Disempowering institutional behaviour by exploring the risks associated with investing into the 'fine art' market

Abstract: This paper examines the role of institutions in the global art market, Due to the asymmetrical distribution of information between art investors and the art institutions, there is uncertainty over the value of 'Fine Art' between those that wish to indirectly manipulate the price of art for the benefit of the institution, and those that wish to invest into the 'Fine Art' market. The value of 'Fine Art' is determined by the 'Value of Information', which has a direct positive relationship between quantity of information that the institution plans to hold, and the amount of uncertainty in the market

Telkom and the South African economy : achieving the optimal relationship

Includes bibliography.South Africa needs a modern, sophisticated telecommunications network to ensure economic development and political stability. The same network must also provide affordable and reliable service to a great percentage of the population. The telecommunications industry is currently monopolised by Telkom, a state-owned business enterprise (SBE), and does not appear capable of meeting these basic requirements. The purpose of this paper is to present a case for restructuring Telkom and liberalising the telecommunications industry to best serve the needs of the South African economy. The objective for restructuring the telecommunications industry must be to maximise long-term consumer welfare for all South Africans. This paper argues that consumer welfare will be maximised only by dismantling the statutory monopoly structure and moving toward a highly competitive, privately owned telecommunications industry. The economic issues, of course, cannot be discussed realistically without reference to political, social and historical variables, all of which are also considered. By focusing primarily on economic issues, however, this paper strives to avoid the ideological disputes which usually surround discussions of state ownership. This paper focuses on the telecommunications industry because it represents the single most important infrastructural component in a modern economy. It also presents a unique opportunity if managed well, and a grave danger if allowed to continue in its current structure

Hamiltonicity in multitriangular graphs

The family of 5-valent polyhedral graphs whose faces are all triangles or 3s-gons, s ≥ 9, is shown to contain non-hamiltonian graphs and to have a shortness exponent smaller than one

Is reduced-density-matrix functional theory a suitable vehicle to import explicit correlations into density-functional calculations?

A variational formulation for the calculation of interacting fermion systems based on the density-matrix functional theory is presented. Our formalism provides for a natural integration of explicit many-particle effects into standard density-functional-theory based calculations and it avoids ambiguities of double-counting terms inherent to other approaches. Like the dynamical mean-field theory, we employ a local approximation for explicit correlations. Aiming at the ground state only, trade some of the complexity of Green's function based many-particle methods against efficiency. Using short Hubbard chains as test systems we demonstrate that the method captures ground state properties, such as left-right-correlation, beyond those accessible by mean-field theories.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

Automated Generation of User Guidance by Combining Computation and Deduction

Herewith, a fairly old concept is published for the first time and named "Lucas Interpretation". This has been implemented in a prototype, which has been proved useful in educational practice and has gained academic relevance with an emerging generation of educational mathematics assistants (EMA) based on Computer Theorem Proving (CTP). Automated Theorem Proving (ATP), i.e. deduction, is the most reliable technology used to check user input. However ATP is inherently weak in automatically generating solutions for arbitrary problems in applied mathematics. This weakness is crucial for EMAs: when ATP checks user input as incorrect and the learner gets stuck then the system should be able to suggest possible next steps. The key idea of Lucas Interpretation is to compute the steps of a calculation following a program written in a novel CTP-based programming language, i.e. computation provides the next steps. User guidance is generated by combining deduction and computation: the latter is performed by a specific language interpreter, which works like a debugger and hands over control to the learner at breakpoints, i.e. tactics generating the steps of calculation. The interpreter also builds up logical contexts providing ATP with the data required for checking user input, thus combining computation and deduction. The paper describes the concepts underlying Lucas Interpretation so that open questions can adequately be addressed, and prerequisites for further work are provided.Comment: In Proceedings THedu'11, arXiv:1202.453