Better Bell-inequality violation by collective measurements

The standard Bell-inequality experiments test for violation of local realism by repeatedly making local measurements on individual copies of an entangled quantum state. Here we investigate the possibility of increasing the violation of a Bell inequality by making collective measurements. We show that the nonlocality of bipartite pure entangled states, quantified by their maximal violation of the Bell-Clauser-Horne inequality, can always be enhanced by collective measurements, even without communication between the parties. For mixed states we also show that collective measurements can increase the violation of Bell inequalities, although numerical evidence suggests that the phenomenon is not common as it is for pure states.

A piaci normák sérülése, üzleti döntések és a vállalati hatékonyság (Violation of market norms, business decisions and firms’ efficiency)

Az üzleti vállalkozások környezetére vonatkozó előfeltevések és ezek érvényesülése keretet szab az üzleti döntésekhez és hat a teljesítményre. A cikkben (a feltételezett, illetve elvárt) piaci normák sérülésének hatékonysági következményeit vizsgálja a szerző. Kiindulásként értelmezi a vállalati hatékonyság fogalmát és külső befolyásoló tényezőit. Ezt követően rendszerezi a nem normasértő üzleti döntéshozók lehetséges válaszait a piaci szereplők (versenytársak, üzleti partnerek) normasértéseire, kitérve arra is, hogy ez milyen hatást gyakorol a hatékonyságra. _______ The decisions and the performance of business corporations are not independent of their environment. The assumed norms provide a framework for the business decisions and the existing norms affect the firms’ performance. The article focuses on the efficiency consequences of the violation of the market norms. It presents the concept of corporate efficiency and its influencing factors. Then the decision makers’ possible answers to the violation of norms are investigated and the efficiency consequences are analyzed.

Dimensional dependence of the Stokes-Einstein relation and its violation

We generalize to higher spatial dimensions the Stokes-Einstein relation (SER) as well as the leading correction to diffusivity in finite systems with periodic boundary conditions, and validate these results with numerical simulations. We then investigate the evolution of the high-density SER violation with dimension in simple hard sphere glass formers. The analysis suggests that this SER violation disappears around dimension du = 8, above which it is not observed. The critical exponent associated with the violation appears to evolve linearly in 8 - d, below d = 8, as predicted by Biroli and Bouchaud [J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 19, 205101 (2007)], but the linear coefficient is not consistent with the prediction. The SER violation with d establishes a new benchmark for theory, and its complete description remains an open problem. © 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.

Compulsory licensing of standard-essential patents and injunctive relief as abuse of dominant position in violation of Article 102 TFEU

When a dominant undertaking holding a standard-essential patent uses its exclusive right to the IP to seek injunctions against those wishing to produce either de jure or de facto standard compliant products, it creates a conflict between the exclusive right to the use of the IP on the one hand and the possible abuse of dominance due to the exclusionary conduct on the other. The aim of the thesis is to focus on the issues concerning abuse of dominance in violation of Article 102 TFEU when the holder of the standard-essential patent seeks an injunction against a would-be licensee. The thesis is mainly based on the most recent ECJ case law in Huawei and the Commission’s recent decisions in Samsung and Motorola. The case law in Europe prior to those decisions was mainly focused on the German case law from Orange Book Standard which provided IP holders great leverage due to the almost automatic granting of injunctions against infringers. The ECJ in Huawei set out the requirements for when a de jure standard-essential patent holder would not be violating Article 102 TFEU when seeking an injunction, requiring that negotiations in good faith must take place prior to the seeking of the injunction and that all offers must comply with FRAND terms, thus limiting the scope of case law derived from Orange Book Standard in Germany. The ECJ chose not to follow all of the reasoning the Commission had laid out in Samsung and Motorola which provided a more licensee-friendly approach on the matter, but rather chose a compromise between the IP holder friendly German case law and the Commission’s decisions. However, the ECJ did not disclose how FRAND terms themselves should be interpreted, but rather left it for the national courts to decide. Furthermore, the thesis strongly argues that Huawei did not change the fact that only vertically integrated IP holders who have made a FRAND declaration are subject to the terms laid out in Huawei, thus leaving non-practicing entities such as patent trolls and entities that have not made a FRAND declaration outside its scope. The resulting conclusion from the thesis is that while the ECJ in Huawei presented new exceptional circumstances for when an IP holder could be abusing its dominant position when it seeks an injunction, it still left many more questions answered, such as the meaning of FRAND and whether deception in giving a FRAND declaration is prohibited under Article 102 TFEU or not.

