Multi-layered Collaboration Research Articles

Multi-layer resource scheduling architecture and algorithm for a service-oriented optical network based on a fine grain OTN

With the development of service, there are demands for flexible connection scheduling based on customer-side services, fast connection response, and efficient scheduling of line-side resources in an optical transport network (OTN). This article proposes a service-oriented multi-layer resource scheduling architecture and algorithm based on the introduction of OTN fine grain technology. Specifically, we propose a service awareness scheme that enables OTNs to better match service requirements. Based on a centralized distributed collaborative architecture, we extend a path computation element communication protocol (PCEP) to achieve more efficient connection distribution. We further design a resource scheduling strategy and an algorithm based on multi-layer collaboration to perform differentiated scheduling for services with different priorities. Through the mechanisms and algorithms proposed, it is technically feasible to achieve precise matching of customer-side services, flexible scheduling of connections and resources, and efficient service response, and promote the evolution of the OTN service supply from traditional fixed point-to-point connections to flexible service-oriented optical network (SOON) connections.

Green Internationalism on Display: Motives, Structures, and Dynamics of Nordic Environmental Diplomacy during the 1970s

Abstract Using the negotiations of the 1979 Convention on Long-Rage Transboundary Air Pollution as a case, this article examines the characteristics of Nordic environmental diplomacy. Through a Nordic perspective, it investigates the practices, dynamics, and motives of Nordic cooperation on atmospheric pollution within an international context. It argues that Nordic environmental diplomacy was anchored in regional Nordic cooperation, facilitating a fluid and multi-layered collaboration at the international scene. By revealing this complexity of Nordic environmental diplomacy, the article nuances the diplomatic accounts focusing on single countries, emphasizing the multi-ownership of ideas and achievements. Furthermore, by exploring the motivational, organization, and practical traits of Nordic environmental diplomacy, it proposes to characterize Nordic environmental diplomacy as green internationalism, a self-interested international environmentalism resting upon a shared sense of Nordic solidarity and institutional cooperation.

Enabling Deterministic Tasks with Multi-Access Edge Computing in 5G Networks

Deterministic executions of computation-intensive and delay-sensitive tasks are vital for realizing Industry 4.0. Multi-access edge computing (MEC) enables critical tasks to be offloaded to the network edge for quickly responding and processing tasks locally. However, during workload peaks at the resource-limited edge, the best effort IP forwarding in the typical network architecture incurs long-tail latency at both the access and interconnection networks of MEC systems. The long-tail latency results in strict service level agreements (SLAs) unable to be guaranteed in end-to-end communication. In this article, we propose a task deterministic network (TDN) architecture that provides communication with bounded low latency and zero jitter for critical tasks among MEC systems. In TDN, the cross-domain collaboration mechanisms of the layer 2/layer 3 deterministic networking and 5G are jointly designed to eliminate the long-tail latency in typical MEC system networks. In addition, we design a seamless working scheme for the time-sensitive networking controller, the MEC orchestrator, and other coordinators to enable edge collaboration and global deterministic forwarding. Moreover, the main functions of TDN are detailed, including clock synchronization, network slicing, cycle mapping, and multi-layer collaboration. Finally, we present simulation results to substantiate the performance of TDN for accommodating critical service flows among MEC systems.

Film Dubbing and Collaborative Pedagogy

ABSTRACT In this article, we discuss the multi-layered collaboration occurring among students, between students and teachers, and among instructors in the context of an advanced Italian course at the college level. We specifically showcase the project-based learning activity Ma chi parla? (Who Is Talking?), during which students generated the audiovisual translation from English to Italian of film and television show excerpts. We argue that, in its implementation in fall 2018 at our institution, Ma chi parla? fostered creativity, engagement, and pluralism thanks to its collaborative structure, in addition to establishing a decentralised co-laboratory of cultural experiences. The article also frames Ma chi parla? as a starting point to reflect on audiovisual translation, in particular dubbing, as a long-standing tradition in Italy, to illuminate its history, to question its cultural effects, and to problematise its pedagogical applications.

