1,582 research outputs found
On the Shapley-like Payoff Mechanisms in Peer-Assisted Services with Multiple Content Providers
This paper studies an incentive structure for cooperation and its stability
in peer-assisted services when there exist multiple content providers, using a
coalition game theoretic approach. We first consider a generalized coalition
structure consisting of multiple providers with many assisting peers, where
peers assist providers to reduce the operational cost in content distribution.
To distribute the profit from cost reduction to players (i.e., providers and
peers), we then establish a generalized formula for individual payoffs when a
"Shapley-like" payoff mechanism is adopted. We show that the grand coalition is
unstable, even when the operational cost functions are concave, which is in
sharp contrast to the recently studied case of a single provider where the
grand coalition is stable. We also show that irrespective of stability of the
grand coalition, there always exist coalition structures which are not
convergent to the grand coalition. Our results give us an important insight
that a provider does not tend to cooperate with other providers in
peer-assisted services, and be separated from them. To further study the case
of the separated providers, three examples are presented; (i) underpaid peers,
(ii) service monopoly, and (iii) oscillatory coalition structure. Our study
opens many new questions such as realistic and efficient incentive structures
and the tradeoffs between fairness and individual providers' competition in
peer-assisted services.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, an extended version of the paper to be presented
in ICST GameNets 2011, Shanghai, China, April 201
Distributed Computing in the Asynchronous LOCAL model
The LOCAL model is among the main models for studying locality in the
framework of distributed network computing. This model is however subject to
pertinent criticisms, including the facts that all nodes wake up
simultaneously, perform in lock steps, and are failure-free. We show that
relaxing these hypotheses to some extent does not hurt local computing. In
particular, we show that, for any construction task associated to a locally
checkable labeling (LCL), if is solvable in rounds in the LOCAL model,
then remains solvable in rounds in the asynchronous LOCAL model.
This improves the result by Casta\~neda et al. [SSS 2016], which was restricted
to 3-coloring the rings. More generally, the main contribution of this paper is
to show that, perhaps surprisingly, asynchrony and failures in the computations
do not restrict the power of the LOCAL model, as long as the communications
remain synchronous and failure-free
Locally Optimal Load Balancing
This work studies distributed algorithms for locally optimal load-balancing:
We are given a graph of maximum degree , and each node has up to
units of load. The task is to distribute the load more evenly so that the loads
of adjacent nodes differ by at most .
If the graph is a path (), it is easy to solve the fractional
version of the problem in communication rounds, independently of the
number of nodes. We show that this is tight, and we show that it is possible to
solve also the discrete version of the problem in rounds in paths.
For the general case (), we show that fractional load balancing
can be solved in rounds and discrete load
balancing in rounds for some function , independently of the
number of nodes.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figure
Anti-infective surface coatings: design and therapeutic promise against device-associated infections
Patient safety and well-being are under increasing threat from hospital-acquired infections [1]. The root cause of a large number of these infections arises from microbial biofilms that colonise on surfaces of medical devices such as the millions of catheters, endotracheal tubes, and prosthetics implanted every year [2]. Biofilm infections are accompanied by increased resistance to antimicrobial therapy and immune clearance, severely limiting treatment options and leading to life-threatening disease [3,4]. Device-associated infections are caused by both bacteria and fungi and, while most studies have focused on single-species biofilms, biofilm-related infections are often polymicrobial [5–8]. Multi-species biofilms, particularly those involving bacterial and fungal pathogens, are more challenging to treat, likely as a consequence of their combined architecture, protective extracellular matrix, and potential synergism in protecting against antimicrobials and host immunity [9–11]. Among the fungi, Candida species are the most important biofilm pathogens [12,13] and the fourth leading cause of blood-stream infections in United States hospitals [7]. Fungal diseases remain difficult to diagnose, mortality rates remain high, and antifungal drug resistance continues to limit therapeutic options [14,15]. We are in desperate need of innovative strategies that target the mechanisms of pathogenesis of polymicrobial biofilms on medical devices. This is a grand challenge because it requires multidisciplinary collaboration and breakthrough research involving physical chemistry, materials science, and microbiology. Communication between these disciplines has not been common, but recent advances show greater convergence in the development of anti-infective devices. At this nexus, we outline the therapeutic promise of anti-infective coatings for medical devices and discuss pitfalls and strategies for overcoming them.Bryan R. Coad, Hans J. Griesser, Anton Y. Peleg, Ana Trave
