Academic literature on the topic 'Trust Region Model'

<p>Event marketing is the important strategy for the regional tourism development. It is worthwhile to be discussed that the cooperation between regional image and physical environment can shape the regional features and intensify tourists’ attitudes and tourist willingness towards regions. This study took the regular event marketing activities (Xinshe Sea of Flowers events in Taichung; Sakura Festival in Formosa Aboriginal Culture Village in Sun Moon Lake) held in two regions in Taiwan as the examples to discuss the effect of event marketing activities in different regions, regional image and physical environment on tourists’ experiential value, satisfaction, trust and commitment, so as to establish the competing model, compare the intensity difference in each path relationship and deeply analyze the effect of different event marketing activities.</p><p>After the analysis of 500 valid questionnaires, it can be found that: (1) the event marketing activities and physical environment in two regions both have the significantly positive effect on tourists’ experiential value; (2) The tourists’ experiential value has the significantly positive effect on satisfaction and trust; (3) The tourists’ trust has the significantly positive effect on commitment; (4) However, the regional image has no significant effect on tourists’ experiential value. Besides, there is significant difference in the influencing intensity of the two paths: (1) The tourists’ satisfaction for Xinshe Sea of Flowers events in Taichung has the significantly positive effect on trust, while there is no significantly positive effect in the other region; (2) The influencing intensity of tourists’ experiential value for Sakura Festival in Formosa Aboriginal Culture Village in Sun Moon Lake on trust is significantly greater than that in the other region. It can be seen that the event marketing in different regions can generate the impact with different intensity. Therefore, each region should cooperate with its physical environment to plan the characteristic event marketing strategies.<strong></strong></p>

We propose a nonmonotone adaptive trust region method for unconstrained optimization problems which combines a conic model and a new update rule for adjusting the trust region radius. Unlike the traditional adaptive trust region methods, the subproblem of the new method is the conic minimization subproblem. Moreover, at each iteration, we use the last and the current iterative information to define a suitable initial trust region radius. The global and superlinear convergence properties of the proposed method are established under reasonable conditions. Numerical results show that the new method is efficient and attractive for unconstrained optimization problems.

A quasi-Newton trust region method with a new fractional model for linearly constrained optimization problems is proposed. We delete linear equality constraints by using null space technique. The fractional trust region subproblem is solved by a simple dogleg method. The global convergence of the proposed algorithm is established and proved. Numerical results for test problems show the efficiency of the trust region method with new fractional model. These results give the base of further research on nonlinear optimization.

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to test and analyze the Influence of Service Marketing, Referral Marketing, Trust Icon Corporate on Radical Marketing through Customer Satisfaction at Bank Jatim Sememi Branch Surabaya. Design/methodology/approach: Purposive Sampling Method. The total sample of 100 Customer Respondents at Bank Jatim Sememi Branch. This research is a Survey Research and Quantitative approach. The data analysis technique of this study uses the Partial Least Square (PLS) method. Findings: The results of Service Marketing Research do not directly affect Customer Satisfaction, Referral Marketing has a direct effect on Customer Satisfaction, Trust Icon Corporate does not directly affect Customer Satisfaction, Service Marketing has a direct effect on Radical Marketing, Referral Marketing has a direct effect on Radical Marketing, Trust Icon Corporate directly affects Radical Marketing. Service Marketing does not have an indirect effect on Radical Marketing through Customer Satisfaction. Radical Marketing does not have an indirect effect on Radical Marketing through Customer Satisfaction. Trust Icon Corporate does not indirectly affect Radical Marketing through Customer Satisfaction. Originality/value: This paper is original Paper type: Research paper

