Deployment of a Hybrid Multicast Switch in Energy-Aware Data Center Network: A Case of Fat-Tree Topology

Recently, energy efficiency or green IT has become a hot issue for many IT infrastructures as they attempt to utilize energy-efficient strategies in their enterprise IT systems in order to minimize operational costs. Networking devices are shared resources connecting important IT infrastructures, especially in a data center network they are always operated 24/7 which consume a huge amount of energy, and it has been obviously shown that this energy consumption is largely independent of the traffic through the devices. As a result, power consumption in networking devices is becoming more and more a critical problem, which is of interest for both research community and general public. Multicast benefits group communications in saving link bandwidth and improving application throughput, both of which are important for green data center. In this paper, we study the deployment strategy of multicast switches in hybrid mode in energy-aware data center network: a case of famous fat-tree topology. The objective is to find the best location to deploy multicast switch not only to achieve optimal bandwidth utilization but also to minimize power consumption. We show that it is possible to easily achieve nearly 50% of energy consumption after applying our proposed algorithm.

Avaliação da atenção humanizada ao abortamento em maternidade-escola, em Natal, Rio Grande do Norte

Unplanned pregnancy is experienced by millions of women worldwide. Such fact increases the risk of abortion-related morbimortality, which represents a serious public health problem. This study aims to evaluate the advances and challenges of the implementation of Humanized Abortion Care at the Maternity-School in Natal, state of Rio Grande do Norte. The research was evaluative, was preceded by an Evaluative Study, and resulted in a Case Study. The intentional sample totaled 102 subjects (60 users, 39 professionals and 3 managers). The collection techniques included documental analysis, semi-structured interview and observation with a field diary. The documental analysis was descriptive, while the Content Analysis by Bardin was used for semi-structured interviews and field diary. The Evaluative Study observed that Humanized Abortion Care is an evaluative program with preparation and pact of the logical model, of the matrix of indicators and evaluative questions. The Case Study showed that users were satisfied with the problem-solving capacity and access to the service; however, is also showed that they pointed out inadequacy in terms of environment, qualified hearing and reproductive planning. Professionals reported that the inefficiency of service consists of infrastructure and environment, which are considered inefficient and inadequate to humanized care, especially regarding patient accommodation, the lack of hospital beds, the reduced number of rooms in the surgical center and the lack of laboratory inside the maternity. Moreover, reproductive planning does not consist of an institutionalized practice in the service, and integrality with other services or partnership with the community is not in place. The Maternity Board emphasizes that the excessive demand of patients is one of the reasons that hinders the appropriate implementation of the technical standard. We then conclude that although satisfied regarding problem-solving capacity in terms of service and ease of access, there is room for improvement in qualified hearing systems, in the creation of a system to promote team work, implementation of ombudsman and satisfaction surveys. The right of shared choice did not prevail among users and health professionals with regard to the option of uterine evacuation procedure. Environment was the most mentioned category as that requiring more changes, seeing as a limited factor for the development of humanized and welcoming practices. Health professionals do not establish a periodic routine of planning practices, and such practices are not aligned with the Technical Standard. Incorporation of guidelines and availability of a plurality of methods and possibilities of choices for family planning are required. There is no institutionalization of reference and counter-reference, or partnerships with the community, which makes integrality of care not viable. The Standard needs to be included in the action plans of managers as one of the priorities in the construction of care strategies for women's health, in order to enable, allied to other initiatives, the real integration among safe conduct service, primary care network and social organizations. As a result, respect for human rights and adequate humanized care, as a way of attention and prevention of abortion, can be secured.

