Suchergebnisse

Includes bibliographical references. ; 2015 Fall. ; Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) perform critical functions in many applications such as, military surveillance, rescue operations, detection of fires and heath care monitoring. In these applications, nodes in the network carry critical and sensitive data. Thus, WSNs are prone to various kinds of attacks that target different protocols and layers of the network. Also, most of the WSNs are placed remotely that makes it difficult to implement security measures after deployment. Thus, security of WSNs needs to be considered at the initial stage of system design. In many applications, the nodes are deployed randomly, and thus are unpredictable in terms of physical network topology. Virtual Coordinate (VC) based WSNs possess significant advantages over Geographical Coordinate (GC) based WSNs. This is because VCs negate the need for physical localization of nodes, which require costly techniques like GPS. The VCs of the nodes in the network are very important for basic functionalities such as routing and self-organization. However, security of VCs has not been extensively researched even though routing algorithms rely on the correctness of the VCs for proper functioning. VC based WSNs are susceptible to attacks resulting from malicious modification of VCs of individual nodes. While the impact of some such attacks is localized, others such as Coordinate Deflation and Wormholes (tunneling) can cause severe disruptions. This thesis proposes techniques for the detection and mitigation of attacks, which are aimed at the VC based WSNs. We propose a novel approach where coordinate attacks are identified by detecting changes in the shape of the network, extracted using Topology Maps. A comprehensive solution for detection of coordinate-based attacks on VC systems is presented that combines Beta Reputation System and a reputation based routing scheme. Latter ensures safe communication that bypasses malicious nodes during detection process. The Coordinate Deflation and Wormhole ...

International audience ; Despite massive investments in infrastructure reconstruction, Beirut has never fully recovered 24/7 provision of electricity after the civil war (1975-90). Since 2006, the consequences of Israeli bombings and of infrastructure decaying in a context of political bickering preventing new investments plans have worsened the situation. On average, electricity is currently supplied only half of the day. Building on Timothy Mitchell's project to follow the tracks of energy in order to unravel the precarious agencies of power that allow its flows to circulate, I try to map the disruptions and reconfigurations of energy circuits and to show that it both reflect existing configurations of power in the city and create new ones. (Mitchell 2011) At a first glance, uneven access to electricity might well be understood as the way to reproduce social and political domination between central Beirut and its suburbs and between the wealthiest and the middle and lower class, for which the cost of making without public network is very heavy. But seen from Mitchell's perspective, the economic arrangements and the technological devices needed to run the system and for the electricity being generated and processed contain in themselves their fragilities that allow such domination to be constantly challenged by the clients-users-citizens or newcomers like informal vendors of alternative electricity devices (the famous generators). Thus, one might well read the rising protests against the current state of blackness in Beirut as new agencies of power that seek to undermine and derail the symbolical hierarchies of power (here I will analyse cartoons and the Minister of Energy bashing on the social networks), despite the constant struggle by the political class to reenact them through sectarian cleavages. Hooking and meter-pirating, as well as non-payment, display the power of the network's end-users. The development of private illegal-but-tolerated generators involves the building of new local configuration of power.

This dissertation explores representations of nonhuman agency across the diverse literary tradition of speculative fiction. I identify speculative fiction as a site where cultural discourses of personhood, species, and power might be challenged and reworked; a loosely defined genre, SF insists on an openness to disruption, exploiting the creative and politically radical possibilities of imagining the world otherwise. The project draws upon an archive of nineteenth- and twentieth-century French, English, and U.S. American texts that adopt a speculative mode in order to literalize long-standing associations of the feminine, animal, and object in the Western patriarchal imagination, populating their pages with figures of feminized cyborgs, animalized women, and mechanized animals. By worlding a range of beings defined by their difference from the human norm, the texts intervene in longstanding anthropocentric discourses of "who" versus "what," proposing a more inclusive notion of personhood that recognizes collective, interdependent, and passive forms of agency. I draw upon feminist theory, gender and queer theory, animal studies, and posthumanist scholarship to articulate an intersectional approach to multispecies ethics.The four chapters separate into two parts, each concerned with one vector of the infinitely multiple field of the nonhuman. The first two focus on artificial, machinic life as one alternative to human species-being; Rachilde's Monsieur Vénus in Chapter 1 and Villiers's L'Eve future and Carter's The Passion of New Eve in Chapter 2 employ cyborg figures to challenge dominant discourses of gender propriety and authorial agency. The second two chapters focus on animals and animality as a second alternative to humanity; Carter's Nights at the Circus and Darrieussecq's Truismes in Chapter 3 and Stapledon's Sirius and Bakis's Lives of the Monster Dogs in Chapter 4 attend to the perils and pleasures of bestial life on the margins of human-dominated society. Together, the chapters build toward a notion of worlding as collaboration—between humans, animals, and machines; between genders; between storytellers and stories, authors and texts.

Walter Benjamin ?s concept of history journeys across different theoretical and political states. Although in all of them he decidedly criticizes any Hegelian idealization of history's passive material, he does so from very different theoretical angles. In this paper we demarcate two key conceptualizations in history ?s disruption: the concept of"allegory", coined in his work about the German tragic drama (and displayed in his works about Baudelaire), and the idea of "montage" inspired by constructivist avant-garde (and new ways of technical art). Two decisive features join these two concepts: the critique of any symbolic or totalizing conception about significance and its special performance in thinking the image problem. Nevertheless, there is a slight difference between them: if allegory is understood as a protest that dismisses every significance regime above suffering and lack of sense, montage is a building option that lasts after totality is dismantled. However, Benjamin sustains in his late work the tension between both of them. This shows us, on the one hand a Benjamin that tries to avoid an unilateral interpretation, but on the other, this fluctuation between the allegory ?s melancholic dismissal, its fixation in the loss, and montage ?s constructivist passion, its commitment with a work (of grief), "tightens the arch" of contemporary debates about "memory" and "horror ?s representation". ; La concepción de la historia de Walter Benjamin transita diversas estaciones teórico-políticas fundamentales. Si bien en todas ellas se plantea una crítica decidida a toda idealización hegeliana de la materialidad sufriente de la historia, se la realiza desde diseños teóricos diferenciados. En este trabajo, delimitamos dos conceptualizaciones clave de este trastorno de la historia: la noción de "alegoría", acuñada en su libro sobre el barroco (y desplegada en sus trabajos sobre Baudelaire), y la idea de "montaje", desarrollada al calor de la vanguardia constructivista (y de las nuevas formas de arte técnico). Dos ...

"And they do not pay to me. When they'll pay me - I will pay you! " This is the motto that realistically demonstrate the mutual payments situation between the companies in Republic of Macedonia. This situation of late obligations payment, causing a chain reaction and disruption liquidity of companies and the economy in general. It is estimated that domestic debt as a result of the financial indiscipline over the years, measured by billions of euros. In order to overcome this situation, in December 2013, The Law on financial discipline applying from 01.05.2014, the aim was to bring order to the payment of liabilities as the private sector and in state enterprises and institutions. The expectations were that the law will improve the liquidity of companies through the timely obligations payment between private - private and public - private sector. The law defined deadlines for liabilities payment of 30, 60 or 120 days if it has the written consent of the Parties. The penalties provided for in the Act of 1000 to 10,000 euros, was to end unethical operation between companies and break the chain of illiquidity. The adoption of the law was welcomed by the business community and the scientific profession, with a warning that should be taken of the effects and adverse effects that can cause it, and inconsistencies and undefined terms that it has. Within 18 months of the application, Law of financial discipline has undergone two amendments and adoptions, and were adopted two instructions for timely fulfillment of financial obligations and oversight of business transactions between these economic operators from the private sector in order to overcome gaps and inconsistencies which contained the first version. It seems that the Macedonian economic conditions require a more cautious and studious approach in making such radical legislation for an extended period of adjustment to finally respect thereof.

