Empowering the Internet of Vehicles with Multi-RAT 5G Network Slicing

Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is a hot research niche exploiting the synergy between Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS) and the Internet of Things (IoT), which can greatly benefit of the upcoming development of 5G technologies. The variety of end-devices, applications, and Radio Access Technologies (RATs) in IoV calls for new networking schemes that assure the Quality of Service (QoS) demanded by the users. To this end, network slicing techniques enable traffic differentiation with the aim of ensuring flow isolation, resource assignment, and network scalability. This work fills the gap of 5G network slicing for IoV and validates it in a realistic vehicular scenario. It offers an accurate bandwidth control with a full flow-isolation, which is essential for vehicular critical systems. The development is based on a distributed Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) architecture, which provides flexibility for the dynamic placement of the Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) in charge of managing network traffic. The solution is able to integrate heterogeneous radio technologies such as cellular networks and specific IoT communications with potential in the vehicular sector, creating isolated network slices without risking the Core Network (CN) scalability. The validation results demonstrate the framework capabilities of short and predictable slice-creation time, performance/QoS assurance and service scalability of up to one million connected devices.EC/H2020/825496/EU/5G for cooperative & connected automated MOBIility on X-border corridors/5G-MOBI

A New Paradigm to Address Threats for Virtualized Services

With the uptaking of virtualization technologies and the growing usage of public cloud infrastructures, an ever larger number of applications run outside of the traditional enterprise’s perimeter, and require new security paradigms that fit the typical agility and elasticity of cloud models in service creation and management. Though some recent proposals have integrated security appliances in the logical application topology, we argue that this approach is sub-optimal. Indeed, we believe that embedding security agents in virtualization containers and delegating the control logic to the software orchestrator provides a much more effective, flexible, and scalable solution to the problem. In this paper, we motivate our mindset and outline a novel framework for assessing cyber-threats of virtualized applications and services. We also review existing technologies that build the foundation of our proposal, which we are going to develop in the context of a joint research project

The NORMAN Association and the European Partnership for Chemicals Risk Assessment (PARC): let’s cooperate! [Commentary]

The Partnership for Chemicals Risk Assessment (PARC) is currently under development as a joint research and innovation programme to strengthen the scientific basis for chemical risk assessment in the EU. The plan is to bring chemical risk assessors and managers together with scientists to accelerate method development and the production of necessary data and knowledge, and to facilitate the transition to next-generation evidence-based risk assessment, a non-toxic environment and the European Green Deal. The NORMAN Network is an independent, well-established and competent network of more than 80 organisations in the field of emerging substances and has enormous potential to contribute to the implementation of the PARC partnership. NORMAN stands ready to provide expert advice to PARC, drawing on its long experience in the development, harmonisation and testing of advanced tools in relation to chemicals of emerging concern and in support of a European Early Warning System to unravel the risks of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) and close the gap between research and innovation and regulatory processes. In this commentary we highlight the tools developed by NORMAN that we consider most relevant to supporting the PARC initiative: (i) joint data space and cutting-edge research tools for risk assessment of contaminants of emerging concern; (ii) collaborative European framework to improve data quality and comparability; (iii) advanced data analysis tools for a European early warning system and (iv) support to national and European chemical risk assessment thanks to harnessing, combining and sharing evidence and expertise on CECs. By combining the extensive knowledge and experience of the NORMAN network with the financial and policy-related strengths of the PARC initiative, a large step towards the goal of a non-toxic environment can be taken

ANALYZA TECHNICKEJ EFEKTIVNOSTI POL'NOHOSPODARSKYCH PODNIKOV SLOVENSKA

The article presents the results of the stochastic parametric approach of the production frontier estimate. The classical Cobb-Douglas production function is used as the basis of this estimate. The output-oriented measures of technical efficiency are derived on the basis of the production function estimate. The analysis is based on the data obtained from the data sets of the selected bundle of 5,604 agricultural cooperatives for the period of 1994-2000. The cooperatives are classified according to the acreage of agricultural land into six quantitative groups. The total production is considered to be an output and material and energy, services, labour costs and total assets represent the inputs. The achieved results of analysis indicate that the cooperatives operating on the larger scale of acreage reached statistically significant difference in the average level of technical efficiency. The average technical efficiency of the cooperatives with the acreage up to 500 ha is at its lowest value and represents 0.831. On the other hand, the cooperatives with the acreage over 3,000 ha reached the highest level of technical efficiency which is 0.941. The declining variability of technical efficiency amongst the larger cooperatives is evident. The average variability coefficient of technical efficiency of the smallest cooperatives is 14.5 % and in the case of cooperatives with the acreage over 3,000 ha this coefficent is only 3.73 %. The analysis showed that the differences of the average value of technical efficiency and also in the variability of technical efficiency in individual years are not statistically significant. Therefore, it is not possible to discuss certain given tendencies of the efficiency development in the period of time

Assessment of contaminant levels and trophic relations at a World Heritage Site by measurements in a characteristic shorebird species

The River Elbe is responsible for influxes of contaminants into the Wadden Sea World Heritage Site. We investigated levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), oxychlordane (OxC), hexachlorobenzene (HCB), hexachlorocyclohexanes (α-, β-, γ-HCHs), dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and its metabolites, and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in blood and feathers from Eurasian oystercatchers (Haematopus ostralegus; n=28) at the Elbe and compared it with a non-riverine site about 90 km further north. (1) Mean levels of all contaminants in feathers and serum were significantly higher at the river (ƩPCBs: 27.6 ng/g feather, 37.0 ng/ml serum; ƩDDTs: 5.3 ng/g feather, 4.4 ng/ml serum) compared with the non-riverine site (ƩPCBs: 6.5 ng/g feather, 1.2 ng/ml serum; ƩDDTs: 1.4 ng/g feather, 0.5 ng/ml serum). Mean ƩHCH and HCB levels were <1.8 ng/g in feather and <1.8 ng/ml in serum at both sites. (2) Levels of most detectable compounds in serum and feathers were significantly related, but levels were not consistently higher in either tissue. (3) There was no significant relationship between trophic level in individual oystercatchers (expressed as δ15N) or the degree of terrestrial feeding (expressed as δ13C) and contaminant loads. (4) PBDEs were not detected in significant amounts at either site. The results of this study indicate that the outflow from one of Europe’s largest river systems is associated with significant historical contamination, reflected by the accumulation of contaminants in body tissues in a coastal benthivore predator

Autonomy and decentralization in active networks: A case study for mobile agents

This paper discusses the applicability of mobile and intelligent agent technology for the development of active networks (AN). Agent technology has the potential to enhance the autonomy and decentralization of both deployment and execution solutions in an AN environment. The roles involved in an active network business scenario along with the actor specific requirements are shortly outlined. The main part of the paper introduces an agent-based active network architecture able to be built on top of existing programmable network nodes. The APIs offered by the proposed active node architecture are compared with the peer standardization efforts for open node interfaces. Two example applications demonstrate how ANs can improve the functionality of today’s networks, and how mobile agents enhance the robustness and performance of the AN solutio