Network Events Research Articles

The new normal of alumni volunteering

Many aspects of society have been forever changed by the pandemic and alumni volunteering programmes are no different. The University of Manchester quickly responded to campus closures and moved events online, starting small and building up, including larger, more complex events along the journey. Utilising detailed feedback from student audiences and alumni volunteers, the formats of events were continually honed, successful online speed networking events and roundtables were trialled. Now that teaching has resumed on campus, it is essential to look at what that means for both the volunteers and student audiences and make sure a programme of events that keeps up with their needs is being offered. Offering a mix of online and in-person events will not be enough, activity must be moved to hybrid formats to remain resilient against future challenges and to make sure that these programmes are accessible to everyone. This paper outlines successes with online events and stewardship, which has become the new normal since the pandemic, and how it is intended to develop this in line with the new hybrid way of working.

Evaluating the Student Training Equity Project: An Upstream Recruitment Approach to Diversifying Clinical Psychology Graduate Programs

The U.S. psychology workforce is considerably less diverse than the population that it serves. While several recruitment and admission practices are effective for diversifying psychology training programs, upstream recruitment of underrepresented candidates is particularly promising. Aiming to diversify the clinical psychology graduate program applicant pool, the Student Training Equity Project (STEP) was developed to promote and evaluate upstream recruitment of undergraduate students of color interested in psychology graduate studies. This study used a mixed-method design to evaluate immediate outcomes for three STEP programmatic strategies. Survey results suggest that STEP networking events were associated with undergraduate research and mentorship opportunities. Findings suggest that STEP funding supported students in producing research products (e.g., manuscripts) that might bolster graduate application materials. STEP website engagement data showed over 1,000 views per year, and highlighted ways to improve outreach. More controlled evaluation is needed to determine whether STEP contributed to diversification of the applicant pool.

Improvement and comparison the performance of fuzzing testing algorithms for applications in Google Thread Sanitizer

It is difficult to imagine modern information systems without the use of multithreading. The use of multithreading can both improve the performance of the system as in whole so as slow down the execution of multithreaded applications due to the occurrence of multithreaded programming errors. To find such errors in C/C++ languages, there exists a Google Thread Sanitizer compiler module. The order of execution of threads can change every time the program is started for execution and can affect the appearance of such errors. To repeatedly change the order of execution of threads during the execution of the program, Google Thread Sanitizer has a fuzzing testing module that allows you to increase the probability of finding errors. But all the thread scheduling algorithms in this module are presented in the form of sequential execution of threads which can lead to a significant slowdown in Google Thread Sanitizer as well as can affect the testing of applications that depends on timers (waiting for network events, deadline for operations, ...). To speed up the work of fuzzing schedulers, a method for parallelizing independent transitions is proposed. From the point of view of multithreaded programming errors, it is only important to change the shared state between threads, and local calculations do not affect the reproduction of multithreaded errors. The changes of shared states themselves occur at synchronization points (places in the code where threads are switched according to the principle of cooperative multitasking). The method suggests ordering only the change of shared states at synchronization points, and performing local calculations in parallel, due to which parallelization is achieved. For the analysis of theoretical complexity of the algorithm, the method of combinatorial counting is used. A new approach to the organization of fuzzing testing based on the method of parallelization of independent transitions is proposed the implementation of which, according to theoretical and practical estimates, shows a noticeable acceleration of the work of fuzzing schedulers. According to the results of the experiment, it was revealed that for the algorithm of iterating through all execution variants, the acceleration of execution reaches 1.25 times for two threads. For an arbitrary number of threads, an estimate is presented in the form of a formula. The proposed approach allows fuzzing tests to cover multithreaded applications for which execution time is important — applications with reference to timers which improve the quality of the software.

Detecting Unknown Threat Based on Continuous-Time Dynamic Heterogeneous Graph Network

Unknown threats have caused severe damage in critical infrastructures. To solve this issue, the graph-based methods have been proposed because of their ability for learning complex interaction patterns of network entities with discrete graph snapshots. However, such methods are challenged by the computer networking model characterized by the natural continuous-time dynamic heterogeneous graph (CDHG). In this paper, we propose a CDHG-based graph neural network model, namely, CDHGN, for unknown threat detection. It first constructs the CDHG using interaction relationships among network entities extracted from various log records. Then, it trains the detection model based on a heterogeneous attention network and performs streaming detection for live online network events. We implement a prototype and conduct extensive experiments on a comprehensive cybersecurity dataset with more than nine million records. Experimental result shows that the proposed method can achieve superior detection performance than the state-of-the-art methods.