The World Health Organization (WHO) Global Tuberculosis Report 2015 states that 28% of the world's 9.6 million new tuberculosis (TB) cases are in the WHO Africa Region. The Mano River Union (MRU) countries of West Africa-Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia-have made incremental sustained investments into TB control programmes over the past two decades. The devastating Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak of 2014-2015 in West Africa impacted significantly on all sectors of the healthcare systems in the MRU countries, including the TB prevention and control programmes. The EVD outbreak also had an adverse impact on the healthcare workforce and healthcare service delivery. At the height of the EVD outbreak, numerous staff members in all MRU countries contracted EBV at the Ebola treatment units and died. Many healthcare workers were also infected in healthcare facilities that were not Ebola treatment units but were national hospitals and peripheral health units that were unprepared for receiving patients with EVD. In all three MRU countries, the disruption to TB services due to the EVD epidemic will no doubt have increased Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission, TB morbidity and mortality, and decreased patient adherence to TB treatment, and the likely impact will not be known for several years to come. In this viewpoint, the impact that the EVD outbreak had on TB diagnostic, management, and prevention services is described. Vaccination against TB with BCG in children under 5 years of age was affected adversely by the EVD epidemic. The EVD outbreak was a result of global failure and represents yet another 'wake-up call' to the international community, and particularly to African governments, to reach a consensus on new ways of thinking at the national, regional, and global levels for building healthcare systems that can sustain their function during outbreaks. This is necessary so that other disease control programmes (like those for TB, malaria, and HIV) are not compromised during the emergency measures of a severe epidemic.

none ; Current Internet and mobile ad hoc protocols do not properly handle the delivery of data in networks with intermittent connectivity due to link instability. Such networks where nodes are characterized by opportunistic connectivity are referred to as Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs). Delay tolerant networking is a networking paradigm that deals with the establishment of communication between two nodes when the connectivity is intermittent and/or subject to disruptions and thus a path connecting source and destination cannot be maintained over time. As a consequence, end-to-end latency cannot be guaranteed. A typical example of DTN are vehicular Ad Hoc networks, where a vehicle can send a message to the intended destination only when they are close, or by means of intermediate vehicles carrying a copy of the message. Other examples are military communications in the battlefield, deep space communications and wireless sensor networks. DTNs have been one of the growing topics of interest characterized by significant amount of research efforts invested in this area over the past decade. Routing is one of the major components significantly affecting the overall performance of DTNs in terms of resource consumption, delivery ratio and latency. Data delivery in DTNs mainly rely on the mobility of nodes, where data is transferred in a store-carry-forward fashion between a source and a destination using relays. Whenever two nodes are in proximity (within radio range of one another), they exchange information based on local knowledge to make forwarding decisions. In this context, several data delivery schemes have been proposed to choose the best relays that would bring data closer to the destination In this thesis, we discuss several aspects concerning routing and data delivery problems in DTNs. We start by proposing a reference architecture for DTNs routing protocols, which consider queue management, forwarding and replication as the main components for the routing process. According to this architecture we classify ...

Abstract Background Mental illness may cause a variety of psychosocial problems such as decreased quality of life of the patient's family members as well as increased social distance for the patient and the family caring for the patient. Psychosocial challenges are enhanced by the stigma attached to mental illness, which is a problem affecting not only the patient but also the family as a whole. Coping mechanisms for dealing with mentally ill patients differ from one family to another for a variety of reasons. The aim of the study was to determine the psychosocial problems of mental illness on the family including the coping strategies utilized by family members caring for a person with mental illness. Method A qualitative study was conducted, involving four focus group discussions and 2 in-depth interviews of family members who were caring for patient with mental illness at Temeke Municipality, Dar es Salaam. Purposive sampling procedure was used to select participants for the study. Audio-recorded interviews in Swahili were conducted with all study participants. The recorded interview was transcribed and qualitative content thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Results Financial constraints, lack of social support, disruption of family functioning, stigma, discrimination, and patients' disruptive behaviour emerged as the main themes in this study. Acceptance and religious practice emerged as the major coping strategies used by family members. Conclusion Familial care for a person with mental illness has its advantages, yet it has multiple social and psychological challenges. Coping strategies and skills are important for the well-being of the caregiver and the patient. Addressing these psychosocial challenges requires a collaborative approach between the health care providers and government so that the needs of the family caregivers and those of the patients can be addressed accordingly.

Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) might develop into a viable alternative to public regulation. However, it turns on the (regulatory) circumstances whether that holds true in practice. If public regulation on CSR topics is lacking, governments are unable to agree upon certain topics on a global level or diverging public regulation exists, VSS can be helpful to set global standards. Obviously, private standards will especially be helpful if they are commensurate with local public legislation (and e.g. treaties) and/or are accepted by local governments. If one neglects this, numerous domestic structures might exist that frustrate VSS. Furthermore, governments have to remain vigilant as to whether these private regimes do not result in market disruption, consumer detriment or hamper trade. VSS might also compete with public arrangements which might limit the uptake of VSS. However, if public regulation exists VSS might be a viable alternative if compliance with not too compelling public norms by market participants is rather poor and the public policymaker is aiming to incentivize the better performing part of the market to embark on higher standards and thus only desires to regulate the less performing part of the market. However, of paramount importance is the effectiveness of VSS in order to be a viable alternative to public regulation. The effectiveness of VSS should be assessed using an integrated multi-disciplinary (comparative) approach entailing legal, impact-assessment, legitimacy, governance and behavioural aspects. Only effective VSS in the aforementioned sense are a true alternative to public regulation.Beyond that, the legal perspective in connection with (the effectiveness of) VSS is discussed, featuring FSC and UTZ Certified as an example. It is important from this perspective that VSS have a clear and sufficiently selective objective and sufficiently specific norms, are regularly evaluated, entail 'conflict of law rules' and an effective grievance mechanism, provide sufficient means for monitoring and enforcement and contribute to a more balanced risk attribution between producers and (ultimate) buyers.

Technology-driven market disruptions are not new. Joseph Schumpeter famously coined the term "creative destruction" to describe the impact of innovations on markets via the creation of new products that render old ones obsolete. The type of innovation associated with the services provided by Uber and Grab belongs to what is known today as the "sharing economy".2 Made possible by technological advances in GPS, mobile communications, social networking and cloud computing, the sharing economy has affected almost all industries such as transport, retail, logistics, food and beverage, and accommodation. The stakes involved in the sharing economy are high. The size of the sharing economy, estimated globally for five sectors, is projected to increase from US$ 15 billion in 2014 to US$ 335 billion by 2025.3 The cost and benefit calculus of the impact of the sharing economy goes beyond the immediate gains enjoyed by consumers (and new service providers) and the losses incurred by traditional service purveyors. For starters, there is already some evidence of cross-border investment opportunities brought about by such innovations. For governments, such innovations – disruptive as they are – may provide new opportunities to revitalize micro-enterprises and even provide new sources of revenues for the state. More importantly, any misguided government policy and regulation in this area has the potential to dampen future innovations. Thus the question of "to uberize or not to uberize" is about how governments should respond to the challenges posed by the sharing economy. This essay addresses the question by explaining the nature of the sharing economy, its foothold in Southeast Asia, and finally, the various policy responses by governments in the region. The policy challenges of engaging with the sharing economy ("to uberize or not to uberize") is examined via a comparative study of the countries in the region. Examples from the car sharing market is used in this essay to focus the discussions on specifics.

