20,602 research outputs found
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Making water privatisation illegal: new laws in Netherlands and Uruguay
Both Uruguay and Netherlands are legislating to make privatisation of water illegal. This report describes the processes and discusses the context of international laws
Experimental Analysis of Algorithms for Coflow Scheduling
Modern data centers face new scheduling challenges in optimizing job-level
performance objectives, where a significant challenge is the scheduling of
highly parallel data flows with a common performance goal (e.g., the shuffle
operations in MapReduce applications). Chowdhury and Stoica introduced the
coflow abstraction to capture these parallel communication patterns, and
Chowdhury et al. proposed effective heuristics to schedule coflows efficiently.
In our previous paper, we considered the strongly NP-hard problem of minimizing
the total weighted completion time of coflows with release dates, and developed
the first polynomial-time scheduling algorithms with O(1)-approximation ratios.
In this paper, we carry out a comprehensive experimental analysis on a
Facebook trace and extensive simulated instances to evaluate the practical
performance of several algorithms for coflow scheduling, including the
approximation algorithms developed in our previous paper. Our experiments
suggest that simple algorithms provide effective approximations of the optimal,
and that the performance of our approximation algorithms is relatively robust,
near optimal, and always among the best compared with the other algorithms, in
both the offline and online settings.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figures, 11 table
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Dogmatic development : privatisation and conditionalities in six countries a PSIRU report for War on Want
This report looks at how conditionalities and pressures from aid agencies and development banks force
developing countries to adopt privatisation policies in public services.
It focuses specifically on the sectors of water, electricity, and healthcare, in six countries: Colombia; El
Salvador; Indonesia; Mozambique; South Africa; and Sri Lanka. It examines the impact of the requirements
and policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB), and other agencies including
regional development banks, the European Commission (EC) and donor countries. It includes a specific
examination of the various ways in which the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID)
supports privatisation in these services.
It concludes that the pressures for privatisation have been strengthened through new structures of ‘globalised
aid’; that they create serious limitations on independent decision-making by developing countries, and
generate some strong political responses; and that policies of development banks and donor agencies,
including DFID, should be reviewed to remove such pressures and ensure that policy-making in developing
countries is determined by local democratic processes
How Context Matters: Predicting Men's Homophobic Slang Use
This is the Author's Pre-Print. The journal's official website is: http://jls.sagepub.com.This manuscript reports two experiments exploring heterosexual men’s use of homophobic slang
in social contexts, varied by sex-ratio. Study 1 (N = 127) experimentally demonstrated that
compared to a mixed-sex audience, heterosexual men with an all-male audience reported higher
levels of hetero-identity concern (HIC) and more homophobic slang use; these men had similar
levels of HIC compared to men with an all-female audience. Study 2 replicated Study 1’s mean
difference tests, and explored whether the relationship between HIC and homophobic slang was
affected by group sex-ratio and social norms. Results suggest the relationship between HIC and
homophobic slang was significant only in all-male and mixed-sex audiences, and the norm of
noninterference was predictive of homophobic slang only in all-male groups
Solving the Hierarchy Problem with a Light Singlet and Supersymmetric Mass Terms
A generalization of the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Model (NMSSM) is
studied in which an explicit \mu-term as well as a small supersymmetric mass
term for the singlet superfield are incorporated. We study the possibility of
raising the Standard Model-like Higgs mass at tree level through its mixing
with a light, mostly-singlet, CP-even scalar. We are able to generate Higgs
boson masses up to 145 GeV with top squarks below 1.1 TeV and without the need
to fine tune parameters in the scalar potential. This model yields light
singlet-like scalars and pseudoscalars passing all collider constraints.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure
Scheduling MapReduce Jobs under Multi-Round Precedences
We consider non-preemptive scheduling of MapReduce jobs with multiple tasks
in the practical scenario where each job requires several map-reduce rounds. We
seek to minimize the average weighted completion time and consider scheduling
on identical and unrelated parallel processors. For identical processors, we
present LP-based O(1)-approximation algorithms. For unrelated processors, the
approximation ratio naturally depends on the maximum number of rounds of any
job. Since the number of rounds per job in typical MapReduce algorithms is a
small constant, our scheduling algorithms achieve a small approximation ratio
in practice. For the single-round case, we substantially improve on previously
best known approximation guarantees for both identical and unrelated
processors. Moreover, we conduct an experimental analysis and compare the
performance of our algorithms against a fast heuristic and a lower bound on the
optimal solution, thus demonstrating their promising practical performance
About the stability of the dodecatoplet
A new investigation is done of the possibility of binding the "dodecatoplet",
a system of six top quarks and six top antiquarks, using the Yukawa potential
mediated by Higgs exchange. A simple variational method gives a upper bound
close to that recently estimated in a mean-field calculation. It is
supplemented by a lower bound provided by identities among the Hamiltonians
describing the system and its subsystems.Comment: 5 pages, two figures merged, refs. added, typos correcte
Quantum fluctuations as deviation from classical dynamics of ensemble of trajectories parameterized by unbiased hidden random variable
A quantization method based on replacement of c-number by c-number
parameterized by an unbiased hidden random variable is developed. In contrast
to canonical quantization, the replacement has straightforward physical
interpretation as statistical modification of classical dynamics of ensemble of
trajectories, and implies a unique operator ordering. We then apply the method
to develop quantum measurement without wave function collapse \'a la pilot-wave
theory.Comment: 14 pages, accepted in Physica
Risk of Population Extinction from Periodic and Abrupt Changes of Environment
A simulation model of a population having internal (genetic) structure is
presented. The population is subject to selection pressure coming from the
environment which is the same in the whole system but changes in time.
Reproduction has a sexual character with recombination and mutation. Two cases
are considered - oscillatory changes of the environment and abrupt ones
(catastrophes). We show how the survival chance of a population depends on
maximum allowed size of the population, the length of the genotypes
characterising individuals, selection pressure and the characteristics of the
climate changes, either their period of oscillations or the scale of the abrupt
shift.Comment: 8 pages, 25 references, 10 figures; preliminary version to be
submitted to Physica
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