The Olympic medals ranks, lexicographic ordering and numerical infinities

Several ways used to rank countries with respect to medals won during Olympic Games are discussed. In particular, it is shown that the unofficial rank used by the Olympic Committee is the only rank that does not allow one to use a numerical counter for ranking – this rank uses the lexicographic ordering to rank countries: one gold medal is more precious than any number of silver medals and one silver medal is more precious than any number of bronze medals. How can we quantify what do these words, more precious, mean? Can we introduce a counter that for any possible number of medals would allow us to compute a numerical rank of a country using the number of gold, silver, and bronze medals in such a way that the higher resulting number would put the country in the higher position in the rank? Here we show that it is impossible to solve this problem using the positional numeral system with any finite base. Then we demonstrate that this problem can be easily solved by applying numerical computations with recently developed actual infinite numbers. These computations can be done on a new kind of a computer – the recently patented Infinity Computer. Its working software prototype is described briefly and examples of computations are given. It is shown that the new way of counting can be used in all situations where the lexicographic ordering is required

The Influence of Outsourcing and Information and Communication Technology on Virtualization of the Company

In the article we investigate the field of virtual organizations, which in the definition of many authors consists of two components: outsourcing and information and communication technology. In the study we have tried to determine which of the two, in the opinion of employees working in the area of Slovene tourism, contributes to a greater degree to virtualization of the company. We determine that outsourcing influences the virtualization of the company more strongly than does information and communication technology, since it enables the company to acquire new knowledge and know-how and increase its competitiveness in the marketplace.virtual organization, outsourcing, information and communication technology

Development of fractal-fuzzy evaluation methodology and its application for seismic hazards assessment using microseismic monitoring in coal mining

Seismic hazards have become one of the common risks in underground coal mining and their assessment is an important component of the safety management. In this study, a methodology, involving nine fractal dimension-based indices and a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model, has been developed based on the processed real time microseismic data from an underground coal mine, which allows for a better and quantitative evaluation of the likelihood for the seismic hazards. In the fuzzy model, the membership function was built using a Gaussian shape and the weight of each index was determined using the performance metric F score derived from the confusion matrix. The assessment results were initially characterised as a probability belonging to each of four risk levels (none, weak, moderate and strong). The comprehensive result was then evaluated by integrating the maximum membership degree principle (MMDP) and the variable fuzzy pattern recognition (VFPR). The model parameters of this methodology were first calibrated using historical microseismic data over a period of seven months at Coal Mine Velenje in Slovenia, and then applied to analyse more recent microseismic monitoring data. The results indicate that the calibrated model was able to assess seismic hazards in the mine

Dynamics of new strain emergence on a temporal network

Multi-strain competition on networks is observed in many contexts, including infectious disease ecology, information dissemination or behavioral adaptation to epidemics. Despite a substantial body of research has been developed considering static, time-aggregated networks, it remains a challenge to understand the transmission of concurrent strains when links of the network are created and destroyed over time. Here we analyze how network dynamics shapes the outcome of the competition between an initially endemic strain and an emerging one, when both strains follow a susceptible-infected-susceptible dynamics, and spread at time scales comparable with the network evolution one. Using time-resolved data of close-proximity interactions between patients admitted to a hospital and medical health care workers, we analyze the impact of temporal patterns and initial conditions on the dominance diagram and coexistence time. We find that strong variations in activity volume cause the probability that the emerging strain replaces the endemic one to be highly sensitive to the time of emergence. The temporal structure of the network shapes the dominance diagram, with significant variations in the replacement probability (for a given set of epidemiological parameters) observed from the empirical network and a randomized version of it. Our work contributes towards the description of the complex interplay between competing pathogens on temporal networks.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Lex personalitatis & technology-driven law

The Reidenberg approach was both profound and practical: it took the trans-jurisdictional needs of medieval Europe which led to the birth of Lex Mercatoria and argued that the Internet requires as broad a sweep with the deliberate creation of a Lex Informatica. Without necessarily disagreeing with much of what Reidenberg and his followers have proposed, I would like, in this short contribution, to go one step further, and invite attention to an emerging field of law which I shall, for the sake of convenience, dub Lex Personalitatis. By this I mean the “Law of Personality” relating to personality rights in a much wider way than that understood by most common law-based commentators. The latter tend to divide personality rights into two broad camps: that of rights over commercial exploitation of image, name etc. and privacy rights….By proposing a composite concept of Lex Personalitatis I am seeking to go deeper and also encompass the underlying reasons for both image/identity-related rights and privacy-related rights. In essence, I am suggesting that we should be looking to a supreme value, the individual’s fundamental right to unhindered (or free) development of his/her own personality. In this sense Lex Personalitatis is closer in conceptual definition to the German Persönlichkeitsrecht, and can be viewed as both a fundamental right (ius personalitatis) underpinning much of, and an integral component of, Lex Informatica. I would also suggest that legal cultural and language barriers have prevented much of the world from understanding the depth and value of German legal thinking on the matter over the past 50 years. The primary raison d’être of such complex legal provision is not however to permit the use of informatics for trade or leisure. The latter is more likely to be an intended by-product. Certainly “informatica” is important, indeed essential for “commercium” and hence Lex informatica is certainly very important, but I submit that the raison d’etre of the hierarchical structure in Romania just outlined above goes beyond Lex Informatica. It is the realisation that the supreme value at law is that of the right of dignity and free development of personality, i.e. the ius personalitatis that inspires and underpins such law. It is not unnatural for the post-communist countries to use their experience of systemic abuse of personal information in 50 years of pre-digital communism to nurture a more profound appreciation of why the flow of information in society is so important and consequently why its regulation must be subservient to the individual’s right to the unhindered development of one’s personality. In doing so in the Information Age, they are helping to develop a Lex Personalitatis the scope of which is broader than that encapsulated by the term “personality rights” in the Anglo-Saxon legal world.peer-reviewe