17889083
Managing computing resources in active intranets
The objective of this paper is to present an economic pricing-based resource management technique for Intranets that has the capability of managing Intranet resources from an organizational perspective. We discuss the adoption of this pricing scheme at three stages: application level, node level, and data-stream level implementations. These three levels demonstrate how a pricing based approach can be used with the current technology and also be migrated to evolving network architectures such as active networks.
166893960
Priority pricing of integrated services networks
17233820
IT-enabled transparent electronic markets: the case of the air travel industry
The electronic market hypothesis predicts that by reducing coordination costs, information technology (IT) will shift industrial organization from hierarchical to market-based forms of economic activity. While academic researchers and practitioners have witnessed these shifts with the advent of the Internet, there is little understanding about the process and the underlying forces that drive them. In this paper, we provide an in-depth analysis of the air travel industry, which has recently experienced significant IT-driven transformations. We conclude that, together with IT, pro-competitive laws and the information-intensive nature of air travel products have triggered competition for consumers with transparent market mechanisms, which is leading to the emergence of more transparent electronic markets in the air travel industry.
30721210
Economic analysis of consumer purchase intentions in electronic and traditional retail channels: competitive and strategic implications
We develop a multiattribute economic model to analyze consumer behavior for traditional and electronic channels based on consumers' risk profiles and risk-neutral or risk-averse. We then conduct comparative analyses of consumer purchase decisions to derive strategies for different channels. We study the attitudinal and economic factors that lead to specific purchase decisions under different combinations of price, delivery time, and product customization. We develop theoretical propositions concerning consumer channel switching behavior, incentives to consumers, and pricing strategies for different channels. We also use simulations to gain insights for cases where analytical model becomes intractable.
7914809
Predicting Bidders' Willingness to Pay in Online Multiunit Ascending Auctions: Analytical and Empirical Insights
We develop a real-time estimation approach to predict bidders' maximum willingness to pay in a multiunit ascending uniform-price and discriminatory-price (Yankee) online auction. Our two-stage approach begins with a bidder classification step, which is followed by an analytical prediction model. The classification model identifies bidders as either adopting a myopic best-response (MBR) bidding strategy or a non-MBR strategy. We then use a generalized bid-inversion function to estimate the willingness to pay for MBR bidders. We empirically validate our two-stage approach using data from two popular online auction sites. Our joint classification-and-prediction approach outperforms two other naive prediction strategies that draw random valuations between a bidder's current bid and the known market upper bound. Our prediction results indicate that, on average, our estimates are within 2% of bidders' revealed willingness to pay for Yankee and uniform-price multiunit auctions. We discuss how our results can facilitate mechanism-design changes such as dynamic-bid increments and dynamic buy-it-now prices.
57631
Insights and analyses of online auctions
5988621
Motion estimation using ordinal measures
We present a method for motion estimation using ordinal measures. Ordinal measures are based on relative ordering of intensity values in an image region called rank permutation. While popular measures like the sum-of-squared-difference (SSD) and normalized correlation (NCC) rely on linearity between corresponding intensity values, ordinal measures only require them to be monotonically related so that rank permutations between corresponding regions are presented. This property turns out to be useful for motion estimation in tagged magnetic resonance images. We study the imaging equation involved in two methods of tagging and observe temporal monotonicity in intensity under certain conditions though the tags themselves fade. We compare our method to SSD and NCC in a rotating ring phantom image sequence. We present an experiment on a real heart image sequence which suggests the suitability of our method.
155165
Multivariate Integration on Hypercubic and Mesh Networks
Abstract We analyze a class of adaptive algorithms for integration over N-dimensional hyper-rectangular or simplical regions, on distributed systems. An adaptive algorithm attempts to achieve the requested accuracy by refining the subdivision of the integration region, thus allowing for a concentration of subdivisions near singularities. At the subdivision of a region, the error behaves according to a prescribed model, relating the error of the parent region to that of its children. The analysis can also be applied to problems in other areas, as long as the task selection is based on a priority function which behaves according to a suitable model. Using an efficient management of the subregions, we show that an O (p/ log p) speedup can be achieved on a p-processor hypercubic network, such as shuffle exchange, butterfly and hypercube. Furthermore, a speedup of O ( p ) can be achieved on a p × p mesh network. We also show that our algorithms compare favorably with well-known dynamic load balancing strategies.
6504247
Hardware Diagnosis as Program Debugging
Horn clauses provide a useful framework for writing executable structural representations for digital circuits. This paper discusses how these representations can be used to diagnose faulty circuits using algorithmic program debugging techniques developed by Shapiro. The sound theoretical basis of these techniques is one of the major advantages of this approach. This framework also provides a new perspective on some of the hardware diagnosis techniques suggested in the literature.
30968721
Tracking Deformable Templates Using a Shortest Path Algorithm
This paper proposes a new technique to track deformable templates. We extend the typical graph algorithms that have been used for active contour recovery to incorporate shape information. The advantage of graph algorithms is that they are guaranteed to find the global minimum of the energy function. The difficulty with their traditional use for active contours is that they consider only two pixels at a time when recovering the contour, making it impossible to enforce shape constraints. We define the deformable template as a polygonal contour, demonstrate the proper mapping between the image, the contour, and a graph, and show how to apply Dijkstra's algorithm to track contours in image sequences. Examples are shown for deforming contours, articulated objects, and smooth contours being tracked in simple and complicated backgrounds. We also provide an analysis of the computational requirements.
17746198
Large—scale parallel numerical integration
We present and analyze strategies which can be used for the parallel computation of large numbers of integrals which may be of different levels of difficulty. Parallelization on the integral level, which is generally used for large numbers of integrals, is combined with parallelization on the subregion level, which enables handling local integration difficulties within individual problems. This results in a new, hierarchical algorithm which incorporates load balancing on the integral level and on the subregion level. We report test results of the software and show that the hierarchical approach leads to a scalable integration algorithm.