Self-managed cells and their federation

Future e-Health systems will consist of low-power, on-body wireless sensors attached to mobile users that interact with a ubiquitous computing environment. This kind of system needs to be able to configure itself with little or no user input; more importantly, it is required to adapt autonomously to changes such as user movement, device failure, the addition or loss of services, and proximity to other such systems. This extended abstract describes the basic architecture of a Self-Managed Cell (SMC) to address these requirements, and discusses various forms of federation between/among SMCs. This structure is motivated by a typical e-Health scenario

HIV and AIDS in the Russian Federation : prisons as a case study of risk environments and agency

This thesis explores Russian prisons as risk environments for the spread of HIV through intravenous drug use. The Russian HIV epidemic is extremely fast growing, and though exact prevalence rates are unknown, the epidemic is now considered generalized as estimated prevalence rates exceed one percent of the Russian population. After decades of foreign-aid and interventions in African nations have largely failed to address the HIV epidemic, social scientists now attribute HIV infection to risk environments created by low levels of social cohesion and a lack of agency. Within my research, I explore Russian male prisons and the role risk environments and agency play in the spread of HIV. I review recently published literature, government statistics, as well as reports published by non-governmental organizations. I then analyze and interpret these data, draw conclusions and inferences regarding the spread of HIV within Russian prison risk environments.Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studie

Commons and Cooperatives

In the last decade, the commons has become a prevalent theme in discussions about collective but decentralized control over resources. This paper is a preliminary exploration of the potential linkages between commons and cooperatives through a discussion of the worker cooperative as one example of a labour commons. We view the worker coop as a response at once antagonistic and accommodative to capitalism. This perspective is amplified through a consideration of five aspects of an ideal-type worker cooperativism: associated labour, workplace democracy, surplus distribution, cooperation among cooperatives, and, controversially, links between worker cooperatives and socialist states. We conclude by suggesting that the radical potential of worker cooperatives might be extended, theoretically and practically, by elaborating connections with other commons struggles in a process we term the circulation of the common

BonFIRE: A multi-cloud test facility for internet of services experimentation

BonFIRE offers a Future Internet, multi-site, cloud testbed, targeted at the Internet of Services community, that supports large scale testing of applications, services and systems over multiple, geographically distributed, heterogeneous cloud testbeds. The aim of BonFIRE is to provide an infrastructure that gives experimenters the ability to control and monitor the execution of their experiments to a degree that is not found in traditional cloud facilities. The BonFIRE architecture has been designed to support key functionalities such as: resource management; monitoring of virtual and physical infrastructure metrics; elasticity; single document experiment descriptions; and scheduling. As for January 2012 BonFIRE release 2 is operational, supporting seven pilot experiments. Future releases will enhance the offering, including the interconnecting with networking facilities to provide access to routers, switches and bandwidth-on-demand systems. BonFIRE will be open for general use late 2012

Assessing the effectiveness of a clinic-based diabetes management program in a community setting

Diabetes in the United States occurs in approximately 8% of adults.[i] Diabetes, if not treated, can lead to many health problems such as blindness or loss of physical functioning, sometimes leading to amputation. However, Type 2 diabetes can be cured or kept under control through effective diabetes management. Many Type 2 diabetes patients let their diabetes become out of control through at risk behaviors, such as smoking, and poor diet, which in turn can lead to a worsening of their condition. With effective disease management, patients can avoid more severe effects of the disease and have higher quality of life. Joslin Diabetes Center operates a diabetes management program called “Why WAIT”. Why Wait is a medically managed clinic-based program to teach Type 2 diabetes patients how to control and manage their diabetes. Joslin Diabetes Center has modified this program and initiated it in a community setting. Here I evaluate whether the community-based program can have similar outcomes to the clinic-based one. The modified community based program was at the Wang YMCA Center and involved seven participants who had full disclosure of the program in a hope to improve their diabetes management. Outcomes measured were Hemoglobin A1c, weight loss, and patient satisfaction collected through participant surveys and program staff. Bringing the Why Wait medically managed clinic-based program into a community setting at the Wang YMCA brings better benefits to the population of Type 2 diabetes patients through increased patient satisfaction. [i] Diabetes.niddk.nih.gov (2011). National Diabetes Statistics, 2011 - National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse. [online] Retrieved from: http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/dm/pubs/statistics/index.aspx#fast [Accessed: 21 Mar 2013]