“É acompanhante ou usuária?” Implicações sobre a posição da família no atendimento a crianças e adolescentes em um Centro de Atenção Psicossocial da Infância e Adolescência - CAPSi

This study emerged and founded itself with the aim to analyze the position taken by the family – and the implications in this subjective area – in attending children and adolescents in a Childhood Psychosocial Care Center (CAPSi). A secondary goal has come up as the comprehension surrounding the institutional representation made about the family and the service offered to children, adolescents and relatives. For such, the historical perspective on the relation between the State (laws and institutions) and the family was resumed, and the understanding of how it was reconciled by the medical knowledge and attended the ideological and political means. The social and ideological transformations of the 20th century culminated in the need of change required by the Psychiatric Reform and the achievement of patients on the right to return home and to their families. This new situation, permeated by the attempt of building an assistance model in Mental Health, presented a peculiarity–the close relationship between family and Mental Health services. The observations and conversations at CAPSi that were the investigation objects in this research, intended to learn on the quotidian of families and the possible treatment alternatives that would take into account the family circumstances. Conceiving the status of the families in Mental Health services is a germinal matter yet to be adjusted among the active knowledge in the post-Reform devices. The discussion about the family bonds, anchored in the theoretical perspective of Binding Psychoanalysis brought up elementary concepts such as psychic heritage, denial pact, unconscious alliances, the familiar psychic set, among other. The concept of family organizer helped to think of the family trajectories and stablishes a sort of identity for the family, as well as interferes in the establishment of its boundaries. The family path within the institution, as well as the status they establish facing the institutional approach, reflect the ghosts and the organizers shared by the group-family. It follows that the family is an important protagonist to be considered in the current therapeutic and political processes and, thus, is key to welcome the family bonds for the alliances act over the affective destinations, as well as try to remain sealed from the proposed changes.

A value-oriented model for managing service supply chains

Service supply chain (SSC) has attracted more and more attention from academia and industry. Although there exists extensive product-based supply chain management models and methods, they are not applicable to the SSC as the differences between service and product. Besides, the existing supply chain management models and methods possess some common deficiencies. Because of the above reasons, this paper develops a novel value-oriented model for the management of SSC using the modeling methods of E3-value and Use Case Maps (UCMs). This model can not only resolve the problems of applicability and effectiveness of the existing supply chain management models and methods, but also answer the questions of ‘why the management model is this?’ and ‘how to quantify the potential profitability of the supply chains?’. Meanwhile, the service business processes of SSC system can be established using its logic procedure. In addition, the model can also determine the value and benefits distribution of the entire service value chain and optimize the operations management performance of the service supply.

‘Every Coward’s Choice’? Political Objection to Military Service in Apartheid South Africa as Sexual Citizenship

Sexuality was articulated by the apartheid state as a means of disciplining the white population and marginalizing white opponents of apartheid. As such, homophobia was a recurrent feature of political and legal discourse. The End Conscription Campaign (ECC) opposed compulsory conscription for all white men in the apartheid era South African Defence Force (SADF). Its challenge was a potentially radical and profoundly destabilizing one and it articulated a competing definition of citizenship to that offered by the state. The pro‐ and anti‐conscription discourse was inherently gendered and overtly sexualized. The South African government regularly associated men who objected to military service with effeminacy, cowardice and sexual ‘deviance’. The case of Dr Ivan Toms' objection, a gay objector who wished to cite his sexuality as a primary motivation for his objection, reveals the unwillingness of the ECC to engage in sexual politics. Using Shane Phelan's and Zygmunt Bauman's concept of friends, enemies and strangers, this paper investigates the construction of both white gay men and white people who opposed apartheid as ‘strangers’ and suggests that the deployment of homophobia by the state was a stigmatizing discourse aimed at purging the ECC's political message from the public realm. In this context the ECC adopted an assimilatory discursive strategy, whereby they attempted to be ‘respectable whites’, negotiating over shared republican territory. This populist strategy, arguably safer in the short term, avoided issues of sexuality and the fundamental conflation of sexuality and citizenship in apartheid South Africa. The ECC thus circumscribed its radical and deconstructive political potential and did not offer a ‘radical democratic’ message in opposition to apartheid.

Effectiveness of Community versus Hospital Eye Service follow-up for patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration with quiescent disease (ECHoES): a virtual non-inferiority trial

OBJECTIVES: To compare the ability of ophthalmologists versus optometrists to correctly classify retinal lesions due to neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD).

DESIGN: Randomised balanced incomplete block trial. Optometrists in the community and ophthalmologists in the Hospital Eye Service classified lesions from vignettes comprising clinical information, colour fundus photographs and optical coherence tomographic images. Participants' classifications were validated against experts' classifications (reference standard).

