Streaming Framework Research Articles

Climate declarations for buildings as a new policy instrument in Sweden: a multiple streams perspective

ABSTRACT Sweden has recently adopted new legislation on mandatory climate declarations of buildings. This occurred before the EU policy requests. The implementation of climate calculations and the visibility of the results of these calculations in a declaration is intended to increase building developers’ knowledge of the climate impact from construction and improves the opportunities for the developer to make conscious choices that reduce their climate impact. Using the Multiple Stream Framework as a theoretical lens, we analyse by qualitative and quantitative text analysis, the formulation and decision-making on the new law. A majority of stakeholders approved the proposal for the new law, but it was not undisputed. Some stakeholders advocated a voluntary scheme instead of a mandatory scheme. Some key stakeholders advocated a focus on life cycle emissions rather than embedded construction emissions only. The final line of conflict was that the climate declarations are not linked to the most important phase for reducing the climate impact of buildings, which is planning and design, rather than construction. We show how frame disconnection and frame polarization was used by the Government Offices of Sweden and the Swedish government to downplay critique from key stakeholders.

An evaluation of the Australian Community Pharmacy Agreement from a public policy perspective: industry policy cloaked as health policy?

BackgroundA series of Community Pharmacy Agreements (Agreements) between the Federal government and a pharmacy-owners’ body, the Pharmacy Guild of Australia (PGA) have been influential policy in Australian community pharmacy (CP) since 1990. While ostensibly to support the public’s access and use of medicines, the core elements of the Agreements have been remuneration for dispensing and rules that limit the establishment of new pharmacies. Criticism has focused on the self-interest of pharmacy owners, the exclusion of other pharmacy stakeholders from the Agreement negotiations, the lack of transparency, and the impact on competition. The objective of this paper is to determine the true nature of the policy by examining the evolution of the CPA from a policy theory perspective.MethodsA qualitative evaluation of all seven Agreement documents and their impact was undertaken using policy theories including a linear policy development model, Multiple Streams Framework, Incremental Theory, the Advocacy Coalition Framework, the Theory of Economic Regulation, the Punctuated Equilibrium Framework, and Elite Theory. The Agreements were evaluated using four lenses: their objectives, evidentiary base, stakeholders and beneficiaries.ResultsThe PGA has acted as an elite organisation with long-standing influence on the policy’s development and implementation. Notable has been the failure of other pharmacy stakeholders to establish broad-based advocacy coalitions in order to influence the Agreements. The incremental changes negotiated every 5 years to the core elements of the Agreements have supported the publics’ access to medication, provided stability for the government, and security for existing pharmacy owners. Their impact on the evolution of pharmacists’ scope of practice and through that, on the public’s safe and appropriate use of medication, has been less clear.ConclusionsThe Agreements can be characterised predominantly as industry policy benefiting pharmacy owners, rather than health policy. An emerging issue is whether incremental change will continue to be an adequate policy response to the social, political, and technological changes that are affecting health care, or whether policy disruption is likely to arise.

Knowledge brokers within the multiple streams framework: The science-policy interface for livestock and climate change discussions in Kenya

Livestock production is affected by climate change, but also contributes to climate change through greenhouse gas emissions. This leads to ambiguity in how livestock are framed in climate and development policy processes. We use the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) to investigate the role of knowledge brokers in Kenyan livestock and climate change policy processes. We analyse how knowledge brokers deal with ambiguity from different problem and response framings within science-policy interfaces using the case of a project that seeks to inform Kenyan policies relevant to livestock and climate change. We identify ambiguity within the problem stream where actors recognise adaptation and mitigation as dual challenges of livestock and climate change. This ambiguity creates tension between actors but can be strategically deployed to help match the problem and policy streams. Actors use the terms ‘climate smart’ and ‘co-benefits’ to link the dual adaptation and mitigation needs. In the political stream, nationally defined priorities and external funding possibilities influence the political will and motivation to adopt identified response options. There are opportunities for knowledge brokers to address the ambiguities and translate knowledge during windows of opportunity when the streams are being coupled, but challenges exist, resulting in slow and inadequate development of policies. This paper makes two contributions to the MSF literature. First, we further refine the concept of knowledge brokers and establish their role across all three streams. Second, we apply the MSF in a lower income country and demonstrate that international organizations must be among the actors considered.

