Fuzzy Win-Win: A Novel Approach to Quantify Win-Win Using Fuzzy Logic

The classic win-win has a key flaw in that it cannot offer the parties with right amounts of winning because each party believes they are winners. In reality, one party may win more than the other. This strategy is not limited to a single product or negotiation; it may be applied to a variety of situations in life. We present a novel way to measure the win-win situation in this paper. The proposed method employs the Fuzzy logic to create a mathematical model that aids negotiators in quantifying their winning percentages. The model is put to the test on real-life negotiation scenarios such as the Iranian uranium enrichment negotiations, the Iraqi-Jordanian oil deal, and the iron ore negotiation (2005-2009). The presented model has shown to be a useful tool in practice and can be easily generalized to be utilized in other domains as well.

Data heterogeneity and oldness, two difficulties to overcome for the world seabed sediment mapping

A global seabed sediment map has been developed since 1995 to provide a necessary tool for different needs. This project is not completely original since it had already been done in 1912 when the French hydrographic Office and the University of Nancy produced sedimentary maps of the European and North American coasts. Seabed sediments is one of the last geographical domains which can’t benefit of satellite data. Without this contribution, sediment maps need to use very old data mixed with the new ones to be able to reach the goal of a global map. In general, sediment maps are made with the latest available techniques and are replaced after a few decades, thus generating new cartographic works as if all the previous efforts had become useless. Such approach underestimates the quality of past works and prevents to have maps covering large areas. The present work suggests to standardize all kind of sedimentary data from different periods and from very different acquisition systems and integrate them into a single product. This process has already been done for bathymetric data of marine charts, we discuss in this article of the application of this method at a global scale for sediment data.

Content and Access Provision in a Discrete Competition Model

The non-rival, non-excludable and infinitely expansible characteristics of digital goods with marginal cost of zero strongly favours the use of bundling strategies. Theoretical tractability requires most models in the current literature to make highly stylized assumptions, rarely observed or anticipated in the real-life situations, motivating inquiry. This paper considers a competition model in which: * the firms, consumers and differentiated products are finite in number; * prices are discrete and not continuous; * consumers may purchase multiple items in a single product category where the degree of complementarity or substitutability of the product categories can also vary across consumers; and * where consumer-specific cost savings are obtained when purchasing multiple items from the same firm. Approximate solutions are obtained through numerical simulation. Firms act in concert to maximise the total firm revenue. Our main finding is that the interplay between maximal firm revenue, consumer surplus and prices is very complex and that high firm revenue and high consumer surplus are not antithetic. It suggests also that consumer surplus and market concentration are not necessarily related. Many market outcomes that are observed may be due to chance rather than design as diverse outcomes can accompany situations that are, to the firms, difficult to distinguish.

Applying the Lexicographic Maximum Solution of Min-Product Fuzzy Relational Inequalities for Finding the Optimal Pricing with a Fixed Priority in a Supply Chain System

Fuzzy relational inequalities composed by the min-product operation are established to model the optimal pricing with fixed priority in a single product supply chain system. The solution algorithm has been proposed for solving such an optimization problem and finding the optimal solution (is called lexicographic maximum solution). In this study, a novel approach is proposed to finding the optimal pricing with fixed priority in a single product supply chain system. This approach is based on new properties of solution set in a min-product fuzzy relational inequality. These new properties allow us directly determine the optimal value of variable without many duplicate checks in the solution procedure. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the procedure.

REVIEW OF INDONESIA'S EMPLOYMENT ARRANGEMENTS IN FACING ASEAN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY

The AEC is the founder of the ASEAN Community and the formation of regional economic integration, which was implemented in 2015. The implementation of ASEAN is made up of the flow of services/goods on a single product and market basis, skilled labour, investment, and free capital flows between countries in the ASEAN region. As an opportunity at the time of employment and as a substitute for unemployment, the Indonesian state must be utilized free of skilled labour. The issues that have arisen are how the employment arrangements in Indonesia are? How to optimize Indonesia’s employment arrangements in the AEC era? The method of approaching this research is the normative juridical method. The research shows that there are arrangements in the field of manpower that help realize quality human resources and skilled labour. It also states that Law No. 13 of 2003 on Manpower and other policies that provide job training and certification of work competencies that optimize employment to be more qualified, skilled, and competitive and recognized by other ASEAN countries in facing the AEC.

