Flexible reasoning using sensible agent-based systems: A case study in job flow scheduling

Planning and control systems for highly dynamic and uncertain manufacturing environments require adaptive flexibility and decision-making capabilities. Modern distributed manufacturing systems assess the utility of planning and executing solutions for both system goals (e.g. minimize manufacturing production time for all parts or minimize WIP) and local goals (e.g. expedite part A production schedule or maximize machine X utilization). Sensible Agents have the ability to alter their autonomy levels to choose among a set of decision models in order to handle the differences between local and system goals. In this paper, Sensible Agents are applied to a production planning and control problem in the context of job shop scheduling and decision model theory. Sensible Agents provide for trade-off reasoning mechanisms among system and local utilities that are flexible and responsive to an agent's abilities, situational context and position in the organizational structure of the system.     

New Approaches to Human Mobility: Using Mobile Phones for Demographic Research

This article explores new methods for gathering and analyzing spatially rich demographic data using mobile phones. It describes a pilot study (the Human Mobility Project) in which volunteers around the world were successfully recruited to share GPS and cellular tower information on their trajectories and respond to dynamic, location-based surveys using an open-source Android application. The pilot study illustrates the great potential of mobile phone methodology for moving spatial measures beyond residential census units and investigating a range of important social phenomena, including the heterogeneity of activity spaces, the dynamic nature of spatial segregation, and the contextual dependence of subjective well-being.     

How to choose a non-controversial list with k names

Barberà and Coelho (WP 264, CREA-Barcelona Economics, 2007) documented six screening rules associated with the rule of k names that are used by diferent institutions around the world. Here, we study whether these screening rules satisfy stability. A set is said to be a weak Condorcet set à la Gehrlein (Math Soc Sci 10:199–209) if no candidate in this set can be defeated by any candidate from outside the set on the basis of simple majority rule. We say that a screening rule is stable if it always selects a weak Condorcet set whenever such set exists. We show that all of the six procedures which are used in reality do violate stability if the voters do not act strategically. We then show that there are screening rules which satisfy stability. Finally, we provide two results that can explain the widespread use of unstable screening rules.     

Australian industrial relations policy and workers with family responsibilities

Australian workers have been experiencing growing levels of work-to-family conflict for decades now. In recognition of this problem, the Australian Commonwealth Government ratified ILO Convention 156 concerning workers with family responsibilities in 1990. Despite this, industrial relations reforms introduced under Australia's Industrial Relations Reform Act 1993 and extended under the Workplace Relations Act 1996 have actually increased the pressure on workers with family responsibilities by enabling changes to rostering arrangements, decreases in overtime and penalty rates, and increases in the span of ordinary working hours. Depuis plusieurs décenies déjà, les travailleurs australiens sont victimes de conflits résultant de l'interaction entre leur vie professionnelle et leur vie familiale. En reconnaissance de ces problèmes, le Gouvernement du Commonwealth Australien a ratifié en 1990 la ILO Convention 156 relative aux travailleurs ayant des responsabilités familiales. En dépit de ceci, les réformes mises en place conformément au Workplace Relations Act de 1990, puis conformément au Workplace Relations Act de 1993 n'ont fait qu'augmenter les tensions auxquelles sont soumis les travailleurs ayant des responsabilités familiales. En effet, en autorisant une plus grande flexibilité du travail posté ainsi qu'une réduction des possibilités d'effectuer des heures supplémentaires, entraînant ainsi une diminution des charges salariales associées à celles-ci, ces mesures n'ont fait qu'allonger le temps de travail normalement payé.     

RURAL DISADVANTAGE IN THE DISTRIBUTION OF SOUTH AUSTRALIAN HOME AND COMMUNITY CARE FUNDING

In this paper, the level of HACC funding under the South Australian Dementia Support and Respite Projects and the Community Support Scheme was compared across Domiciliary Care and Human Services and Health regions. Results revealed that metropolitan regions generally received more than their per capita share of HACC funding despite the greater cost of community services in rural areas and the relative paucity of supplementary or alternative rural services. The need for greater planning in the distribution of HACC funds, including moving towards formula funding is identified.     

