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Time, cost and quality are among the crucial aspects of each project. In recent years, the demands of project stakeholders regarding reductions in the total cost and time of a project along with achieving the acceptable quality of the project have risen significantly. This leads researchers to developing models that incorporate the quality factor to previously existing time cost trade-off models.We develop a model for discrete time-cost-quality trade-off problem. For each activity, an execution mode can be selected from a number of possible ones. The time and cost of each mode are assumed to be crisp but the quality of each mode is a linguistic variable. Therefore, in this paper, fuzzy logic... 

Time, cost and quality are among the major objectives of any project. In recent years, the demands of project stakeholders regarding reductions in the total cost and time of a project along with achieving the desirable quality of the project have risen significantly. This leads researchers to developing models that incorporate the quality factor to previously existing time-cost trade-off models. This study presents a model for the discrete time-cost-quality trade-off problem. In this model there are a number of execution modes to select for each activity, and the best execution mode (t, c, q) of the activities should be determined to optimize total cost and time objectives, subjected to... 

A new multi-skill multi-mode resource constrained project scheduling problem with three objectives is studied in this paper. The objectives are: (1) minimizing project's makespan, (2) minimizing total cost of allocating workers to skills, and (3) maximizing total quality of processing activities. A meta-heuristic algorithm called multi-objective invasive weeds optimization algorithm (MOIWO) with a new chromosome structure guaranteeing feasibility of solutions is developed to solve the proposed problem. Two other meta-heuristic algorithms called non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) and multi-objective particle swarm optimization algorithm (MOPSO) are used to validate the... 

We describe several return code schemes for secure vote submission in electronic voting systems. We consider a unified treatment where a return code is generated as a multiparty computation of a secure MAC tag applied on an encrypted message submitted by a voter. Our proposals enjoy a great level of flexibility with respect to various usability, security, and performance tradeoffs. © 2017, Springer International Publishing AG  

In this paper, we propose an optimized parameter selection procedure for rainbow table Time Memory Trade-Off (TMTO) attack with sequential online search. Unlike previous works that mainly deal with minimizing required memory in the rainbow table TMTO attack we simultaneously focus on the required memory and online search time. Our parameter selection technique is optimized regarding the minimization of the required memory subject to a certain success probability and a maximum online search time. Obtained results are two compact mathematical expressions for determining rainbow table TMTO attack parameters, number and length of chains. The application of our optimized parameter selection... 

Time-cost trade-off problems (TCT) are well-known in project management contents. This approach normally applied for scheduling of a project especially where the project should be completed under pre-determined deadline. This paper aims to extend time-cost trade-off (TCT) problems in order to provide a well-organized mechanism for both scheduling and rescheduling processes of a project. The proposed mechanism includes project scheduling which concerns with the TCT problem, monitoring of project performance during execution phase using earned value management (EVM), and also predicting project future performance through statistical modeling. Once the predicted values of project performance... 

In this paper, we develop a metaheuristic procedure for solving the discrete time/resource trade-off problem in the field of project scheduling. In this problem, a project contains activities interrelated by finish-start-type precedence constraints with a time lag of zero, which require a single constrained renewable resource. Each activity has a specified work content and can be performed in different modes, i.e. with different durations and resource requirements; as long as the required work content is met. The objective is to schedule each activity in one of its modes in order to minimize the project makespan. To tackle this problem, we use a genetic algorithm in which a new method based... 

An algorithm for determining optimal reserve capacity in a power market is presented in this paper. Optimization process in the proposed algorithm is based on the cost-benefit trade off. Market clearance is executed with consideration of uncertainties of power system components in an aggregated environment. It is assumed that both generating units and interruptible loads participate in the reserve market. In addition, customers' reliability requirements are considered as constraints for decision making process of ISO. The rendered method considers random outages of generating units and transmission lines and determined outage of interruptible loads and employs Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS)... 

In this paper, we study the problem of channel simulation via interactive communication, known as the coordination capacity, in a two-terminal network. We assume that two terminals observe i.i.d. copies of two random variables and would like to generate i.i.d. copies of two other random variables jointly distributed with the observed random variables. The terminals are provided with two-way communication links, and shared common randomness, all at limited rates. Two special cases of this problem are the interactive function computation studied by Ma and Ishwar, and the tradeoff curve between one-way communication and shared randomness studied by Cuff. The latter work had inspired Gohari and... 

Over the last decades quota violations have become a norm for OPEC countries. However, the academic literature on OPEC focuses more on its production behavior than on analyzing the quota allocation process or characterizing quota violation patterns. This paper offers a theoretical model with empirical evidence to explain OPEC members’ incentives for abiding or violating quotas. We first offer a cartel model with a quota allocation rule and an endogenous capacity choice. The model highlights the trade-off between building spare capacity to bargain for a higher legitimate quota versus risking quota violation punishment. Using the quarterly data from 1995 to 2007, we empirically support the... 

We study a two-player zero-sum game in which one of the players is restricted to mixed strategies with limited randomness. More precisely, we consider the maximum payoff that the maximizer (Alice) can secure with limited randomness h. This problem finds an operational interpretation in the context of repeated games with non-ideal sources of randomness. The computational aspects of this problem has not received much attention in the game theory literature. We begin by observing the equivalence of this problem with entropy minimization problems in other scientific contexts. Next, we provide two explicit lower bounds on the entropy-payoff tradeoff curve. To do this, we provide and utilize new... 

In this paper, the relation between gain and resolution of an ideal analog optical differentiator in two different cases and their fundamental limits are investigated. Based on this relation, a figure of merit for comparison of the designed differentiators in recent papers is proposed. The differentiators are optimized using this figure of merit, and they are compared with each other to determine the best one. Also, a new differentiator is presented based on the dielectric slab waveguide in which the trade-off between its gain and resolution is easily controllable, and its best operating point is determined. © 2020 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing... 

In this paper, we study the problem of delay minimization in NFV-based networks. In such systems, the ultimate goal of any request is to compute a sequence of functions in the network, where each function can be computed at only a specific subset of network nodes. In conventional approaches, for each function, we choose one node from the corresponding subset of the nodes to compute that function. In contrast, in this work, we allow each function to be computed in more than one node, redundantly in parallel, to respond to a given request. We argue that such redundancy in computation not only improves the reliability of the network, but would also, perhaps surprisingly, reduce the overall...