A Framework for Trusted Services

An existing challenge when selecting services to be used in a service- based system is to be able to distinguish between good and bad services. In this paper we present a trust-based service selection framework. The framework uses a trust model that calculates the level of trust a user may have with a service based on past experience of the user with the service and feedback about the service received from other users. The model takes into account different levels of trust among users, different relationships between users, and different levels of importance that a user may have for certain quality aspects of a service. A prototype tool has been implemented to illustrate and evaluate the work. The trust model has been evaluated in terms of its capacity to adjust itself due to changes in user ratings and its robustness

Notes on the Two-brane Model with Variable Tension

Motivated by possible extensions of the braneworld models with two branes, we investigate some consequences of a variable brane tension using the well established results on consistency conditions. By a slight modification of the usual stress-tensor used in order to derive the braneworld sum rules, we find out some important constraints obeyed by time dependent brane tensions. In particular it is shown that the tensions of two Randall-Sundrum like branes obeying, at the same time, an Eotvos law, aggravate the fine tuning problem. Also, it is shown that if the hidden brane tension obeys an Eotvos law, then the visible brane has a mixed behavior allowing a bouncing-like period at early times while it is dominated by an Eotvos law nowadays. To finalize, we discuss some qualitative characteristics which may arise in the scope of dynamical brane tensions, as anisotropic background and branons production.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in Physical Review

Algebroid Yang-Mills Theories

A framework for constructing new kinds of gauge theories is suggested. Essentially it consists in replacing Lie algebras by Lie or Courant algebroids. Besides presenting novel topological theories defined in arbitrary spacetime dimensions, we show that equipping Lie algebroids E with a fiber metric having sufficiently many E-Killing vectors leads to an astonishingly mild deformation of ordinary Yang-Mills theories: Additional fields turn out to carry no propagating modes. Instead they serve as moduli parameters gluing together in part different Yang-Mills theories. This leads to a symmetry enhancement at critical points of these fields, as is also typical for String effective field theories.Comment: 4 pages; v3: Minor rewording of v1, version to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Black string corrections in variable tension braneworld scenarios

Braneworld models with variable tension are investigated, and the corrections on the black string horizon along the extra dimension are provided. Such corrections are encrypted in additional terms involving the covariant derivatives of the variable tension on the brane, providing profound consequences concerning the black string horizon variation along the extra dimension, near the brane. The black string horizon behavior is shown to be drastically modified by the terms corrected by the brane variable tension. In particular, a model motivated by the phenomenological interesting case regarding Eotvos branes is investigated. It forthwith provides further physical features regarding variable tension braneworld scenarios, heretofore concealed in all previous analysis in the literature. All precedent analysis considered uniquely the expansion of the metric up to the second order along the extra dimension, what is able to evince solely the brane variable tension absolute value. Notwithstanding, the expansion terms aftermath, further accomplished in this paper from the third order on, elicits the successive covariant derivatives of the brane variable tension, and their respective coupling with the extrinsic curvature, the Weyl tensor, and the Riemann and Ricci tensors, as well as the scalar curvature. Such additional terms are shown to provide sudden modifications in the black string horizon in a variable tension braneworld scenarioComment: 12 pages, 5 figures, accepted in PR