Dependencies among software projects and libraries are an indicator of the often implicit collaboration among many developers in software ecosystems. Negotiating change can be tricky: changes to one module may cause ripple effects to many other modules that depend on it, yet insisting on only backwardcompatible changes may incur significant opportunity cost and stifle change. We argue that awar...

This paper studies colour filtering with particular reference to colour bleeding for median and mode filters. While confirming that multiple single-channel implementation gives especially serious colour bleeding, the paper goes on to argue that the conventional solution — of using the vector median — is over-strenuous for many types of application. In fact, instead of insisting that the output ...

In this paper we propose a formal model of coordination in Multi-Agent Systems. Wooldridge and Jennings [15] restrict their approach to Cooperative Problem Solving cases insisting in a team-formation stage in which agents commit themselves to act as a group to achieve a common goal before negotiation starts. In our model, autonomous agents first recognise how they depend on each other (they may...

In the standard R4 embedding of the chiral O(4) model in 3+1 dimensions the winding number is not conserved near the chiral phase transition and thus no longer can be identified with baryon number. In order to reestablish conserved baryon number in effective low-energy models near and above the critical temperature Tc it is argued that insisting in O(N) models on the angular nature of the chira...

A statistical analysis is performed for a random unrestricted local crew scheduling problem, expressed in terms of pairing arrivals with departures. The analysis is aimed at understanding the structure of similar problems with global restrictions, and estimating their difficulty. The methods developed are of a general nature and can be of use in other problems with a similar structure. For larg...

We study the collision of two flat, parallel end-of-the-world branes in heterotic M-theory. By insisting that there is no divergence in the Riemann curvature as the collision approaches, we are able to single out a unique solution possessing the local geometry of (2d compactified Milne)/Z2 × R3, times a finite-volume CalabiYau manifold in the vicinity of the collision. At a finite time before a...

The author makes an appraisal of the videogame Mark of the Ninja (Klei 2012) through the analysis of its construction of temporality. Appropriating the framework of litterature scholar Éric Méchoulan, time is described as the anachronistic folding of the past upon the present. The theme of time and memory in the game is paralleled with Méchoulan’s media-archeological approach to western metaphy...

Public corporations have been constantly in the spotlight, with some commentators arguing that they can help governments provide better public services, and others insisting their governance is simply too complex. Despite this ongoing debate, few studies researched corporation performance. The present study offers empirical evidence of effects various forms corporatization on service costs. In ...

I review and update ideas about the quantum theory of de Sitter space. New results include a quantum relation between energy and entropy of states in the causal patch, which is satisfied by small dS black holes. I also discuss the preliminaries of a quantum theory in global coordinates, which is invariant under a q-deformed version of the de Sitter supergroup. In this context I outline an algeb...