336 research outputs found

    Transition 2.0: Re-establishing Constitutional Democracy in EU Member States

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    The central question of Transition 2.0 is this: what (and how) may a new government do to re-establish constitutional democracy, as well as repair membership within the European Union, without breaching the European rule of law? This volume demonstrates that EU law and international commitments impose constraints but also offer tools and assistance for facilitating the way back after rule of law and democratic backsliding. The various contributions explore the constitutional, legal, and social framework of 'Transition 2.0'.Dieser Band zeigt, dass das EU-Recht und die internationalen Verpflichtungen zwar Zwänge auferlegen, aber auch Instrumente und Hilfestellungen bieten, um den Weg zurück in die Europäische Union nach Rechtsstaatlichkeitsdefiziten und demokratischen Rückschritten zu erleichtern. Die verschiedenen Beiträge untersuchen den verfassungsrechtlichen, rechtlichen und sozialen Rahmen des "Übergangs 2.0"

    Delay and price differentiation in cloud computing: a service model, supporting architectures, and performance

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    Many cloud service providers (CSPs) offer an on-demand service with a small delay. Motivated by the reality of cloud ecosystems, we study non-interruptible services and consider a differentiated service model to complement the existing market by offering multiple service level agreements (SLAs) to satisfy users with different delay tolerance. The model itself is incentive compatible by construction. Two typical architectures are considered to fulfill SLAs: (i) non-preemptive priority queues and (ii) multiple independent groups of servers. We leverage queueing theory to establish guidelines for the resultant market: (a) Under the first architecture, the service model can only improve the revenue marginally over the pure on-demand service model and (b) under the second architecture, we give a closed-form expression of the revenue improvement when a CSP offers two SLAs and derive a condition under which the market is viable. Additionally, under the second architecture, we give an exhaustive search procedure to find the optimal SLA delays and prices when a CSP generally offers multiple SLAs. Numerical results show that the achieved revenue improvement can be significant even if two SLAs are offered. Our results can help CSPs design optimal delay-differentiated services and choose appropriate serving architectures

    Rethinking Film Festivals in the Pandemic Era and After

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    ‘Rethinking Film Festivals’ explores how COVID-19 intervened in the film festival circuit by disrupting regular industry cycles and allowing new ways of reaching audiences to flourish. Films found other distribution channels, often online, while the festival format proved particularly vulnerable in a one-half-meter society. The search for a full-fledged substitute for live events and shared experiences involved all kinds of experimentation and an acceleration of digital developments that were already underway. The book documents how different festivals in different local contexts were affected differently by the pandemic and reacted differently to it as well. At the same time, the case studies confirm the interconnectedness and transnational relationships inherent in globalised media systems. Finally, the book seizes the momentum of the crisis to make the case for sustainable interventions: festivals must address their ecological footprint, decolonise their organisations, and ensure that their history and heritage is safeguarded for the future