Ripple effect mitigation capabilities of a hub and spoke distribution network: an empirical analysis of pharmaceutical supply chains in India

In this study, we focus on ripple effect mitigation capability of the Indian pharmaceutical distribution network during disruptions like COVID-19 pandemic. To study the mitigation capabilities, we conduct a multi-layer analysis (network, process, and control levels) using Bayesian network, mathematical optimisation, and discrete event simulation methodologies. This analysis revealed an associative relationship between ripple effect mitigation capabilities and network design characteristics of upstream supply chain entities. Using stochastic optimisation and Lagrangian relaxation, we then find ideal candidates for regional distribution centres at the downstream level. We then integrate these downstream locations with other supply chain entities for building the network optimisation and simulation model to analyse overall performance of the system. We demonstrate utility of our proposed methodology using a case study involving distribution of N95 masks to ‘Jan Aushadhi’ (peoples’ medicines) stores in India during COVID-19 pandemic. We find that supply chain reconfiguration improves service level to 95.7% and reduces order backlogs by 10.7%. We also find that regional distribution centres and backup supply sources provide overall flexibility and improve occupational health and safety. We further investigate alternate mitigation capabilities through fortification of suppliers’ workforce by vaccination. We offer recommendations for policymakers and managers and implications for academic research.

A real-time probabilistic risk assessment method for the petrochemical industry based on data monitoring

Safety is of high societal concern in the petrochemical industry. With advancing digitalization, the techniques of probabilistic risk assessment (PRA), which provide a system-level perspective for industrial risk analysis, have become increasingly dynamic. This paper provides a further advancement in this direction by proposing a risk updating method based on the dynamic Bayesian network (DBN) to incorporate data monitoring into PRA in real-time. We update the probabilistic risk for basic events in Bayesian networks based on their prior probability and the probability of their online monitoring signals exceeding the alarm threshold. The key idea behind this approach is that if the signal of a basic event exceeds the alarm threshold, the corresponding risk should increase. Otherwise, the basic event should have a low risk. The contribution in this paper is twofold. First, residual methods are developed to estimate signal probabilities exceeding abnormal thresholds. Second, a DBN model is proposed to integrate prior risk with data monitoring for risk analysis. The proposed DBN model does not require additional expert knowledge and historical accident data to define the conditional relationship between data monitoring and prior risk. The proposed approach is validated using the RT 580 experimental setup and managed pressure drilling operations.

Istanbul as a "City of Design"

Istanbul as a "City of Design"

Aberdeen, City of Culture?

Aberdeen, City of Culture?

Vulnerability Digging for Software-Defined Network Controller Using Event Flow Graph Analysis

Software-defined network (SDN) controllers, the core of SDN network architecture, need to deal with network events of the whole network, which has huge program state space and complex logic dependency, with security issues related. Vulnerabilities in the SDN controller can paralyze the whole network. Existing controller testing methods are difficult to dig into the hidden logic vulnerability for their ignorance of the complex events interactions among controllers, apps, and data plane inputs. Different from file processing software, network software is driven by events, and the event flow can more accurately and comprehensively reflect the execution process. In this work, we propose an SDN controller vulnerability digging method based on event flow graph analysis. The proposed method consists of three main steps: first, we execute the instrumented controller in a normal environment and generate event flow graphs and then extract their features as reference. Second, we generate and execute test cases using the fuzzing method and dig the newly built event flow graphs with potential vulnerabilities. Finally, we manually examine and validate the potential vulnerabilities. To accurately discover abnormal subgraphs, we utilize graph feature extraction and analysis technologies, such as graph mining and clustering, to distinguish the normal graph and abnormal graph. We implement our method on the Ryu controller and compare it with other SDN testing methods, such as BEADS and Delta. The evaluation indicates that our method uncovered three new vulnerabilities that other methods failed to find.

