The seminar I shall present at Masaryk University in Brno on May 19, 2016. A video of this presentation is available at https://www.youtube.com/edit?video_id=Fu5kv0sFWG4
Community Resilience: Challenges, Requirements, and Organizational ModelsVincenzo De Florio
An important challenge for human societies is that of mastering the complexity of Community Resilience, namely “the sustained ability of a community to utilize available resources to respond to, withstand, and recover from adverse situations”. The above concise definition puts the accent on an important requirement: a community’s ability to
make use in an intelligent way of the available resources, both institutional and spontaneous, in order to match the complex evolution of the “significant multi-hazard threats characterizing a crisis”. Failing to address such requirement exposes a community to extensive failures that are known to exacerbate the consequences of natural and human-induced crises. As a consequence, we experience today an urgent need to respond to the challenges of community resilience engineering. This problem, some reflections, and preliminary prototypical contributions constitute
the topics of this presentation.
A companion article is available at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/67040428/Articles/serene14.pdf
The Now Wave to the Next Wave: public service delivery in a networked worldDominic Campbell
Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and FutureGov are working together to research the “now wave” and the “next wave” of web enabled public service delivery." This presentation reports back initial thoughts and findings.
Presentation by Justin Valasek "Reforming an Institutional Culture of Corruption: A Model of Motivated Agents and Collective Reputation" at the SITE Corruption Conference, 31 August 2015.
Find more at: https://www.hhs.se/site
Deling av data: ”Tenke det, ønske det, ville det med, men gjøre det...?”Stian Danenbarger
Presentation on sharing of open data held for the Norwegian government's "Forum for Large Public Web Sites", early in June 2009, soon after Data.gov went live. The talk was in Norwegian, but the PPT actually contains more English than Norwegian text...
Community Resilience: Challenges, Requirements, and Organizational ModelsVincenzo De Florio
An important challenge for human societies is that of mastering the complexity of Community Resilience, namely “the sustained ability of a community to utilize available resources to respond to, withstand, and recover from adverse situations”. The above concise definition puts the accent on an important requirement: a community’s ability to
make use in an intelligent way of the available resources, both institutional and spontaneous, in order to match the complex evolution of the “significant multi-hazard threats characterizing a crisis”. Failing to address such requirement exposes a community to extensive failures that are known to exacerbate the consequences of natural and human-induced crises. As a consequence, we experience today an urgent need to respond to the challenges of community resilience engineering. This problem, some reflections, and preliminary prototypical contributions constitute
the topics of this presentation.
A companion article is available at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/67040428/Articles/serene14.pdf
The Now Wave to the Next Wave: public service delivery in a networked worldDominic Campbell
Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and FutureGov are working together to research the “now wave” and the “next wave” of web enabled public service delivery." This presentation reports back initial thoughts and findings.
Presentation by Justin Valasek "Reforming an Institutional Culture of Corruption: A Model of Motivated Agents and Collective Reputation" at the SITE Corruption Conference, 31 August 2015.
Find more at: https://www.hhs.se/site
Deling av data: ”Tenke det, ønske det, ville det med, men gjøre det...?”Stian Danenbarger
Presentation on sharing of open data held for the Norwegian government's "Forum for Large Public Web Sites", early in June 2009, soon after Data.gov went live. The talk was in Norwegian, but the PPT actually contains more English than Norwegian text...
Notes in Psychology: The Digital MarketplaceAhmad Hamdan
Social interactions and the sociological dynamics of social networks have many contributions that lead to many developments to our daily lives, it shaped the ways we interact, share and achieve.
The working world is in a complete transformation. The processing factors are known. And the digital is a part of the problems :
- digital technologies transform the nature of any jobs that humans still do : jobs use computer more often, they are more abstract, and more mobile.
- Relationships and time are porous, and this porosity is all consuming.
- and recent studies have shown that robotics and smart systems will continue to destroy creative, service-related and skilled occupations.
Why are the transitions not easy ? This document presents 3 alternative models for work and employment organisation, work distribution and redistribution.
Political ecologies of immaterial commoning: data storage, digital waste, and...Juhana Venäläinen
Presented at the Commons Convivium, University of East London, Centre for Social Justice and Change, 29th April 2015. See https://sustainabilityandthecommons.wordpress.com/2015/04/13/3078/
ABSTRACT: Networked commons-based peer production, as in Wikipedia or in open source communities, has occasionally been depicted as a revolutionary socio-economic system with fundamental consequences for the future of capitalism. These conceptions are, however, often prone to neglecting the material boundaries of the economy. In a "digitalist" utopia (Pasquinelli 2008), production is portrayed as a pure symbolic exchange, independent of the physical, biological, financial or socio-cultural conditions for its reproduction. With the current growth in the networking infrastructures, it is becoming more obvious that the so-called immaterial economy is tightly connected to the constraints of the finite planet. In my presentation, I will examine the political ecologies of immaterial commoning by focusing on one of its material boundaries: data storage capacity. By following the events and discourses unfolding from the 2011 Thailand floods that caused an unforeseen shock in the data storage markets, I seek to illuminate some more general interlinkages between the practices of immaterial commoning and its material underpinnings.
Opportunity formation, stakeholder management and the role of personal and bu...Mario Morello
An exploration into the notions of opportunity formation, networks and stakeholder management in moderate and extreme digital entrepreneurship.
Share this presentation if you liked it and get in touch with any suggestions to continue, expand and evolve the research exploringdigital@gmail.com
Corporate Social Responsibility: Tangible Item or PR FluffCharmaine Barton
Within the Canadian context what is CSR? Who is responsible for it? Which civil society sector benefits most? Should the government mandate a comprehensive CSR policy?
CSR can be both public policy and private concern for the betterment of the voluntary sector.
