In July 2001 the 70-year-old German „Rabattgesetz“ that prevented negotiations in retail business has been abolished. During the abolition process consumeras well as retailer pressure groups claimed that significant damages for their clients were to be expected. Using game theoretic modelling this paper discusses which economic consequences could arise from the amendment. It shows that none of ...

Extending the analysis of the evolution of pore humidity and carbonation presented in a preceding paper by Ferretti and Baz ̆ant, this paper analyzes the redistribution in time of vertical normal stresses across the multiple-leaf wall of ancient towers, using the example of collapsed Pavia Tower. It is shown that stress redistribution due to nonuniform shrinkage and nonuniform creep across the w...

Preserving cultural heritage and historic sites is an important problem. These sites are subject to erosion, vandalism, and as long-lived artifacts, they have gone through many phases of construction, damage and repair. It is important to keep an accurate record of these sites using 3-D model building technology as they currently are, so preservationists can track changes, foresee structural pr...

The recent emergence of the small cloud (SC), both in concept and in practice, has been driven mainly by issues related to service cost and complexity of commercial cloud providers (e.g., Amazon) employing massive data centers. However, the resource inelasticity problem faced by the SCs due to their relatively scarce resources (e.g., virtual machines) might lead to a potential degradation of cu...

The technology-driven demand for the extraction of human organs--mainly kidneys, but also liver lobes and single corneas--has created an illegal market in body parts. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, in this article I examine the body bazaar in Bangladesh: in particular, the process of selling organs and the experiences of 33 kidney sellers who are victims of this trade. The sellers' narratives...