Decentralized Coalition Formation with Agent-based Combinatorial Heuristics

A steadily growing pervasion of the energy distribution grid with communication technology is widely seen as an enabler for new computational coordination techniques for renewable, distributed generation as well as for bundling with controllable consumers. Smart markets will foster a decentralized grid management. One important task as prerequisite to decentralized management is the ability to group together in order to jointly gain enough suitable flexibility and capacity to assume responsibility for a specific control task in the grid. In self-organized smart grid scenarios, grouping or coalition formation has to be achieved in a decentralized and situation aware way based on individual capabilities. We present a fully decentralized coalition formation approach based on an established agent-based heuristics for predictive scheduling with the additional advantage of keeping all information about local decision base and local operational constraints private. Two closely interlocked optimization processes orchestrate an overall procedure that adapts a coalition structure to best suit a given set of energy products. The approach is evaluated in several simulation scenarios with different type of established models for integrating distributed energy resources and is also extended to the induced use case of surplus distribution using basically the same algorithm

Pengelolaan Praktik Kerja Industri (Prakerin) Di SMK Negeri I Tengaran Kabupaten Semarang

The purpose of this study was to describe the characteristics Industrial Work Practices management planning, the implementation and oversight in Private Vocational High School 1 Tengaran. This research is a qualitative study research design phenomenological. Technique used observation, of interview and documentation, analyzed using with reduction, data presentation, and conclusion. The validit used credibility test, test transferability, dependability test, and test convertibility. The results showed managed with strict rules and binding and based on the work order. The implementation of with due regard to the functions and objectives of planned by the Working Group on Industrial Relations and his staff authorized by the Principal at the beginning of the school year as outlined in the work program of industrial relations then distributed to teachers to monitor the students gradually

TuLip : reshaping trust management

In today’s highly distributed and heterogeneous world of the Internet, sharing resources has\ud become an everyday activity of every Internet user. We buy and sell goods over the Internet,\ud share our holiday pictures using facebook™, “tube” our home videos on You Tube™, and\ud exchange our interests and thoughts on blogs. We podcast, we are Linkedin™ to extend our\ud professional network, we share files over P2P networks, and we seek advice on numerous\ud on-line discussion groups. Although in most cases we want to reach the largest possible\ud group of users, often we realise that some data should remain private or, at least, restricted\ud to a carefully chosen audience. Access control is no longer the domain of computer security\ud experts, but something we experience everyday.\ud In a typical access control scenario, the resource provider has full control over the protected\ud resource. The resource provider decides who can access which resource and what\ud action can be performed on this resource. The set of entities that can access a protected resource\ud can be statically defined and is known a priori to the resource provider. Although still\ud valid in many cases, such a scenario is too restrictive today. The resource owner is not only\ud required, but often wants to reach the widest possible group of users, many of which remain\ud anonymous to the resource provider. A more flexible approach to access control is needed.\ud Trust Management is a recent approach to access control in which the access control decision\ud is based on security credentials. In a credential, the credential issuer states attributes\ud (roles, properties) of the credential subject. For the credentials to have the same meaning\ud across all the users, the credentials are written in a trust management language. A special\ud algorithm, called a compliance checker, is then used to evaluate if the given set of credentials\ud is compliant with the requested action on the requested protected resource. Finally, an\ud important characteristic of trust management is that every entity may issue credentials.\ud In the original approach to trust management, the credentials are stored at a well-known\ud location, so that the compliance checker knows where to search for the credentials. Another\ud approach is to let the users store the credentials. Storing the credentials in a distributed way\ud eliminates the single point of failure introduced by the centralised credential repository, but\ud now the compliance checker must know where to find the credentials. Another difficulty of\ud the distributed approach is that the design of a correct credential discovery algorithm comes\ud at the cost of limiting the expressive power of the trust management language.\ud In this thesis we show that it is possible to build a generic, open-ended trust management\ud system enjoying both a powerful syntax and supporting distributed credential storage. More\ud specifically, we show how to build a trust management system that has:\ud • a formal yet expressive trust management language for specifying credentials,\ud • a compliance checker for determining if a given authorisation request can be granted\ud given the set of credentials,\ud • support for distributed credential storage.\ud \ud We call our trust management system TuLiP (Trust management based on Logic Programming).\ud In the thesis we also indicate how to deploy TuLiP in a distributed content management\ud system (we use pictures as the content in our implementation). Using the same approach,\ud TuLiP can improve existing P2P content sharing services by providing a personalised, scalable,\ud and password-free access control method to the users. By decentralising the architecture,\ud systems like facebook™ or You Tube™ could also benefit from TuLiP. By providing\ud easy to use and scalable access control method, TuLiP can encourage sharing of private and\ud copyrighted content under a uniform and familiar user interface. Also Internet stores, often\ud deployed as a centralised system, can benefit from using the credential based trust management.\ud Here, TuLiP can facilitate the business models in which the recommended clients\ud and the clients of friendly businesses participate in customised customer rewarding programs\ud (like receiving attractive discounts). By naturally supporting co-operation of autonomous entities\ud using distributed credentials, we believe that TuLiP could make validation of business\ud relationships easier, which, in turn, could stimulate creation of new business models

