Enabling Censorship Tolerant Networking

Billions of people in the world live under heavy information censorship. We propose a new class of delay tolerant network (DTN), known as a censorship tolerant network (CTN), to counter the growing practice of Internet-based censorship. CTNs should provide strict guarantees on the privacy of both information shared within the network and the identities of network participants. CTN software needs to be publicly available as open source software and run on personal mobile devices with real-world computational, storage, and energy constraints. We show that these simple assumptions and system constraints have a non-obvious impact on the design and implementation of CTNs, and serve to differentiate our system design from previous work. We design data routing within a CTN using a new paradigm: one where nodes operate selfishly to maximize their own utility, make decisions based only on their own observations, and only communicate with nodes they trust. We introduce the Laissez-faire framework, an incentivized approach to CTN routing. Laissez-faire does not mandate any specific routing protocol, but requires that each node implement tit-for-tat by keeping track of the data exchanged with other trusted nodes. We propose several strategies for valuing and retrieving content within a CTN. We build a prototype BlackBerry implementation and conduct both controlled lab and field trials, and show how each strategy adapts to different network conditions. We further demonstrate that, unlike existing approaches to routing, Laissez-faire prevents free-riding. We build an efficient and reliable data transport protocol on top of the Short Message Service (SMS) to serve a control channel for the CTN. We conduct a series of experiments to characterise SMS behaviour under bursty, unconventional workloads. This study examines how variables such as the transmission order, delay between transmissions, the network interface used, and the time-of-day affect the service. We present the design and implementation of our transport protocol. We show that by adapting to the unique channel conditions of SMS we can reduce message overheads by as much as 50\% and increase data throughput by as much as 545% over the approach used by existing applications. A CTN's dependency on opportunistic communication imposes a significant burden on smartphone energy resources. We conduct a large-scale user study to measure the energy consumption characteristics of 20100 smartphone users. Our dataset is two orders of magnitude larger than any previous work. We use this dataset to build the Energy Emulation Toolkit (EET) that allows developers to evaluate the energy consumption requirements of their applications against real users' energy traces. The EET computes the successful execution rate of energy-intensive applications across all users, specific devices, and specific smartphone user-types. We also consider active adaptation to energy constraints. By classifying smartphone users based on their charging characteristics we demonstrate that energy level can be predicted within 72% accuracy a full day in advance, and through an Energy Management Oracle energy intensive applications, such as CTNs, can adapt their execution to maintain the operation of the host device

Sharing Secrets with Agents: Improving Sensitive Disclosures using Chatbots

There is an increasing shift towards the use of conversational agents, or chatbots, thanks to their inclusion in consumer hardware (e.g. Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant) and the growing number of essential services moving online. A chatbot allows an organisation to deal with a large volume of user queries with minimal overheads, which in turn allows human operators to deal with more complex issues. In this paper we present our work on maximising responsible, sensitive disclosures to chatbots. The paper focuses on two key studies, the first of which surveyed participants to establish the relative sensitivity of a range of disclosures. From this, we found that participants were equally comfortable making financial disclosures to a chatbot as to a human. The second study looked to support the dynamic personalisation of the chatbot in order to improve the disclosures. This was achieved by exploiting behavioural biometrics (keystroke and mouse dynamics) to identify demographic information about anonymous users. The research highlighted that a fusion approach, combining both keyboard and mouse dynamics, was the most reliable predictor of these biographic characteristics

Colloquium on Solid State Devices

[no abstract

Penalization of aperture complexity in inversely planned volumetric modulated arc therapy

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134774/1/mp2566.pd

1966

Proper Watering by Earl P. Grey (page 1) Soil Structure and Plant Feeding for Trees and Shrubs on the Golf Course by William Teece (2) Power Golf Carts: A Blessing or a Curse by David Dunlavey (3) A Comparison by Paul White (3) Trees on a Golf Course by Oliver Leech (5) Turf Management Majors Want a Golf Team by Richard Rossiter (6) Class Will of \u2766 (7)Famous Last Words from 1966 (8) Turf Heating with Electric Cables by J.R. Barrett, Jr. and W.H. Daniel (A-1) Poa Annua Restriction by C. F. Kerr and W.H. Daniel (A-9) Phosphorus by Marvin H. Ferguson (A-14) Role of Potassium in Turf Grass management by R. E. Wagner (A-16) Role of Minor Elements in Turfgrass Management by Alexander Radko (A-22) Rhizoctonia Brown patch and Pythium Diseas by Malcolm C. Shurtleff (A-27) Sclerotinia Dollar Spot and Snow Mold by Noel Jackson (A-32) Fusarium Blight - Disease of Turf Grasses by George A. Bean (A-35) Observing the Weather - Old and New Techniques by Robert C. Copeland (A-39) Water Supply by Allan Grieve Jr. (A-41) Establishment and Maintenance of Campus Turf by William A. Lambert (A-51) Athletic Field Management by J. T. Williams (A-56

'To live and die [for] Dixie': Irish civilians and the Confederate States of America

Around 20,000 Irishmen served in the Confederate army in the Civil War. As a result, they left behind, in various Southern towns and cities, large numbers of friends, family, and community leaders. As with native-born Confederates, Irish civilian support was crucial to Irish participation in the Confederate military effort. Also, Irish civilians served in various supporting roles: in factories and hospitals, on railroads and diplomatic missions, and as boosters for the cause. They also, however, suffered in bombardments, sieges, and the blockade. Usually poorer than their native neighbours, they could not afford to become 'refugees' and move away from the centres of conflict. This essay, based on research from manuscript collections, contemporary newspapers, British Consular records, and Federal military records, will examine the role of Irish civilians in the Confederacy, and assess the role this activity had on their integration into Southern communities. It will also look at Irish civilians in the defeat of the Confederacy, particularly when they came under Union occupation. Initial research shows that Irish civilians were not as upset as other whites in the South about Union victory. They welcomed a return to normalcy, and often 'collaborated' with Union authorities. Also, Irish desertion rates in the Confederate army were particularly high, and I will attempt to gauge whether Irish civilians played a role in this. All of the research in this paper will thus be put in the context of the Drew Gilpin Faust/Gary Gallagher debate on the influence of the Confederate homefront on military performance. By studying the Irish civilian experience one can assess how strong the Confederate national experiment was. Was it a nation without a nationalism

Harmonized gap-filled datasets from 20 urban flux tower sites

A total of 20 urban neighbourhood-scale eddy covariance flux tower datasets are made openly available after being harmonized to create a 50 site-year collection with broad diversity in climate and urban surface characteristics. Variables needed as inputs for land surface models (incoming radiation, temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind and precipitation) are quality controlled, gap-filled and prepended with 10 years of reanalysis-derived local data, enabling an extended spin up to equilibrate models with local climate conditions. For both gap filling and spin up, ERA5 reanalysis meteorological data are bias corrected using tower-based observations, accounting for diurnal, seasonal and local urban effects not modelled in ERA5. The bias correction methods developed perform well compared to methods used in other datasets (e.g. WFDE5 or FLUXNET2015). Other variables (turbulent and upwelling radiation fluxes) are harmonized and quality controlled without gap filling Site description metadata include local land cover fractions (buildings, roads, trees, grass etc.), building height and morphology, aerodynamic roughness estimates, population density and satellite imagery. This open collection can help extend our understanding of urban environmental processes through observational synthesis studies or in the evaluation of land surface environmental models in a wide range of urban settings. These data can be accessed from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7104984 (Lipson et al., 2022).Peer reviewe

A lamp-type electric pig brooder

Published June 1940. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalo