World Wide Web Technology in Support of Negotiation and Communication

With the advent of the mass use of the Internet involving the classic use of e-mail, file transfer and now the more recent use of www applications, such as home pages, chat, Internet phone, audio and video and web broadcast systems, business transactions over the net are increasing dramatically. An important, yet relatively undeveloped component for electronic commerce is the negotiation of contracts and the resolution of disputes. We discuss Web-based technology and practice in supporting business negotiations and communication. The focus of the paper is on the present and the future promises of such technology

Racing Multi-Objective Selection Probabilities

In the context of Noisy Multi-Objective Optimization, dealing with uncertainties requires the decision maker to define some preferences about how to handle them, through some statistics (e.g., mean, median) to be used to evaluate the qualities of the solutions, and define the corresponding Pareto set. Approximating these statistics requires repeated samplings of the population, drastically increasing the overall computational cost. To tackle this issue, this paper proposes to directly estimate the probability of each individual to be selected, using some Hoeffding races to dynamically assign the estimation budget during the selection step. The proposed racing approach is validated against static budget approaches with NSGA-II on noisy versions of the ZDT benchmark functions

Multiple Issue Action and Market Algorithms for the World Wide Web

The Internet is quickly changing the way business-to-consumer and business-to-business commerce is conducted in the world. The Electronic Revolution has also spawned a trend of price wars and, in some instances, chaos because of the zero-sum nature of the electronic channel. The technology has created an opportunity to get beyond the lose-lose nature of single issue price wars by determining sellers' and buyers' preferences across multiple issues and encouraging negotiations, thereby creating possible joint gains for all parties. We develop simple multiple issue algorithms and heuristics that could be used in electronic auctions and electronic markets, to match business to business and consumers based on dovetailing underlying interests and preferences. We provide arguments that such dovetailed matches should help stabilize markets and make them more efficient

Designing a framework for evaluating the impacts and outcomes of Forest Service appeals

USDA Forest Service administrative appeals have recently been a focus of considerable political debate. Congressional legislation and new administrative rules to change the appeals process and exclude certain fuel reductions projects from environmental review and appeal are under consideration. Meanwhile, there has been little systematic analysis of the claims and counterclaims being put forward about the ecological, social, economic, and administrative impacts of appeals. The workshop, Designing a Framework for Evaluating the Impacts and Outcomes of Forest Service Appeals, engaged researchers, agency representatives, and various affected interests who use appeals, or are affected by their use, to discuss development of a framework by which the impacts and outcomes of Forest Service appeals can be systematically documented and analyzed. Participants identified what is important to evaluate about the appeals process, and discussed how to realistically conduct such evaluations so that results are credible to all. The purpose of the workshop was to focus research and analysis on critical issues surrounding the appeals process to better inform ongoing policy debates

Simple model for 1/f noise

We present a simple stochastic mechanism which generates pulse trains exhibiting a power law distribution of the pulse intervals and a $1/f^\alpha$ power spectrum over several decades at low frequencies with $\alpha$ close to one. The essential ingredient of our model is a fluctuating threshold which performs a Brownian motion. Whenever an increasing potential $V(t)$ hits the threshold, $V(t)$ is reset to the origin and a pulse is emitted. We show that if $V(t)$ increases linearly in time, the pulse intervals can be approximated by a random walk with multiplicative noise. Our model agrees with recent experiments in neurobiology and explains the high interpulse interval variability and the occurrence of $1/f^\alpha$ noise observed in cortical neurons and earthquake data.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Polarization-sensitive quantum-optical coherence tomography

We set forth a polarization-sensitive quantum-optical coherence tomography (PS-QOCT) technique that provides axial optical sectioning with polarization-sensitive capabilities. The technique provides a means for determining information about the optical path length between isotropic reflecting surfaces, the relative magnitude of the reflectance from each interface, the birefringence of the interstitial material, and the orientation of the optical axis of the sample. PS-QOCT is immune to sample dispersion and therefore permits measurements to be made at depths greater than those accessible via ordinary optical coherence tomography. We also provide a general Jones matrix theory for analyzing PS-QOCT systems and outline an experimental procedure for carrying out such measurements.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, to appear in Physical Review