Congestion aware forwarding in delay tolerant and social opportunistic networks

We propose an approach for opportunistic forwarding that supports optimization of multipoint high volume data flow transfer while maintaining high buffer availability and low delays. This paper explores a number of social, buffer and delay heuristics to offload the traffic from congested parts of the network and spread it over less congested parts of the network in order to keep low delays, high success ratios and high availability of nodes. We conduct an extensive set of experiments for assessing the performance of four newly proposed heuristics and compare them with Epidemic, Prophet, Spay and Wait and Spay and Focus protocols over real connectivity driven traces (RollerNet) and with a realistic publish subscribe filecasting application. We look into success ratio of answered queries, download times (delays) and availability of buffer across eight protocols for varying congestion levels in the face of increasing number of publishers and topic popularity. We show that all of our combined metrics perform better than Epidemic protocol, Prophet, Spray and Wait, Spray and Focus and our previous prototype across all the assessed criteria

Service user perspectives and experiences of risk assessment and management in an acute psychiatric setting: A critical ethnography

Background: Many mental health policy documents state that involving service users in conversations about risk is important to improving quality of care and promoting recovery. However, a scoping review of the literature revealed limited evidence of service users having a role in the assessment and management of risk. It suggested that service users are unaware, uninvolved, and ill-equipped for, risk assessment and management; particularly in acute psychiatric inpatient settings. The power of staff to define, document, and manage the risks that matter are key factors in explaining service user experience. Research question: How do mental health service users experience risk assessment and management in an acute psychiatric inpatient setting? Methods: Data was generated by a service user researcher via four months of intensive, overt, non-participant observation of life on one acute psychiatric ward (47 service users; 35 staff), including formal meetings (ward rounds; community meetings; handovers; one-to-ones) and informal spaces, and via semi-structured interviews (11 service users; 11 staff). Findings: 1). Risk is a “sensitive” and “emotive” experience that can be “difficult” for service users to discuss openly. 2). An “honest sharing” of the individual’s experiential knowledge is required to enhance their self-knowledge (identify triggers) and develop new knowledge (coping skills) towards independent coping. 3). Service users feel distant from aspects of formal risk assessment processes and from the knowledge formed, resulting in feelings of powerlessness. 4). Clinical knowledge is prioritised over experiential knowledge in various ways. 5). To counterbalance this perceived power-disparity, service users are seeking more involvement, framed as opportunities to contribute their experiential knowledge. Discussion: This research contributes to our understanding of risk as a form of experiential knowledge, and risk assessment and management as epistemic activities. It explores conflicting epistemologies operating in the setting (clinical vs experiential), and the power dynamics involved, which contribute to service users experiencing forms of epistemic injustice. How epistemic justice can be recovered through an interpretivist approach to service user testimony and a coproduction approach to knowledge and power is outlined. That risk documentation can be used (as boundary objects) to navigate these issues of knowledge and power within the setting will be discussed. Implications for practice are that risk processes should be made transparent, one-to-ones routinely initiated by staff, and ward round preparation encouraged. Risk documentation should be co-constructed, to enable service user narratives to be centred in acute psychiatric inpatient risk assessment and management

Congestion control framework for delay-tolerant communications

Detecting and dealing with congestion in delay tolerant networks is an important and challenging problem. Current DTN forwarding algorithms typically direct traffic towards particular nodes in order to maximise delivery ratios and minimise delays, but as traffic demands increase these nodes may become unusable. This thesis proposes Café, an adaptive congestion aware framework that reduces traffic entering congesting network regions by using alternative paths and dynamically adjusting sending rates, and CafRep, a replication scheme that considers the level of congestion and the forwarding utility of an encounter when dynamically deciding the number of message copies to forward. Our framework is a fully distributed, localised, adaptive algorithm that evaluates a contact’s next-hop potential by means of a utility comparison of a number of congestion signals, in addition to that contact’s forwarding utility, both from a local and regional perspective. We extensively evaluate our work using two different applications and three real connectivity traces showing that, independent of the network inter-connectivity and mobility patterns, our framework outperforms a number of major DTN routing protocols. Our results show that both Café and CafRep consistently outperform the state-of-the-art algorithms, in the face of increasing traffic demands. Additionally, with fewer replicated messages, our framework increases success ratio and the number of delivered packets, and reduces the message delay and the number of dropped packets, while keeping node buffer availability high and congesting at a substantially lower rate, demonstrating our framework’s more efficient use of network resources

150 YEARS OF HIGHER AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION IN TRANSYLVANIA, 1869 – 2019

The University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Cluj-Napoca, ranked today among the most prestigious universities in the country and in Europe, celebrates this year, 2019, 150 years of productive existence!The School of Agronomy of Cluj laid its foundations in 1869, when the Institute of Agronomic Studies was established, during the reign of Emperor Franz Joseph (1830-1916) as Transylvania belonged at the time to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. The new higher school counted on a dowry consisting in 730 acres (420 hectares) of land taken from the Roman Catholic status and from the buildings around the old Benedictine Monastery on ″Dealul Craiului″ (nowadays the location belonging to the university)

Congestion control framework for delay-tolerant communications

Detecting and dealing with congestion in delay tolerant networks is an important and challenging problem. Current DTN forwarding algorithms typically direct traffic towards particular nodes in order to maximise delivery ratios and minimise delays, but as traffic demands increase these nodes may become unusable. This thesis proposes Café, an adaptive congestion aware framework that reduces traffic entering congesting network regions by using alternative paths and dynamically adjusting sending rates, and CafRep, a replication scheme that considers the level of congestion and the forwarding utility of an encounter when dynamically deciding the number of message copies to forward. Our framework is a fully distributed, localised, adaptive algorithm that evaluates a contact’s next-hop potential by means of a utility comparison of a number of congestion signals, in addition to that contact’s forwarding utility, both from a local and regional perspective. We extensively evaluate our work using two different applications and three real connectivity traces showing that, independent of the network inter-connectivity and mobility patterns, our framework outperforms a number of major DTN routing protocols. Our results show that both Café and CafRep consistently outperform the state-of-the-art algorithms, in the face of increasing traffic demands. Additionally, with fewer replicated messages, our framework increases success ratio and the number of delivered packets, and reduces the message delay and the number of dropped packets, while keeping node buffer availability high and congesting at a substantially lower rate, demonstrating our framework’s more efficient use of network resources

Pragmatic research in sport: coaching philosophies in action - a values chain to inform practice

Sports coaching philosophy is an area with numerous studies conducted into its origins, development and operation. One under researched concept however, is how a coach’s own values can impact upon their professional practice. This paper presents qualitative data from eight high level performance sport coaches, all from different disciplines, which demonstrate how personal values have influenced and continue to influence their coaching. A Values Chain is then presented to illustrate a Values Based Coaching Approach. This highlights two coaching archetypes and offers a framework for practicing coaches to reflect upon their own values and how these directly and indirectly affect their own and their players’ performance. The study demonstrates how qualitative data can be used to construct tangible models, provide support for practical coaching and continued coach development