Managed ecosystems of networked objects

Small embedded devices such as sensors and actuators will become the cornerstone of the Future Internet. To this end, generic, open and secure communication and service platforms are needed in order to be able to exploit the new business opportunities these devices bring. In this paper, we evaluate the current efforts to integrate sensors and actuators into the Internet and identify the limitations at the level of cooperation of these Internet-connected objects and the possible intelligence at the end points. As a solution, we propose the concept of Managed Ecosystem of Networked Objects, which aims to create a smart network architecture for groups of Internet-connected objects by combining network virtualization and clean-slate end-to-end protocol design. The concept maps to many real-life scenarios and should empower application developers to use sensor data in an easy and natural way. At the same time, the concept introduces many new challenging research problems, but their realization could offer a meaningful contribution to the realization of the Internet of Things

The construction of choice. A computational voting model.

Social choice models usually assume that choice is among exogenously given and non decomposable alternatives. Often, on the contrary, choice is among objects that are constructed by individuals or institutions as complex bundles made of many interdependent components. In this paper we present a model of object construction in majority voting and show that, in general, by appropriate changes of such bundles, different social outcomes may be obtained, depending upon initial conditions and agenda, intransitive cycles and median voter dominance may be made appear or disappear, and that, finally, decidability may be ensured by increasing manipulability or viceversa.Voting, Social choice, Agenda power, Power, Voting paradox, Median voter

Alpha Entanglement Codes: Practical Erasure Codes to Archive Data in Unreliable Environments

Data centres that use consumer-grade disks drives and distributed peer-to-peer systems are unreliable environments to archive data without enough redundancy. Most redundancy schemes are not completely effective for providing high availability, durability and integrity in the long-term. We propose alpha entanglement codes, a mechanism that creates a virtual layer of highly interconnected storage devices to propagate redundant information across a large scale storage system. Our motivation is to design flexible and practical erasure codes with high fault-tolerance to improve data durability and availability even in catastrophic scenarios. By flexible and practical, we mean code settings that can be adapted to future requirements and practical implementations with reasonable trade-offs between security, resource usage and performance. The codes have three parameters. Alpha increases storage overhead linearly but increases the possible paths to recover data exponentially. Two other parameters increase fault-tolerance even further without the need of additional storage. As a result, an entangled storage system can provide high availability, durability and offer additional integrity: it is more difficult to modify data undetectably. We evaluate how several redundancy schemes perform in unreliable environments and show that alpha entanglement codes are flexible and practical codes. Remarkably, they excel at code locality, hence, they reduce repair costs and become less dependent on storage locations with poor availability. Our solution outperforms Reed-Solomon codes in many disaster recovery scenarios.Comment: The publication has 12 pages and 13 figures. This work was partially supported by Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF Doc.Mobility 162014, 2018 48th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN

The value and character of political science: report on the member's survey, September 2014

In the lead-up to the 2014 APSA Conference, the APSA Executive agreed to a proposal by the president, Brian Head, to conduct a rapid survey of members’ opinions on the nature and future of political science. Background The focus on research impact reflects contemporary trends in higher education and research funding policies in a number of countries. There are sound moral, ethical and financial arguments that publicly-funded academics should use their training and activities for the good of society. Concepts of academic impact and quality have been continuously refined and measured, mainly in terms of high-status publications in journals with higher citation counts. Reliance on such ‘ivory tower’ measures of impact have been increasingly contested over recent years. Thus, in the United Kingdom and Australia, there have been increasing expectations that publicly-funded research should have ‘impact’ beyond academia, and should yield demonstrable economic, environmental and social benefits. These expectations, and an accompanying focus on encouraging research engagement and collaboration, have underpinned the external‘ impact agenda’. In 2013 the Australian Research Council (ARC) defined research impact as ‘the demonstrable contribution that research makes to the economy, society, culture, national security, public policy or services, health, the environment, or quality of life, beyond contributions to academia. The focus on measuring the economic and societal benefits from research has resulted in increasingly sophisticated and complex research assessment mechanisms, such as the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) exercise, and the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF). While the 2015 round of the ERA does not currently include an impact assessment component, the language of impact is explicit in ARC grant applications and reporting mechanisms, and impact trials were conducted in Australia in2011–12 (Australian Technology Network of Universities and Group of Eight 2013)

Cubic complexes and finite type invariants

Cubic complexes appear in the theory of finite type invariants so often that one can ascribe them to basic notions of the theory. In this paper we begin the exposition of finite type invariants from the `cubic' point of view. Finite type invariants of knots and homology 3-spheres fit perfectly into this conception. In particular, we get a natural explanation why they behave like polynomials.Comment: Published by Geometry and Topology Monographs at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/gt/GTMon4/paper14.abs.htm

A computational voting model

Social choice models usually assume that choice is among exogenously given and non decomposable alternatives. Often, on the contrary, choice is among objects that are constructed by individuals or institutions as complex bundles made of many interdependent components. In this paper we present a model of object construction in majority voting and show that, in general, by appropriate changes of such bundles, different social outcomes may be obtained, depending upon initial conditions and agenda, intransitive cycles and median voter dominance may be made appear or disappear, and that, finally, decidability may be ensured by increasing manipulability or viceversa.Social choice; object construction power; agenda power; intransitive cycles; median voter theorem.

The Yogācāra Theory of Three Natures: Internalist and Non-Dualist Interpretations

According to Vasubandhu’s Trisvabhāvanirdeśa or Treatise on the Three Natures, experiential phenomena can be understood in terms of three natures: the constructed (parikalpita), the dependent (paratantra), and the consummate (pariniṣpanna). This paper will examine internalist and anti-internalist or non-dualist interpretations of the Yogācāra theory of the three natures of experience. The internalist interpretation is based on representationalist theory of experience wherein the contents of experience are logically independent of their cause and various interconnected cognitive processes continually create an integrated internal world-model that is transparent to the cognitive system that creates and uses it. In contrast, the anti-internalist interpretation begins, not from the constructed nature of experiential objects, but from the perfected nature of mind-world non-duality. This interpretation treats the distinctions between inside and outside, subject and object, mind and world as distinctions drawn within experience rather than between experience and something else. And experience here refers to the continuous dynamic interplay of factors constituting our sentient embodied (nāma-rūpa) existence. Having examined each interpretation, the paper will suggest some reasons to favor the non-dualist view