Assessing multi-version systems through fault Injection

Multi-version design (MVD) has been proposed as a method for increasing the dependability of critical systems beyond current levels. However, a major obstacle to large-scale commercial usage of this approach is the lack of quantitative characterizations available. Fault injection is used to help seek an answer this problem. Fault injection is a phrase covering a variety of testing techniques that can be applied to both hardware and software, all of which involve the deliberate insertion of faults into an operational system to determine its response. This approach has the potential for yielding highly useful metrics with regard to MVD systems, as well as giving developers a greater insight into the behaviour of each channel within the system, k this research, an automatic fault injection system for multi-version systems called FITMVS is developed. A multi-version system is then, tested using this system, and the results analysed. It is concluded that this approach can yield several extremely useful metrics, such as metrics related to channel sensitivity, channel sensitivity to common-mode error, program' scope sensitivity, program scope sensitivity to common-mode error, error frequency distribution and common-mode error frequency distribution. In addition to this, the analysis of the multi-version system tested indicates that the system has an extremely low probability of experiencing common-mode error, although several key points in channel code are identified as having higher sensitivity to faults than others

Remote trial and error: how COVID-19 changed public access to court proceedings

Restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic in England and Wales accelerated the use of digital technology for remote hearings. Inevitably, a period of trial and error followed, with a hybrid and emergency set of rules for media and public access to hearings. This short article outlines some of the main changes to the conduct of court hearings in 2020–21, and the impact on open justice. We contend that this tumultuous period has highlighted the potential for improved accountability of the justice process, but also unresolved issues around the practical management of public access to courts

Seismic observations of crevasse growth following rain-induced glacier acceleration, Haupapa/Tasman Glacier, New Zealand

Changing rates of water input can affect both the flow of glaciers and ice sheets and their propensity to crevasse. Here we examine geodetic and seismic observations during two substantial (10–18-times background velocity) rain-induced glacier accelerations at Haupapa/Tasman Glacier, New Zealand. Changes in rain rate result in glacier acceleration and associated uplift, which propagate down-glacier. This pattern of acceleration results in a change to the strain rate field, which correlates with an order of magnitude increase in the apparent seismicity rate and an overall down-glacier migration in located seismicity. After each acceleration event the apparent seismicity rate decreases to below the pre-acceleration rate for 3 days. This suggests that seismic events associated with surface crevasse growth occur early during phases of glacier acceleration due to elevated extensional stresses, and then do not occur again until stresses recover

Palliative care in the emergency department: A systematic literature qualitative review and thematic synthesis

Background: Despite a fast-paced environment, the emergency clinician has a duty to meet thepalliative patient's needs. Despite suggested models and interventions, this remains challenging inpractice.Aim: To increase understanding of these challenges by exploring the experience of palliative carepatients and their families and informal carers attending the emergency department, and of theclinicians caring for them.Design: Qualitative systematic literature review and thematic synthesis. Search terms related tothe population (palliative care patients, family carers, clinicians), exposure (the emergencydepartment) and outcome (experience). The search was international but restricted to English, andused a qualitative filter. Title, abstracts and retrieved full texts were reviewed independently by tworeviewers against predefined inclusion criteria arbitrated by a third reviewer. Studies were appraisedfor quality but not excluded on that basis.Data Sources: MEDLINE [1946-], Embase[1947-], CINAHL [1981-] and PsycINFO [1987-] with abibliography search.Results: 19 papers of 16 studies were included from Australia (n=5), the United Kingdom (n=5) andUnited States (n = 9) representing 482 clinical staff involved in the emergency department (doctors,nurses, paramedics, social workers, technicians), 61 patients and 36 carers. Nine descriptive themesformed three analytic themes: “Environment and Purpose”; “Systems of Care and InterdisciplinaryWorking” and “Education and Training”.Conclusions: Provision of emergency palliative care is a necessary purpose of the emergencydepartment. Failure to recognise this, gain the necessary skills, or change the systems needed for anenvironment better suited to its delivery perpetuates poor implementation of care in thisenvironment

