1,720,959 research outputs found

    Autonomic control and personalization of a wireless access network

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    As ICT services are becoming more ubiquitous and mobile and access technologies grow to be more heterogeneous and complex, we are witnessing the increasing importance of two related needs: (i) users need to be able to configure and personalize their services with minimal effort; (ii) operators desire to engineer and manage their networks easily and efficiently, limiting human agency as far as possible. We propose a possible solution to reach these goals. Our vision, developed in the so-called Simplicity project, is based on a personalization device, which, together with a brokerage framework, offers transparent service configuration and runtime adaptation, according to user preferences and computing/networking context conditions. The capabilities of this framework can be exploited: (i) on the user side, to personalize services, to improve the portability of services over heterogeneous terminals and devices, to adapt services to available networking and terminal technologies; (ii) on the network side, to give operators more powerful tools to define new solutions for distributed, technology- independent, self-organizing, autonomic networking systems. Such systems could be designed so as to be able to react autonomously to changing contexts and environments. In this paper, we first describe the main aspects of the Simplicity solution. We then want to show that our approach is indeed viable. To prove this point, we present an application which exploits the capabilities of the Simplicity system: a mechanism to drive mobile users towards the most appropriate point of access to the network, taking into account both user preferences and network context. We use simulation to evaluate the performance of this procedure in a specific case study, where the aim is to balance the load in an 802.11b access network scenario. The numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed procedure when compared to a legacy scenario and to another solution from literature. To give ample proof of the feasibility of our solution, we also designed and implemented a real prototype. The prototype enables not only the load to be balanced among different 802.11 access points, but also network and application services to be differentiated as a function of user profiles and network load. The main aspects of this prototype are presented in this paper

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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