A Multi-Layer Collaboration Framework for Industrial Parks with 5G Vehicle-to-Everything Networks

The fifth-generation (5G) wireless communication networks are expected to play an essential role in the transformation of vertical industries. Among many exciting applications to be enabled by 5G, logistics tasks in industry parks can be performed more efficiently via vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications. In this paper, a multi-layer collaboration framework enabled by V2X is proposed for logistics management in industrial parks. The proposed framework includes three layers: a perception and execution layer, a logistics layer, and a configuration layer. In addition to the collaboration among these three layers, this study addresses the collaboration among devices, edge servers, and cloud services. For effective logistics in industrial parks, task collaboration is achieved through four functions: environmental perception and map construction, task allocation, path planning, and vehicle movement. To dynamically coordinate these functions, device–edge–cloud collaboration, which is supported by 5G slices and V2X communication technology, is applied. Then, the analytical target cascading method is adopted to configure and evaluate the collaboration schemes of industrial parks. Finally, a logistics analytical case study in industrial parks is employed to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed collaboration framework.

Exploring multilayered collaboration designs

Exploring multilayered collaboration designs

A Data-Driven Unified Framework for Predicting Citation Dynamics

With the rising interest in predicting the scientific output, various efforts have been made to predict a scientist's h-index or the citation trajectory of a publication. In this work, we employ a dynamic categorization for scientists to ensure at each stage of their careers a comparison amongst their peers and combine this grouping with predictive models to estimate a scientist's future impact, as expressed by citation counts. Moreover, we investigate a wide range of factors identifying their importance in determining the future of science for different performance and academic levels with particular emphasis on features describing a scholar's position in multi-layered collaboration and citation networks. The robustness of the approach is examined on a longitudinal dataset centered around 700,302 data points representing Computer Scientists in various time periods with their complete networks of over 18 million collaboration links and 36 million citations. Our results indicate up to 30 percent improvement in prediction performance compared to baseline methods along with an average R <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> =0.96 for short term and R <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> =0.91 for long term predictions.

The Adopting Together Service: how innovative collaboration is meeting the needs of children in Wales waiting the longest to find a family

Significant concerns remain in many countries about the high numbers of children needing an adoptive placement relative to the low numbers of prospective adopters, the high level of long-term therapeutic support needs for many adopted children and their families, and whether there are appropriate services to meet them. There has been an increase in ‘priority’ children waiting over 12 months to find a family. These are often children aged four years and over, in care with siblings, with additional needs or developmental uncertainties and from minority ethnic backgrounds. The financial and emotional costs of long-term fostering when plans are changed are huge. This article describes a major development in child care practice in Wales that has occurred over the past two years. The Adopting Together Service (ATS) involves a unique, innovative and multi-layered collaboration between the voluntary adoption agencies (VAAs – non-governmental charities) and regional adoption teams (statutory agencies) to secure permanence for children who wait the longest to find families. It explains how the ATS has been developed and embedded, including an account of the referral process, the approach to recruitment, linking and matching, and therapeutic activity before, during and after placement. It also describes the process of securing sustainable social procurement under the guidance of the British Standard for Collaborative Working (ISO 44001; British Standard Institute, 2017), the creation of a Joint Relationship Management Plan between VAAs, and the implementation of service level agreements between the voluntary and statutory sectors. These developments are considered in the context of the Welsh Government’s implementation of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, which lays out collaborative expectations to the statutory sector as one of its sustainable development principles. The article concludes with an initial evaluation of progress, noting challenges to the service and the views of the social workers, foster carers and adoptive parents involved.

Rethinking design studios as an integrative multi-layered collaboration environment

ABSTRACT This paper discusses experimental studios within an incremental collaboration framework to better understand the opportunities of peer‐to‐peer learning and student collaboration. Using qualitative methods including observation, interviews, peer-evaluations, and descriptive assessments of student work, the study revealed that collaboration can lead to both progression and regression in overall learning processes depending on the approach (mandatory/self-directed), group composition, and how students arrive at common decisions. The findings suggest that a strategically designed studio structure combined with multiple, diversified collaboration strategies are essential to give students successful learning experiences in both explicit and tacit forms.

Modeling of inter-organizational coordination dynamics in resilience planning of infrastructure systems: A multilayer network simulation framework.