El modelo matemático de un generador fotovoltaico en conexión Serie-Paralelo representado mediante el modelo de diodo simple, tiene asociado a él un sistema de ecuaciones no lineales. En este trabajo se propone la solución de estos sistemas empleando los métodos de optimización Trust Region Dogleg y Optimización por Enjambre de Partículas, para resolver el modelo de un generador fotovoltaico operando en condiciones homogéneas y no homogéneas, variando el número de submódulos y el patrón de sombreado que incide sobre el generador. Se realizó la simulación de los modelos para generadores compuestos por 3 y 15 submódulos en serie, bajo diferentes condiciones de sombreado. De los métodos implementados, Trust Region Doglegmostró un mejor desempeño con tiempos de cómputo 2 y 14 veces menores que el método de referencia y Optimización por Enjambre de Partículas, respectivamente. Y un error medio cuadrático igual o un 50% inferior a los otros métodos

Modern nonlinear programming solvers can efficiently handle very large scale optimization problems when accurate derivative information is available. However, black box or derivative free modeling components are often unavoidable in practice when the modeled phenomena may cross length and time scales. This work is motivated by examples in chemical process optimization where most unit operations have well-known equation oriented representations, but some portion of the model (e.g. a complex reactor model) may only be available with an external function call. The concept of a surrogate model is frequently used to solve this type of problem. A surrogate model is an equation oriented approximation of the black box that allows traditional derivative based optimization to be applied directly. However, optimization tends to exploit approximation errors in the surrogate model leading to inaccurate solutions and repeated rebuilding of the surrogate model. Even if the surrogate model is perfectly accurate at the solution, this only guarantees that the original problem is feasible. Since optimality conditions require gradient information, a higher degree of accuracy is required. In this work, we consider the general problem of hybrid glass box/black box optimization, or gray box optimization, with focus on guaranteeing that a surrogate-based optimization strategy converges to optimal points of the original detailed model. We first propose an algorithm that combines ideas from SQP filter methods and derivative free trust region methods to solve this class of problems. The black box portion of the model is replaced by a sequence of surrogate models (i.e. surrogate models) in trust region subproblems. By carefully managing surrogate model construction, the algorithm is guaranteed to converge to true optimal solutions. Then, we discuss how this algorithm can be modified for effective application to practical problems. Performance is demonstrated on a test set of benchmarks as well as a set of case studies relating to chemical process optimization. In particular, application to the oxycombustion carbon capture power generation process leads to significant efficiency improvements. Finally, extensions of surrogate-based optimization to other contexts is explored through a case study with physical properties.

In this thesis a numerical study of the one dimensional viscous Burgers equation is conducted. The discretization techniques Finite Differences, Finite Element Method and Group Finite Elements are applied and their impact on model reduction techniques, namely Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD), Group POD and the Discrete Empirical Interpolation Method (DEIM), is studied. This study is facilitated by examination of several common ODE solvers. Embedded in this process, some results on the structure of the POD basis and an alternative algorithm to compute the POD subspace are presented. Various numerical studies are conducted to compare the different methods and the to study the interaction of the spatial discretization on the ROM through the basis functions. Moreover, the results are used to investigate the impact of Reduced Order Models (ROM) on Optimal Control Problems. To this end, the ROM is embedded in a Trust Region Framework and the convergence results of Arian et al. (2000) is extended to POD-DEIM. Based on the convergence theorem and the results of the numerical studies, the emphasis is on implementation strategies for numerical speedup.
Master of Science

This study focused on how local politicians in Kalmar perceive journalists and their intertwined relationship. We based our study on the theoretical understanding of today’s media-centric democratic society. The ‘adversary model’ offered an understanding of the intricate relations between politicians and journalists. The relationship builds on constant trade where both parties are dependent on each other. Politicians exchange information to gain attention in the media. Journalists needs politicians as important sources of information and have the power to control the exposure that politicians get in the public eye. This study was researched and conducted through qualitative interviews with local politicians.

We found that experienced politicians have developed an understanding for journalistic work and that it is important to have a good relationship to reach out to their constituency. This professional relationship has to be kept at arm’s length as it otherwise risks to become too muddled. We learned that politicians are well aware of the need to adapt to media conditions – there were, however, examples of breakdowns in this precarious relationship.

