1,996 research outputs found
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 â 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 â 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
Introduction to the Special Issue: The AgentLink III Technical Forums
This article introduces the special issue of ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems devoted to research papers arising from the three Technical Forum Group meetings held in 2004 and 2005 that were organized and sponsored by the European FP6 Coordination Action AgentLink III
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
Superprocesses as models for information dissemination in the Future Internet
Future Internet will be composed by a tremendous number of potentially
interconnected people and devices, offering a variety of services, applications
and communication opportunities. In particular, short-range wireless
communications, which are available on almost all portable devices, will enable
the formation of the largest cloud of interconnected, smart computing devices
mankind has ever dreamed about: the Proximate Internet. In this paper, we
consider superprocesses, more specifically super Brownian motion, as a suitable
mathematical model to analyse a basic problem of information dissemination
arising in the context of Proximate Internet. The proposed model provides a
promising analytical framework to both study theoretical properties related to
the information dissemination process and to devise efficient and reliable
simulation schemes for very large systems
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 âLaw of Personalityâ 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 rightsâŠ.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 individualâs 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 dâĂȘtre 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 âinformaticaâ is important, indeed essential for âcommerciumâ and hence Lex informatica is certainly very important, but I submit that the raison dâetre 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 individualâs right to the unhindered development of oneâs 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 âpersonality rightsâ in the Anglo-Saxon legal world.peer-reviewe
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
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