163 research outputs found
DESIGN AND VERIFICATION OF AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS IN THE PRESENCE OF UNCERTAINTIES
Autonomous Systems offer hope towards moving away from mechanized, unsafe, manual, often inefficient practices. The last decade has seen several small, but important, steps towards making this dream into reality. These advancements have helped us to achieve limited autonomy in several places, such as, driving, factory floors, surgeries, wearables, and home assistants, etc. Nevertheless, autonomous systems are required to operate in a wide range of environments with uncertainties (viz., sensor errors, timing errors, dynamic nature of the environment, etc.). Such environmental uncertainties, even when present in small amounts, can have drastic impact on the safety of the system—thus hampering the goal of achieving higher degree of autonomy, especially in safety critical domains. To this end, the dissertation shall discuss formaltechniques that are able to verify and design autonomous systems for safety, even under the presence of such uncertainties, allowing for their trustworthy deployment in the real world. Specifically, the dissertation shall discuss monitoring techniques for autonomous systems from available (noisy) logs, and safety-verification techniques of autonomous system controllers under timing uncertainties. Secondly, using heterogeneous learning-based cloud computing models that can balance uncertainty in output and computation cost, the dissertation will present techniques for designing safe and performance-optimal autonomous systems.Doctor of Philosoph
A Tale of Two Incentives: How divergent incentives, for opportunism and restraint, collectively shape state behavior
This study explains how divergent incentives, for opportunism and restraint, shape state behavior. Divergent incentives arise when states exist within two Hobbesian systems that have different material structures. China, for example, is the second-ranked global power, but lacking an effective local counterweight, it remains unbalanced in East Asia. Thus, Beijing receives a restraining incentive from the international system and an opportunistic local incentive. Neorealism cannot explain how these incentives interact: because its principal theories employ extreme parsimony, to the point that they can only consider single incentives in isolation. Neorealism contains a useful metaphor though, that likens incentives to the Newtonian principle of force. Extending this metaphor in accordance with Newtonian mechanics, I create a framework for evaluating concurrent incentives. Since divergent incentives only occur under a single set of conditions, I use this framework to derive a theory-of-constraints that explains how regional aspirants should behave when they enjoy a local military advantage but face a more powerful extra-regional balancer. To this end, divergent incentives theory argues: 1) divergent incentives encourage moderated opportunism – a restrained power-maximizing behavior, that seeks incremental gains in a manner that minimizes the risks of escalation and retaliation; 2) divergent incentives facilitate challenges to the regional status quo, that do not end in voluntary withdrawal or hegemonic war; and 3) noncompliance with incentives has adverse consequences. The theory enjoys strong empirical support. Across three cases (the US ascent to regional hegemony, Japan’s quest for regional hegemony, and the Soviet menace to Europe), aspirants exhibited moderated opportunism in 24 of 26 instances, and in the other two, aspirants were punished relative to the extent of their noncompliance. Each case outcome was also broadly consistent with the theory’s expectations
Masks, Misinformation, and Making Do: Appalachian Health-Care Workers and the COVID-19 Pandemic
The firsthand pandemic experiences of rural health-care providers—who were already burdened when COVID-19 hit—raise questions about the future of public health and health-care delivery.
This volume comprises the COVID-19 pandemic experiences of Appalachian health-care workers, including frontline providers, administrators, and educators. The combined narrative reveals how governmental and corporate policies exacerbated the region’s injustices, stymied response efforts, and increased the death toll.
Beginning with an overview of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its impact on the body, the essays in the book’s first section provide background material and contextualize the subsequent explosion of telemedicine, the pandemic’s impact on medical education, and its relationship to systemic racism and related disparities in mental health treatment.
First-person narratives from diverse perspectives recount the pandemic’s layered stresses. These visceral, personal experiences of how Appalachian health-care workers responded to the pandemic amid the nation’s deeply polarized political discourse will shape the historical record of this “unprecedented time” and provide a glimpse into the future of rural medicine.