The politicians in our study delivered several examples of how media adaptation is managed, e g how press conferences are scheduled according to media deadlines and are held at suitable locations so that photographers can get good pictures. Trust appeared to be the crucial condition for a rewarding relationship. Every politician in our study agreed that it is all a question of trust.

For parameter inversion problems governed by systems of partial differential equations, such as those arising in Diffuse Optical Tomography (DOT), even the cost of repeated objective function evaluation can be overwhelming. Despite the linear (in the state variable) nature of the DOT problem, the nonlinear parameter inversion process is dominated by the computational burden of solving a large linear system for each source and frequency. To compute the Jacobian for use in Newton-type methods, an adjoint solve is required for each detector and frequency. When a three-dimensional tomography problem may have nearly 1,000 sources and detectors, the computational cost of an optimization routine is a large burden. While techniques from model order reduction can partially alleviate the computational cost, obtaining error bounds in parameter space is typically not feasible. In this work, we examine two different remedies based on stochastic estimates of the objective function. In the first manuscript, we focus on maximizing the efficiency of using stochastic estimates by replacing our objective function with a surrogate objective function computed from a reduced order model (ROM). We use as few as a single sample to detect a misfit between the full-order and surrogate objective functions. Once a sufficiently large difference is detected, it is necessary to update the ROM to reduce the error. We propose a new technique for improving the ROM with very few large linear solutions. Using this techniques, we observe a reduction of up to 98% in the number of large linear solutions for a three-dimensional tomography problem. In the second manuscript, we focus on establishing a robust algorithm. We propose a new trust region framework that replaces the objective function evaluations with stochastic estimates of the improvement factor and the misfit between the model and objective function gradients. If these estimates satisfy a fixed multiplicative error bound with a high, but fixed, probability, we show that this framework converges almost surely to a stationary point of the objective function. We derive suitable bounds for the DOT problem and present results illustrating the robust nature of these estimates with only 10 samples per iteration.
Doctor of Philosophy
For problems such as medical imaging, the process of reconstructing the state of a system from measurement data can be very expensive to compute. The ever increasing need for high accuracy requires very large models to be used. Reducing the computational burden by replacing the model with a specially constructed smaller model is an established and effective technique. However, it can be difficult to determine how well the smaller model matches the original model. In this thesis, we examine two techniques for estimating the quality of a smaller model based on randomized combinations of sources and detectors. The first technique focuses on reducing the computational cost as much as possible. With the equivalent of a single randomized source, we show that this estimate is an effective measure of the model quality. Coupled with a new technique for improving the smaller model, we demonstrate a highly efficient and robust method. The second technique prioritizes robustness in its algorithm. The algorithm uses these randomized combinations to estimate how the observations change for different system states. If these estimates are accurate with a high probability, we show that this leads to a method that always finds a minimum misfit between predicted values and the observed data.

Thesis (M. S.)--Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008.
Committee Chair: Anton Kleywegt; Committee Co-Chair: Alexander Shapiro; Committee Member: Charles Rosa; Committee Member: Shabbir Ahmed; Committee Member: Sigrun Andradottir.

