A reliability model for a power generating system comprising two gas turbines and one steam turbine is developed wherein scheduled inspection is done at regular interval of time for maintenance. Initially, all the three units i.e. two gas turbines as well as one the steam turbine are operating and working of the system is called the working at full capacity. On failure of one of the gas turbine...

This review-essay explores the uses and limits of cost-benefit analysis in the context of environmental protection, focusing on three recent books: Priceless, by Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling; Cellular Phones, Public Fears, and A Culture of Precaution, by Adam Burgess; and Catastrophe: Risk and Response, by Richard A. Posner. The review-essay emphasizes three principal limitations on the ...

Traditionally, computing has meant calculating results and then storing those results for later use. Unfortunately, committing large volumes of rarely used data to storage wastes space and energy, making it a very expensive strategy. Cloud computing, with its readily available and flexibly allocatable computing resources, suggests an alternative: storing the provenance data, and means to recomp...

The Economics of Altruistic Punishment and the Demise of Cooperation Explaining the evolution and maintenance of cooperation among unrelated individuals is one of the fundamental problems in biology and the social sciences. Recent experimental evidence suggests that altruistic punishment is an important mechanism to maintain cooperation among humans. In this paper we explore the boundary condit...

Societies prohibit many transactions considered morally repugnant, although potentially efficiency-enhancing. We conducted an online choice experiment to characterize preferences for the morality and efficiency of payments to kidney donors. Preferences were heterogeneous, ranging from deontological to strongly consequentialist; the median respondent would support payments by a public agency if ...

Using detailed data from garment factories in Bangalore, India, we estimate large, negative impacts of temperature on productive efficiency (actual over target output). The introduction of LED lighting, which emits less heat than standard lighting, attenuates the temperatureproductivity gradient by 75 percent. Our estimates suggest that productivity returns to LEDs are more than four times larg...

The objective is to use cost-benefit analyses to identify, for a given project, optimal sets of software assurance activities. Towards this end we have incorporated costbenefit calculations into a risk management framework. The net result is the capability to rapidly explore the costs and benefits of sets of assurance decisions. We describe the cost-benefit aspects of our framework , and demons...

This paper assesses the economic implications of an innovative approach to preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS in the Washington, DC. “Test & Treat” is premised on the idea that the epidemic can ultimately be eliminated by testing people widely and regularly and by putting all infected persons on antiretroviral medicines upon diagnosis. The relative costs and benefits of Test & Treat are quantifi...

This study develops an alternative methodology for the risk analysis of information systems security (ISS). an evidential reasoning approach under the Dempster-Shafer theory of belief functions. The approach has the following important dimensions. First, the evidential reasoning approach provides a rigorous, structured manner to incorporate relevant ISS risk factors, related countermeasures, an...

This article reports efforts to devise frameworks for quickly and easily characterizing 13 different supervisory control applications developed and tested by the international participants in a North Atlantic Treaty Organization working group on supervisory control of multiple uninhabited vehicles (UVs). Multiple prior frameworks for supervisory control are reviewed, and two novel ones (a more ...