Contributors: Lucas Aidukaitis, Clay Anderson, Tammy Bannister, Alli Delp, Lynn Elliott, Monika Holbein, Laura Hungerford, Nikki King, Brittany Landore, Jeffrey J. LeBoeuf, Sojourner Nightingale, Beth O’Connor, Rakesh Patel, Mildred E. Perreault, Melanie B. Richards, Tara Smith, Kathy Osborne Still, Darla Timbo, Kathy Hsu Wibberlyhttps://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/oupress/1022/thumbnail.jp
Analysis of Embedded Controllers Subject to Computational Overruns
Microcontrollers have become an integral part of modern everyday embedded systems, such as smart bikes, cars, and drones. Typically, microcontrollers operate under real-time constraints, which require the timely execution of programs on the resource-constrained hardware. As embedded systems are becoming increasingly more complex, microcontrollers run the risk of violating their timing constraints, i.e., overrunning the program deadlines. Breaking these constraints can cause severe damage to both the embedded system and the humans interacting with the device. Therefore, it is crucial to analyse embedded systems properly to ensure that they do not pose any significant danger if the microcontroller overruns a few deadlines.However, there are very few tools available for assessing the safety and performance of embedded control systems when considering the implementation of the microcontroller. This thesis aims to fill this gap in the literature by presenting five papers on the analysis of embedded controllers subject to computational overruns. Details about the real-time operating system's implementation are included into the analysis, such as what happens to the controller's internal state representation when the timing constraints are violated. The contribution includes theoretical and computational tools for analysing the embedded system's stability, performance, and real-time properties.The embedded controller is analysed under three different types of timing violations: blackout events (when no control computation is completed during long periods), weakly-hard constraints (when the number of deadline overruns is constrained over a window), and stochastic overruns (when violations of timing constraints are governed by a probabilistic process). These scenarios are combined with different implementation policies to reduce the gap between the analysis and its practical applicability. The analyses are further validated with a comprehensive experimental campaign performed on both a set of physical processes and multiple simulations.In conclusion, the findings of this thesis reveal that the effect deadline overruns have on the embedded system heavily depends the implementation details and the system's dynamics. Additionally, the stability analysis of embedded controllers subject to deadline overruns is typically conservative, implying that additional insights can be gained by also analysing the system's performance
A Tale of Two Paradigms: How Genealogical and Comparative Historical analysis can help reset the intractable debate over the causation of ideological violence
This study responds to the endemic lack of clarity and consensus afflicting
academic and policy discussions on the causes of ideological violence and, by
extension, the appropriate means for preventing/containing it. I trace,
conceptualise, and problematise the long-standing debate between two deeply entrenched oppositional camps or ‘paradigms’ – heuristically dubbed the
‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’ paradigms of ideological violence, respectively –
that propose competing explanations for the causation of ideological violence; the
former considering it a product of irrational individual dysfunction, the latter
viewing it as a rational (if often misguided) response to societal dysfunction.
Further, I show that extant attempts at reconciling/synthesising these paradigms
have, to date, proven problematic. I explore how and why these opposing
paradigms emerged and why debate between them persists. I argue that they are
shaped, perpetuated and marred by multiple extra-academic dynamics and
naturalised assumptions and conclude that clarity and consensus is unlikely
unless we can ‘reset’ the debate, making a conscious decision to ‘step back’ from
our extant paradigms/assumptions and approach the phenomenon with fresh
eyes. I propose and demonstrate two methodological approaches that – used in
conjunction – can contribute towards this end. Firstly, I propose that – and
demonstrate how - Genealogical Analysis can aid in this ‘stepping back’ by
denaturalising our entrenched assumptions on the causes of ideological violence
(i.e., our extant paradigms) by uncovering how and why those assumptions came
to be held and reified. Secondly, I propose and demonstrate Comparative
Historical Analysis’ utility as a tool that can aid in re-approaching the phenomena
with fresh eyes by helping - gradually and collaboratively - to construct a new set
of more methodologically-rigorous assumptions (i.e., a new paradigm) upon
which extant research built upon either extant paradigm can be resituated,
reinterpreted, de-limited, and synthesised, and further research can be premised
The Border of Lights Reader
Border of Lights, a volunteer collective, returns each October to Dominican-Haitian border towns to bear witness to the 1937 Haitian Massacre ordered by Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo. This crime against humanity has never been acknowledged by the Dominican government and no memorial exists for its victims. A multimodal, multi-vocal space for activists, artists, scholars, and others connected to the BOL movement, The Border of Lights Reader provides an alternative to the dominant narrative that positions Dominicans and Haitians as eternal adversaries and ignores cross-border and collaborative histories. This innovative anthology asks large-scale, universal questions regarding historical memory and revisionism that countries around the world grapple with today
Archipelago of Resettlement
From April to November 1975, the US military processed over 112,000 Vietnamese refugees on the unincorporated territory of Guam; from 1977 to 1979, the State of Israel granted asylum and citizenship to 366 non-Jewish Vietnamese refugees. Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi analyzes these two cases to theorize what she calls the refugee settler condition: the fraught positionality of refugee subjects whose resettlement in a settler colonial state is predicated on the unjust dispossession of an Indigenous population. This groundbreaking book explores two forms of critical geography: first, archipelagos of empire, examining how the Vietnam War is linked to the US military buildup in Guam and unwavering support of Israel, and second, corresponding archipelagos of trans-Indigenous resistance, tracing how Chamorro decolonization efforts and Palestinian liberation struggles are connected through the Vietnamese refugee figure. Considering distinct yet overlapping modalities of refugee and Indigenous displacement, Gandhi offers tools for imagining emergent forms of decolonial solidarity between refugee settlers and Indigenous peoples.