An epidemic model based temporal violation prediction strategy for large batch of parallel business cloud workflows

Temporal violations often take place during the running of large batch of parallel business cloud workflow, which have a serious impact on the on-time completion of massive concurrent user requests. Existing studies have shown that local temporal violations (namely the delays of workflow activities) occurring during cloud workflow execution are the fundamental causes for failed on-time completion. Therefore, accurate prediction of temporal violations is a very important yet challenging task for business cloud workflows. In this paper, based on an epidemic model, a novel temporal violation prediction strategy is proposed to estimate the number of local temporal violations and the number of violations that must be handled so as to achieve a certain on-time completion rate before the execution of workflows. The prediction result can be served as an important reference for temporal violation prevention and handling strategies such as static resource reservation and dynamic provision. Specifically, we first analyze the queuing process of the parallel workflow activities, then we predict the number of potential temporal violations based on a novel temporal violation transmission model inspired by an epidemic model. Comprehensive experimental results demonstrate that our strategy can achieve very high prediction accuracy under different situations.

Do we need to handle every temporal violation in scientific workflow systems?

Scientific processes are usually time constrained with overall deadlines and local milestones. In scientific workflow systems, due to the dynamic nature of the underlying computing infrastructures such as grid and cloud, execution delays often take place and result in a large number of temporal violations. Temporal violation handling is to execute violation handling strategies which can compensate for the occurring time deficit but would impose some additional cost. Generally speaking, the two fundamental requirements for delivering satisfactory temporal QoS in scientific workflow systems are temporal conformance and cost effectiveness. Every task for workflow temporal management incurs some cost. Take a single temporal violation handling as an example, its cost can be primarily referred to monetary costs and time overheads of violation handling strategies which are normally nontrivial in scientific workflow systems.

Allegation of a Violation of the State Procurement Code and Other Issues Related to a Statewide Term Contract Involving the Department of Revenue and the Department of Health and Environmental Control

A complainant alleged the Department of Revenue violated the South Carolina Procurement Code. This paper examines that complaint.

Negotiating social and moral order in internet relay chat

Although internet chat is a significant aspect of many internet users’ lives, the manner in which participants in quasi-synchronous chat situations orient to issues of social and moral order remains to be studied in depth. The research presented here is therefore at the forefront of a continually developing area of study. This work contributes new insights into how members construct and make accountable the social and moral orders of an adult-oriented Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel by addressing three questions: (1) What conversational resources do participants use in addressing matters of social and moral order? (2) How are these conversational resources deployed within IRC interaction? and (3) What interactional work is locally accomplished through use of these resources? A survey of the literature reveals considerable research in the field of computer-mediated communication, exploring both asynchronous and quasi-synchronous discussion forums. The research discussed represents a range of communication interests including group and collaborative interaction, the linguistic construction of social identity, and the linguistic features of online interaction. It is suggested that the present research differs from previous studies in three ways: (1) it focuses on the interaction itself, rather than the ways in which the medium affects the interaction; (2) it offers turn-by-turn analysis of interaction in situ; and (3) it discusses membership categories only insofar as they are shown to be relevant by participants through their talk. Through consideration of the literature, the present study is firmly situated within the broader computer-mediated communication field. Ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis were adopted as appropriate methodological approaches to explore the research focus on interaction in situ, and in particular to investigate the ways in which participants negotiate and co-construct social and moral orders in the course of their interaction. IRC logs collected from one chat room were analysed using a two-pass method, based on a modification of the approaches proposed by Pomerantz and Fehr (1997) and ten Have (1999). From this detailed examination of the data corpus three interaction topics are identified by means of which participants clearly orient to issues of social and moral order: challenges to rule violations, ‘trolling’ for cybersex, and experiences regarding the 9/11 attacks. Instances of these interactional topics are subjected to fine-grained analysis, to demonstrate the ways in which participants draw upon various interactional resources in their negotiation and construction of channel social and moral orders. While these analytical topics stand alone in individual focus, together they illustrate different instances in which participants’ talk serves to negotiate social and moral orders or collaboratively construct new orders. Building on the work of Vallis (2001), Chapter 5 illustrates three ways that rule violation is initiated as a channel discussion topic: (1) through a visible violation in open channel, (2) through an official warning or sanction by a channel operator regarding the violation, and (3) through a complaint or announcement of a rule violation by a non-channel operator participant. Once the topic has been initiated, it is shown to become available as a topic for others, including the perceived violator. The fine-grained analysis of challenges to rule violations ultimately demonstrates that channel participants orient to the rules as a resource in developing categorizations of both the rule violation and violator. These categorizations are contextual in that they are locally based and understood within specific contexts and practices. Thus, it is shown that compliance with rules and an orientation to rule violations as inappropriate within the social and moral orders of the channel serves two purposes: (1) to orient the speaker as a group member, and (2) to reinforce the social and moral orders of the group. Chapter 6 explores a particular type of rule violation, solicitations for ‘cybersex’ known in IRC parlance as ‘trolling’. In responding to trolling violations participants are demonstrated to use affiliative and aggressive humour, in particular irony, sarcasm and insults. These conversational resources perform solidarity building within the group, positioning non-Troll respondents as compliant group members. This solidarity work is shown to have three outcomes: (1) consensus building, (2) collaborative construction of group membership, and (3) the continued construction and negotiation of existing social and moral orders. Chapter 7, the final data analysis chapter, offers insight into how participants, in discussing the events of 9/11 on the actual day, collaboratively constructed new social and moral orders, while orienting to issues of appropriate and reasonable emotional responses. This analysis demonstrates how participants go about ‘doing being ordinary’ (Sacks, 1992b) in formulating their ‘first thoughts’ (Jefferson, 2004). Through sharing their initial impressions of the event, participants perform support work within the interaction, in essence working to normalize both the event and their initial misinterpretation of it. Normalising as a support work mechanism is also shown in relation to participants constructing the ‘quiet’ following the event as unusual. Normalising is accomplished by reference to the indexical ‘it’ and location formulations, which participants use both to negotiate who can claim to experience the ‘unnatural quiet’ and to identify the extent of the quiet. Through their talk participants upgrade the quiet from something legitimately experienced by one person in a particular place to something that could be experienced ‘anywhere’, moving the phenomenon from local to global provenance. With its methodological design and detailed analysis and findings, this research contributes to existing knowledge in four ways. First, it shows how rules are used by participants as a resource in negotiating and constructing social and moral orders. Second, it demonstrates that irony, sarcasm and insults are three devices of humour which can be used to perform solidarity work and reinforce existing social and moral orders. Third, it demonstrates how new social and moral orders are collaboratively constructed in relation to extraordinary events, which serve to frame the event and evoke reasonable responses for participants. And last, the detailed analysis and findings further support the use of conversation analysis and membership categorization as valuable methods for approaching quasi-synchronous computer-mediated communication.