This document by Eelke Wielinga describes the FAN (Free Actor Network) approach and practical tools to promote effective networks where traditional planning is balanced with the energies, incentives and dreams of the members. Mr Wielinga was one of the speakers of the Systemic M&E webinar (Innovations in Measuring Impacts in Market and Financial Systems: rethinking the current paradigm). This webinar was organised by SEEP's MaFI in October 2012 and hosted in collaboration with USAID's Microlinks and FHI360. To know more about the FAN approach and Eelke's work go to www.toolsfornetworkers.nl
An introduction to the C programming language for the students of the course "HJ-82 Ontwerpen voor de optie multimedia en signaalverwerking: seminaries", taught by the authors at the Catholic University of Leuven.
Notes in Psychology: The Digital MarketplaceAhmad Hamdan
Social interactions and the sociological dynamics of social networks have many contributions that lead to many developments to our daily lives, it shaped the ways we interact, share and achieve.
The working world is in a complete transformation. The processing factors are known. And the digital is a part of the problems :
- digital technologies transform the nature of any jobs that humans still do : jobs use computer more often, they are more abstract, and more mobile.
- Relationships and time are porous, and this porosity is all consuming.
- and recent studies have shown that robotics and smart systems will continue to destroy creative, service-related and skilled occupations.
Why are the transitions not easy ? This document presents 3 alternative models for work and employment organisation, work distribution and redistribution.
Political ecologies of immaterial commoning: data storage, digital waste, and...Juhana Venäläinen
Presented at the Commons Convivium, University of East London, Centre for Social Justice and Change, 29th April 2015. See https://sustainabilityandthecommons.wordpress.com/2015/04/13/3078/
ABSTRACT: Networked commons-based peer production, as in Wikipedia or in open source communities, has occasionally been depicted as a revolutionary socio-economic system with fundamental consequences for the future of capitalism. These conceptions are, however, often prone to neglecting the material boundaries of the economy. In a "digitalist" utopia (Pasquinelli 2008), production is portrayed as a pure symbolic exchange, independent of the physical, biological, financial or socio-cultural conditions for its reproduction. With the current growth in the networking infrastructures, it is becoming more obvious that the so-called immaterial economy is tightly connected to the constraints of the finite planet. In my presentation, I will examine the political ecologies of immaterial commoning by focusing on one of its material boundaries: data storage capacity. By following the events and discourses unfolding from the 2011 Thailand floods that caused an unforeseen shock in the data storage markets, I seek to illuminate some more general interlinkages between the practices of immaterial commoning and its material underpinnings.
Opportunity formation, stakeholder management and the role of personal and bu...Mario Morello
An exploration into the notions of opportunity formation, networks and stakeholder management in moderate and extreme digital entrepreneurship.
Share this presentation if you liked it and get in touch with any suggestions to continue, expand and evolve the research exploringdigital@gmail.com
Corporate Social Responsibility: Tangible Item or PR FluffCharmaine Barton
Within the Canadian context what is CSR? Who is responsible for it? Which civil society sector benefits most? Should the government mandate a comprehensive CSR policy?
CSR can be both public policy and private concern for the betterment of the voluntary sector.
This document by Eelke Wielinga describes the FAN (Free Actor Network) approach and practical tools to promote effective networks where traditional planning is balanced with the energies, incentives and dreams of the members. Mr Wielinga was one of the speakers of the Systemic M&E webinar (Innovations in Measuring Impacts in Market and Financial Systems: rethinking the current paradigm). This webinar was organised by SEEP's MaFI in October 2012 and hosted in collaboration with USAID's Microlinks and FHI360. To know more about the FAN approach and Eelke's work go to www.toolsfornetworkers.nl
An introduction to the C programming language for the students of the course "HJ-82 Ontwerpen voor de optie multimedia en signaalverwerking: seminaries", taught by the authors at the Catholic University of Leuven.
This C tutorial covers every topic in C with the programming exercises. This is the most extensive tutorial on C you will get your hands on. I hope you will love the presentation. All the best. Happy learning.
Feedbacks are most welcome. Send your feedbacks to dwivedi.2512@gmail.com. You can download this document in PDF format from the link, http://www.slideshare.net/dwivedi2512/learning-c-an-extensive-guide-to-learn-the-c-language
Kathy Bachmann, Executive Vice President and Managing Director for Americas at MarketShare, discussed what it takes for marketers to understand the future of the global marketplace during her presentation at the 2015 Chief Marketing Officer Leadership Forum in Los Angeles on Jan. 27. In her presentation, Bachmann noted that the rising demand for marketing data has led many marketers to leverage sophisticated technologies, but marketers must understand how to optimize these tools to bolster their marketing campaigns.
Tapping Into the Wells of Social Energy: A Case Study Based on Falls Identifi...Vincenzo De Florio
Are purely technological solutions the best answer we can get to the shortcomings our organizations are often experiencing today? The results we gathered in this work lead us to giving a negative answer to such question. Science and technology are powerful boosters, though when they are applied to the “local, static organization of an obsolete yesterday” they fail to translate in the solutions we need to our problems. Our stance here is that those boosters should be applied to novel, distributed, and dynamic models able to allow us to escape from the local minima our societies are currently locked in. One such model is simulated in this paper to demonstrate how it may be possible to tap into the vast basins of social energy of our human societies to realize ubiquitous computing sociotechnical services for the identification and timely response to falls.
Accompanying paper available at https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.06655
How Resilient Are Our Societies?Analyses, Models, Preliminary ResultsVincenzo De Florio
Traditional social organizations such as those for the management of healthcare and civil defense are the result of designs and realizations that matched well with an operational
context considerably different from the one we are experiencing today: A simpler world, characterized by a greater amount of resources to match less users producing lower peaks of requests.
The new context reveals all the fragility of our societies: unmanageability is just around the corner unless we do not complement the “old recipes” with smarter forms of social organization.
Here we analyze this problem and propose a refinement to our fractal social organizations as a model for resilient cyber-physical societies. Evidence to our claims is provided by simulating our model in terms of multi-agent systems.
On a few hours notice, due to another presenter's "volcano-cancelled" flight, I was asked to fill an empty slot at the Norwegian GoOpen 2010 conference. On the background of the freshly proposed data.norge.no site, I decided to present a high level motivation for open data and linked open data in context of government, briefly compare and contrast its predecessors, data.gov and data.gov.uk, and suggest a possible middle ground between "anything goes" and "one format only" (in Norwegian).
