The t-test, resource pooling, and psi: why the minimum sample size counts towards theoretical progress in behavioral science

A theoretical construct that subsumes an empirical phenomenon should rest on statistically significant test-results with high replication probably. To statistically establish such test-results, behavioral science publications typically rely on a t-test, and researchers typically operate under limited data collection resources. To publish more test-results, or to publish an individual result sooner, questionable strategies are commonly used to reduce data collection cost. One strategy is to increase the β-error rate from 0.05 to 0.20; a second strategy is to treat the control group as a constant, collapsing a two sample t-test into a one sample t-test. Both strategies happen to underlie Bem’s (2011) rightly controversial results on human precognition (“psi hypothesis” [Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 3, 407-425]). Since both strategies undermine theoretical research in behavioral science, their ubiquity partially explains the rarity of well-corroborated theoretical constructs there. We advocate collaboration between individual labs as a viable route to enabling theoretical research by collecting a large enough sample jointly.

Educational Pairings and Fertility Across Europe: How Do the Low-Educated Fare?

Recent research suggests that the fertility-education relationship may be mediated by the educational attainment of the partner, especially among the tertiary-educated. However, there are no studies focusing on the couple-education-fertility nexus among couples who achieved only basic educational attainment, even though resource pooling theory predicts differences in family formation by couples’ joint levels of socio-economic resources. We address this research gap and investigate how educational pairings among married and cohabiting partners relate to second and third birth transitions across 22 European countries, using data from the EU-SILC (European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions) panel and discrete time event history models. Our findings show significantly lower second and third birth transition rates among homogamous low-educated couples compared to heterogamous couples with one low- and one medium or highly-educated partner in the Nordic countries, but not across the rest of Europe. However, couples with one or two low-educated partners have significantly lower second birth rates compared with couples with two highly-educated partners in all European regions.

Qualitative analysis of Iranian sixth five-year economic, social, and cultural development plan from universal health coverage perspective

Background This research analyzed the Sixth Five-Year Economic, Social, and Cultural Development Plan of the Islamic Republic of Iran (6NPD) to shed light on how the plan addresses the Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Methods This research was a qualitative study. We systematically analyzed ‘Secs. 14 -Health, Insurance, Health & Women, and Family’ in the 6NPD. Through a content analysis, we converted this section into meaning units and coded them. Coding was guided through the conceptual framework ‘Six Building Blocks of Health System’ and the key principles of UHC. Results Six themes and twenty-one subthemes were identified. The subthemes of financing include a fair and secured process of resource pooling, payment methods, revenue generation for the health sector, and a definition of a basic benefits package. The subthemes of governance and leadership consist of social insurance policies’ integration, compliance of providers, a designation of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education (MoHME) as the regulator and the steward of health resources, a payer-provider split, and stakeholders’ participation. The subthemes of health workforce emphasizes balancing the quality and quantity of the health workforce with populations’ health needs and the health system’s requirements. The subthemes of health information systems consist of the electronic health records for Iranians, information systems for organization and delivery functions, and information systems for the financing function. The subthemes of the organization and delivery consider improving effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare delivery, strengthening the family physician program and referral system, and extending the pre-hospital emergency system. Lastly, access to medicine focuses on the design and implementation of an essential drug list and drug systems for approving the coverage and provision of generic medicine. Conclusions The 6NPD introduced policies for strengthening the 6 building blocks of the health system. It introduced policies to improve financing particularly resource pooling and the sustainability of financial resources. As mandated by 6NPD, centering the health system’s governance/leadership in MoHME may exacerbate the existing conflict of interests and provoke various arguments, which impede the enforcement of rules and regulation. The 6NPD is a step forward in terms of improving financial protection, yet several other policies need to be made to adequately meet the requirement of UHC regarding equity and effective coverage.

A Comprehensive Overview of Privacy and Data Security for Cloud Storage

People used to carry their documents about on CDs only a few years ago. Many people have recently turned to memory sticks. Cloud computing, in this case, refers to the capacity to access and edit data stored on remote servers from any Internet-connected platform. Cloud computing is a self-service Internet infrastructure that allows people to access computing resources at any location worldwide. The world has altered as a result of cloud computing. Cloud computing can be thought of as a new computing typology that can provide on-demand services at a low cost. By increasing the capacity and flexibility of data storage and providing scalable compute and processing power that fits the dynamic data requirements, cloud computing has aided the advancement of IT to higher heights. In the field of information technology, privacy and data security have long been a serious concern. It becomes more severe in the cloud computing environment because data is stored in multiple locations, often across the globe. Users' primary challenges regarding the cloud technology revolve around data security and privacy. We conduct a thorough assessment of the literature on data security and privacy issues, data encryption technologies, and related countermeasures in cloud storage systems in this study. Ubiquitous network connectivity, location-independent resource pooling, quick resource flexibility, usage-based pricing, and risk transference are all features of cloud computing.

