638,366 research outputs found
Do we measure what we get?
Performance measures shall enhance the performance of companies by directing the attention of decision makers towards the achievement of organizational goals. Therefore, goal congruence is regarded in literature as a major factor in the quality of such measures. As reality is affected by many variables, in practice one has tried to achieve a high degree of goal congruence by incorporating an increasing number of these variables into performance measures. However, a goal congruent measure does not lead automatically to superior decisions, because decision makersâ restricted cognitive abilities can counteract the intended effects. This paper addresses the interplay between goal congruence and complexity of performance measures considering cognitively-restricted decision makers. Two types of decision quality are derived which allow a differentiated view on the influence of this interplay on decision quality and learning. The simulation experiments based on this differentiation provide results which allow a critical reflection on costs and benefits of goal congruence and the assumptions regarding the goal congruence of incentive systems
Statistical framework for video decoding complexity modeling and prediction
Video decoding complexity modeling and prediction is an increasingly important issue for efficient resource utilization in a variety of applications, including task scheduling, receiver-driven complexity shaping, and adaptive dynamic voltage scaling. In this paper we present a novel view of this problem based on a statistical framework perspective. We explore the statistical structure (clustering) of the execution time required by each video decoder module (entropy decoding, motion compensation, etc.) in conjunction with complexity features that are easily extractable at encoding time (representing the properties of each module's input source data). For this purpose, we employ Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) and an expectation-maximization algorithm to estimate the joint execution-time - feature probability density function (PDF). A training set of typical video sequences is used for this purpose in an offline estimation process. The obtained GMM representation is used in conjunction with the complexity features of new video sequences to predict the execution time required for the decoding of these sequences. Several prediction approaches are discussed and compared. The potential mismatch between the training set and new video content is addressed by adaptive online joint-PDF re-estimation. An experimental comparison is performed to evaluate the different approaches and compare the proposed prediction scheme with related resource prediction schemes from the literature. The usefulness of the proposed complexity-prediction approaches is demonstrated in an application of rate-distortion-complexity optimized decoding
Proceedings of the ECCS 2005 satellite workshop: embracing complexity in design - Paris 17 November 2005
Embracing complexity in design is one of the critical issues and challenges of the 21st century. As the realization grows that design activities and artefacts display properties associated with complex adaptive systems, so grows the need to use complexity concepts and methods to understand these properties and inform the design of better artifacts. It is a great challenge because complexity science represents an epistemological and methodological swift that promises a holistic approach in the understanding and operational support of design. But design is also a major contributor in complexity research. Design science is concerned with problems that are fundamental in the sciences in general and complexity sciences in particular. For instance, design has been perceived and studied as a ubiquitous activity inherent in every human activity, as the art of generating hypotheses, as a type of experiment, or as a creative co-evolutionary process. Design science and its established approaches and practices can be a great source for advancement and innovation in complexity science. These proceedings are the result of a workshop organized as part of the activities of a UK government AHRB/EPSRC funded research cluster called Embracing Complexity in Design (www.complexityanddesign.net) and the European Conference in Complex Systems (complexsystems.lri.fr). Embracing complexity in design is one of the critical issues and challenges of the 21st century. As the realization grows that design activities and artefacts display properties associated with complex adaptive systems, so grows the need to use complexity concepts and methods to understand these properties and inform the design of better artifacts. It is a great challenge because complexity science represents an epistemological and methodological swift that promises a holistic approach in the understanding and operational support of design. But design is also a major contributor in complexity research. Design science is concerned with problems that are fundamental in the sciences in general and complexity sciences in particular. For instance, design has been perceived and studied as a ubiquitous activity inherent in every human activity, as the art of generating hypotheses, as a type of experiment, or as a creative co-evolutionary process. Design science and its established approaches and practices can be a great source for advancement and innovation in complexity science. These proceedings are the result of a workshop organized as part of the activities of a UK government AHRB/EPSRC funded research cluster called Embracing Complexity in Design (www.complexityanddesign.net) and the European Conference in Complex Systems (complexsystems.lri.fr)
LightChain: A DHT-based Blockchain for Resource Constrained Environments
As an append-only distributed database, blockchain is utilized in a vast
variety of applications including the cryptocurrency and Internet-of-Things
(IoT). The existing blockchain solutions have downsides in communication and
storage efficiency, convergence to centralization, and consistency problems. In
this paper, we propose LightChain, which is the first blockchain architecture
that operates over a Distributed Hash Table (DHT) of participating peers.
