Triple-loop networks with arbitrarily many minimum distance diagrams

Minimum distance diagrams are a way to encode the diameter and routing information of multi-loop networks. For the widely studied case of double-loop networks, it is known that each network has at most two such diagrams and that they have a very definite form "L-shape''. In contrast, in this paper we show that there are triple-loop networks with an arbitrarily big number of associated minimum distance diagrams. For doing this, we build-up on the relations between minimum distance diagrams and monomial ideals.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure

Avian Influenza Threat and its Potential Impact on Demand for Chicken and Eggs

A highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of avian influenza (AI) has been confirmed in 420 human cases and has caused 257 deaths in the world starting from 2003. Using face-to-face interviews, our data were collected by utilizing a stratified sampling scheme following the distribution of gender and age in three major metropolitan areas in Taiwan, including Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung. The questionnaire was designed to retrieve information including AI knowledge, risk perceptions, and behavioral changes of two types of consumers, primary shoppers and general consumers. In total, 501 primary shoppers and 505 general consumers completed the survey in June 2007 and were recorded for analysis. The empirical results show several interesting findings, especially, that risk perception and some socioeconomic characteristics such as age are the key factor which determines changes in purchasing behavior.avian influenza, knowledge, risk perception, Tobit model, Taiwan, Consumer/Household Economics, Livestock Production/Industries, M30,

RAC-Multi: Reader Anti-Collision Algorithm for Multichannel Mobile RFID Networks

At present, RFID is installed on mobile devices such as mobile phones or PDAs and provides a means to obtain information about objects equipped with an RFID tag over a multi-channeled telecommunication networks. To use mobile RFIDs, reader collision problems should be addressed given that readers are continuously moving. Moreover, in a multichannel environment for mobile RFIDs, interference between adjacent channels should be considered. This work first defines a new concept of a reader collision problem between adjacent channels and then suggests a novel reader anti-collision algorithm for RFID readers that use multiple channels. To avoid interference with adjacent channels, the suggested algorithm separates data channels into odd and even numbered channels and allocates odd-numbered channels first to readers. It also sets an unused channel between the control channel and data channels to ensure that control messages and the signal of the adjacent channel experience no interference. Experimental results show that suggested algorithm shows throughput improvements ranging from 29% to 46% for tag identifications compared to the GENTLE reader anti-collision algorithm for multichannel RFID networks