Fog computing: a cloud to the ground support for smart things and machine-to-machine networks

Cloud services to smart things face latency and intermittent connectivity issues. Fog devices are positioned between cloud and smart devices. Their high speed Internet connection to the cloud, and physical proximity to users, enable real time applications and location based services, and mobility support. Cisco promoted fog computing concept in the areas of smart grid, connected vehicles and wireless sensor and actuator networks. This survey article expands this concept to the decentralized smart building control, recognizes cloudlets as special case of fog computing, and relates it to the software defined networks (SDN) scenarios. Our literature review identifies a handful number of articles. Cooperative data scheduling and adaptive traffic light problems in SDN based vehicular networks, and demand response management in macro station and micro-grid based smart grids are discussed. Security, privacy and trust issues, control information overhead and network control policies do not seem to be studied so far within the fog computing concept.

The impact of living environment on satisfaction with social relationships upon commencing university

Making the transition to university is a significant life event for many young people. It is believed that strong social relationships can help make this transition more successful. In this study, 201 full-time, first year university students completed a survey in order to examine whether those students who remained living with their parents differed on a range of social relationship variables compared to those who lived on-campus or off-campus independently from their parents. Results revealed that students living independently off-campus reported significantly lower satisfaction with their living environment and opportunities to make new friends at university, as well as significantly higher levels of depression, and higher levels of loneliness which approached significance. These findings indicate that universities may need to focus more attention on this particular sub-group, in an attempt to increase the successful transition of students from high school to university. Future research could endeavour to develop strategies for increasing university students' social relationships and support networks.

Social on the road: enabling secure and efficient social networking on highways

 This article presents SOR, a vehicular social network to enable social communications and interactions among users on the road during their highway travels. Motivated by the limited connection to Internet contents and services, the essential goal of SOR is to encourage distributed users on the road to spontaneously contribute as the information producer, assembler, and distributer in order to provide timely and localized infotainments to each other through low-cost inter-vehicle communications. To be specific, SOR enables individual users to maintain a personal blog, similar to one on Facebook and Twitter, over which users can create and share personal content information to the public such as travel blogs with pictures and videos. By accessing each other's SOR blogs and commenting on interesting topics, passengers can exchange messages and initiate social interactions. In the specific highway environment, SOR addresses two challenges in the context of vehicular social communications. First, vehicular social communications tend to be frequently interrupted by diverse vehicle mobility and intermittent intervehicle connections, which is annoying to users. To address this issue, SOR adopts a proactive mechanism by estimating the connection time between peer vehicles, and recommending vehicles with relatively long-lasting and stable intervehicle connections for social communications. Second, as users on the road are typically strangers to each other, they are reluctant to disclose personal information to others. This makes it challenging to identify users of shared interests and accordingly restricts the scale of users' social interactions. To remedy that, SOR provides a secured solution to protect sensitive user information during social communications. Lastly, we use simulations to verify the performance of SOR. © 2015 IEEE.

Marketization and perceptions of social protection in China's cities

One of the major challenges for China's ongoing economic reforms is how best to handle the social protection needs of its citizens in the face of mounting insecurities resulting from the marketization process. We first argue that China has adopted a middle road in its approach to balancing marketization and stability. We then proceed to draw on a large survey of people living in China's cities to examine how successful China's middle road has been perceived to be through the eyes of its urban populace. Our findings support the view that the market and state are complements and that fostering sustained economic growth requires sound social protection arrangements. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The contact hypothesis in urban china: the perspective of minority-status migrant workers

This study is the first to test Allport's (1954) contact hypothesis from the perspective of a minority group in China. Employing a sample of off-farm migrant workers in urban China, results indicate a positive effect on self-reported attitudes of intergroup friendship contact between migrant and local workers; and positive effects on self-reported behavioral interaction between migrants and urban locals of both intergroup friendship and intergroup nonfriendship contact. © 2011 Urban Affairs Association.

Migration and the right to social security: perceptions of off-farm migrants' rights to social insurance in China's Jiangsu Province

In 2001 China ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. By so doing the national government became legally bound, "to the maximum of its available resources", to achieve "progressively" full realization of the rights specified in the Covenant. Included amongst these entitlements is the "right of everyone to social security, including social insurance". This paper uses data from Jiangsu to examine the extent to which urbanites agree that previously disenfranchised migrants have the same right to social insurance as the urban population. Many urbanites fear that their existing entitlements to social protection will be diluted if social insurance coverage is extended to include new populations. Accordingly, state agencies and the media have sought to promote acceptance of a more positive view of migrant workers than has traditionally prevailed within towns and cities. We find that younger urban residents, urban residents who already have social insurance and urban residents working in the state-owned sector are more likely to agree that migrants have the same right to social insurance as the urban population. © 2007 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Urban heritage, development and sustainability : international frameworks, national and local governance

This volume is a timely analysis of current theories and practises in urban heritage, with particular reference to the conflict between, and potential reconciliation of, conservation and development goals.