A comprehensive exploration of an operating next-generation organization.
Core founding assumptions
Vision & Values
Culture is key .. wirearchy as opposed to hierarchy
Practical operational aspects
The New Business Model, Revolution in a Service Economy - Mr David Kweecelebratelifegroup
In this thought-provoking presentation, David gave the tribe a glimpse of the near future which is already at the very edge of our doorsteps poised to cause unavoidable disruption in conventional business models as we know it.
From customer co-creation to service-for-service exchange in market systems, David gave us plenty of food for thought as he delivered poignant perspectives with lots of humour and fun
Edward Andersson, Deputy Director of Involve, reflects on where engagement is heading in a time of Localism and Austerity, looks at creative methods of engagement and gives advice on when and how they should be used.
A recording of the presentation can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2Ej3NbCjes
Building Collaborative Health Networks: Pat Terrell”Healthwork
PPT on Building Collaborative Partnerships for the the Regional Health Care Safety Net in Northeastern Illinois. Presented at the Safety Net Summit, June 23, 2009, hosted by Health & Medicine Policy Research Group (HMPRG) and the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)
The Amplified Resilient Community (ARC) aims to unlock community resilience as a way to navigate around global challenges and toward new solutions for wealth creation and life improvement. ARC is a framework which helps to reweave civic, economic and political life from the bottom up. The vision is for communities to develop capacities to become adaptive and flexible under the constraints and uncertainties of globalization.
Thilo Boeck is a senior research fellow based in the Centre for Social Action at De Montfort University. He worked in Youth and Community Development in Peru, Germany and the UK which has influenced his commitment to participative research and training.
He worked in several research projects exploring social capital and community cohesion. He was the social researcher on the Amplified Leicester project.
Twitter: @tgboeck
PPT on Building Collaborative Partnerships for the the Regional Health Care Safety Net in Northeastern Illinois. Presented at the Safety Net Summit, June 23, 2009, hosted by Health & Medicine Policy Research Group (HMPRG) and the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)
Thinking psychoanalytically about desire in organizations - why we need a 3rd...Boxer Research Ltd
Psychoanalytic understanding has approached the organization as being like the ego in its pursuit of sovereign autonomy, its inter-subjective discursive practices organizing its work in relation to its markets. The corporate entity has been approached as an a priori. Psychoanalytic understanding has addressed the ways in which individuals take up roles within the life of an organization, but not the ways in which an organization may support a multiplicity of roles one-by-one in the lives of its citizen-clients.
The a priori status of the sovereign corporate entity leads to the unconscious being referred to as descriptively unconscious, ‘below the surface’ of the inter-subjective practices it supports. The implication is that what lies ‘below the surface’ can in principle be made conscious. This repressed unconscious is distinct from the wider compass of the radically unconscious. Distinguishing the repressed from this radically unconscious enables us to establish a ‘beyond’ of the libidinally-invested-in identifications supported by the organization. Defenses against anxiety may thus become defenses against a ‘beyond’ of innovation, through which a posteriori organization might support innovative roles in the lives of its citizen-clients.
We need to understand how a radically unconscious valency for innovation becomes realized. This would enable us to address how individuals might support identifications with an organization when it was itself having to innovate continuously ‘under their feet’. Without such an understanding, we can only expect an organization to betray its citizen-clients through serving its a priori interests to the exclusion of ‘others’.
In the Fifties, Arnold Schönberg introduced a model for music composition that he called "Grundgestalt", the basic shape. In this seminar I show how I interpreted this concept as a generative music model that translates the orbits of dynamic systems into musical components. I also describe a family of experiments that led me to the creation of simple and not-so-simple musical compositions, which I call "my little Grundgestalten”. Excerpts from a selection of those compositions will be presented.
Models and Concepts for Socio-technical Complex Systems: Towards Fractal Soci...Vincenzo De Florio
We introduce fractal social organizations—a novel class of socio-technical complex systems characterized
by a distributed, bio-inspired, hierarchical architecture. Based on a same building block that is recursively
applied at different layers, said systems provide a homogeneous way to model collective behaviors of
different complexity and scale. Key concepts and principles are enunciated by means of a case study and a
simple formalism. As preliminary evidence of the adequacy of the assumptions underlying our systems here
we define and study an algebraic model for a simple class of social organizations. We show how despite its
generic formulation, geometric representations of said model exhibit the spontaneous emergence of complex
hierarchical and modular patterns characterized by structured addition of complexity and fractal nature—
which closely correspond to the distinctive architectural traits of our fractal social organizations. Some
reflections on the significance of these results and a view to the next steps of our research conclude this
contribution.
On the Role of Perception and Apperception in Ubiquitous and Pervasive Enviro...Vincenzo De Florio
Building on top of classic work on the perception of natural systems this paper addresses the role played by such quality in
environments where change is the rule rather than the exception. As in natural systems, perception in software systems takes two major forms: sensory perception and awareness (also known as apperception). For each of these forms we introduce semi-formal models that allow us to discuss and characterize perception and apperception failures in software systems evolving in environments subjected to rapid and sudden changes—such as those typical of ubiquitous and pervasive computing. Our models also provide us with two partial orders to compare such software systems with one another as well as with reference environments. When those
environments evolve or change, or when the software themselves evolve after their environments, the above partial orders may be used to compute new environmental fits and different strategic fits and gain insight on the degree of resilience achieved through the current adaptation steps.
On codes, machines, and environments: reflections and experiencesVincenzo De Florio
Code explicitly refers to a reference machine and, implicitly, to a set of conditions often called the system model and the fault model.
If one wants to guarantee an agreed-upon quality of service, one needs to either make assumptions about those conditions or adapt to them.
In this lecture I present this problem and a number of solutions, both practical and theoretical, that I have devised in the course of my career.
Although the main accent is on programming languages, here I provide links and references to other approaches that operate at algorithmic- and system-level.