Feasibility and Coverage of Implementing Intermittent Preventive Treatment of Malaria in Pregnant women Contacting Private or Public Clinics in Tanzania: Experience-based Viewpoints of Health Managers in Mkuranga and Mufindi districts.

Evidence on healthcare managers' experience on operational feasibility of malaria intermittent preventive treatment for malaria during pregnancy (IPTp) using sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) in Africa is systematically inadequate. This paper elucidates the perspectives of District Council Health Management Team (CHMT)s regarding the feasibility of IPTp with SP strategy, including its acceptability and ability of district health care systems to cope with the contemporary and potential challenges. The study was conducted in Mkuranga and Mufindi districts. Data were collected between November 2005 and December 2007, involving focus group discussion (FGD) with Mufindi CHMT and in-depth interviews were conducted with few CHMT members in Mkuranga where it was difficult to summon all members for FGD. Participants in both districts acknowledged the IPTp strategy, considering the seriousness of malaria in pregnancy problem; government allocation of funds to support healthcare staff training programmes in focused antenatal care (fANC) issues, procuring essential drugs distributed to districts, staff remuneration, distribution of fANC guidelines, and administrative activities performed by CHMTs. The identified weaknesses include late arrival of funds from central level weakening CHMT's performance in health supervision, organising outreach clinics, distributing essential supplies, and delivery of IPTp services. Participants anticipated the public losing confidence in SP for IPTp after government announced artemither-lumefantrine (ALu) as the new first-line drug for uncomplicated malaria replacing SP. Role of private healthcare staff in IPTp services was acknowledged cautiously because CHMTs rarely supplied private clinics with SP for free delivery in fear that clients would be required to pay for the SP contrary to government policy. In Mufindi, the District Council showed a strong political support by supplementing ANC clinics with bottled water; in Mkuranga such support was not experienced. A combination of health facility understaffing, water scarcity and staff non-adherence to directly observed therapy instructions forced healthcare staff to allow clients to take SP at home. Need for investigating in improving adherence to IPTp administration was emphasised. High acceptability of the IPTp strategy at district level is meaningless unless necessary support is assured in terms of number, skills and motivation of caregivers and availability of essential supplies

The Yin and Yang of Kinship and Business: Complementary or Contradictory Forces?