A Machine Learning Based Intrusion Impact Analysis Scheme for Clouds

Clouds represent a major paradigm shift, inspiring the contemporary approach to computing. They present fascinating opportunities to address dynamic user requirements with the provision of on demand expandable computing infrastructures. However, Clouds introduce novel security challenges which need to be addressed to facilitate widespread adoption. This paper is focused on one such challenge - intrusion impact analysis. In particular, we highlight the significance of intrusion impact analysis for the overall security of Clouds. Additionally, we present a machine learning based scheme to address this challenge in accordance with the specific requirements of Clouds for intrusion impact analysis. We also present rigorous evaluation performed to assess the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method to address this challenge for Clouds. The evaluation results demonstrate high degree of effectiveness to correctly determine the impact of an intrusion along with significant reduction with respect to the intrusion response time

Promoting Community Engagement: A Campus-Wide Approach to Applied Learning

Applied learning pedagogy has gained momentum in recent decades. Simultaneously, a call for universities to respond to the needs of local and global communities has prompted a focus on community engagement in higher education. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of the Applied Learning and Teaching Community (ALTC), an initiative designed to further integrate applied learning—including community engagement— into the identity, practice, and teaching ethos of the university. With a focus on sustainability, the ALTC has evolved into an expansive model that involves faculty, staff, students, and other supporters across campus. A discussion of the ALTC’s relevance in the context of current trends in higher education is included

To Trust or Not to Trust? Developing Trusted Digital Spaces through Timely Reliable and Personalized Provenance

Organizations are increasingly dependent on data stored and processed by distributed, heterogeneous services to make critical, high-value decisions. However, these service-oriented computing environments are dynamic in nature and are becoming ever more complex systems of systems. In such evolving and dynamic eco-system infrastructures, knowing how data was derived is of significant importance in determining its validity and reliability. To address this, a number of advocates and theorists postulate that provenance is critical to building trust in data and the services that generated it as it provides evidence for data consumers to judge the integrity of the results. This paper presents a summary of the STRAPP (trusted digital Spaces through Timely Reliable And Personalised Provenance) project, which is designing and engineering mechanisms to achieve a holistic solution to a number of real-world service-based decision-support systems

Intrusion damage assessment for multi-stage attacks for clouds

Clouds represent a major paradigm shift from contemporary systems, inspiring the contemporary approach to computing. They present fascinating opportunities to address dynamic user requirements with the provision of flexible computing infrastructures that are available on demand. Clouds, however, introducing novel challenges particularly with respect to security that require dedicated efforts to address them. This study is focused at one such challenge, that is, determining the extent of damage caused by an intrusion for a victim virtual machine. It has significant implications especially with respect to effective response to the intrusion. This study presents the efforts to address this challenge for Clouds in the form of a novel scheme for intrusion damage assessment for Clouds. In addition to its context-aware operation, the scheme facilitates protection against multi-stage attacks. The study also includes the formal specification and evaluation of the scheme, which successfully demonstrate its effectiveness to achieve rigorous damage assessment for Clouds

Reducing late-timing failure at scale:straggler root-cause analysis in cloud datacenters

Task stragglers hinder effective parallel job execution in Cloud datacenters, resulting in late-timing failures due to the violation of specified timing constraints. Straggler-tolerant methods such as speculative execution provide limited effectiveness due to (i) lack of precise straggler root-cause knowledge and (ii) straggler identification occurring too late within a job lifecycle. This paper proposes a method to ascertain underlying straggler root-causes by analyzing key parameters within large-scale distributed systems, and to determine the correlation between straggler occurrence and factors including resource contention, task concurrency, and server failures. Our preliminary study of a production Cloud datacenter indicates that the dominate straggler root-cause is resultant of high temporal resource contention. The result can assist in enhancing straggler prediction and mitigation for tolerating late-timing failures within large-scale distributed systems