Practice of Streaming Processing of Dynamic Graphs: Concepts, Models, and Systems

Graph processing has become an important part of various areas of computing, including machine learning, medical applications, social network analysis, computational sciences, and others. A growing amount of the associated graph processing workloads are dynamic, with millions of edges added or removed per second. Graph streaming frameworks are specifically crafted to enable the processing of such highly dynamic workloads. Recent years have seen the development of many such frameworks. However, they differ in their general architectures (with key details such as the support for the concurrent execution of graph updates and queries, or the incorporated graph data organization), the types of updates and workloads allowed, and many others. To facilitate the understanding of this growing field, we provide the first analysis and taxonomy of dynamic and streaming graph processing. We focus on identifying the fundamental system designs and on understanding their support for concurrency, and for different graph updates as well as analytics workloads. We also crystallize the meaning of different concepts associated with streaming graph processing, such as dynamic, temporal, online, and time-evolving graphs, edge-centric processing, models for the maintenance of updates, and graph databases. Moreover, we provide a bridge with the very rich landscape of graph streaming theory by giving a broad overview of recent theoretical related advances, and by discussing which graph streaming models and settings could be helpful in developing more powerful streaming frameworks and designs. We also outline graph streaming workloads and research challenges.

A policy analysis of how alkyl nitrites (poppers) became prescription-only in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Alkyl nitrites ('poppers') are a group of drugs that includes amyl nitrite, butyl nitrite, and isopropyl nitrite. Their use is prevalent among men who have sex with men (MSM), to enhance sexual comfort and pleasure. In Aotearoa New Zealand, all alkyl nitrites became prescription-only from March 2020. With alkyl nitrites no longer sold locally in stores, and no availability via pharmacies (even with a prescription), access has been significantly reduced. This decision was opposed by advocacy groups and people who use alkyl nitrites. This policy case study explores how this decision was made and impacts on MSM. We use policy formation theory; both policy framing and Multiple Streams Framework, to analyse factors that contributed to this regulatory decision. Analysis of issue framing by policy coalitions was undertaken through review of documents including submissions and committee minutes. Two policy coalitions emerged, which differed in their issue framing. The Medicines Classification Committee conveyed concerns about evidence limitations, and recommended reclassification. NGOs and people who use alkyl nitrites communicated that there was no evidence of harm from alkyl nitrite use in New Zealand, and thus, given that there was evidence of benefit, the status quo should be maintained and further regulatory responses were unnecessary. Pre-existing processes created a situation where alkyl nitrite scheduling came unexpectedly onto the New Zealand policy agenda, and set the issue onto a somewhat pre-determined pathway with limited policy choices available. As a drug policy case study, it appears that reclassification was initiated due to a policy process that did not enable or support plausible alternatives. While the purpose of the reclassification was to improve safety, there was no evidence of harm prior to reclassification, and the reduction in access is likely to have increased harm for MSM.

Time series big data: a survey on data stream frameworks, analysis and algorithms

Big data has a substantial role nowadays, and its importance has significantly increased over the last decade. Big data’s biggest advantages are providing knowledge, supporting the decision-making process, and improving the use of resources, services, and infrastructures. The potential of big data increases when we apply it in real-time by providing real-time analysis, predictions, and forecasts, among many other applications. Our goal with this article is to provide a viewpoint on how to build a system capable of processing big data in real-time, performing analysis, and applying algorithms. A system should be designed to handle vast amounts of data and provide valuable knowledge through analysis and algorithms. This article explores the current approaches and how they can be used for the real-time operations and predictions.

Dutch first in Dutch higher education policy

In the past 15 years, the number of international students in tertiary education doubled to reach 5.6 million students in 2018 and is expected to grow to 6.9 million in 2030 (Choudaha and Van Rest, 2018). In the Netherlands, the percentage of international degree seeking students is relatively high and growing fast from 4% in 2010 to more than 10% in 2017 where the average in OECD countries was 6% (OECD, 2020). Initially, this growth was perceived as positive, seen as a sign of good quality of Dutch higher education, and it was stimulated by government policy. However in the past few years, this development has led to a public debate on the downsides of this growth; the accessibility- and the quality of higher education (IBO, 2019). The latter being impacted by increased pressure on HEI because of growing student numbers. The use of the English language is also part of the discussion on quality. The debate eventually resulted in a policy proposal called Taal en Toegankelijkheid which translates into Language and Accessibility that was sent to the House of Representatives by the Minister of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) in September 2019 (Van Engelshoven, 2019b). The aim of the bill is to safeguard the quality of education, promote Dutch language skills, to guarantee accessibility of higher education and to control the influx of international students in the Netherlands (Van Engelshoven, 2019a). Before the bill was approved by the Senate, the Dutch Cabinet stepped out of power in January 2021 and the bill was declared controversial which means no decision will be made until a new Cabinet is installed (Bikker, 2021). Using the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF), this paper unravels the agenda-setting process that has led to the aforementioned government policy proposal.

Towards a paradigm shift in social protection in developing countries? Analysing the emergence of the Ghana national unemployment insurance scheme from a multiple streams perspective

The COVID 19 pandemic continues to cause a lot of uncertainty around the world. At the onset of the pandemic, governments responded with policies and programs to curb its devastating effects on citizens, and Ghana was no exception. Although the Ghanaian government introduced various stop-gap measures to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, the inadequacies of the extant social welfare system was badly exposed. Consequently, as the pandemic seethed on, there were calls for reform of the existing social protection system and the introduction of new programs, especially for those in the informal sector. In response, the government introduced a new National Unemployment Insurance Scheme (NUIS). How did this happen? What led the government to accept tentatively the need to reform and transform the social welfare system after years of policy padding and the dragging of feet? Drawing on Kingdon's Multiple Streams Framework, we argue that the pandemic created a policy window, which enabled policy enntrepreneurs to push the unemployment insurance idea to reform the existing social welfare system. The introduction of a NUIS, is seen as a paradigm shift in social protection and more broadly in social policy. The objective of this paper is to examine how the NUIS got on government's agenda, and whether the NUIS is a game changer in social protection in Ghana. We sourced information mainly from secondary sources.

Editorial introduction: Punctuated equilibrium, multiple streams, environmental governance, and many more

Editorial introduction: Punctuated equilibrium, multiple streams, environmental governance, and many more

Masked360: Enabling Robust 360-degree Video Streaming with Ultra Low Bandwidth Consumption.

360-degree video streaming has gained tremendous growth over the past years. However, the delivery of 360-degree videos over the Internet still suffers from the scarcity of network bandwidth and adverse network conditions (e.g., packet loss, delay). In this paper, we propose a practical neural-enhanced 360-degree video streaming framework called Masked360, which can significantly reduce bandwidth consumption and achieve robustness against packet loss. In Masked360, instead of transmitting the complete video frame, the video server only transmits a masked low-resolution version of each video frame to reduce bandwidth significantly. When delivering masked video frames, the video server also sends a lightweight neural network model called MaskedEncoder to clients. Upon receiving masked frames, the client can reconstruct the original 360-degree video frames and start playback. To further improve the quality of video streaming, we also propose a set of optimization techniques, such as complexity-based patch selection, quarter masking strategy, redundant patch transmission and enhanced model training methods. In addition to bandwidth savings, Masked360 is also robust to packet loss during the transmission, because packet losses can be concealed by the reconstruction operation performed by the MaskedEncoder. Finally, we implement the whole Masked360 framework and evaluate its performance using real datasets. The experimental results show that Masked360 can achieve 4K 360-degree video streaming with bandwidth as low as 2.4 Mbps. Besides, video quality of Masked360 is also improved significantly, with an improvement of 5.24-16.61% in terms of PSNR and 4.74-16.15% in terms of SSIM compared to other baselines.

How does explicit knowledge inform policy shaping? The case of Burkina Faso's national social protection policy.

In 2009, Burkina Faso embarked on a process leading to the development of a national social protection policy (politique nationale de protection sociale-PNPS) in 2012. The objective of this study was to analyze the circumstances under which explicit knowledge was used to inform the process of emergence and formulation PNPS. The term explicit knowledge excludes tacit and experiential knowledge, taking into account research data, grey literature, and monitoring data. Court and Young's conceptual framework was adapted by integrating concepts from political science, such as Kingdon's Multiple Streams framework. Discursive and documentary data were collected from 30 respondents from national and international institutions. Thematic analysis guided the data processing. Results showed that use of peer-reviewed academic research was not explicitly mentioned by respondents, in contrast to other types of knowledge, such as national statistical data, reports on government program evaluations, and reports on studies by international institutions and NGOs, also called technical and financial partners (TFPs). The emergence phase was more informed by grey literature and monitoring data. In this phase, national actors deepened and increased their knowledge (conceptual use) on the importance and challenges of social protection. The role of explicit knowledge in the formulation phase was nuanced. The actors' thinking was little guided by the question of whether the solutions had the capacity to solve the problem in the Burkina Faso context. Choices were based very little on analysis of strategies (effectiveness, equity, unintended effects) and their applicability (cost, acceptability, feasibility). This way of working was due in part to actors' limited knowledge on social protection and the lack of government guidance on strategic choices. Strategic use was clearly identified. It involved citing knowledge (reports on studies conducted by TFPs) to justify the utility and feasibility of a PNPS. Instrumental use consisted of drawing from workshop presentations and study reports when writing sections of the PNPS. The consideration of a recommendation based on explicit knowledge was influenced by perceived political gains, i.e., potential social and political consequences.

An improved differential evolution algorithm for quantifying fraudulent transactions

Identification of fraudulent credit card transactions is a complex problem mainly due to the following factors: 1) The relative behavior of customers and fraudsters may alter over time. 2) The ratio of legitimate to fraudulent transactions is highly imbalanced, and 3) Investigators examine a small segment of transactions in a reasonable time frame. Researchers have proposed various algorithms to identify potential fraud in a new incoming transaction. However, these approaches require significant human investigator effort and are sometimes misleading. To address this issue, this paper proposes an improved multiobjective differential evolution (DE) algorithm to estimate the distribution of fraudulent transactions in a set of new incoming transactions, referred to as quantifying fraudulent transactions. Our paper has three major novelties. First, we present the problem formulation of cost-based feature selection with maximum quantification ability. Second, we improve the DE by applying effective trial vector generation algorithms to the random control parameter settings to exploit the advantage of individual DE variants. Third, we develop the maximum-relevancy-minimum-redundancy-based Pareto refining operator to enhance the self-learning ability of individuals in Pareto solutions. We compare our approach against four other modifications of DE and five state-of-the-art evolutionary algorithms on real-time credit datasets in streaming and non-streaming frameworks using hyper-volume, two-set coverage, and spread performance metrics.

Online Streaming Platform

Video traffic demand over mobile networks have been difficult task, the quality of service get reduced when there is a gap between the traffic demand and link capacity. The quality of video streaming gets poor when there occurs the long buffering and intermittent disruptions. In the cloud computing technology, we propose a new mobile video streaming framework consist of AMES cloud, which is dubbed with: adaptive mobile video streaming and efficient social video sharing these construct a private agent to provide video streaming efficiently for each mobile user. AMO uses the scalable video coding technique to adjust the streaming. SOV monitors the social network interactions among mobile users and as to pre fetch video in advance. The website will have a user-friendly interface, allowing users to easily navigate and access the content of the website. The website will also provide features such as creating playlists, sharing content with friends, and rating videos. Additionally, the website will provide a way for users to upload and publish their own videos. The website will also include a search engine to help users find content quickly and easily.

Australia’s Foreign Policy towards China from the Perspective of the Multiple Stream Framework

The relationship between China and Australia has maintained a trend of fluctuating development for a long period since the establishment of diplomatic ties. However, around 2017, Australia gradually adopted negative policies towards China, and the relationship between the two countries cooled down rapidly, with no obvious easing trend. Based on the Multiple Stream Framework, this paper attempts to use the China5G case to analyze the factors contributing to Australia's negative foreign policy toward China. The paper argues that the definition of problems by the top governmental officials and the urgency of the problem mutually determine whether the final resolution is negative or positive toward a country; that the complexity of domestic political party structure and electoral politics imply the preference for national policy; and that the lead of public opinion, as well as the government's political intention to maintain the rule of legality, are the key factors affecting the policy orientation. This analysis aims to better understand the deep connotation of the relationship between China and Australia and provides a thinking path for improving relations between the two countries. It also refers to analyzing the attitudes towards China's rise from other countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Enhancing 360 Video Streaming through Salient Content in Head-Mounted Displays.

Predicting where users will look inside head-mounted displays (HMDs) and fetching only the relevant content is an effective approach for streaming bulky 360 videos over bandwidth-constrained networks. Despite previous efforts, anticipating users' fast and sudden head movements is still difficult because there is a lack of clear understanding of the unique visual attention in 360 videos that dictates the users' head movement in HMDs. This in turn reduces the effectiveness of streaming systems and degrades the users' Quality of Experience. To address this issue, we propose to extract salient cues unique in the 360 video content to capture the attentive behavior of HMD users. Empowered by the newly discovered saliency features, we devise a head-movement prediction algorithm to accurately predict users' head orientations in the near future. A 360 video streaming framework that takes full advantage of the head movement predictor is proposed to enhance the quality of delivered 360 videos. Practical trace-driven results show that the proposed saliency-based 360 video streaming system reduces the stall duration by 65% and the stall count by 46%, while saving 31% more bandwidth than state-of-the-art approaches.

The Winds of Winter: COVID-19 and Punctuations Without Policy Change in German Health Care Policy

ABSTRACT In the second half of the 19th legislative period, COVID-19 brought the issue of health policy firmly into the public limelight. Given that it amplified already existing challenges, this crisis can be conceptualised as a case of positive feedback in the understanding of punctuated equilibrium theory (PET). One would have expected this crisis to provide a push for reforms in the areas of digitalisation, hospital and care policy, as these represent both the policy path taken by the Minister of Health at the beginning of the legislative period and a response to the problems caused by the pandemic. However, none of these areas were addressed in any significant way by health policymakers after the COVID-19 outbreak, leaving us to wonder why a shift in attention and positive feedback did not lead to major reforms. To answer this question, we link PET to the multiple streams framework (MSF) to explain why positive feedback has not led to major reforms in German health policy. We show that the policy stream – with a lack of measures ready for adoption – and the politics stream, with power struggles within parties and between levels of government, explain why major reforms have not been adopted.

Applying the Multiple Streams Framework in Westminster systems: A comparative case study of pay-for-performance policymaking in primary health care in England and New Zealand

Applying the Multiple Streams Framework in Westminster systems: A comparative case study of pay-for-performance policymaking in primary health care in England and New Zealand

The policy process of adopting environmental standards for coal plants in India: accommodating transnational politics in the Multiple Streams Framework

This article provides an important international empirical application of the multiple-streams framework with some theoretical additions that make a novel contribution to the existing scholarship in this field. Using a modified multiple-streams approach (MSA) that extends Kingdon’s original agenda setting model to the decision-making stage, we analyse and explain an empirical puzzle in the context of the environmental regulation of coal-fired power plants, considered central to India’s economic development. The puzzle involves both the content – a stringency comparable to those in more developed economies – and the timing – within a year of a new national government coming to power with the promise of reviving economic growth. Our findings show how a top bureaucrat exploited the agenda window opening in the problem stream to couple the three streams, resulting in the notification of draft environmental standards. The political entrepreneurship of the same bureaucrat led to the adoption of final standards in the same form as the draft in the decision window created by developments during the period leading to the Paris climate summit. The operationalisation of the modified MSA to our empirical case generated new theoretical insights. First, we expand on the original formulation of decision stage dynamics and argue that the decision window could also open due to independent activity in any of the three streams. Second, we argue that transnational politics could act as an additional factor in the ripening of the political stream at the decision stage.

이해충돌방지제도의 정책결정과정에 관한 연구

The purpose of this study is to analyze the factors influencing the process of enacting the Conflict of Interest Prevention Act using the combined model of the Multiple Streams Framework and the Advocacy Coalition Framework to explore which factors are decisive factors in the policy process and lead irrational decisions.
 According to the study, the dynamic variables of the ACF consist real estate explosion, LH scandal, and 4.7 by-elections, and they operated as the main streams of the MSF. The real estate explosion, Sohn Hye-won and Park Deok-heum scandals, LH scandal, and the political flow of 4.7 by-elections combined to open the policy window. Opening the policy window, legislation was made through the activities of the Advocacy Coalition and Policy Entrepreneurs who obtained the driving force, but it contain problems - effectiveness of conflict of interest management for member of the National Assembly and heads of institutions, authority to manage conflict of interest divided by the Ministry of Personnel Management and the ACRC, and other issues of effectiveness of system operation, etc. - as the legislation was made quickly as it was caught up in the political schedules and the public anger.
 This study shows that meeting the accumulated streams of problems and political streams is a necessary factor in policy process and that preparation of policy streams, which are policy alternatives, is necessary. In addition, it presents that if policy alternatives, belief systems, and policy advocacy coalition are not prepared, they can fail at a mere level even if they are legislated.

Estimating Optical Flow with Streaming Perception and Changing Trend Aiming to Complex Scenarios

Most of the recent works on optical flow estimation focus on introducing more effective CNNs or even the Transformer architecture that is quite popular in today’s CV field, but they all still follow the traditional two-frame input structure. In this paper, we argue that optical flow estimation should be more focused on the dynamic information in the image sequence. To that end, we present a straightforward but effective streaming framework equipped with a novel prediction module for capturing optical flow trends, which is a point that has not yet been discussed in previous works. By employing the backbone of the strong baseline to extract the stream of features from three consecutive frames as inputs, this module can predict the current state and update the previous changing trend of optical flow for feature fusion at the next stage. Additionally, we redesign the training loss, providing two new cost functions, in particular, to measure the variations in the optical flow trend. At the forward stage, we deploy a historical buffer to maintain the inference speed so that it is unaffected by additional input frames. Compared with the strong baseline, our method improves the average end-point error by 21.12% on Sintel Clean and 12.94% on Sintel Final. In addition, it also outperforms existing methods in real-world scenarios with low brightness or fast-moving targets.