591 |
Essays on social influences in decision makingKC, Raghabendra Pratap January 2018 (has links)
This dissertation reports a series of studies on social influences in decision making with wide ranging marketing implications in areas such as gamification initiatives, participative pricing mechanisms, and charity fundraising strategies. The body of this work comprises of three indepth, stand-alone studies. The first study, "Contagion of the Competitive Spirit: The Influence of a Competition on Non-Competitors", investigates the influence of a competition on noncompetitors who do not participate in it but are aware of it. In a series of experimental studies, the study shows that the mere awareness of a competition can affect a non-competitor's performance in similar tasks. These experiments provide confirmatory and process evidence for this contagion effect, showing that it is driven by heightened social comparison motivation due to mere awareness of the competition. In addition, the study finds evidence that the reward level for the competitors could moderate the contagion effect on the non-competitors. The second study, "The Negative Effects of Precommitment on Reciprocal Behaviour: Evidence from a Series of Voluntary Payment Experiments", examines the effects of precommitment on reciprocal behaviour towards a forthcoming benefit. Through a series of experiments in several countries, the study shows that precommitment often weakens reciprocal behaviour. In two field experiments, a laboratory and an online experiment, the study finds consistent evidence that voluntary payment amounts decrease for individuals who are asked to precommit their payment. The results from a final online trust-game experiment support the posited mental-accounting mechanism for the effect. The third study, "Hold-Up Induced by Demand for Fairness: Theory and Experimental Evidence", explores the domain of hold-up and fairness concerns. While recent research suggests that fairness concerns could mitigate hold-up problems, this study proposes a starkly opposite possibility: that fairness concerns can also induce hold-up problems and thus significant inefficiencies. The study reports theoretical analysis and experimental evidence of hold-up in scenarios in which it will not occur if agents are purely self-interested, but could occur if they care about fairness at ex post negotiation.
|
592 |
Contribuições para a análise e simulação de redes ópticas: aspectos de Engenharia de Tráfego, restauração dinâmica e conversão de comprimentos de onda / Contributions for the analysis and simulation of optical networks: aspects of traffic engineering, dynamic restoration and conversion of wavelenghtsAloia, Eduardo José 09 March 2009 (has links)
A tecnologia WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing) e a introdução de OXCs (Optical Cross Connect) e OADMs (Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer) puramente ópticos podem dotar as redes ópticas da função de networking, ou seja, da capacidade de manipular comprimentos de onda de forma a implementar o roteamento destes. Esta possibilidade implica em uma nova forma de relacionamento das aplicações com a camada física, sendo a arquitetura GMPLS candidata a estabelecer tal relacionamento. Soluções eficientes para o problema de alocação de recursos e roteamento de tráfego tornam-se uma necessidade imperiosa em projeto, expansão e gerenciamento de redes ópticas. A contribuição desta tese consiste em relacionar funcionalidades tais como: agregação (grooming) de tráfego, mecanismo de controle de admissão de chamadas (CAC), mecanismos de restauração e alocação de conversores em redes ópticas heterogêneas, avaliando-se as métricas de probabilidade de bloqueio, probabilidade do tráfego bloqueado e imparcialidade (fairness). Tais funcionalidades são tratadas separadamente na literatura. Com este objetivo em mente modela-se a rede com duas camadas: a camada física e a camada virtual. Estabelecem-se duas políticas de agregação de tráfego MrTV (minimização da rota na topologia virtual) e MrTF (minimização da rota na topologia física) e analisa-se o desempenho destas em relação à porcentagem de tráfego bloqueado. Em seguida um mecanismo de controle de admissão de chamadas (CAC) é implementado e sua influência em termos de imparcialidade (fairness) e probabilidade de bloqueio é analisada. A simulação e análise de redes ópticas, como a Rede NSFnet e a Rede Nacional Italiana são executadas por meio da implementação de um grafo baseado em Zhu e Mukherjee [28]. Como resultado, a política MrTF apresenta menor porcentagem de tráfego bloqueado do que a política MrTV para as redes simuladas e a implementação de um mecanismo de janela deslizante (rolling window) tornou o mecanismo de CAC mais otimizado. A utilidade de se implantar conversores de comprimento de onda apenas em alguns nós da rede (conversão esparsa) é estudada e uma análise sobre a probabilidade de bloqueio e a imparcialidade da rede desta distribuição de conversores é apresentada. Finalmente, técnicas de