In social dilemmas, the ability of individuals to coordinate their actions is crucial to reach group optima. Unless exacted by power or force, coordination in humans relies on a common understanding of the problem, which is greatly facilitated by communication. The lack of means of consultation about the nature of the problem and how to solve it may explain why multiagent coordination in nonhum...

We consider the problem faced by a company that must outsource reverse logistics (RL) activities to third-party providers. Addressing RL outsourcing problems has become increasingly relevant issue in the management science and decision making literatures. The correct evaluation and ranking of the decision criteria/priorities determining the selection of the best third-party RL providers (3PRLPs...

The practice of sponsored search advertising—where advertisers pay a fee to appear alongside particular Web search results—is now one of the largest and fastest growing source of revenue for Web search engines. We model and compare several mechanisms for allocating sponsored slots, including stylized versions of those used by Overture and Google, the two biggest brokers of sponsored search. The...

Animals neither negotiate verbally nor conclude binding contracts, but nevertheless regularly exchange goods and services without overt coercion and manage to arrive at agreements over exchange rates. Biological market theory predicts that such exchange rates fluctuate according to the law of supply and demand. Previous studies showed that primates pay more when commodities become scarcer: subo...

The widespread demand for data applications over mobile networks requires that service providers guarantee a well-defined quality of service (QoS) for subscribers. Evaluating the QoS provided by service providers within a geographical area to determine which network provides the best QoS is a challenging task. The complex nature of mobile networks with multi-criteria and conflicting factors mak...

The goal of this research was to investigate, through active-duty Army anesthesia providers, their perceptions on emergence delirium (ED) in US combat veterans. Specifically, the pharmacologic, physiologic, and psychological characteristics associated with ED. An online survey was sent to all active-duty Army anesthesia providers with a response rate of 34%. Results indicated that the providers...

With the growing adoption of the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in the industry and the wide deployment of Web services, users are increasingly requiring services that are capable of meeting their quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for QoS-aware Web service provisioning, which relies on QoS brokers, to mediate between clients and service prov...

OBJECTIVE To determine what community health service providers in rural southern Queensland considered were major issues affecting their efficacy. Results will inform the future research strategy of the Centre for Rural and Remote Area Health with the aim of addressing specific regional needs. DESIGN Interactive research workshops. SETTING Health providers and other key stakeholders. SUBJ...

The purpose of this case study is to better understand the relationships between three key factors namely Usability, Availability and Relevance. One of the primary goal of this case study is to analyze the data collected from the database technology professionals(Knowledge Seekers), who access a series of database technology articles in the knowledge sharing portal to enhance their skills. This...

BACKGROUND Improving the quality of prescribing and appropriate handling of alerts remains a challenge for design and implementation of clinical decision support (CDS) and comparatively little is known about the effects that provider characteristics have on how providers respond to medication alerts. OBJECTIVES To investigate the relationship between provider characteristics and their respons...