PriDyn: Enabling Differentiated I/O Services in Cloud Using Dynamic Priorities

Virtualization is one of the key enabling technologies for Cloud computing. Although it facilitates improved utilization of resources, virtualization can lead to performance degradation due to the sharing of physical resources like CPU, memory, network interfaces, disk controllers, etc. Multi-tenancy can cause highly unpredictable performance for concurrent I/O applications running inside virtual machines that share local disk storage in Cloud. Disk I/O requests in a typical Cloud setup may have varied requirements in terms of latency and throughput as they arise from a range of heterogeneous applications having diverse performance goals. This necessitates providing differential performance services to different I/O applications. In this paper, we present PriDyn, a novel scheduling framework which is designed to consider I/O performance metrics of applications such as acceptable latency and convert them to an appropriate priority value for disk access based on the current system state. This framework aims to provide differentiated I/O service to various applications and ensures predictable performance for critical applications in multi-tenant Cloud environment. We demonstrate through experimental validations on real world I/O traces that this framework achieves appreciable enhancements in I/O performance, indicating that this approach is a promising step towards enabling QoS guarantees on Cloud storage.

Spray: A Multi-Modal Localization System for Stationary Sensor Network Deployment

We present a localization system that targets rapid deployment of stationary wireless sensor networks (WSN). The system uses a particle filter to fuse measurements from multiple localization modalities, such as RF ranging, neighbor information or maps, to obtain position estimations with higher accuracy than that of the individual modalities. The system isolates different modalities into separate components which can be included or excluded independently to tailor the system to a specific scenario. We show that position estimations can be improved with our system by combining multiple modalities. We evaluate the performance of the system in both an indoor and outdoor environment using combinations of five different modalities. Using two anchor nodes as reference points and combining all five modalities, we obtain RMS (Root Mean Square) estimation errors of approximately 2.5m in both cases, while using the components individually results in errors within the range of 3.5 and 9 m.

Sistema seguro de votação eletrônica multi-células

Em uso desde a Grécia antiga e atualmente massificado na maioria dos países do mundo, o sistema de votação tradicional baseado em cédulas de papel possui diversos problemas associados à segurança, tais como dificuldades para evitar coerção do eleitor, venda do voto e substituição fraudulenta do eleitor. Além de problemas de usabilidade que acarretam erros de preenchimento da cédula e um processo de apuração lento, que pode durar dias. Ao lado disso, o sistema tradicional não fornece a contraprova do voto, que permite ao eleitor conferir se o seu voto foi corretamente contabilizado na apuração. Inicialmente acreditou-se que a informatização do sistema de votação resolveria todos os problemas do sistema tradicional. Porém, com a sua implantação em alguns países o sistema de votação eletrônica não mostrou-se capaz de fornecer garantias irrefutáveis que não tivesse sido alvo de alterações fraudulentas durante o seu desenvolvimento ou operação. A má reputação do sistema eletrônico está principalmente associada à falta de transparência dos processos que, em sua maioria, não proporcionam a materialização do voto, conferido pelo eleitor para fins de contagem manual, e nem geram evidências (contraprova) da correta contabilização do voto do eleitor. O objetivo deste trabalho é propor uma arquitetura de votação eletrônica que integra, de forma segura, o anonimato e autenticidade do votante, a confidencialidade e integridade do voto/sistema. O sistema aumenta a usabilidade do esquema de votação baseado em "Três Cédulas" de papel, implementando-o computacionalmente. O esquema oferece maior credibilidade ao sistema de votação através da materialização e contraprova do voto, resistência à coerção e ao comércio do voto. Utilizando esquemas de criptografia assimétrica e segurança computacional clássica, associado a um sistema de auditoria eficiente, a proposta garante segurança e transparência nos processos envolvidos. A arquitetura de construção modular distribui a responsabilidade entre suas entidades, agregando-lhe robustez e viabilizando eleições em grande escala. O protótipo do sistema desenvolvido usando serviços web e Election Markup Language mostra a viabilidade da proposta.

Non-governmental organizations and multi-sited marine conservation science: A case study

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are now major players in the realm of environmental conservation. While many environmental NGOs started as national organizations focused around single-species protection, governmental advocacy, and preservation of wilderness, the largest now produce applied conservation science and work with national and international stakeholders to develop conservation solutions that work in tandem with local aspirations. Marine managed areas (MMAs) are increasingly being used as a tool to manage anthropogenic stressors on marine resources and protect marine biodiversity. However, the science of MMA is far from complete. Conservation International (CI) is concluding a 5 year, $12.5 million dollar Marine Management Area Science (MMAS) initiative. There are 45 scientific projects recently completed, with four main “nodes” of research and conservation work: Panama, Fiji, Brazil, and Belize. Research projects have included MMA ecological monitoring, socioeconomic monitoring, cultural roles monitoring, economic valuation studies, and others. MMAS has the goals of conducting marine management area research, building local capacity, and using the results of the research to promote marine conservation policy outcomes at project sites. How science is translated into policy action is a major area of interest for science and technology scholars (Cash and Clark 2001; Haas 2004; Jasanoff et al. 2002). For science to move policy there must be work across “boundaries” (Jasanoff 1987). Boundaries are defined as the “socially constructed and negotiated borders between science and policy, between disciplines, across nations, and across multiple levels” (Cash et al. 2001). Working across the science-policy boundary requires boundary organizations (Guston 1999) with accountability to both sides of the boundary, among other attributes. (Guston 1999; Clark et al. 2002). This paper provides a unique case study illustrating how there are clear advantages to collaborative science. Through the MMAS initiative, CI built accountability into both sides of the science-policy boundary primarily through having scientific projects fed through strong in-country partners and being folded into the work of ongoing conservation processes. This collaborative, boundary-spanning approach led to many advantages, including cost sharing, increased local responsiveness and input, better local capacity building, and laying a foundation for future conservation outcomes. As such, MMAS can provide strong lessons for other organizations planning to get involved in multi-site conservation science. (PDF contains 3 pages)

