This paper presents an extension of a framework for synthesizing a composition of services, named Roman Model, such that it is able to model the best service composition synthesis problem. In such extension, which we call the Weighted Roman Model, the services are modeled as Weighted Transition Systems so that one can capture the cost of operations executed by a service. Within this setting, we...

Time-cost trade off problem is one of the highly important issues in project accomplishment and has been ever taken into consideration by project managers. Time and cost as two critical objectives of construction project management, are not independent but intricately related. Time-cost optimization may be defined as a process to identify suitable construction activities for speeding up, and fo...

This paper draws upon the results of a qualitative study on the procurement and adoption of open source software by public sector organizations spanning Europe, Brazil and the USA. The premise of this work was to understand the role ‘cost’ or total cost of ownership of software plays in government procurement decisions. We found, however, that this was more a rhetoric to gain acceptance for ope...

Technical support contributes 17% of the total cost of ownership of today’s desktop PCs [25]. An important element of technical support is troubleshooting misconfigured applications. Misconfiguration troubleshooting is particularly challenging, because configuration information is shared and altered by multiple applications. In this paper, we present a novel troubleshooting system: PeerPressure...

Dissertation Abstract Chapter 1: Reclaim-proof Allocation of Indivisible Objects This paper studies axioms de…ning a " desirable allocation " in indivisible object allocation problems. The existing axioms in the literature are conditions of ex-ante robustness (individual-rationality and group-rationality) and ex-post robustness (Pareto-e¢ ciency) to blocking coalitions. We introduce an all-enco...

This study uses a boundary design and propensity score methods to the effects of 1930s-era Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) “redlining” maps on long-run trajectories urban neighborhoods. The led reduced home ownership rates, house values, rents increased racial segregation in later decades. A comparison either side city-level population cutoff that determined whether were drawn finds broadly...

This case-control study evaluated the factors influencing volunteering in the Islamic Republic of Iran's Women's Health Volunteer (WHV) programme, which is implemented in 150 centres in Khorasan-e-Razavi Province. We recruited 145 cases (volunteers) and 146 controls (non-volunteers) from the centres. Data were collected by questionnaire. Sociodemographic variables included were: length of resid...

background: medicinal plant extracts such as those obtained from salvia species have a wide variety of chemical compounds in their essential oils. the repellency of a number of essential oils including those from the labiates like salvia against several insect species including the common house flies is reported. objective: the aim of this investigation was to find out the excito-repellency eff...