Society and State Responsibilities for Security in the Digital Network Space: The Opinions of Citizens and Experts

This article is devoted to the study of the role of state bodies and civil structures in ensuring the security of the digital network space. The purpose of this work was to determine the subjective opinions of citizens about the boundaries of society and state responsibility for security in the digital network space. This sociological study included a combined online and offline survey, as well as a survey of experts. A sample of 1,000 respondents aged 16 years and older was recruited, which was representative on gender and age grounds. The sample for the expert survey consisted of 90 specialists across areas of activity. Based on the results, the authors concluded that in order to legitimize power, it is necessary to re-distinguish states and societies from the responsibility of ensuring personal and public security. Respondents considered the state and society to be equally responsible for the moral components of personal security, and that the state is responsible for protecting the personal data of citizens and ensuring public security. Experts were inclined to believe that both personal and public security in the digital network environment should be provided by authorities. Keywords: digitalization, responsibility, state, society, security, digital network spac

Towards the design of an optimal mixer

We define as an optimal mixer a mixing device able to deliver a uniformly optimal mixing performance over a wide range of operating and initial conditions. We consider the conceptual problem of designing an optimal mixer starting from a well-known reference mixer, the sine flow. We characterize the mixing performance of the reference mixer, and show that it performs poorly and erratically over a wide range of operating conditions and is quite sensitive to the geometry of the initial concentration field. We define as a target performance the best mixing performance the reference mixer is able to achieve. In steps we modify the design of the reference mixer. First, we optimize the time sequence of the switching protocols and show that the mixing performance of the time-optimized mixer, although substantially improved with respect to the reference mixer, is still far from achieving the target performance and being insensitive to the geometry of the initial concentration field. The analysis of the performance of the time-optimized mixer brings to light the deficiency of the actuating system used, which delivers always the same amount of shear at the same locations. We modify the actuating system by allowing the stirring velocity fields to shift along their coordinate axes. A new mixer, the space-optimized mixer, is created by equipping the reference mixer with the new actuating system and optimizing the shift of the stirring velocity field at each iteration. The space-optimized mixer is able to deliver the target performance over the upper two-thirds of the operating range. In the lower one-third, the performance of the space-optimized mixer deteriorates because of the use of a periodic protocol. A optimal mixer is finally obtained using the actuating system of the space-optimized mixer and coupling the time and shift optimizations. The resulting optimal mixer is able to deliver a uniform target performance, insensitive to the geometry of the initial conditions, over the entire operating range

Interaction Between Public Authorities and Stakeholders in Social Media (Comparative Analysis of the Regional Practician)

The wide functionality of social media allows the authorities of the territorial subject to choose a variety of models for using this information resource for organizing interaction in the space of public communications. The purpose of the present research is to explore the practice of public authorities organizing interaction with stakeholders in social media. The study took into consideration official accounts of regional state and municipal structures, as well as regional accounts of federal executive authorities in social networks ”Vkontakte”, ”Odnoklassniki”, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The analysis has shown that in the median region, the number of government accounts is almost twice as high as the social network “Vkontakte”, while the structure of official accounts of Moscow authorities is more differentiated by social networks. Despite a 10-fold increase in the number of Muscovites over residents of the Kursk region, the share of subscribers to official government accounts in them among the General population is comparable. The intensity of the use of feedback forms for official accounts of the authorities of the Kursk region exceeds similar indicators of Moscow city. But at the same time, the publication activity of official accounts the Kursk region authorities is lower than in Moscow. Keywords: public administration, regional governance, public communications, social media, stakeholder

On the cost efficiency of mixing optimization

In this study we discuss the cost efficiency of the optimization of a new prototypical mixing flow, the Fourier sine flow, an extension of the sine flow. The Fourier sine flow stirs a mixture on a two-dimensional torus by blinking, at prescribed switching times, two orthogonal velocity fields with profiles represented by a Fourier sine series. We derive a family of mixers of increasing complexity by truncating the series to one, two, three and four modes. We consider the optimization of the velocity profiles and the optimization of the stirring protocol. We implement the former by computing, at each iteration, the amplitudes and phase shifts of the Fourier modes synthesizing the velocity profiles that minimize the mix-norm, our cost function, i.e. maximize the quality of mixing. We implement the latter by selecting, at each iteration, the best performing of the two orthogonal stirring velocity fields, i.e. the velocity field that minimizes the mix-norm. To obtain a physically meaningful optimization problem, we constrain the kinetic energy of the flow to be the same among all mixers and use the viscous dissipation as an estimate of the power input needed to operate the mixers. We characterize the performance of the mixers using three cost functions: the homogenization time, the computational cost of optimization and the total energy consumption. We test the mixers on a range of admissible power inputs using two representative switching times. We report some surprising results. Mixers equipped with the velocity profile optimization and a periodic stirring protocol cannot be optimal, i.e. their performance depends on the switching time chosen, independently of the number of Fourier modes used in the optimization. Apparently, optimal mixers can be obtained only by coupling velocity profile and stirring protocol optimizations. The computational cost of the optimization depends only on the number of Fourier modes used and grows by about an order of magnitude for each Fourier mode added to the optimization. At low power inputs, the coupled optimizations allow us to obtain an attractive reduction of the homogenization time in combination with a reduction of the total energy required to produce it. However, increasing the power input does not guarantee a reduction of the homogenization time. Counter-intuitively, there are ranges of power inputs for which both the homogenization time and the total energy increase when increasing the power input. Finally, for large enough power inputs, optimizations with two, three and four Fourier modes perform similarly, making the former optimization the most cost-efficient

How to choose the most appropriate centrality measure?

We propose a new method to select the most appropriate network centrality measure based on the user's opinion on how such a measure should work on a set of simple graphs. The method consists in: (1) forming a set $\cal F$ of candidate measures; (2) generating a sequence of sufficiently simple graphs that distinguish all measures in $\cal F$ on some pairs of nodes; (3) compiling a survey with questions on comparing the centrality of test nodes; (4) completing this survey, which provides a centrality measure consistent with all user responses. The developed algorithms make it possible to implement this approach for any finite set $\cal F$ of measures. This paper presents its realization for a set of 40 centrality measures. The proposed method called culling can be used for rapid analysis or combined with a normative approach by compiling a survey on the subset of measures that satisfy certain normative conditions (axioms). In the present study, the latter was done for the subsets determined by the Self-consistency or Bridge axioms.Comment: 26 pages, 1 table, 1 algorithm, 8 figure

Algebraic solution of project scheduling problems with temporal constraints

New solutions for problems in optimal scheduling of activities in a project under temporal constraints are developed in the framework of tropical algebra, which deals with the theory and application of algebraic systems with idempotent operations. We start with a constrained tropical optimization problem that has an objective function represented as a vector form given by an arbitrary matrix, and that can be solved analytically in a closed but somewhat complicated form. We examine a special case of the problem when the objective function is given by a matrix of unit rank, and show that the solution can be sufficiently refined in this case, which results in an essentially simplified analytical form and reduced computational complexity of the solution. We exploit the obtained result to find complete solutions of project scheduling problems to minimize the project makespan and the maximum absolute deviation of start times of activities under temporal constraints. The constraint under consideration include ``start-start'', ``start-finish'' and ``finish-start'' precedence relations, release times, release deadlines and completion deadlines for activities. As an application, we consider optimal scheduling problems of a vaccination project in a medical centre.Comment: 20 page