SETTING: Internet-based application.

PARTICIPANTS: Ophthalmologists with experience in the age-related macular degeneration service; fully qualified optometrists not participating in nAMD shared care.

INTERVENTIONS: The trial emulated a conventional trial comparing optometrists' and ophthalmologists' decision-making, but vignettes, not patients, were assessed. Therefore, there were no interventions and the trial was virtual. Participants received training before assessing vignettes.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Primary outcome-correct classification of the activity status of a lesion based on a vignette, compared with a reference standard. Secondary outcomes-potentially sight-threatening errors, judgements about specific lesion components and participants' confidence in their decisions.

RESULTS: In total, 155 participants registered for the trial; 96 (48 in each group) completed all assessments and formed the analysis population. Optometrists and ophthalmologists achieved 1702/2016 (84.4%) and 1722/2016 (85.4%) correct classifications, respectively (OR 0.91, 95% CI 0.66 to 1.25; p=0.543). Optometrists' decision-making was non-inferior to ophthalmologists' with respect to the prespecified limit of 10% absolute difference (0.298 on the odds scale). Optometrists and ophthalmologists made similar numbers of sight-threatening errors (57/994 (5.7%) vs 62/994 (6.2%), OR 0.93, 95% CI 0.55 to 1.57; p=0.789). Ophthalmologists assessed lesion components as present less often than optometrists and were more confident about their classifications than optometrists.

CONCLUSIONS: Optometrists' ability to make nAMD retreatment decisions from vignettes is not inferior to ophthalmologists' ability. Shared care with optometrists monitoring quiescent nAMD lesions has the potential to reduce workload in hospitals.

TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: ISRCTN07479761; pre-results registration.

Bridging Perspectives

People’s ability to change their social and economic circumstances may be constrained by various forms of social, cultural and political domination. Thus to consider a social actor’s particular lifeworld in which the research is embedded assists in the understanding of how and why different trajectories of change occur or are hindered and how those changes fundamentally affect livelihood opportunities and constraints. In seeking to fulfill this condition this thesis adopted an actor-oriented approach to the study of rural livelihoods. A comprehensive livelihoods study requires grasping how social reality is being historically constituted. That means to understand how the interaction of modes of production and symbolical reproduction produces the socio-space. Research is here integrated to action through the facilitation of farmer groups. The overall aim of the groups was to prompt agency, as essential conditions to build more resilient livelihoods. The smallholder farmers in the Mabalane District of Mozambique are located in a remote semi-arid area. Their livelihoods customarily depend at least as much on livestock as on (mostly) rain-fed food crops. Increased climate variability exerts pressure on the already vulnerable production system. An extensive 10-month duration of participant observation divided into 3 periods of fieldwork structured the situated multi-method approach that drew on a set of interview categories. The actor-oriented appraisal of livelihoods worked in building a mutually shared definition of the situation. This reflection process was taken up by the facilitation of the farmer groups, one in Mabomo and one in Mungazi, which used an inquiry iteratively combining individual interviews and facilitated group meetings. Integration of action and reflection was fundamental for group constitution as spaces for communicative action. They needed to be self-organized and to achieve understanding intersubjectively, as well as to base action on cooperation and coordination. Results from this approach focus on how learning as collaboratively generated was enabled, or at times hindered, in (a) selecting meaningful options to test; (b) in developing mechanisms for group functioning; and (c) in learning from steering the testing of options. The study of livelihoods looked at how the different assets composing livelihoods are intertwined and how the increased severity of dry spells is contributing to escalated food insecurity. The reorganization of the social space, as households moved from scattered homesteads to form settlements, further exerts pressure on the already scarce natural resource-based livelihoods. Moreover, this process disrupted a normative base substantiating the way that the use of resources is governed. Hence, actual livelihood strategies and response mechanisms turn to diversification through income-generating activities that further increase pressure on the resource-base in a rather unsustainable way. These response mechanisms are, for example, the increase in small-livestock keeping, which has easier conversion to cash, and charcoal production. The latter results in ever more precarious living and working conditions. In the majority of the cases such responses are short-term and reduce future opportunities in a downward spiral of continuously decreasing assets. Thus, by indicating the failure of institutions in the mediation of smallholders’ adaptive capabilities, the livelihood assessment in Mabomo and Mungazi sheds light on the complex underlying structure of present day social vulnerability, linking the macro-context to the actual situation. To assist in breaking this state of “subordination”, shaped by historical processes, weak institutions and food insecurity, the chosen approach to facilitation of farmer groups puts farmer knowledge at the center of an evolving process of intersubjective co-construction of knowledge towards emancipation.

