An Agent-Based Simulation API for Speculative PDES Runtime Environments

Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation (ABMS) is an effective paradigm to model systems exhibiting complex interactions, also with the goal of studying the emergent behavior of these systems. While ABMS has been effectively used in many disciplines, many successful models are still run only sequentially. Relying on simple and easy-to-use languages such as NetLogo limits the possibility to benefit from more effective runtime paradigms, such as speculative Parallel Discrete Event Simulation (PDES). In this paper, we discuss a semantically-rich API allowing to implement Agent-Based Models in a simple and effective way. We also describe the critical points which should be taken into account to implement this API in a speculative PDES environment, to scale up simulations on distributed massively-parallel clusters. We present an experimental assessment showing how our proposal allows to implement complicated interactions with a reduced complexity, while delivering a non-negligible performance increase

Making apartments affordable: moving from speculative to deliberative development

Urban consolidation policies in Australia presuppose apartments as the new dominant housing type, but much of what the market has delivered is criticised as over-development, and as being generic, poorly-designed, environmentally unsustainable and unaffordable. In contrast to the usual focus on planning regulation and construction costs as the primary issues needing to be addressed in order to increase the supply of quality, affordable apartment housing this paper uses Ball’s (1983) ‘structure of provision’ approach to outline the key processes informing apartment development to reveal a substantial gap in critical understanding of how apartments are developed in Australia, and identifies economic problems not previously considered by policymakers. Using mainstream economic analysis to review the market itself, the authors found high search costs, demand risk, problems with exchange, and lack of competition present key barriers to achieving greater affordability and limit the extent to which ‘speculative’ developers can respond to the preferences of would be owner-occupiers of apartments. The existing development model, which is reliant on capturing uplift in site value, suits investors seeking rental yields in the first instance and capital gains in the second instance, and actively encourages housing price inflation. This is exacerbated by lack of density restrictions, such as have existed in inner Melbourne for many years, which permits greater yields on redevelopment sites. The price of land in the vicinity of such redevelopment sites is pushed up as landholders\u27 expectation of future yield is raised. All too frequently existing redevelopment sites go back onto the market as vendors seek to capture the uplift in site value and exit the project in a risk free manner. The paper proposes three major reforms. Firstly, that the market for apartment development be re-designed following insights from the economic field of ‘Market Design’ (a branch of Game Theory). A two-sided matching market for new apartments is proposed, where demand-side risks can be mitigated via consumer aggregation. Secondly, consumers should be empowered through support for  ‘deliberative’, or ‘do-it-yourself’ (DYI) development models, in order to increase competition, expand access, and promote responsiveness to consumer needs and preferences. Finally, planning schemes need to impose density restrictions (in the form of height limits, floor space ratios or bedroom quotas) in localities where housing demand is high, in order to dampen speculation and de-risk development by creating certainty. However restrictions on over-development on larger infill sites needs to be offset by permitting intensification of ‘greyfield’ suburbs. Aggregating existing housing lots to enable precinct regeneration and moderate height and density increases would permit better use of airspace thus allowing design outcomes that can optimise land use while retaining amenity

Communication satellites: Guidelines for a strategic plan

To maintain and augment the leadership that the United States has enjoyed and to ensure that the nation is investing sufficiently and wisely to this purpose, a strategic plan for satellite communications research and development was prepared by NASA. Guidelines and recommendations for a NASA plan to support this objective and for the conduct of communication satellite research and development program over the next 25 years were generated. The guidelines are briefly summarized

New in Cocoa-5.2.4 and Cocoalib-0.99600 for SC-square

CoCoALib is a C++ software library offering operations on polynomials, ideals of polynomials, and related objects. The principal developers of CoCoALib are members of the SC2project. We give an overview of the latest developments of the library, especially those relating to the project SC2. The CoCoA software suite includes also the programmable, interactive system CoCoA-5. Most of the operations in CoCoALib are also accessible via CoCoA-5. The programmability of CoCoA-5 together with its interactivity help in fast prototyping and testing conjectures

Investment Styles, Fees, & Returns Among Individually Managed & Team Managed Mutual Funds

Identifying a successful mutual fund investment involves a crucial analysis of alternatives, all of which influence the true benefit of the investment. Major considerations must include performance, management and fees; which ultimately determine investment returns. Studies have shown that team managed mutual funds exhibit similar risk adjusted performance to individually managed mutual funds, however studies lack this comparison of performance based on fund fees and investment objective. This gap in research implies that there is an opportunity to examine how fund management, investment objective, and fund fees affect overall returns to the investor. Using the 2010 Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) database, this study provides an examination of team managed and individually managed mutual funds with given investment styles on the basis of fees and overall returns. This study finds empirical evidence that team management has a significant negative effect on equity objective mutual funds, while having a positive impact on Debt and Equity combination funds. In addition, our research concludes that team management has no significant effect on funds whose primary focus is debt. Across the majority of fund objectives, the added benefit of team management in the mutual fund industry continues to be outweighed by the increased cost of a team managed operating structure

Acceptability of the transitional wearable companion “+me” in typical children: a pilot study

This work presents the results of the first experimentation of +me-the first prototype of Transitional Wearable Companion–run on 15 typically developed (TD) children with ages between 8 and 34 months. +me is an interactive device that looks like a teddy bear that can be worn around the neck, has touch sensors, can emit appealing lights and sounds, and has input-output contingencies that can be regulated with a tablet via Bluetooth. The participants were engaged in social play activities involving both the device and an adult experimenter. +me was designed with the objective of exploiting its intrinsic allure as an attractive toy to stimulate social interactions (e.g., eye contact, turn taking, imitation, social smiles), an aspect potentially helpful in the therapy of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and other Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD). The main purpose of this preliminary study is to evaluate the general acceptability of the toy by TD children, observing the elicited behaviors in preparation for future experiments involving children with ASD and other PDD. First observations, based on video recording and scoring, show that +me stimulates good social engagement in TD children, especially when their age is higher than 24 months