The Role of Responsive Pricing in the Internet

The Internet continues to evolve as it reaches out to a wider user population. The recent introduction of user-friendly navigation and retrieval tools for the World Wide Web has triggered an unprecedented level of interest in the Internet among the media and the general public, as well as in the technical community. It seems inevitable that some changes or additions are needed in the control mechanisms used to allocate usage of Internet resources. In this paper, we argue that a feedback signal in the form of a variable price for network service is a workable tool to aid network operators in controlling Internet traffic. We suggest that these prices should vary dynamically based on the current utilization of network resources. We show how this responsive pricing puts control of network service back where it belongs: with the users.Internet, pricing, feedback, networks

Cost-based burst dropping strategy in optical burst switching networks

Optical burst switching (OBS) is a new paradigm for future all-optical networks. Intentional burst dropping is one of techniques used to achieve desired quality of service. In this paper we note that some bursts are more likely to cause contention. We propose a cost function that can be used to predict the likelihood that a given burst will interfere with other traffic, then we explain how, by using this information a new burst dropping strategy can be designed. We compare our method with a random burst dropping technique and show that the cost-based approach offers a significant performance improvement

What’s the Deference? Interpreting the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines After Kisor

For more than three decades, the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines have constrained the punishment doled out by federal judges, limiting discretion that was once nearly unlimited and bringing standardization to the penological decisionmaking process. For twice as long, the Supreme Court has constrained judges in a different way—by requiring that administrative agencies receive deference when they interpret the meaning of their own regulations. At the convergence of these two domains sits “commentary,” or interpretive notes the U.S. Sentencing Commission appends to the otherwise congressionally approved Guidelines. In Stinson v. United States, the Court made clear that commentary should be reviewed and deferred to as an agency’s view of its own regulations. This classification has since rendered numerous examples of commentary, including those that enhance punishment, the last word on what the Guidelines mean and how they should be applied. Recently, however, in Kisor v. Wilkie, the Supreme Court clarified its regulatory deference doctrine, narrowing the circumstances in which it should be applied. This Note examines the historical interplay between federal sentencing and regulatory deference and considers whether, in light of Kisor, deference to commentary is appropriate. Specifically, by analyzing one example of commentary already dividing the circuit courts, this Note contends that Kisor and the rationales underlying the Guidelines and regulatory deference caution against their commingling—particularly where, as here, commentary only adds punishment

Designing a Supply Chain Visibility Information System for the Manufacturing Industry

This paper evaluates the design and success of an Information System developed in a just-in-time UK manufacturer to combat the lack of visibility and financial impact caused by supply chain disruptions related to extreme weather and traffic events. An information system design is first presented through the use of leading academic models, with a subsequent evaluation of perceived success via 4 employee interviews within the UK manufacturer. The DeLone and McLean model Multi-Perspective Evaluation model is then used to present the interviewees responses. This paper finds the newly introduced IS to be a partial success in meeting project objectives via the reduction of incident response time by 30 minutes per incident, and the centralization of key data points. This paper contributes to literature through the provision of framework and learnings for other organizations to build and act upon, in the aims of reducing their own supply chain disruption due to extreme weather and traffic events

AfCFTA: the remedy to an enduring mischief?

The pervasive legacy of colonialism and neo-colonialism is steadfast. This mischief has been and is afflicting African trade and development. Its influence has permeated the ideological foundation of African integration and has been inimical to growth on the continent. The African Continental Free Trade Area agreement is the African Union's hopeful attempt to remedy this enduring mischief. The scope of AfCFTA indicates that State Parties have adopted the multidimensional approach of developmental regionalism to remedy Africa's developmental challenges. However, to fulfil the precepts of this model, State Parties will have to engage in further deliberations to expand AfCFTA's scope and tune it to the nuances of African developmental ills. Furthermore, in its current form, AfCFTA fails to resolve historical implementation hurdles and overlooks foreboding supranational crises. AfCFTA rests on Pan-African idealism and not pragmatism. Thus, if the implementation challenges and supranational crises are left unaddressed, Pan-African solidarity will fracture and State Parties will retreat into their sovereignty. Therefore, idealism must be balanced with pragmatism to forge robust collectivism to drive the remedy of Africa's enduring mischief. Only time will tell whether AfCFTA is a meretricious symbol of integration or a concerted and substantive effort to develop and unite Africa

The Role of the Insulin-Like Growth Factors and Their Binding Proteins in Glucose Homeostasis

The insulin like growth factors (IGF-I and -II) are structurally and functionally related to insulin. While insulin is a key regulator of glucose homeostasis over the short term, emerging evidence suggests that the IGFs are involved in the longer term glucose homeostasis, possibly by modulating insulin sensitivity. Unlike insulin, the IGFs are present in most biological fluids as complexes with high affinity binding proteins, the insulin-like growth factor binding proteins (IGFBPs). The IGFBPs regulate the bioavailability of the IGFs. Of the six IGFBPs identified there is evidence from studies in transgenic mice that both IGFBP-1 and IGFBP-3 may have a role in glucose regulation

The Unsung Evolutionist: Charles Rau\u27s Swiss Lake Dwelling Collection at the Smithsonian Institution

During the second half of the nineteenth century, museums and collectors around the world engaged in a collecting frenzy focused on objects from the Swiss Alpine sites known as Pfahlbauten. Romantic reconstructions of these sites captured the antiquarian imagination and resulted in an artifact diaspora. Charles (Carl) Rau, a German-American archaeologist who became the first Curator of Antiquities at the Smithsonian Institution (SI), collected several hundred Neolithic and Bronze Age artifacts from the lake dwelling sites of Robenhausen and Auvernier, donating this material as well as his library to the SI upon his death in 1886. This thesis investigates the effect of Rau’s political and social evolutionary beliefs on his collecting habits. A detailed object-based investigation in the larger context of the Swiss lake dwelling phenomenon is combined with a close analysis of Rau’s published materials and personal letters held at the National Anthropological Archives (NAA) and Smithsonian Institutional Archives (SIA) to assess his contributions to the development of American archaeology. Similar collections in the United States and Switzerland are compared to the Rau Swiss lake dwelling material to evaluate the impact of individual agency on the development of the SI collection

Ontology-Based Quality Evaluation of Value Generalization Hierarchies for Data Anonymization

In privacy-preserving data publishing, approaches using Value Generalization Hierarchies (VGHs) form an important class of anonymization algorithms. VGHs play a key role in the utility of published datasets as they dictate how the anonymization of the data occurs. For categorical attributes, it is imperative to preserve the semantics of the original data in order to achieve a higher utility. Despite this, semantics have not being formally considered in the specification of VGHs. Moreover, there are no methods that allow the users to assess the quality of their VGH. In this paper, we propose a measurement scheme, based on ontologies, to quantitatively evaluate the quality of VGHs, in terms of semantic consistency and taxonomic organization, with the aim of producing higher-quality anonymizations. We demonstrate, through a case study, how our evaluation scheme can be used to compare the quality of multiple VGHs and can help to identify faulty VGHs.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, presented in the Privacy in Statistical Databases Conference 2014 (Ibiza, Spain