Complete resource pooling of a load-balancing policy for a network of battery swapping stations

To reduce carbon emission in the transportation sector, there is currently a steady move taking place to an electrified transportation system. This brings about various issues for which a promising solution involves the construction and operation of a battery swapping infrastructure rather than in-vehicle charging of batteries. In this paper, we study a closed Markovian queueing network that allows for spare batteries under a dynamic arrival policy. We propose a provisioning rule for the capacity levels and show that these lead to near-optimal resource utilization, while guaranteeing good quality-of-service levels for electric vehicle users. Key in the derivations is to prove a state-space collapse result, which in turn implies that performance levels are as good as if there would have been a single station with an aggregated number of resources, thus achieving complete resource pooling.

Mobile Cloud Computing Provides Service Availability using A Context Aware Architecture

Mobile systems are becoming increasingly important, and new promising paradigms such as Mobile Cloud Computing. Mobile Cloud Computing is an application that allows data to be stored and processed outside of the mobile node. There is a lot of interest in using the resources that can be accessed by transparently using distributed resource pooling offered by nearby mobile nodes. This type of device is used in emergency, education, and tourism. Systems basically use dynamic network topologies in which network partitions and disconnection occurs frequently, so the availability of the services has been compromised. In this paper proposes the context aware architecture to provide availability of the services deployed in mobile and dynamic network environments which provides better response time, the services need not be migrated at real time, so the bandwidth and energy used has been more efficient.

Resource orchestration in innovation ecosystems: a comparative study between innovation ecosystems at different stages of development

Objective of the study: The present study aimed to answer the following question: How are resources orchestrated to generate innovation in innovation ecosystems?Methodology/Approach: An exploratory qualitative research was conducted through documentary analysis, non-participant observation, and in-depth interviews with actors from two Brazilian ecosystems in different stages of development: 4th District (emerging) and Porto Digital (growth).Originality/Relevance: Innovation ecosystems can be understood as a set of resources that foster innovation. Current research suggests that even more important than resources is the articulation among them and the way they are orchestrated.Main Results: It was found that resource pooling characterizes the transition moment from the emergency stage to the growth stage.Theoretical/ Methodological Contribution: A direct relationship between resource orchestration and the stage of ecosystem development was identified.Social/Management Contribution: The importance of the orchestration role, as well as the presence of an orchestrating actor, was emphasized, and a framework of analysis on the orchestration of resources in innovation ecosystems was proposed.

Cloud Technologies and Services

This chapter defines what cloud computing is. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has set out a commonly used definition of cloud computing. Under this definition, a 'computing capacity' will qualify as a 'cloud service' if it has the following five characteristics: on-demand self-service; broad network access; resource pooling; rapid elasticity; and measured service. In terms of business models, cloud computing resources are typically offered 'as a Service'. Traditionally, cloud computing services were typically described as falling into one or more of the following three service categories or models: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). The chapter then looks at the key concepts of the cloud supply chain.

Heavy-traffic Analysis of the Generalized Switch under Multidimensional State Space Collapse

Stochastic Processing Networks that model wired and wireless networks, and other queueing systems, have been studied in heavytraffic limit under the so-called Complete Resource Pooling (CRP) condition. When the CRP condition is not satisfied, heavy-traffic results are known only in the special case of an input-queued switch and bandwidth-sharing network. In this paper, we consider a very general queueing system called the 'generalized switch' that includes wireless networks under fading, data center networks, input-queued switch, etc. The primary contribution of this paper is to present the exact value of the steadystate mean of certain linear combinations of queue lengths in the heavy-traffic limit under MaxWeight scheduling algorithm. We use the Drift method, and we also present a negative result that it is not possible to obtain the remaining linear combinations (and consequently all the individual mean queue lengths) using this method. We do this by presenting an alternate view of the Drift method in terms of an (under-determined) system of linear equations. Finally, we use this system of equations to obtain upper and lower bounds on all linear combinations of queue lengths.