This course teaches engineering students how to program in C. I gave this course for several years in the framework of the "Advanced Technology Higher Education Network" / SOCRATES program.
A framework for trustworthiness assessment based on fidelity in cyber and phy...Vincenzo De Florio
We introduce a method for the assessment of trust for n-open systems based on a measurement of fidelity and present a prototypic implementation of a complaint architecture. We construct a MAPE loop which monitors the compliance between corresponding figures of interest in cyber- and physical domains; derive measures of the system’s trustworthiness; and use them to plan and execute actions aiming at guaranteeing system safety and resilience. We conclude with a view on our future work.
Presented at ANTIFRAGILE'15
Companion paper available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050915008923
A behavioural model for the discussion of resilience, elasticity, and antifra...Vincenzo De Florio
Resilience is one of those "general systems attributes" that appear to play a central role in several disciplines - including ecology, business, psychology, industrial safety, microeconomics, computer networks, security, management science, cybernetics, control theory, crisis and disaster management. Resilience thus seems to be "needed" everywhere; and yet, even in the framework of a same discipline, it is not easy to define it precisely and consensually. To add to the confusion, other terms such as elasticity, change tolerance, and antifragility, although clearly related to resilience, cannot be easily differentiated.
In this talk I tackle this problem by introducing a behavioural model of resilience. I interpret resilience as the property emerging from the interaction of the behaviours produced by two "players": a system and a hosting environment. The outcome of said interaction depends on both intrinsic and extrinsic factors, including the systemic "traits" of the system but also how the system's endowment matches the requirements expressed by the behaviours of the environment. I show how the behavioural approach provides a unifying framework within which it is possible to express coherent definitions for elasticity, change tolerance, and antifragility.
A Behavioral Interpretation of Resilience and AntifragilityVincenzo De Florio
In this presentation I discuss resilience and antifragility as behaviors resulting from the coupling of a system and its environment(s). Depending on the interactions between these two "ends" and on the quality of the individual behaviors that they may exercise, different strategies may be chosen: elasticity (change masking); entelechism (change tolerance); and antifragility (adapting to & learning from change). When the environment is very simple and only capable of so-called "random behavior", often the only effective strategy towards resilience is off-line dimensioning of redundancy as a result of a worst-case assessment of disturbances and/or threats. Much more complex and variegated is the case when both systems and environments are "intelligent" -- or at least able to exercise complex teleological and extrapolatory behaviors. In this case both system and ambient may choose among a variety of strategies in what could be regarded as a complex evolutionary game theory setting.
On the Behavioral Interpretation of System-Environment Fit and Auto-ResilienceVincenzo De Florio
Already 71 years ago Rosenblueth, Wiener, and Bigelow introduced the concept of the “behavioristic study of natural events” and proposed a classification of systems according to the quality of the behaviors they are able to exercise. In this presentation we consider the problem of the resilience of a system when deployed in a changing environment, which we tackle by considering the behaviors both the system organs and the environment mutually exercise. We then introduce a partial order and a metric space for those behaviors, and we use them to define a behavioral interpretation of the concept of system-environment fit. Moreover we suggest that behaviors based on the extrapolation of future environmental requirements would allow systems to proactively improve their own system-environment fit and optimally evolve their resilience. Finally we describe how we plan to express a complex optimization strategy in terms of the concepts introduced in this presentation.
The paper accompanying this presentation is available at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/67040428/Articles/DF14b_Wiener21stA.pdf
Antifragility = Elasticity + Resilience + Machine Learning. Models and Algori...Vincenzo De Florio
Presentation for the ANTIFRAGILE 2014 workshop, https://sites.google.com/site/resilience2antifragile/
Abstract: We introduce a model of the fidelity of open systems—fidelity being interpreted here as the compliance between corresponding
figures of interest in two separate but communicating domains. A special case of fidelity is given by real-timeliness and synchrony,
in which the figure of interest is the physical and the system’s notion of time. Our model covers two orthogonal aspects of fidelity,
the first one focusing on a system’s steady state and the second one capturing that system’s dynamic and behavioral characteristics.
We discuss how the two aspects correspond respectively to elasticity and resilience and we highlight each aspect’s qualities and
limitations. Finally we sketch the elements of a new model coupling both of the first model’s aspects and complementing them
with machine learning. Finally, a conjecture is put forward that the new model may represent a first step towards compositional
criteria for antifragile systems.
Service-oriented Communities and Fractal Social Organizations - Models and co...Vincenzo De Florio
Presentation given by Vincenzo De Florio at the Ceremony for the handing of the 2013 Faculty Awards.
Keywords: Fractal social organizations; service oriented communities; mutual assistance communities
Seminarie Computernetwerken 2012-2013: Lecture I, 26-02-2013Vincenzo De Florio
Seminarie Computernetwerken is a course given at Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium
A series of seminars focusing on various themes changing from year to year.
This year's themes are: resilience, behaviour, evolvability; in systems, networks, and organizations
In what follows we describe:
themes of the course
view to the seminars
rules of the game
TOWARDS PARSIMONIOUS RESOURCE ALLOCATION IN CONTEXT-AWARE N-VERSION PROGRAMMINGVincenzo De Florio
Adopting classic redundancy-based fault-tolerant schemes in
highly dynamic distributed computing systems does not
necessarily result in the anticipated improvement in
dependability. This primarily stems from statically predefined
redundancy configurations employed within many classic
dependability strategies, which as well known may negatively
impact the schemes' overall effectiveness. In this paper, a
novel dependability strategy is introduced encompassing
advanced redundancy management, aiming to autonomously
tune its internal configuration in function of disturbances
observed. Policies for parsimonious resource allocation are
presented thereafter, intent upon increasing the scheme's cost
effectiveness without breaching its availability objective. Our
experimentation suggests that the suggested solution can
achieve a substantial improvement in availability, compared
to traditional, static redundancy strategies, and that tuning the
adopted degree of redundancy to the actual observed
disturbances allows unnecessary resource expenditure to be
reduced, therefore enhancing cost-effectiveness.