An Application of the IFM Method for the Risk Assessment of Financial Instruments

External influences or behavioral biases can affect the way risk is perceived. This paper studies the prediction of VaR (Value at Risk) as a measure of the risk of loss for investments on financial products. Our aim is to predict the percentage of loss that a financial product would have in the future to assess the risks and determine the potential loss of a security in the stock market, thus reducing reasoning influenced by feelings for bank and financial firms seeking to deploy AI and advanced automation. We used the IFM (inference function for margins) method in different market scenarios, with particular emphasis on the strengths and weaknesses of it. The study is assessed on single product level with the skewed studen-t GARCH(1,1) model and portfolio level with t-copulas for the inter-dependencies. It has been shown that under normal market conditions the risk is predicted properly for both levels. However, when an unexpected market event occurs, the prediction fails. To address this limitation, a combined model with sentiment analysis and regression is proposed for further investigation as a future work.

Hemostatic efficacy of two topical adjunctive hemostats in a porcine spleen biopsy punch model of moderate bleeding

Topical hemostatic agents have become essential tools to aid in preventing excessive bleeding in surgical or emergency settings and to mitigate the associated risks of serious complications. In the present study, we compared the hemostatic efficacy of SURGIFLO® Hemostatic Matrix Kit with Thrombin (Surgiflo—flowable gelatin matrix plus human thrombin) to HEMOBLAST™ Bellows Hemostatic Agent (Hemoblast—a combination product consisting of collagen, chondroitin sulfate, and human thrombin). Surgiflo and Hemoblast were randomly tested in experimentally induced bleeding lesions on the spleens of four pigs. Primary endpoints included hemostatic efficacy measured by absolute time to hemostasis (TTH) within 5 min. Secondary endpoints included the number of product applications and the percent of product needed from each device to achieve hemostasis. Surgiflo demonstrated significantly higher hemostatic efficacy and lower TTH (p < 0.01) than Hemoblast. Surgiflo-treated lesion sites achieved hemostasis in 77.4% of cases following a single product application vs. 3.3% of Hemoblast-treated sites. On average, Surgiflo-treated sites required 63% less product applications than Hemoblast-treated sites (1.26 ± 0.0.51 vs. 3.37 ± 1.16). Surgiflo provided more effective and faster hemostasis than Hemoblast. Since both products contain thrombin to activate endogenous fibrinogen and accelerate clot formation, the superior hemostatic efficacy of Surgiflo in the porcine spleen punch biopsy model seems to be due to Surgiflo’s property as a malleable barrier able to adjust to defect topography and to provide an environment for platelets to adhere and aggregate. Surgiflo combines a flowable gelatin matrix and a delivery system well-suited for precise application to bleeding sites where other methods of hemostasis may be impractical or ineffective.

A Collaborative Method for Scoping Software Product Lines: A Case Study in a Small Software Company

SPL scoping is the activity for bounding Software Product Lines (SPL), gathering heterogeneous knowledge from diverse sources. For achieving an agreement among different stakeholders, a commonalty scope must be understood and committed to. However, gathering this knowledge from stakeholders with individual interests is a complex task. This paper reports the experience of scoping the SPL of a small Colombian software company, applying and evaluating a collaborative method called CoMeS-SPL. The company was looking to develop a set of products from a product previously developed with great potential to be adapted and sold to different customers. From a collaborative relationship university–enterprise model, the research groups that developed CoMeS-SPL proposed to use it answering to the company needs for defining an organization-suitable reuse scope around its platform called CORA. Both parties joined in the scoping co-production of the first SPL of the company. This method implied that the company would perform new tasks and involve other roles different for those who are used to defining the scope of a single product. The company actors considered that they obtained a useful scope and perceived the collaboration as valuable because they shared different knowledge and perspectives. The researchers were able to provide feedback on their proposed model, identifying successes and aspects to improve. The experience allowed strengthening the ties of cooperation with the company, and new projects and consultancies are being carried out.

Nutrition to Optimise Human Health—How to Obtain Physiological Substantiation?

Demonstrating in an unambiguous manner that a diet, let alone a single product, ‘optimizes’ health, presents an enormous challenge. The least complicated is when the starting situation is clearly suboptimal, like with nutritional deficiencies, malnutrition, unfavourable lifestyle, or due to disease or ageing. Here, desired improvements and intervention strategies may to some extent be clear. However, even then situations require approaches that take into account interactions between nutrients and other factors, complex dose-effect relationships etc. More challenging is to substantiate that a diet or a specific product optimizes health in the general population, which comes down to achieve perceived, ‘non-medical’ or future health benefits in predominantly healthy persons. Presumed underlying mechanisms involve effects of non-nutritional components with subtle and slowly occurring physiological effects that may be difficult to translate into measurable outcomes. Most promising strategies combine classical physiological concepts with those of ‘multi-omics’ and systems biology. Resilience-the ability to maintain or regain homeostasis in response to stressors-is often used as proxy for a particular health domain. Next to this, quantifying health requires personalized strategies, measurements preferably carried out remotely, real-time and in a normal living environment, and experimental designs other than randomized controlled trials (RCTs), for example N-of-1 trials.