Negotiating constitution for political unions

This paper provides a cradle-to-grave model for political union between two unequally endowed states. We introduce negotiated, contested, and time-consistent contested constitutions to address various classes of merger problems. Merger agreement is shown to be path dependent and, in some cases, time inconsistent. The possibility of contest constrains the set of mutually agreeable tax rates and provides stability to a constitution. Demographic heterogeneity constrains the set of mutually agreeable mergers. Rent extracted by technologically advanced province for transferring technology to the backward province in a union is shown to be increasing in complexity of technology but bounded from above. The model can also support the possibility of historical cycles of political geography. The main contribution of this paper is to highlight the role of technology gap and unequal distribution of resources in all the above cases.Bargaining, Constitution, Contest, Political Union

Negotiating Constitution for Political Unions

This paper provides a cradle-to-grave model for political union between two unequally endowed states. We introduce negotiated, contested, and time-consistent contested constitutions to address various classes of merger problems. Merger agreement is shown to be path dependent and, in some cases, time inconsistent. The possibility of contest constrains the set of mutually agreeable tax rates and provides stability to a constitution. Demographic heterogeneity constrains the set of mutually agreeable mergers. Rent extracted by technologically advanced province for transferring technology to the backward province in a union is shown to be increasing in complexity of technology but bounded from above. The model can also support the possibility of historical cycles of political geography. The main contribution of this paper is to highlight the role of technology gap and unequal distribution of resources in all the above cases.Bargaining, Constitution, Contest, Political Union

Fast Conical Hull Algorithms for Near-separable Non-negative Matrix Factorization

The separability assumption (Donoho & Stodden, 2003; Arora et al., 2012) turns non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) into a tractable problem. Recently, a new class of provably-correct NMF algorithms have emerged under this assumption. In this paper, we reformulate the separable NMF problem as that of finding the extreme rays of the conical hull of a finite set of vectors. From this geometric perspective, we derive new separable NMF algorithms that are highly scalable and empirically noise robust, and have several other favorable properties in relation to existing methods. A parallel implementation of our algorithm demonstrates high scalability on shared- and distributed-memory machines.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure

A TSSA algorithm based approach to enhance the performance of warehouse system

In this plethora of increased competitiveness and globalization the effective management of the warehouse system is a challenging task. Realizing that proper scheduling of the warehouses is necessary to outperform the competitors on cost, lead time, and customer service basis (Koster, 1998); the proposed research focuses on optimization of warehouse scheduling problems. This research aims to minimize the total tardiness so that the overall time involved in managing the inventory inside the warehouse could be effectively reduced. This research also deals with the vehicle routing issues in the warehousing scenario and considers various constraints, and decision variables, directly influencing the undertaken objective so as to make the model more realistic to the real world environment. The authors have also proposed a hybrid tabu sample-sort simulated annealing (TSSA) algorithm to reduce the tardiness as well as to enhance the performance of the warehousing system. The proposed TSSA algorithm inherits the merits of the tabu search and sample-sort annealing algorithm. The comparative analysis of the results of the TSSA algorithm with other algorithms such as simulated annealing (SA), tabu search (TS), and hybrid tabu search algorithms indicates its superiority over others, both in terms of computational time as well as total tardiness reduction

An experimental analysis and optimization of machining rate and surface characteristics in WEDM of Monel-400 using RSM and desirability approach

In the present work, an experimental investigation on wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) of Monel-400 has been presented. Monel-400 is a nickel- copper-based alloy, mostly employed in ships and corrosion- resisting applications. Four input WEDM parameters namely discharge current (Ip), pulse-on time (Ton), pulseoff time (Toff) and servo voltage (SV) have been investigated and modeled for two performance characteristics namely machining rate (MR) and surface roughness (SR). Effect of WEDM parameters has been discussed using response surface graphs. Using analysis of variance, quadratic model is found significant for MR while two factors interaction (2FI) model has been suggested for SR. To optimize multi-performance characteristics, desirability function has been employed. Corresponding to highest desirability, the optimal combination of discharge parameters is Ip: 103 A; Ton: 113 ls; Toff: 37 ls and SV: 50 V. The effect of discharge energy on surface morphology has also been examined. High discharge energy increases the extent of surface damage and results in large size and overlapped craters on machined surface. Low discharge energy and high value of Toff result in minimum defects on machined surface. Trim cutting operations were performed at low discharge energy using different wire offset values. Result shows that surface finish can be improved significantly after a single trim cut irrespective of high discharge energy in rough cut