This article considers the link removal problem in a strongly connected directed network with the goal of minimizing the dominant eigenvalue of the network’s adjacency matrix while maintaining its strong connectivity. Due to the complexity of the problem, this article focuses on computing a suboptimal solution. Furthermore, it is assumed that the knowledge of the overall network topology is not available. This calls for distributed algorithms which rely solely on the local information available to each individual node and information exchange between each node and its neighbors. Two different strategies based on matrix perturbation analysis are presented, namely simultaneous and iterative link removal strategies. Key ingredients in implementing both strategies include novel distributed algorithms for estimating the dominant eigenvectors of an adjacency matrix and for verifying strong connectivity of a directed network under link removal. It is shown via numerical simulations on different type of networks that in general the iterative link removal strategy yields a better suboptimal solution. However, it comes at a price of higher communication cost in comparison to the simultaneous link removal strategy.

This study examines the information demands of decision-makers from across the globe in their exchanges with interest organizations. It proposes two explanatory factors that drive these information demands: democracy and development. We argue that decision-makers’ information demands vary depending on whether they hail from developed countries or developing countries, as well as the extent to which their political systems are democratically accountable. We test our expectations based on interviews with 297 decision-makers from 107 different countries who were active during transnational trade and climate change negotiations. Our findings demonstrate that decision-makers from less developed countries exhibit a higher preference for interactions with organizations that provide them with technical information. Decision-makers from democratically accountable countries, by contrast, tend to place relatively greater value on political information provided by interest groups.

Monitoring the implementation process in domestic settings of multi-level policies like the EU gender directives is dependent on interactions among a diverse set of policy stakeholders. However, there is no clear understanding of which factors determine the structure of these monitoring networks and what benefits effective exchange. Drawing on insights from social network theory, literature on information politics in transnational networks and policy network analysis, this study analyses what drives information exchange among actors in the monitoring network of women’s groups in the Netherlands. Using Exponential Random Graph Models, the analysis reveals distinctive structural features facilitating efficient information exchange and significant brokerage in the monitoring network. Moreover, the results demonstrate that interactions that serve the purpose of monitoring EU policy implementation occur among a diverse set of actors in a multi-level structure. These findings indicate that effective monitoring requires resourceful and broad-based information exchange to increase transparency in the implementation process.

A persistent question in the literature on policy adoption and diffusion focuses on the ways in which jurisdictions gather policy information. Decades of research have offered numerous conclusions regarding knowledge transfer mechanisms assumed to drive diffusion. While important, we suggest that the characteristics of existing work may have limited what we know about the exchange of policy information among peers. Most studies infer learning indirectly, and as a result, the literature has tended to focus on exchange between geographic and ideological peers, to the exclusion of other channels. As an alternative, this study takes a more direct approach and draws on a survey of 112 U.S. expert informants in the area of energy policy. We use the information exchange channels revealed by these informants to predict the diffusion of state renewable portfolio standards and electricity deregulation among the American states to determine whether they offer explanatory leverage beyond the “traditional” channels.

Three-dimensional (3-D) geometry can be described in many ways, with both a varying syntax and a varying semantics. As a result, several very diverse schemas and file formats can be deployed to describe geometry, depending on the application domain in question. In a multidisciplinary domain such as the domain of architecture, engineering, and construction, this range of specialized schemas makes file format conversions inevitable. The approach adopted by current conversion tools, however, often results in a loss of information, most often due to a “mistranslation” between different syntaxes and/or semantics, leading to errors and limitations in the design conception stage and to inefficiency due to the required remodeling efforts. An approach based on semantic web technology may reduce the loss of information significantly, leading to an improved processing of 3-D information and hence to an improved design practice in the architecture, engineering, and construction domain. This paper documents our investigation of the nature of this 3-D information conversion problem and how it may be encompassed using semantic web technology. In an exploratory double test case, we show how the specific deployment of semantic rule languages and an appropriate inference engine are to be adopted to improve this 3-D information exchange. It shows how semantic web technology allows the coexistence of diverse descriptions of the same 3-D information, interlinked through explicit conversion rules. Although only a simple example is used to document the process, and a more in-depth investigation is needed, the initial results indicate the suggested approach to be a useful alternative approach to obtain an improved 3-D information exchange.

Developments in information technology and the ongoing restructuring of health services to increase provision in community settings militate in favour of a streamlining of communications and the exchange of information about patients among health and social care providers. Yet the principles of confidentiality and privacy appear to inhibit this process. In order to explore the practical, ethical, and legal imperatives attendant upon personal health information exchange, we conducted a series of interviews with professional care providers, persons with early-stage dementia, and their family caregivers. The findings indicate some degree of discordance. Professionals reported valuing disclosure both to colleagues and family caregivers on the basis of its being in the patients' best interests. Patients also valued inter-professional exchange, but sought strong control over disclosure to family members. Family caregivers valued being kept informed of the patient's condition, even without the latter's consent. Implications for research and policy are discussed.

Impediments to agricultural change extend beyond lack of appropriate research and the federal farm program to addiction to use of agricultural chemicals. Several recent trends in American agriculture have been caused by or have resulted in dependence on agricultural chemicals. They include the continuing separation of livestock from farms, farm size, separation of ownership and farming of the land, discontinuity of learned procedures, part-time farming, and certain aspects of noxious perennial weeds. This implies that prospects for agricultural change are related to the trends with which they are associated.