Determining Geographic Vulnerabilities Using a Novel Impact Based Resilience Metric

Various natural and man-made disasters as well as major political events (like riots) have increased the importance of understanding geographic failures and how correlated failures impact networks. Since mission critical networks are overlaid as virtual networks over a physical network infrastructure forming multilayer networks, there is an increasing need for methods to analyze multilayer networks for geographic vulnerabilities. In this paper, we present a novel impact-based resilience metric. Our new metric uses ideas borrowed from performability to combine network impact with state probability to calculate a new metric called Network Impact Resilience. The idea is that the highest impact to the mission of a network should drive its resilience metric. Furthermore, we present a state space analysis method that analyzes multilayer networks for geographic vulnerabilities. To demonstrate the methods, the inability to provision a given number of upper layer services is used as the criteria for network failure. Mapping techniques for multilayer network states are presented. Simplifying geographic state mapping techniques to reduce enumeration costs are also presented and tested. Finally, these techniques are tested on networks of varying sizes.     

Exploring Virtual Librarianship: Second Life Library 2.0

ABSTRACT

In April 2006, Alliance Library System and Online Programming for All Libraries partnered to start the Second Life Library 2.0 in the online world Second Life and in August 2006 purchased an island on the Teen grid of Teen Second Life. Second Life is a virtual world, a descendant of multiplayer online games. Educational institutions have recently been drawn into Second Life's robust economy and vibrant cultural life. The Second Life Library 2.0 works with librarians from around the world and with other educational partners such as TechSoup, WorldBridges, and the New Media Consortium. Second Life Library 2.0 provides “traditional” library services such as ready reference, book discussions, and search assistance, but, at heart, it explores what it means to be a virtual library in a virtual world.     

Do organizational citizenship behaviors lead to information system success?: Testing the mediation effects of integration climate and project management

We adapted a model in organizational theory to determine whether organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) of system implementation teams influenced that organization's integration climate and improved their project management, resulting in successful system implementation. Surveys were elicited from 254 system users in various business organizations that had implemented large-scale IS in the previous year; the analysis of their responses provided support for our model, suggesting that the OCB of the implementation team created a higher level of integration climate and more effective project management, and that these in turn influenced information system success. Implications for researchers and managers are discussed and limitations are identified.     

An Interoperable Grid Information System for Integrated Resource Monitoring Based on Virtual Organizations

In many Grid infrastructures different kinds of information services are in use, which utilize different incompatible data structures and interfaces to encode and provide their data. Homogeneous monitoring of these infrastructures with the monitoring data being accessible everywhere independently of the middleware which provided it, is the basis for a consistent status reporting on the Grids’ resources and services. Thus, interoperability or interoperation between the different information services in a heterogeneous Grid infrastructure is required. Monitoring data must contain the identity of the affected Virtual Organization (VO) so that it can be related to the resources and services the VO has allocated to enable VO-specific information provision. This paper describes a distributed architecture for an interoperable information service, which combines data unification and categorization with policies for VO membership, VO resource management and data transformations. This service builds the basis for an integrated and interoperating monitoring of Grids, which provide their data to more than one VO and utilize heterogeneous information services.     

The effect of time of day on injury patterns amongst adolescents in Australia

Labour force participation of adolescents in Australia is growing at an unprecedented rate. This increased participation is coupled with a growing realisation of the vulnerability of adolescents in the labour market in terms of occupational injury. Despite recent evidence that time of day may be an important determinant of adolescent injuries, the impact of non-standard and night work on adolescent injury rates has received scant attention to date. The current study addresses this shortcoming by examining injury patterns of 3201 working adolescents in Queensland. Results revealed that female adolescents are 2.5 times more likely to sustain an injury on day shift and 4.71 times more likely to sustain an injury on night shift than their adult counterparts when total work hours are taken into consideration. Similar results were found for male adolescents with an injury to work hours ratio of 2.19 on day shift and 3.05 on night shift. These findings point to the value of considering the temporal pattern of adolescent work in future research aimed at minimising injuries at work and improving the work experience of tomorrow's workforce.     

Prioritizing Information for the Discovery of Phenomena

We consider the problem of prioritizing a collection of discrete pieces of information, or transactions. The goal is to rank the transactions in such a way that the user can best pursue a subset of the transactions in hopes of discovering those which were generated by an interesting source. The problem is shown to differ from traditional classification in several fundamental ways. Ranking algorithms are divided into classes, depending on the amount of information they may utilize. We demonstrate that while ranking by the least constrained algorithm class is consistent with classification, such is not the case for a more constrained class of algorithms. We demonstrate also that while optimal ranking by the former class is easy, optimal ranking by the latter class is NP-hard. Finally, we present detectors which solve optimally restricted versions of the ranking problem, including symmetric anomaly detection.     

Computer-assisted techniques to enhance transformative learning in first-year literature courses

When students use computers as learning tools, the whole process of learning, and, indeed, the learners themselves, are transformed. This article illustrates some techniques that foster transformative learning in computer-assisted first-year literature classes: first, a lesson plan on A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning that uses Microsoft Word functions, including format painter, tables, and annotation to explore meaning in context; second, a plan for learners to use subconference options in the Daedalus Interactive Writing Environment to analyze Oedipus Rex; finally, a demonstration of how students engage in a meta-reflection process as they explore Barn Burning with Freelance Graphics.Marguerite Jamieson is an English instructor at Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, Maryland, and a doctoral student at George Mason University. Her research interests include forming bridges between adult learning theory and contemporary literary theory — especially drawing on transformational learning theory and the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and Lev Vygotsky.Rebecca Kajs holds a doctorate in English from Texas Woman's University with a concentration in rhetoric. For ten years, she taught the use of heuristic tools for reading analysis at the University of Texas at Arlington. She is currently an associate professor of English and Philosophy at Anne Arundel Community College.Anne Agee holds a doctorate in rhetoric from The Catholic University of America. A professor of English and formerly director of the Humanities Computer Center at Anne Arundel Community College, she is currently the college's Coordinator of Instructional Technology. Dr. Agee and Professor Jamieson have collaborated in a study of the learning environment in a computer classroom, the results of which were published in the Fall 1995 issue of Teaching/Learning Conversations. Dr. Agee has also published Using [Daedalus] InterChange as a Teachers' Journal in the Fall 1995 issue of Wings.