Auctions are supposed to procure the best deal money can buy. Yet, practitioners who procure complex contracts by auction are well aware of some basic pitfalls. One concern is that winning bids may not reflect the quality of the bidder but strategic behavior like low-balling bids or underestimating costs. Such behavior may then lead to demands for contract renegotiation by the winning bidder th...

©FFPRHC J Fam Plann Reprod Health Care 2007: 33(3) Clinical scenario Susan, an 18-year-old, presents to you in a community setting requesting a termination of pregnancy (TOP). You see from her notes that she had a TOP 6 months earlier and, in the course of the history taking, you raise this with her. She confesses that in fact she didn’t have this TOP but her sister, Nicola, who was 15 years ol...

The funding policies of the NIH have made it increasingly difficult for young researchers to procure research funds. This threatens to drive a whole generation of young people away from careers in basic biomedical research.

Emerging service-oriented technologies allow software agents to automatically procure distributed services to complete complex tasks. However, in many application scenarios, service providers demand financial remuneration, execution times are uncertain and consumers have deadlines for their tasks. In this paper, we address these issues by developing a novel approach that dynamically procures mu...

Emerging service-oriented technologies allow software agents to automatically procure distributed services to complete complex tasks. However, in many application scenarios, service providers demand financial remuneration, execution times are uncertain and consumers have deadlines for their tasks. In this paper, we address these issues by developing a novel approach that dynamically procures mu...