Local View Research Articles

Testing Linearity against Non-signaling Strategies

Non-signaling strategies are collections of distributions with certain non-local correlations. They have been studied in physics as a strict generalization of quantum strategies to understand the power and limitations of nature’s apparent non-locality. Recently, they have received attention in theoretical computer science due to connections to Complexity and Cryptography. We initiate the study of Property Testing against non-signaling strategies, focusing first on the classical problem of linearity testing (Blum, Luby, and Rubinfeld; JCSS 1993). We prove that any non-signaling strategy that passes the linearity test with high probability must be close to a quasi-distribution over linear functions. Quasi-distributions generalize the notion of probability distributions over global objects (such as functions) by allowing negative probabilities, while at the same time requiring that “local views” follow standard distributions (with non-negative probabilities). Quasi-distributions arise naturally in the study of quantum mechanics as a tool to describe various non-local phenomena. Our analysis of the linearity test relies on Fourier analytic techniques applied to quasi-distributions. Along the way, we also establish general equivalences between non-signaling strategies and quasi-distributions, which we believe will provide a useful perspective on the study of Property Testing against non-signaling strategies beyond linearity testing.

LSQ: Load Balancing in Large-Scale Heterogeneous Systems With Multiple Dispatchers

Nowadays, the efficiency and even the feasibility of traditional load-balancing policies are challenged by the rapid growth of cloud infrastructure and the increasing levels of server heterogeneity. In such heterogeneous systems with many load-balancers, traditional solutions, such as $JSQ$ , incur a prohibitively large communication overhead and detrimental incast effects due to herd behavior. Alternative low-communication policies, such as $JSQ(d)$ and the recently proposed $JIQ$ , are either unstable or provide poor performance. We introduce the Local Shortest Queue ( $LSQ$ ) family of load balancing algorithms. In these algorithms, each dispatcher maintains its own, local, and possibly outdated view of the server queue lengths, and keeps using $JSQ$ on its local view. A small communication overhead is used infrequently to update this local view. We formally prove that as long as the error in these local estimates of the server queue lengths is bounded in expectation , the entire system is strongly stable. Finally, in simulations, we show how simple and stable $LSQ$ policies exhibit appealing performance and significantly outperform existing low-communication policies, while using an equivalent communication budget. In particular, our simple policies often outperform even $JSQ$ due to their reduction of herd behavior. We further show how, by relying on smart servers ( i.e., advanced pull-based communication), we can further improve performance and lower communication overhead.

Calculation of radiation heat transfer in staggered drop-shaped tubes bundle

Tube bundles can be used as a separation heat exchanger in the “organic” Rankine cycle power plants (ORC), while the hot gas passes over the outer surface, and the working substance in ORC flows inside the tubes. Numerical study of the hydrodynamics and heat transfer of a staggered bundle of drop-shaped tubes at different angle of attack (θ) of the incoming gas flow is carried out using the ANSYS package. The distribution of velocity, pressure, temperature in the studied bundle are obtained and the relation for calculating the average Nusselt number for the stress-strain state of the tubes bundle is proposed. The numerical method of calculation of the elementary, local and average radiation view factors for staggered bundle of drop-shaped tubes is developed using the “crossed-strings method”. The radiation net fluxes in the systems of drop-shaped and circular tubes with the same equivalent diameter are determined.

Blockchain-Enabled Software-Defined Industrial Internet of Things With Deep Reinforcement Learning

Recently, software-defined Industrial Internet of Things (SDIIoT), the integration of software-defined networking (SDN) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), has emerged. It is perceived as an effective way to manage IIoT dynamically. Aiming to improve the scalability and flexibility of SDIIoT, multi-SDN has been applied to form a physically distributed control plane to handle a large amount of data generated by industrial devices. However, as the core of multi-SDN, reaching consensus among multiple SDN controllers is a thorny issue. To meet the required design principle, this article proposes a blockchain-enabled distributed SDIIoT to synchronize local views between distinct SDN controllers and finally reach the consensus of the global view. On the other hand, both the cryptographic operations of blockchain and the noncryptographic tasks have access to the same computational resource pool of mobile edge cloud (MEC). In order to optimize the system energy efficiency, we adaptively allocate computational resources and the batch size of the block by jointly considering the trust features of SDN controllers and the resource requirements of noncryptographic operations. To implement the truly distributed manner of blockchain, we describe our problem as a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) and propose a novel deep reinforcement learning (DRL) approach to solve it. In the simulation results, we compare three different protocols of blockchain and show the effectiveness of our scheme in each of them.

