23 research outputs found

    Climate Change and Critical Agrarian Studies

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    Climate change is perhaps the greatest threat to humanity today and plays out as a cruel engine of myriad forms of injustice, violence and destruction. The effects of climate change from human-made emissions of greenhouse gases are devastating and accelerating; yet are uncertain and uneven both in terms of geography and socio-economic impacts. Emerging from the dynamics of capitalism since the industrial revolution — as well as industrialisation under state-led socialism — the consequences of climate change are especially profound for the countryside and its inhabitants. The book interrogates the narratives and strategies that frame climate change and examines the institutionalised responses in agrarian settings, highlighting what exclusions and inclusions result. It explores how different people — in relation to class and other co-constituted axes of social difference such as gender, race, ethnicity, age and occupation — are affected by climate change, as well as the climate adaptation and mitigation responses being implemented in rural areas. The book in turn explores how climate change – and the responses to it - affect processes of social differentiation, trajectories of accumulation and in turn agrarian politics. Finally, the book examines what strategies are required to confront climate change, and the underlying political-economic dynamics that cause it, reflecting on what this means for agrarian struggles across the world. The 26 chapters in this volume explore how the relationship between capitalism and climate change plays out in the rural world and, in particular, the way agrarian struggles connect with the huge challenge of climate change. Through a huge variety of case studies alongside more conceptual chapters, the book makes the often-missing connection between climate change and critical agrarian studies. The book argues that making the connection between climate and agrarian justice is crucial

    27th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms: ESA 2019, September 9-11, 2019, Munich/Garching, Germany

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    Internet Daemons: Digital Communications Possessed

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    We’re used to talking about how tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon rule the internet, but what about daemons? Ubiquitous programs that have colonized the Net’s infrastructure—as well as the devices we use to access it—daemons are little known. Fenwick McKelvey weaves together history, theory, and policy to give a full account of where daemons come from and how they influence our lives—including their role in hot-button issues like network neutrality. Going back to Victorian times and the popular thought experiment Maxwell’s Demon, McKelvey charts how daemons evolved from concept to reality, eventually blossoming into the pandaemonium of code-based creatures that today orchestrates our internet. Digging into real-life examples like sluggish connection speeds, Comcast’s efforts to control peer-to-peer networking, and Pirate Bay’s attempts to elude daemonic control (and skirt copyright), McKelvey shows how daemons have been central to the internet, greatly influencing everyday users. Internet Daemons asks important questions about how much control is being handed over to these automated, autonomous programs, and the consequences for transparency and oversight. Table of Contents Abbreviations and Technical Terms Introduction 1. The Devil We Know: Maxwell’s Demon, Cyborg Sciences, and Flow Control 2. Possessing Infrastructure: Nonsynchronous Communication, IMPs, and Optimization 3. IMPs, OLIVERs, and Gateways: Internetworking before the Internet 4. Pandaemonium: The Internet as Daemons 5. Suffering from Buffering? Affects of Flow Control 6. The Disoptimized: The Ambiguous Tactics of the Pirate Bay 7. A Crescendo of Online Interactive Debugging? Gamers, Publics and Daemons Conclusion Acknowledgments Appendix: Internet Measurement and Mediators Notes Bibliography Index Reviews Beneath social media, beneath search, Internet Daemons reveals another layer of algorithms: deeper, burrowed into information networks. Fenwick McKelvey is the best kind of intellectual spelunker, taking us deep into the infrastructure and shining his light on these obscure but vital mechanisms. What he has delivered is a precise and provocative rethinking of how to conceive of power in and among networks. —Tarleton Gillespie, author of Custodians of the Internet Internet Daemons is an original and important contribution to the field of digital media studies. Fenwick McKelvey extensively maps and analyzes how daemons influence data exchanges across Internet infrastructures. This study insightfully demonstrates how daemons are transformative entities that enable particular ways of transferring information and connecting up communication, with significant social and political consequences. —Jennifer Gabrys, author of Program Eart

    From metaheuristics to learnheuristics: Applications to logistics, finance, and computing

