Scale-Adaptive Group Optimization for Social Activity Planning

Studies have shown that each person is more inclined to enjoy a group activity when 1) she is interested in the activity, and 2) many friends with the same interest join it as well. Nevertheless, even with the interest and social tightness information available in online social networks, nowadays many social group activities still need to be coordinated manually. In this paper, therefore, we first formulate a new problem, named Participant Selection for Group Activity (PSGA), to decide the group size and select proper participants so that the sum of personal interests and social tightness of the participants in the group is maximized, while the activity cost is also carefully examined. To solve the problem, we design a new randomized algorithm, named Budget-Aware Randomized Group Selection (BARGS), to optimally allocate the computation budgets for effective selection of the group size and participants, and we prove that BARGS can acquire the solution with a guaranteed performance bound. The proposed algorithm was implemented in Facebook, and experimental results demonstrate that social groups generated by the proposed algorithm significantly outperform the baseline solutions.Comment: 20 pages. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1305.150

Maximizing Friend-Making Likelihood for Social Activity Organization

The social presence theory in social psychology suggests that computer-mediated online interactions are inferior to face-to-face, in-person interactions. In this paper, we consider the scenarios of organizing in person friend-making social activities via online social networks (OSNs) and formulate a new research problem, namely, Hop-bounded Maximum Group Friending (HMGF), by modeling both existing friendships and the likelihood of new friend making. To find a set of attendees for socialization activities, HMGF is unique and challenging due to the interplay of the group size, the constraint on existing friendships and the objective function on the likelihood of friend making. We prove that HMGF is NP-Hard, and no approximation algorithm exists unless P = NP. We then propose an error-bounded approximation algorithm to efficiently obtain the solutions very close to the optimal solutions. We conduct a user study to validate our problem formulation and per- form extensive experiments on real datasets to demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of our proposed algorithm

REINVESTMENT ACTIVITY OF INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE – STIMULATORS AND MOTIVATORS: CASE OF UKRAINE

Basic tendencies in investment climate of Ukraine are discovered. The principal sources of investments of industrial enterprises are examined. The process of reinvestment activity of industrial enterprises and its influence on the prospects of economic growth of the country are considered. Basic stimulators and motivators which allow to accelerate the reinvestment activity of the industrial enterprises used in the global economy and recommended by international economic and financial institutions are defined and prospects of its application in Ukraine are considered.Basic tendencies in investment climate of Ukraine are discovered. The principal sources of investments of industrial enterprises are examined. The process of reinvestment activity of industrial enterprises and its influence on the prospects of economic growth of the country are considered. Basic stimulators and motivators which allow to accelerate the reinvestment activity of the industrial enterprises used in the global economy and recommended by international economic and financial institutions are defined and prospects of its application in Ukraine are considered

REINVESTMENT ACTIVITY OF INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE – STIMULATORS AND MOTIVATORS: CASE OF UKRAINE

Basic tendencies in investment climate of Ukraine are discovered. The principal sources of investments of industrial enterprises are examined. The process of reinvestment activity of industrial enterprises and its influence on the prospects of economic growth of the country are considered. Basic stimulators and motivators which allow to accelerate the reinvestment activity of the industrial enterprises used in the global economy and recommended by international economic and financial institutions are defined and prospects of its application in Ukraine are considered.Basic tendencies in investment climate of Ukraine are discovered. The principal sources of investments of industrial enterprises are examined. The process of reinvestment activity of industrial enterprises and its influence on the prospects of economic growth of the country are considered. Basic stimulators and motivators which allow to accelerate the reinvestment activity of the industrial enterprises used in the global economy and recommended by international economic and financial institutions are defined and prospects of its application in Ukraine are considered

Resolution of the stochastic strategy spatial prisoner's dilemma by means of particle swarm optimization