An adaptive and Distributed Traffic Management System using Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks

Traffic Management Systems become an important challenge for large cities due to the constant growth of vehicles. As the road mesh does not increase as well as the number of vehicles in the streets, technological solutions for the traffic congestion rise as alternative and easy-to-use applications. This work presents the ON-DEMAND: An adaptive and Distributed Traffic Management System using VANETS. The proposed solution is based on V2V communication and the local view of traffic congestion. During its displacement in a road, the vehicle monitors its traveled distance and the expected one considering a free-flow traffic condition. The difference between these measurements is used to classify a contention factor, i.e., the vehicle perception on the road traffic condition. Each vehicle uses the contention factor to classify the overall congestion level and this information is proactively disseminated to its vicinity considering an adaptive approach. In the case a vehicle does not have the necessary traffic information to estimate alternative routes, it executes a reactive traffic information knowledge discovery. The proposed solution is compared with three literature solutions, named DIVERT, PANDORA and s-NRR. Our results showed that ON-DEMAND presents better results regarding network and traffic congestion metrics.

Link utility aware geographic routing for urban VANETs using two-hop neighbor information

Routing in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) is a challenging problem. While geographic routing protocols are preferred for VANETs due to their scalability, they are focused on finding next-hop nodes closer to the destination without considering their current load or network traffic. In addition, routing decisions based on only one-hop neighbors information might be less optimal since they do not consider the availability of further suitable nodes for forwarding. Thus, such selected next-hop nodes may become overloaded with too much traffic that exceeds their available bandwidth, and may even result in significant packet losses if no other node suitable for forwarding can be found. In this paper, we propose a novel geographic routing protocol named Geo-LU. The proposed protocol improves the routing performance by extending the local view of the network topology at the current forwarder to include two-hop neighbor information. Moreover, it utilizes our proposed link utility (LU) measure. LU considers the utility of a two-hop neighbor link by considering the minimum residual bandwidth on that link and its packet loss rate. By incorporating two-hop neighbor information and our proposed LU measure, the proposed protocol, Geo-LU, can react appropriately to the increased network traffic and to the frequent topology dis-connectivity in VANETs as confirmed by our simulation results.

Multi-view routing visualization for the identification of BGP issues

The Internet is constantly evolving and changing over time. Outages, attacks, upgrades, censorships, and policy changes modify the routing very frequently everywhere in the world. To give the possibility to the Internet Service Providers and to the network operators of monitoring such an evolving scenario, many organizations collect information on the routing changes and give free access to them. We propose, prototype, and evaluate a visual interface, called Upstream Visibility, to display such data. It is based on three views: (1) a Global View that, based on stacked area charts, gives the high level trend of the visibility of an IP prefix; (2) a Local View that allows the user to check the effects over time of the visibility of an IP prefix on specific locations of the network; and (3) a traditional graph Animation View. Also, we propose heuristics for producing such type of drawings, evaluating their effectiveness and performance against scenarios describing well-known Internet incidents. Further, we classify Internet issues and study how they are visualized with our interface. We then identify and describe visual patterns which can be used to spot networking issues at a glance.

Volunteer geographic information in the Global South: barriers to local implementation of mapping projects across Africa

The world is awash in data—by 2020 it is expected that there will be approximately 40 trillion gigabytes of data in existence, with that number doubling every 2 to 3 years. However, data production is not equal in all places—the global data landscape remains heavily concentrated on English-speaking, urban, and relatively affluent locations within the Global North. This inequality can contribute to new forms of digital and data colonialism. One partial solution to these issues may come in the form of crowdsourcing and volunteer geographic information (VGI), which allow Global South populations to produce their own data. Despite initial optimism about these approaches, many challenges and research gaps remain in understanding the opportunities and barriers that organizations endemic to the Global South face in carrying out their own sustainable crowdsourcing projects. What opportunities and barriers do these endemic organizations face when trying to carry out mapping projects driven by their own goals and desires? This paper contributes answers to this question by examining a VGI project that is currently mapping public libraries across the African continent. Our findings highlight how dramatically digital divides can bias crowdsourcing results; the importance of local cultural views in influencing participation in crowdsourcing; and the continued importance of traditional, authoritative organizations for crowdsourcing. These findings offer important lessons for researchers and organizations attempting to develop their own VGI projects in the Global South.

