QoE Testbed Infrastructure and Services: Enriching the End User’s Experience

Quality of Experience (QoE) is the subjective judgment of the satisfaction an end user perceives from an application running over a given network topology and configuration. The information provided by end users regarding their QoE preferences, experience and feedback is invaluable in providing a service that meets with their mobile activity needs within various access networks. The PERIMETER project progresses the QoE thematic research area by taking end user-related QoE factors for end user-centric mobility experimentation, thus empowering them to always have a service in which their QoE is high. This paper will detail the components of the PERIMETER framework and the user centric scenario based process adopted to implement and develop such a framework. This paper provides an insight into the federated testbed infrastructure, testing methodology and tools, operating system and applications used in the project, thus demonstrating PERIMETER’s innovative advances within the QoE end user domain

Adolescenti e sexting. L’esperienza dello scambio digitale di materiale sessualmente esplicito

Lo sviluppo tecnologico sta favorendo un mondo sempre più interconnesso. I maggiori fruitori della rete sono gli adolescenti e nelle loro vite i social network rappresentano ulteriori strumenti che hanno a disposizione per comunicare. Questo avviene perché i social media presentano un’interfaccia che aiuta a incrementare le relazioni interpersonali, ampliando in questo modo i loro spazi sociali nel mondo digitale. Questo progetto di ricerca mira alla conoscenza più approfondita della pratica del sexting in relazione ai giovani. Il sexting è un fenomeno strettamente connesso alle nuove tecnologie digitali, termine coniato di recente con il fine di spiegare i modi in cui gli esseri umani utilizzano i nuovi strumenti digitali per esplorare ed esprimere la propria sessualità in relazione con quella di altri soggetti. La ricerca è stata effettuata attraverso sessanta interviste su un campione di trenta ragazzi e trenta ragazze di età compresa tra i quattordici e i diciotto anni. Un ulteriore criterio per suddividere il campione è stato differenziare le scuole superiori tra licei, istituti tecnici e istituti professionali. Il progetto si è focalizzato sulla comprensione dei legami online che uniscono gli adolescenti, in particolare a come essi si mettano in relazione allo scambio digitale di materiale sessualmente esplicito. L’analisi presentata è volta a identificare l’esperienza sul web attraverso: quanto sia diffuso il sexting tra gli adolescenti, cosa prevede lo scambio digitale (foto, messaggi, video), quali dinamiche emotive emergono (fiducia, paura, consenso), le opinioni nei confronti di questa pratica e in che modo viene performato il genere.Technological development is leading to an increasingly interconnected world. The major users in the online world are teenagers whose lives find social networks as tools available to communicate more efficently. This last happens because social media present an interface that helps them to increase interpersonal relationships, thus expanding their social spaces in the digital world. This research project aims at deepening knowledge of the sexting practice in relation to young people. Sexting is a phenomenon closely related to new digital technologies, term recently coined in order to explain the ways in which humans use new digital tools to explore and express their sexuality in relation to others’. The research was carried out through sixty interviews on a sample of thirty boys and thirty girls ranged between fourteen and eighteen years old. Another criterion adopted to split the sample was to differentiate high schools, technical institutes and professional institutes. The project focused on understanding the online links that connect teenagers, particularly how they interact with the digital exchange of sexually explicit material. The analysis presented aims at identifying the experience on the web through: how popular sexting is among teenagers, which digital exchange involves (photos, messages, videos), what emotional dynamics emerge the most (trust, fear, consent), main opinions about this practcice and how gender is performed

Da segurança na Europa: o paradigma securitário na União Europeia

Numa época em que as ameaças não reconhecem fronteiras nem regras, nem se apresentam tão independentes apresentando relações com outras ameaças, os conceitos de segurança interna e externa são dificilmente separados. A mesma complexidade subsiste nas políticas públicas de segurança da União Europeia, onde os países-membros tendem a harmonizar os quadros legislativos. O estudo das ciências policiais é relativamente novo, sobretudo na análise da temática das políticas públicas de segurança. Tendo em conta a velocidade em que evoluem as ameaças, é importante aprofundar o estudo das políticas públicas de segurança. O intuito é dotar os detentores do poder político, presentes e futuros, de bases de trabalho e ferramentas que os patrocinem na execução de políticas públicas de segurança eficazes e profícuas. A União Europeia é uma das regiões do mundo alvo de diversas ameaças e foi, recentemente, palco de atentados terroristas. Legitima-se o estudo das políticas públicas de segurança no seio desta organização pluridisciplinar, tentando examinar no que se consubstanciam e aferir a sua eficácia na promoção de uma maior segurança.In a time where threats don’t recognize boundaries or rules or indicate any signs of independence, relating themselves with other threats, the notions of internal and external security are hardly separated. The same complexity subsists when it comes to the European Union’s security public policies, where member-countries tend to standardize legislative frameworks. The study of Police Science is relatively recent, namely concerning the security public policies analysis. Considering the pace in which the threats evolved, it is important to expand the study of Police Science. The main objective is to provide background knowledge to the possessors of political power, actual and future, regarding work and tools that will support them in the enforcement of effective security public policies. The European Union is one of the regions target of many threats and it was recently the stage for terrorist attacks. The study of security public policies in this multidisciplinary organization is legitimize to assess its consubstantiation and measure its effectiveness in the promotion of more security

