On Resilient Behaviors in Computational Systems and Environments

The present article introduces a reference framework for discussing resilience of computational systems. Rather than a property that may or may not be exhibited by a system, resilience is interpreted here as the emerging result of a dynamic process. Said process represents the dynamic interplay between the behaviors exercised by a system and those of the environment it is set to operate in. As a result of this interpretation, coherent definitions of several aspects of resilience can be derived and proposed, including elasticity, change tolerance, and antifragility. Definitions are also provided for measures of the risk of unresilience as well as for the optimal match of a given resilient design with respect to the current environmental conditions. Finally, a resilience strategy based on our model is exemplified through a simple scenario.Comment: The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40860-015-0002-6 The paper considerably extends the results of two conference papers that are available at http://ow.ly/KWfkj and http://ow.ly/KWfgO. Text and formalism in those papers has been used or adapted in the herewith submitted pape

Halving Food Loss and Waste in the EU by 2030: the major steps needed to accelerate progress

Unsustainable production and consumption of food constitutes one of the biggest environmental threats to our planet. Eliminating food loss and waste to the largest extent possible – at all stages from producer to final consumer – stands out as an urgent and indispensable step towards more sustainable food systems. The EU’s recent adoption of the Circular Economy Package, including the revision of its Waste Framework Directive in 2018 and a new Delegated Act on the measurement of food waste in 2019, opens a limited time period where Member States will have to integrate these policies into their national law. In 2020, the first EU-wide national measurement of food waste will be undertaken. This will be reported back to the EU mid2022 and will provide comparative baseline measures for all Member States. The publication of this baseline data in 2023 will provide the opportunity to consider the feasibility of establishing Union-wide food waste reduction targets to be met by 2025 and 2030. For this reason, 2020–2023 will provide crucial moments of opportunity for EU Member States’ food waste policy and EU-wide food waste reduction. Indeed, changes in the regulatory framework were necessary but need to be accompanied by further action to effectively accelerate food waste reductions. Through a rapid review of food waste literature and interviews with Member State representatives, this report identifies and provides case studies of the food waste reduction actions that have the largest evidence bases and largest potential for accelerating progress towards SDG target 12.3 (halving food waste by 2030 and reducing food losses), but which have been insufficiently applied in the EU until now: Food waste measurement; Valorisation; and Voluntary Agreements. Some of these actions are already partly developed in the EU (valorisation), while others have only recently been piloted across several Member States (voluntary agreements) or still need to be deployed coherently (food waste measurement). This report also highlights other interventions that show less evidence of their potential to date, but which are expected to hold high potential for effective food waste reduction: Changes to the Common Agricultural Policy; Stronger Regulation; and National Food Waste Strategies. Due to the interconnected nature of food waste, and of the EU and Member State policies, all food waste reduction areas proposed are interlinked and related. Together they offer a suite of actions that can be deployed over a range of time scales, from 12 months through to 5 years; and at a range of sizes, from individual companies or specific industry sectors, through to government-led deployment on a national scale. These actions will all benefit from close collaboration between the stakeholders, who can jointly deliver the urgently needed acceleration in food waste reduction

Model of macroeconomic evolution in stable regionally dependent economic fields

We develop a model for the evolution of economic entities within a geographical type of framework. On a square symmetry lattice made of three (economic) regions, firms, described by a scalar fitness, are allowed to move, adapt, merge or create spin-offs under predetermined rules, in a space and time dependent economic environment. We only consider here one timely variation of the ''external economic field condition''. For the firm fitness evolution we take into account a constraint such that the disappearance of a firm modifies the fitness of nearest neighboring ones, as in Bak-Sneppen population fitness evolution model. The concentration of firms, the averaged fitness, the regional distribution of firms, and fitness for different time moments, the number of collapsed, merged and new firms as a function of time have been recorded and are discussed. Also the asymptotic values of the number of firms present in the three regions together with their average fitness, as well as the number of respective births and collapses in the three regions are examined. It appears that a sort of $critical$ selection pressure exists. A power law dependence, signature of self-critical organization is seen in the birth and collapse asymptotic values for a high selection pressure only. A lack of self-organization is also seen at region borders.Comment: 11 figures double columns on 7 page