Sensing Mechanisms: Calcium Signaling Mediated Abiotic Stress in Plants.

Plants are exposed to various environmental stresses. The sensing of environmental cues and the transduction of stress signals into intracellular signaling are initial events in the cellular signaling network. As a second messenger, Ca2+ links environmental stimuli to different biological processes, such as growth, physiology, and sensing of and response to stress. An increase in intracellular calcium concentrations ([Ca2+]i) is a common event in most stress-induced signal transduction pathways. In recent years, significant progress has been made in research related to the early events of stress signaling in plants, particularly in the identification of primary stress sensors. This review highlights current advances that are beginning to elucidate the mechanisms by which abiotic environmental cues are sensed via Ca2+ signals. Additionally, this review discusses important questions about the integration of the sensing of multiple stress conditions and subsequent signaling responses that need to be addressed in the future.

The Time Course of Language Production as Revealed by Pattern Classification of MEG Sensor Data.

Language production involves a complex set of computations, from conceptualization to articulation, which are thought to engage cascading neural events in the language network. However, recent neuromagnetic evidence suggests simultaneous meaning-to-speech mapping in picture naming tasks, as indexed by early parallel activation of frontotemporal regions to lexical semantic, phonological, and articulatory information. Here we investigate the time course of word production, asking to what extent such “earliness” is a distinctive property of the associated spatiotemporal dynamics. Using MEG, we recorded the neural signals of 34 human subjects (26 males) overtly naming 134 images from four semantic object categories (animals, foods, tools, clothes). Within each category, we covaried word length, as quantified by the number of syllables contained in a word, and phonological neighborhood density to target lexical and post-lexical phonological/phonetic processes. Multivariate pattern analyses searchlights in sensor space distinguished the stimulus-locked spatiotemporal responses to object categories early on, from 150 to 250 ms after picture onset, whereas word length was decoded in left frontotemporal sensors at 250-350 ms, followed by the latency of phonological neighborhood density (350-450 ms). Our results suggest a progression of neural activity from posterior to anterior language regions for the semantic and phonological/phonetic computations preparing overt speech, thus supporting serial cascading models of word production.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Current psycholinguistic models make divergent predictions on how a preverbal message is mapped onto articulatory output during the language planning. Serial models predict a cascading sequence of hierarchically organized neural computations from conceptualization to articulation. In contrast, parallel models posit early simultaneous activation of multiple conceptual, phonological, and articulatory information in the language system. Here we asked whether such earliness is a distinctive property of the neural dynamics of word production. The combination of the millisecond precision of MEG with multivariate pattern analyses revealed subsequent onset times for the neural events supporting semantic and phonological/phonetic operations, progressing from posterior occipitotemporal to frontal sensor areas. The findings bring new insights for refining current theories of language production.

FORGING AHEAD AND ADAPTING TO CHANGE: A REVIEW OF THE INITIATIVES OF THE ISPRS STUDENT CONSORTIUM

Abstract. The International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Student Consortium (ISPRS SC) is an international organization that represents a constituency of the students and the young professionals with common interests and goals within ISPRS in the areas of photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information science. The ISPRS SC Board of Directors strengthened the organization’s foundations and increased its engagement in the Society from 2016 to 2022. Given the current global health crisis, selected members of the Board of Directors continued to serve in the ISPRS SC for a two-year extension and developed creative strategies in navigating the new normal. Building on the strengths of the organization and motivated by the incredible ideas of connecting and engaging the scientific community that emerged during the pandemic, we were able to transform challenges into opportunities through collaborations and sustained participation of our members. In this paper, we summarize all the activities of the Consortium from 2016 to 2022 and provide insights on the impacts and values of these initiatives to the organization and its members. We also elaborated on hosting the GeoMixers as virtual networking events with our partner organizations as well as organizing the virtual Google Earth Engine meetup in the Singapore Geospatial Festival, which was given the short title, EarthEngine@SG. Outcomes of the Leadership and Service Mentoring Programme, the Consortium’s first mentorship and training programme for potential nominees for the incoming Board of Directors, demonstrated the remarkable potential of the youth in leading and engaging in relevant social and global issues and contributing to the scientific community. Sustaining our relevance to ISPRS, experiencing growth during the pandemic and understanding our roles as an international organization, the Consortium will continue to forge ahead and adapt to change to support the youth and contribute to building resilience and adaptability in our scientific community.

