Ends, means, beginnings: environmental technocracy, ecological deliberation or embodied disagreement

Technocratic attitudes suggest that decisions about environmental policy should be led by scientific experts. Such decisions, it is expected, will be more rational than any arrived at by a democratic mediation between the narrow, short-term interests and uninformed preferences of the general public. Within green political theory, deliberative democracy has emerged as the dominant repost to technocracy, offering an account of how democratic polities can deal with complex scientific and technological decisions through the emergence of communicative rationality. This article argues that neither appeals to expert knowledge, nor communicative rationality, are likely to deliver the optimal green outcomes that proponents suggest, but rather will cover up the inevitable disagreements over environmental policy making. Instead the article suggests that more ecologically-sensitive and democratic decision making about complex scientific and technological issues can emerge if we acknowledge the differently embodied perspectives of decision-makers – from scientists to citizens. This prioritises democratic means over green ends, yet incorporates the environment at the beginning of the decision-making process. The article aims to sketch out the theoretical and practical implications of such an embodied turn for responding to the anti-democratic tendencies of environmental technocracy.

Business Models for Cloud Computing: Experiences from Developing Modeling & Simulation as a Service Applications in Industry

The potential of cloud computing is gaining significant interest in Modeling & Simulation (M&S). The underlying concept of using computing power as a utility is very attractive to users that can access state-of-the-art hardware and software without capital investment. Moreover, the cloud computing characteristics of rapid elasticity and the ability to scale up or down according to workload make it very attractive to numerous applications including M&S. Research and development work typically focuses on the implementation of cloud-based systems supporting M&S as a Service (MSaaS). Such systems are typically composed of a supply chain of technology services. How is the payment collected from the end-user and distributed to the stakeholders in the supply chain? We discuss the business aspects of developing a cloud platform for various M&S applications. Business models from the perspectives of the stakeholders involved in providing and using MSaaS and cloud computing are investigated and presented.

"One of our hosts in another country": Challenges of data geolocation in cloud storage

Physical location of data in cloud storage is an increasingly urgent problem. In a short time, it has evolved from the concern of a few regulated businesses to an important consideration for many cloud storage users. One of the characteristics of cloud storage is fluid transfer of data both within and among the data centres of a cloud provider. However, this has weakened the guarantees with respect to control over data replicas, protection of data in transit and physical location of data. This paper addresses the lack of reliable solutions for data placement control in cloud storage systems. We analyse the currently available solutions and identify their shortcomings. Furthermore, we describe a high-level architecture for a trusted, geolocation-based mechanism for data placement control in distributed cloud storage systems, which are the basis of an on-going work to define the detailed protocol and a prototype of such a solution. This mechanism aims to provide granular control over the capabilities of tenants to access data placed on geographically dispersed storage units comprising the cloud storage.

Distributed Agent-Based Load Balancer for Cloud Computing

In this paper we present a concept of an agent-based strategy to allocate services on a Cloud system without overloading nodes and maintaining the system stability with minimum cost. To provide a base for our research we specify an abstract model of cloud resources utilization, including multiple types of resources as well as considerations for the service migration costs. We also present an early version of simulation environment and a prototype of agent-based load balancer implemented in functional language Scala and Akka framework.

Embodied perspective-taking indicated by selective disruption from aberrant self motion

Spatial perspective-taking that involves imagined changes in one’s spatial orientation is facilitated by vestibular stimulation inducing a congruent sensation of self-motion. We examined further the role of vestibular resources in perspective-taking by evaluating whether aberrant and conflicting vestibular stimulation impaired perspective-taking performance. Participants (N = 39) undertook either an “own body transformation” (OBT)task, requiring speeded spatial judgments made from the perspective of a schematic figure, or a control task requiring reconfiguration of spatial mappings from one’s own visuo-spatial perspective. These tasks were performed both without and with vestibular stimulation by whole-body Coriolis motion, according to a repeated measures design, balanced for order. Vestibular stimulation was found to impair performance during the first minute post stimulus relative to the stationary condition. This disruption was task-specific, affecting only the OBT task and not the control task, and dissipated by the second minute post-stimulus. Our experiment thus demonstrates selective temporary impairment of perspective-taking from aberrant vestibular stimulation, implying that uncompromised vestibular resources are necessary for efficient perspective-taking. This finding provides evidence for an embodied mechanism for perspective-taking whereby vestibular input contributes to multisensory processing underlying bodily and social cognition. Ultimately, this knowledge may contribute to the design of interventions that help patients suffering sudden vertigo adapt to the cognitive difficulties caused by aberrant vestibular stimulation.

A Meta-Heuristic Load Balancer for Cloud Computing Systems

This paper introduces a strategy to allocate services on a cloud system without overloading the nodes and maintaining the system stability with minimum cost. We specify an abstract model of cloud resources utilization, including multiple types of resources as well as considerations for the service migration costs. A prototype meta-heuristic load balancer is demonstrated and experimental results are presented and discussed. We also propose a novel genetic algorithm, where population is seeded with the outputs of other meta-heuristic algorithms.

The Data of Things: Strategies, Patterns and Practice of Cloud-based Participatory Sensing

The broad capabilities of current mobile devices have paved the way for Mobile Crowd Sensing (MCS) applications. The success of this emerging paradigm strongly depends on the quality of received data which, in turn, is contingent to mass user participation; the broader the participation, the more useful these systems become. However, there is an ongoing trend that tries to integrate MCS applications with emerging computing paradigms such as cloud computing. The intuition is that such a transition can significantly improve the overall efficiency while at the same time it offers stronger security and privacy-preserving mechanisms for the end-user. In this position paper, we dwell on the underpinnings of incorporating cloud computing techniques to facilitate the vast amount of data collected in MCS applications. That is, we present a list of core system, security and privacy requirements that must be met if such a transition is to be successful. To this end, we first address several competing challenges not previously considered in the literature such as the scarce energy resources of battery-powered mobile devices as well as their limited computational resources that they often prevent the use of computationally heavy cryptographic operations and thus offering limited security services to the end-user. Finally, we present a use case scenario as a comprehensive example. Based on our findings, we posit open issues and challenges, and discuss possible ways to address them, so that security and privacy do not hinder the migration of MCS systems to the cloud.