    Market driven elastic secure infrastructure

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    In today’s Data Centers, a combination of factors leads to the static allocation of physical servers and switches into dedicated clusters such that it is difficult to add or remove hardware from these clusters for short periods of time. This silofication of the hardware leads to inefficient use of clusters. This dissertation proposes a novel architecture for improving the efficiency of clusters by enabling them to add or remove bare-metal servers for short periods of time. We demonstrate by implementing a working prototype of the architecture that such silos can be broken and it is possible to share servers between clusters that are managed by different tools, have different security requirements, and are operated by tenants of the Data Center, which may not trust each other. Physical servers and switches in a Data Center are grouped for a combination of reasons. They are used for different purposes (staging, production, research, etc); host applications required for servicing specific workloads (HPC, Cloud, Big Data, etc); and/or configured to meet stringent security and compliance requirements. Additionally, different provisioning systems and tools such as Openstack-Ironic, MaaS, Foreman, etc that are used to manage these clusters take control of the servers making it difficult to add or remove the hardware from their control. Moreover, these clusters are typically stood up with sufficient capacity to meet anticipated peak workload. This leads to inefficient usage of the clusters. They are under-utilized during off-peak hours and in the cases where the demand exceeds capacity the clusters suffer from degraded quality of service (QoS) or may violate service level objectives (SLOs). Although today’s clouds offer huge benefits in terms of on-demand elasticity, economies of scale, and a pay-as-you-go model yet many organizations are reluctant to move their workloads to the cloud. Organizations that (i) needs total control of their hardware (ii) has custom deployment practices (iii) needs to match stringent security and compliance requirements or (iv) do not want to pay high costs incurred from running workloads in the cloud prefers to own its hardware and host it in a data center. This includes a large section of the economy including financial companies, medical institutions, and government agencies that continue to host their own clusters outside of the public cloud. Considering that all the clusters may not undergo peak demand at the same time provides an opportunity to improve the efficiency of clusters by sharing resources between them. The dissertation describes the design and implementation of the Market Driven Elastic Secure Infrastructure (MESI) as an alternative to the public cloud and as an architecture for the lowest layer of the public cloud to improve its efficiency. It allows mutually non-trusting physically deployed services to share the physical servers of a data center efficiently. The approach proposed here is to build a system composed of a set of services each fulfilling a specific functionality. A tenant of the MESI has to trust only a minimal functionality of the tenant that offers the hardware resources. The rest of the services can be deployed by each tenant themselves MESI is based on the idea of enabling tenants to share hardware they own with tenants they may not trust and between clusters with different security requirements. The architecture provides control and freedom of choice to the tenants whether they wish to deploy and manage these services themselves or use them from a trusted third party. MESI services fit into three layers that build on each other to provide: 1) Elastic Infrastructure, 2) Elastic Secure Infrastructure, and 3) Market-driven Elastic Secure Infrastructure. 1) Hardware Isolation Layer (HIL) – the bottommost layer of MESI is designed for moving nodes between multiple tools and schedulers used for managing the clusters. It defines HIL to control the layer 2 switches and bare-metal servers such that tenants can elastically adjust the size of the clusters in response to the changing demand of the workload. It enables the movement of nodes between clusters with minimal to no modifications required to the tools and workflow used for managing these clusters. (2) Elastic Secure Infrastructure (ESI) builds on HIL to enable sharing of servers between clusters with different security requirements and mutually non-trusting tenants of the Data Center. ESI enables the borrowing tenant to minimize its trust in the node provider and take control of trade-offs between cost, performance, and security. This enables sharing of nodes between tenants that are not only part of the same organization by can be organization tenants in a co-located Data Center. (3) The Bare-metal Marketplace is an incentive-based system that uses economic principles of the marketplace to encourage the tenants to share their servers with others not just when they do not need them but also when others need them more. It provides tenants the ability to define their own cluster objectives and sharing constraints and the freedom to decide the number of nodes they wish to share with others. MESI is evaluated using prototype implementations at each layer of the architecture. (i) The HIL prototype implemented with only 3000 Lines of Code (LOC) is able to support many provisioning tools and schedulers with little to no modification; adds no overhead to the performance of the clusters and is in active production use at MOC managing over 150 servers and 11 switches. (ii) The ESI prototype builds on the HIL prototype and adds to it an attestation service, a provisioning service, and a deterministically built open-source firmware. Results demonstrate that it is possible to build a cluster that is secure, elastic, and fairly quick to set up. The tenant requires only minimum trust in the provider for the availability of the node. (iii) The MESI prototype demonstrates the feasibility of having a one-of-kind multi-provider marketplace for trading bare-metal servers where providers also use the nodes. The evaluation of the MESI prototype shows that all the clusters benefit from participating in the marketplace. It uses agents to trade bare-metal servers in a marketplace to meet the requirements of their clusters. Results show that compared to operating as silos individual clusters see a 50% improvement in the total work done; up to 75% improvement (reduction) in waiting for queues and up to 60% improvement in the aggregate utilization of the test bed. This dissertation makes the following contributions: (i) It defines the architecture of MESI allows mutually non-trusting tenants of the data center to share resources between clusters with different security requirements. (ii) Demonstrates that it is possible to design a service that breaks the silos of static allocation of clusters yet has a small Trusted Computing Base (TCB) and no overhead to the performance of the clusters. (iii) Provides a unique architecture that puts the tenant in control of its own security and minimizes the trust needed in the provider for sharing nodes. (iv) A working prototype of a multi-provider marketplace for bare-metal servers which is a first proof-of-concept that demonstrates that it is possible to trade real bare-metal nodes at practical time scales such that moving nodes between clusters is sufficiently fast to be able to get some useful work done. (v) Finally results show that it is possible to encourage even mutually non-trusting tenants to share their nodes with each other without any central authority making allocation decisions. Many smart, dedicated engineers and researchers have contributed to this work over the years. I have jointly led the efforts to design the HIL and the ESI layer; led the design and implementation of the bare-metal marketplace and the overall MESI architecture