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    Un gran nombre de processos de presa de decisions en sectors estratègics com el transport i la producció representen problemes NP-difícils. Sovint, aquests processos es caracteritzen per alts nivells d'incertesa i dinamisme. Les metaheurístiques són mètodes populars per a resoldre problemes d'optimització difícils en temps de càlcul raonables. No obstant això, sovint assumeixen que els inputs, les funcions objectiu, i les restriccions són deterministes i conegudes. Aquests constitueixen supòsits forts que obliguen a treballar amb problemes simplificats. Com a conseqüència, les solucions poden conduir a resultats pobres. Les simheurístiques integren la simulació a les metaheurístiques per resoldre problemes estocàstics d'una manera natural. Anàlogament, les learnheurístiques combinen l'estadística amb les metaheurístiques per fer front a problemes en entorns dinàmics, en què els inputs poden dependre de l'estructura de la solució. En aquest context, les principals contribucions d'aquesta tesi són: el disseny de les learnheurístiques, una classificació dels treballs que combinen l'estadística / l'aprenentatge automàtic i les metaheurístiques, i diverses aplicacions en transport, producció, finances i computació.Un gran número de procesos de toma de decisiones en sectores estratégicos como el transporte y la producción representan problemas NP-difíciles. Frecuentemente, estos problemas se caracterizan por altos niveles de incertidumbre y dinamismo. Las metaheurísticas son métodos populares para resolver problemas difíciles de optimización de manera rápida. Sin embargo, suelen asumir que los inputs, las funciones objetivo y las restricciones son deterministas y se conocen de antemano. Estas fuertes suposiciones conducen a trabajar con problemas simplificados. Como consecuencia, las soluciones obtenidas pueden tener un pobre rendimiento. Las simheurísticas integran simulación en metaheurísticas para resolver problemas estocásticos de una manera natural. De manera similar, las learnheurísticas combinan aprendizaje estadístico y metaheurísticas para abordar problemas en entornos dinámicos, donde los inputs pueden depender de la estructura de la solución. En este contexto, las principales aportaciones de esta tesis son: el diseño de las learnheurísticas, una clasificación de trabajos que combinan estadística / aprendizaje automático y metaheurísticas, y varias aplicaciones en transporte, producción, finanzas y computación.A large number of decision-making processes in strategic sectors such as transport and production involve NP-hard problems, which are frequently characterized by high levels of uncertainty and dynamism. Metaheuristics have become the predominant method for solving challenging optimization problems in reasonable computing times. However, they frequently assume that inputs, objective functions and constraints are deterministic and known in advance. These strong assumptions lead to work on oversimplified problems, and the solutions may demonstrate poor performance when implemented. Simheuristics, in turn, integrate simulation into metaheuristics as a way to naturally solve stochastic problems, and, in a similar fashion, learnheuristics combine statistical learning and metaheuristics to tackle problems in dynamic environments, where inputs may depend on the structure of the solution. The main contributions of this thesis include (i) a design for learnheuristics; (ii) a classification of works that hybridize statistical and machine learning and metaheuristics; and (iii) several applications for the fields of transport, production, finance and computing

    Robust hybrid central/self-organising multi-agent systems in intersections without traffic lights

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    Anti load-balancing for energy-aware distributed scheduling of virtual machines