A Quantitative Analysis of the Relationship Between the Public and News Media Attentions to Hot Network Events in China

With the popularity of new media, the relationship between the media and the public has changed considerably. A comprehensive and quantitative analysis of the relationship between the public and media can reveal the development of news media in China and help provide some constructive advice to improve their quality. Therefore, we establish vector autoregression (VAR) models between the media and the public on 160 network trending events from 2011 to 2018 based on the Baidu Index. In specific terms, we explore the causal relationship between them with the Granger causality test and analyze the dynamic effects using the impulse response function (IRF) analysis. Our findings suggest that there are satisfactory two-way interactions between the news media and the public in China (especially in the event categories directly related to people's livelihood, such as safety misadventure, natural disasters, food and drug safety, and entertainment) and that the public plays a leading role for most events. We also find that the news media lags behind users generally, which prompts us to propose the three-relay hypothesis to explain its dissemination mechanism. Also, the impulse responses of attention to negative events are generally more drastic than those to positive events. For hot network events in China, the time span and sample size of our research are large, increasing the results' reliability.

Informal Networking in Residency: An Opportunity for Inclusivity.

Informal Networking in Residency: An Opportunity for Inclusivity.

The Organization of Networking and Gender Inequality in the New Economy: Evidence from the Tech Industry

In the new economy, with shrinking organizational supports and increased precarity for professional workers, networking has intensified as an entrepreneurial career management strategy. Networking is embedded in the logic of new work organizations, but less attention has been paid to its impact on gender inequality. Through fifty interviews with workers from one tech company and nine months of observations, I ask: (1) In the new economy, with intense networking demands, how does gender structure the networking strategies of workers? And (2) How does the organization of networking contribute to gender inequality? I find that individuals draw on masculinity and femininity as they network in ways that reproduce gender status hierarchies. The structure and culture of networking disproportionately limit the careers of women compared to men by shaping their (1) networking approaches; (2) attitudes about networking; and (3) resources gained from networking. Men network by strategically socializing, confidently building informal relationships with other men through masculine activities and leveraging these relationships for key resources. Women cannot similarly access informal relationships, and so they engage in strategic networking, attending formal networking events that are less effective in providing career resources. Women embodying an elite, white femininity locate personal support in the company-sponsored women's network. However, this group reinforces organizational boundaries by gender and race. This article advances sociological literature on inequality in the new economy, drawing on gender theory to demonstrate how in elite, male-dominated industries like technology, networking contributes to the maintenance of gender inequalities.

Intent-based zero-touch service chaining layer for software-defined edge cloud networks

Edge Computing, along with Software Defined Networking and Network Function Virtualization, are causing network infrastructures to become as distributed clouds extended to the edge with services provided as dynamically established sequences of virtualized functions (i.e., dynamic service chains) thereby elastically addressing different processing requirements of application data flows. However, service operators and application developers are not inclined to deal with descriptive configuration directives to establish and operate services, especially in case of service chains. Intent-based Networking is emerging as a novel approach that simplifies network management and automates the implementation of network operations required by applications.This paper presents an intent-based zero-touch service chaining layer that provides the programmable provision of service chain paths in edge cloud networks. In addition to the dynamic and elastic deployment of data delivery services, the intent-based layer offers an automated adaptation of the service chains paths according to the application’s goals expressed in the intent to recover from sudden congestion events in the SDN network. Experiments have been carried out in an emulated network environment to show the feasibility of the approach and to evaluate the performance of the intent layer in terms of network resource usage and adaptation overhead.

Undertaking Rehabilitation Research During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Emergent Strategies From a Trainee-Faculty Workshop.