Evolutionary algorithms for sustainable building design

This approach to sustainable design explores the possibility of creating an architectural design process which can iteratively produce optimised and sustainable design solutions. Driven by an evolution process based on genetic algorithms, the system allows the designer to “design the building design generator” rather than to “designs the building”. The design concept is abstracted into a digital design schema, which allows transfer of the human creative vision into the rational language of a computer. The schema is then elaborated into the use of genetic algorithms to evolve innovative, performative and sustainable design solutions. The prioritisation of the project’s constraints and the subsequent design solutions synthesised during design generation are expected to resolve most of the major conflicts in the evaluation and optimisation phases. Mosques are used as the example building typology to ground the research activity. The spatial organisations of various mosque typologies are graphically represented by adjacency constraints between spaces. Each configuration is represented by a planar graph which is then translated into a non-orthogonal dual graph and fed into the genetic algorithm system with fixed constraints and expected performance criteria set to govern evolution. The resultant Hierarchical Evolutionary Algorithmic Design System is developed by linking the evaluation process with environmental assessment tools to rank the candidate designs. The proposed system generates the concept, the seed, and the schema, and has environmental performance as one of the main criteria in driving optimisation.

A multi-disciplinary approach for the design and management of airport terminals

Multi-disciplinary approaches to complex problems are becoming more common – they enable criteria manifested in distinct (and potentially conflicting) domains to be jointly balanced and satisfied. In this paper we present airport terminals as a case study which requires multi-disciplinary knowledge in order to balance conflicting security, economic and passenger-driven needs and correspondingly enhance the design, management and operation of airport terminals. The need for a truly multi-disciplinary scientific approach which integrates information, process, people, technology and space domains is highlighted through a brief discussion of two challenges currently faced by airport operators. The paper outlines the approach taken by this project, detailing the aims and objectives of each of seven diverse research programs.

Comment on “The spreading of disorder”

Keizer, Lindenberg and Steg (2008) conduct six interesting field experiments and report that their results provide evidence of the broken windows theory. Such an analysis is highly relevant as the (broken windows) theory is both controversial and lacking empirical support. Keizer et al.’s key aim was to conceptualize a disorderly setting in such a way that it is linked to a process of spreading norm violation. The strength of the study is the exploration of cross-norm inhibition effects in a controlled field experimental environment. Their results show that if norm violating behavior becomes more common, it negatively affects compliance in other areas. Nevertheless, this comment paper discusses several shortcomings or limitations and provides new empirical evidence that deals with these problems.

Safety in occupational driving : development of a driver behaviour scale for the workplace context

International statistics indicate that occupational, or work-related driving, crashes are the most common cause of workplace injury, death, and absence from work. The majority of research examining unsafe driver behavior in the workplace has relied on general road safety questionnaires. However, past research has failed to consider the organizational context in the use of these questionnaires, and as such, there is ambiguity in the dimensions constituting occupational driving. Using a theoretical model developed by Hockey (1993, 1997), this article proposes and validates a new scale of occupational driver behavior. This scale incorporates four dimensions of driver behavior that are influenced by demanding workplace conditions; speeding, rule violation, inattention, and driving while tired. Following a content validation process, three samples of occupational drivers in Australia were used to assess the scale. Data from the first sample (n=145) were used to reduce the number of scale items and provide an assessment of the factorial validity of the scale. Data from the second sample (n=645) were then used to confirm the factor structure and psychometric properties of the scale including reliability and construct validity. Finally, data from the third sample (n=248) were used to establish criterion validity. The results indicated that the scale is a reliable and valid measure of occupational driver behavior.