A Formal Model and an Algorithm for Generating the Permutations of a MultisetVincenzo De Florio
This paper may be considered as a mathematical divertissement as well as a didactical tool for
undergraduate students in a universitary course on algorithms and computation. The well-known problem of
generating the permutations of a multiset of marks is considered. We define a formal model and an abstract
machine (an extended Turing machine). Then we write an algorithm to compute on that machine the successor
of a given permutation in the lexicographically ordered set of permutations of a multiset. Within the model we
analyze the algorithm, prove its correctness, and show that the algorithm solves the above problem. Then we
describe a slight modification of the algorithm and we analyze in which cases it may result in an improvement of
execution times.
This paper, the ideas in it, and its realization are the work of the first author only.
A FAULT-TOLERANCE LINGUISTIC STRUCTURE FOR DISTRIBUTED APPLICATIONSVincenzo De Florio
The structures for the expression of fault-tolerance provisions into the application
software are the central topic of this dissertation.
Structuring techniques provide means to control complexity, the latter being a relevant factor
for the introduction of design faults. This fact and the ever increasing complexity of today’s dis-
tributed software justify the need for simple, coherent, and effective structures for the expression
of fault-tolerance in the application software. A first contribution of this dissertation is the defi-
nition of a base of structural attributes with which application-level fault-tolerance structures can
be qualitatively assessed and compared with each other and with respect to the above mentioned
need. This result is then used to provide an elaborated survey of the state-of-the-art of software
fault-tolerance structures.
The key contribution of this work is a novel structuring technique for the expression of the
fault-tolerance design concerns in the application layer of those distributed software systems
that are characterised by soft real-time requirements and with a number of processing nodes
known at compile-time. The main thesis of this dissertation is that this new structuring tech-
nique is capable of exhibiting satisfactory values of the structural attributes in the domain of soft
real-time, distributed and parallel applications. Following this novel approach, beside the con-
ventional programming language addressing the functional design concerns, a special-purpose
linguistic structure (the so-called “recovery language”) is available to address error recovery and
reconfiguration. This recovery language comes into play as soon as an error is detected by an
underlying error detection layer, or when some erroneous condition is signalled by the applica-
tion processes. Error recovery and reconfiguration are specified as a set of guarded actions, i.e.,
actions that require a pre-condition to be fulfilled in order to be executed. Recovery actions deal
with coarse-grained entities of the application and pre-conditions query the current state of those
entities.
An important added value of this so-called “recovery language approach” is that the exe-
cutable code is structured so that the portion addressing fault-tolerance is distinct and separated
from the rest of the code. This allows for division of complexity into distinct blocks that can be
tackled independently of each other.
SAFETY ENHANCEMENT THROUGH SITUATION-AWARE USER INTERFACESVincenzo De Florio
Due to their privileged position halfway the physical and the
cyber universe, user interfaces may play an important role in
learning, preventing, and tolerating scenarios affecting the
safety of the mission and the user's quality of experience. This
vision is embodied here in the main ideas and a proof-of-
concepts
implementation of user interfaces combining
dynamic profiling with context- and situation-awareness and
autonomic software adaptation.
The user interface (UI) may be considered as the contact point
between two "universes"—the physical universe of the user
(let us refer to this universe as U) and the cyber universe
where required computer services are executed (C). The UI is
also the logical “place” where actions are selected and passed
for execution in C. As well known U and C are very different
from each other—in particular they have quite different
notions of time, behaviours, actions, and quality of service.
Despite so huge a difference, the consequences of the actions
in C often reverberate in U—to the point that when the
computer
service
is
safety-critical
failures
or
misinterpretations in C may induce catastrophic events in U
possibly involving the loss of goods, capital, and even lives.
As a matter of facts, the human factor is known as one of the
major causes for system failures [2,15], and the UI is often
the indirect player behind most interaction faults at the root of
computer failures.
Due to its central role in the emergence of the user's quality of
experience (QoE), the UI has been the subject of extensive
research. As a result, current interfaces are adaptive,
anticipative, personalized, and to some degree “intelligent”
[3].
We believe that much more can be done beyond this already
noteworthy progress. Thanks to its privileged position
halfway between the user and the computer, we argue that the
UI is well suited for hosting several non-functional tasks,
including:
Gathering contextual information from both sides of
the activity spectrum.
Deriving situational information about the current
interaction processes.
Producing logs of the knowledge accrued and
situations unveiled.
Executing corrective actions in U and C so as to
mitigate the extent of the consequences of safety or
security violations.
●
In this paper we propose an approach based on the above
argument. This approach instruments a UI so as to produce a
stream of atomic UI operations and their C-time of
occurrence.
Truly dependable software systems should be built with structuring techniques able to decompose the software complexity without
hiding important hypotheses and assumptions such as those regarding
their target execution environment and the expected fault- and system
models. A judicious assessment of what can be made transparent and
what should be translucent is necessary. This paper discusses a practical
example of a structuring technique built with these principles in mind:
Reflective and refractive variables. We show that our technique offers
an acceptable degree of separation of the design concerns, with limited
code intrusion; at the same time, by construction, it separates but does
not hide the complexity required for managing fault-tolerance. In particular, our technique offers access to collected system-wide information
and the knowledge extracted from that information. This can be used
to devise architectures that minimize the hazard of a mismatch between
dependable software and the target execution environments.
ARRL: A Criterion for Composable Safety and Systems EngineeringVincenzo De Florio
While safety engineering standards define rigorous and controllable
processes for system development, safety standards’ differences in distinct
domains are non-negligible. This paper focuses in particular on the aviation,
automotive, and railway standards, all related to the transportation market.
Many are the reasons for the said differences, ranging from historical reasons,
heuristic and established practices, and legal frameworks, but also from the
psychological perception of the safety risks. In particular we argue that the
Safety Integrity Levels are not sufficient to be used as a top level requirement
for developing a safety-critical system. We argue that Quality of Service is a
more generic criterion that takes the trustworthiness as perceived by users better
into account. In addition, safety engineering standards provide very little
guidance on how to compose safe systems from components, while this is the
established engineering practice. In this paper we develop a novel concept
called Assured Reliability and Resilience Level as a criterion that takes the
industrial practice into account and show how it complements the Safety
Integrity Level concept.