We want to reconsider and explore the epistemology of student engagement in higher education as part of a democratic and sustainable education, going beyond neo-liberal groundings. In our exploration, we mainly draw on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and his co-writers Felix Guattari and Claire Parnet. In contemporary educational systems, teachers are often urged to work with student engagement in various forms due to the connection between academic success and student engagement. Student engagement is being perceived as an important factor in quality measurements – a trend which can be connected to the neoliberal marketization focusing on performance, individualization, competition, goal-rationality and linear progression. This neo-liberal agenda produces new demands on education, changing students' and teachers' possibilities to act and become within higher education. In addition, some theories are prioritized which lead to narrowed and limited epistemologies for higher education and accordingly student engagement. Deleuze's way of thinking challenge linearity and dualistic views of subject/object and process/product when emphasizing becoming, appreciating multiplicities and the unpredictable; what has not yet come into being. When "doing" Deleuze in teacher education, we have considered 'pedagogical relations' to involve both human and non-human relations - assemblages that are both intercorporeal and entangled. Such assemblages open, according to Deleuze, for a rhizomatic thinking about learning where events are created that bear possibilities for all actors involved to become-multiple-others for a while. These processes of becoming runs through on-going affective, entangled and moving relationships and modes of existence. Although our exploration is mainly philosophical, we will connect our exploration to an ongoing project at our university. This attempt to reconsider the epistemology of student engagement, challenges structures, power-relations and epistemological pre-assumptions in higher education by creating disruptions, openings and lines of flight?

International audience ; Despite massive investments in infrastructure reconstruction, Beirut has never fully recovered 24/7 provision of electricity after the civil war (1975-90). Since 2006, the consequences of Israeli bombings and of infrastructure decaying in a context of political bickering preventing new investments plans have worsened the situation. On average, electricity is currently supplied only half of the day. Building on Timothy Mitchell's project to follow the tracks of energy in order to unravel the precarious agencies of power that allow its flows to circulate, I try to map the disruptions and reconfigurations of energy circuits and to show that it both reflect existing configurations of power in the city and create new ones. (Mitchell 2011) At a first glance, uneven access to electricity might well be understood as the way to reproduce social and political domination between central Beirut and its suburbs and between the wealthiest and the middle and lower class, for which the cost of making without public network is very heavy. But seen from Mitchell's perspective, the economic arrangements and the technological devices needed to run the system and for the electricity being generated and processed contain in themselves their fragilities that allow such domination to be constantly challenged by the clients-users-citizens or newcomers like informal vendors of alternative electricity devices (the famous generators). Thus, one might well read the rising protests against the current state of blackness in Beirut as new agencies of power that seek to undermine and derail the symbolical hierarchies of power (here I will analyse cartoons and the Minister of Energy bashing on the social networks), despite the constant struggle by the political class to reenact them through sectarian cleavages. Hooking and meter-pirating, as well as non-payment, display the power of the network's end-users. The development of private illegal-but-tolerated generators involves the building of new local configuration of power.

Este artículo mira el 're-armaje' social, religioso, económico y político de la comunidad Shuid (parroquia Guasuntos, cantón Alausi, provincia Chimborazo, Ecuador) a partir de sus prácticas cotidianas y entramados relacionales hasta un entramado más amplio marcado por la dinámica nacional y global. No es un estudio comparativo, pretende más bien ser un 'texto de urgencia' que muestra los armajes-desarmajes-rearmajes de la comunidad en contextos de crisis económica, de relaciones asimétricas de poder, campos de fuerzas y al interno de órdenes pre-determinadas, pero también en la búsqueda de nuevas oportunidades y posibilidades. Me interesa, además, reflexionar sobre las maneras de ser comunidad desde entendimientos horizontales y verticales de lo relacional, de la lógica del don y el contra-don. De esta forma muestro rupturas, heterogeneidades, pluralidades, distancias, vistas desde una multiplicidad de coloridos aconteceres. ; This article examines the social, religious, economic, and political re-assemblage of the Shuid community (parish Guasuntos, city Alausi, province Chimborazo, Ecuador) from their daily practices and relational structures to a broader framework set by national and global dynamics. Rather than being a comparative study, this is meant to be a text of urgency showing assemblages-disassemblages-reassemblages of the community in contexts of economic crisis, asymmetrical power relations, and fields of forces and within pre-determined orders but also in search for new opportunities and possibilities. Also, a critical discussion is provided concerning the ways of being a community from horizontal as well as vertical interpretations of what is relational and what is the logic of gift and counter-gift. In this way, disruptions, heterogeneity, plurality, and distances are regarded from a multiplicity of colourful endeavours. ; - Grupo de investigación Antropología y Filosofía (SEJ-126). Universidad de Granada. - Área de Antropología Social. Universidad de Jaén. - Laborarorio de Antropología Social y Cultural (HUM-472). Universidad de Almería. - Departamento de Filosofía II. Universidad de Granada.

