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Analyzing SRPT for preemptive scheduling
No full text Imagine a car garage with three car lifts that can be used to lift a car so it can be repaired. All the time, customers are coming in with their broken cars. Some are very broken and need a lot of time to repair while others may only need a short amount of time. The manager of the garage needs to decide which cars he is going to repair first. His goal is to get the most cars out of his garage as fast as possible. Unfortunately, deciding what cars to repair first is a very hard problem. It is comparable to solving the famous Travelling Salesperson Problem, where a businessperson has to visit a lot of cities and wants to find the shortest route between them. A simple way of deciding the order of repairing the cars is starting with the cars that will take the shortest time to repair, and leave the longer repairs for later. This may seem like a very logical rule, but it may produce a repair schedule that is not ideal. But, how far from ideal could this simple schedule be? That is the main topic of my thesis. In the thesis, I first explain what research has been done already on the subject. Then I use the program I wrote to make schedules using the simple rule and optimal schedules for a lot of examples. What I found out is that the examples where the difference between the two schedules is the largest all look similar. Finally, I analyze the general form of the examples with large differences. I show in the paper that when we restrict ourselves to the form of the examples with the largest differences, the simple rule schedule can be at most 1,105 times worse than the ideal schedule. In practice, this means that at the very worst, the cars in the garage will only have to stay 10,5% longer in the garage. This last result is new and if someone can prove that the form of the examples I found is indeed the worst form of example, we know that the simple rule produces quite well preforming schedules that can be at most 1,105 times worse than the ideal schedule. Then, if the small factor of 1,105 is not a problem, garage managers and other people who encounter problems like this can apply the "short jobs first" rule with confidence.
Blindness in the Interrogation Room: A review article about the potential role of choice blindness during suspect interrogations
No full textResearch indicates that humans display a phenomenon called choice blindness. When we choose between alternatives, we are sometimes blind to the mismatch between our original choice and its outcome. Taking the initial findings about choice blindness as a starting point, this article explores whether choice blindness could also play a relevant role in interrogation situations. The explorations revolve around a hypothetical scenario: An innocent suspect is faced with an interrogation situation in which the investigator manipulates the testimony and thus introduces a mismatch between the original testimony and the manipulated one. Could this mismatch go unnoticed by the suspect due to choice blindness? Recent experimental evidence with a focus on this question is reviewed. It is generally concluded that the role of choice blindness in eliciting outright false confessions to extreme allegations is limited; however, it can still pose a threat to innocent suspects by leading them to give contradictory testimony in interrogations. Suggestions for future research are made and advice on the practice of law enforcement is given
Justifying Aid: Reconstructing and Assessing Political Justifications for Development Aid Spending in Contemporary British Public Discourse
Get PDFForeign aid generates furious public discussion. Significant amounts of British public money are spent on aid, and citizens rightly want to know why. Unfortunately, the public discourse surrounding the justification of aid spending is shrouded in foggy ideas and cloudy arguments. I contend that this has been the case for a considerable time, and demonstrate that both a moral and rational argument for aid can be reconstructed for aid spending from existing discussions. Having given what I consider to be the strongest articulations of these arguments drawn from discourse, I suggest that both arguments have considerable flaws and suggest ways in which politicians could engage on the subject to help keep the fog at bay
Theory of Diversification and Cross-subsidy for Eurobonds
Get PDFIn the face of excessive yield spreads on sovereign bonds in the European Monetary Union, the issuance of joint debt commonly known as Eurobonds has been proposed to ease the access to credit for fiscally struggling countries. This paper is the first to consider Eurobonds in terms of diversification and cross-subsidy benefits. It shows that the risk-sharing nature of Eurobonds lowers sovereign default probability in a non-replicable way for investors thereby lowering investment losses on a macro-level. Countries benefit as well from lower default probability that prevents sovereign bankruptcy costs. On a micro-level, fiscally strong countries have to weigh the benefits of Eurobonds against the two-fold costs of higher interest payments and financial support for defaulting countries. With further research, the argument brought forward in this paper will contribute to a more comprehensive debate about the benefits and costs of Eurobonds
Political Transparency and its Effects on the Media: A Study of the Eurocrisis
Get PDFThe perceived importance of both transparency and openness has never been greater and more lucid in modern society than they are at the present day. Demanded by the public, and both catalysed and facilitated by the Internet, governments and other institutions have increased their direct communication to their subordinates in a substantial manner. As the exercise and importance of communication increases, accordingly will the effect it has on power and influence. French philosopher Foucault argues that the holder of information has the power to shape and create discourse and thereby influence behaviour and response (1978). Public relations (PR), specifically political public relations (PPR), has the prime function to inform the general public about important issues regarding the own conduct. This form of, what Heald defined as downward transparency, facilitates that “the ruled can observe the conduct behaviour, and/or results’ of their ‘rulers’” (2006, p. 27). The main objective is to research whether PPR, in the form of press releases and statements, is able to influence the debates in the media on a certain topic. In other words, it is assessed whether and to what extent the media directly adopts the information it is given by a political actor. In order to answer this research focus, a case study format is adopted in the form of the PPR of the European Council (EC) during the European Sovereign debt crisis
Manager by Law: An Analytical Discourse Evaluation of the German Woman Quota
