No description available.

No description available.

Esta tesis ofrece una justificación para el uso de la pluralidad como una manera óptima de agregar información en las sociedades compuestas por individuos con intereses comunes pero con información diversa. El motivo de esta tesis es seguir una línea de investigación sobre la elección social que se remonta al matemático y filósofo político francés Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marqués de Condorcet (1743-1794). En su Essai sur l'application de l'analyse à la probabilité des decisions rendues à la pluralité des voix (1785), Condorcet afirmó que se garantizaría la justicia social si las naciones adoptaran constituciones políticas que facilitaran el juicio correcto del grupo y argumentó que la votación por mayoría sería la herramienta constitucional más probable para alcanzar este objetivo.Siguiendo esta línea de investigación, la primera parte de esta tesis estudia las condiciones bajo las cuales la pluralidad proporciona a la sociedad el método más adecuado para llegar a decisiones de grupo. Aquí, como en el estudio de Condorcet, supondremos que los votantes actúan honradamente.El desarrollo natural de la teoría de votación, que ha introducido los temas de incentivos e interacción estratégica en la toma de decisiones de grupos, ha sido utilizado para cuestionar la suposición de votación honesta. Austen-Smith y Banks (1996) fueron los primeros en observar que la combinación de información privada e intereses comunes en el sistema propuesto por Condorcet podría crear incentivos para los votantes para actuar estratégicamente. Esta observación les condujo a plantear si la votación honesta sería compatible con el comportamiento de equilibrio de Nash en el juego inducido por la mayoría. La segunda parte de esta tesis expone esta problemática estudiando el comportamiento de los votantes en el juego inducido por la pluralidad.El interés en las instituciones del mundo real, para las cuales la votación es un elemento importante, ha hecho plantear desde hace tiempo la cuestión de si los votantes se comportan tal y como pronostican los modelos teóricos. Otra cuestión ha sido cómo tratar la complejidad del entorno estratégico. La segunda parte de esta tesis pide respuestas a estas preguntas. Puesto que la literatura sobre experimentos de votación parece proporcionar respuestas razonables a estas preguntas, la tercera parte de esta tesis utiliza experimentos de laboratorio para verificar las implicaciones de la segunda parte. / This thesis offers a justification for the use of plurality rule as an optimal way to aggregate information for societies composed of individuals with common interests but diverse information. The motivation of this thesis follows a line of research in social choice that dates back to the French mathematician and political philosopher Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794). In his Essai sur l'application de l'analyse à la probabilité des decisions rendues à la pluralité des voix (1785), Condorcet posited that social justice would be secured if nations would adopt political constitutions that facilitate accurate group judgments, and argued that the majority rule would be the most likely constitutional tool to achieve this goal.Following this line of research, the first part of this thesis discusses the conditions under which plurality rule provides the society with the most likely method to reach accurate group judgments. In this part, as in Condorcet's work, it is assumed that voters act honestly. Natural developments in the theory of voting, that brought in the issues of incentives and strategic interaction in group decision making, were used to challenge the assumption of honest voting. Austen-Smith and Banks (1996) were the first to notice that the combination of private information and common interests in the framework proposed by Condorcet might create an incentive for voters to act strategically. This observation led them to ask the question of whether honest voting is compatible with the Nash equilibrium behavior in the game induced by majority rule. The second part of this thesis advances this problematic by studying voters' behavior in the game induced by plurality rule.The interest in real-world institutions, for which voting is an important element, raised for some time the question of whether voters behave as predicted by the theoretical models. Another question was of how to deal with the complexity of the strategic environment. The second part of this thesis calls for answers to these types of questions. Since the literature on voting experiments seems to provide reasonable answers to these questions, the third part of this thesis uses laboratory experiments to test the implications of the second part.

In this thesis we propose a formal framework for specifying and validating properties of software system architectures. The framework is founded on a model of software architecture description languages (ADLs) and uses a theorem-proving based approach to formally and mechanically establish properties of architectures. Our approach allows models defined using existing ADLs to be validated against properties that may not be expressible using the original notation and tool-set. The central component of the framework is a conceptual model of architecture description languages. The model formalizes a salient, shared set of design categories, relationships and constraints that are fundamental to these notations. An advantage of an approach based on a conceptual model is that it provides a uniform view of design information across a selection of languages. This allows us to construct alternate formal representations of design information specified using existing ADLs. These representations can then be mechanically validated to ensure they meet their specific formal requirements. After defining the model we embed it in the logic of the PVS theorem-proving environment and illustrate its utility with a case study. We first demonstrate how the elements of a design are specified using the model, and then show how this representation is validated using machine-assisted proof. Our approach allows the correctness of a design to be established against a wide range of properties. We illustrate with structural properties, behavioural properties, relationships between the structural and behavioural specification, and dynamic, or evolving aspects of a system's topology.

