Systematic composition of distributed objects: Processes and sessions

We consider a system with the infrastructure for the creation and interconnection of large numbers of distributed persistent objects. This system is exemplified by the Internet: potentially, every appliance and document on the Internet has both persistent state and the ability to interact with large numbers of other appliances and documents on the Internet. This paper elucidates the characteristics of such a system, and proposes the compositional requirements of its corresponding infrastructure. We explore the problems of specifying, composing, reasoning about and implementing applications in such a system. A specific concern of our research is developing the infrastructure to support structuring distributed applications by using sequential, choice and parallel composition, in the anarchic environment where application compositions may be unforeseeable and interactions may be unknown prior to actually occurring. The structuring concepts discussed are relevant to a wide range of distributed applications; our implementation is illustrated with collaborative Java processes interacting over the Internet, but the methodology provided can be applied independent of specific platforms

PLAYING SENIOR INTER-COUNTY GAELIC GAMES: EXPERIENCES, REALITIES AND CONSEQUENCES. ESRI RESEARCH SERIES NUMBER 76 September 2018

Given the developments that have taken place in Gaelic games over the past decade, particularly at the senior inter-county level, there is a concern that the demands that today’s games are placing on players are having negative effects on their lives. The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) and the Gaelic Players Association (GPA) have introduced a number of measures to ensure that players’ needs are taken care of and that those who play enjoy their experience. Nevertheless, questions continue to be raised. Given this, the GAA and GPA jointly commissioned the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) to conduct an independent examination of the commitment required to play senior inter-county, and the impact that this has on players’ personal and professional lives and club involvement. The research was primarily conducted through senior inter-county player workshops and a survey of 2016 players. Workshops were also conducted with 2016 senior inter-county managers, County Board Secretaries and third-level Games Development Officers (GDOs). What follows is a summary of the principal findings arising from the study, consideration of their implications for both player welfare and policy in this area, and some discussion on future directions

How people find videos

At present very little is known about how people locate and view videos 'in the wild'. This study draws a rich picture of everyday video seeking strategies and video information needs, based on an ethnographic study of New Zealand university students. These insights into the participants' activities and motivations suggest potentially useful facilities for a video digital library

Reflections on security options for the real-time transport protocol framework

The Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) supports a range of video conferencing, telephony, and streaming video ap- plications, but offers few native security features. We discuss the problem of securing RTP, considering the range of applications. We outline why this makes RTP a difficult protocol to secure, and describe the approach we have recently proposed in the IETF to provide security for RTP applications. This approach treats RTP as a framework with a set of extensible security building blocks, and prescribes mandatory-to-implement security at the level of different application classes, rather than at the level of the media transport protocol

MENU: multicast emulation using netlets and unicast

High-end networking applications such as Internet TV and software distribution have generated a demand for multicast protocols as an integral part of the network. This will allow such applications to support data dissemination to large groups of users in a scalable and reliable manner. Existing IP multicast protocols lack these features and also require state storage in the core of the network which is costly to implement. In this paper, we present a new multicast protocol referred to as MENU. It realises a scalable and a reliable multicast protocol model by pushing the tree building complexity to the edges of the network, thereby eliminating processing and state storage in the core of the network. The MENU protocol builds multicast support in the network using mobile agent based active network services, Netlets, and unicast addresses. The multicast delivery tree in MENU is a two level hierarchical structure where users are partitioned into client communities based on geographical proximity. Each client community in the network is treated as a single virtual destination for traffic from the server. Netlet based services referred to as hot spot delegates (HSDs) are deployed by servers at "hot spots" close to each client community. They function as virtual traffic destinations for the traffic from the server and also act as virtual source nodes for all users in the community. The source node feeds data to these distributed HSDs which in turn forward data to all downstream users through a locally constructed traffic delivery tree. It is shown through simulations that the resulting system provides an efficient means to incrementally build a source customisable secured multicast protocol which is both scalable and reliable. Furthermore, results show that MENU employs minimal processing and reduced state information in networks when compared to existing IP multicast protocols

Finding video on the web

At present very little is known about how people locate and view videos. This study draws a rich picture of everyday video seeking strategies and video information needs, based on an ethnographic study of New Zealand university students. These insights into the participants’ activities and motivations suggest potentially useful facilities for a video digital library

Older People Have Their Say! Survey of Older People’s Needs in Westgate Ward, Canterbury

Although a lot of effort in the last few years has been made to address the needs of people in old age, surprisingly not much is known about the views of this age group in the Canterbury City Council area. To address this lack of knowledge, the Canterbury and District Pensioners’ Forum was funded by the Canterbury City Council to explore the needs of older people living in this area. Our Forum decided to collaborate with the University of Kent to produce a survey on the needs of older people within the District of Canterbury. During the process of the project, we decided to base the survey on the Westgate Ward in Canterbury because we felt that older people living in this area represent a good example for highlighting needs that involve ‘ordinary’ older people. This ward is quite diverse in many ways; it spreads from a semi-rural area through to town dwelling. It is not seen as an area of deprivation, thereby has not generated any special money from the Government to help with social problems in the provision of social centres, community learning, social activities etc. Yet we know from our own experience that what may appear in many parts as fairly affluent is quite deprived of places for people to meet; and has large public housing areas with no amenities at all. The present Government put through legislation, which said that public services should be surveyed, and the part of that legislation that we are particularly interested in is “The National Service Framework for Older People”. That framework asks that older people are treated with dignity by NHS and Social Care organisations; and that Councils –County and District, examine existing services- housing, leisure and transport – to identify opportunities to promote health and well-being. We felt that Westgate Ward would be representative of many other areas within our District that had not received any special investment. The work that has been done in producing this survey has been done by members of the Canterbury & District Pensioners’ Forum with help from the University of Kent. It is a survey of older people, carried out by older people. It is our work. Information generated by this project will be assisting the Forum’s work to promote important issues related to older people’s quality of life and access to health and social care services. A comment from J.F. Kennedy we believe sums up the approach that we took at the start of this survey: “It is not enough for a nation to have added years of life. Our object must be to add new life to those years