Static Pricing for a Network Service Provider

This article studies the static pricing problem of a network service provider who has a fixed capacity and faces different types of customers (classes). Each type of customers can have its own capacity constraint but it is assumed that all classes have the same resource requirement. The provider must decide a static price for each class. The customer types are characterized by their arrival process, with a price-dependant arrival rate, and the random time they remain in the system. Many real-life situations could fit in this framework, for example an Internet provider or a call center, but originally this problem was thought for a company that sells phone-cards and needs to set the price-per-minute for each destination. Our goal is to characterize the optimal static prices in order to maximize the provider's revenue. We note that the model here presented, with some slight modifications and additional assumptions can be used in those cases when the objective is to maximize social welfare.

Preliminary Observations on Program Instability

This white paper reports emerging findings at the end of Phase I of the Lean Aircraft Initiative in the Policy focus group area. Specifically, it provides details about research on program instability. Its objective is to discuss high-level findings detailing: 1) the relative contribution of different factors to a program’s overall instability; 2) the cost impact of program instability on acquisition programs; and 3) some strategies recommended by program managers for overcoming and/or mitigating the negative effects of program instability on their programs. Because this report comes as this research is underway, this is not meant to be a definitive document on the subject. Rather, is it anticipated that this research may potentially produce a number of reports on program instability-related topics. The government managers of military acquisition programs rated annual budget or production rate changes, changes in requirements, and technical difficulties as the three top contributors, respectively, to program instability. When asked to partition actual variance in their program’s planned cost and schedule to each of these factors, it was found that the combined effects of unplanned budget and requirement changes accounted for 5.2% annual cost growth and 20% total program schedule slip. At a rate of approximately 5% annual cost growth from these factors, it is easy to see that even conservative estimates of the cost benefits to be gained from acquisition reforms and process improvements can quickly be eclipsed by the added cost associated with program instability. Program management practices involving the integration of stakeholders from throughout the value chain into the decision making process were rated the most effective at avoiding program instability. The use of advanced information technologies was rated the most effective at mitigating the negative impact of program instability.

Refinement criteria for global illumination using convex funcions

In several computer graphics areas, a refinement criterion is often needed to decide whether to go on or to stop sampling a signal. When the sampled values are homogeneous enough, we assume that they represent the signal fairly well and we do not need further refinement, otherwise more samples are required, possibly with adaptive subdivision of the domain. For this purpose, a criterion which is very sensitive to variability is necessary. In this paper, we present a family of discrimination measures, the f-divergences, meeting this requirement. These convex functions have been well studied and successfully applied to image processing and several areas of engineering. Two applications to global illumination are shown: oracles for hierarchical radiosity and criteria for adaptive refinement in ray-tracing. We obtain significantly better results than with classic criteria, showing that f-divergences are worth further investigation in computer graphics. Also a discrimination measure based on entropy of the samples for refinement in ray-tracing is introduced. The recursive decomposition of entropy provides us with a natural method to deal with the adaptive subdivision of the sampling region

Intrinsic test of independence in contingency tables

A condition needed for testing nested hypotheses from a Bayesian viewpoint is that the prior for the alternative model concentrates mass around the small, or null, model. For testing independence in contingency tables, the intrinsic priors satisfy this requirement. Further, the degree of concentration of the priors is controlled by a discrete parameter m, the training sample size, which plays an important role in the resulting answer regardless of the sample size. In this paper we study robustness of the tests of independence in contingency tables with respect to the intrinsic priors with different degree of concentration around the null, and compare with other “robust” results by Good and Crook. Consistency of the intrinsic Bayesian tests is established. We also discuss conditioning issues and sampling schemes, and argue that conditioning should be on either one margin or the table total, but not on both margins. Examples using real are simulated data are given

Laquímica.net, una proposta per millorar la relació entre universitat i la secundària

