385,323 research outputs found
Efficiency and Nash Equilibria in a Scrip System for P2P Networks
A model of providing service in a P2P network is analyzed. It is shown that
by adding a scrip system, a mechanism that admits a reasonable Nash equilibrium
that reduces free riding can be obtained. The effect of varying the total
amount of money (scrip) in the system on efficiency (i.e., social welfare) is
analyzed, and it is shown that by maintaining the appropriate ratio between the
total amount of money and the number of agents, efficiency is maximized. The
work has implications for many online systems, not only P2P networks but also a
wide variety of online forums for which scrip systems are popular, but formal
analyses have been lacking
A Game-Theoretic Framework for Optimum Decision Fusion in the Presence of Byzantines
Optimum decision fusion in the presence of malicious nodes - often referred
to as Byzantines - is hindered by the necessity of exactly knowing the
statistical behavior of Byzantines. By focusing on a simple, yet widely
studied, set-up in which a Fusion Center (FC) is asked to make a binary
decision about a sequence of system states by relying on the possibly corrupted
decisions provided by local nodes, we propose a game-theoretic framework which
permits to exploit the superior performance provided by optimum decision
fusion, while limiting the amount of a-priori knowledge required. We first
derive the optimum decision strategy by assuming that the statistical behavior
of the Byzantines is known. Then we relax such an assumption by casting the
problem into a game-theoretic framework in which the FC tries to guess the
behavior of the Byzantines, which, in turn, must fix their corruption strategy
without knowing the guess made by the FC. We use numerical simulations to
derive the equilibrium of the game, thus identifying the optimum behavior for
both the FC and the Byzantines, and to evaluate the achievable performance at
the equilibrium. We analyze several different setups, showing that in all cases
the proposed solution permits to improve the accuracy of data fusion. We also
show that, in some instances, it is preferable for the Byzantines to minimize
the mutual information between the status of the observed system and the
reports submitted to the FC, rather than always flipping the decision made by
the local nodes as it is customarily assumed in previous works
New Experiments in Minority Voter Mobilization: A Report on the California Votes Initiative
Evaluates the effectiveness of efforts in California to mobilize voters in communities with significant low-income and minority populations
Directed self-assembly of silica nanoparticles in ionic liquid-spun cellulose fibers
The application range of man-made cellulosic fibers is limited by the absence of cost- and manufacturing-efficient strategies for anisotropic hierarchical functionalization. Overcoming these bottlenecks is therefore pivotal in the pursuit of a future bio-based economy. Here, we demonstrate that colloidal silica nanoparticles (NPs), which are cheap, biocompatible and easy to chemically modify, enable the control of the cross-sectional morphology and surface topography of ionic liquid-spun cellulose fibers. These properties are tailored by the silica NPs’ surface chemistry and their entry point during the wet-spinning process (dope solution DSiO2 or coagulation bath CSiO2). For CSiO2-modified fibers, the coagulation mitigator dimethylsulphoxide allows for controlling the surface topography and the amalgamation of the silica NPs into the fiber matrix. For dope-modified fibers, we hypothesize that cellulose chains act as seeds for directed silica NP self-assembly. This results for DSiO2 in discrete micron-sized rods, homogeneously distributed throughout the fiber and for glycidoxy-surface modified DSiO2@GLYEO in nano-sized surface aggregates and a cross-sectional core-shell fiber morphology. Furthermore, the dope-modified fibers display outstanding strength and toughness, which are both characteristic features of biological biocomposites
Playing With Population Protocols
Population protocols have been introduced as a model of sensor networks
consisting of very limited mobile agents with no control over their own
movement: A collection of anonymous agents, modeled by finite automata,
interact in pairs according to some rules.
Predicates on the initial configurations that can be computed by such
protocols have been characterized under several hypotheses.
We discuss here whether and when the rules of interactions between agents can
be seen as a game from game theory. We do so by discussing several basic
protocols
Resilience markers for safer systems and organisations
If computer systems are to be designed to foster resilient
performance it is important to be able to identify contributors to resilience. The
emerging practice of Resilience Engineering has identified that people are still a
primary source of resilience, and that the design of distributed systems should
provide ways of helping people and organisations to cope with complexity.
Although resilience has been identified as a desired property, researchers and
practitioners do not have a clear understanding of what manifestations of
resilience look like. This paper discusses some examples of strategies that
people can adopt that improve the resilience of a system. Critically, analysis
reveals that the generation of these strategies is only possible if the system
facilitates them. As an example, this paper discusses practices, such as
reflection, that are known to encourage resilient behavior in people. Reflection
allows systems to better prepare for oncoming demands. We show that
contributors to the practice of reflection manifest themselves at different levels
of abstraction: from individual strategies to practices in, for example, control
room environments. The analysis of interaction at these levels enables resilient
properties of a system to be ‘seen’, so that systems can be designed to explicitly
support them. We then present an analysis of resilience at an organisational
level within the nuclear domain. This highlights some of the challenges facing
the Resilience Engineering approach and the need for using a collective
language to articulate knowledge of resilient practices across domains
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