A characterization of strategy-proof social choice functions for economies with pure public goods

We characterize strategy-proof social choice functions when individuals have strictly quasi-concave, continuous and satiated utility functions on convex subsets of IR ^m , representing preferences for the provision of m pure public goods. When specialized to the case m=1, these assumptions amount to requiring that preferences are single peaked, and for such a domain there exists a wide class of strategy-proof social choice functions. These were studied by Moulin (1980) under strong additional assumptions. Our first results characterize the complete class, after an appropriate extension of the single-peakedness condition. The new characterization retains the flavour of Moulin's elegant representation theorem. For the general m-dimensional case, previous results have shown that there is no efficient, strategy-proof, nondictatorial social choice function, even within the domain restrictions under consideration (Border and Jordan 1983; Zhou 1991). In fact, Zhou's powerful result indicates that nondictatorial strategy-proof s.c.f.'s will have a range of dimension one. This allows us to conclude with a complete characterization of all strategy-proof s.c.f.'s on IR ^m , because restrictions of preferences from our admissible class to one dimensional subsets satisfy the slightly generalized notion of single-peakedness that is used in our characterization for the case m=1. We feel that a complete knowledge of the class of strategy-proof mechanisms, in this as well as in other contexts, is an important step in the analysis of the trade-offs between strategy-proofness and other performance criteria, like efficiency.This paper was written while both authors were visiting GREMAQ, Université des Sciences Sociales de Toulouse. We are thankful for its hospitality and good research atmosphere. Barberà's work is supported by the Instituto de Estudios Fiscales and by research grant PB89-0294 from the Secretaría de Estado de Universidades e Investigación, Spain. Jackson acknowledges the support of NSF grant SES8921409. We thank Jacques Crémer, Beth Allen, John Weymark and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts.     

AGING AND FAMILY THERAPY: PREVALENCE OF AGING ISSUES AND LATER FAMILY LIFE CONCERNS IN MARITAL AND FAMILY THERAPY LITERATURE (1986-1993)

To what extent are gerontological issues addressed in the marital and family literature? In answering this question, the authors conducted a content analysis of 873 articles published in the Journal of Marital Family Therapy, Family Process, Family Systems Medicine, and the Journal of Family Psychology during an 8-year period beginning in 1986. Only 3.2% (n = 28) of these articles contained explicit emphasis on aging issues and later life family concerns. Furthermore, there was no significant trend in the number of gerontologically focused articles published during this period. The paper describes the content of the 28 aging-focused articles, including the types of presenting problems mentioned, the relational contexts of these problems, and the types of family therapy theories represented. Included in the content analysis were the proceedings of the annual national conferences of the American Association of Marital and Family Therapy from 1986 to 1993. Only 2.3% (n = 37) of the regular conference sessions had an explicit aging focus, as did 1 of the 29 plenary sessions and 1 of the 40 Master Series® sessions. Used as a gauge of gerontological interest and awareness of late life issues, the implication of these findings is that the family therapy community is still engaged in “comming of age.”     

Clinical and behavioral evaluation of pathological gambling in Barcelona,Spain

This paper assesses both the clinical characteristics and gambling behavior of 45 pathological gamblers (40 male, 5 female, average age 41) in a psychiatric hospital in Barcelona, Spain. These pathological gamblers tend to have other addictions and psychiatric disorders in addition to their pathological gambling. Suicidal ideation and attempts were one of the most frequent complications with these patients. Slot and fruit machines were found to be the most preferred form of gambling. Loans and crime were frequently used by the gambler to finance his or her gambling. Nevertheless, the gambler is rarely aggessive, and legal problems resulting from serious crimes are the exception. The profile presentes is similar to that found among pathological gamblers in other countries.     

Evaluation of the "Lose Your Excuse" public service advertising campaign for tweens to save energy

This study evaluates the 2008-2009 "Lose your Excuse" public service advertising (PSA) campaign on energy efficiency targeting 8- to 12-year-olds, intended to increase knowledge, foster proactive attitudes, and change energy usage behaviors. Baseline and two follow-up surveys were conducted with online samples representative of the national population of households with kids with online access. Almost half (47%) of the tweens recognized at least one ad from the campaign. Ad recognition was positively associated with knowledge, proactive attitudes, and energy-saving behavior. Propensity score analysis confirmed a small but measurable and statistically significant effect on energy-saving behavior. The discussion section compares these results to public health campaigns in terms of ghost awareness, reach, and effect size.