Clouseau: Generating Communication Protocols from Commitments

Engineering a decentralized multiagent system (MAS) requires realizing interactions modeled as a communication protocol between autonomous agents. We contribute Clouseau, an approach that takes a commitment-based specification of an interaction and generates a communication protocol amenable to decentralized enactment. We show that the generated protocol is (1) correct—realizes all and only the computations that satisfy the input specification; (2) safe—ensures the agents' local views remain consistent; and (3) live—ensures the agents can proceed to completion.

Mining the Local Dependency Itemset in a Products Network

Many studies have been conducted on market basket analysis such as association rules and dependent patterns. These studies mainly focus on mining all significant patterns or patterns directly associated with a given item in a dataset. The problem that has not been addressed is how to mine patterns associated with a given item from the local view. This problem becomes very meaningful when the market basket dataset is huge. To address this problem, in this study, first, a new idea called “local dependency itemset” is put forward, which refers to patterns associated with the given item. Second, a framework of mining the local dependency itemset is presented. The framework has two steps, which are executed iteratively. One is expanding the local dependency itemset that initially consists of only the given item; the other is updating the local products network. Third, this framework is implemented by three different dependence indicators and a typical local community detection algorithm. The experimental results confirm that the local dependency itemset is meaningful.

Decarbonising the UK residential sector: The dependence of national abatement on flexible and local views of the future

The UK has some of the worst performing residential buildings in the EU from an energy efficiency perspective. Natural gas remains a dominant feature of existing and new-build housing with strong historical, technical, and social barriers to change. Consequently, the residential sector is responsible for significant shares of national emissions and has a strong role to play under ambitious net zero targets.To assess this role, this work combines long-term system-wide optimisation modelling with heat and electricity network models of representative residential locations. The scenario framework investigates key heating alternatives across futures with dwindling carbon budgets but lower restrictions on residential investment options. Comparing frameworks offers insights into “real life” applicability of technology solutions consistent with system-wide decarbonisation pathways to 2050.Residential sector heat plays an increasing role in lowering emissions as targets tighten. Moving away from natural gas becomes unavoidable and long-term trajectories combine end-use electrification, at household or collective levels, with supply-side decarbonisation. This is preferable to alternative gases that continue to carry uncertain emission impacts, but requires significant local network reinforcement. This could be deferred where technically difficult using near-term hybrid approaches. Enabling this transition will rely on policies that support open and varied technology portfolios.

Berries, greens, and medicinal herbs\u2014mapping and assessing wild plants as an ecosystem service in Transylvania (Romania)

BackgroundWild edible plants as well as medicinal herbs are still widely used natural resources in Eastern Europe that are frequently accessed by the local population. Ethnobotanical studies rarely give insight to the specific ecosystems in which wild food and medicinal plants grow in a spatially explicit way. The present work assesses the potential of different ecosystems to provide wild plants for food and medicinal use based on 37 selected plant species, gives an estimate on the actual use of wild plants, and allows insights into the motivation of local people to collect wild plants.MethodsA number of interdisciplinary methods were used: participatory stakeholder workshops with experts scoring the provisioning capacity of ecosystem types, GIS for representing results (capacity maps), basic data statistics for actual use assessment, and interviews for analysing motivations.ResultsCapacity to provide wild edible plants was assessed highest in broad-leaved forests and wetlands, while for medicinal herbs, orchards were rated best. We could find a multitude of motivations for gathering that could be grouped along four main lines corresponding to major dimensions of well-being (health, habit/tradition, nutrition/income, pleasure/emotional), with health reasons dominating very clearly the range (59% of answers), which can be interpreted as a combination of modern “green” values with a traditional lifestyle. We detected some distinct patterns of motivations between the different social groups analysed with more fundamental needs associated with lower level socio-ecological background.ConclusionThis case study provides an example on the importance of wild plants for locals from several points of view. We emphasize the relevance of these local stakeholder views to be included in decision-making and ecosystem management, which can be achieved by the presented workflow for mapping and assessment of ecosystem services which is also compatible with EU-suggested Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services (MAES).

Managing Expats and Their Effectiveness: A Comparative Study

Abstract Objective: This paper investigates how expatriates and UAE citizens understand the effectiveness of expats’ performance and significance in the workplace. In addition, it explores the difficulty of managing expats to achieve operational excellence. Methodology: A questionnaire was sent to over 1000 subjects whose feedback was analysed using descriptive statistics. A t-test has been used for the inferential part whenever requirements allowed it; in case this was not possible, a Mann-Whitney U test was used. Findings: The results of the conducted statistical analysis suggest that expats think it is difficult to be managed in the UAE compared to the locals who find it relatively easy to manage them. Furthermore, expats believe their effectiveness as a distinct competency to organizations is much higher compared to UAE citizens. Value Added: The results of the conducted statistical analysis point some important conclusions about the way that expats and local Emiratis view differently in managing expats and effectiveness of expats. Recommendations: A further research of this study can be done by examining various types of firms and organizations, by distinguishing them based on their provided services. Comparison among the 7 emirates could also be examined. Comparison between the views of different nationalities of the expats would be very interesting. Other parameters to be examined include age, educational level, nationality (or country of origin), and marital status of the participants.

