Designing cost-sharing methods for Bayesian games

We study the design of cost-sharing protocols for two fundamental resource allocation problems, the Set Cover and the Steiner Tree Problem, under environments of incomplete information (Bayesian model). Our objective is to design protocols where the worst-case Bayesian Nash equilibria, have low cost, i.e. the Bayesian Price of Anarchy (PoA) is minimized. Although budget balance is a very natural requirement, it puts considerable restrictions on the design space, resulting in high PoA. We propose an alternative, relaxed requirement called budget balance in the equilibrium (BBiE).We show an interesting connection between algorithms for Oblivious Stochastic optimization problems and cost-sharing design with low PoA. We exploit this connection for both problems and we enforce approximate solutions of the stochastic problem, as Bayesian Nash equilibria, with the same guarantees on the PoA. More interestingly, we show how to obtain the same bounds on the PoA, by using anonymous posted prices which are desirable because they are easy to implement and, as we show, induce dominant strategies for the players

Resource Competition on Integral Polymatroids

We study competitive resource allocation problems in which players distribute their demands integrally on a set of resources subject to player-specific submodular capacity constraints. Each player has to pay for each unit of demand a cost that is a nondecreasing and convex function of the total allocation of that resource. This general model of resource allocation generalizes both singleton congestion games with integer-splittable demands and matroid congestion games with player-specific costs. As our main result, we show that in such general resource allocation problems a pure Nash equilibrium is guaranteed to exist by giving a pseudo-polynomial algorithm computing a pure Nash equilibrium.Comment: 17 page

Acceptability to patients, carers and clinicians of an mHealth platform for the management of Parkinson's disease (PD_Manager): study protocol for a pilot randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Parkinson's disease is a degenerative neurological condition causing multiple motor and non-motor symptoms that have a serious adverse effect on quality of life. Management is problematic due to the variable and fluctuating nature of symptoms, often hourly and daily. The PD_Manager mHealth platform aims to provide a continuous feed of data on symptoms to improve clinical understanding of the status of any individual patient and inform care planning. The objectives of this trial are to (1) assess patient (and family carer) perspectives of PD_Manager regarding comfort, acceptability and ease of use; (2) assess clinician views about the utility of the data generated by PD_Manager for clinical decision making and the acceptability of the system in clinical practice. METHODS/DESIGN: This trial is an unblinded, parallel, two-group, randomised controlled pilot study. A total of 200 persons with Parkinson's disease (Hoehn and Yahr stage 3, experiencing motor fluctuations at least 2 h per day), with primary family carers, in three countries (110 Rome, 50 Venice, Italy; 20 each in Ioannina, Greece and Surrey, England) will be recruited. Following informed consent, baseline information will be gathered, including the following: age, gender, education, attitudes to technology (patient and carer); time since Parkinson's diagnosis, symptom status and comorbidities (patient only). Randomisation will assign participants (1:1 in each country), to PD_Manager vs control, stratifying by age (1 ≤ 70 : 1 > 70) and gender (60% M: 40% F). The PD_Manager system captures continuous data on motor symptoms, sleep, activity, speech quality and emotional state using wearable devices (wristband, insoles) and a smartphone (with apps) for storing and transmitting the information. Control group participants will be asked to keep a symptom diary covering the same elements as PD_Manager records. After a minimum of two weeks, each participant will attend a consultation with a specialist doctor for review of the data gathered (by either means), and changes to management will be initiated as indicated. Patients, carers and clinicians will be asked for feedback on the acceptability and utility of the data collection methods. The PD_Manager intervention, compared to a symptom diary, will be evaluated in a cost-consequences framework. DISCUSSION: Information gathered will inform further development of the PD_Manager system and a larger effectiveness trial. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN Registry, ISRCTN17396879 . Registered on 15 March 2017

The twelfth-century documents of St. George’s of Tròccoli (Sicily)

This study publishes for the first time six authentic and original documents from mid-twelfth-century Norman Sicily. Three are bilingual, written in Greek and Arabic, and three are Arabic. All were issued by the multilingual dīwān of King Roger de Hauteville, and relate to the lands and Muslim peasants held of the crown by the Greek monastery of St. George’s of Tròccoli, near Caltabellotta. These documents are of particular interest in four principal ways. First, they permit the reconstruction in unusual detail of the internal administrative processes of the royal dīwān. Second, they preserve the toponymy and describe the topography of the lands of St. George’s that lay in a district of Norman Sicily until now poorly documented. Third, they record the remarkable phenomenon of the immigration to Norman Sicily of Muslims, who apparently commended themselves into the service of a Christian monastery as villeins, in order to escape deprivation and famine in Ifrīqīya. And fourth they add to the small corpus of Arabic documents from Norman Sicily, contributing much new evidence for their diplomatic form, language and palaeography

The Twelfth-century documents of St. George’s of Tròccoli (Sicily)

This study publishes for the first time six authentic and original documents from mid-twelfth-century Nor-man Sicily. Three are bilingual, written in Greek and Arabic, and three are Arabic. All were issued by the multilingual dīwān of King Roger de Hauteville and relate to the lands and Muslim peasants held of the crown by the Greek monastery of St. George’s of Tròccoli, near Caltabellotta. These documents are of particular interest in four principal ways. First, they permit the reconstruction in unusual detail of the inter-nal administrative processes of the royal dīwān. Second, they preserve the toponymy and describe the topography of the lands of St. George’s that lay in a district of Norman Sicily until now poorly documented. Third, they record the remarkable phenomenon of the immigration to Norman Sicily of Muslims, who apparently commended themselves into the service of a Christian monastery as villeins, in order to escape deprivation and famine in Ifrīqiyya. And fourth, they add to the small corpus of Arabic documents from Norman Sicily, contributing much new evidence for their diplomatic form, language and palaeography

TOWARDS AUTOMATIC VALIDATION AND HEALING OF CITYGML MODELS FOR GEOMETRIC AND SEMANTIC CONSISTENCY

A steadily growing number of application fields for large 3D city models have emerged in recent years. Like in many other domains, data quality is recognized as a key factor for successful business. Quality management is mandatory in the production chain nowadays. Automated domain-specific tools are widely used for validation of business-critical data but still common standards defining correct geometric modeling are not precise enough to define a sound base for data validation of 3D city models. Although the workflow for 3D city models is well-established from data acquisition to processing, analysis and visualization, quality management is not yet a standard during this workflow. Processing data sets with unclear specification leads to erroneous results and application defects. We show that this problem persists even if data are standard compliant. Validation results of real-world city models are presented to demonstrate the potential of the approach. A tool to repair the errors detected during the validation process is under development; first results are presented and discussed. The goal is to heal defects of the models automatically and export a corrected CityGML model