Diese Dissertation umfasst drei Aufsätzen, die sich mit Erwartungen, Entscheidungen und deren Rückwirkung auf die Umgebung beschäftigen. Der erste Aufsatz untersucht die Binnenwanderung von Ost- nach Westdeutschland. Dabei wird der Zusammenhang von Variation in ökonomischen Disparitäten zwischen der Ursprungs- und der Zielregion und Bildungsniveau, Alter und Arbeitsmarktstatus der wandernden Bevölkerung untersucht. Mit Hilfe der SOEP Daten von 1993 bis 2011 gelangt die Untersuchung zu dem Ergebnis, dass regionale Disparitäten in Verbindung mit der Selbstselektion der Wandernden stehen. Während die Wandernden im Durchschnitt jünger und besser ausgebildet als die Bleibenden sind, verringert sich dieser Unterschied, wenn die Differentiale in den Arbeitslosenquoten zwischen den Regionen steigen. Im zweiten Aufsatz entwickle ich ein Modell zur Untersuchung von prosozialem Verhalten in Begegnungen mit Fremden. Durch das Abstrahieren von Möglichkeiten der Reputationsbildung oder des Bestraftwerdens, entfallen die wesentlichen strategischen Motive für prosoziales Verhalten. Die Entscheidung prosozial zu Handeln ist dann nicht mehr strategisch vorteilhaft sondern intrinsisch motiviert durch Altruismus und einer Neigung sich an das Verhalten anderer anzupassen. In einem zweiten Schritt untersuche ich, ob die Erkenntnisse des Modells mit dem empirisch beobachteten Verhalten übereinstimmen. Der dritte Aufsatz skizziert eine (mögliche) Verhaltensstruktur und notwendige Bedingungen auf Mikroebene, die zu den beobachteten Verhaltensunterschieden in prosozialem Verhalten zwischen dem ländlichen und städtischen Raum führen. Den Rahmen des hier entwickelten Modells bildet das bekannte Gefangenen Dilemma, das wiederholt mit zufällig zugeordneten Partnern einer großen Gesellschaft gespielt wird. Das Modell bezieht Merkmale ein, die sich häufig in realen Begegnungen wiederfinden: imperfekte Information, freiwillige Teilnahme und eine Neigung sich dem Verhalten anderer anzupassen.
This thesis consists of three essays that analyze choices and beliefs to explore how both lead to adaptive behavior. The first essay examines the positive net migration flow from the eastern to western parts of Germany. The migration decision is substantially based on expectations about future developments. With economic conditions changing substantially over the past 20 years in the eastern part of Germany, the incentives to migrate have also altered, so changing the composition of the east-to-west migrant body. This essay explores variations in economic disparities between the region of origin and region of destination, relating them to changes in the skill level, age and labor force status of the migrant population. Analyzing SOEP data from 1993-2011, the findings suggest that, with falling wage differentials, older migrants are less frequent job-to-job movers and are more likely to be non-working prior to migration. Furthermore, while migrants tend to be younger and better educated than stayers, the group of movers becomes partly less distinct from the group of stayers with respect to the skill and age composition when regional disparities in employment opportunities increase. The second and the third essay of this thesis model the decision making process in social interactions between strangers. In these situations, choices are often affected by beliefs about others behavior. In the second essay of this work, I develop a simple model of prosocial behavior for encounters between strangers. By abstracting from the possibility of reputation building and punishment between anonymous partners, I remove the main strategic motives for prosocial behavior so reducing it to a simple non-strategic decision. The principal motivation to behave prosocially is then intrinsic, based on altruism, with a taste for conforming to the behavior of others. In this way, individual decisions are conditional on the behavior of others. Emerging equilibria will then explain the occurrence of prosocial or cooperative behavior within a given society. In a second step, I analyze whether the model’s predictions are consistent with the empirical evidence on the link between beliefs and prosocial behavior using data on blood donations. The third essay outline a (possible) micro-structure and conditions which lead to the observed urban-rural differences in cooperative behavior using agent-based modeling. The model presented here adapts the familiar framework of a prisoners dilemma which is played repeatedly with randomly matched members of a large population. I introduce features that are often found in real world interactions: imperfect information, voluntary participation and a taste for conforming to majority behavior. In this analysis, peoples beliefs about the level of cooperation in the population and their resulting behavior are determined endogenously. Both are governed principally by the experience that they derive from interactions. I present results of an agentbased simulation in order to study the emerging dynamic relationships, to examine how cooperative behavior evolves over time under different circumstances, and to determine how urban-rural differences in behavior emerge. The factors that give rise to rural-urban differences are heterogeneity in individual loss aversion or risk taking, and limited migration possibilities between rural and urban areas.

