2,138 research outputs found
Modeling Epidemic Spread in Synthetic Populations - Virtual Plagues in Massively Multiplayer Online Games
A virtual plague is a process in which a behavior-affecting property spreads
among characters in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). The MMOG
individuals constitute a synthetic population, and the game can be seen as a
form of interactive executable model for studying disease spread, albeit of a
very special kind. To a game developer maintaining an MMOG, recognizing,
monitoring, and ultimately controlling a virtual plague is important,
regardless of how it was initiated. The prospect of using tools, methods and
theory from the field of epidemiology to do this seems natural and appealing.
We will address the feasibility of such a prospect, first by considering some
basic measures used in epidemiology, then by pointing out the differences
between real world epidemics and virtual plagues. We also suggest directions
for MMOG developer control through epidemiological modeling. Our aim is
understanding the properties of virtual plagues, rather than trying to
eliminate them or mitigate their effects, as would be in the case of real
infectious disease.Comment: Accepted for presentation at Digital Games Research Association
(DiGRA) conference in Tokyo in September 2007. All comments to the authors
(mail addresses are in the paper) are welcom
On Understanding Catastrophe â The Case of Highly Severe Influenza-Like Illness
Computational epidemiology is a form of spatiotemporal
reasoning in which social link structures
are employed, and spatially explicit models
are specified and executed. We point to issues thus
far addressed neither by engineers, nor scientists, in
the light of a use case focusing on catastrophic scenarios
that assume the emergence of a highly unlikely
but lethal and contagious strain of influenza.
Our conclusion is that important perspectives are
missing when dealing with policy issues resulting
from scenario execution and analyses in computational
epidemiology
Hypervisor Integrity Measurement Assistant
An attacker who has gained access to a computer may want to upload or modify configuration files, etc., and run arbitrary programs of his choice. We can severely restrict the power of the attacker by having a white-list of approved file checksums and preventing the kernel from loading loading any file with a bad checksum. The check may be placed in the kernel, but that requires a kernel that is prepared for it. The check may also be placed in a hypervisor which intercepts and prevents the kernel from loading a bad file.
We describe the implementation of and give performance results for two systems. In one the checksumming, or integrity measurement, and decision is performed by the hypervisor instead of the OS. In the other only the final integrity decision is done in the hypervisor. By moving the integrity check out from the VM kernel it becomes harder for the intruder to bypass the check.
We conclude that it is technically possible to put file integrity control into the hypervisor, both for kernels without and with pre-compiled support for integrity measurement
Beyond representations: towards an action-centric perspective on tangible interaction
In the light of theoretical as well as concrete technical development, we discuss a conceptual shift from an information-centric to an action-centric perspective on tangible interactive technology. We explicitly emphasise the qualities of shareable use, and the importance of designing tangibles that allow for meaningful manipulation and control of the digital material. This involves a broadened focus from studying properties of the interface, to instead aim for qualities of the activity of using a system, a general tendency towards designing for social and sharable use settings and an increased openness towards multiple and subjective interpretations. An effect of this is that tangibles are not designed as representations of data, but as resources for action. We discuss four ways that tangible artefacts work as resources for action: (1) for physical manipulation; (2) for referential, social and contextually oriented action; (3) for perception and sensory experience; (4) for digitally mediated action
Directional antennas for wireless sensor networks
Directional antennas provide angle-of-arrival information, which can be used for localization and routing algorithms in wireless sensor networks. We briefly describe three classical, major types of antennas: 1) the Adcock-pair antenna, 2) the pseudo-Doppler antenna, and 3) the electronically switched parasitic element antenna. We have found the last type to be the most suitable for wireless sensor networks, and we present here the early design details and beam pattern measurements of a prototype antenna for the
2.4-GHz ISM band, the SPIDA: SICS Parasitic Interference Directional Antenna
BALANCING FOOD VALUES: MAKING SUSTAINABLE CHOICES WITHIN COOKING PRACTICES
Within user-centred design and topics such as
persuasive design, pleasurable products, and design for sustainable behaviour, there is a danger of over-determining, pacifying or reducing peopleâs diversity. Taking the case of sustainable food, we have looked into the social aspects of cooking at home, in specific related to the type of food that is purchased. This paper describes what it means for people to make more sustainable choices in food shopping and how that can be mediated while taking different âfood valuesâ that household members have into account. In a design experiment, we developed a service for selecting daily dinner meals while supporting choices of sustainable food which reported on environmental impact, health and nutrition values, and purchase data. Through visualizations of alternative food choices, the experiment provided a space for households to negotiate food values, while opening up possibilities for changing cooking practices
CHORUS Deliverable 4.5: Report of the 3rd CHORUS Conference
The third and last CHORUS conference on Multimedia Search Engines took place from the 26th to the 27th of May 2009 in Brussels, Belgium. About 100 participants from 15 European countries, the US, Japan and Australia learned about the latest developments in the domain. An exhibition of 13 stands presented 16 research projects currently ongoing around the
world
Poster Abstract: Modeling an Electronically Switchable Directional Antenna for Low-power Wireless Networks
WISENET (NES
Foreground and background text in retrieval
Our hypothesis is that certain clauses have foreground functions in text,
while other clauses have background functions and that these functions are
expressed or reflected in the syntactic structure of the clause.
Presumably these clauses will have differing utility for automatic
approaches to text understanding; a summarization system might want to
utilize background clauses to capture commonalities between numbers of
documents while an indexing system might use foreground clauses in order to
capture specific characteristics of a certain document
Demo: Snap â Rapid Sensornet Deployment with a Sensornet Appstore
Despite ease of deployment being seen as a primary advantage
of sensor networks, deployment remains difficult.
We present Snap, a system for rapid sensornet deployment
that allows sensor networks to be deployed, positioned, and
reprogrammed through a sensornet appstore. Snap uses a
smartphone interface that uses QR codes for node identification, a map interface for node positioning, and dynamic loading of applications on the nodes. Snap nodes run the Contiki
operating system and its low-power IPv6 network stack that
provides direct access from nodes to the smartphone application.
We demonstrate rapid sensor node deployment, identification,
positioning, and node reprogramming within seconds, over
a multi-hop sensornet routing path with a WiFi-connected
smartphone
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