Ontology-based collaborative framework for disaster recovery scenarios

This paper aims at designing of adaptive framework for supporting collaborative work of different actors in public safety and disaster recovery missions. In such scenarios, firemen and robots interact to each other to reach a common goal; firemen team is equipped with smart devices and robots team is supplied with communication technologies, and should carry on specific tasks. Here, reliable connection is mandatory to ensure the interaction between actors. But wireless access network and communication resources are vulnerable in the event of a sudden unexpected change in the environment. Also, the continuous change in the mission requirements such as inclusion/exclusion of new actor, changing the actor's priority and the limitations of smart devices need to be monitored. To perform dynamically in such case, the presented framework is based on a generic multi-level modeling approach that ensures adaptation handled by semantic modeling. Automated self-configuration is driven by rule-based reconfiguration policies through ontology

Building self-optimized communication systems based on applicative cross-layer information

This article proposes the Implicit Packet Meta Header(IPMH) as a standard method to compute and represent common QoS properties of the Application Data Units (ADU) of multimedia streams using legacy and proprietary streams’ headers (e.g. Real-time Transport Protocol headers). The use of IPMH by mechanisms located at different layers of the communication architecture will allow implementing fine per-packet selfoptimization of communication services regarding the actual application requirements. A case study showing how IPMH is used by error control mechanisms in the context of wireless networks is presented in order to demonstrate the feasibility and advantages of this approach

"Voyage through death/to life upon these shores": the living dead of the Middle Passage

While historical studies of the Atlantic slave trade have amply demonstrated the magnitude of slave mortality during the Middle Passage, only recently have they started to examine how the captives might have endured and coped with this traumatic experience. Although it constitutes a major topos in African diasporic culture, the Middle Passage has only occasionally been represented directly and in details in novels and in films. This article examines three recent narratives of the Middle Passage, Fred D'Aguiar's novel Feeding the Ghosts (1998), Guy Deslauriers's film Passage du milieu (2000), and Stephanie Smallwood's historical study Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (2007). Beyond their individual poetic, aesthetic, and scholarly qualities, what is most striking about these three texts is that they all use the figure of the living dead in order to explore the captives' experience of the transatlantic journey. If the ghastly quality of the living dead powerfully captures the life-threatening material and physical conditions the captives endured on the voyage, its dual, liminal character also allows D'Aguiar, Deslauriers, and Smallwood to represent the metaphysical, psychological, social, and cultural journey they were forced to undertake. Through their use of the trope of the living dead, these three texts show that if death is indeed a central aspect of the experience of the Middle Passage, it impacts the captives in ways that go well beyond the issue of mortality

Ghosts of the African Diaspora

The first monograph to investigate the poetics and politics of haunting in African diaspora literature, Ghosts of the African Diaspora: Re-Visioning History, Memory, and Identity examines literary works by five contemporary writers—Fred D’Aguiar, Gloria Naylor, Paule Marshall, Michelle Cliff, and Toni Morrison. Joanne Chassot argues that reading these texts through the lens of the ghost does cultural, theoretical, and political work crucial to the writers’ engagement with issues of identity, memory, and history. Drawing on memory and trauma studies, postcolonial studies, and queer theory, this truly interdisciplinary volume makes an important contribution to the fast-growing field of spectrality studies

Colored Systems with Improved Weatherfastness

Weatherfastness of pigmented organic coatings is a classical problem in the industrial world. We describe the photoreactivity of some heterocyclic pigments from the 1,4-dioxopyrrolo[3,4-c]pyrrole (DPP) family in suspension and in a polymer matrix, and the discovery of the photostabilization of organic crystals by nitroxy radicals

A cross-layer approach to enhance QoS for multimedia applications over satellite

The need for on-demand QoS support for communications over satellite is of primary importance for distributed multimedia applications. This is particularly true for the return link which is often a bottleneck due to the large set of end-users accessing a very limited uplink resource. Facing this need, Demand Assignment Multiple Access (DAMA) is a classical technique that allows satellite operators to offer various types of services, while managing the resources of the satellite system efficiently. Tackling the quality degradation and delay accumulation issues that can result from the use of these techniques, this paper proposes an instantiation of the Application Layer Framing (ALF) approach, using a cross-layer interpreter(xQoS-Interpreter). The information provided by this interpreter is used to manage the resource provided to a terminal by the satellite system in order to improve the quality of multimedia presentations from the end users point of view. Several experiments are carried out for different loads on the return link. Their impact on QoS is measured through different application as well as network level metrics