We study the evolution of cooperation among selfish individuals in the stochastic strategy spatial prisoner's dilemma game. We equip players with the particle swarm optimization technique, and find that it may lead to highly cooperative states even if the temptations to defect are strong. The concept of particle swarm optimization was originally introduced within a simple model of social dynamics that can describe the formation of a swarm, i.e., analogous to a swarm of bees searching for a food source. Essentially, particle swarm optimization foresees changes in the velocity profile of each player, such that the best locations are targeted and eventually occupied. In our case, each player keeps track of the highest payoff attained within a local topological neighborhood and its individual highest payoff. Thus, players make use of their own memory that keeps score of the most profitable strategy in previous actions, as well as use of the knowledge gained by the swarm as a whole, to find the best available strategy for themselves and the society. Following extensive simulations of this setup, we find a significant increase in the level of cooperation for a wide range of parameters, and also a full resolution of the prisoner's dilemma. We also demonstrate extreme efficiency of the optimization algorithm when dealing with environments that strongly favor the proliferation of defection, which in turn suggests that swarming could be an important phenomenon by means of which cooperation can be sustained even under highly unfavorable conditions. We thus present an alternative way of understanding the evolution of cooperative behavior and its ubiquitous presence in nature, and we hope that this study will be inspirational for future efforts aimed in this direction.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures; accepted for publication in PLoS ON

Where should livestock graze? Integrated modeling and optimization to guide grazing management in the Cañete basin, Peru

Integrated watershed management allows decision-makers to balance competing objectives, for example agricultural production and protection of water resources. Here, we developed a spatially-explicit approach to support such management in the Cañete watershed, Peru. We modeled the effect of grazing management on three services – livestock production, erosion control, and baseflow provision – and used an optimization routine to simulate landscapes providing the highest level of services. Over the entire watershed, there was a trade-off between livestock productivity and hydrologic services and we identified locations that minimized this trade-off for a given set of preferences. Given the knowledge gaps in ecohydrology and practical constraints not represented in the optimizer, we assessed the robustness of spatial recommendations, i.e. revealing areas most often selected by the optimizer. We conclude with a discussion of the practical decisions involved in using optimization frameworks to inform watershed management programs, and the research needs to better inform the design of such programs

Alert-BDI: BDI Model with Adaptive Alertness through Situational Awareness

In this paper, we address the problems faced by a group of agents that possess situational awareness, but lack a security mechanism, by the introduction of a adaptive risk management system. The Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) architecture lacks a framework that would facilitate an adaptive risk management system that uses the situational awareness of the agents. We extend the BDI architecture with the concept of adaptive alertness. Agents can modify their level of alertness by monitoring the risks faced by them and by their peers. Alert-BDI enables the agents to detect and assess the risks faced by them in an efficient manner, thereby increasing operational efficiency and resistance against attacks.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to ICACCI 2013, Mysore, Indi

U.S. Conservation Policy Reconsidered

Research related to the Endangered Species Act tends to take the presence of that policy as given and focus on issues of implementation and effects. This paper seeks to reconsider U.S. conservation policy entirely. The ESA does not protect species or ecosystems that are not endangered, and formally requires that conservation efforts be spread evenly across endangered species to prevent their extinctions. However, the focus of conservation science has evolved in recent years towards ecosystems and away from species. This paper characterizes the composition of optimal conservation spending when species are valued for their contributions to ecosystem services and not always for their own existence. The ESA clearly fails to provide ecosystem services when the species that provide them happen to be widespread enough not to be endangered. I show that the Noahs Ark design of the ESA is also unlikely to yield optimal conservation levels even of endangered species, and can push excess total social resources away from conservation and towards consumer goods. I show that private conservation can help to remediate inefficient distribution of government activity among species if the scale of government programs is modest enough to leave room for private initiatives to remedy accidental government misallocations. Finally, I suggest an alternative pair of policies that protect ecosystem services and match private expenditures on conservation of charismatic species.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

GLOBAL FINANCIAL FLOWS: SHIFTING THE BALANCE

On the basis of comparative analysis of the basic groups of national economic indicators, provided by The World Bank, the changes in balance in financial resources distribution are defined. The gradual shifting of center of generation of financial resources from North America to Middle, Eastern and South Asia is discovered. The factors that influence on the given processes are shown, and the main future trends of global economy are substantiated.On the basis of comparative analysis of the basic groups of national economic indicators, provided by The World Bank, the changes in balance in financial resources distribution are defined. The gradual shifting of center of generation of financial resources from North America to Middle, Eastern and South Asia is discovered. The factors that influence on the given processes are shown, and the main future trends of global economy are substantiated