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted everyday rehabilitation research. Many academic institutions have halted in-person human research including rehabilitation sciences. Researchers are faced with several barriers to continuing their research programs. The purpose of this perspective article is to report the results of an interdisciplinary workshop aimed at understanding the challenges and corresponding strategies for conducting rehabilitation research during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsTwenty-five rehabilitation researchers (17 trainees and eight faculty) attended a 2-h facilitated online workshop in to discuss challenges and strategies they had experienced and employed to conduct rehabilitation research during the COVID-19 pandemic.ResultsRehabilitation researchers reported challenges with (1) pandemic protocol adjustments, (2) participant accessibility, and (3) knowledge dissemination, along with corresponding strategies to these challenges. Researchers experienced disruptions in study outcomes and intervention protocols to adhere to public health guidelines and have suggested implementing novel virtual approaches and study toolkits to facilitate offsite assessment. Participant accessibility could be improved by engaging community stakeholders in protocol revisions to ensure equity, safety, and feasibility. Researchers also experienced barriers to virtual conferences and publication, suggested opportunities for smaller networking events, and revisiting timeframes for knowledge dissemination.ConclusionThis perspective article served as a catalyst for discussion among rehabilitation researchers to identify novel and creative approaches that address the complexities of conducting rehabilitation research during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

A survey on TCP enhancements using P4-programmable devices

The increasing performance requirements of today’s Internet applications demand a reliable mechanism to transfer data. Many applications rely on the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) as the transport protocol, due to its ability to adapt to properties of the network and to be robust in the face of many kinds of failures. However, improving the performance of applications that rely on TCP has been limited by the closed nature of legacy switches, which do not provide accurate visibility of network events. With the emergence of P4-programmable devices, developers can rapidly implement and test customized solutions that use fine-grained telemetry, provide sub round-trip time feedback to end devices to enhance congestion control, precisely isolate traffic to offer better Quality of Service (QoS), quickly detect congestion and re-route traffic via alternate paths, and optimize server resources by offloading protocols.This paper first surveys recent works on P4-programmable devices, focusing on schemes aimed at enhancing TCP performance. It provides a taxonomy classifying the aspects that impact TCP’s behavior, such as congestion control, Active Queue Management (AQM) algorithms, TCP offloading, and network measurement schemes. Then, it compares the P4-based solutions, and contrasts those solutions with legacy implementations. Lastly, the paper presents challenges and future trends.

Mapping the engagement of alumni organisations in entrepreneurship education and support at UK universities

Alumni have a growing role in supporting entrepreneurship education in universities, but there is scant evidence about their actual engagement with these initiatives. We explored the alumni organisations affiliated to the 162 higher education institutions in the UK to provide insights into their activities in academic entrepreneurship and to understand whether the prevalence of their engagement with these activities is linked to parental higher education institution (HEI) characteristics and regional characteristics. Alumni organisations help their members to access networks of their peers to generate career, mentoring and role-modelling opportunities. Only around 18% of alumni organisations engage in activities to foster entrepreneurship by providing awards and funding and organising networked communities and events. In addition, alumni can also be involved individually in entrepreneurship clubs. Entrepreneurship support activities are more prevalent in alumni organisations affiliated to larger, more resource-rich HEIs that have developed a culture of entrepreneurship and technology transfer. Regional contexts are not relevant for alumni organisations engaging or not in providing entrepreneurship support activities. We discuss future research opportunities to investigate the antecedents, processes and outcomes of engaging alumni organisations in academic entrepreneurship and the policy implications for universities investing in peer support to build their entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Networked supervisor synthesis against lossy channels with bounded network delays as non-networked synthesis

In this work, we study the problem of supervisory control of networked discrete event systems. We consider lossy communication channels with bounded network delays, for both the control channel and the observation channel. By a model transformation, we transform the networked supervisor synthesis problem into the classical (non-networked) supervisor synthesis problem (for non-deterministic plants), such that the existing supervisor synthesis tools can be used for synthesizing networked supervisors. In particular, we can use the (state-based) normality property for the synthesis of the supremal networked supervisors, whose existence is guaranteed by construction due to our consideration of command non-deterministic supervisors. The effectiveness of our approach is illustrated on a mini-guideway example that is adapted from the literature, for which the supremal networked supervisor has been synthesized in the synthesis tools SuSyNA and TCT.