zCap: a zero configuration adaptive paging and mobility management mechanism

Today, cellular networks rely on fixed collections of cells (tracking areas) for user equipment localisation. Locating users within these areas involves broadcast search (paging), which consumes radio bandwidth but reduces the user equipment signalling required for mobility management. Tracking areas are today manually configured, hard to adapt to local mobility and influence the load on several key resources in the network. We propose a decentralised and self-adaptive approach to mobility management based on a probabilistic model of local mobility. By estimating the parameters of this model from observations of user mobility collected online, we obtain a dynamic model from which we construct local neighbourhoods of cells where we are most likely to locate user equipment. We propose to replace the static tracking areas of current systems with neighbourhoods local to each cell. The model is also used to derive a multi-phase paging scheme, where the division of neighbourhood cells into consecutive phases balances response times and paging cost. The complete mechanism requires no manual tracking area configuration and performs localisation efficiently in terms of signalling and response times. Detailed simulations show that significant potential gains in localisation effi- ciency are possible while eliminating manual configuration of mobility management parameters. Variants of the proposal can be implemented within current (LTE) standards

Exploring the relationship between organisational culture and planning processes in selected Western Australian sport associations

This study explored the effects of organisational culture on the planning processes of three state sport associations in Western Australia. Using the competing values framework of organisational culture and Chapman\u27 s planning model, this study aimed to explore three research questions: (i) What are the demographic and organisational cultural profiles of the selected sport organisations? In particular, do professionals and volunteers share similar or different perceptions of the organisational cultures?; (ii) Wh~t are the development planning processes for each sport association? How does each association perceive the development planning processes?, and; (iii) How does organisational culture influence planning processes? To find answers to these research questions, this study used two kinds of data: a survey for quantitative analysis, and interviews with CEO/President and board members of each association for qualitative analysis. For all the associations, group culture was strongly emphasised. This may be a tradition in sport, especially as Australian sport has a strong reliance on volunteers, and is a quality that distinguishes sport organisations from other types of organisations. The slightly lower emphasis on rational and developmental culture may be indicative of the newer trends of professionalism in sport and the tension between especially group culture and rational culture as professional officers (paid staff) take over managing sport from the volunteers. All these sport associations exhibited low to very low emphasis on hierarchical culture, suggesting that these attributes are less evident and less valued, and perhaps the organisational structures are less hierarchical, although organisational charts for the associations were not investigated. In comparison, the interviewees recognised group, development and hierarchical cultures to be emphasised but not rational culture. This may indicate that the two facts were combined: first, organisations have moved from hierarchical to a more horizontal structure, and second, the interviewees, in general, had been with respective associations for a significantly longer duration than the average workers. It was found that the workers in the three associations had similar perceptions in regard to their planning processes. Regression analysis found that group cultural value was significantly related to the association\u27s planning process. Hierarchical culture was also found to be related to some aspects of the planning process, such as the association\u27s recognition of the importance of planning. It was also found that some demographic profiles of respondents affected the perception of planning processes. For example, a female worker was more likely to perceive that her association\u27s planning processes were better developed. A worker with longer experience in the current occupation was more likely to perceive his/her association\u27s planning processes as less developed. The status of the worker, whether she/he was a volunteer or paid employee, also seemed important in recognising the importance of planning. The findings from this study presented important suggestions and recommendations for sport organisations and national and state governments, as well as relevant academic disciplines, regarding the relationship between organisational culture and planning processes

An Analysis of Fiscal Policy and Economics Growth: The Case of Transition Economies

Based on a low level of elasticity of substitution between labour and capital in the transitional economies, this paper theoretically suggests how they should be able to reach a stable growth path after a period of rapid dynamic short-run movement. The paper places particular emphasis on the role of government fiscal policy in exploring this phenomenon.The transition economies, capital accumulation, budget deficit, tax rate

Return on Investment Analysis for Facility Location

We consider how the optimal decision can be made if the optimality criterion of maximizing profit changes to that of maximizing return on investment for the general uncapacitated facility location problem. We show that the inherent structure of the proposed model can be exploited to make a significant computational reduction

The Economics of the Olympic Games: Reconsidering Former Socialist Countries' Performance

This paper explores how a country can maximise its utility from the Olympic games when uncertainty exists in medal production. A theoretical model demonstrates how the value of medals, uncertainty in producing medals, a decision maker's attitutes towards risks and costs of producing medals affect the optimal number of medals and expected utility of a risk-averse decision maker. An application of the model shows that, as teh overall welfare level and, accordingly, investment in sports increase, the related risk premium decreases, which in turn reduces the difference between the eastern and western bloc countries' performances in the Olympic games. The difference int he performance is also supposed to decrease as the uncertainty in obtaining medals decreases and the cost of medal production increases. This phenomenon occurs even when the Eastern bloc countries attach higher values to medals than do the Western bloc countries. As a result, this study predicts that the out-performance of the former socialist countries in the Olympic games would have dissipated, even without the recent political and economic collapse of those countries, unless they had accelerated their distorted state-driven sport policies.The Olympic Games, Uncertainty, Attitudes Towards Risks, Value Mark-up, Cost Mark-up

Is World Metal Consumption in Disarray?

The consumption pattern of seven major metals - steel, aluminium, copper, lead, nickel, tin and zinc - has frequently violated the law of demand in the late 20th century. This paper examines the patters of the major metal consumption int he world and seven particular regions and analyzes the disarray of metals consumption. Divisia price-quantity covariance indexes report that the price and quantity consumed moved frequently int he same direction and the elasticity approach shows that the own-price elasticities are extremely small and insignificant, while income elasticities are signficant. However, considering the parameters that are crucial in detemrining the own-price elasticity, this paper concludes that the apparent disarray in metals consumption is not in fact real.Metals Consumption, Divisia Indexes, Elasticities, The Law of Demand

Reconsidering Performance at the Summer Olympics and Revealed Comparative Advantage

This paper examines the performance of the participating countries at the Summer Olympic games. It investigates each country's performance and attempts to identify the determinants of this performance in each sport, and also examines other issues related to specialization at these games, using the concept of revealed comparative advantage developed in the field of international economics. Each country's RCA is explained by geographical, biological as well as economic variables of the participating countries. Most previous studies investigated the correlation between total/per capita performance and a wide range of variables, using a range of methods that we consider to be inappropriate. A few studies employed more appropriate censoring methods, however, they did not consider heteroscedasticity or non-normality in their regressions that could make the estimates inconsistent. In addition, RCA and specialization in the Olympic games has never been analyzed. Our analyses present the determinants of each country's specialization in sports and the patterns of RCA, which are susbstantially different from those obtained when analyzing total and per capita performance. We also found that high-income countries specialize less; in other words, they win medals in a more diversified range of sports, which is analogous to a country's patters of specialization in production, a topic frequently explored in international economics.

The Color of Money: The Effects of Foreign Direct Investment on Economic Growth in Transition Economies

This paper examines the role of foreign direct investment in the growth of central and Eastern European countries, the Baltic States and the CIS around the transition period.