This paper proposes and tests a multilayer framework for simulating the network dynamics of inter-organizational coordination among interdependent infrastructure systems (IISs) in resilience planning. Inter-organizational coordination among IISs (such as transportation, flood control, and emergency management) would greatly affect the effectiveness of resilience planning. Hence, it is important to examine and understand the dynamics of coordination in networks of organizations within and across various systems in resilience planning. To capture the dynamic nature of coordination frequency and the heterogeneity of organizations, this paper proposes a multilayer network simulation framework enabling the characterization of inter-organizational coordination dynamics within and across IISs. In the proposed framework, coordination probabilities are utilized to approximate the varying levels of collaboration among organizations. Based on these derived collaborations, the simulation process perturbs intra-layer or inter-layer links and unveils the level of inter-organizational coordination within and across IISs. To test the proposed framework, the study examined a multilayer collaboration network of 35 organizations from five infrastructure systems within Harris County, Texas, based on the data gathered from a survey in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. The results indicate that prior to Hurricane Harvey: (1) coordination among organizations across different infrastructure systems is less than the coordination within the individual systems; (2) organizations from the community development system had a low level of coordination for hazard mitigation with organizations in flood control and transportation systems; (3) achieving a greater level of coordination among organizations across infrastructure systems is more difficult and would require a greater frequency of interaction (compared to within-system coordination). The results show the capability of the proposed multilayer network simulation framework to examine inter-organizational coordination dynamics at the system level (e.g., within and across IISs). The assessment of inter-organizational coordination within and across IISs sheds light on important organizational interdependencies in IISs and leads to recommendations for improving the resilience planning process.

QoE-Aware wireless video communications for emotion-aware intelligent systems: A multi-layered collaboration approach

With the ever increasing demand on high-quality visual information for emotion-aware intelligent systems, wireless video traffic explosively grows and causes great energy consumption. Therefore, providing high quality of experience (QoE) for connected users becomes increasingly important. Aiming to establish a new paradigm to solve this challenging problem, in this article we propose a multi-layered collaboration approach to provide energy-efficient QoE-aware wireless video communications by efficiently utilizing the limited transmission resources of wireless networks for 5G. We first investigate the emotion-aware intelligent system QoE measurement based on objective metrics of quality of service (QoS). Then, we utilize the multi-layered collaborations of physical, network and application layers among the connected users to achieve energy-efficient QoE-aware video communications. By developing a profound understanding of the interplay between the video applications and wireless networks, we qualitatively analyze how QoE can benefit from the multi-layered collaborations, and quantitatively assess the achievable gains in a typical wireless-connected emotion-aware application scenario.

Achieving environmental sustainability: The case for multi-layered collaboration across disciplines and players

The sustainable development (SD) paradigm challenges global production and consumption, and the legitimacy of corporations. In this paper we examine corporate responses to legitimacy challenges posed by SD. Corporations initially responded to SD with “eco-efficiency” and corporate social responsibility. More recently, we observe a process of multi-layered collaboration that we here call “hybridization”. In this approach corporations meld their interests with those of key stakeholders – government, political actors, public, consumers, and non-governmental organizations – in the process of achieving environmental sustainability. This exploratory study describes several examples of the hybridization strategy. We explore how corporations are being transformed by hybridization and also transforming the capitalist system in the process.

Supporting novel biomedical research via multilayer collaboration networks.

The value of research containing novel combinations of molecules can be seen in many innovative and award-winning research programs. Despite calls to use innovative approaches to address common diseases, an increasing majority of research funding goes toward “safe” incremental research. Counteracting this trend by nurturing novel and potentially transformative scientific research is challenging and it must be supported in competition with established research programs. Therefore, we propose a tool that helps to resolve the tension between safe/fundable research vs. high-risk/potentially transformational research. It does this by identifying hidden overlapping interests around novel molecular research topics. Specifically, it identifies paths of molecular interactions that connect research topics and hypotheses that would not typically be associated, as the basis for scientific collaboration. Because these collaborations are related to the scientists’ present trajectory, they are low risk and can be initiated rapidly. Unlike most incremental steps, these collaborations have the potential for leaps in understanding, as they reposition research for novel disease applications. We demonstrate the use of this tool to identify scientists who could contribute to understanding the cellular role of genes with novel associations with Alzheimer’s disease, which have not been thoroughly characterized, in part due to the funding emphasis on established research.