The increasing interest in the real estate investment has led to the emergence of new real estate investment vehicles, adding more complexity to the real estate market which increasingly resembles to financial markets. Academic research regarding real estate market, from a financial perspective, has been developed, essentially, considering modern finanance theories. Nevertheless, a new trend of thought named behavioural finance that assume the market inefficiency as well as the irrationality of market, and develope models based on individuals' behaviour. This doctoral thesis applies behavioural finance theories into the analysis and investment in the real estate market, showing that behavioural models improve the results of their actors' decision making. On the one hand, it has been developed an econometric model of the prices of new housing in Spain, implying not only an extrinsic and intrinsic combined approach, but also hipothesis inherited from the Behavioral School in order to explain and predict the Spanish real estate market and understand the periods of irrational exhuberance. On the other hand, it has been analysed from a financial perspective, the market performance of the first SOCIMI (Spanish Real Estate Investment Trusts) established in Spain, developing a model that allows to predict the price-to-net-asset-value (P/NAV) ratio of a SOCIMI. In addition, it is proved that the constitution of a SOCIMI is an efficient alternative for real estate companies to obtain liquidity from their assets, compared to other alternatives such as assets' disposal or obtaining bank finance.
El aumento del interés inversor en el sector inmobiliario, el cual forma parte tanto de carteras de pequeños inversores hasta grandes fondos de inversión internacionales, ha llevado a la aparición de nuevos vehículos de inversión inmobiliaria dotando al mercado de mayor complejidad, asemejándolo cada vez más a los mercados financieros. La investigación académica entorno al mercado inmobiliario, desde una perspectiva financiera, ha tomado como referencia las finanzas modernas surgidas de la escuela económica neoclásica y basadas en la teorías de carteras de Markowitz, del mercado de capitales de Sharpe y del mercado eficiente de Fama. No obstante, una nueva corriente denominada finanzas conductuales, desarrolladas a partir de las teorías de la escuela conductual, han puesto en duda los modelos de las finanzas modernas debido al dudoso encaje de sus modelos en el mercado inmobiliario, así como en la escasa previsión de la crisis de los mercados financieros del año 2008. Así, la falta de un mercado único de comercialización, la ineficiencia informacional, la heterogeneidad e iliquidez de los activos, son algunas de las características del sector inmobiliario que no se adaptan a las hipótesis de la teoría económica moderna, y que, por tanto, exigen un nuevo planteamiento que parece resolverse mediante las finanzas conductuales. La escuela conductual asume la ineficiencia de los mercados y la irracionalidad de sus actores (los cuales influyen en los precios infravalorándolos o sobrevalorándolos de forma persistente y duradera) y desarrolla modelos en base al comportamiento real de las personas. La presente tesis doctoral aplica las finanzas conductuales para el análisis e inversión en el mercado inmobiliario evidenciando que los modelos conductuales comportan una mejora en las tomas de decisiones de sus actores. Por un lado, se ha desarrollado un modelo econométrico del precio de la vivienda nueva en España que supone no sólo un acercamiento que combina el enfoque extrínseco e intrínseco, si no que incorpora también hipótesis de la escuela conductual a fin de explicar y prever el ciclo inmobiliario español y comprender los períodos de exuberancia irracional. Adicionalmente, se ha procedido a analizar desde una perspectiva financiera, el comportamiento de las primeras SOCIMI (Sociedades Anónimas Cotizadas de Inversión en el Mercado Inmobiliario) constituidas en España, desarrollando un modelo que prevé el valor del ratio P/NAV, obtenido como el cociente entre la cotización (P) y el valor neto de los activos (NAV) de una SOCIMI. Así mismo se comprueba que la constitución de una SOCIMI es una alternativa eficiente para las sociedades inmobiliarias para la obtención de liquidez de sus activos, frente a otras alternativas como la enajenación directa de éstos o la obtención de financiación bancaria. Finalmente, aunque la liquidez de las primeras SOCIMI constituidas en España es moderada, se evidencia que son un vehículo de inversión inmobiliaria competitivo en términos de rentabilidad y riesgo, previéndose una mejora en el medio plazo a medida se constituyan SOCIMI de mayor tamaño y se disponga de series históricas de rentabilidades más amplias.