The political economy of co-ordination challenges in the National Health Service: a postpositivist evaluation of diabetes policy and governance

The present PhD thesis develops and applies an evaluative methodology suited to the evaluation of policy and governance in complex policy areas. While extensive literatures exist on the topic of policy evaluation, governance evaluation has received less attention. At the level of governance, policymakers confront choices between different policy tools and governance arrangements in their attempts to solve policy problems, including variants of hierarchy, networks and markets. There is a need for theoretically-informed empirical research to inform decision-making at this level. To that end, the PhD develops an approach to evaluation by combining postpositivist policy analysis with heterodox political economy. Postpositivist policy analysis recognises that policy problems are often contested, that choices between policy options can involve significant trade-offs and that knowledge of policy options is itself dispersed and fragmented. Similarly, heterodox economics combines a concept of incommensurable values with an appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of different institutional arrangements to realise them. A central concept of the field is coordination, which orientates policy analysis to the interactions of stakeholders in policy processes. The challenge of governance is to select the appropriate policy tools and arrangements which facilitate coordination. Via a postpositivist exploration of stakeholder ‘frames’, it is possible to ascertain whether coordination is occurring and to identify problems if it is not. Evaluative claims of governance can be made where arrangements can be shown to frustrate the realisation of shared values and objectives. The research makes a contribution to knowledge in a number of ways a) a distinctive evaluative approach that could be applied to other areas of health and public policy b) greater appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of different forms of evidence in public policy and in particular health policy and c) concrete policy proposals for the governance and organisation of diabetes services, with implications for the NHS more broadly.

FRESH: A Food-service Sustainability Rating for Hospitality Sector Events

This report presents a metric called FRESH (for Foodservice Impact Rating for Environmentally Sustainable Hospitality Events). FRESH can be used to evaluate the performance of any foodservice meal period or event in the hospitality sector with regards to its sustainability, based on seven measurements. These measures are: a (post-consumer) food-waste indicator, a no-show indicator (when unexpectedly few people show up), an over-show measure (when too many people show up), a planning indicator (measuring intentional overproduction), a portion-size indicator (measuring per-guest consumption against expectations), an economies of scale indicator, and a post-event indicator (which depends on disposal approaches). FRESH can help managers, authorities, and potential guests evaluate the sustainability of food production in any establishment.

The Influence of Table Top Technology in Full-service Restaurants

The use of tabletop technology continues to grow in the restaurant industry, and this study identifies the strengths and weakness of the technology, how it influences customers, and how it can improve the bottom line for managers and business owners. Results from two studies involving a full-service casual dining chain show that dining time was significantly reduced among patrons who used the tabletop hardware to order or pay for their meals, as was the time required for servers to meet the needs of customers. Also, those who used the devices to order a meal tended to spend more than those who did not. Patrons across the industry have embraced guest-facing technology, such as online reservation systems, mobile apps, payment apps, and tablet-based systems, and may in fact look for such technology when deciding where to dine. Guests’ reactions have been overwhelmingly positive, with 70 to 80 percent of consumers citing the benefits of guest-facing technology and applications. The introduction of tabletop technology in the full-service segment has been slower than in quick-service restaurants (QSRs), and guests cite online reservation systems, online ordering, and tableside payment as preferred technologies. Restaurant operators have also cited benefits of guest-facing technology, for example, the use of electronic ordering, which led to increased sales as such systems can induce the purchase of more expensive menu items and side dishes while allowing managers to store order and payment information for future transactions. Researchers have also noted the cost of the technology and potential problems with integration into other systems as two main factors blocking adoption.