Cloud computing services for seismic networks

This thesis describes a compositional framework for developing situation awareness applications: applications that provide ongoing information about a user's changing environment. The thesis describes how the framework is used to develop a situation awareness application for earthquakes. The applications are implemented as Cloud computing services connected to sensors and actuators. The architecture and design of the Cloud services are described and measurements of performance metrics are provided. The thesis includes results of experiments on earthquake monitoring conducted over a year. The applications developed by the framework are (1) the CSN --- the Community Seismic Network --- which uses relatively low-cost sensors deployed by members of the community, and (2) SAF --- the Situation Awareness Framework --- which integrates data from multiple sources, including the CSN, CISN --- the California Integrated Seismic Network, a network consisting of high-quality seismometers deployed carefully by professionals in the CISN organization and spread across Southern California --- and prototypes of multi-sensor platforms that include carbon monoxide, methane, dust and radiation sensors.

Competing Ecosystem Services: an Assessment of Carbon and Timber in the Tropical Forests of Central America

29 p.

Participación ciudadana, patrimonio cultural y museos: entre la teoría y la praxis

Cap. 1. La Nueva Museología, el patrimonio cultural y la participación ciudadana a debate. Iñaki Arrieta Urtizberea Cap. 2. Museos: del público al ciudadano. Rafael Azuar Ruiz Cap. 3. Los públicos y lo público. De mutismos, sorderas, y de diálogos sociales en museos y espacios patrimoniales. Luz Maceira Ochoa Cap. 4. La restitution du patrimoine: un rôle pour le musée? Études de cas dans les communautés innues du Québec et du Labrador (Canada). Élise Dubuc Cap. 5. El museo de territorio y sociedad, ¿una utopía? el caso del Museo Industrial del Ter. Carles García Hermosilla Cap. 6. El ecomuseo del río Caicena (Almedinilla-Córdoba): un proyecto de desarrollo rural desde el patrimonio histórico-natural, ¿y la participación ciudadana? Ignacio Muñiz Jaén Cap. 7. Mé-tisser les mémoires. Musées indiens du nordeste brésilien. Martin Soares Cap. 8. El patrimonio como proceso social. Intervención, desarrollo y consumo del patrimonio minero en Andalucía. Macarena Hernández Ramírez y Esteban Ruiz Ballesteros Cap. 9. Legislación patrimonial, intervención pública y participación ciudadana en la declaración de un conjunto histórico. Iñaki Arrieta Urtizberea Cap. 10. El castillo de Montsoriu. La participación de la sociedad civil. Joaquim Mateu Gasquet Cap. 11. El patrimonio cultural; espacio de encuentro. Daniel Arnesio Lara Montero

Improving Content Delivery Efficiency through Multi-Layer Mobile Edge Adaptation

This paper presents a novel architecture for optimizing the HTTP-based multimedia delivery in multi-user mobile networks. This proposal combines the usual client-driven dynamic adaptation scheme DASH-3GPP with network-assisted adaptation capabilities, in order to maximize the overall Quality of Experience. The foundation of this combined adaptation scheme is based on two state of the art technologies. On one hand, adaptive HTTP streaming with multi-layer encoding allows efficient media delivery and improves the experienced media quality in highly dynamic channels. Additionally, it enables the possibility to implement network-level adaptations for better coping with multi-user scenarios. On the other hand, mobile edge computing facilitates the deployment of mobile services close to the user. This approach brings new possibilities in modern and future mobile networks, such as close to zero delays and awareness of the radio status. The proposal in this paper introduces a novel element, denoted as Mobile Edge-DASH Adaptation Function, which combines all these advantages to support efficient media delivery in mobile multi-user scenarios. Furthermore, we evaluate the performance enhancements of this content- and user context-aware scheme through simulations of a mobile multimedia scenario.