Seminar of U.V. Spectroscopy by SAMIR PANDASAMIR PANDA
Spectroscopy is a branch of science dealing the study of interaction of electromagnetic radiation with matter.
Ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy refers to absorption spectroscopy or reflect spectroscopy in the UV-VIS spectral region.
Ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy is an analytical method that can measure the amount of light received by the analyte.
Slide 1: Title Slide
Extrachromosomal Inheritance
Slide 2: Introduction to Extrachromosomal Inheritance
Definition: Extrachromosomal inheritance refers to the transmission of genetic material that is not found within the nucleus.
Key Components: Involves genes located in mitochondria, chloroplasts, and plasmids.
Slide 3: Mitochondrial Inheritance
Mitochondria: Organelles responsible for energy production.
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA): Circular DNA molecule found in mitochondria.
Inheritance Pattern: Maternally inherited, meaning it is passed from mothers to all their offspring.
Diseases: Examples include Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON) and mitochondrial myopathy.
Slide 4: Chloroplast Inheritance
Chloroplasts: Organelles responsible for photosynthesis in plants.
Chloroplast DNA (cpDNA): Circular DNA molecule found in chloroplasts.
Inheritance Pattern: Often maternally inherited in most plants, but can vary in some species.
Examples: Variegation in plants, where leaf color patterns are determined by chloroplast DNA.
Slide 5: Plasmid Inheritance
Plasmids: Small, circular DNA molecules found in bacteria and some eukaryotes.
Features: Can carry antibiotic resistance genes and can be transferred between cells through processes like conjugation.
Significance: Important in biotechnology for gene cloning and genetic engineering.
Slide 6: Mechanisms of Extrachromosomal Inheritance
Non-Mendelian Patterns: Do not follow Mendel’s laws of inheritance.
Cytoplasmic Segregation: During cell division, organelles like mitochondria and chloroplasts are randomly distributed to daughter cells.
Heteroplasmy: Presence of more than one type of organellar genome within a cell, leading to variation in expression.
Slide 7: Examples of Extrachromosomal Inheritance
Four O’clock Plant (Mirabilis jalapa): Shows variegated leaves due to different cpDNA in leaf cells.
Petite Mutants in Yeast: Result from mutations in mitochondrial DNA affecting respiration.
Slide 8: Importance of Extrachromosomal Inheritance
Evolution: Provides insight into the evolution of eukaryotic cells.
Medicine: Understanding mitochondrial inheritance helps in diagnosing and treating mitochondrial diseases.
Agriculture: Chloroplast inheritance can be used in plant breeding and genetic modification.
Slide 9: Recent Research and Advances
Gene Editing: Techniques like CRISPR-Cas9 are being used to edit mitochondrial and chloroplast DNA.
Therapies: Development of mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT) for preventing mitochondrial diseases.
Slide 10: Conclusion
Summary: Extrachromosomal inheritance involves the transmission of genetic material outside the nucleus and plays a crucial role in genetics, medicine, and biotechnology.
Future Directions: Continued research and technological advancements hold promise for new treatments and applications.
Slide 11: Questions and Discussion
Invite Audience: Open the floor for any questions or further discussion on the topic.
What is greenhouse gasses and how many gasses are there to affect the Earth.moosaasad1975
What are greenhouse gasses how they affect the earth and its environment what is the future of the environment and earth how the weather and the climate effects.
(May 29th, 2024) Advancements in Intravital Microscopy- Insights for Preclini...Scintica Instrumentation
Intravital microscopy (IVM) is a powerful tool utilized to study cellular behavior over time and space in vivo. Much of our understanding of cell biology has been accomplished using various in vitro and ex vivo methods; however, these studies do not necessarily reflect the natural dynamics of biological processes. Unlike traditional cell culture or fixed tissue imaging, IVM allows for the ultra-fast high-resolution imaging of cellular processes over time and space and were studied in its natural environment. Real-time visualization of biological processes in the context of an intact organism helps maintain physiological relevance and provide insights into the progression of disease, response to treatments or developmental processes.
In this webinar we give an overview of advanced applications of the IVM system in preclinical research. IVIM technology is a provider of all-in-one intravital microscopy systems and solutions optimized for in vivo imaging of live animal models at sub-micron resolution. The system’s unique features and user-friendly software enables researchers to probe fast dynamic biological processes such as immune cell tracking, cell-cell interaction as well as vascularization and tumor metastasis with exceptional detail. This webinar will also give an overview of IVM being utilized in drug development, offering a view into the intricate interaction between drugs/nanoparticles and tissues in vivo and allows for the evaluation of therapeutic intervention in a variety of tissues and organs. This interdisciplinary collaboration continues to drive the advancements of novel therapeutic strategies.
Professional air quality monitoring systems provide immediate, on-site data for analysis, compliance, and decision-making.
Monitor common gases, weather parameters, particulates.
Richard's aventures in two entangled wonderlandsRichard Gill
Since the loophole-free Bell experiments of 2020 and the Nobel prizes in physics of 2022, critics of Bell's work have retreated to the fortress of super-determinism. Now, super-determinism is a derogatory word - it just means "determinism". Palmer, Hance and Hossenfelder argue that quantum mechanics and determinism are not incompatible, using a sophisticated mathematical construction based on a subtle thinning of allowed states and measurements in quantum mechanics, such that what is left appears to make Bell's argument fail, without altering the empirical predictions of quantum mechanics. I think however that it is a smoke screen, and the slogan "lost in math" comes to my mind. I will discuss some other recent disproofs of Bell's theorem using the language of causality based on causal graphs. Causal thinking is also central to law and justice. I will mention surprising connections to my work on serial killer nurse cases, in particular the Dutch case of Lucia de Berk and the current UK case of Lucy Letby.