    An Action Research Study on Visible Learning Feedback and Motivational Interviewing Concerning Underserved Advanced Placement Students

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    Underserved minority students participating in Advanced Placement (AP) courses encountered increased academic pressures, in addition to inequitable conditions in education. The following study addressed inequity, as well as self-motivation, self-regulation, feedback practices, and student autonomy. The researcher implemented Visible Learning Feedback, an academic intervention, focused on bridging the gap in knowledge (Brooks et al., 2019; Hattie & Yates, 2014). Furthermore, the researcher designed a Motivational Interviewing (MI) pilot program, a client-centered approach concentrated on participant social-emotional well-being (Miller & Rollnick, 2013). The study’s purpose involved improving AP exam scores, increasing post-test essay grades, and raising self-motivation and self-regulation measurements through the Motivated Student Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). Additionally, the study examined student perceptions of the interventions, self-motivation and self-regulation relating to the programs, and racial bias in feedback through feedback forms, interviews, MI conversations, and a feedback perceptions survey (Rowe & Wood, 2008. Quantitative results indicated little to no statistically significant increase in AP exam scores or self-motivation and self-regulation measurements; however, increased post-test essay scores demonstrated a large positive statistical difference and a high effect size for VLF. Qualitative results showed students perceived VLF as helpful and aiding in academic growth, and conclusively reported zero racial bias in feedback received in the APELC classroom. Furthermore, students articulated struggles, such as apathy, and successes, such as utilizing strategies for growth, with self-motivation and self-regulation regarding VLF. Participants viewed MI as also contributing to personal growth and as a personalized activity. Concerning self-motivation and self-regulation relating to MI, students perceived the intervention as an autonomy-building and identity-forging endeavor

    A review of commercialisation mechanisms for carbon dioxide removal

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    The deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) needs to be scaled up to achieve net zero emission pledges. In this paper we survey the policy mechanisms currently in place globally to incentivise CDR, together with an estimate of what different mechanisms are paying per tonne of CDR, and how those costs are currently distributed. Incentive structures are grouped into three structures, market-based, public procurement, and fiscal mechanisms. We find the majority of mechanisms currently in operation are underresourced and pay too little to enable a portfolio of CDR that could support achievement of net zero. The majority of mechanisms are concentrated in market-based and fiscal structures, specifically carbon markets and subsidies. While not primarily motivated by CDR, mechanisms tend to support established afforestation and soil carbon sequestration methods. Mechanisms for geological CDR remain largely underdeveloped relative to the requirements of modelled net zero scenarios. Commercialisation pathways for CDR require suitable policies and markets throughout the projects development cycle. Discussion and investment in CDR has tended to focus on technology development. Our findings suggest that an equal or greater emphasis on policy innovation may be required if future requirements for CDR are to be met. This study can further support research and policy on the identification of incentive gaps and realistic potential for CDR globally

    Social convergence in times of spatial distancing: The rRole of music during the COVID-19 Pandemic

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