Market Driven Multi-domain Network Service Orchestration in 5G Networks

The advent of a new breed of enhanced multimedia services has put network operators into a position where they must support innovative services while ensuring both end-to-end Quality of Service requirements and profitability. Recently, Network Function Virtualization (NFV) has been touted as a cost-effective underlying technology in 5G networks to efficiently provision novel services. These NFV-based services have been increasingly associated with multi-domain networks. However, several orchestration issues, linked to cross-domain interactions and emphasized by the heterogeneity of underlying technologies and administrative authorities, present an important challenge. In this paper, we tackle the cross-domain interaction issue by proposing an intelligent and profitable auction-based approach to allow inter-domains resource allocation

A Descriptive Literature Review and Classification of Cloud Computing Research

We present a descriptive literature review and classification scheme for cloud computing research. This includes 205 refereed journal articles published since the inception of cloud computing research. The articles are classified based on a scheme that consists of four main categories: technological issues, business issues, domains and applications, and conceptualising cloud computing. The results show that although current research is still skewed towards technological issues, new research themes regarding social and organisational implications are emerging. This review provides a reference source and classification scheme for IS researchers interested in cloud computing, and to indicate under-researched areas as well as future directions

Hydra: loosely coupling the graphics pipeline to facilitate digital preservation.

It can be argued that software can be seen as a form of art and digital heritage and yet it rarely enjoys the same efforts afforded to it compared to physical counterparts. There are many reasons for this, such as the increasing costs of maintenance or the reducing amount of expertise in the specific aging technology. Maintaining software and ensuring that it continues to work on current hardware and operating systems is known as digital preservation. There are many ways in which we can attempt to preserve digital software and one of the most effective ones is by using emulation to simulate the obsolete hardware. However, for games and other entertainment media, this technique is not always effective due to a requirement on specific hardware, such as an accelerated GPU in order to reach an acceptable performance for the user. It is often difficult to emulate a GPU and, as such, a different approach often needs to be taken, which reduces the flexibility and portability of the emulation software. Hydra is a new approach to accessing the native hardware from within an emulated environment which allows for a much simpler emulator to be developed and maintained and yet also offers the potential of accessing other types of hardware without needing to modify the emulation software itself. Hydra is designed to be platform agnostic in that not only is it possible to integrate with existing emulators but also be immediately usable from within guest operating systems, ranging from legacy platforms such as MS-DOS, through to modern platforms such as the PlayStation 4 (Orbis OS, a FreeBSD derivative), through to more exotic platforms such as Plan 9 from Bell Laboratories. It can do this because it does not rely on a complex emulator-specific virtual driver stack. This PhD thesis provides the research undertaken for Hydra, including the motivation behind it, the specific problems it was designed to solve and how it can be implemented in a platform agnostic manner. Hydra’s performance is analysed to ascertain the suitability of the output to cater for, specifically, a wide variety of platforms that it can run on in a satisfactory manner within less powerful or emulated environments. A performance analysis study is conducted to ensure that the technology provides an acceptable solution to accessing preserved titles. This study concluded with results showing that Hydra offers a greater performance than software rendering, especially within emulated environments. A bandwidth comparison between Hydra and VNC was undertaken to ascertain the use of the technology as a streaming medium. The results concluded that under specific conditions, Hydra performed better than VNC by streaming at a higher resolution and consuming less bandwidth. Hydra is also utilised in a number of engineering tasks relating to preservation of software. The experiences of using Hydra in this way are discussed, including any difficulties encountered. Lastly, a conclusion is made and any future work is identified

CONTRACTUAL GOVERNANCE OF ONLINE COMMUNITIES – (PROPERTY) RIGHTS DISPUTES IN VIRTUAL WORLDS

Considering law’s difficult ride on the coattails of societal and technological progress, this thesis discusses property rights disputes in virtual worlds, the origin and foundation of (property) rights in characters, objects and items (virtual assets), and the possibility of contractual governance. Investing considerable time, effort and money to create, develop and accumulate virtual assets to gain prestige or competitive advantage, or simply to have more fun playing, users often build strong emotional connections to their characters and place a high value on accumulated operator, third user and user-generated content. But the user’s experience of virtual assets as property, contrasts starkly with most in-world property models where first property rights belong to the operator, subsequent rights are delineated by contract, and emerging property rights are transferred to the operator or waived by the user. Noting the ‘technologically inaccurate portrayal of software’ in legislation, jurisprudence and legal debate, that ignores its ‘physical properties of mass and volume’, and the influence of client/server system architecture on the allocation of personal property rights, this thesis shows that physical and intellectual rights cannot resolve the newly emerging property rights disputes in virtual worlds. Instead of making another helpless attempt to justify a new virtual property right that still cannot overcome an enforceable transfer/waiver of (future) (property) rights clause in the contract, this author questions common concepts of property and proposes a new quasi-property right. Originated in the contractual obligation of the operator to grant the user a right to use, to exclude other users from and to transfer virtual assets, the rules of conduct included in the multiple-separate user contract complete its quasi-absolute effect. This quasi-property right does not only complement the quasi-tort, quasi-criminal and quasi-constitutional system already established by the (virtual social) contract but supports the identification of the contract (terms) as new default legal rules for VWs and similar online communities

