Contributions in Merlin

The new generation of commodity graphics cards with significant on-board video memory has become widely popular and provides high-performance rendering and flexibility. One of the features to be exploited with this hardware is the use of the on-board video memory to store geometry information. This strategy significantly reduces the data transfer overhead from sending geometry data over the (AGP) bus interface from main memory to the graphics card. However, taking advantage of cached geometry is not a trivial task because the data models often exceed the memory size of the graphics card. In this paper we present a dynamic Cached Geometry Manager (CGM) to address this issue. We show how this technique improves the performance of real-time view-dependent level-of-detail (LOD) selection and rendering algorithms of large data sets. Alternative caching approaches have been analyzed over two different view-dependent progressive mesh (VDPM) frameworks: one for rendering of arbitrary manifold 3D meshes, and one for terrain visualization.

We consider economies with additively separable utility functions and give conditions for the two-agents case under which the existence of sunspot equilibria is equivalent to the occurrence of the transfer paradox. This equivalence enables us to show that sunspots cannot matter if the initial economy has a unique spot market equilibrium and there are only two commodities or if the economy has a unique equilibrium for all distributions of endowments induced by asset trade. For more than two agents the equivalence breaks and we give an example for sunspot equilibria even though the economy has a unique equilibrium for all distributions of endowments induced by asset trade.

A newly developed paradigm for studying spontaneous trait inferences (STI) was applied in 3 experiments. The authors primed dyadic stimulus behaviors involving a subject (S) and an object (O) person through degraded pictures or movies. An encoding task called for the verification of either a graphical feature or a semantic interpretation, which either fit or did not fit the primed behavior. Next, participants had to identify a trait word that appeared gradually behind a mask and that either matched or did not match the primed behavior. STI effects, defined as shorter identification latencies for matching than nonmatching traits, were stronger for S than for O traits, after graphical rather than semantic encoding decisions and after encoding failures. These findings can be explained by assuming that trait inferences are facilitated by open versus closed mindsets supposed to result from distracting (graphical) encoding tasks or encoding failures (involving nonfitting interpretations).

We propose a network description of large market investments, where both stocks and shareholders are represented as vertices connected by weighted links corresponding to shareholdings. In this framework, the in-degree ($k_{in}$) and the sum of incoming link weights (v) of an investor correspond to the number of assets held (portfolio diversification) and to the invested wealth (portfolio volume), respectively. An empirical analysis of three different real markets reveals that the distributions of both $k_{in}$ and v display power-law tails with exponents y and a. Moreover, we find that $k_{in}$ scales as a power-law function of v with an exponent b. Remarkably, despite the values of a, b and y differ across the three markets, they are always governed by the scaling relation b = (1-a)/(1-y). We show that these empirical findings can be reproduced by a recent model relating the emergence of scale-free networks to an underlying Paretian distribution of ‘hidden’ vertex properties.

In this study we examine how the perception of layoff as a violation of a psychological contract can vary depending upon one's perception of employer contractual obligation. We also investigate how perceptions of layoffs vary depending on whether one is focusing on his/her own layoff or the layoff of someone else. Survey results from 81 layoff victims reveal that respondents perceive their own layoff as a breach of contract more than they do the layoff of someone else. In addition, respondents who believe strongly in employee self reliance perceive their own layoff as less of a contract breach. Ideas for future research and implications for managers are discussed in our conclusions.

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This paper develops a framework for the quantification of operational risk based on a network with functional dependencies that represent work flows for business activities. The functioning of each node depends on stochastic risk factors driven by inputs such as human resources, data and inputs from other nodes. Using analytical and numerical methods, we obtain answers concerning capital allocation, stability, risk figures, the effect of different network structures (called “topological diversification”) and dynamic diversification. Interpreting the results shows that the usual intuition gained from market and credit risk does not apply to the quantification of operational risk.