Photography as an act of collaboration

The camera is usually considered to be a passive tool under the control of the operator. This definition implicitly constrains how we use the medium, as well as how we look at – and what we see in – its interpretations of scenes, objects, events and ‘moments’. This text will suggest another way of thinking about – and using – the photographic medium. Based on the evidence of photographic practice (mine and others’), I will suggest that, as a result of the ways in which the medium interprets, juxtaposes and renders the elements in front of the lens, the camera is capable of depicting scenes, events and moments that did not exist and could not have existed until brought into being by the act of photographing them. Accordingly, I will propose that the affective power of many photographs is inseparable from their ‘photographicness’ – and that the photographic medium should therefore be considered as an active collaborator in the creation of uniquely photographic images

Kinetic User Interface: Interaction through Motion for Pervasive Computing Systems

Abstract. We present in this paper a semantic model for the conception of pervasive computing systems based on object or user's motions. We describe a system made of moving entities, observers and views. More specifically, we focus on the tracking of implicit interaction between entities and their environment. We integrate the user’s motion as primary input modality as well as the contexts in which the interaction takes place. We have combined the user activities with contexts to create situations. We illustrate this new concept of motion-awareness with examples of applications built on this model

How older people enact care involvement during transition from hospital to home: A systematic review and model

Background Current models of patient‐enacted involvement do not capture the nuanced dynamic and interactional nature of involvement in care. This is important for the development of flexible interventions that can support patients to ‘reach‐in’ to complex health‐care systems. Objective To develop a dynamic and interactional model of patient‐enacted involvement in care. Search strategy Electronic search strategy run in five databases and adapted to run in an Internet search engine supplemented with searching of reference lists and forward citations. Inclusion criteria Qualitative empirical published reports of older people's experiences of care transitions from hospital to home. Data extraction and synthesis Reported findings meeting our definition of involvement in care initially coded into an existing framework. Progression from deductive to inductive coding leads to the development of a new framework and thereafter a model representing changing states of involvement. Main results Patients and caregivers occupy and move through multiple states of involvement in response to perceived interactions with health‐care professionals as they attempt to resolve health‐ and well‐being‐related goals. ‘Non‐involvement’, ‘information‐acting’, ‘challenging and chasing’ and ‘autonomous‐acting’ were the main states of involvement. Feeling uninvolved as a consequence of perceived exclusion leads patients to act autonomously, creating the potential to cause harm. Discussion and conclusion The model suggests that involvement is highly challenging for older people during care transitions. Going forward, interventions which seek to support patient involvement should attempt to address the dynamic states of involvement and their mediating factors

Leadership, the logic of sufficiency and the sustainability of education

The notion of sufficiency has not yet entered mainstream educational thinking, and it still has to make its mark upon educational leadership. However, a number of related concepts – particularly those of sustainability and complexity theory – are beginning to be noticed. This article examines these two concepts and uses them to critique the quasi-economic notion of efficiency, before arguing that the concept of sufficiency arises naturally from this discussion. This concept, originally derived from environmental thinking, has both metaphorical and practical impact for educational organizations and their leadership. An examination of three possible meanings suggests that while an embrace of an imperative concept of sufficiency seems increasingly necessary, its adoption would probably lead to a number of other problems, as it challenges some fundamental societal values and assumptions. Nevertheless, the article argues that these need to be addressed for the sake of both sustainable leadership and a sustainable planet

Global citizenship as the completion of cosmopolitanism

A conception of global citizenship should not be viewed as separate from, or synonymous with, the cosmopolitan moral orientation, but as a primary component of it. Global citizenship is fundamentally concerned with individual moral requirements in the global frame. Such requirements, framed here as belonging to the category of individual cosmopolitanism, offer guidelines on right action in the context of global human community. They are complementary to the principles of moral cosmopolitanism – those to be used in assessing the justice of global institutions and practices – that have been emphasised by cosmopolitan political theorists. Considering principles of individual and moral cosmopolitanism together can help to provide greater clarity concerning individual duties in the absence of fully global institutions, as well as clarity on individual obligations of justice in relation to emerging and still-developing trans-state institutions