The EBM-DPSER conceptual model: integrating ecosystem services into the DPSIR framework

There is a pressing need to integrate biophysical and human dimensions science to better inform holistic ecosystem management supporting the transition from single species or single-sector management to multi-sector ecosystem-based management. Ecosystem-based management should focus upon ecosystem services, since they reflect societal goals, values, desires, and benefits. The inclusion of ecosystem services into holistic management strategies improves management by better capturing the diversity of positive and negative human-natural interactions and making explicit the benefits to society. To facilitate this inclusion, we propose a conceptual model that merges the broadly applied Driver, Pressure, State, Impact, and Response (DPSIR) conceptual model with ecosystem services yielding a Driver, Pressure, State, Ecosystem service, and Response (EBM-DPSER) conceptual model. The impact module in traditional DPSIR models focuses attention upon negative anthropomorphic impacts on the ecosystem; by replacing impacts with ecosystem services the EBM-DPSER model incorporates not only negative, but also positive changes in the ecosystem. Responses occur as a result of changes in ecosystem services and include inter alia management actions directed at proactively altering human population or individual behavior and infrastructure to meet societal goals. The EBM-DPSER conceptual model was applied to the Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas marine ecosystem as a case study to illustrate how it can inform management decisions. This case study captures our system-level understanding and results in a more holistic representation of ecosystem and human society interactions, thus improving our ability to identify trade-offs. The EBM-DPSER model should be a useful operational tool for implementing EBM, in that it fully integrates our knowledge of all ecosystem components while focusing management attention upon those aspects of the ecosystem most important to human society and does so within a framework already familiar to resource managers.

Traceability applications based on Discovery Services

RFID, in its different forms, but especially following EPCglobal standards, has become a key enabling technology for many applications. An essential component to develop track and trace applications in a complex multi-vendor scenario are the Discovery Services. Although they are already envisaged as part of the EPCglobal network architecture, the functional definition and standardization of the Discovery Service is still at a very early stage. Within the scope of the BRIDGE project, a specification for the interfaces of Discovery Services has been developed, together with a prototype to validate the design and different models to enhance supply-chain control through track and trace applications. © 2008 IEEE.

Student use of electronic information services in further education

Urquhart,C., Thomas, R., Spink, S., Fenton, R., Yeoman, A., Lonsdale, R., Armstrong, C., Banwell, L., Ray, K., Coulson, G. & Rowley, J. (2005). Student use of electronic information services in further education. International Journal of Information Management, 25(4), 347-362. Sponsorship: JISC

Understanding student information behavior in relation to electronic information services: lessons from longitudinal monitoring and evaluation Part 1

Rowley, J.& Urquhart, C. (2007). Understanding student information behavior in relation to electronic information services: lessons from longitudinal monitoring and evaluation Part 1. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(8), 1162-1174. Sponsorship: JISC

?A Certain Idea of Britain': British Cultural Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1945-1957?

Vaughan, J. (2005). ?A Certain Idea of Britain': British Cultural Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1945-1957. Contemporary British History. 19 (2), pp.151-168 RAE2008

Load Profiling for Efficient Route Selection in Multi-Class Networks

High-speed networks, such as ATM networks, are expected to support diverse Quality of Service (QoS) constraints, including real-time QoS guarantees. Real-time QoS is required by many applications such as those that involve voice and video communication. To support such services, routing algorithms that allow applications to reserve the needed bandwidth over a Virtual Circuit (VC) have been proposed. Commonly, these bandwidth-reservation algorithms assign VCs to routes using the least-loaded concept, and thus result in balancing the load over the set of all candidate routes. In this paper, we show that for such reservation-based protocols|which allow for the exclusive use of a preset fraction of a resource's bandwidth for an extended period of time-load balancing is not desirable as it results in resource fragmentation, which adversely affects the likelihood of accepting new reservations. In particular, we show that load-balancing VC routing algorithms are not appropriate when the main objective of the routing protocol is to increase the probability of finding routes that satisfy incoming VC requests, as opposed to equalizing the bandwidth utilization along the various routes. We present an on-line VC routing scheme that is based on the concept of "load profiling", which allows a distribution of "available" bandwidth across a set of candidate routes to match the characteristics of incoming VC QoS requests. We show the effectiveness of our load-profiling approach when compared to traditional load-balancing and load-packing VC routing schemes.

Safe Composition of Web Communication Protocols for Extensible Edge Services

As new multi-party edge services are deployed on the Internet, application-layer protocols with complex communication models and event dependencies are increasingly being specified and adopted. To ensure that such protocols (and compositions thereof with existing protocols) do not result in undesirable behaviors (e.g., livelocks) there needs to be a methodology for the automated checking of the "safety" of these protocols. In this paper, we present ingredients of such a methodology. Specifically, we show how SPIN, a tool from the formal systems verification community, can be used to quickly identify problematic behaviors of application-layer protocols with non-trivial communication models—such as HTTP with the addition of the "100 Continue" mechanism. As a case study, we examine several versions of the specification for the Continue mechanism; our experiments mechanically uncovered multi-version interoperability problems, including some which motivated revisions of HTTP/1.1 and some which persist even with the current version of the protocol. One such problem resembles a classic degradation-of-service attack, but can arise between well-meaning peers. We also discuss how the methods we employ can be used to make explicit the requirements for hardening a protocol's implementation against potentially malicious peers, and for verifying an implementation's interoperability with the full range of allowable peer behaviors.