Escalation Bargaining: Theoretical Analysis and Experimental Test

The standard chicken game is a popular model of certain important real scenarios but does not allow for the escalation behaviour these are typically associated with. This is problematic if the critical, final decisions in these scenarios are sensitive to previous escalation. We introduce and analyse, theoretically and by experiment, a new game which permits escalation behaviour. Compared with an equivalent chicken game, Pareto-suboptimal outcomes are significantly more frequent. This result is inconsistent with our rational choice analysis and possible psychological roots are explored.escalation; brinkmanship; chicken game; experiments

Open source guilds:enabling micro­ businesses to create a sustainable community of practice?

This paper outlines how the concept of open source guilds was developed through undertaking a pilot action research project with three micro-businesses in the North West of England as co-researchers. The research initially aimed to explore how a virtual guild could enable micro-businesses to move towards sustainability by creating a community of practice based on open source principles. However, research findings raised the issue of both the business and its community needing to become sustainable. The open source guild addresses this issue by adding the proprietary aspect of the original medieval guilds, enabling a micro-business to defend its core intellectual property while creating a sustainable community based on shared values that operates both off-and on-line

How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University

Hymns have always been part of Christian liturgy, expressing the faith in congregational song. The NZ hymnwriter of the late twentieth century writes within a secular society which increasingly questions the relevance of religion. This thesis examines and describes issues with which modern hymnwriters are confronted in the practice of their work, the intention being to produce a work of practical benefit to those using hymns in some way. The thesis begins with an historical overview of the ways hymnology has developed. From this background it is possible to ascertain a working definition of a hymn, and to discover how hymns have been used over the centuries to express certain theological points of view about the nature of the church, particularly as it relates to society as a whole. Hymns are a combination of doctrine and song. How words and music combine to form the complex experience of a hymn is discussed in Chapter two. Music has always been a contentious issue within the church for it brings the possibility of the "secular" into worship. Music style is an expression of a church's theology of church in the world. The choice of music as part of the experience of a hymn is a crucial issue. In a secular society, the charge of irrelevance is levelled at religion in general, and hymns in particular. Chapter Three discusses the meaning of "relevance" for hymnology. This is related to hermeneutics, liturgy, and tradition, with particular focus on Reader-Response Criticism as a tool for understanding the dynamics of the texts relationship to the reader/singer. The modern hymnwriter must overcome the conservatism of hymnbook collections. The quest for relevance and the exploration of new styles takes place largely outside the confines of hymnbooks. As liturgy is the milieu within which hymns are experienced and for which they are written, the thesis raises four questions by which to test the effectiveness of hymns in worship. During the writing of this thesis an issue arose several times which is more properly the province of religious sociology or theology; the way in which hymns express the power struggle between the "organisation" and the people. many music forms used in the church began as people's songs and dances, but church use has dampened the original liveliness of these forms. I have addressed this issue in passing without exploring it fully. Because I am a Methodist presbyter, there are times when my Methodist bias shows. I make no apology for that. The NZ context from which I write is also an important factor in the choosing of illustrative material. I have deliberately used With One Voice as a source book for most hymn quotations as it is used in many NZ churches and can therefore add to the practical nature of this work. The thesis is not a critique of With One Voice

Predicting the absorption of perforated panels backed by resistive textiles

This paper studies the diffuse field sound absorption coefficient of a system consisting of a rigid perforated panel with a thin porous woven/matted material glued to its back, which is placed in front of an air cavity with a rigid backing. To cut the cost of trial and error diffuse field sound absorption coefficient measurements, a prediction method was developed. Measurements were made in a two-microphone impedance tube of the complex specific acoustic impedances of the unperforated rigid panel materials and of the thin porous materials in front of a rigidly terminated air cavity. These values were used in the transfer matrix method to predict the complex specific acoustic impedances of the perforated panels systems as a function of the angle of incidence of the sound. These calculations assumed the systems to have infinite or finite lateral extent. The measured diffuse field sound absorption coefficient values usually lay between the infinite and finite predictions. The most important variables are the perforation factor of the panel, the acoustic resistance of the thin porous material and the cavity depth

