7,541 research outputs found
When queueing is better than push and shove
We address the scheduling problem of reordering an existing queue into its efficient order through trade. To that end, we consider individually rational and balanced budget direct and indirect mechanisms. We show that this class of mechanisms allows us to form efficient queues provided that existing property rights for the service are small enough to enable trade between the agents. In particular, we show on the one hand that no queue under a fully deterministic service schedule such as first-come, first-serve can be dissolved efficiently and meet our requirements. If, on the other hand, the alternative is service anarchy (ie. a random queue), every existing queue can be transformed into an efficient order
Spitzer Warm Mission Workshop Introduction
The Spitzer Warm Mission Workshop was held June 4â5, 2007, to explore the science drivers for the warm Spitzer mission and help the Spitzer Science Center develop a new science operations philosophy. We must continue to maximize the science return with the reduced resources available, both using (a) the shortest two IRAC channels, and (b) archival research with the rich Spitzer archive. This paper summarizes the overview slides presented to the workshop participant
Market-Based Alternatives for Managing Congestion at New Yorkâs LaGuardia Airport
We summarize the results of a project that was motivated by the expiration of the âHigh Density Rule,â which defined the slot controls employed at New Yorkâs LaGuardia Airport for more than 30 years. The scope of the project included the analysis of several administrative measures, congestion pricing options and slot auctions. The research output includes a congestion pricing procedure and also the specification of a slot auction mechanism. The research results are based in part on two strategic simulations. These were multi-day events that included the participation of airport operators, most notably the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, FAA and DOT executives, airline representatives and other members of the air transportation community. The first simulation placed participants in a stressful, high congestion future scenario and then allowed participants to react and problem solve under various administrative measures and congestion pricing options. The second simulation was a mock slot auction in which participants bid on LGA arrival and departure slots for fictitious airlines.Auctions, airport slot auctions, combinatorial auctions
Hang With Your Buddies to Resist Intersection Attacks
Some anonymity schemes might in principle protect users from pervasive
network surveillance - but only if all messages are independent and unlinkable.
Users in practice often need pseudonymity - sending messages intentionally
linkable to each other but not to the sender - but pseudonymity in dynamic
networks exposes users to intersection attacks. We present Buddies, the first
systematic design for intersection attack resistance in practical anonymity
systems. Buddies groups users dynamically into buddy sets, controlling message
transmission to make buddies within a set behaviorally indistinguishable under
traffic analysis. To manage the inevitable tradeoffs between anonymity
guarantees and communication responsiveness, Buddies enables users to select
independent attack mitigation policies for each pseudonym. Using trace-based
simulations and a working prototype, we find that Buddies can guarantee
non-trivial anonymity set sizes in realistic chat/microblogging scenarios, for
both short-lived and long-lived pseudonyms.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure
Handling Network Partitions and Mergers in Structured Overlay Networks
Structured overlay networks form a major class of peer-to-peer systems, which are touted for their abilities to
scale, tolerate failures, and self-manage. Any long-lived
Internet-scale distributed system is destined to face network partitions. Although the problem of network partitions
and mergers is highly related to fault-tolerance and
self-management in large-scale systems, it has hardly been
studied in the context of structured peer-to-peer systems.
These systems have mainly been studied under churn (frequent
joins/failures), which as a side effect solves the problem
of network partitions, as it is similar to massive node
failures. Yet, the crucial aspect of network mergers has been
ignored. In fact, it has been claimed that ring-based structured
overlay networks, which constitute the majority of the
structured overlays, are intrinsically ill-suited for merging
rings. In this paper, we present an algorithm for merging
multiple similar ring-based overlays when the underlying
network merges. We examine the solution in dynamic conditions,
showing how our solution is resilient to churn during
the merger, something widely believed to be difficult or
impossible. We evaluate the algorithm for various scenarios
and show that even when falsely detecting a merger, the
algorithm quickly terminates and does not clutter the network
with many messages. The algorithm is flexible as the
tradeoff between message complexity and time complexity
can be adjusted by a parameter
Energy efficiency in virtual machines allocation for cloud data centers with lottery algorithm
Energy usage of data centers is a challenging and complex issue because computing applications and data are growing so quickly that increasingly larger servers and disks are needed to process them fast enough within the required time period. In the past few years, many approaches to virtual machine placement have been proposed. This study proposes a new approach for virtual machine allocation to physical hosts. Either minimizes the physical hosts and avoids the SLA violation. The proposed method in comparison to the other algorithms achieves better results
CONVENIENCE STORE PRACTICES AND PROGRESS WITH EFFICIENT CONSUMER RESPONSE: THE MINNESOTA CASE
The adoption of Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) practices by Minnesota convenience store (C- store) is explained in this study. Data were collected through a mail survey distributed to more than 250 Minnesota C-stores ranging in size from single, independently owned stores to over 100 store chains. The survey instrument was developed to collect data on the following components important to C-store operations and the implementation of ECR: information systems, ordering, receiving, inventory management, and pricing practices. Findings are presented from three distinct perspectives: 1. Location: Rural C-stores, which often meet customer needs that were once met by small supermarkets, carried a wider range of products and offered more services than C-stores in urban and suburban locations. However, rural stores had the lowest adoption rate for practices related to the ECR initiative. Urban chains coordinated business practices with suppliers to a greater degree than suburban and rural chains. 2. Chain size: Larger chains were more likely to have implemented the more costly technological practices than were small chains. This was expected since large chains can spread the fixed costs of ECR adoption over a larger number of stores. Larger chains also cooperated and communicated more with their suppliers than small chains. Again, this was expected, since larger chains can economize on transaction costs involved in maintaining these business relationships. 3. ECR practices: ECR adoption and superior performance were positively related. Having adopted six to nine practices was positively correlated with higher inside and outside sales per square foot of selling area and higher annual inventory turns. However, it was not clear whether there was a causal relationship in either direction between ECR practices and store performance. The C-store industry is changing, as new information technologies, new business practices, and new retail strategies are developed. The results from this survey can serve as a baseline for future research monitoring the adoption of these innovations and assessing their impact on productivity and profitability. Minnesota C-Stores appear to be smaller but more productive than the national average. Overall, it appears ECR is just beginning to impact the Minnesota C-store industry. Nonetheless, regression analyses confirmed ECR practices are positively related to store sales performance and those stores adopting the most practices had higher productivity measures.Industrial Organization, Marketing,
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