Robots with Lights: Overcoming Obstructed Visibility Without Colliding
Robots with lights is a model of autonomous mobile computational entities
operating in the plane in Look-Compute-Move cycles: each agent has an
externally visible light which can assume colors from a fixed set; the lights
are persistent (i.e., the color is not erased at the end of a cycle), but
otherwise the agents are oblivious. The investigation of computability in this
model, initially suggested by Peleg, is under way, and several results have
been recently established. In these investigations, however, an agent is
assumed to be capable to see through another agent. In this paper we start the
study of computing when visibility is obstructable, and investigate the most
basic problem for this setting, Complete Visibility: The agents must reach
within finite time a configuration where they can all see each other and
terminate. We do not make any assumption on a-priori knowledge of the number of
agents, on rigidity of movements nor on chirality. The local coordinate system
of an agent may change at each activation. Also, by definition of lights, an
agent can communicate and remember only a constant number of bits in each
cycle. In spite of these weak conditions, we prove that Complete Visibility is
always solvable, even in the asynchronous setting, without collisions and using
a small constant number of colors. The proof is constructive. We also show how
to extend our protocol for Complete Visibility so that, with the same number of
colors, the agents solve the (non-uniform) Circle Formation problem with
obstructed visibility
A gas emitted by Neurospora crassa
We investigated whether gases other than carbon dioxide are produced by N. crassa. A peak corresponding to ethylene has been detected using gas chromatography. Mass spectroscopy, however, indicated that the gas produced might be carbon monoxide which, surprisingly, migrated with the same chromatographic retention time as ethylene. Our results emphasize the need for caution when interpreting results based solely on gas chromatographic data
Normal scaling in globally conserved interface-controlled coarsening of fractal clusters
Globally conserved interface-controlled coarsening of fractal clusters
exhibits dynamic scale invariance and normal scaling. This is demonstrated by a
numerical solution of the Ginzburg-Landau equation with a global conservation
law. The sharp-interface limit of this equation is volume preserving motion by
mean curvature. The scaled form of the correlation function has a power-law
tail accommodating the fractal initial condition. The coarsening length
exhibits normal scaling with time. Finally, shrinking of the fractal clusters
with time is observed. The difference between global and local conservation is
discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 3 eps figure
Far-from-equilibrium Ostwald ripening in electrostatically driven granular powders
We report the first experimental study of cluster size distributions in
electrostatically driven granular submonolayers. The cluster size distribution
in this far-from-equilibrium process exhibits dynamic scaling behavior
characteristic of the (nearly equilibrium) Ostwald ripening, controlled by the
attachment and detachment of the "gas" particles. The scaled size distribution,
however, is different from the classical Wagner distribution obtained in the
limit of a vanishingly small area fraction of the clusters. A much better
agreement is found with the theory of Conti et al. [Phys. Rev. E 65, 046117
(2002)] which accounts for the cluster merger.Comment: 5 pages, to appear in PR
An exact solution for 2+1 dimensional critical collapse
We find an exact solution in closed form for the critical collapse of a
scalar field with cosmological constant in 2+1 dimensions. This solution agrees
with the numerical simulation done by Pretorius and Choptuik of this system.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, Revtex. New comparison of analytic and numerical
solutions beyond the past light cone of the singularity added. Two new
references added. Error in equation (21) correcte
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