LightChain is a permissionless blockchain that provides addressable blocks and
transactions within the network, which makes them efficiently accessible by all
the peers. Each block and transaction is replicated within the DHT of peers and
is retrieved in an on-demand manner. Hence, peers in LightChain are not
required to retrieve or keep the entire blockchain. LightChain is fair as all
of the participating peers have a uniform chance of being involved in the
consensus regardless of their influence such as hashing power or stake.
LightChain provides a deterministic fork-resolving strategy as well as a
blacklisting mechanism, and it is secure against colluding adversarial peers
attacking the availability and integrity of the system. We provide mathematical
analysis and experimental results on scenarios involving 10K nodes to
demonstrate the security and fairness of LightChain. As we experimentally show
in this paper, compared to the mainstream blockchains like Bitcoin and
Ethereum, LightChain requires around 66 times less per node storage, and is
around 380 times faster on bootstrapping a new node to the system, while each
LightChain node is rewarded equally likely for participating in the protocol
The Qualitative Analysis of Factors Influencing the Adoption Rate of Reward-Based Crowdfunding by Polish Filmmakers
The aim of this article is to analyze and discuss the factors impacting the process of the implementation of crowdfunding by the Polish film industry. The presented study is based on the qualitative approach: unstructured or semistructured interviews, questionnaires and the analysis of case studies. The respondents enumerated and evaluated a wide spectrum of factors facilitating and hindering the adoption rate: from general barriers (e.g. legal regulation of crowdfunding) to very specific aspects for filmmaking (e.g. the unprofessional promotional video of the crowdfunding project). The findings highlighted the significance of the following factors: the existing strong filmmakersâ attitude that âcrowdfunding is for film beginnersâ, the complexity of team management (film crew) during the process of crowdfunding campaigns, and the cultural aspects of seeking financial support from friends.Celem artykuĆu jest analiza i omĂłwienie czynnikĂłw wpĆywajÄ
cych na proces implementacji crowdfundingu przez polski sektor filmowy. Zaprezentowane w artykule badania zostaĆy oparte na metodach jakoĆciowych: nieustrukturalizowanych lub czÄĆciowo ustrukturalizowanych wywiadach i kwestionariuszach oraz na analizie studium przypadkĂłw. Respondenci wskazali i dokonali ewaluacji szerokiego spektrum czynnikĂłw wspierajÄ
cych i hamujÄ
cych proces akceptacji innowacji, jakÄ
jest crowdfunding: od ogĂłlnych barier (np. legislacji prawnych dotyczÄ
cych crowdfundingu), po czynniki ĆciĆle zwiÄ
zane z produkcjÄ
filmowÄ
(np. nieprofesjonalne wideo promujÄ
ce projekt crowdfundingowy). Wyniki badaĆ podkreĆlajÄ
szczegĂłlne znaczenie nastÄpujÄ
cych czynnikĂłw: silnej postawy respondentĂłw oceniajÄ
cej crowdfunding jako narzÄdzie dla poczÄ
tkujÄ
cych filmowcĂłw, zĆoĆŒonoĆÄ procesu zarzÄ
dzania zespoĆem (ekipÄ
filmowÄ
) w trakcie realizacji projektu kampanii crowdfundingowej oraz aspekt kulturowy dotyczÄ
cy szukania wsparcia dla projektu wĆrĂłd grona znajomych
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Project Controls and Management Systems : current practice and how it has changed over the past decade
Project Controls and Management System (PCMS) refers to an ecosystem of processes, tools and personnel required for the proper planning and execution of capital projects throughout the different phases of design, procurement, construction and startup. This can be divided into different focus areas (functions) that would include Estimating, Planning, Scheduling, Cost Control, Change Management, Progressing, and Forecasting. Various trends such as globalization, contractor specialization and information technology developments have impacted the way PCMS are implemented and made it the subject of extensive research over the past years to investigate how to best utilize those trends. Replicating the research methodology used in a 2011 report published by the Construction Research Institute (CII), this work aims to investigate the current status of PCMS implementation and how it has changed over the past decade. It was concluded that while the original PCMS principles are still valid, adoption has drastically changed in terms of efficiency for the majority of the functions. The research also identifies areas of potential concerns and provides recommendations for further improvement.Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineerin
Solving Hard Control Problems in Voting Systems via Integer Programming
Voting problems are central in the area of social choice. In this article, we
investigate various voting systems and types of control of elections. We
present integer linear programming (ILP) formulations for a wide range of
NP-hard control problems. Our ILP formulations are flexible in the sense that
they can work with an arbitrary number of candidates and voters. Using the
off-the-shelf solver Cplex, we show that our approaches can manipulate
elections with a large number of voters and candidates efficiently
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