an effort carried out to find out the smaller size of cuttings for propagation ofmorus alba in experimental area, department of forestry, range management and wildlife, university of agriculture, faisalabad, 2005. different size of cuttings i.e.5 cm, 10 cm, 15 cm and 20 cm were planted in polythene tubes of 9 cm x 18 cm. the attempt was also made to compare the performance of cuttings outdoor a...

Does a performance measure which is a monotonous function of the benefit (a benefit measure) lead to a desirable allocation of effort between the tasks which create this benefit? We analyse two settings. If the mechanism designer knows the choice set of the agent, benefit measures generally do not result in the second-best effort allocation – unless restrictive assumptions about agent’s prefere...

Branch and bound algorithms are methods for global optimization in nonconvex problems [LW66, Moo91]. They are nonheuristic, in the sense that they maintain a provable upper and lower bound on the (globally) optimal objective value; they terminate with a certificate proving that the suboptimal point found is ǫ-suboptimal. Branch and bound algorithms can be (and often are) slow, however. In the w...

This paper discusses how software projects following different processes, which display disparate characteristics, have been categorized and analyzed using statistical techniques to measure and improve process capability. The analysis shows that language type, size of the application and complexity (represented by ratio of Total Project Effort to Build Phase Effort) are the predominant discrimi...

This article introduces a statistical approach for the maximization of the financial benefits yielded by software projects that have been broken down into a considerable number of minimum marketable features modules (MMFs) and architectural elements (AEs). As the statistical approach requires a polynomial computational effort to run and provides approximation solutions with an arbitrarily chose...

In this paper we discuss technology appropriation in the context of close personal relationships. We review literature that reveals how collaborative appropriation is a natural and necessary feature of technology adoption by relational partners. We then advance a position whereby appropriations in close relationships can be characterised as a form of discretionary effort investment. We end by r...

When providing professional services, an expert may misbehave by either prescribing “wrong” treatment for consumer's problem or failing to exert proper effort diagnose it. We show that under a range of liabilities the will recommend appropriate based on his private information if markups alternative treatments are close enough; however, well-designed liability rule is essential also motivating ...

Given a set S of n points, we show that the length of 1) the minimum weight triangulation (MWT ) of the minimum weight convex partition (MWCP ) of S (TMWCP ) is at most Θ(n) longer than the MWT of S if collinearity of two or more edges is allowed and Θ(log n) otherwise, 2) the MWT of the minimum spanning tree (MST ) of the MWCP of S (Tmst(MWCP )) is at most Θ(n) longer than the MWT of S if coll...