Kinetics of the radiative and nonradiative recombination in polar and semipolar InGaN quantum wells

We studied mechanisms of recombination in InGaN quantum wells in polar and semipolar structures. Photoluminescence measurements show that the optical emission linewidths for polar and semipolar structures are almost identical suggesting the same level of indium fluctuations in quanutm wells. Their “peak-energy-versus-temperature” relations demonstrate very pronounced “s-shape” effect. Emission linewidth measured by cathodoluminescence does not depend on area from which the light is collected meaning that the fluctuations are smaller that 100 nm. The time scale of recombination process are of the order of 80 ns for polar and 2 ns for semipolar. Energy dispersion of the recombination time is strong in polar structures and very weak in semipolar ones which can be interperted in terms of electric field influence on photoluminescence lifetime energy dispersion. At room temparture emmission is dominated by Schockley-Hall-Read recombination and does not show any dispersion. Rate equation analysis of photoluminescence transients show domination of excitonic recombination in the case of polar samples (low temperature) and bimolecular in the case of semipolar ones. Both types of quantum wells, polar and semipolar look similar from the point of view of localization but differ in their radiative recombination mechanisms.

Vector control in Zika-affected communities: Local views on community engagement and public health ethics during outbreaks.

Aerial spraying of products to kill larvae or adult mosquitoes is a public health measure used to control vector-borne diseases. In some outbreaks, the intervention has evoked controversy and community resistance. This study evaluated how local opinion leaders in US localities affected by Zika think about community engagement in public health policies for outbreak response. In December 2017 through March 2018, 4 focus groups were convened in Houston, TX, New Orleans, LA, Miami, FL, and Brooklyn, NY. They discussed a hypothetical scenario that featured vector control by aerial spraying. Participants (N=20) more readily accepted this vector control method under 4 conditions: They were informed of alternatives, benefits, and risks for human health and the environment. Public health claims were backed by objective evidence and an authority figure genuinely working in the community's interests. They received timely notice about how to mitigate toxin exposure. And, aerial spraying helped to protect vulnerable individuals. The community engagement requirements of the local opinion leaders resonate with core principles of recent public health ethics frameworks: namely, personal autonomy, transparency, reasonableness, and solidarity. Participants foresaw problems with community consent in an era of growing social media use and mistrust in governmental and scientific authority. They also debated whether health authorities should use moral-based arguments, in addition to science-based ones, to communicate aerial spraying's risks and benefits.

Losing the local? Public participation and legal expertise in planning law

AbstractLocal community opposition to environmentally significant development proposals is commonplace, with environmental issues often at the forefront of community concerns. Whilst the development consent system provides multiple opportunities for local community groups to participate in the initial decision-making process, a legal commitment to such participation ensures neither its quality nor its effectiveness. This is especially so for local group ‘have-nots’ who lack resource and expertise, and whose focus on locally-based objections can delegitimise their valid and often broader concerns about the proposed development. This paper argues that access to legal expertise plays a significant role in promoting principles of fairness and competence in participation by helping shape local opposition views in a way that is both understood and accepted as valid by the planning system. Whilst there are important and valuable sources of advice and support currently available, many local groups find themselves in the position of having to raise considerable funds to pay for the legal expertise they need. This unsatisfactory position needs to be addressed if local groups are to meaningfully engage with the planning process.

Language and happiness: Cultural epistemologies and ideological conflicts in Finnish online discourses on the causes of happiness

This article approaches “happiness” as a discursive construct. We examine different understandings of happiness as socially transmitted, linguistically formulated epistemological models by which humans reflexively evaluate and rationalize their experiences and identities. Our data consists of a set of Finnish online discourses that discuss the causes of happiness. We examine media platforms that mass-mediate popular discourses of happiness to individuals and allow individuals to voice their “indigenous” understandings. We analyze the linguistic, interactional, and interdiscursive characteristics of such views of happiness and show how they emerge and circulate in society disseminating mutually competing epistemologies of happiness. We also aim to show how the cross-cultural and culture-internal variation of these models becomes linked to ideological conflicts and politics of identity. On the one hand, our examples echo the kinds of individualistic, depoliticized views of happiness that have been seen as characteristic of modern media. On the other hand, they show that smaller-scale, local views of happiness tend to be more varied and attract explicit identity-political debates.