Sota el lema "Química entre nosaltres: descobrim la química a Girona", el projecte LaQuimica.Net iniciat l’any 2004 vol promoure la divulgació de la química en l'entorn geogràfic de la UdG, estimular l'estudi i la recerca en química en l'àmbit de secundària, i fomentar la incorporació dels estudiants de secundària a l'ensenyament superior. En aquest marc, en els darrers anys, el departament de química de la Universitat de Girona ve desenvolupant tota una sèrie d'activitats adreçades tant a estudiants de secundària com al públic en general. Pel que fa als estudiants de secundària, s’ofereixen un conjunt d’activitats entre les que cal destacar “El Dissabte de la Química”, el “[Nano]reacciona!” i les pràctiques ofertes a grupsclasse. “El Dissabte de la Química” consta d’una conferència d’uns 30-40 minuts seguida de 4 tallers on els estudiants poden practicar diferents aspectes de la química. Amb “[Nano]reacciona!” els estudiants de secundària presenten els seus treballs de recerca relacionats amb la química mitjançant un pòster que confeccionen ells mateixos. Finalment, a les pràctiques de grups-classe els estudiants d’un determinat curs de secundària fan una pràctica completa en un dels laboratoris de docència del nostre departament. Pel que fa als professors de secundària s’organitza el “Congrés de Docència en Química a Secundària”, en el que participen una sèrie d’experts en el tema de la didàctica de la química o de les ciències en general i on els professors de secundària podem fer una comunicació curta amb alguna de les seves experiències personals a l’aula. Finalment, pel que fa al públic en general, durant la Setmana de la Ciència s’organitza “La Fira de la Química”, una activitat que pretén donar a conèixer alguns aspectes d’aquesta ciència, així com també mostrar com ens influeix la química en la nostra vida diària

Plataforma redGIS.NET para el acceso libre a datos y funciones geográficas

The redGIS.NET project is led by the Geomatics Unit in the University of Alicante's Geography Institute, and financed by the Vice-Chancellor of Research Office under the umbrella of the COPLA inititive, promoting open source software in this university. (...)

Publiradio.net: innovación docente e investigación sobre publicidad radiofónica en el marco del EEES

La adaptación del sistema universitario catalán y español al Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior (EEES) está favoreciendo la aparición de nuevas metodologías docentes en respuesta a los requerimientos del llamado European Credit Transfer System (ECTS), una modalidad de crédito cuya principal característica consiste, como ya es ampliamente conocido, en focalizar la atención en el estudiante y, especialmente, en generar un proceso interactivo en el que el alumno se convierta en responsable activo de la adquisición de conocimientos. En el ámbito de las Ciencias de la Comunicación, una de las iniciativas más destacables de aproximación al EEES comienza en el año 2004, cuando el Departament d'Universitats, Investigació i Societat de la Informació de la Generalitat de Catalunya (DURSI) eligió a varios centros catalanes para que aplicaran de manera experimental el nuevo sistema común de créditos derivados de la Declaración de Bolonia. La Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB) fue uno de ellos, y ésta, a su vez, decidió poner en práctica la prueba piloto en la licenciatura de Publicidad y Relaciones Públicas. Es a partir de ese momento cuando los profesores del Departament de Comunicació Audiovisual i Publicitat de la UAB que forman el grupo de investigación Publiradio2 deciden poner en marcha un proyecto que, en el marco de las asignaturas de creatividad y de radio publicitaria, respondiera a las exigencias de la cultura docente en la que se inspira el crédito ECTS. Nace así Publiradio.net, un aplicativo on-line para la creación de publicidad radiofónica destinado, también, a facilitar y potenciar el aprendizaje autónomo entre los estudiantes, a fomentar, en sintonía con las apreciaciones de Aguaded, la utilización de 'técnicas y procedimientos que permitan al alumnado su análisis y uso como lenguajes propios' y a impulsar y facilitar a los estudiantes la investigación en publicidad radiofónica