This is a phenomenal book that takes seriously the implication of Indigenous calls for place-based scholarship to refugee and migration studies and ups the ante by engaging the accountabilities such calls demand. Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi exemplifies the possibilities of reading ‘archipelagically’ across Indigenous and Asian American studies, across settler colonies, and against US militarism and empire.” JODI A. BYRD, author of The Transit of Empire
This strikingly original study demonstrates ways of knowing and connection otherwise— within, across, and beyond incommensurable structural divides and multiple belongings. Deeply inspiring, Gandhi’s archipelagic methodology elucidates compelling political possibilities for decolonial futures.” LISA YONEYAMA, author of Cold War Ruin
Objection my Lord: legal practice demystified
Having received a brief of the client’s case, and identified legal issues. You should develop a Checklist to enable you pick necessary legal information you would need to advise the client and also in case of court action, sufficient information to support the action and also the mode of Commencement. In developing one you can be guided by the Substantive legislation on the matter, case law and even the CPR for example Check list No Standard template Make sure it covers the details of the workshop question There and general things in the personal details 0.7. 1 is also a guiding factor
Cost effective technology applied to domotics and smart home energy management systems
Premio extraordinario de Trabajo Fin de Máster curso 2019/2020. Máster en Energías Renovables DistribuidasIn this document is presented the state of art for domotics cost effective technologies available on market nowadays, and how to apply them in Smart Home Energy Management Systems (SHEMS) allowing peaks shaving, renewable management and home appliance controls, always in cost effective context in order to be massively applied. Additionally, beyond of SHEMS context, it will be also analysed how to apply this technology in order to increase homes energy efficiency and monitoring of home appliances. Energy management is one of the milestones for distributed renewable energy spread; since renewable energy sources are not time-schedulable, are required control systems capable of the management for exchanging energy between conventional sources (power grid), renewable sources and energy storage sources. With the proposed approach, there is a first block dedicated to show an overview of Smart Home Energy Management Systems (SMHEMS) classical architecture and functional modules of SHEMS; next step is to analyse principles which has allowed some devices to become a cost-effective technology. Once the technology has been analysed, it will be reviewed some specific resources (hardware and software) available on marked for allowing low cost SHEMS. Knowing the “tools” available; it will be shown how to adapt classical SHEMS to cost effective technology. Such way, this document will show some specific applications of SHEMS. Firstly, in a general point of view, comparing the proposed low-cost technology with one of the main existing commercial proposals; and secondly, developing the solution for a specific real case.En este documento se aborda el estado actual de la domótica de bajo coste disponible en el mercado actualmente y cómo aplicarlo en los sistemas inteligentes de gestión energética en la vivienda (SHEMS) permitiendo el recorte de las puntas de demanda, gestión de energías renovables y control de electrodomésticos, siempre en el contexto del bajo coste, con el objetivo de lograr la máxima difusión de los SHEMS. Adicionalmente, más allá del contexto de la tecnología SHEMS, se analizará cómo aplicar esta tecnología para aumentar la eficiencia energética de los hogares y para la supervisión de los electrodomésticos. La gestión energética es uno de los factores principales para lograr la difusión de las energías renovables distribuidas; debido a que las fuentes de energía renovable no pueden ser planificadas, se requieren sistemas de control capaces de gestionar el intercambio de energía entre las fuentes convencionales (red eléctrica de distribución), energías renovables y dispositivos de almacenamiento energético. Bajo esta perspectiva, este documento presenta un primer bloque en el que se exponen las bases de la arquitectura y módulos funcionales de los sistemas inteligentes de gestión energética en la vivienda (SHEMS); el siguiente paso será analizar los principios que han permitido a ciertos dispositivos convertirse en dispositivos de bajo coste. Una vez analizada la tecnología, nos centraremos en los recursos (hardware y software) existentes que permitirán la realización de un SHEMS a bajo coste. Conocidas las “herramientas” a nuestra disposición, se mostrará como adaptar un esquema SHEMS clásico a la tecnología de bajo coste. Primeramente, comparando de modo genérico la tecnología de bajo coste con una de las principales propuestas comerciales de SHEMS, para seguidamente desarrollar la solución de bajo coste a un caso específico real
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