Foundations of coverage algorithms in autonomic mobile sensor networks

Drones are poised to become a prominent focus of advances in the near future as hardware platforms manufactured via mass production become accessible to consumers in higher quantities at lower costs than ever before. As more ways to utilize such devices become more popular, algorithms for directing the activities of mobile sensors must expand in order to automate their work. This work explores algorithms used to direct the behavior of networks of autonomous mobile sensors, and in particular how such networks can operate to achieve coverage of a field using mobility. We focus special attention to the way limited mobility affects the performance (and other factors) of algorithms traditionally applied to area coverage and event detection problems. Strategies for maximizing event detection and minimizing detection delay as mobile sensors with limited mobility are explored in the first part of this work. Next we examine exploratory coverage, a new way of analyzing sensor coverage, concerned more with covering each part of the coverage field once, while minimizing mobility required to achieve this level of 1-coverage. This analysis is contained in the second part of this work. Extending the analysis of mobility, we next strive to explore the novel topic of disabled mobility in mobile sensors, and how algorithms might react to increase effectiveness given that some sensors have lost mobility while retaining other senses. This work analyzes algorithm effectiveness in light of disabled mobility, demonstrates how this particular failure mode impacts common coverage algorithms, and presents ways to adjust algorithms to mitigate performance losses. --Abstract, page iv

Critical infrastructure protection and the Domain Name Service (DNS) system

Components of the critical infrastructure of any system are natural targets for attack. Any inherent weakness of such components can potentially expose the entire system to vulnerability. The Domain Name System (DNS) is one component of the proper functioning of the Internet. Although DNS is a relatively simple, isolated component, it serves as a straightforward example for the study of distributed systems in general, and as such, we have explored properties of DNS to examine how enterprise-scale, critical infrastructure components are vulnerable to attack, what protections are afforded to defenders of such components, the inherent weaknesses of such systems, and what natural defenses are available to safeguard them and ensure the availability of these systems. Each of the works in this thesis analyzes some aspect of our efforts in this regard --Abstract, page iv

Political strategies of external support for democratization

Political strategies of external support to democratization are contrasted and critically examined in respect of the United States and European Union. The analysis begins by defining its terms of reference and addresses the question of what it means to have a strategy. The account briefly notes the goals lying behind democratization support and their relationship with the wider foreign policy process, before considering what a successful strategy would look like and how that relates to the selection of candidates. The literature's attempts to identify strategy and its recommendations for better strategies are compared and assessed. Overall, the article argues that the question of political strategies of external support for democratization raises several distinct but related issues including the who?, what?, why?, and how? On one level, strategic choices can be expected to echo the comparative advantage of the "supporter." On a different level, the strategies cannot be divorced from the larger foreign policy framework. While it is correct to say that any sound strategy for support should be grounded in a theoretical understanding of democratization, the literature on strategies reveals something even more fundamental: divergent views about the nature of politics itself. The recommendations there certainly pinpoint weaknesses in the actual strategies of the United States and Europe but they have their own limitations too. In particular, in a world of increasing multi-level governance strategies for supporting democratization should go beyond preoccupation with just an "outside-in" approach

World-Wide FINGERS Network: A global approach to risk reduction and prevention of dementia

© 2020 The Authors. Alzheimer\u27s & Dementia published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Alzheimer\u27s Association Reducing the risk of dementia can halt the worldwide increase of affected people. The multifactorial and heterogeneous nature of late-onset dementia, including Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD), indicates a potential impact of multidomain lifestyle interventions on risk reduction. The positive results of the landmark multidomain Finnish Geriatric Intervention Study to Prevent Cognitive Impairment and Disability (FINGER) support such an approach. The World-Wide FINGERS (WW-FINGERS), launched in 2017 and including over 25 countries, is the first global network of multidomain lifestyle intervention trials for dementia risk reduction and prevention. WW-FINGERS aims to adapt, test, and optimize the FINGER model to reduce risk across the spectrum of cognitive decline—from at-risk asymptomatic states to early symptomatic stages—in different geographical, cultural, and economic settings. WW-FINGERS aims to harmonize and adapt multidomain interventions across various countries and settings, to facilitate data sharing and analysis across studies, and to promote international joint initiatives to identify globally implementable and effective preventive strategies

Cause of Cambrian Explosion - Terrestrial or Cosmic?

We review the salient evidence consistent with or predicted by the Hoyle-Wickramasinghe (H-W) thesis of Cometary (Cosmic) Biology. Much of this physical and biological evidence is multifactorial. One particular focus are the recent studies which date the emergence of the complex retroviruses of vertebrate lines at or just before the Cambrian Explosion of ∼500 Ma. Such viruses are known to be plausibly associated with major evolutionary genomic processes. We believe this coincidence is not fortuitous but is consistent with a key prediction of H-W theory whereby major extinction-diversification evolutionary boundaries coincide with virus-bearing cometary-bolide bombardment events. A second focus is the remarkable evolution of intelligent complexity (Cephalopods) culminating in the emergence of the Octopus. A third focus concerns the micro-organism fossil evidence contained within meteorites as well as the detection in the upper atmosphere of apparent incoming life-bearing particles from space. In our view the totality of the multifactorial data and critical analyses assembled by Fred Hoyle, Chandra Wickramasinghe and their many colleagues since the 1960s leads to a very plausible conclusion - life may have been seeded here on Earth by life-bearing comets as soon as conditions on Earth allowed it to flourish (about or just before 4.1 Billion years ago); and living organisms such as space-resistant and space-hardy bacteria, viruses, more complex eukaryotic cells, fertilised ova and seeds have been continuously delivered ever since to Earth so being one important driver of further terrestrial evolution which has resulted in considerable genetic diversity and which has led to the emergence of mankind