Enhancing Node Cooperation in Mobile Wireless Ad Hoc Networks with Selfish Nodes

In Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), nodes depend on each other for routing and forwarding packets. However, to save power and other resources, nodes belonging to independent authorities may behave selfishly, and may not be willing to help other nodes. Such selfish behavior poses a real threat to the proper functioning of MANETs. One way to foster node cooperation is to introduce punishment for selfish nodes. Based on neighbor-monitoring techniques, a fully distributed solution to detect, punish, and re-admit selfish nodes, is proposed here. This solution provides nodes the same opportunity to serve/and be served by others. A light-weight solution regarding battery status is also proposed here. This solution requires neighbor monitoring only when necessary, thereby saving nodes battery power. Another effective way to solve the selfish-node problem is to reward nodes for their service according to their cost. To force nodes to show their true cost, truthful protocols are needed. A low overhead truthful routing protocol to find optimal routes is proposed in this thesis. The most prominent feature of this protocol is the reduction of overhead from existing solutions O(n3) to O(n2). A light-weight scalable truthful routing protocol (LSTOP) is further proposed, which finds near-least-cost paths in dense networks. LSTOP reduces overhead to O(n) on average, and O(n2) in worst case scenarios. Multiple path routing protocols are an effective alternative to single path routing protocols. A generic mechanism that can turn any table-driven multipath routing protocol into a truthful one, is outlined here. A truthful multipath routing protocol (TMRP), based on well-known AOMDV protocol, is presented as an example. TMRP incurs an only 2n message overhead for a route discovery, and can also achieve load balancing without compromising truthfulness. To cope with the selfish-node problem in the area of position-based routing, a truthful geographic forwarding (TGF) algorithm is presented. TGF utilizes three auction-based forwarding schemes to stimulate node cooperation. The truthfulness of these schemes is proven, and their performance is evaluated through statistical analysis and simulation studies

Ego, scriptor cantilenae : The Cantos and Ezra Pound

Can poetry make new the world? Ezra Pound thought so. In Cantico del Sole he said: The thought of what America would be like/ If the Classics had a wide circulation/ Troubles me in my sleep (Personae 183). He came to write an 815 page poem called The Cantos in which he presents fragments drawn from the literature and documents of the past in an attempt to build a new world, a paradiso terreste (The Cantos 802). This may be seen as either a noble gesture or sheer egotism. Pound once called The Cantos the tale of the tribe (Guide to Kulchur 194), and I believe this is so, particularly if one associates this statement with Allen Ginsberg\u27s concerning The Cantos as a model of a mind, like all our minds (Ginsberg 14-16). But Pound was a Fascist and anti-Semite, was he not? This is what I think faces a reader of Pound: Perhaps the reader finds he is not so different from Pound, or any other mind. Perhaps that is what is most disturbing. After all, do we not each wish to build our own little terrestrial paradise

Creativity and Science in Contemporary Argentine Literature

With a burgeoning academic interest in Latin American science fiction and cyberfiction and in representations of science and technology in Latin American literature and cinema, this book adds new understanding to the growing body of interdisciplinary work on the relationship between literature and science in postmodern culture. Joanna Page examines how contemporary fiction and literary theory in Argentina consistently employ theories and models from mathematics and science to probe the nature of innovation and evolution in literature. Theories of incompleteness, uncertainty, and chaos are often mobilized in European and North American literary and philosophical texts as metaphors for the inadequacy of our epistemological tools to probe the world's complexity. However, in recent Argentine fiction, these generalizations are put to very different uses: to map out the potential for artistic creativity and regeneration in times of crisis. Page focuses on texts by contemporary Argentine writers Ricardo Piglia, Guillermo Martínez and Marcelo Cohen, which draw on theories of formal systems, chaos, emergence, and complexity to counter proclamations of the end of philosophy or the exhaustion of literature in the postmodern era. This book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how newness and creativity have been theorized, tracing often unexpected relationships between thinkers such as Nietzsche, Deleuze, and the Russian Formalists. It is also the first time that a major study in English has been published on the work of Martínez, Piglia, or Cohen

Revisiting the legal regulation of digital identity in the light of global implementation and local difference

This thesis aims to address a vital gap that has emerged in the digital identity regulatory discourse: how can the legal regulation of digital identity mirror the global nature of digital identity and be compatible with national local difference? Digital identity, or the digital representation of an individual, is a complex concept, which manifests in myriad forms (e.g. authenticators, claims, data or information, identifiers, presence, relationship representations and reputation) and natures. As such, it engages a gamut of legal domains ranging from criminal law, constitutional law, human rights law, law of identity schemes, contract law, intellectual property law, tort law and data protection law. Digital identity is global and local in its nature, influence and effects. Yet, the digital identity regulatory discourse has primarily developed in and focussed on the digitally advanced West, leaving out countries like India which are developing strong digital presences, with their own digital identity perceptions and needs. This situation is adverse to the sustained future of digital identity. Thus, the contribution of this thesis lies in filling this gap and preparing the ground for a dialogue between different countries with different national agendas through building international and local awareness of how similarities and differences operate in respect of digital identity, its regulation and providing a modest solution to help preserve the global and local dimensions of digital identity and its regulation. To this end, the thesis carried out comparative legal research on the legal regulation of digital identity using the UK and India as base jurisdictions. The original hypothesis was that that immense differences in the legal regulation of digital identity between the comparator countries would emerge. Yet, though differences were evident, considerable degrees of similarity also emerged, not just on the superficial level of mere identity of rules, but also in legal practice, in large part attributable to India’s penchant for legal transplants. While the transplantation of Western law did not result in a full-scale rejection of the transplanted laws in relation to digital identity in India, there are indications of anomalies caused by the imposition of Western cultural norms through law on an Indian society ill prepared for it. Thus there has resulted a tension between the local and the global, the indigenous and the externally imposed. The challenge is thus to resolve this, taking into account, on the one hand the need to maintain the global nature and relevance of digital identity and the other, the need to accommodate and be responsive to local differences. The thesis proposes a tentative solution called the tri-elemental framework (TeF) which draws from the Indian philosophical and legal concept of dharma (and its elements of Sad Achara, Vyavahara and Prayaschitta) and learns from the most universally relevant digital identity proposal, De Hert’s right to identity. The solution provides one way in which the law regulating digital identity, whatever its nature, can be made sense of and acquire cultural meaning appropriate to local contexts

Imagining Taiwan : the making and the museological representation of art in Taiwan's quest for identity (1987-2010)

This thesis probes and analyses the critical role of art in the shaping of Taiwan's national identity during the period 1987-2010. With the rise of democratisation and national identity consciousness (bentu yishi), Taiwan's quest for national identity intensified after the lifting of martial law in 1987. The thesis challenges the view that art has played an inconsequential role in this identity discourse by demonstrating that artists, curators and art museums have significantly contributed towards the processes of identity formation, particularly during the peak period of the early-mid 1990s. Focusing on the nature and extent of the contribution of artists, curators and art museums to Taiwan's quest for identity, the thesis explores how national identity narratives were imagined, interpreted, projected and transmitted, nationally and internationally, through the production, selection and exhibition of art from Taiwan. Structurally, the thesis contextualizes each socio-political period, providing the backdrop for a series of case studies. These demonstrate how artists, curators and art museums became active agents in the processes of national identity formation, not only promoting but also critiquing and contesting identity narratives revolving around the concept of a 'Taiwan nation'. Given that national identities are relational and fluid constructs, the thesis reveals how identity discourses in art had diminished in significance by the early twenty-first century when globalisation, the rise of China, and art market forces transformed identity discourses in art from a Taiwan-centred narrative into one embracing not only regional and global perspectives but, most critically, dialogue and exchange with China