restauração na camada física e virtual são implementadas e uma análise da influência destes sobre a probabilidade de bloqueio e a imparcialidade da rede é executada. / The Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technology as well as both the introduction of all optical OXCs (Optical Cross Connect) and OADMs (Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer) may provide the optical network with the networking function, i.e, the capacity to manipulate wavelengths in order to implement their routing. This possibility implies a new type of relationship between applications and the physical layer. The likely candidate to establish such relationships is GMPLS architecture. Efficient solutions to both the problems of allocating resources and traffic routing become an enhanced requirement in the design, expansion and management of optical networking. The present study focus at the relationship between functionalities such as traffic grooming, network fairness improvement, protection/restoring mechanisms and wavelength conversion in heterogeneous optical networks, evaluating the metrics of blocking probability, probability of traffic blocked and fairness. These functionalities are separately treated in literature. With this goal in mind, a two-layer representation is used in order to model the network: the physical and virtual layers, respectively. Two policies on traffic grooming are set up, as follows: MrTV (route minimizing on virtual topology) and MrTF (route minimizing on physical topology). The performance of such policies is analyzed regarding the percentage of blocked traffic. Next, a mechanism for call admission control (CAC) is implemented and its influence in terms of fairness and blocking probability is discussed. The simulations of optical networks such as NSFnet and the Italian National Network are carried out through a graph based in Zhu and Mukherjee [28]. As a result, MrTF policy presents a smaller percentage of blocked traffic than the MrTV for the simulated networks and the rolling window mechanism has allowed the optimization of the call admission control (CAC) mechanism. The usefulness of placing wavelength converters in a few networks nodes (spare conversion) is studied and an analysis on the blocking probability is presented. Next, the network fairness for this distribution of wavelength converters is presented. Finally, techniques for restoring both physical and virtual layers are also implemented and an analysis regarding their influence on the blocking probability and the network fairness is carried out.
|
593 |
Abuso de situações jurídicas processuais no Código de Processo Civil / Abuse of procedural rights in the Brazilian civil procedure codeCarradita, André Luís Santoro 04 June 2013 (has links)
Este trabalho visa a realizar uma análise sistemática das diversas normas do Código de Processo Civil que tratam do abuso de situações jurídicas processuais. O tratamento desse tema é dividido em quatro partes. Em primeiro lugar, analisa-se a teoria geral do abuso do processo, que abrange a evolução histórica do abuso processual, a adoção da teoria do abuso do direito oriunda do Direito privado, os fundamentos da prevenção e da repressão dos comportamentos abusivos, os elementos essenciais que caracterizam o abuso do processo (objeto, sujeitos e requisitos do ato processual abusivo) e a discussão acerca da ilicitude do ato processual abusivo. Em seguida, considerando os elementos caracterizadores do abuso do processo, são identificadas e estudadas as hipóteses de abuso de situações jurídicas processuais previstas no Código de Processo Civil brasileiro. A terceira seção deste trabalho é dedicada às consequências jurídicas do abuso do processo e a algumas questões referentes à aplicação de sanções. Finalmente, na quarta parte, procede-se ao exame dos mecanismos destinados a prevenir o abuso de situações jurídicas processuais. / This work aims to do a systematic analysis of the different norms of the Brazilian Civil Procedure Code that deals with the abuse of procedural rights. The treatment of this subject is divided into four sections. In the first place, it analyses the general theory of abuse of process, which includes the historical evolution of abuse of process, the adoption of the theory of abuse of rights from civil law, the foundations of prevention and repression of abusive behaviors, the essential elements that characterize the abuse of process (its object, its subjects and the requisites of the abusive procedural act) and the discussion about the unlawfulness of the abusive procedural act. Subsequently, considering the distinguishing elements of abuse of process, it identifies and studies the fattispecies of abuse of procedural rights contained in the Brazilian Civil Procedure Code. The third section of this work is dedicated to the legal consequences of abuse of process and to some questions related to the application of sanctions. Finally, in the fourth section, it examines the legal devices aimed at preventing abuse of procedural rights.
