11 research outputs found

    Uncoverings on graphs and network reliability

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    We propose a network protocol similar to the kk-tree protocol of Itai and Rodeh [{\em Inform.\ and Comput.}\ {\bf 79} (1988), 43--59]. To do this, we define an {\em tt-uncovering-by-bases} for a connected graph GG to be a collection U\mathcal{U} of spanning trees for GG such that any tt-subset of edges of GG is disjoint from at least one tree in U\mathcal{U}, where tt is some integer strictly less than the edge connectivity of GG. We construct examples of these for some infinite families of graphs. Many of these infinite families utilise factorisations or decompositions of graphs. In every case the size of the uncovering-by-bases is no larger than the number of edges in the graph and we conjecture that this may be true in general.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure

    Error-Correcting codes fromk-resolving sets

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    We demonstrate a construction of error-correcting codes from graphs by means of k-resolving sets, and present a decoding algorithm which makes use of covering designs. Along the way, we determine the k-metric dimension of grid graphs (i.e., Cartesian products of paths)

    Value Attainment, Orientations, and Quality-Based Profile of the Local Political Elites in East-Central Europe. Evidence from Four Towns

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    The present paper is an attempt at examining the value configuration and the socio-demographical profiles of the local political elites in four countries of East-Central Europe: Romania, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Poland. The treatment is a comparative one, predominantly descriptive and exploratory, and employs, as a research method, the case-study, being a quite circumscribed endeavor. The cases focus on the members of the Municipal/Local Council in four towns similar in terms of demography and developmental strategies (i.e. small-to-medium sized communities of around 35,000 inhabitants, with economies largely based on food industry and commercial activities): Tecuci (Galați county, Romania), Česká Lípa (Liberec region, Czech Republic), Targovishte (Targovishte province, Bulgaria), and Oleśnica (Lower Silesia province, Poland). Hypothesizing that the local elites of the former Sovietized Erurope tend to differ in outlook, priorities, and value attainment, as compared to their Western counterparts, the paper considers the former’s attitudes and perspectives in regard to seven values: a series of values customarily connected with the concept of ‘democracy’ (i.e. citizen participation, political conflict, gradual change, economic equality), state intervention in economy, decentralization and increased local autonomy, cultural-geographical self-identification. The study uses, as well, five models of value attainment in what concerns the ‘ideal portrait’ of the local councilor (Putnam 1976): ethical, pragmatic, technocratic, political, and gender. According to the results of a study applying a standard written questionnaire among the local councilors of the three communities in the period December 2010-February 2013, the paper distinguishes among three corresponding types of local elites: (1) ‘predominantly elitistic,’ (2) ‘democratic elitist,’ and (3) ‘predominantly democratic,’ following two types of explanation accounting for the differences among the four cases: the legacy of the defunct regime and the degree of administrative decentralization

    Piecing together creativity: feminist aesthetics and the crafting of quilts

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    When traditionally feminized crafts such as quilting are embraced as fine art, the discourses surrounding their elevation often serve to bolster the power of art world establishments by referencing the tenets of modernism and employing mutually reinforcing aesthetic hierarchies. In this thesis, I aim to understand the gendered politics of the separation between art and craft, and to analyze how the forces shaping the definitions of art and artist are drawn along lines of gender, class, race, and nationality. I utilize feminist aesthetics, craft aesthetics, and feminist ethics of care to examine problems of artists\u27 appropriation of quilting, traditional myths of art and individuality, the disregarding of utility in dominant aesthetics, the devaluation of feminized labor, and consumerism and craft as a luxury. I argue that a feminist analysis of quilting must include a re-evaluation of what counts as art, shifting the focus to a broader view of art that values quilting on its own terms, embracing its heritage as a feminized domestic craft. This feminist approach to quilt scholarship facilitates the potential for alternative aesthetics that nurture human creativity by blurring and destablizing dominant aesthetic hierarchies. Quilting\u27s heritage as a form of women\u27s domestic art also provides potential for employing collective innovation via the use of the humble pattern; hand-making as care of oneself, loved ones, and community; embracing the aesthetic qualities of utility; resisting commodification through heirloom-value; and resisting consumerism with a scrap-quilt aesthetic