Identifying Modular Flows on Multilayer Networks Reveals Highly Overlapping Organization in Interconnected Systems

Unveiling the community structure of networks is a powerful methodology to comprehend interconnected systems across the social and natural sciences. To identify different types of functional modules in interaction data aggregated in a single network layer, researchers have developed many powerful methods. For example, flow-based methods have proven useful for identifying modular dynamics in weighted and directed networks that capture constraints on flow in the systems they represent. However, many networked systems consist of agents or components that exhibit multiple layers of interactions. Inevitably, representing this intricate network of networks as a single aggregated network leads to information loss and may obscure the actual organization. Here we propose a method based on compression of network flows that can identify modular flows in non-aggregated multilayer networks. Our numerical experiments on synthetic networks show that the method can accurately identify modules that cannot be identified in aggregated networks or by analyzing the layers separately. We capitalize on our findings and reveal the community structure of two multilayer collaboration networks: scientists affiliated to the Pierre Auger Observatory and scientists publishing works on networks on the arXiv. Compared to conventional aggregated methods, the multilayer method reveals smaller modules with more overlap that better capture the actual organization.

The Architecture of Multi-Layer Collaboration Information Service System for Electricity Trading in China

With the advancement of electricity deregulation in China, the market entities’ demands for getting high quality information service from power exchange center are growing. Power exchange center needs to establish a comprehensive, efficient and interactive information service platform. In view of the current situation, this paper classifies the large amount of information in electricity market, and analyses the information demands and acquisition channels of market entities. This paper puts forward the architecture of multi-layer collaboration information service system for electricity trading in China. The architecture has a clearly hierarchy and reflects the crucial junctures of information processing. It has the important guiding significance to the power exchange center to provide quality information services for the market entities.

Multi-layer Model Collaboration for Bioimage Temporal Stage Classification

Nowadays, bioimages such as microscopic images and in situ hybridization images increase exponentially. The rapid growth of such images calls for efficient and effective methods for mining significant patterns in them. As a biological process usually consists of several temporal stages, one important task in bioimage analysis is to classify images into different stages. In this paper, a multi-layer model collaboration approach is proposed to capitalize the class correlations in order to enhance the multi-class classification accuracy. First, several middle-level classes, which are relatively easy to annotate are created. A set of subspace-based classifiers are trained. Next, the classification scores output from these models are integrated with the target class classification scores. The score integration problem was formulated as a convex optimization problem, which is solved by the gradient descent approach. Experiments on four biological image data sets demonstrate that the proposed framework outperforms other current state-of-the-art algorithms, which indicates the proposed framework is promising.

Evolving Traffic Grooming in Multi-Layer Flexible-Grid Optical Networks With Software-Defined Elasticity

Recently, flexible grid and elastic-rate transponders have emerged as evolutionary technologies to satisfy the ever-increasing demand for higher spectrum efficiency and operational flexibility. In this study, we first briefly review the evolution of traffic grooming from SONET/SDH to currently-deployed WDM networks, and summarize the essence of the current traffic-grooming paradigm based on electronic circuit or packet switching and multi-layer collaboration. Then, the role of traffic grooming in flexible-grid and elastic-rate optical networks is re-examined. The impact of some new optical-layer technologies on traffic-grooming paradigm is discussed. Particularly, sliceable optical layer based on sliceable transponders and BV-ROADM is identified as a novel technology that could impact the future grooming paradigm by offloading considerable amount of traffic and part of electronic grooming function to the optical layer. We propose two novel network architectures based on sliceable optical layer and numerically compare them with the traditional packet-over-optical network architecture. It is found that packet-over-sliceable network architecture consumes the fewest transponders and at the same time achieves either the “lowest-possible” latency or least spectrum usage. Finally, traffic grooming, which involves multi-layer resource orchestration, should be controlled by software with a centralized view of the network to accommodate the dynamic requirements of applications.

Multi-layered Collaboration: From Online Development to Delivery

Collaboration is often a significant element in course development and/or delivery. This paper describes a project that was collaboratively developed and facilitated by a team of faculty under the auspices of a consortium of universities called the Collaboration for Online Higher Education and Research (COHERE). The project is ongoing and its significance lies in overcoming or circumventing the typical barriers that stand in the way of success for many consortia-created collaborative projects of this nature.