Paradoxes of Fair Division

Two or more players are required to divide up a set of indivisible items that they can rank from best to worst. They may, as well, be able to indicate preferences over subsets, or packages, of items. The main criteria used to assess the fairness of a division are efficiency (Pareto-optimality) and envy-freeness. Other criteria are also suggested, including a Rawlsian criterion that the worst-off player be made as well off as possible and a scoring procedure, based on the Borda count, that helps to render allocations as equal as possible. Eight paradoxes, all of which involve unexpected conflicts among the criteria, are described and classified into three categories, reflecting (1) incompatibilities between efficiency and envy-freeness, (2) the failure of a unique efficient and envy-free division to satisfy other criteria, and (3) the desirability, on occasion, of dividing up items unequally. While troublesome, the paradoxes also indicate opportunities for achieving fair division, which will depend on the fairness criteria one deems important and the trade-offs one considers acceptable.FAIR DIVISION; ALLOCATION OF INDIVISIBLE ITEMS; ENVY-FREENESS; PARETO- OPTIMALITY; RAWLSIAN JUSTICE; BORDA COUNT.

Fair Division of Indivisible Items

This paper analyzes criteria of fair division of a set of indivisible items among people whose revealed preferences are limited to rankings of the items and for whom no side payments are allowed. The criteria include refinements of Pareto optimality and envy-freeness as well as dominance-freeness, evenness of shares, and two criteria based on equally-spaced surrogate utilities, referred to as maxsum and equimax. Maxsum maximizes a measure of aggregate utility or welfare, whereas equimax lexicographically maximizes persons' utilities from smallest to largest. The paper analyzes conflicts among the criteria along possibilities and pitfalls of achieving fair division in a variety of circumstances.FAIR DIVISION; ALLOCATION OF INDIVISIBLE ITEMS; PARETO OPTIMALITY; ENVY-FREENESS; LEXICOGRAPHIC MAXIMUM

Playing With Time: Gay Intergenerational Performance Work and the Productive Possibilities of Queer Temporalities

This article examines the tendencies of LGBT intergenerational theater projects. By engaging with ideas of queer time, temporal drag, and the pervasive heteronormative imagery of heritability and inheritance, this article explores the possibility that LGBT intergenerational projects may generate some of the problems they aim to challenge. Through the lens of queer time, the article describes the normativity generated in LGBT intergenerational theater projects as a form of restrictive interpellation. The article explores the temporal complexities at play in such theater productions as The Front Room, a specific LGBT intergenerational theater project performed in the United Kingdom in 2011. The article concludes by noting some ways in which intergenerational theater projects might seek to work through the embodiment of the historical quotidian as a mode of resistance to normativity’s recirculation

Identification of isolate-specific proteins on sorbitol-enriched <i>Plasmodium falciparum</i> infected erythrocytes from Gambian patients

SUMMARYWe have compared the surface radio-iodinated proteins of uninfected and Plasmodium falciparum-infected erythrocytes from natural infections of human patients. Cryopreserved infected blood from Gambian children with falciparum malaria was thawed, cultured to the middle trophozoite stage, and surface radio-iodinated. Trophozoite-infected cells were enriched about 10-fold on a Percoll gradient newly designed to separate cells based on their differential permeability to sorbitol. Infected blood was radio-iodinated and erythrocyes from the fraction enriched in parasitized cells and uninfected erythrocytes from the same sample obtained from the gradient and compared by SDS–PAGE and autoradiography. In each sample, parasitized erythrocytes contained one or more polypeptides of very high molecular weight (Mr 250000–300000) that were not found on uninfected erythrocytes from the same patient. These proteins were isolate-specific in size and number, suggesting that natural isolates contain a variable number of different P. falciparum phenotypes for this surface protein. In addition, these radio-iodinated surface proteins could not be extracted from the host cell membrane by the non-ionic detergent Triton X-100, but were extracted by SDS. The properties of these proteins suggest they are the equivalent for natural infections of the strain-dependent antigen previously described (Leech, Barnwell, Miller &amp; Howard, 1984) on the surface of P. falciparum-infected Aotus erythrocytes. In addition, we observed a second parasite-dependent modification of labelled proteins on infected erythrocytes with the appearance of a new band of Mr 30000. There were also variations in the pattern of radio-isotope labelled proteins on uninfected erythrocytes from different patients.</jats:p