Growing Greener Initiative

Using funds from this grant, the City of Dover Open Lands Committee worked in conjunction with the Planning Department and Conservation Commission to plan, promote and present a series of workshops. These workshops were designed to educate decision- makers and residents about the economic, aesthetic, and environmental benefits of open space. In addition, the Dover Open Lands Committee developed two brochures and a display to publicize the Open Lands Committee and to encourage further citizen participation

A Combined Component-Based Approach for the Design of Distributed Software Systems

Component-based software development enables the construction of software artefacts by assembling binary units of production, distribution and deployment, the so-called components. Several approaches to component-based development have been proposed recently. Most of these approaches are based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML). UML has been increasingly used in component-based development, despite some shortcomings of this language. This paper presents a methodology for the design of component-based applications that combines a model-based approach with a UML-based approach. This combined approach tackles some of the limitations of UML, allowing a better control of the design proces

Production/maintenance cooperative scheduling using multi-agents and fuzzy logic

Within companies, production is directly concerned with the manufacturing schedule, but other services like sales, maintenance, purchasing or workforce management should also have an influence on this schedule. These services often have together a hierarchical relationship, i.e. the leading function (most of the time sales or production) generates constraints defining the framework within which the other functions have to satisfy their own objectives. We show how the multi-agent paradigm, often used in scheduling for its ability to distribute decision-making, can also provide a framework for making several functions cooperate in the schedule performance. Production and maintenance have been chosen as an example: having common resources (the machines), their activities are actually often conflicting. We show how to use a fuzzy logic in order to model the temporal degrees of freedom of the two functions, and show that this approach may allow one to obtain a schedule that provides a better compromise between the satisfaction of the respective objectives of the two functions

On consistency maintenance in service discovery

Communication and node failures degrade the ability of a service discovery protocol to ensure Users receive the correct service information when the service changes. We propose that service discovery protocols employ a set of recovery techniques to recover from failures and regain consistency. We use simulations to show that the type of recovery technique a protocol uses significantly impacts the performance. We benchmark the performance of our own service discovery protocol, FRODO against the performance of first generation service discovery protocols, Jini and UPnP during increasing communication and node failures. The results show that FRODO has the best overall consistency maintenance performance

Task allocation in dynamic networks of satellites

The management of distributed satellite systems requires the coordination of a large number of heterogeneous spacecraft. Task allocation in such a system is complicated by limited communication and individual satellite dynamics. Previous work has shown that task allocation using a market-based mechanism can provide scalable and efficient management of static networks; in this paper we extend this work to determine the impact of dynamic topologies. We develop a Keplerian mobility model to describe the topology of the communication network over time. This movement model is then used in simulation to show that the task allocation mechanism does not show a significant decrease in effectiveness from the static case, reflecting the suitability distributed market-based control to the highly dynamic environment

Unhappy Holidays at Merton Factory

This document is part of a digital collection provided by the Martin P. Catherwood Library, ILR School, Cornell University, pertaining to the effects of globalization on the workplace worldwide. Special emphasis is placed on labor rights, working conditions, labor market changes, and union organizing.CLW_2009_Report_China_unhappy_holidays.pdf: 49 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

K-Trek: A Peer-to-Peer Approach To Distribute Knowledge In Large Environments

In this paper, we explore an architecture, called K-Trek, that enables mobile users to travel across knowledge distributed over a large geographical area (ranging from large public buildings to a national park). Our aim is providing, dis-tributing, and enriching the environment with location-sensitive information for use by agents on board of mobile and static devices. Local interactions among K-Trek devices and the distribution of information in the larger environment adopt some typical peer-to-peer patterns and techniques. We introduce the architecture, discuss some of its potential knowledge management applications, and present a few experimental results obtained with simulation

Decentralized trust in the inter-domain routing infrastructure

Inter-domain routing security is of critical importance to the Internet since it prevents unwanted traffic redirections. The current system is based on a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), a centralized repository of digital certificates. However, the inherent centralization of such design creates tensions between its participants and hinders its deployment. In addition, some technical drawbacks of PKIs delay widespread adoption. In this paper we present IPchain, a blockchain to store the allocations and delegations of IP addresses. IPchain leverages blockchains' properties to decentralize trust among its participants, with the final goal of providing flexible trust models that adapt better to the ever-changing geopolitical landscape. Moreover, we argue that Proof of Stake is a suitable consensus algorithm for IPchain due to the unique incentive structure of this use-case, and that blockchains offer relevant technical advantages when compared to existing systems, such as simplified management. In order to show its feasibility and suitability, we have implemented and evaluated IPchain's performance and scalability storing around 350k IP prefixes in a 2.5 GB chain.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Qualitative and Qualitative Longitudinal Resources in Europe

In April 2009 the UK Timescapes Initiative, in collaboration with the University of Bremen, organised a residential workshop to explore the nature of qualitative (Q) and qualitative longitudinal (QL) research and resources across Europe. The workshop was hosted by the Archive for Life Course Research (Archiv für Lebenslaufforschung, ALLF) at Bremen and funded by Timescapes with support from CESSDA (The Council of European Social Science Data Archives, Preparatory Phase Project). It was attended by archivists and researchers from 14 countries, including ‘transitional’ states such as Belarus and Lithuania. The broad aim of the workshop was to map existing infrastructures for qualitative and QL data archiving among the participating countries, including the extent of archiving and the ethos of data sharing and re-use in different national contexts. The group also explored strategies to develop infrastructure and to support qualitative and QL research and resources, including collaborative research across Europe and beyond