The structure of communities in scale-free networks

Scale-free networks are often used to model a wide range of real-world networks, such as social, technological, and biological networks. Understanding the structure of scale-free networks evolves into a big data problem for business, management, and protein function prediction. In the past decade, there has been a surge of interest in exploring the properties of scale-free networks. Two interesting properties have attracted much attention: the assortative mixing and community structure. However, these two properties have been studied separately in either theoretical models or real-world networks. In this paper, we show that the structural features of communities are highly related with the assortative mixing in scale-free networks. According to the value of assortativity coefficient, scale-free networks can be categorized into assortative, disassortative, and neutral networks, respectively. We systematically analyze the community structure in these three types of scale-free networks through six metrics: node embeddedness, link density, hub dominance, community compactness, the distribution of community sizes, and the presence of hierarchical communities. We find that the three types of scale-free networks exhibit significant differences in these six metrics of community structures. First, assortative networks present high embeddedness, meaning that many links lying within communities but few links lying between communities. This leads to the high link density of communities. Second, disassortative networks exhibit great hubs in communities, which results in the high compactness of communities that nodes can reach each other via short paths. Third, in neutral networks, a big portion of links act as community bridges, so they display sparse and less compact communities. In addition, we find that (dis)assortative networks show hierarchical community structure with power-law-distributed community sizes, while neutral networks present no hierarchy. Understanding the structure of communities from the angle of assortative mixing patterns of nodes can provide insights into the network structure and guide us in modeling information propagation in different categories of scale-free networks.

Healthy nature healthy people: 'contact with nature' as an upstream health promotion intervention for populations

Whilst urban-dwelling individuals who seek out parks and gardens appear to intuitively understand the personal health and well-being benefits arising from `contact with nature', public health strategies are yet to maximize the untapped resource nature provides, including the benefits of nature contact as an upstream health promotion intervention for populations. This paper presents a summary of empirical, theoretical and anecdotal evidence drawn from a literature review of the human health benefits of contact with nature. Initial findings indicate that nature plays a vital role in human health and well-being, and that parks and nature reserves play a significant role by providing access to nature for individuals. Implications suggest contact with nature may provide an effective population-wide strategy in prevention of mental ill health, with potential application for sub-populations, communities and individuals at higher risk of ill health. Recommendations include further investigation of `contact with nature' in population health, and examination of the benefits of nature-based interventions. To maximize use of `contact with nature' in the health promotion of populations, collaborative strategies between researchers and primary health, social services, urban planning and environmental management sectors are required. This approach offers not only an augmentation of existing health promotion and prevention activities, but provides the basis for a socio-ecological approach to public health that incorporates environmental sustainability.

Adapting to rural communities by overseas-born health professionals

Introduction
As with other multicultural nations, cultural diversity is a prominent feature of Australian society that leads to intercultural awareness and respect through citizen interactions. While this enriching multicultural interaction is clearly seen in big cities like Sydney and Melbourne, it can be very different in the Australian rural context. Living in an isolated rural area is challenging for health professionals who were brought up in urban areas, particularly those born overseas as they experience two types of cultural and social adaptation: urban into rural and native culture into new culture.

As a result of workforce shortages, many overseas trained health professionals are recruited to work in Australia, particularly in rural areas. This has given rise to various initiatives and strategies developed to support and assist these health professionals in their dual cultural and social adaptation. These include University Departments of Rural Health and Rural Clinical Schools programs as well as the Rural Workforce Agencies. However, these programs do not extend to those health professionals who were born overseas and trained in Australia as they are ‘Australian graduates’. In this paper we argue that in ways similar to those born and trained overseas, overseas-born Australian-trained health professionals may require additional support during the acculturation process and making the transition to working in rural communities.

Aim
The aim of this study is to examine some aspects of the acculturation of overseas-born Australian trained health professionals working in rural areas. This study seeks to understand the particular issues that emerge as a result of cultural difference in order to propose strategies that may more adequately prepare these Australian graduates for their rural health experience.

Method
Six overseas-born Australian-trained health professionals were invited to participate in this qualitative study using snowball sampling. The interviews were recorded with the approval of the participants. The interview data were transcribed as raw data and later coded for thematic analysis, which includes topics and themes arising from the raw data as well as from the interview questions with a focus on issues and strategies of acculturation into a rural health context.

Results/conclusion
There were different factors which facilitated or hindered the acculturation of overseas-born health professionals into a rural workforce such as professional isolation, cultural shock, family pressure, and cultural identity. The acculturation process was also affected by the quality of their perceived ‘social and cultural capital’. Different coping strategies were employed to deal with the changes in a new rural environment. The paper discusses some implications of this study with focus on how to improve the living and working conditions of overseas-born Australian-trained health professionals in order to attract them to rural Australia.

Exploring the application of Health Impact Assessment in neighbourhood renewal

This thesis explores the role that Health Impact Assessment can play in social exclusion policy contexts focusing specifically on Victoria's Neighbourhood Renewal Scheme. The findings demonstrate that it can play an important role if due attention is given to contextual and procedural factors both within community settings and within government.

Does moral cleansing moderate the effect of evolutionary altruism on helping intention? An exploratory study

There is strong evidence for social evolutionary motivations for helping (e.g., reciprocal altruism) and also growing support for the influence of the social cognitive theory of moral cleansing on prosociality. Where the former motivation is interpersonal, the latter is intrapersonal. This experimental study hypothesized that, in addition to main effects of evolutionary altruism and moral cleansing on helping intention, an interaction would occur between these theoretical motivations. Using three situational helping scenarios as dependent measures, the effect of participants’ morally-valenced recalled behavior (moral/immoral/achievement/failure) and the effect of their social proximity to a helping target (cousin/colleague/stranger) on helping intention was determined. Overall, 616 Australian participants (90.1% female) completed the online experiment. Two-way ANOVA demonstrated a consistent main effect of social proximity on helping intention across all three helping scenarios, supporting evolutionary social psychological explanations for helping. However, instead of moral self-regulation effects, moral identity consistency effects were induced by the moral behavior recall manipulation. A main effect of behaviour recall on helping intention occurred, with moral recall increasing helping intention. The problem of theoretical ambiguity regarding moral identity consistency and moral self-regulation is discussed, as is the useful role of null result publications in informing effective experimental design.