Are the social domains of kinship and business on balance complementary or contradictory? Do ventures that invest heavily in both – conventionally referred to as “family firms” – bear a net gain or net loss? We are scarcely the first to raise these questions. How then will we try to contribute to an answer? We try this in five ways, all of them based on previous literature. First, we develop the dichotomy of kinship and business by taking seriously the metaphor of yin and yang, merging it with the anthropological constructs of structural domains such as “domestic” and “public.” This metaphor proves to shed light on the relevant literature. Second, we provide a qualitative survey of the costs and benefits of kinship in business. Third, we summarize the empirical work that addresses the performance outcomes from family involvement. Fourth, we consider the practitioner implications of these studies. Finally, we ask if scholars are as yet in a position to answer these questions

Pretty Private Group Management

Group management is a fundamental building block of today's Internet applications. Mailing lists, chat systems, collaborative document edition but also online social networks such as Facebook and Twitter use group management systems. In many cases, group security is required in the sense that access to data is restricted to group members only. Some applications also require privacy by keeping group members anonymous and unlinkable. Group management systems routinely rely on a central authority that manages and controls the infrastructure and data of the system. Personal user data related to groups then becomes de facto accessible to the central authority. In this paper, we propose a completely distributed approach for group management based on distributed hash tables. As there is no enrollment to a central authority, the created groups can be leveraged by various applications. Following this paradigm we describe a protocol for such a system. We consider security and privacy issues inherently introduced by removing the central authority and provide a formal validation of security properties of the system using AVISPA. We demonstrate the feasibility of this protocol by implementing a prototype running on top of Vuze's DHT

Cache Equalizer: A Cache Pressure Aware Block Placement Scheme for Large-Scale Chip Multiprocessors

This paper describes Cache Equalizer (CE), a novel distributed cache management scheme for large scale chip multiprocessors (CMPs). Our work is motivated by large asymmetry in cache sets usages. CE decouples the physical locations of cache blocks from their addresses for the sake of reducing misses caused by destructive interferences. Temporal pressure at the on-chip last-level cache, is continuously collected at a group (comprised of cache sets) granularity, and periodically recorded at the memory controller to guide the placement process. An incoming block is consequently placed at a cache group that exhibits the minimum pressure. CE provides Quality of Service (QoS) by robustly offering better performance than the baseline shared NUCA cache. Simulation results using a full-system simulator demonstrate that CE outperforms shared NUCA caches by an average of 15.5% and by as much as 28.5% for the benchmark programs we examined. Furthermore, evaluations manifested the outperformance of CE versus related CMP cache designs

The Integration of Six Sigma and Balanced Scorecard in Internal Auditing

Purpose – This study examines the integration of six sigma and balanced scorecard in internal auditing (IA).It aims to utilize the integration between six sigma and BSC in internal auditing to be more effective and efficient in risk management. Design/methodology – This study based on a structured questionnaire, was distributed to a group of a sample of internal auditors, members of audit committee and senior managers of insurance companies in Egypt that have established internal audit function and risk management, The research sample consists of Misr insurance company, as a public company and represent 70% of this sector, Delta insurance company and Suez canal insurance company as private one. In total130 responses were collected and analyzed. Findings –The integration between six sigma and balanced scorecard will have a significant positive impact on the internal auditing effectiveness and efficiency. Practical implications – Financial organizations like banks and insurance companies could gain an understanding of the integration between six sigma and balanced score card in internal auditing to be more effective and efficient in its organizations. Value – This study indicated an empirical evidence to support the need to rethink the internal auditing role in risk management to be added value in the organizations. Limitation -This study focuses on the Egyptian insurance companies that have risk management but they do not use six sigma or balanced scorecard in internal auditing. This study chooses three companies in insurance companies which represent the major percentage of the Egyptian insurance companies. Keywords: Egypt, Balanced scorecard, Six Sigma, the integration, risk management internal auditing, efficiency, effectiveness

Feed the future aquaculture project: annual report October 2011-Sept 2012

The Feed the Future Aquaculture project is a five year transformative investment in aquaculture focused on 20 southern districts in Barisal, Khulna and Dhaka divisions, Bangladesh. This report describes the achievements of FtF-Aquaculture project activities implemented during FY12. Some of the targets for production and associated income have not been achieved yet as a large share of the fish will be harvested after closing of the reporting period. However, on the basis of growth monitoring, indications are that production is on track to achieve the targets