Get PDFTwo bills for the implementation of a legal women quota demand that all German market-listed companies should be required by law to have at least 40% women on their supervisory boards by 2020. In the German political discourse, the bills ground their justification in what I will articulate as the equality of opportunity argument, which primarily refers to the government’s duty according to German constitutional law to promote the effective implementation of equal rights for women and men and take steps to eliminate disadvantages that now exist. As the Analytical Discourse Evaluation will show, the contested argument hinges on an interpretation of the implied conception of equality of opportunity and can only cogently argue for a redistribution of management positions when assuming that structural disadvantages in employment for women originate from their cultural coercion to raise families
Did the perpetrator have a gun, or did he not? – Children’s false memories and the developmental reversal phenomenon
No full textDevelopmental reversal in false memories is the counterintuitive phenomenon that older children and adults are more prone to developing false memories than younger children and that false memories increase with age. The current paper discusses the theories behind this phenomenon and the paradigms that can be used to investigate it. Not only age is a prominent factor in the development of false memories. The role of emotional load of the falsely remembered words will also be investigated
The 2011 Proposal for a Regulation on a Common European Sales Law: A House of Cards? – The Chapeau Rules as Foundations and the Necessary Extensions of the Personal and Territorial Scopes of Application
Get PDFThe EU has come a long way of various European Contract Law initiatives, consultation rounds with stakeholders and academic and political debates7 to arrive at the 2011 Proposal of the European Parliament and the Council for a Regulation on a Common European Sales Law (the Proposal).8 It is a Proposal for a second regime on the sale of goods which would be optional to opt-into by parties and would exist next to national contract laws of Member States for cross-border sale of goods transactions.9 However, in spite of all of these efforts to achieve a possible future Common European Sales Law, it is striking that most of the work and discussions were solely focused on the substantive rules which are to make up the future European tool.10 Thereby, the equally important chapeau rules, which set out the scopes of application of an instrument, remained largely neglected. The ratione personae (personal scope application) and ratione loci (territorial scope application) of the envisaged instrument constitute an intrinsic part of trying to create an instrument which tackles the barrier to trade consisting of different national contract law regimes. Setting the scopes too narrow (as it is the case in the current Proposal), making limitations on who can make use of the future instrument and in what specific situations, leads to undesirable practical results and ultimately makes the efforts of over two decades being in vain, for the attractiveness of such a Common European Sales Law (CESL) is greatly depreciated. The personal and territorial scopes of application of the Proposal are to be analysed carefully and thoroughly to facilitate the success of the envisaged instrument and achieve the Commission’s aim of enhancing the functioning the Internal Market of the EU. This paper shows that the current Proposal for a CESL is build on such weak ‘foundations’, consisting out of the scopes of application, that there is a very high probability of it collapsing like a house of cards. It will argue that there is a pressing need for an elaborative consideration and revision of the personal and territorial scopes of application by the European legislator in order to guarantee success
Is harmonization of retention of title necessary and feasible?
Get PDFI chose to look at four different legal systems; The Netherlands, Germany, France and England. I will look at the rules for retention of title, transfer of ownership, a bona fide purchaser and retention of title, specificatio and retention of title, accessio and retention of title and the legal systems of the Member States. The Bona fide purchaser is dealt with in another section then specificatio and accessio, because acquiring ownership in this way is a form of derivative acquisition of ownership and specificatio and accessio are two forms of original acquisition of ownership. These terms will be discussed in the sections dealing with these subjects. After this I will answer how 3 different cases would be solved according to the different legal systems. These cases will be about; a bona fide purchaser, specificatio and accessio. After answering these cases I will compare the outcomes and on the basis of the outcomes I will determine whether harmonization of retention of title in the European Union is needed. Then I will look at the legal regimes of the four Member States. After this I will determine whether harmonization of retention of title is feasible. My two main questions will be: 1. Is harmonization of retention of title in the European Union needed? 2. Is harmonization of retention of title feasible in the European Union
Interpreting Subsidiarity – How to develop into a constitutional principle?
Get PDFThe principle of subsidiarity is clearly one of the most ambiguous and disputed notions of European Union (EU) law. What started with the intention to create a simple mechanism that allocates competences to the Member States’ or EU level, in order to ensure that the level of government, best suited to pursue the task decided, so that legislation was enacted as close as possible to the citizens, ended in confusion. Since the question of allocation is inherently political it was quite unclear how much of a legal component was embedded in the principle. The low efficiency of the principle in reality is primarily due to the European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) failure to provide for a clear legal definition of it. In fact, it has never annulled a measure on grounds of subsidiarity and generally reviews the principle marginally and cautiously. Without the threat of annulment, the Commission has been careless in its justification for subsidiarity compliance of a legislative proposal. In order to enhance control, the Treaty of Lisbon has introduced an ex ante review of compliance by national parliaments (NP).8 Although this can potentially protect national ‘territory’ from a competence creep, the review’s full potential cannot be harnessed if lack of a uniform and efficient principle remains. Nevertheless, an interpretation of subsidiarity is also ultimately a question of governance as both relate to the issue of how the powers of the EU and the Member States should be applied. Even if a proper definition is found, should it be the EU or the Member States who decide to whom competence should be allocated? Is it the Member States, because they have conferred the powers in the first place or the Union due to its supranational character? As a consequence, this paper will address the question of how the principle of subsidiarity should be interpreted in order to form a workable mechanism that ensures an effective divide between EU and Member States’ competence?