Background Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) contribute to disease and dysfunction and incur high associated costs (>1% of the gross domestic product [GDP] in the European Union). Exposure to EDCs varies widely between the USA and Europe because of differences in regulations and, therefore, we aimed to quantify disease burdens and related economic costs to allow comparison. Methods We used existing models for assessing epidemiological and toxicological studies to reach consensus on probabilities of causation for 15 exposure–response relations between substances and disorders. We used Monte Carlo methods to produce realistic probability ranges for costs across the exposure–response relation, taking into account uncertainties. Estimates were made based on population and costs in the USA in 2010. Costs for the European Union were converted to US$ (€1=$1·33). Findings The disease costs of EDCs were much higher in the USA than in Europe ($340 billion [2·33% of GDP] vs $217 billion [1·28%]). The difference was driven mainly by intelligence quotient (IQ) points loss and intellectual disability due to polybrominated diphenyl ethers (11 million IQ points lost and 43 000 cases costing $266 billion in the USA vs 873 000 IQ points lost and 3290 cases costing $12·6 billion in the European Union). Accounting for probability of causation, in the European Union, organophosphate pesticides were the largest contributor to costs associated with EDC exposure ($121 billion), whereas in the USA costs due to pesticides were much lower ($42 billion). Interpretation EDC exposure in the USA contributes to disease and dysfunction, with annual costs taking up more than 2% of the GDP. Differences from the European Union suggest the need for improved screening for chemical disruption to endocrine systems and proactive prevention. Funding Endocrine Society, Ralph S French Charitable Foundation, and Broad Reach Foundation. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd ; Peer reviewed

The present study focuses on César Vallejo's latest poetic production, especially on rhythmical resources and linguistic disruptions as well as on the frank challenge to the canon of his time. Neologisms, Quechua terms, orthographic and lexical transgressions of all kinds, archaisms, irruptions of colloquial registers, and so on. They are all poetic resources decidedly politically oriented, i.e. they respond to a language policy. The intercalation of popular lan-guage in the midst of complex and subtle figurative procedures is an operation by which the voice of the common man is rescued and dignified. From the analysis of emblematic poems from Poemas humanos (Human poems) and España, aparta de mi este cáliz (Spain, take this chalice away from me), we shall be able to corroborate how in this period the convergence of the greatest social commitment (on the thematic level), with the formal audacity that already characterized Trilce, becomes evident. ; El presente estudio se centra en la última producción poética de César Vallejo, sobre todo en los recursos rítmicos y las disrupciones lingüísticas, así como en el franco desafío al canon de su época. Neologismos, términos quechuas, transgresiones ortográficas y léxicas de todo tipo, arcaísmos, irrupciones de registros coloquiales, etcétera, son todos recursos poé-ticos decididamente orientados políticamente: responden a una política de la lengua. La inter-calación del lenguaje popular en medio de complejos y sutiles procedimientos figurativos es una operación por la cual se rescata y dignifica la voz del hombre común. A partir del análisis de poemas emblemáticos de Poemas humanos y de España, aparta de mí este cáliz podremos corroborar como en este período se hace notoria la convergencia del mayor compromiso social (en el plano temático) con la audacia formal que ya caracterizara a Trilce.