The british mental health service user / survivor movement and the experience of mental distress

O presente estudo dedica-se a compreender como o engajamento com o movimento britânico de usuários/sobreviventes (SUSM) afetou a experiência de sofrimento mental dos usuários participantes. Baseado em entrevistas com ativistas do movimento, nós analisamos suas experiências pessoais; o processo de engajamento com o SUSM e seus relatos da dinâmica do movimento; e finalmente, os efeitos do engajamento com o SUSM para suas experiências de sofrimento mental. Nossos reultados indicaram que o engajamento com o movimento possibilita aos participantes construir sentidos mais positivos para o seu sofrimento mental e reconstruir suas identidades. O engajamento com o movimento também permitiu a eles desenvolver um novo papel social. A pressão grupal e conflitos internos ao SUSM, assim como as relações de confronto com atores externos, no entando, causa efeitos prejudiciais. Em geral, o envolvimento produz um nível de transformação subjetiva para os envolvidos em relação ao seu sofrimento mental; ABSTRACT: The present study examines how engaging with the British service user/survivor movement (SUSM) affected the experience of mental distress of mental health service users. Based upon interviews with participants of this movement, we have analysed their personal experiences of mental distress; the process of engagement with the SUSM and their accounts of the movement's dynamics; the effects of the engagement with the SUSM to their experiences of mental distress. Our results indicated that engaging with this movement allowed for participants to construct more positive meanings for their experience and reconstruct identities. The engagement with the movement also allows for them to develop a new social role. Pressure to conform, internal conflicts within the SUSM and confrontational relations with external actors, however, cause detrimental effects. Overall, engagement has produced a level of subjective transformation to those involved in relation to their mental distress

The experience of mental distress and recovery among people involved with the service user/survivor movement

This article examines how the personal experiences of mental distress of people involved in the British service user/survivor movement were shaped or transformed by this involvement, and the impact of involvement on their recovery journeys. The analysis was based on 12 in-depth interviews with service users/survivors who are, or were once, involved with the service user/survivor movement. Three large themes were identified regarding the ways in which social movement involvement affected the personal experience of mental distress: (a) making sense and reframing mental distress, (b) the social experience of involvement and (c) identity and identity reconstruction. We discuss how some features of the service user/survivor movement, such as self- help, user involvement, the centrality of experience to collective action, and the range of political positions adopted by activists can affect experience and recovery in different forms. As an exploratory study that looks into a complex topic, our findings illuminate the ways of surviving, recovering and experiencing mental distress in the context of a significant social movement

Growth Performance of Crossbred Steers on Unfertilised Mountain Pastures at Low Stocking Rates

As a consequence of increasing economic pressure on Swiss agriculture, marginal areas are threatened by abandonment, especially in the mountainous regions. Using these areas for extensive beef production might preserve an open landscape and favour biodiversity. A grazing experiment was conducted with steers on an unfertilised mountain pasture to study the effects of a reduction of stocking rate on the growth of the animals and on changes in the vegetation

Managing the Ethical Dimensions of Brain-Computer Interfaces in eHealth: An SDLC-based Approach

A growing range of brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies is being employed for purposes of therapy and human augmentation. While much thought has been given to the ethical implications of such technologies at the ‘macro’ level of social policy and ‘micro’ level of individual users, little attention has been given to the unique ethical issues that arise during the process of incorporating BCIs into eHealth ecosystems. In this text a conceptual framework is developed that enables the operators of eHealth ecosystems to manage the ethical components of such processes in a more comprehensive and systematic way than has previously been possible. The framework’s first axis defines five ethical dimensions that must be successfully addressed by eHealth ecosystems: 1) beneficence; 2) consent; 3) privacy; 4) equity; and 5) liability. The second axis describes five stages of the systems development life cycle (SDLC) process whereby new technology is incorporated into an eHealth ecosystem: 1) analysis and planning; 2) design, development, and acquisition; 3) integration and activation; 4) operation and maintenance; and 5) disposal. Known ethical issues relating to the deployment of BCIs are mapped onto this matrix in order to demonstrate how it can be employed by the managers of eHealth ecosystems as a tool for fulfilling ethical requirements established by regulatory standards or stakeholders’ expectations. Beyond its immediate application in the case of BCIs, we suggest that this framework may also be utilized beneficially when incorporating other innovative forms of information and communications technology (ICT) into eHealth ecosystems