Professional service productization and its implications to knowledge transfer in internationalization processes –Case: Company X in Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian markets

As a result of globalization, two thirds of the world’s business takes place nowadays in the service sector. In line, professional service firms are growing their share of the global service production. However, saturation of the professional service sector has forced professional service firms to search for more heuristic ways to conduct business in the international markets. By leveraging effectively the firm’s professionals, a professional service firm can lower its costs to clients and simultaneously generate additional value for the company and thus gain competitive advantage. Even though the academic field has shown growing interest towards services for decades, the fields of service productization and service internationalization are heavily understudied even today. Hence, the objective of this study was to contribute to the research on professional service internationalization and productization. The study concentrated on examining the impact that productization has on knowledge sharing and leveraging in professional service firms operating internationally. The research question focused on examining what implications productization has on knowledge transfer and leveraging during professional service internationalization by leaning on the existing research and on an empirical research. The empirical research was conducted as a single case study within a professional service firm operating in debt-related administrative service business. The case company is one of the leading operators in its field of business and therefore offered a fruitful environment to observe and analyze the topics in question. Additionally, the case company has a strong international presence and a large scale of operations in the selected markets, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Based on the previous literature and on the empirical research, this study found that for professional service firms to efficiently utilize individual, tacit knowledge, in its internationalization processes, it must be shared with the whole organization. By exploiting productization as a knowledge leveraging mechanism, a PSF can apply and transfer knowledge profoundly during its internationalization processes that would otherwise be difficult to tap into. Productization might not be sufficient alone, but by complementing it with a favorable organizational structure and culture, and by encouraging open communication, a PSF may take advantage of the whole potential that productization has to offer.

Aplicación de un modelo de gestión del conocimiento para mejorar el programa de capacitación del call center de Promociones y Cobranzas Beta S.A. Bogotá

Este artículo de investigación propone la aplicación de un modelo de gestión del conocimiento para mejorar el programa de capacitación en el Call Center de la empresa Promociones y Cobranzas Beta S.A., ubicada en la zona centro de Bogotá, Cra. 10 No. 16 -39 piso 13. La investigación se realizó durante el año 2015 utilizando como metodología revisión documental, entrevistas a los coordinadores del área y encuestas con un grupo de asesores del Call Center. La aplicación de dichas herramientas generó información acerca del proceso de capacitación actual. A partir de algunas teorías de gestión del conocimiento se buscó determinar el ciclo de las capacitaciones que mejor se adaptara a la necesidad del Call Center de Promociones y Cobranzas Beta S.A., de tal forma que la comunicación con los asesores de cobranzas fuera más efectiva y el conocimiento mantuviera una actualización permanente. La aplicación del modelo permitirá a la gerencia de la compañía, ampliar el conocimiento y mejorar en el servicio con los clientes atendidos, reflejando cumplimiento de las metas de cobro establecidas en el área. Palabras clave: Gestión del conocimiento, programa de capacitación, Call Center

Improving Resource Management in Virtualized Data Centers using Application Performance Models

The rapid growth of virtualized data centers and cloud hosting services is making the management of physical resources such as CPU, memory, and I/O bandwidth in data center servers increasingly important. Server management now involves dealing with multiple dissimilar applications with varying Service-Level-Agreements (SLAs) and multiple resource dimensions. The multiplicity and diversity of resources and applications are rendering administrative tasks more complex and challenging. This thesis aimed to develop a framework and techniques that would help substantially reduce data center management complexity. We specifically addressed two crucial data center operations. First, we precisely estimated capacity requirements of client virtual machines (VMs) while renting server space in cloud environment. Second, we proposed a systematic process to efficiently allocate physical resources to hosted VMs in a data center. To realize these dual objectives, accurately capturing the effects of resource allocations on application performance is vital. The benefits of accurate application performance modeling are multifold. Cloud users can size their VMs appropriately and pay only for the resources that they need; service providers can also offer a new charging model based on the VMs performance instead of their configured sizes. As a result, clients will pay exactly for the performance they are actually experiencing; on the other hand, administrators will be able to maximize their total revenue by utilizing application performance models and SLAs. This thesis made the following contributions. First, we identified resource control parameters crucial for distributing physical resources and characterizing contention for virtualized applications in a shared hosting environment. Second, we explored several modeling techniques and confirmed the suitability of two machine learning tools, Artificial Neural Network and Support Vector Machine, to accurately model the performance of virtualized applications. Moreover, we suggested and evaluated modeling optimizations necessary to improve prediction accuracy when using these modeling tools. Third, we presented an approach to optimal VM sizing by employing the performance models we created. Finally, we proposed a revenue-driven resource allocation algorithm which maximizes the SLA-generated revenue for a data center.