The prediction of the diffuse field sound absorption of perforated panel systems

This paper studies the diffuse field sound absorption coefficient of a system consisting of a rigid perforated panel with a thin porous woven/matted material glued to its back, which is placed in front of an air cavity with a rigid backing. To cut the cost of trial and error diffuse field sound absorption coefficient measurements, a prediction method was developed. Measurements were made in a two-microphone impedance tube of the complex specific acoustic impedances of the un-perforated rigid panel materials, and of the thin porous materials in front of a rigidly terminated air cavity. These values were used in the transfer matrix method to predict the complex specific acoustic impedances of the perorated panels systems as a function of the angle of incidence of the sound. These calculations assumed the systems to have infinite or finite lateral extent. The measured diffuse field absorption values usually lay between the infinite and finite predictions. The most important variables are the perforation factor of the panel, the acoustic resistance of the thin porous material and the cavity depth

A preliminary investigation into the use of fixed formulaic sequences as a marker of authorship

This research unites the theory of formulaic language—prefabricated sequences of words believed to be stored as holistic units—and the practice of forensic authorship attribution with a view to developing a new marker of authorship. It stands to reason that since formulaic sequences are holistically processed as single lexical items, they are likely to elude a writer’s attempts to disguise their style. Furthermore, evidence suggests that individuals have different stores of formulaic sequences. Therefore, research into differences in formulaic language usage may assist in the development of new tools for authorship attribution. In order to test this assertion, a reference list containing 13,412 formulaic sequences was compiled from multiple online sources. This was then used to identify formulaic sequences in a 20 author corpus containing 100 personal narratives. After exploring the types of formulaic sequences used by authors, statistical tests were used to determine whether the count of formulaic words was sufficient to establish variation between authors and to attribute a Questioned Text to its autho

Value-led personas:a methodology to promote sustainable user-centered design?

This paper explores how values can be the focus in user-centered design through the use of value-led personas. Its starting point was exploring value-driven alternative models for micro-business based on the principles of open source. The research documented in this paper is a participatory design process with two emergent micro-businesses as co-researchers. The stakeholders of each micro-business were presented as value-led personas, representing a deep understanding of their values and beliefs gained from ethnographic data. In this project, the use of value-led personas effectively communicated the core values of each micro-business and enabled participants to visualize how stakeholders would interact with the organization. Value-led personas thus have the potential to be an effective communication technique in user-centered design that can lead to purposeful action

Escalation bargaining: Theoretical analysis and experimental test

The standard chicken game is a popular model of certain important real scenarios but does not allow for the escalation behaviour these are typically associated with. This is problematic if the critical, final decisions in these scenarios are sensitive to previous escalation. We introduce and analyse, theoretically and by experiment, a new game which permits escalation behaviour. Compared with an equivalent chicken game, Pareto-suboptimal outcomes are significantly more frequent. This result is inconsistent with our rational choice analysis and possible psychological roots are explored

The acoustic radiation impedance of a rectangular panel

This paper extends the definition of the one sided radiation impedance of a panel mounted in an infinite rigid baffle which was previously used by the authors so that it can be applied to all transverse velocity wave types on the panel rather than just to the possibly forced travelling plane transverse velocity waves considered previously by the authors. For the case of travelling plane waves on a rectangular panel with anechoic edge conditions, and for the case of standing waves on a rectangular panel with simply supported edge conditions, the equations resulting from one of the standard reductions from quadruple to double integrals are given. These double integral equations can be reduced to single integral equations, but the versions of these equations given in the literature did not always converge when used with adaptive integral routines and were sometimes slower than the double integral versions. This is because the terms in the integrands in the existing equations have singularities. Although these singularities cancel, they caused problems for the adaptive integral routines. This paper rewrites these equations in a form which removes the singularities and enables the integrals in these equations to be evaluated with adaptive integral routines. Approximate equations for the azimuthally averaged one sided radiation impedance of a rectangular panel mounted in an infinite baffle are given for all the cases considered in this paper and the values produced by these equations are compared with numerical calculations