The method of quasilinearization for the solution of nonlinear two point boundary value problems is Newton's method for a nonlinear differential operator equation. Semilocal convergence results, with the attendant error estimates, are available from the Kantorovich Theorem. Since the linear boundary value problem to be solved at each iteration must be discretized, it is natural to consider quasilinearization in the framework of Inexact Newton methods. Conditions on the size of the relative residual of the linear differential equation, given by an approximate solution, can then be specified to guarantee rapid local convergence. If initial value techniques are used to solve the linear boundary value problem then it is possible to implement an integration step selection scheme so that the residual criteria is satisfied by the approximate solution. The result is a sequence of approximate solutions to the linear boundary value problems that converge to the true solution of the nonlinear boundary value problem. A model trust region approach to globalization can be extended to this infinite dimensional problem to allow convergence from an arbitrary initial point. The double dogleg implementation yields a globally convergent algorithm that is robust in solving difficult problems.

The state social contract relationship between rulers and the ruled in civil society is fruitfully understood as a governing convention. This relationship is modeled with an indefinitely repeated Humean Sovereignty game, where subjects and their sovereign maintain a governing convention by respectively obeying and providing adequate government. The ruled and their rulers maintain an implicit contract that is self-enforcing rather than an explicit contract requiring third-party enforcement. This model is motivated by the Trust problem in game theory and dynamic programming models of employment search. The governing convention idea has roots in Hume’s discussions of government. The closely allied Leadership Selection problem has roots in Hobbes’ account of commonwealth by institution. Hobbes’ original analysis fails, but his general strategy of justifying government by identifying an isomorphism between an actual regime and the regime of hypothetical choice motivates justifying democratic government via the salience of a democratic leadership convention.

Every engineer and decision scientist must have a good mastery of optimization, an essential element in their toolkit. Thus, this articulate introductory textbook will certainly be welcomed by students and practicing professionals alike. Drawing from his vast teaching experience, the author skillfully leads the reader through a rich choice of topics in a coherent, fluid and tasteful blend of models and methods anchored on the underlying mathematical notions (only prerequisites: first year calculus and linear algebra). Topics range from the classics to some of the most recent developments in smooth unconstrained and constrained optimization, like descent methods, conjugate gradients, Newton and quasi-Newton methods, linear programming and the simplex method, trust region and interior point methods. Furthermore elements of discrete and combinatorial optimization like network optimization, integer programming and heuristic local search methods are also presented. This book presents optimization as a modeling tool that beyond supporting problem formulation plus design and implementation of efficient algorithms, also is a language suited for interdisciplinary human interaction. Readers further become aware that while the roots of mathematical optimization go back to the work of giants like Newton, Lagrange, Cauchy, Euler or Gauss, it did not become a discipline on its own until World War Two. Also that its present momentum really resulted from its symbiosis with modern computers, which made it possible to routinely solve problems with millions of variables and constraints. With his witty, entertaining, yet precise style, Michel Bierlaire captivates his readers and awakens their desire to try out the presented material in a creative mode. One of the outstanding assets of this book is the unified, clear and concise rendering of the various algorithms, which makes them easily readable and translatable into any high level programming language. ''This is an addictive book that I am very pleased to recommend.'' Prof. Thomas M. Liebling

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

AbstractThis study attempts to explore how China as an external actor bordering the OSCE region facilitates and amplifies the norm contestation in the OSCE’s wider region. We argue that China can use the OSCE’s internal leadership and security crisis for its own strategic advantage by further weakening the OSCE participating States’ commitments in the human dimension and their support for democratic institutions. We discuss the aforementioned through the case of the persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang. The research findings indicate that China uses its policy tools to accomplish its objectives: it seeks to expand and strengthen the network of supporting states in regard to Xinjiang; it uses its diplomats as outlets of propaganda and disinformation to deny the persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang and to present China as a benign actor; it uses multilateral institutions such as Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as a platform to build support for its alternative regional security governance model. We conclude that this policy posture undermines the work of the OSCE and trust in its values, norms, and practices.