|
594 |
The Difference Principle in Rawls: Pragmatic or Infertile?Esmaeili, Farzaneh 01 January 2015 (has links)
This thesis attempts to provide a coherent view of the idea of ‘justice as fairness’ and, in particular, the ‘difference principle’ expressed by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice. The main focus of the thesis is the difference principle and its limits. Rawls’s conception of ‘justice as fairness’ is based on the thought experiment of the ‘original position’ in which people, considered as free and equal, deliberate under an imagined ‘veil of ignorance,’ i.e. not knowing which social roles or status they would occupy in their society. Rawls then argues that in the original position people come up with two major principles of justice, understood as principles that would be acceptable to people treated as free and equal. The second principle entails the so-called ‘difference principle,’ according to which the inequalities of, say, wealth and authority are just and fair only if they lead to compensating benefits for everybody and particularly the least advantaged. The thesis proceeds, then, by probing whether compared with other theories, , including a discussion of Dahl’s theory of democracy, Rawls’s difference principle could be a proper answer to one of the main questions of social justice. The questions is: how the economic fortune in a society should be distributed among citizens. However, despite Rawls’s aim to develop the difference principle as a practical normative theory, it fails to give us a pragmatic answer. The reason is: the statement of the difference principle fails to take into account one crucial point: to wit, the matter of time. The thesis develops two empirical economic scenarios to illustrate that there is a trade-off between the interests of the poor in short and long period of time. However, this important issue is not considered and discussed by Rawls which makes the theory inapplicable.
|
595 |
Colonised Coasts : Aquaculture and Emergy Flows in the World System: Cases from Sri Lanka and the PhilippinesBergquist, Daniel A. January 2008 (has links)
<p>This thesis conceives aquaculture as a transfer of resources within and between different parts of the world system. It is argued that due to inappropriate human-nature interactions, resources tend to flow from the South to the North, as a process of coastal colonisation. To study this resource transfer, coastal aquaculture is ap-proached from a transdisciplinary perspective, integrating natural, social, economic and spatial aspects. By combining world system theory and general systems theory, a systems view is adopted to relate aquaculture to forces of global capitalism, and analyse interactions between social and ecological processes at local and global levels. Emergy (energy memory) synthesis and participatory research methodologies were applied to two cases of aquaculture in Sri Lanka and the Philippines; monocul-ture of the black tiger prawn (Penaeus monodon) and milkfish (Chanos chanos), and polyculture of the two species together with mudcrab (Scylla serrata). The study reveals that semi-intensive shrimp monoculture in Sri Lanka generates few benefits for poor local people, and depends much on external inputs such as fry, feed and fuels, which implies negative environmental effects at local as well as global levels. Extensive polyculture in the Philippines involves more local people, and implies lower dependence on external inputs. Still, since benefits accrue mostly to elites, and mangroves are negatively affected, neither case is viable for sustainable poverty alleviation. Nevertheless, the study offers several insights into how sustainability assessment may be more transdisciplinary, and points to several factors affecting sustainability and fairness in aquaculture; the most important being mangrove con-version, local people involvement, and dependence on external inputs. Given that mangrove conversion is counteracted, extensive polyculture practices may also prove more viable in times of decreasing resources availability, and if policies are developed that favour resource efficient polyculture, and local small-scale and re-source poor farmers, instead of the global North.</p>
|
596 |
Strategic and environmental uncertainty in social dilemmasLindahl, Therese January 2005 (has links)
Social dilemmas constitute a broad class of quandaries, including, for example, common pool resource (CPR) dilemmas and public good (PG) dilemmas. CPR's are characterized by non-excludability and rivalry and are often associated with overexploitation. Through similar arguments, the features non-excludability and non-rivalry give rise to under-provision of PG's. The prevalence and inefficiencies often associated with CPR's have given rise to an extensive literature and the role of resource uncertainty has not been ignored. Uncertainty combined with rivalry is often said to augment users' incentive to overexploit. However, underlying most of the theoretical research is an explicit or implicit assumption of symmetric information, or a symmetric lack of information. In reality, people generally have access to different sources of information and they may differ in their abilities to process information. In the first two papers of this thesis, the assumption of symmetry is relaxed and both papers demonstrate that from a welfare perspective, the distribution of uncertainty is also of importance. Many CPR's and PG's are natural, which can complicate the situation. In the traditional resource management literature, the exploited resource is often assumed to be properly characterized by some concave growth function. Today, there is extensive empirical evidence suggesting that many ecosystems have more complex, often non-linear dynamics. Management of such resources can be quite challenging as the non-linear dynamics can make the ecosystem flip between alternate stable states, and even marginal changes can cause radical transformations of such ecosystems. Most of the CPR models assume the shared resource to be of fixed size or to be able to generate a constant flow of services. In the third paper we aim at providing a more complete picture of the overexploitation of a common resource, by combining the institutional structure with complex ecological dynamics. We manage to raise questions and doubts about the standard assumptions. Another feature of convex-concave resources is that a state can become highly robust and sometimes an ecosystem change may even be irreversible. This is problematic if, for example, we wish to restore a degraded ecosystem. The aim of the fourth paper is to empirically analyze this question, by eliciting peoples' preferences through a hypothetical referendum on the issue. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2005
|
597 |
Colonised Coasts : Aquaculture and Emergy Flows in the World System: Cases from Sri Lanka and the PhilippinesBergquist, Daniel A. January 2008 (has links)
This thesis conceives aquaculture as a transfer of resources within and between different parts of the world system. It is argued that due to inappropriate human-nature interactions, resources tend to flow from the South to the North, as a process of coastal colonisation. To study this resource transfer, coastal aquaculture is ap-proached from a transdisciplinary perspective, integrating natural, social, economic and spatial aspects. By combining world system theory and general systems theory, a systems view is adopted to relate aquaculture to forces of global capitalism, and analyse interactions between social and ecological processes at local and global levels. Emergy (energy memory) synthesis and participatory research methodologies were applied to two cases of aquaculture in Sri Lanka and the Philippines; monocul-ture of the black tiger prawn (Penaeus monodon) and milkfish (Chanos chanos), and polyculture of the two species together with mudcrab (Scylla serrata). The study reveals that semi-intensive shrimp monoculture in Sri Lanka generates few benefits for poor local people, and depends much on external inputs such as fry, feed and fuels, which implies negative environmental effects at local as well as global levels. Extensive polyculture in the Philippines involves more local people, and implies lower dependence on external inputs. Still, since benefits accrue mostly to elites, and mangroves are negatively affected, neither case is viable for sustainable poverty alleviation. Nevertheless, the study offers several insights into how sustainability assessment may be more transdisciplinary, and points to several factors affecting sustainability and fairness in aquaculture; the most important being mangrove con-version, local people involvement, and dependence on external inputs. Given that mangrove conversion is counteracted, extensive polyculture practices may also prove more viable in times of decreasing resources availability, and if policies are developed that favour resource efficient polyculture, and local small-scale and re-source poor farmers, instead of the global North.
|
598 |
Om utmaning i förskolan : Hur är man rättvis och inkluderande som pedagog?Taha, Nadia January 2015 (has links)
In my essay, I will start with a story that represents my dilemma from my own experience. In the story, dealing with children that challenges teachers and other children in preschool, I wonder how I as a teacher can be fair and inclusive when I feel insufficient on several occasions. I reflect on my own approach because it can be difficult when we encounter children with different needs and abilities in preschool. I write the essay in experience-based essay form. The essays form makes it possible for me to reflect on my own experience and by using selected theoretical perspectives processing my dilemma. In my essay, I explore my own approach, what is meant by fairness and how the concept can be interpreted and how I can in the best way include all children in activities. I conclude that fairness from a perspective can be seen from the five criteria similarity, need, performance, compensation and rights. The teachers should reflect on their approach and take into account all the needs of every children based on their conditions. Fronesis, practical knowledge, is required to, among other things, make good judgement and to make wise decisions in preschool.
