Artificial Evolution 2011 : 10th International Conference, Evolution Artificielle, EA 2011, Angers, France, October 24-26, 2011, Revised Selected Papers

International audienc

How Fast Can We Play Tetris Greedily With Rectangular Pieces?

Consider a variant of Tetris played on a board of width $w$ and infinite height, where the pieces are axis-aligned rectangles of arbitrary integer dimensions, the pieces can only be moved before letting them drop, and a row does not disappear once it is full. Suppose we want to follow a greedy strategy: let each rectangle fall where it will end up the lowest given the current state of the board. To do so, we want a data structure which can always suggest a greedy move. In other words, we want a data structure which maintains a set of $O(n)$ rectangles, supports queries which return where to drop the rectangle, and updates which insert a rectangle dropped at a certain position and return the height of the highest point in the updated set of rectangles. We show via a reduction to the Multiphase problem [P\u{a}tra\c{s}cu, 2010] that on a board of width $w=\Theta(n)$, if the OMv conjecture [Henzinger et al., 2015] is true, then both operations cannot be supported in time $O(n^{1/2-\epsilon})$ simultaneously. The reduction also implies polynomial bounds from the 3-SUM conjecture and the APSP conjecture. On the other hand, we show that there is a data structure supporting both operations in $O(n^{1/2}\log^{3/2}n)$ time on boards of width $n^{O(1)}$, matching the lower bound up to a $n^{o(1)}$ factor.Comment: Correction of typos and other minor correction

Factors Influencing Customer Satisfaction towards E-shopping in Malaysia

Online shopping or e-shopping has changed the world of business and quite a few people have decided to work with these features. What their primary concerns precisely and the responses from the globalisation are the competency of incorporation while doing their businesses. E-shopping has also increased substantially in Malaysia in recent years. The rapid increase in the e-commerce industry in Malaysia has created the demand to emphasize on how to increase customer satisfaction while operating in the e-retailing environment. It is very important that customers are satisfied with the website, or else, they would not return. Therefore, a crucial fact to look into is that companies must ensure that their customers are satisfied with their purchases that are really essential from the ecommerce’s point of view. With is in mind, this study aimed at investigating customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed among students randomly selected from various public and private universities located within Klang valley area. Total 369 questionnaires were returned, out of which 341 questionnaires were found usable for further analysis. Finally, SEM was employed to test the hypotheses. This study found that customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia is to a great extent influenced by ease of use, trust, design of the website, online security and e-service quality. Finally, recommendations and future study direction is provided. Keywords: E-shopping, Customer satisfaction, Trust, Online security, E-service quality, Malaysia

Three Essays on Democratic Theory and Practice

This dissertation is an attempt to expound on the meaning of democracy as “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” It attempts in three essays to explore the depths of this all-encompassing ‘Lincoln’ definition of popular government. If democracy is government borne ‘of the people,’ how has it evolved and developed with the growth of the nation-state? And if it is crafted ‘by the people,’ what are its ascriptive features and characteristics? And if it is made ‘for the people,’ how is it perceived and practiced by them? The first essay focuses on the origins of democracy and the political revivals that have shaped its present development. It thus undertakes a study of the political systems of Classical Athens and Rome, and performs an analysis of the democratic revolutions that ensued in England, the United States, and France. The second essay explores some model theoretical constructs of representative democracy, as well as the conditions required for its functional practice. The third essay however moves away from theory to empirics, and performs a qualitative case study of democratic practice in Ghana, by which means it attempts to shed light on what Professor Harry Eckstein has called “the improbable combination of circumstances that make democracy work.

Une bibliographie commentée en temps réel : l'art de la performance au Québec et au Canada = An Annotated Bibliography in Real Time : Performance Art in Quebec and Canada

An Annotated Bibliography in Real Time: Performance Art in Quebec and Canada offers a bibliographic survey of writings, publications and printed matter on Quebec and Canadian performance art from the early 20th century to today. This university based research project, not only gathers and annotates but also questions how categories can be cross-read, revisited, and thought of in new ways. A key objective of the bibliography is to enable its future users to consider the various roles and complex networks that continue to shape the medium and practice of performance. This publication is a continuously growing resource that presents both the work of the artists and the history of the works’ reception in the past as well as the present, investigating the correlative relationship between the performer, the spectator and their given time(s). An Annotated Bibliography in Real Time offers a hybrid and discursive perspective on the historization of performance art and sheds light on performance’s many circumstances and modes of production, experience, and reception over time. -- p.