Can an ethical revival of prudence within prudential regulation tackle corporate psychopathy?

The view that corporate psychopathy played a significant role in causing the global financial crisis, although insightful, paints a reductionist picture of what we present as the broader issue. Our broader issue is the tendency for psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism to cluster psychologically and culturally as ‘dark leadership’ within global financial institutions. Strong evidence for their co-intensification across society and in corporations ought to alarm financial regulators. We argue that an ‘ethical revival’ of prudence within prudential regulation ought to be included in any package of solutions. Referencing research on moral muteness and the role of language in framing thoughts and behaviours, we recommend that regulators define prudence in an explicitly normative sense, an approach that may be further strengthened by drawing upon a widely appealing ethic of intergenerational care. An ethical revival of prudence, we argue, would allow the core problems of greed and myopia highlighted by corporate psychopathy theory to be addressed in a politically sensitive manner which recognises the pitfalls of regulating directly against corporate psychopathy. Furthermore, it would provide a viable conceptual framework to guide regulators along the treacherous path to more intrusive cultural regulation

Riparian reform: who pays

The Constitution of the United States provides the understanding of who should pay for rangeland riparian reform in its discussion of private property rights. The economic theory used for Western rangeland management has used mechanistic models but should begin using an ecosystem model, where the assumptions do not isolate the model. The use of an ecosystem model would tie the right to act with the responsibility of the action\u27s outcome. Management agencies use the mechanistic model to describe the economics behind current management and the current grazing-fee structure. If permits for all uses were issued in a market, the highest good for each area would be realized. Any use (consumptive or nonconsumptive) would have a protective covenant requiring the permit holder to maintain the riparian areas (and surrounding uplands) regardless of their use. This covenant would provide the incentive needed to maintain riparian areas and the associated uplands

A UPC++ Actor Library and Its Evaluation on a Shallow Water Proxy Application

Programmability is one of the key challenges of Exascale Computing. Using the actor model for distributed computations may be one solution. The actor model separates computation from communication while still enabling their over-lap. Each actor possesses specified communication endpoints to publish and receive information. Computations are undertaken based on the data available on these channels. We present a library that implements this programming model using UPC++, a PGAS library, and evaluate three different parallelization strategies, one based on rank-sequential execution, one based on multiple threads in a rank, and one based on OpenMP tasks. In an evaluation of our library using shallow water proxy applications, our solution compares favorably against an earlier implementation based on X10, and a BSP-based approach

UPC++ v1.0 Programmer’s Guide, Revision 2020.3.0

UPC++ is a C++11 library that provides Partitioned Global Address Space (PGAS) programming. It is designed for writing parallel programs that run efficiently and scale well on distributed-memory parallel computers. The PGAS model is single program, multiple-data (SPMD), with each separate constituent process having access to local memory as it would in C++. However, PGAS also provides access to a global address space, which is allocated in shared segments that are distributed over the processes. UPC++ provides numerous methods for accessing and using global memory. In UPC++, all operations that access remote memory are explicit, which encourages programmers to be aware of the cost of communication and data movement. Moreover, all remote-memory access operations are by default asynchronous, to enable programmers to write code that scales well even on hundreds of thousands of cores

Business Models and Value

We identify the business model as the mechanism that explains how a firm engages with consumers to create and capture value. We look into the literatures of marketing, strategy, entrepreneurship to identify 4 important – mutually exclusive - theoretical types: dyadic product; dyadic solutions; triadic matchmaking; and triadic multi-sided. Each of these business model types implies a different set of behaviors by the consumer; different actions by the firm; and give rise to differences in value for the consumer; profit opportunities for the firm; different organizational designs and corresponding entrepreneurial pathways. Our paper draws on and extends the current literature on the demand side perspective and effectuation

Mapping Learning and Game Mechanics for Serious Games Analysis in Engineering Education

In a world where students are increasing digitally tethered to powerful, ‘always on’ mobile devices, new models of engagement and approaches to teaching and learning are required from educators. Serious Games (SG) have proved to have instructional potential but there is still a lack of methodologies and tools not only for their design but also to support game analysis and assessment. This paper explores the use of SG to increase student engagement and retention. The development phase of the Circuit Warz game is presented to demonstrate how electronic engineering education can be radically reimagined to create immersive, highly engaging learning experiences that are problem-centered and pedagogically sound. The Learning Mechanics–Game Mechanics (LM-GM) framework for SG game analysis is introduced and its practical use in an educational game design scenario is shown as a case study

Concrete Mix Design Using Double Coating Method

Considerable study, particularly in the last twenty to thirty years, has led to a much better understanding of the structure and behaviour of concrete.  This has accompanied by an improved and more sophisticated technology and the product now mad, in its variety of forms, is much more capable of satisfying the huge increasing demands required of it.  Because the behaviour of both fresh and hardened concrete is significantly related to their composition it should be possible, at least principle, to choose better ingredients with suitable proportion to gain the required satisfaction.   A good mix design for concrete mixtures is considered as a milestone for the construction of any concrete member or structure meets economical, service and durability requirements, as well as safety and efficiency throughout its life cycle.  Currently, there are many international methods locally approved for mix designs, such as: the ACI  method and the BS method, which are widely used in Libya at research centers, universities, and concrete batch plants as well as pre-cast concrete manufacturing plants (e.g.: pre-stressed concrete beams, concrete columns and slabs, etc.).  These methods depend on certain equations and graphs based on mathematical analysis of results obtained from previous field experience.  Generally speaking, mix design methods give some indication to the designer to validate and adjust them via experimental mixes in the local laboratories in order to check the variables related to the characteristics and properties of the local materials and the surrounding environment conditions.  This paper illustrates the steps used for mix design using the double coating method, which is currently used in some research centres in Poland and was recently applied in the laboratories of the Civil Engineering Department in the University of Tripoli in Libya.  Results obtained by this method using the local materials subject to local environmental conditions are presented and discussed