|
599 |
Les enjeux éthiques de l’ambiguïté du terme "communauté" dans les documents officiels de santé publique au Québec sous une perspective de justice distributiveGendron, Karine 08 1900 (has links)
Ciblant la réduction des inégalités sociales de santé, le Québec a établi une stratégie de soutien au développement des communautés en santé publique. Or, un usage ambigu du terme de « communauté » est identifiable dans les documents officiels de santé publique au Québec, ce qui pose des questions d’équité et de justice sociale. D'abord, cette imprécision permet mal l’application du soutien au développement des communautés et laisse présager la même difficulté quant à l’objectif de réduction des inégalités sociales de santé qui s’y rattache. Aussi, cette situation pose un problème d’équité, puisqu’elle mène difficilement à la justification des choix des communautés qui seront soutenues pour leur développement. Le premier Chapitre de ce mémoire
confirme alors l’hypothèse selon laquelle on ne s’efforce pas suffisamment pour rendre compréhensible la notion de « communauté » en santé publique, à l’aide d’une analyse de contenu des documents de santé publique québécois. Le deuxième chapitre explore diverses compréhensions du terme à travers les sciences sociales. On propose alors la typologie de Vibert pour démontrer la richesse sociohistorique du concept de « communauté » et ses enjeux et pour permettre d’éclairer les professionnels de santé quant aux choix des communautés qu’ils soutiendront dans leur pratique. Enfin, si plusieurs acceptations du terme de « communauté » sont justifiables en santé publique, alors sous quels critères sont sélectionnées les communautés soutenues? Le troisième chapitre y réfléchit, en s’appuyant sur le modèle de justice procédurale développé par Daniels et Sabin pour répondre équitablement aux désaccords liés aux
rationnements en santé. / To reduce social health inequalities, the Quebec government has introduced a strategy to support community development. However, official Quebec government documents in the public health sector are ambiguous in their use of the term “community”, which raises issues of fairness and justice. First, the ambiguity of this concept points to a lack of effort to make community development functional, which suggests a lack of seriousness with regards to reducing associated health inequalities. There is also an issue of fairness, because the rationale for the selection of communities that can expect support in community development cannot be justified if
we do not know what “community” means. In the first chapter, this thesis employs a content analysis of Quebec public health documents to confirm the hypothesis that
these official documents do not make sufficiently clear the concept of “community”. The second chapter explores understandings of this term in the social sciences.
Vibert’s typology is proposed to account for the socio-historical richness of the term “community”, the issues that this term raises and a possible means for enabling health professionals to make better-informed choices about the communities they support in their practice. Finally, if multiple uses or understanding of the term “community” are acceptable in Quebec public health, then by what criteria are communities selected for support? The third chapter examines the model of procedural justice developed by Daniels and Sabin to respond fairly to disagreements related to rationing in health.
|
600 |
Network and end-host support for HTTP adaptive video streamingMansy, Ahmed 04 April 2014 (has links)
Video streaming is widely recognized as the next Internet killer application. It was not one of the Internet's original target applications and its protocols (TCP in particular) were tuned mainly for e efficient bulk file transfer. As a result, a significant effort has focused on the development of UDP-based special protocols for streaming multimedia on the Internet. Recently, there has been a shift in video streaming from UDP to TCP, and specifically to HTTP. HTTP streaming provides a very attractive platform for video distribution on the Internet mainly because it can utilize all the current Internet infrastructure. In this thesis we make the argument that the marriage between HTTP streaming and the current Internet infrastructure can create many problems and inefficiencies. In order to solve these issues, we provide a set of techniques and protocols that can help both the network and end-hosts to make better decisions to improve video streaming quality. The thesis makes the following contributions:
- We conduct a characterization study of popular commercial streaming services on mobile platforms. Our study shows that streaming services make different design decisions when implementing video players on different mobile platforms. We show that this can lead to several inefficiencies and undesirable behaviors specially when several clients compete for bandwidth in a shared bottleneck link.
- Fairness between traffic flows has been preserved on the Internet through the use of TCP. However, due to the dynamics of adaptive video players and the lack of standard client adaptation techniques, fairness between multiple competing video flows is still an open issue of research. Our work extends the definition of standard bitrate fairness to utility fairness where utility is the Quality of Experience (QoE) of a video stream. We define QoE max-min fairness for a set of adaptive video flows competing for bandwidth in a network and we develop an algorithm that computes the set of bitrates that should be assigned to each stream to achieve fairness. We design and implement a system that can apply QoE fairness in home networks and evaluate the system on a real home router.
- A well known problem that has been associated with TCP traffic is the buffer bloat problem. We use an experimental setup to show that adaptive video flows can cause buffer bloat which can significantly harm time sensitive applications sharing the same bottleneck link with video traffic. In addition, we develop a technique that can be used by video players to mitigate this problem. We implement our technique in a real video player and evaluate it on our testbed.
- With the increasing popularity of video streaming on the Internet, the amounts of traffic on the peering links between video streaming providers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have become the source of many disputes. Hybrid CDN/P2P streaming systems can be used to reduce the amounts of traffic on the peering links by leveraging users upload bandwidth to redistribute some of the load to other peers. We develop an analysis for hybrid CDN/P2P systems that broadcast live adaptive video streams. The analysis helps the CDN to make better decisions to optimize video quality for its users.
|
Page generated in 0.045 seconds