We discuss queueing systems subject to total disasters. If the time intervals between successive disasters are i.i.d. random variables independent of arrival and service process and arrivals form a Poisson process, then the transient and the asymptotic analysis of such models may be based on Feller's Second Renewal Theorem. Several examples are given: the limiting behavior of M/G/1 in case of exponential disasters and its special cases M/M/1, M/M/1/K and M/M/infinity. (author´s abstract) / Series: Research Report Series / Department of Statistics and Mathematics

In this thesis we propose a formal framework for specifying and validating properties of software system architectures. The framework is founded on a model of software architecture description languages (ADLs) and uses a theorem-proving based approach to formally and mechanically establish properties of architectures. Our approach allows models defined using existing ADLs to be validated against properties that may not be expressible using the original notation and tool-set. The central component of the framework is a conceptual model of architecture description languages. The model formalizes a salient, shared set of design categories, relationships and constraints that are fundamental to these notations. An advantage of an approach based on a conceptual model is that it provides a uniform view of design information across a selection of languages. This allows us to construct alternate formal representations of design information specified using existing ADLs. These representations can then be mechanically validated to ensure they meet their specific formal requirements. After defining the model we embed it in the logic of the PVS theorem-proving environment and illustrate its utility with a case study. We first demonstrate how the elements of a design are specified using the model, and then show how this representation is validated using machine-assisted proof. Our approach allows the correctness of a design to be established against a wide range of properties. We illustrate with structural properties, behavioural properties, relationships between the structural and behavioural specification, and dynamic, or evolving aspects of a system's topology.

Scalable video coding (SVC) supports full scalability by extracting a partial bitstream to adapt to transmission and display requirements in multimedia applications. Most conventional video content is stored in non-scalable format, e.g., H.264/AVC, necessitating the development of an efficient video transcoding from a conventional format to a scalable one. This work describes a fast video transcoding architecture that overcomes the complexity of different coding structures between H.264/AVC and SVC. The proposed algorithm simplifies the mode decision process in SVC owing to its heavy computations. The current mode in SVC is selected by the highest conditional probability of SVC¡¦s mode given the H.264/AVC¡¦s mode. Exactly when an error prediction occurs is then detected using Bayesian theorem, followed by its refinement using the Markov model. Experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm saves on average 75.28% of coding time with 0.13 dB PSNR loss over that when using a cascaded pixel domain transcoder.

This paper investigates methods of solving calculus problems in Putnam Mathematical Competition.Chapter 2 presents the methods of finding limits, and the most important theorems of continuity---Intermediate Value Theorem and Extreme Value Theorem. Chapter 3 introduces to the properties of derivatives, and the application problems change from the basic problems of derivative. It contains the tangent line and the rate and the meaning of derivative on the geometry.In this chapter also includes the most important theorem---Mean Value Theorem---in derivatives. Chapter 4 introduces to the properties of integral, and the application problems change from the basic problems of integral. There are the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, Arc length, area, volume and the mass moment and centroid of physical. Chapter 5 investigates the integral techniques of the various forms of possible form for the integral function, to take the integral becomes relatively easy to calculate. In addition to the common variable transformation, also describes how to use the Leibniz Rule for solving integrating. In Chapter 6, it presents that how to determine terms of sequence and its limit, and introduces the infinite summation and to determine convergence or divergence of series.

In this dissertation, four nonlinear controllers are proposed for different class of multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems with matched and mismatched perturbations. All the plants to be controlled contains input uncertainty. The technique of the adaptive sliding mode control (ASMC) scheme is first introduced in order to solve the regulation or tracking problems. By applying adaptive techniques to the design of a novel sliding surface as well as to the design of sliding mode controller, one can not only enable the fulfillment of reaching mode in fi- nite time, but also suppress the mismatched perturbations when system is in the sliding mode. Secondly, the design methodology of block backstepping is proposed to solve the regulation problem in chapter 5. Some adaptive mechanisms are employed in the virtual input controller, so that the mismatched perturbations can be tackled and the proposed robust controller can guarantee stability of the controlled systems. All these control schemes are designed by means of Lyapunov stability theorem. Each robust controller contains two parts. The first part is for eliminating measurable feedback signals of the plant, and the second part is an adaptive control mechanism, which is capable of adapting some unknown constants embedded in the least upper bounds of perturbations, so that the knowledge of the least upper bounds of matched and mismatched perturbations is not required and can achieve asymptotic stability. Several numerical examples and industrial applications are demonstrated for showing the feasibility of the proposed control schemes.

¡@Ever since the foundation in 2000, the branches of Administrative Enforcement Agency have been handling the cases of monetary payment duty in public law with the total amount reaching 3,0178,624, by only about the workforce of 400 people in average while bringing in 1,133,000,000 financial income for the nation in six years. Among these cases, 24,386,174 are closed, which are more effective than in the past and helpful in keeping the publics from evading their duties by luck and therefore realizing the social fairness and justice, thus manifesting the public authority. However, there are still many problems hiding behind the new organizations and their systems, as the number indicates: unresolved cases reach 5,809,904 while 3,732 1,1609,753 dollars are unexecuted. In order to reduce the number of unclosed cases and enhance the administrative efficiency from two indexes: rate of the case-closing and levied tax, the thesis had combined the transaction cost theory from the Coase Theorem with the concept of opportunity cost in law economics, and had discussed the forming causes and strategies from three aspects under the principle of maximum efficiency, while not omitting the point of view of the public choices by the people of the duty. Three main conclusions are therefore made as follow: Firstly, speaking of system in terms of case management and evaluation, the amount of case closed must outnumbers the case received, while different types of cases (according to the amount of money) must be reduced in proportion; moreover, specific execution procedure should be arranged according to its types, and to indicate a clear termination of the time rather than being delayed for too long. Secondly, as far as the case efficiency is concerned, the more payment channel ,the better. In addition, by using information technology, it is effective in exchanging the information among different individuals, and speeding up the case to be closed. Thirdly, in the part of case receiving, be sure to monitor the loading of cases according to the workforce and to adjust the human resource or control the speed of case receiving. Setting up the voucher re-transfer evaluation mechanism to avoid the running-empty of administrative procedure and the waste of resource; to build up the pre-case database and to provide decision support system of the case execution so as to reduce the cost of research and decision making.