Towards Detecting Changes in Underwater Image Sequences

Detecting changes between images of the same scene taken at different times is of great interest for monitoring and understanding the environment. It is widely used for on-land application but suffers from different constraints. Unfortunately, Change detection algorithms require highly accurate geometric and photometric registration. This requirement has precluded their use in underwater imagery in the past. In this paper, the change detection techniques available nowadays for on-land application were analyzed and a method to automatically detect the changes in sequences of underwater images is proposed. Target application scenarios are habitat restoration sites, or area monitoring after sudden impacts from hurricanes or ship groundings. The method is based on the creation of a 3D terrain model from one image sequence over an area of interest. This model allows for synthesizing textured views that correspond to the same viewpoints of a second image sequence. The generated views are photometrically matched and corrected against the corresponding frames from the second sequence. Standard change detection techniques are then applied to find areas of difference. Additionally, the paper shows that it is possible to detect false positives, resulting from non-rigid objects, by applying the same change detection method to the first sequence exclusively. The developed method was able to correctly find the changes between two challenging sequences of images from a coral reef taken one year apart and acquired with two different cameras

Adaptive business intelligence for an open negotiation environment

Engineering of negotiation model allows to develop effective heuristic for business intelligence. Digital ecosystems demand open negotiation models. To define in advance effective heuristics is not compliant with the requirement of openness. The new challenge is to develop business intelligence in advance exploiting an adaptive approach. The idea is to learn business strategy once new negotiation model rise in the e-market arena. In this paper we present how recommendation technology may be deployed in an open negotiation environment where the interaction protocol models are not known in advance. The solution we propose is delivered as part of the ONE Platform, open source software that implements a fully distributed open environment for business negotiation

Bayesian Networks with Infer.NET

Presentation at AIC away day 2014

Net Neutrality

Some discussion points about net neutrality

Exporting Culture: a Requirement for Competitive Internationalization*

his paper proposes a concept of “culture for internationalization” and “exporting culture” –a highly relevant concept for developing countries’ firms that are likely to follow a gradualinternationalization process– based on the strong relationship binding the concept proposed to strategy and systemic competitiveness. These three items are paramount to Understand the conditions underlying internationalizationas it is characterized by particular traits that make it a key alternative for a firm’s growth and successful perdurability based on competitiveness. “Culture for internationalization” and its variation, “exporting culture”, overflow the conceptsof organizational or corporate culture and involve some major interaction among the micro, meso and macro levels of a national economy in order to operationalize strategies thatpromote such culture and assure successful firm and economy internationalization. Discussion remains open as to the concept and its applicability with the hope that it contributesto the understanding and creation of appropriate conditions for firms to be able to access international markets with greater advantage and generate as much benefit as possible totheir nations, particularly in developing countries. 

Net campus. Una solución educativa virtual.

Net campus es una aplicación de teleformación que ofrece todos los servicios necesarios para garantizar un entorno óptimo de aprendizaje tanto para el alumno y el profesor como para el responsable de la gestión y la organización académica de los cursos. Como sistema de formación basado en internet/intranet la incorporación de herramientas interactivas. Net campus promueve la participación activa entre estudiantes y profesores.

ELEMENTOS PARA LA RELACIÓN ENTRE CULTURA ORGANIZACIONAL Y ESTRATEGIA: CASO SEMCO

Este trabajo es un insumo para proyecto de investigación del Profesor Carlos Eduardo Méndez Álvarez, Elementos para la relación entre cultura organizacional y estrategia, proyecto que hace parte de la línea de investigación de Estrategia de la Escuela de Administración de la Universidad del Rosario, este trabajo fue desarrollado como proyecto de grado el cual se complementa con el trabajo de grado “ELEMENTOS PARA LA RELACIÓN ENTRE CULTURA ORGANIZACIONAL Y ESTRATEGIA: CASO IBM.” elaborado por Angélica Marie Barón, por ende contó con un desarrollo conjunto con la autora antes mencionada en los temas referentes al marco teórico. Este trabajo busca reunir información teórica acerca del concepto de Cultura organización y la Estrategia organizacional, Si se busca poder vislumbrar la relación entre la cultura organizacional y la estrategia dentro de una organización. Actualmente se encuentran en una carrera competitiva en la que no solo participan por un pedazo cada vez más fraccionado y diferenciado del mercado, sino que también por la credibilidad social, la gestión de sus capital intelectual, elevar la calidad de vida de la comunidad medioambiental y cultura así como por trascender la inmediatez de los planes para estimular las proyecciones de las estrategias organizarles, por otra parte las apariciones de creación masiva de las micro, pequeña y mediana empresa, pero estas no logran contar con una alta expectativa de vida.