AbstractTo successfully support decision-making or even automatically make decisions of their own, intelligent transport and mobility systems require large amounts of data. Although multitudes of mobility data are already being collected today, the comprehensive processing and exploitation of this data have often been impossible due to technical, legal, or economic reasons. With Mobility Data Space, an open data space is now being created which offers access to real-time traffic data and sensitive mobility data beyond their secure exchange and which links existing data platforms to each other. In the future, it will thus be possible to provide comprehensive mobility data on a national level.Based on a decentralized system architecture developed by the International Data Spaces Association e. V., the Mobility Data Space offers an ecosystem in which data providers can specify and control the conditions under which their data can be used by third parties. This approach creates data sovereignty as well as trust, and data users can be sure about data origin and quality. By integrating data from the public and private sector via regional and national platforms, the Mobility Data Space will become a digital distribution channel for data-driven business models, providing entirely new options of data acquisition, linking, and exploitation.Whether data provider, user, developer, or end user—the Mobility Data Space takes all acting parties into consideration and offers: Data sovereignty and security along the value chain Standardized access to data from both public and private sources Space for the emergence of new business models, distribution channels and services, as well as a larger selection of innovative mobility services and applications

Models transform the managerial inputs into useful information for managerial decision. The Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) is the most widely used model for project management. However, it requires three estimates for the duration of each activity as its input. This uncertainty in the input requirement makes the Critical Path (CP) unstable, causing major difficulties for the manager. A linear programming formulation of the project network is proposed in this chapter for determining a CP based on making one estimate for the duration of each activity. Upon finding the CP, Sensitivity Analysis (SA) of Data Perturbation (DP) is performed using the constraints of the dual problem. This largest DP set of uncertainties provides the manager with a tool to deal with the simultaneous, independent, or dependent changes of the input estimates that preserves the current CP. The application of DP results to enhance the traditional approach to PERT is presented. The proposed procedure is easy to understand, easy to implement, and provides useful information for the manager. A numerical example illustrates the process.

The understanding of factors leading to the acceptance or rejection of information systems (IS) is important and relevant. Although there have been studies examining the adoption of Internet Banking (IB), research on this topic in the Gulf context and from an IS perspective is lacking, even though societal factors are acknowledged as having an impact on technology adoption. To fill this gap, this paper uses a version of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), extended by the compatibility and trust constructs. An empirical study, using students from a large university in the region, validates the research model.

Abstract Approximations play an important role in multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) by offering system behavior information at a relatively low cost. Most approximate optimization strategies are sequential in which an optimization of an approximate problem subject to design variable move limits is iteratively repeated until convergence. The move limits are imposed to restrict the optimization to regions of the design space in which the approximations provide meaningful information. In order to insure convergence of the sequence of approximate optimizations to a Karush Kuhn Tucker solution a move limit management strategy is required. In this paper, issues of move-limit management are reviewed and a new adaptive strategy for move limit management is developed. With its basis in the provably convergent trust region methodology, the TRAM (Trust region Ratio Approximation Method) strategy utilizes available gradient information and employs a backtracking process using various two-point approximation techniques to provide a flexible move-limit adjustment factor. The new strategy is successfully implemented in application to a suite of multidisciplinary design optimization test problems. These implementation studies highlight the ability of the TRAM strategy to control the amount of approximation error and efficiently manage the convergence to a Karush Kuhn Tucker solution.