Assuring virtual network reliability and resilience

A framework developed that uses reliability block diagrams and continuous-time Markov chains to model and analyse the reliability and availability of a Virtual Network Environment (VNE). In addition, to minimize the unpredicted failures and reduce the impact of failure on a virtual network, a dynamic solution proposed for detecting a failure before it occurs in the VNE. Moreover, to predict failure and establish a tolerable maintenance plan before failure occurs in the VNE, a failure prediction method for VNE can be used to minimise the unpredicted failures, reduce backup redundancy and maximise system performance

Maschilità digitali: una nuova inclusività tra modelli, daily routine e trends

I giovani s’impadroniscono degli spazi digitali e li plasmano a propria immagine e somiglianza. Essi vivono in nicchie con cui condividono usi e costumi. L’avvento della piattaforma Youtube ha creato un nuovo modo di approcciarsi alla multimedialità portando alla ribalta nuovi personaggi pubblici, istituendo format e costruendo interfacce di rating dei contenuti volte a creare un clima di rappresentazione all’interno della rete. La metaforica morte di Youtube ha passato il testimone a quello che tutt’oggi vediamo come una vera e propria estensione della vita reale, il social network. I social network hanno dato luce a differenti maschilità che, riprendendo modelli egemonici e non del passato hanno portato allo sviluppo delle cosiddette maschilità ibride. All’interno di questa ricerca analizzeremo le differenti ibridazioni e gli spazi a loro associati, i modelli educazionali proposti da content creator sempre più attivi digitalmente, i rapporti con mode e tendenze e le apparenti inclusività che avvengono all’interno delle communities e negli spazi misti

The Holocaust and the Maternal Body: An Exploration of the Diverse Deployment of the Symbolic Maternal Body as a Discursive Trope in Holocaust Literature and its Impact on the Construction and Proliferation of Collective Memory.

This thesis explores the significance of maternal symbolism in the examination of Holocaust literature. The majority of the existing research surrounding motherhood and the Holocaust approaches maternity from a specific sociological or cultural standpoint, with the aim of providing further insight into previously marginalised testimony. By way of a departure from this approach, I intend to analyse the significance of maternity as a psychodynamic construct. Whilst I do not go so far as to argue that psychodynamic theory offers a universally applicable maternal archetype, I do argue that a discussion of the maternal influenced by the broadly Lacanian theoretical position that the mother plays a pivotal role in the evolution of subjectivity, lays at the foundation of many of the religious and sociological manifestations of the mother figure that have previously informed analysis of Holocaust literature. Over the course of four chapters I build upon the initial observation that psychodynamic maternal symbolism makes a frequent appearance across multiple genres of Holocaust literature. Using various theoretical models of maternal attachment and identification, I attempt to emphasise the importance of maternal symbolism to the confrontation of many of the over-arcing epistemological and ethical dilemmas that accompany contemporary efforts to confront the traumatic cultural legacy of the Holocaust. The opening chapter explores the use of idealised maternal imagery as a discursive trope in Holocaust memoir. Chapter two examines intergenerational Holocaust memory in terms established by Julia Kristeva’s theory of the maternal abject and its appearance in Bernhard Schlink’s controversial novel The Reader. The third chapter looks at contemporary engagement with the Holocaust using the discursive framework of projective identification. Binjamin Wilkomirski’s Fragments and Sarah Kofman’s Rue Ordener, Rue Labat are analysed using Melanie Klein’s discussion of the mother’s breast as a primary object of attachment. Finally, chapter four uses Melvin Bukiet’s short story ‘The Library of Moloch’ and Norma Rosen’s 1969 novel Touching Evil to examine the metaphysical connection between the archive and the body. Having introduced and established this relationship using ‘The Library of Moloch,’Touching Evil will be discussed in terms its specific deployment of the maternal body as an archetypal memorial vessel. Ultimately I conclude that many of the issues that arise in attempting to confront the Holocaust (on an individual or collective level,) fundamentally arise from discourse surrounding the politics of identity. I posit that the frequent manifestation of the symbolic maternal in Holocaust writing can be attributed to the thematic resonance that exists between these two subjects. The Holocaust is characterised by the disruption of established cultural social and philosophical paradigms, causing us to question the extant assumptions that influence our conception of who we are and what makes us human. The psychodynamic theory that situates the maternal as a master paradigm that sits at the primal origins of the self, renders it uniquely situated as a rhetorical framework to explore many of the problematic issues that surround the continued presence of the Holocaust as a traumatic subtext in western culture