Special Issue on Survivable and Resilient Communication Networks and Services

Communication networks and services play a vital role in our modern lives. This importance is expected to continue to grow in future decades. More and more business, healthcare or government organizations will become increasingly dependent on the communication between their offices and people. Not only does modern society depend on these services in terms of availability but also in terms of proper functioning in all circumstances. These services having stringent requirements with respect to protection of privacy and security. Anonymity (such as e-health) cannot accept, for example, temporary leakage of confidential information by accident whether a result of human error or technical problems. The information and communication network technology itself have also been evolving with tremendous breakthroughs. Users have more and more different types of mobile devices that interconnect them to the Internet. These mobile devices provide incentives to generate novel technology paradigms that enable more flexible provisioning, network virtualization, or improved power efficiency. The robustness and fault tolerance of these novel evolutions is as crucial as ever

Unsplittable Load Balancing in a Network of Charging Stations Under QoS Guarantees

The operation of the power grid is becoming more stressed, due to the addition of new large loads represented by Electric Vehicles (EVs) and a more intermittent supply due to the incorporation of renewable sources. As a consequence, the coordination and control of projected EV demand in a network of fast charging stations becomes a critical and challenging problem. In this paper, we introduce a game theoretic based decentralized control mechanism to alleviate negative impacts from the EV demand. The proposed mechanism takes into consideration the non-uniform spatial distribution of EVs that induces uneven power demand at each charging facility, and aims to: (i) avoid straining grid resources by offering price incentives so that customers accept being routed to less busy stations, (ii) maximize total revenue by serving more customers with the same amount of grid resources, and (iii) provide charging service to customers with a certain level of Quality-of-Service (QoS), the latter defined as the long term customer blocking probability. We examine three scenarios of increased complexity that gradually approximate real world settings. The obtained results show that the proposed framework leads to substantial performance improvements in terms of the aforementioned goals, when compared to current state of affairs.Comment: Accepted for Publication in IEEE Transactions on Smart Gri

Applied arts and design in museums: USA and Milan experience

The Design represents an innovative work of art. Chairs, spoons, teapots could be an example of designed arts. Creativity and daily utility, they both “evolve in” arts. Design Museums are often collections of famous designers, stylists and firms. The supply chain of brands could find an exhibition in “Museum Rooms”. Design Museums develop own fundraising techniques. Through networks and partnerships with Industrial Museums and Fairs, they focus on targets like entrepreneurs, institutions and research centres. Merchandising could also turn out to be an opportunity in order to raise funds. The range of merchandising could really be multiple and attractive for visitors, usually engaged – in “ordinary” museums - in the choice of t-shirts or calendars. The aim of the paper is the investigation of strategies of Design Museums. How do they transform industrial concepts in museum concepts and attract resources? The analysis will be focused on USA Museums whose collections give evidence of applied arts and design.. The recently born Milan Design Museum will be illustrated as regards the collection, partnerships, networks and fundraising priorities. The Association Museimpresa as a promoter of Italian industrial collections will be presented in the ending part.applied arts; design; museum; management; fundraising

Predictive Non-equilibrium Social Science

Non-Equilibrium Social Science (NESS) emphasizes dynamical phenomena, for instance the way political movements emerge or competing organizations interact. This paper argues that predictive analysis is an essential element of NESS, occupying a central role in its scientific inquiry and representing a key activity of practitioners in domains such as economics, public policy, and national security. We begin by clarifying the distinction between models which are useful for prediction and the much more common explanatory models studied in the social sciences. We then investigate a challenging real-world predictive analysis case study, and find evidence that the poor performance of standard prediction methods does not indicate an absence of human predictability but instead reflects (1.) incorrect assumptions concerning the predictive utility of explanatory models, (2.) misunderstanding regarding which features of social dynamics actually possess predictive power, and (3.) practical difficulties exploiting predictive representations.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1212.680