2. Times, they are a-changin’…
Less resources
Higher
request
peaks
Higher
number
of users…
ICT
Energy
production &
distribution
Enterprises
Transport
of goods
& people
Water treatment
& distribution
Healthcare
Crisis
management
3. With the meter in the red zone…
• …organizations that
appeared to work fine
reveal their limitations!
– cost too much
– use up too many resources
– do not scale well
– intolerable to changes
– fail to address new aspects
→ Traditional approaches are
reaching structural limits.
4. Questions and challenges
• Is there a "smarter way"?
• How do we address big societal
problems (healthcare, crisis mgmt...)?
• How do we rethink our organizations?
Which model, approach, software...?
1. Major stance
2. Two cases
3. Analysis
4. Models
5. Results
This ppt
5. It is the "axioms"
that make up the system...
• "Regardless of its nature, any system is
affected by its design assumptions.
Our organizations and services
are no exception"
(How Resilient Are Our Societies?
https://goo.gl/ftpFVo)
• New axioms are needed!
– “Wrong” assumptions ⇒ inefficiency & fragility
– In what follows: two examples
7. Healthcare "axioms" (1/2)
• Caregiver = producer of
care products
• Care receiver =
consumer = "destroyer"
of resources
• Producer and customer are not in
touch, except during the
"transactions"
• No value co-creation
• What do those axioms produce ?
8. • Caregiver = producer of
care products
• Care receiver =
consumer = "destroyer"
of resources
• Producer and customer are not in
touch, except during the
"transactions"
• No value co-creation
• What do those axioms produce ?
Axioms of a
Product Dominant Logic!
re: FI-PA194
9. Shortage of resources!
→ A subset of the
social actors serves
the whole set
• Growing
population +
progressive
aging⇒ shrinking
of the service
providers subset
→ Fragile society,
unable to serve
its citizens
10. Shortage of resources!
→ A subset of the
social actors serves
the whole set
• Growing
population +
progressive
aging⇒ shrinking
of the service
providers subset
→ Fragile society,
unable to serve
its citizens
21. How did it fare?
People
Private orgs
Local emergency
response orgs
State emergency
response orgs
Federal emergency
Dept of Homeland
Security
Private
circles
Institu-
tional
respon-
ders
WHY?
24. No collaborative sharing of
knowledge and resources
Product
dominant logic
Rigid hierarchy:
No inter-circle
value co-creation
Roles and values:
predefined and static
25. No collaborative sharing of
knowledge and resources
Plastic, fragile
organizations
Product
dominant logic
Rigid hierarchy:
No inter-circle
value co-creation
Roles and values:
predefined and static
26. Official cause:
Institutional-
only response!
“[Responders] would have been
able to do more if the tri-level
system (city, state, federal) of
emergency response was able to
effectively use, collaborate with,
and coordinate the combined
public and private efforts.
How to do so [...] is a central task of
enhancing community
resilience.”CARRI 3 Tech Report
27. Institutional-
only response!
“[Responders] would have been
able to do more if the tri-level
system (city, state, federal) of
emergency response was able to
effectively use, collaborate with,
and coordinate the combined
public and private efforts.
How to do so [...] is a central task of
enhancing community
resilience.”CARRI 3 Tech Report
Community resilience: response=
co-creation + co-evolution
28. Lessons learned
• Traditional organizations: Product
Predominant Logic
– Static definition of providers and suppliers; of
values; of hierarchical roles (⇒ distinction
between institutional and spontaneous
responses)
• New "axioms" are required!
→From the "local, static organization of an
obsolete yesterday" to an interconnected,
dynamic, smarter organization matching
our turbulent, resource-scarce new times!
29. Axiom #1: Society
• Society should be part of the solution
• Society ≡ abundant "pool" of mobile
“resources” able to exercise complex
action
• Challenge: to engineer ways to tap
into the nearly unlimited source of
social energy of our societies
– cf. VLIR-UOS project SELFSERV, just
launched (http://goo.gl/yXi5Ju)
30. Axiom #2: Smart, service-based
• We need "smarter" systems: systems based on
service science and service systems
engineering
• Service system engineering: optimally
organizing resources: "dynamic configurations
of people, technologies, organizations and
shared information that create and deliver value
to customers, providers and other stakeholders"
[IBM, 2008]
⇒
31. Axiom #2: Smart, service-based
• We need "smarter" systems: systems based on
service science and service systems
engineering
• Service system engineering: optimally
organizing resources: "dynamic configurations
of people, technologies, organizations and
shared information that create and deliver value
to customers, providers and other stakeholders"
[IBM, 2008]
⇒
vs. static
32. Axiom #2: Smart, service-based
• We need "smarter" systems: systems based on
service science and service systems
engineering
• Service system engineering: optimally
organizing resources: "dynamic configurations
of people, technologies, organizations and
shared information that create and deliver value
to customers, providers and other stakeholders"
[IBM, 2008]
⇒
vs. static
"live" vs. local (& stale!)
33. Axiom #2: Smart, service-based
• We need "smarter" systems: systems based on
service science and service systems
engineering
• Service system engineering: optimally
organizing resources: "dynamic configurations
of people, technologies, organizations and
shared information that create and deliver value
to customers, providers and other stakeholders"
[IBM, 2008]
– "A body of knowledge that describes, explains,
predicts, and improves value co-creation
between interacting entities" [Sun, 2012]
⇒
vs. static
"live" vs. local (& stale!)
34. Axiom #3: Metarchies
• We need METARCHIES: better-than-
hierarchies!
–Organizations that match better
with service dominant logic
–Functioning as catalysts of value
creation:
≡ Identifying & manifesting
value propositions
–Not imposing predefined, static roles
–Managing "dynamic configurations of
people, technologies, organizations and
shared information"
⇒
35. 35
Service provider Service client
Service registry
Publish Discover
Bind
Service
description
A new model: the
service-oriented community
Starting point: classic SoA pattern
36. Party Party
Service registry
Service
description
Publish Publish
Bind
Reasoning & coordination
Individual &
social concerns
optimization
Capabilities
Policies
Availability
Location…
Events
People
Cyber-Phys.S.