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    La multiplication de l'informatique en nuage (Cloud) a abouti à la création de centres de données dans le monde entier. Le Cloud contient des milliers de nœuds de calcul. Cependant, les centres de données consomment d'énorme quantités d'énergie à travers le monde estimées à plus de 1,5 % de la consommation mondiale d'électricité et devrait continuer à croître. Une problématique habituellement étudiée dans les systèmes distribués est de répartir équitablement la charge. Mais lorsque l'objectif est de réduire la consommation électrique, ce type d'algorithmes peut mener à avoir des serveurs fortement sous chargés et donc à consommer de l'énergie inutilement. Cette thèse présente de nouvelles techniques, des algorithmes et des logiciels pour la consolidation dynamique et distribuée de machines virtuelles (VM) dans le Cloud. L'objectif principal de cette thèse est de proposer des stratégies d'ordonnancement tenant compte de l'énergie dans le Cloud pour les économies d'énergie. Pour atteindre cet objectif, nous utilisons des approches centralisées et décentralisées. Les contributions à ce niveau méthodologique sont présentées sur ces deux axes. L'objectif de notre démarche est de réduire la consommation de l'énergie totale du centre de données en contrôlant la consommation globale d'énergie des applications tout en assurant les contrats de service pour l'exécution des applications. La consommation d'énergie est réduite en désactivant et réactivant dynamiquement les nœuds physiques pour répondre à la demande des ressources. Les principales contributions sont les suivantes: - Ici on s'intéressera à la problématique contraire de l'équilibrage de charge. Il s'agit d'une technique appelée Anti Load-Balancing pour concentrer la charge sur un nombre minimal de nœuds. Le but est de pouvoir éteindre les nœuds libérés et donc de minimiser la consommation énergétique du système. - Ensuite une approche centralisée a été proposée et fonctionne en associant une valeur de crédit à chaque nœud. Le crédit d'un nœud dépend de son affinité pour ses tâches, sa charge de travail actuelle et sa façon d'effectuer ses communications. Les économies d'énergie sont atteintes par la consolidation continue des machines virtuelles en fonction de l'utilisation actuelle des ressources, les topologies de réseaux virtuels établis entre les machines virtuelles et l'état thermique de nœuds de calcul. Les résultats de l'expérience sur une extension de CloudSim (EnerSim) montrent que l'énergie consommée par les applications du Cloud et l'efficacité énergétique ont été améliorées. - Le troisième axe est consacré à l'examen d'une approche appelée "Cooperative scheduling Anti load-balancing Algorithm for cloud". Il s'agit d'une approche décentralisée permettant la coopération entre les différents sites. Pour valider cet algorithme, nous avons étendu le simulateur MaGateSim. Avec une large évaluation expérimentale d'un ensemble de données réelles, nous sommes arrivés à la conclusion que l'approche à la fois en utilisant des algorithmes centralisés et décentralisés peut réduire l'énergie consommée des centres de données.The multiplication of Cloud computing has resulted in the establishment of largescale data centers around the world containing thousands of compute nodes. However, Cloud consume huge amounts of energy. Energy consumption of data centers worldwide is estimated at more than 1.5% of the global electricity use and is expected to grow further. A problem usually studied in distributed systems is to evenly distribute the load. But when the goal is to reduce energy consumption, this type of algorithms can lead to have machines largely under-loaded and therefore consuming energy unnecessarily. This thesis presents novel techniques, algorithms, and software for distributed dynamic consolidation of Virtual Machines (VMs) in Cloud. The main objective of this thesis is to provide energy-aware scheduling strategies in cloud computing for energy saving. To achieve this goal, we use centralized and decentralized approaches. Contributions in this method are presented these two axes. The objective of our approach is to reduce data center's total energy consumed by controlling cloud applications' overall energy consumption while ensuring cloud applications' service level agreement. Energy consumption is reduced by dynamically deactivating and reactivating physical nodes to meet the current resource demand. The key contributions are: - First, we present an energy aware clouds scheduling using anti-load balancing algorithm : concentrate the load on a minimum number of severs. The goal is to turn off the machines released and therefore minimize the energy consumption of the system. - The second axis proposed an algorithm which works by associating a credit value with each node. The credit of a node depends on its affinity to its jobs, its current workload and its communication behavior. Energy savings are achieved by continuous consolidation of VMs according to current utilization of resources, virtual network topologies established between VMs, and thermal state of computing nodes. The experiment results, obtained with a simulator which extends CloudSim (EnerSim), show that the cloud application energy consumption and energy efficiency are being improved. - The third axis is dedicated to the consideration of a decentralized dynamic scheduling approach entitled Cooperative scheduling Anti-load balancing Algorithm for cloud. It is a decentralized approach that allows cooperation between different sites. To validate this algorithm, we have extended the simulator MaGateSim. With an extensive experimental evaluation with a real workload dataset, we got the conclusion that both the approach using centralized and decentralized algorithms can reduce energy consumed by data centers
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