Licence de brevet et partage du risque: Résultats de simulation

Annals of Telecommunications - Le partage du risque est une des raisons les plus souvent avancées pour expliquer les clauses financières des contrats de licence. Pour autant, aucune...     

Progress and prospects of the human–robot collaboration

Recent technological advances in hardware design of the robotic platforms enabled the implementation of various control modalities for improved interactions with humans and unstructured environments. An important application area for the integration of robots with such advanced interaction capabilities is human–robot collaboration. This aspect represents high socio-economic impacts and maintains the sense of purpose of the involved people, as the robots do not completely replace the humans from the work process. The research community’s recent surge of interest in this area has been devoted to the implementation of various methodologies to achieve intuitive and seamless human–robot-environment interactions by incorporating the collaborative partners’ superior capabilities, e.g. human’s cognitive and robot’s physical power generation capacity. In fact, the main purpose of this paper is to review the state-of-the-art on intermediate human–robot interfaces (bi-directional), robot control modalities, system stability, benchmarking and relevant use cases, and to extend views on the required future developments in the realm of human–robot collaboration.     

Asbestos lung burden and asbestosis after occupational and environmental exposure in an asbestos cement manufacturing area: a necropsy study

OBJECTIVE: The largest Italian asbestos cement factory had been active in Casale Monferrato until 1986: in previous studies a substantial increase in the incidence of pleural mesothelioma was found among residents without occupational exposure to asbestos. To estimate exposure to asbestos in the population, this study evaluated the presence of histological asbestosis and the lung burden of asbestos fibres (AFs) and asbestos bodies (ABs). METHODS: The study comprises the consecutive series of necropsies performed at the Hospital of Casale Monferrato between 1985 and 1988. A sample of lung parenchima was collected and stored for 48 out of 55 necropsies. The AF concentration was measured with a TEM electron microscope with x ray mineralogical analysis. The ABs were counted and fibrosis evaluated by optical microscopy. The nearest relative of each subject was interviewed on occupational and residential history. Mineralogical and histological analyses and interviews were conducted in 1993-4. RESULTS: Statistical analyses included 41 subjects with AF, AB count, and interview. Subjects without occupational exposure who ever lived in Casale Monferrato had an average concentration of 1500 AB/g dried weight (gdw); Seven of 18 presented with asbestosis or small airway lung disease (SAL). G2 asbestosis was diagnosed in two women with no occupational asbestos exposure. One of them had been teaching at a school close to the factory for 12 years. Ten subjects had experienced occupational asbestos exposure, seven in asbestos cement production: mean concentrations were 1.032 x 10(6) AF/gdw and 96,280 AB/gdw. Eight of the 10 had asbestosis or SAL. CONCLUSION: The high concentration of ABs and the new finding of environmental asbestosis confirm that high asbestos concentration was common in the proximity of the factory. Subjects not occupationally exposed and ever living in Casale Monferrato tended to have higher AB concentration than subjects never living in the town (difference not significant). The concentrations of ABs and AFs were higher than those found in other studies on nonoccupationally exposed subjects.     

Telecommunications Demand and Pricing Structure: An Econometric Analysis

The main objective of this paper is to analyse residential demand by traffic destination, using a translogarithmic indirect utility function. We focus on five traffic directions, in order to construct a model adapted to evaluate the characteristics of telecommunications demand in a competitive market. The resulting price elasticities express high reactivity to own price changes for the main traffic directions, as well as little interactions between the different types of traffic. Moreover, the high values of income elasticities confirm the importance of income effects when analysing residential telecommunications demand. This model shows useful for welfare analysis. The computation of customers' income equivalent variation shows, on average, a higher willingness to pay for some traffic directions than the bill actually paid. Finally, we show that the optimal prices for the operator, in a cost minimisation point of view, are higher than the observed prices for local and national traffic directions. This emphasises the existence of important cross-subsidies among the different segments of customers.     

LEARNING OLIGOPOLISTIC COMPETITION IN ELECTRICITY AUCTIONS

This paper addresses the problem of auction markets efficiency within the context of recently liberalized electricity markets. Two different auction mechanisms, i.e., the uniform and the discriminatory price setting rules, have been employed worldwide in designing electricity markets. In this paper, we study the relative efficiency of the two auction mechanisms in the framework of the learning-in-games approach. The behavior of electricity suppliers are modeled by means of an adaptive learning algorithm and the demand is assumed to be constant and inelastic, according to a common hypothesis in electricity market modeling. Computational experiments results are interpreted according game theoretical solutions, i.e., Nash equilibria and Pareto optima. Different economic scenarios corresponding to a duopoly and a tripoly competition with different level of demand are considered. Results show that in the proposed conditions, sellers learn to play competitive strategies, which correspond to Nash equilibria. Finally, this study establishes that, in the presented computational setting and economic scenarios, the discriminatory auction mechanism results more efficient than the uniform auction one.     

Urban deprivation in Argentina: A POSET analysis

The Argentinian case offers many examples of fragmented urban reality, whose deprivation might be fruitfully analysed by deprivation indicators, according to a current trend in literature. Non-aggregative quantitative method based on the POSET theory offers an alternative approach that may steer clear of the shortcomings of the aggregative approaches. Through our analysis we intend to propose a picture of the Argentinian material and social deprivation. Since our approach does not establish any indicator and avoids absolute hierarchy among areas, it makes a rigorous tool available to public authorities. This allows them the rational choice about where and how intervene, to focus the political action at its best. Our analysis shows that social deprivation is characterized by high variability, which makes it less comparable than material deprivation. Moreover, 72% of the statistical units considered are socially deprived.     

Trace elements in the muscle of red shrimp Aristeus antennatus (Risso, 1816) (Crustacea, Decapoda) from Ligurian sea (NW Mediterranean): variations related to the reproductive cycle

Concentrations of total and organic mercury, cadmium, lead, copper, iron, manganese and zinc were determined in the muscular tissue of 135 specimens of Aristeus antennatus (Risso, 1816) collected during a 3-year period in the Ligurian sea (NW Mediterranean). The aim of the present work was to study the relationships between the concentrations of these trace elements and the main biological parameters characterising the organisms, i.e. sex and size with special attention to the sexual maturity of the female specimens. Mercury is the only element showing a significant correlation with the size of the specimens, and for this reason it could give some indications about the age of the shrimps. However, comparison between females collected at four different reproductive phases shows that reproductive individuals are characterised by higher levels of mercury with respect to non-reproductive individuals of the same size.     

Learning Agents in an Artificial Power Exchange: Tacit Collusion, Market Power and Efficiency of Two Double-auction Mechanisms

This paper investigates the relative efficiency of two double-auction mechanisms for power exchanges, using agent-based modeling. Two standard pricing rules are considered and compared (i.e., “discriminatory” and “uniform”) and computational experiments, characterized by different inelastic demand level, explore oligopolistic competitions on both quantity and price between learning sellers/producers. Two reinforcement learning algorithms are considered as well—“Marimon and McGrattan” and “Q-learning”—in an attempt to simulate different behavioral types. In particular, greedy sellers (optimizing their instantaneous rewards on a tick-by-tick basis) and inter-temporal optimizing sellers are simulated. Results are interpreted relative to game-theoretical solutions and performance metrics. Nash equilibria in pure strategies and sellers’ joint profit maximization are employed to analyze the convergence behavior of the learning algorithms. Furthermore, the difference between payments to suppliers and total generation costs are estimated so as to measure the degree of market inefficiency. Results point out that collusive behaviors are penalized by the discriminatory auction mechanism in low demand scenarios, whereas in a high demand scenario the difference appears to be negligible.