The Gurson-Tvergaard-Needleman (GTN) model is a material plasticity model in which the accumulation of ductile damage is represented by the nucleation, growth and coalescence of micro-voids. The model has been implemented in full for the ABAQUS finite element code. The model supports fully the nucleation, growth, and coalescence of voids, and differs from the porous plasticity model provided in ABAQUS/Standard. The GTN model is just one model from a particular class of pressure-dependent plasticity models in which the response is dependent on the development of the hydrostatic stress as well as the deviatoric stress tensor. A formal derivation of the constitutive equations is presented in this paper. It is shown that the model can be formally represented by a coupled system of four non-linear equations. A novel approach to solving the equations has been adopted based on a hybrid solution method and a trust region to ensure convergence. The solution of non-linear equations in more than one variable is usually attempted using iterative methods. For the calculation of a material’s response, the method adopted must be sufficiently robust to ensure that the correct result is obtained at each of the material points in the component or structure being modelled. Moreover, the solution method must be as efficient as possible for practical use. In this paper, we present an implementation of a trust region method that allows the solution of the GTN constitutive equations to be derived with confidence. The method utilises iterative corrections and a trust region surrounding the current estimated solution. In the early stages of the iteration, when the estimate may be far removed from the true solution, the steepest descent method is used to improve the solution, while at later stages Newton’s method, with its superior convergence, is used. A hybrid step (part steepest descent step, part Newton step) may also be taken using Powell’s dogleg method with the constraint that the corrections do not take the solution outside the current trust region. A measure of the quality of each step is used to shrink or expand the radius of the trust region during the iteration. The solution algorithm has been implemented in Fortran 90 as a user subroutine for ABAQUS/Standard. The method provides faster convergence than the porous plasticity model in ABAQUS and allows for the representation of void coalescence. Examples of application of the GTN model to study the response of axi-symmetric bars are provided and comparisons are made with the porous plasticity model where appropriate.

Abstract A common engineering practice is the use of approximation models in place of expensive computer simulations to drive a multidisciplinary design process based on nonlinear programming techniques. The use of approximation strategies is designed to reduce the number of detailed, costly computer simulations required during optimization while maintaining the pertinent features of the design problem. To date the primary focus of most approximate optimization strategies is that application of the method should lead to improved designs. This is a laudable attribute and certainly relevant for practicing designers. However to date few researchers have focused on the development of approximate optimization strategies that are assured of converging to a solution of the original problem. Recent works based on trust region model management strategies have shown promise in managing convergence in unconstrained approximate minimization. In this research we extend these well established notions from the literature on trust-region methods to manage the convergence of the more general approximate optimization problem where equality, inequality and variable bound constraints are present. The primary concern addressed in this study is how to manage the interaction between the optimization and the fidelity of the approximation models to ensure that the process converges to a solution of the original constrained design problem. Using a trust-region model management strategy, coupled with an augmented Lagrangian approach for constrained approximate optimization, one can show that the optimization process converges to a solution of the original problem. In this research an approximate optimization strategy is developed in which a cumulative response surface approximation of the augmented Lagrangian is sequentially optimized subject to a trust region constraint. Results for several test problems are presented in which convergence to a Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) point is observed.

[Extract from Executive Summary] This report documents Work Package 7 of the Scottish Inshore Fisheries Integrated Data Systems (SIFIDS) Project, which was designed to facilitate engagement with the key stakeholders including; inshore fishers, their representative bodies, Regional Inshore Fisheries Groups, Marine Scotland including Policy, Compliance and Science. The SIFIDS Project focused on 12 metre and under inshore fisheries vessels, of which around 1,500 are registered in Scotland including those that work part-time or seasonally. The facilitation team was set various targets for engagement based on the requirements of other work packages. The success of the overall project was dependent to a significant extent on securing voluntary engagement and input from working fishers. Previous experience has shown that having a dedicated project facilitation team is an extremely effective model for establishing the necessary trust to encourage industry-participation in projects such as this. The WP7 facilitation team comprised three individuals who have significant marine and fisheries related experience and wide-ranging skills in communications and stakeholder engagement. They worked together flexibly on a part-time basis, ensuring staffing cover over extended hours where required to match fishers’ availability and geographical coverage over Scotland.