Quality improvement within nonprofit social service providers

As a relatively new phenomenon in 2009, Swedish nonprofit social service providers proposed quality improvement as a way to reduce mistakes, use resources more effectively and meet the needs and expectations of clients in a better way. Although similar experiences have been studied in health care, the transfer of quality improvement to nonprofit social services gives a possibility for more knowledge on what enables, and constrains, systematic quality improvement in this specific context. This thesis is based on five years of supporting quality improvement in the Swedish nonprofit welfare sector. Specifically, it builds knowledge on which active mechanisms and enabling or constraining structures exist for nonprofit social service quality improvement. By studying quality improvement projects that have been conducted in the development program Forum for Values, critical cases and broad overviews are found valuable. These cases have resulted in four papers on quality improvement in nonprofit social services. The papers include: critical cases from a nursing home for elderly and a daycare for disabled children (Paper I); a critical case from a sheltered housing (Paper II); an overview of performance measurements in 127 quality improvement projects (Paper III); and an analytical model of how improvement policy and practice are bridged by intermediaries (Paper IV). In this thesis, enabled or constrained events and activities related to Deming's system of profound knowledge are identified from the papers and elaborated upon. As a basis for transforming practice into continuous improvement, profound knowledge includes the four knowledge domains: appreciation of a system, theory of knowledge, understanding of variation and psychology of change. From a realist perspective, the identified events are seen as enabled or constrained by mechanisms and underlying regularities, or structures, in the context of nonprofit social services. The emerging mechanisms found in this thesis are: describing and reflecting upon project relations; forming and testing a theory of action; collecting and displaying measurable results over time; and engaging and participating in a development program. The structures that enable these mechanisms are: connecting projects to shared values such as client needs; local ownership of what should be measured; and translating quality improvement into a single practice. Constraining structures identified are: a lack of generalizable scientific knowledge and inappropriate or missing infrastructure for measurements. Reflecting upon the emergent structures of nonprofit social services, the role of political macro structures, reflective practice, competence in statistical methods and areas of expertise becomes important. From this discussion and the findings some hypotheses for future work can be formulated. First, the identified mechanisms and structures form a framework that helps explain why intended actions of quality improvement occur or not. This frameworkcan be part of formulating a program theory of quality improvement in nonprofit social services. With this theory, quality improvement can be evaluated, reflected upon and further developed in future interventions. Second,new quality improvement interventions can be reproduced more regularly by active work with known enablers and constraints from this program theory. This means that long-lasting interventions can be performed and studied in a second generation of improvement efforts. Third, if organizations integrate quality improvement as a part of their everyday practice they also develop context-specific knowledge about their services. This context-specific knowledge can be adopted and further developed through dedicated management and understanding of variation. Thus, if enabling structures are invoked and constraining structures handled, systematic quality improvement could be one way to integrate generalizable scientific knowledge as part of an evidence-creating practice.

The Larned A. Waterman Iowa Nonprofit Resource Center eNewsletter, Winter 2008-09, Vol. 5, no.1

The Larned A. Waterman Iowa Nonprofit Resource Center is a University of Iowa interdisciplinary collaboration created to make more accessible educational and service programs focused on strengthening the operational capacity of Iowa nonprofit organizations. The Center works collaboratively with government agencies, nonprofit organizations and educational institutions to impart new knowledge through activities and provide information and training resources to help nonprofit organizations and interested persons throughout Iowa. We seek to build the capacity and develop the effectiveness of community-based organizations and enhance the overall effectiveness of local organizations in building communities.