An event service supporting autonomic management of ubiquitous systems for e-health

An event system suitable for very simple devices corresponding to a body area network for monitoring patients is presented. Event systems can be used both for self-management of the components as well as indicating alarms relating to patient health state. Traditional event systems emphasise scalability and complex event dissemination for internet based systems, whereas we are considering ubiquitous systems with wireless communication and mobile nodes which may join or leave the system over time intervals of minutes. Issues such as persistent delivery are also important. We describe the design, prototype implementation, and performance characteristics of an event system architecture targeted at this application domain

A Security Framework Supporting Domain-Based Access Conttol

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Decomposition techniques for policy refinement.

The automation of policy refinement, whilst promising great benefits for policy-based management, has hitherto received relatively little treatment in the literature, with few concrete approaches emerging. In this paper we present initial steps towards a framework for automated distributed policy refinement for both obligation and authorization policies. We present examples drawn from military scenarios, describe details of our formalism and methods for action decomposition, and discuss directions for future research. © 2010 IEEE.Accepted versio

Part-set cuing of texts, scenes and matrices

In four experiments we extended the study of part-set cuing to expository texts and pictorial scenes. In Experiment 1 recall of expository text was tested with and without part-set cues in the same order as the original text; cues strongly impaired recall. Experiment 2 repeated Experiment 1 but used cues in random order and found significant but reduced impairment with cuing. Experiments 3 and 4 examined the part-set cuing of objects presented in a scene or matrix and found virtually no effect of cuing. More objects were recalled from the scene than from the matrix, indicating that the scene’s organization aided memory, but the cues did not assist recall. These results extend the domains in which part-set cues have either impaired or failed to improve recall. Implications for education and eye-witness accounts are briefly considered

Variations on Timing Decisions After Participating in Travel Behavior Change Program

Travel Behavior Change Programs (TBCP) based on psychological principles of persuasions, were implemented to habitual drivers in Valencia (Spain) with the objective of convincing them to reduce car use. Participants in TBCP were selected from those involved in a two-wave activity scheduling process panel survey, which collected weekly pre-planned and executed activity-travel agendas. Actions included in TBCP were implemented between the two panel survey waves, so it is possible to analyze the effect of such actions comparing the way panelists involved in TBCP pre-planned and executed activities and travels in the second survey wave with panelists not involved in TBCP. It is argued that the influences of TBCP extends to the way people pre-plan and re-schedule activities and travels. The desire to reduce car use may drive them to modify the starting time of specific activities, facilitating to share a car or to use alternative transportation modes. In this paper, variations on timing decisions after participating in TBCP are studied. Participants in TBCP pre-planned and executed more morning activities and less night activities than non-participants. Demographic and socioeconomic factors and characteristics of activity and travel episodes are significant to explain those changes as well. Practical implications of the findings in terms of operational modeling and transportation policy are described.García Garcés, P.; Ruiz Sánchez, T. (2014). Variations on Timing Decisions After Participating in Travel Behavior Change Program. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences. 160:625-633. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.12.176S62563316

Policy Driven Management for Distributed Systems

Separating management policy from the automated managers which interpret the policy facilitates the dynamic change of behavior of a distributed management system. This permits it to adapt to evolutionary changes in the system being managed and to new application requirements. Changing the behavior of automated managers can be achieved by changing the policy without having to reimplement them—this permits the reuse of the managers in different environments. It is also useful to have a clear specification of the policy applying to human managers in an enterprise. This paper describes the work on policy which has come out of two related ESPRIT funded projects, SysMan and IDSM. Two classes of policy are elaborated—authorization policies define what a manager is permitted to do and obligation policies define what a manager must do. Policies are specified as objects which define a relationship between subjects (managers) and targets (managed objects). Domains are used to group the objects to which a policy applies. Policy objects also have attributes specifying the action to be performed and constraints limiting the applicability of the policy. We show how a number of example policies can be modeled using these objects and briefly mention issues relating to policy hierarchy and conflicts between overlapping policies. © 1994, Plenum Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.Accepted versio

The twilight of the Liberal Social Contract? On the Reception of Rawlsian Political Liberalism

This chapter discusses the Rawlsian project of public reason, or public justification-based 'political' liberalism, and its reception. After a brief philosophical rather than philological reconstruction of the project, the chapter revolves around a distinction between idealist and realist responses to it. Focusing on political liberalism’s critical reception illuminates an overarching question: was Rawls’s revival of a contractualist approach to liberal legitimacy a fruitful move for liberalism and/or the social contract tradition? The last section contains a largely negative answer to that question. Nonetheless the chapter's conclusion shows that the research programme of political liberalism provided and continues to provide illuminating insights into the limitations of liberal contractualism, especially under conditions of persistent and radical diversity. The programme is, however, less receptive to challenges to do with the relative decline of the power of modern states

Constitutivism

A brief explanation and overview of constitutivism