Horizon Report Europe - 2014 Schools Edition

The NMC Horizon Project from the New Media Consortium is a long-term investigation launched in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact over the coming five years in education around the globe. The NMC Horizon Report Europe: 2014 Schools Edition, the first of its kind for Europe, examines six key trends, six significant challenges and six important developments in educational technology that are very likely to impact educational change processes in European schools over the next five years (2014-2018). The topics within each section were carefully selected by the Horizon Project Europe Expert Panel, a body of 53 experts in European education, technology, and other fields. They come from 22 European countries, as well as international organisations and European networks. Throughout the report, references and links are made to more than 150 European publications (reports, articles, policy documents, blog posts etc.), projects (both EU-funded and national initiatives) and various policy initiatives from all over Europe. The Creative Classrooms multidimensional framework, developed by European Commission’s JRC-IPTS on behalf of DG EAC, was used for analysing the trends, challenges and technologies impacting European schools over the next five years. The analysis reveals that a systemic approach is needed for integrating new technologies in European schools and impacting educational change over the next five years.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

A framework for the visualisation and control of ubiquitous devices, services and digital content

The General Organization for Technical Education and Vocational Training, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, has developed a special feeding program for the students at its institutions. The effects of this program on the nutritional and health status of these students have not been evaluated yet, and since no published dietary research has been performed on Technical and Vocational young adult male students, the present work was undertaken to investigate the nutritional status of this community in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. After a pilot survey, it was decided to use a selfcompleted questionnaire combined with personal interview to investigate the nutritional status of 690 students randomly selected from the study population. Dietary data was collected by two methods: usual weekly intakes "diet history" and actual daily intakes "diet diary". The nutrient intakes were calculated using the unilever Dietary Analysis Program (UNIDAP). The statistical Package for the social Science (SPSS/PC+) was employed to analyse the data; statistical significance of relationships between certain sets of data was determined by chi-square analysis. Some general factors affecting the nutritional status of these students were identified, their nutritional habits and attitudes were investigated, and the average daily intakes of energy, the macronutrients, and selected micronutrients were calculated. The main results of this study shows that the majority of the study population are adolescent, moderately active individuals, and have lower than the standard range of the Body Mass Index; anaemia is the most stated health problem; meal-skipping and eating between meals are common habits amongst the students. Regarding nutrient intake, there was an energy, polyunsaturated fat, and vitamin C deficiency; adequate intake of saturated fat, dietary fibre, retinol, and zinc; more than adequate intake of protein, total fat, cholesterol, thiamin, riboflavin, calcium, and iron. Recommendations are given which aim to improve the nutrition of technical and vocational students

Massively multi-author hybrid artificial intelligence

Biological intelligences often consist of many different, complex systems working together, rather than a single mechanism capable of solving every problem. It may be that artificial intelligence requires a composition of multiple, diverse systems; perhaps more than any one individual or one research group can create or even understand. This dissertation presents an architecture for hosting and efficiently running user-submitted programs (minds) intended to solve particular problems (worlds), and to facilitate the assembly of these problem-solving minds into larger scale systems of hybrid minds which query an existing set of minds (which we call subminds) for their suggested actions. These subminds may be hosted on the same machine or remotely, across the Internet. They may have been written by many different authors, with each program intended either as a complete solution to the problem, or with an eye toward its re-use in a modular fashion. Even if a program is written and intended as a complete, independent solution to the problem, that need not preclude its inclusion in a larger, hierarchical hybrid program. In other words, the architecture presented forms a platform for building hybrid artificial intelligence systems using other people's code. The dissertation also presents and evaluates a method for automatically combining minds (which may have been written by different authors) for use in a hybrid mind, by performing a statistical analysis of the observed performance of each mind program in a collection of minds submitted by third parties competing to solve two different types of problem