Multi-Agent Programming Contest 2011 - The Python-DTU Team

We provide a brief description of the Python-DTU system, including the overall design, the tools and the algorithms that we plan to use in the agent contest.Comment: 4 page

It’s Time to Pay Up, The Justification for Higher Salaries for WNBA Players: An Analysis of the WNBA’s Success and Employing Mediation between the WNBA and NBA to Leverage Future Success

This comment looks at the potential positive effects that mediation can have in fostering a better relationship between the two leagues and for the WNBA and its players to get their much-deserved respect and compensation. First, the comment will go in depth regarding the structure of the WNBA, and its history to date. Next, the comment will examine the WNBA’s success despite the discrepancy in pay and the purported lack of viewership. The comment will then expound on the rise of mediation as one of the major ADR tools. Next, the comment will analyze the success of mediation in professional sports disputes. Lastly, the comment will analyze the application of mediation to the issues concerning the WNBA, weighing both sides of the issue

The first colour blind American president?

This paper explores the link between a mindset of respect for differences and the benefits thereof for global organisations and persons. The profound influence of a person's mindset or worldview towards differences has on the performance of teams and people in multicultural and diverse settings is demonstrated with relatable anecdotes. The influence of the (subconscious) mindsets in these anecdotes is used to explain a model that plots the mental stages of development of intercultural sensitivity. It demonstrates the required mindset of global organizations, executives, leaders and individuals for dealing with the increasing awareness of differences stemming from globalisation that continuously "shrinks" the world of today. It is shown that a mindset towards respect for differences is not only essential to benefit from the hidden potential in multicultural and diverse settings, but also to prevent that same diversity from negatively influencing organisation and team performance. A meta-level approach for effectively dealing with the complexities and uncertainty attributed to multiculturalism and diversity in organisations and teams is briefly introduced

Myocardial injury after non-cardiac surgery: A prevalence study

Background Worldwide, the number of patients suffering from surgical complications account for a significant burden on healthcare systems. Myocardial injury after non-cardiac surgery (MINS) is a new entity that has recently been identified as an independent risk factor associated with 30-day all-cause mortality. The risk of death increases approximately 10 fold following MINS in the perioperative period. Diagnosing myocardial injury in nonsurgical patients often relies on specific symptomatology and clinical findings combined with special investigations. However, in surgical patients, more than 80% of patients with postoperative myocardial injury will be asymptomatic, and hence the majority of diagnoses will be missed. Studies identifying the prevalence and risk factors for MINS have been conducted in countries with a different surgical population to South Africa. The primary outcome of this study was to investigate the prevalence of MINS after non-cardiac, elective, elevated risk surgery in South Africa. Methods Patients undergoing elevated risk, elective, non-cardiac surgery ≥ 45 years of age were enrolled via convenience sampling. The new 5th generation, high sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hscTnT) blood test was used to identify MINS. Blood samples were taken between 24 to 72 hours after surgery. Exclusion criteria included patients with known renal disease, a recent cardiac event, pulmonary embolism or sepsis. Results A total of 244 patients were included in the study. The prevalence of MINS was 4.9% (95% CI 2.2-7.6) which was not significantly different (p=0.078) to reports from international prospective observational studies. Conclusion Elective, elevated risk surgical patients in South Africa have a similar incidence of MINS when compared to patients from international studies. As the risk profile of South African patients is significantly lower than other similar international observational studies, it is possible that the prevalence of MINS is more common in South Africa, when patients are adjusted for cardiovascular risk profile. The burden of MINS on public health morbidity is therefore likely to be proportionally more in South Africa when compared to international reports. This may suggest that the calibration of international cardiovascular risk prediction models is incorrect for South African patients, or there are confounding comorbidities which should be included in South African cardiovascular risk prediction models. Larger studies are required to confirm this hypothesis however, and should also aim to address the need for appropriate cardiovascular risk predicting models in South Africa, to ensure timeous identification of patients at risk of MINS

Works for Caribbean Orchestra: Compositions Reflecting the Music of Grenada and the African Caribbean Diaspora

In this thesis, the music and history of Grenada and the African Caribbean diaspora provided inspiration for compositions featuring a seventeen piece orchestra with an emphasis on form, structure, harmony, rhythm, melody and dynamics. This research includes four original musical compositions, tailored particularly, to characterize the music of the "Big Drum," a lively ancient dance rite of the island of Carriacou, and "Shango," another African based religion in Grenada, and their influences on calypso, reggae, Latin music, jazz, blues, gospel, soul music, and other sub-genres in the Afro-Caribbean diaspora

Time-Space Trade-Offs for Lempel-Ziv Compressed Indexing

Given a string S, the compressed indexing problem is to preprocess S into a compressed representation that supports fast substring queries. The goal is to use little space relative to the compressed size of S while supporting fast queries. We present a compressed index based on the Lempel-Ziv 1977 compression scheme. Let n, and z denote the size of the input string, and the compressed LZ77 string, respectively. We obtain the following time-space trade-offs. Given a pattern string P of length m, we can solve the problem in (i) O(m + occ lglg n) time using O(z lg(n/z) lglg z) space, or (ii) O(m(1 + lg^e z / lg(n/z)) + occ(lglg n + lg^e z)) time using O(z lg(n/z)) space, for any 0 < e < 1 In particular, (i) improves the leading term in the query time of the previous best solution from O(m lg m) to O(m) at the cost of increasing the space by a factor lglg z. Alternatively, (ii) matches the previous best space bound, but has a leading term in the query time of O(m(1+lg^e z / lg(n/z))). However, for any polynomial compression ratio, i.e., z = O(n^{1-d}), for constant d > 0, this becomes O(m). Our index also supports extraction of any substring of length l in O(l + lg(n/z)) time. Technically, our results are obtained by novel extensions and combinations of existing data structures of independent interest, including a new batched variant of weak prefix search

Fast Dynamic Arrays

We present a highly optimized implementation of tiered vectors, a data structure for maintaining a sequence of $n$ elements supporting access in time $O(1)$ and insertion and deletion in time $O(n^\epsilon)$ for $\epsilon > 0$ while using $o(n)$ extra space. We consider several different implementation optimizations in C++ and compare their performance to that of vector and multiset from the standard library on sequences with up to $10^8$ elements. Our fastest implementation uses much less space than multiset while providing speedups of $40\times$ for access operations compared to multiset and speedups of $10.000\times$ compared to vector for insertion and deletion operations while being competitive with both data structures for all other operations

Electronic data interchange : an implementation methodology

The purpose of the research is to propose and evaluate a methodology for implementing EDI to assist organisations in reaping the anticipated benefits. The research involved the systematic analysis of the state of the art of EDI and paradigms of methodologies, to define a model for the EDI implementation methodology, and to define criteria for evaluating such a model. The methodology was developed and modelled utilising the software process model, as adopted by Boehm (1988) and later duPlessis and van der Walt (1992), as a framework. Next a synthesis of the assimilated knowledge and brainstorming of project teams involved in EDI pilot projects, was used to systematically develop an EDI implementation methodology. The methodology was evaluated by utilising it in the implementation of EDI between two organisations, Computer Equipment Brokers (PTY) and Marksec (PTY). It was concluded that the methodology was efficient for implementing EDI.ComputingM. Sc. (Information Systems