Organizations
Catalyst party
Catalyst: "a person or thing that precipitates an event";
"an agent that provokes or speeds significant
change or action"
A new model: the
service-oriented community
(De Florio &
Blondia, 2010)
⇒ VALUE CO-CREATION
48. •"Adaptive Service Orchestration in Ambient
Assisted Living" (Hong Sun, 2006-2011)
Service systems engineering; integration of
human services for ambient assisted living;
optimally organize resources. Semantic service
description & matching. Simulations
My role: director of studies, supervisor, initiator
•IBM Service Innovation Student Contest
2007, number one winner (BeNeLux)
•IBM Ph.D. Fellowship (2009; only fellowship
awarded to a Belgian doctoral student in
2009)
Prototypic implementation:
Mutual Assistance Community
49. • Complement existing healthcare orgs
• Organize intelligent responses to AAL
scenarios
• Optimally orchestrate devices & beings
• Not just safety nets:
–Reducing social isolation of elderly people
–Reducing costs, best utilizing the social
resources
Service system
engineering
⇒
Prototypic implementation:
Mutual Assistance Community
50. Service-oriented Communities:
pluses and minuses
+ Exploits social energy (See Axiom #1)
+ dual service systems
+ Service-, semantic-based (Axiom #2)
+ Simulations prove effectiveness
+ Value co-creation via social translucence
[ - Social translucence: (Kellogg/IBM, 2006)
- Mathematical model in my latest paper,
"Fractal social organization as a
foundation to
pervasive social computing services":
https://arxiv.org/abs/1601.01222 ]
52. Service-oriented Communities:
pluses and minuses
– Not a metarchy (Axiom #3)
–Centralized: single-points-of-failure & -
congestion
–Single-level ⇒ does not match well
multi-level organizations (e.g., crisis
management organizations)
• How to deal with the minuses?
54. Party Party
Service registry
Service
description
Publish
Publish
Reasoning & coordination
"There's
fire here!"
Catalyst party
Enhanced
service-oriented community
PartyParty PartyParty
2) Events trigger protocols, e.g. FIRE(firesquad, firetruck,
driver, extinguishers)
Fire event ⇒
FIRE() protocol
55. Party Party
Service registry
Service
description
Publish
Publish
Reasoning & coordination
3) Catalyst
locates actors
willing & able
to play roles:
firesquad,
firetruck, driver,
extinguishers
Capabilities
Policies
Availability
Location…
People
Cyber-Phys.S.
Organizations
Catalyst party
Enhanced
service-oriented community
PartyParty PartyParty
Fire event ⇒
FIRE() protocol
59. Party PartyPartyParty PartyParty
Party
Party PartyPartyParty PartyParty
Party
Party PartyPartyParty PartyParty
Party
Party PartyPartyParty PartyParty
Party
Party PartyPartyParty PartyParty
Party PartyPartyParty PartyParty
Party
PartyPartyParty
PartyPartyParty
PartyPartyParty
PartyPartyParty
60. Party PartyPartyParty PartyParty
Party
Party PartyPartyParty PartyParty
Party
Party PartyPartyParty PartyParty
Party
Party PartyPartyParty PartyParty
Party
Party PartyPartyParty PartyParty
Party PartyPartyParty PartyParty
Party
PartyPartyParty
PartyPartyParty
PartyPartyParty
PartyPartyParty
FIRE(r1, r2, r3, r4, r5)
5-service system to
deal with a "Fire"
event
Organization identifies
a complex opportunity
for value co-creation:
61. Applications, studies, and results
• "Models and Concepts for Socio-
technical Complex Systems: Towards
Fractal Social Organizations"
http://bit.ly/1o63TEj
• Geometrical and audio representations
–Modularity
–Self-similarity
–Fractal dimension!
–2013 IBM Faculty Award
http://goo.gl/vO8RKj
1) Formal model
67. • Services structured within hierarchical
federation reflecting structure of
deployment environment
• All resources wrapped as manageable
web services
• Standard pub-sub mechanism
• Seamless integration w/ external apps
• Each service group hosts a catalyst
(middleware component)
Applications, studies, and results
2) Little Sister
68. • Aim: measure the potential of "new axioms"
(service-orientation, social energy,
metarchies)
• Case study: falls detection
– Two falls detectors coupled with a cloud of
"verificators" (volunteers that tell whether a fall
was real or not)
• Approach: NetLogo model, written by
a M.Sc. student
– IEEE Conf. paper, ACM Conf. paper
Applications, studies, and results
3) Multi-agent simulation
74. 4) Reduced waiting times
Modicum of
social energy
produces
significant
results!
75. Conclusions
• Novel "axioms" to create "smarter"
systems
– Shift from a Product Dominant Logic to a
Service Dominant Logic
– Social energy
– Metarchies of catalysts: discoverers and
proposers of value (win-win's!)
• Future work: e2e-referral
– Enterprise orchestrates optimal value
propositions
– Enterprise takes responsibility: the user is
not left alone
76. Conclusions
• Novel "axioms" to create "smarter"
systems
– Shift from a Product Dominant Logic to a
Service Dominant Logic
– Social energy
– Metarchies of catalysts: discoverers and
proposers of value (win-win's!)
• Future work: e2e-referral
– Enterprise orchestrates optimal value
propositions
– Enterprise takes responsibility: the user is
not left alone
"How Resilient Are Our Societies?
Analyses, Models, and Preliminary Results"
https://goo.gl/ftpFVo
77. Other results
• 2013 IBM Faculty Award (two in BE)
• 2009 IBM Fellowship (only in BE)
• 2008 FITCE.be "best young enterpreneur"
• 2007 IBM Student context: best BeNeLux
• I'm a good catalyst myself ;-)
78. Possible R&E overlaps
Service ecology
Systems analysis
Community
resilience
Service analysis/
modeling
Resilience /
antifragility
Pervasive social
computing
Semantics modeling
Service evolution
Economics of
information