    Co-Creativity and Engaged Scholarship

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    This open access book explores creative and collaborative forms of research praxis within the social sustainability sciences. The term co-creativity is used in reference to both individual methods and overarching research approaches. Supported by a series of in-depth examples, the edited collection critically reviews the potential of co-creative research praxis to nurture just and transformative processes of change. Included amongst the individual chapters are first-hand accounts of such as: militant research strategies and guerrilla narrative, decolonial participative approaches, appreciative inquiry and care-ethics, deep-mapping, photo-voice, community-arts, digital participatory mapping, creative workshops and living labs. The collection considers how, through socially inclusive forms of action and reflection, such co-creative methods can be used to stimulate alternative understandings of why and how things are, and how they could be. It provides illustrations of (and problematizes) the use of co-creative methods as overtly disruptive interventions in their own right, and as a means of enriching the transformative potential of transdisciplinary and more traditional forms of social science research inquiry. The positionality of the researcher, together with the emotional and embodied dimensions of engaged scholarship, are threads which run throughout the book. So too does the question of how to communicate sustainability science research in a meaningful way

    Journal Usage Report for Fiscal Year 2012

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    Journal usage for the University Libraries are listed alphabetically by authority title. The report includes the usage statistics taken from each vendor and incorporated in Serials Solutions 360 Counter. The report is broken down monthly for fiscal year 2012 and shows each journal\u27s usage per month and the cost per use for the year, if available

    Toward sparse and geometry adapted video approximations

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    Video signals are sequences of natural images, where images are often modeled as piecewise-smooth signals. Hence, video can be seen as a 3D piecewise-smooth signal made of piecewise-smooth regions that move through time. Based on the piecewise-smooth model and on related theoretical work on rate-distortion performance of wavelet and oracle based coding schemes, one can better analyze the appropriate coding strategies that adaptive video codecs need to implement in order to be efficient. Efficient video representations for coding purposes require the use of adaptive signal decompositions able to capture appropriately the structure and redundancy appearing in video signals. Adaptivity needs to be such that it allows for proper modeling of signals in order to represent these with the lowest possible coding cost. Video is a very structured signal with high geometric content. This includes temporal geometry (normally represented by motion information) as well as spatial geometry. Clearly, most of past and present strategies used to represent video signals do not exploit properly its spatial geometry. Similarly to the case of images, a very interesting approach seems to be the decomposition of video using large over-complete libraries of basis functions able to represent salient geometric features of the signal. In the framework of video, these features should model 2D geometric video components as well as their temporal evolution, forming spatio-temporal 3D geometric primitives. Through this PhD dissertation, different aspects on the use of adaptivity in video representation are studied looking toward exploiting both aspects of video: its piecewise nature and the geometry. The first part of this work studies the use of localized temporal adaptivity in subband video coding. This is done considering two transformation schemes used for video coding: 3D wavelet representations and motion compensated temporal filtering. A theoretical R-D analysis as well as empirical results demonstrate how temporal adaptivity improves coding performance of moving edges in 3D transform (without motion compensation) based video coding. Adaptivity allows, at the same time, to equally exploit redundancy in non-moving video areas. The analogy between motion compensated video and 1D piecewise-smooth signals is studied as well. This motivates the introduction of local length adaptivity within frame-adaptive motion compensated lifted wavelet decompositions. This allows an optimal rate-distortion performance when video motion trajectories are shorter than the transformation "Group Of Pictures", or when efficient motion compensation can not be ensured. After studying temporal adaptivity, the second part of this thesis is dedicated to understand the fundamentals of how can temporal and spatial geometry be jointly exploited. This work builds on some previous results that considered the representation of spatial geometry in video (but not temporal, i.e, without motion). In order to obtain flexible and efficient (sparse) signal representations, using redundant dictionaries, the use of highly non-linear decomposition algorithms, like Matching Pursuit, is required. General signal representation using these techniques is still quite unexplored. For this reason, previous to the study of video representation, some aspects of non-linear decomposition algorithms and the efficient decomposition of images using Matching Pursuits and a geometric dictionary are investigated. A part of this investigation concerns the study on the influence of using a priori models within approximation non-linear algorithms. Dictionaries with a high internal coherence have some problems to obtain optimally sparse signal representations when used with Matching Pursuits. It is proved, theoretically and empirically, that inserting in this algorithm a priori models allows to improve the capacity to obtain sparse signal approximations, mainly when coherent dictionaries are used. Another point discussed in this preliminary study, on the use of Matching Pursuits, concerns the approach used in this work for the decompositions of video frames and images. The technique proposed in this thesis improves a previous work, where authors had to recur to sub-optimal Matching Pursuit strategies (using Genetic Algorithms), given the size of the functions library. In this work the use of full search strategies is made possible, at the same time that approximation efficiency is significantly improved and computational complexity is reduced. Finally, a priori based Matching Pursuit geometric decompositions are investigated for geometric video representations. Regularity constraints are taken into account to recover the temporal evolution of spatial geometric signal components. The results obtained for coding and multi-modal (audio-visual) signal analysis, clarify many unknowns and show to be promising, encouraging to prosecute research on the subject
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