202 research outputs found
Justice and Home Affairs in the aftermath of September 11: opportunities and challenges
[Abstract by Archive of European Integration editor]. This essay focuses on the re-emphases and activities, such as judicial and police cooperation in criminal and cross-border matters, caused by September 11
EU Asylum Governance and E(xc)lusive Solidarity: Insights From Germany
The response to the soâcalled refugee crisis of 2015 in the European Union was haphazard and inconsistent with the stated mission of solidarity. This article situates the EUâs response and its Common European Asylum System (CEAS) as defensive integration producing the lowest common denominator policies. It argues that the rise of rightâwing populism redefines solidarity in narrow and exclusionary terms, in contrast to the inclusive and global solidarity espoused by the EU. Drawing on Germany as a case study of how domestic populist pressures also rise to the European level, the article juxtaposes the demise of the EUâs temporary relocation system (an attempt at internal inclusive solidarity) and the success of the EUâTurkey deal (an attempt at externalization and risk avoidance), both initiatives led by Germany. Solidarity efforts championed by Germany were quickly stymied by (Central Eastern European) member states that not only rejected efforts at temporary solutions but blocked efforts to develop permanent mechanisms and a substantive CEAS reform
Parallel Exhaustive Search without Coordination
We analyze parallel algorithms in the context of exhaustive search over
totally ordered sets. Imagine an infinite list of "boxes", with a "treasure"
hidden in one of them, where the boxes' order reflects the importance of
finding the treasure in a given box. At each time step, a search protocol
executed by a searcher has the ability to peek into one box, and see whether
the treasure is present or not. By equally dividing the workload between them,
searchers can find the treasure times faster than one searcher.
However, this straightforward strategy is very sensitive to failures (e.g.,
crashes of processors), and overcoming this issue seems to require a large
amount of communication. We therefore address the question of designing
parallel search algorithms maximizing their speed-up and maintaining high
levels of robustness, while minimizing the amount of resources for
coordination. Based on the observation that algorithms that avoid communication
are inherently robust, we analyze the best running time performance of
non-coordinating algorithms. Specifically, we devise non-coordinating
algorithms that achieve a speed-up of for two searchers, a speed-up of
for three searchers, and in general, a speed-up of
for any searchers. Thus, asymptotically, the speed-up is only four
times worse compared to the case of full-coordination, and our algorithms are
surprisingly simple and hence applicable. Moreover, these bounds are tight in a
strong sense as no non-coordinating search algorithm can achieve better
speed-ups. Overall, we highlight that, in faulty contexts in which coordination
between the searchers is technically difficult to implement, intrusive with
respect to privacy, and/or costly in term of resources, it might well be worth
giving up on coordination, and simply run our non-coordinating exhaustive
search algorithms
Distributed algorithms for low stretch spanning trees
Given an undirected graph with integer edge lengths, we study the problem of approximating the distances in the graph by a spanning tree based on the notion of stretch. Our main contribution is a distributed algorithm in the CONGEST model of computation that constructs a random spanning tree with the guarantee that the expected stretch of every edge is O(log3 n), where n is the number of nodes in the graph. If the graph is unweighted, then this algorithm can be implemented to run in O(D) rounds, where D is the hop-diameter of the graph, thus being asymptotically optimal. In the weighted case, the run-time of our algorithm matches the currently best known bound for exact distance computations, i.e., Ă(min{ânD, ânD1/4 + n3/5 + D}). We stress that this is the first distributed construction of spanning trees leading to poly-logarithmic expected stretch with non-trivial running time
Using synchronizing heuristics to construct homing sequences
Computing a shortest synchronizing sequence of an automaton is an NP-Hard problem. There are well-known heuristics to find short synchronizing sequences. Finding a shortest homing sequence is also an NP-Hard problem. Unlike existing heuristics to find synchronizing sequences, homing heuristics are not widely studied. In this paper, we discover a relation between synchronizing and homing sequences by creating an automaton called homing automaton. By applying synchronizing heuristics on this automaton we get short homing sequences. Furthermore, we adapt some of the synchronizing heuristics to construct homing sequences
Interval Selection in the Streaming Model
A set of intervals is independent when the intervals are pairwise disjoint.
In the interval selection problem we are given a set of intervals
and we want to find an independent subset of intervals of largest cardinality.
Let denote the cardinality of an optimal solution. We
discuss the estimation of in the streaming model, where we
only have one-time, sequential access to the input intervals, the endpoints of
the intervals lie in , and the amount of the memory is
constrained.
For intervals of different sizes, we provide an algorithm in the data stream
model that computes an estimate of that, with
probability at least , satisfies . For same-length
intervals, we provide another algorithm in the data stream model that computes
an estimate of that, with probability at
least , satisfies . The space used by our algorithms is bounded
by a polynomial in and . We also show that no better
estimations can be achieved using bits of storage.
We also develop new, approximate solutions to the interval selection problem,
where we want to report a feasible solution, that use
space. Our algorithms for the interval selection problem match the optimal
results by Emek, Halld{\'o}rsson and Ros{\'e}n [Space-Constrained Interval
Selection, ICALP 2012], but are much simpler.Comment: Minor correction
Online set packing and competitive scheduling of multi-part tasks
We consider a scenario where large data frames are broken into a few packets and transmitted over the network. Our focus is on a bottleneck router: the model assumes that in each time step, a set of packets (a burst) arrives, from which only one packet can be served, and all other packets are lost. A data frame is considered useful only if none of its constituent packets is lost, and otherwise it is worthless. We abstract the problem as a new type of online set packing, present a randomized distributed algorithm and a matching lower bound on the competitive ratio for any randomized online algorithm. Our bounds are expressed in terms of the maximal burst size and the maximal number of packets per frame. We also present refined bounds that depend on the uniformity of these parameters
Exploration of Finite 2D Square Grid by a Metamorphic Robotic System
We consider exploration of finite 2D square grid by a metamorphic robotic
system consisting of anonymous oblivious modules. The number of possible shapes
of a metamorphic robotic system grows as the number of modules increases. The
shape of the system serves as its memory and shows its functionality. We
consider the effect of global compass on the minimum number of modules
necessary to explore a finite 2D square grid. We show that if the modules agree
on the directions (north, south, east, and west), three modules are necessary
and sufficient for exploration from an arbitrary initial configuration,
otherwise five modules are necessary and sufficient for restricted initial
configurations
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