Abstract While information exchange is essential in the policy process, little known about how divergent subgroups filter actors’ technical and political exchange, blocking learning processes. Guided by social identity, group entitativity, self-categorisation theories, we introduce concept measurement of identity-based referring to informal clusters shaped self-referent perception similarities ...

OBJECTIVE To explore the relationship between polymorphisms of XbaI and MspI loci of apolipoprotein B (ApoB) gene and -75 bp, +83 bp loci of apolipoprotein AI (ApoAI) gene and coronary heart disease (CHD) in Kazaks of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. METHODS These loci were analyzed by PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-PFLP). Two hundred and five patients with CHD and...

Policy-making is a dynamic process in which policies can be changed in each period but continue in the absence of new legislation. We study a dynamic legislative bargaining game with an endogenous status quo where in each period a dollar is allocated with a proposal voted against the allocation in the previous period. We characterize for any initial status quo a class of simple Markov perfect e...

In coalition formation with self-interested agents both social welfare of the multi-agent system and stability of individual coalitions must be taken into account. However, in large-scale systems with thousands of agents, finding an optimal solution with respect to both metrics is infeasible. In this paper we propose an approach for finding coalition structures with suboptimal social welfare an...

Purpose Describe the surgical technique of talocalcaneal coalition resection using live CT navigation. Methods A ten-year-old female with left talocalcaneal coalition hindfoot pain refractory to conservative management underwent surgical coalition resection using live CT navigation. The procedure and discussion of this technique is described in detail. Results With minimal radiation exposur...

The fact that a coalition has a strategy does not mean that the coalition knows what the strategy is. If the coalition knows the strategy, then such a strategy is called a know-how strategy of the coalition. The paper proposes the notion of a second-order know-how strategy for the case when one coalition knows what the strategy of another coalition is. The main technical result is a sound and c...

Community-based interventions to promote physical activity (PA) among older adults are of high interest in health promotion since they promise to be effective strategies to reach this population group. Community capacity building, that is, the local promotion of knowledge, skills, commitment, structures, and leadership, is among the recommended core strategies. However, little guidance is provi...

Coalition formation in characteristic function games entails agents partitioning themselves into a coalition structure and assigning the numeric rewards of each coalition via a payoff vector. Various coalition structure generation algorithms have been proposed that guarantee that an optimal coalition structure is found. We present the Synergy Coalition Group-based Dynamic Programming (SCGDP) al...

Coalition formation in multi-agent systems (MAS) is becoming increasingly important as it increases the ability of agents to execute tasks and maximize their payoffs. Dependence relations are regarded as the foundation of coalition formation. This paper proposes a novel dependence theory namely transitive dependence theory for dynamic coalition formation in multi-agent systems. Transitive depen...

In this paper, we anatomize incentive structures in peer assisted services with multiple content providers and focus on stability issues from two different angles: stability at equilibrium of Shapley value and convergence to the equilibrium. We first define a coalition game in a peer assisted service with multiple content providers by classifying the types of coalition structures as separated, ...