4,879 research outputs found
Allocation in Practice
How do we allocate scarcere sources? How do we fairly allocate costs? These
are two pressing challenges facing society today. I discuss two recent projects
at NICTA concerning resource and cost allocation. In the first, we have been
working with FoodBank Local, a social startup working in collaboration with
food bank charities around the world to optimise the logistics of collecting
and distributing donated food. Before we can distribute this food, we must
decide how to allocate it to different charities and food kitchens. This gives
rise to a fair division problem with several new dimensions, rarely considered
in the literature. In the second, we have been looking at cost allocation
within the distribution network of a large multinational company. This also has
several new dimensions rarely considered in the literature.Comment: To appear in Proc. of 37th edition of the German Conference on
Artificial Intelligence (KI 2014), Springer LNC
Mindfulness-based interventions in epilepsy: a systematic review
Mindfulness based interventions (MBIs) are increasingly used to help patients cope with physical and mental long-term conditions (LTCs). Epilepsy is associated with a range of mental and physical comorbidities that have a detrimental effect on quality of life (QOL), but it is not clear whether MBIs can help. We systematically reviewed the literature to determine the effectiveness of MBIs in people with epilepsy. Medline, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, EMBASE, CINAHL, Allied and Complimentary Medicine Database, and PsychInfo were searched in March 2016. These databases were searched using a combination of subject headings where available and keywords in the title and abstracts. We also searched the reference lists of related reviews. Study quality was assessed using the Cochrane Collaboration risk of bias tool. Three randomised controlled trials (RCTs) with a total of 231 participants were included. The interventions were tested in the USA (n = 171) and China (Hong Kong) (n = 60). Significant improvements were reported in depression symptoms, quality of life, anxiety, and depression knowledge and skills. Two of the included studies were assessed as being at unclear/high risk of bias - with randomisation and allocation procedures, as well as adverse events and reasons for drop-outs poorly reported. There was no reporting on intervention costs/benefits or how they affected health service utilisation. This systematic review found limited evidence for the effectiveness of MBIs in epilepsy, however preliminary evidence suggests it may lead to some improvement in anxiety, depression and quality of life. Further trials with larger sample sizes, active control groups and longer follow-ups are needed before the evidence for MBIs in epilepsy can be conclusively determined
Effects of College Roommate Relationships on Student Development at a Private University, Southern Nigeria
This paper examined the effect of roommate relationships on students’ development in a selected university campus. It used
questionnaire to collect data from 470 respondents in a faith based university, Ota, Ogun State Nigeria. The study engaged
Spearman's correlation method to test hypotheses formulated for the study at 0.01 level of significance. The study found a
correlation between roommate relationship and students’ academic performance and students’ spiritual life. The study equally
found a correlation between roommate relationships and involvement of students in social vices. Moreover, the study
discovered correlation between roommate relationships and students emotional stability. Lastly, the study found a correlation
between roommate relationships and student resource management
Performance analysis of carrier aggregation for various mobile network implementations scenario based on spectrum allocated
Carrier Aggregation (CA) is one of the Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A)
features that allow mobile network operators (MNO) to combine multiple
component carriers (CCs) across the available spectrum to create a wider
bandwidth channel for increasing the network data throughput and overall
capacity. CA has a potential to enhance data rates and network performance in
the downlink, uplink, or both, and it can support aggregation of frequency
division duplexing (FDD) as well as time division duplexing (TDD). The
technique enables the MNO to exploit fragmented spectrum allocations and can be
utilized to aggregate licensed and unlicensed carrier spectrum as well. This
paper analyzes the performance gains and complexity level that arises from the
aggregation of three inter-band component carriers (3CC) as compared to the
aggregation of 2CC using a Vienna LTE System Level simulator. The results show
a considerable growth in the average cell throughput when 3CC aggregations are
implemented over the 2CC aggregation, at the expense of reduction in the
fairness index. The reduction in the fairness index implies that, the scheduler
has an increased task in resource allocations due to the added component
carrier. Compensating for such decrease in the fairness index could result into
scheduler design complexity. The proposed scheme can be adopted in combining
various component carriers, to increase the bandwidth and hence the data rates.Comment: 13 page
Spartan Daily, December 7, 2004
Volume 123, Issue 66https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/10070/thumbnail.jp
"Almost-stable" matchings in the Hospitals / Residents problem with Couples
The Hospitals / Residents problem with Couples (hrc) models the allocation of intending junior doctors to hospitals where couples are allowed to submit joint preference lists over pairs of (typically geographically close) hospitals. It is known that a stable matching need not exist, so we consider min bp hrc, the problem of finding a matching that admits the minimum number of blocking pairs (i.e., is “as stable as possible”). We show that this problem is NP-hard and difficult to approximate even in the highly restricted case that each couple finds only one hospital pair acceptable. However if we further assume that the preference list of each single resident and hospital is of length at most 2, we give a polynomial-time algorithm for this case. We then present the first Integer Programming (IP) and Constraint Programming (CP) models for min bp hrc. Finally, we discuss an empirical evaluation of these models applied to randomly-generated instances of min bp hrc. We find that on average, the CP model is about 1.15 times faster than the IP model, and when presolving is applied to the CP model, it is on average 8.14 times faster. We further observe that the number of blocking pairs admitted by a solution is very small, i.e., usually at most 1, and never more than 2, for the (28,000) instances considered
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