Warm bodies in the Chinese borderlands: architecture, thermal infrastructure, and territorialization in the arid continental climate of Ürümchi, Xinjiang

ABSTRACTArchitectural research often considers buildings as local material adaptations to climate, particularly when it comes to the analysis of architecture in rural and small-scale settlements. Based on ethnographic data from the rapidly urbanizing oasis metropolis Ürümchi in China’s northwestern borderlands, this paper goes beyond such a localized view of climate responsiveness. It analyzes how individual thermal practices of residents are linked to the interests of the state and to socio-cultural notions of thermal comfort. Through the classification of Xinjiang as part of China’s northern “Heating Zone,” the keeping warm of individual bodies becomes part of a territorializing strategy. There are, however, clear seasonal differences in how indoor residential spaces are regulated to maintain bodily comfort. In winter, apartment owners and residents enjoy the amenities of the state-financed heating infrastructure. In summer, cooling strategies depend on more neoliberalized, individual, social, and architectural ways to lower indoor temperatures. This paper unfolds the diversity of thermal discourses and practices that characterize Ürümchi citizens’ creation of comfortable residential spaces throughout the seasons. The data outlines that houses as infrastructures are far from being simple containers that keep residents’ bodies warm. Instead, the socio-technical organization of thermal spaces interferes with territorial strategies and ethnic place-making.

BuildingFusion: Semantic-Aware Structural Building-Scale 3D Reconstruction.

Scalable geometry reconstruction and understanding is an important yet unsolved task. Current methods often suffer from false loop closures when there are similar-looking rooms in the scene, and often lack online scene understanding. We propose BuildingFusion, a semantic-aware structural building-scale reconstruction system, which not only allows building-scale dense reconstruction collaboratively, but also provides semantic and structural information on-the-fly. Technically, the robustness to similar places is enabled by a novel semantic-aware room-level loop closure detection(LCD) method. The insight lies in that even though local views may look similar in different rooms, the objects inside and their locations are usually different, implying that the semantic information forms a unique and compact representation for place recognition. To achieve that, a 3D convolutional network is used to learn instance-level embeddings for similarity measurement and candidate selection, followed by a graph matching module for geometry verification. On the system side, we adopt a centralized architecture to enable collaborative scanning. Each agent reconstructs a part of the scene, and the combination is activated when the overlaps are found using room-level LCD, which is performed on the server. Extensive comparisons demonstrate the superiority of the semantic-aware room-level LCD over traditional image-based LCD. Live demo on the real-world building-scale scenes shows the feasibility of our method with robust, collaborative, and real-time performance.

ДИНАМИКА СОДЕРЖАНИЯ АЗОТИСТЫХ ВЕЩЕСТВ И ЛИПИДОВ В ХВОЕ ИНТРОДУЦИРОВАННЫХ ВИДОВ PICEA А. DIETR. В ТАЕЖНОЙ ЗОНЕ (КАРЕЛИЯ)

Studies were conducted in the Botanical Garden of Petrozavodsk State University, located in the taiga zone. The objects were 1 aboriginal (Рicea fennica (Regel) Кom.) аnd 5 introduced (P. pungens Engelm. f. glauca Regel and f. viridis Regel, P. obovata Ledeb., P. glauca (Mill.) Britt., P. omorica (Pane) Purk., P. mariana Britt.). It is established that in the process of adaptation of introduced species Picea to low winter tempera-tures most of the involved proteins. Their number increases significantly during the transition from the period of active shoot growth to a period of deep rest have all studied species of Picea. The accumulation of proteins causes a decrease in the level of total free amino acids of most types of exotic species, while the local form of the amino acid content is maintained at a high level. In the needles of most of the studied species of Picea to the period of deep rest, the fraction of glutamic acid and albanina and increases the proportion of arginine and ethanolamine in the total amount of amino acids. The increase in the content of total lipids and phospholipids in the needles during the transition to a period of deep rest less significant than proteins. In the needles of na-tive species in comparison with the needles of exotic species total lipids actively used in the phase of inten-sive growth of shoots. Despite some differences, the introduced species Picea adapted to endure low tempera-tures using the same biochemical mechanisms as a local view. This indicates successful adaptation of the studied introduced species Picea to new conditions of existence.