To keep pace with the tremendous bandwidth growth in cloud networking, web-scale providers, such as Microsoft, have been quick to adopt elastic features of modern optical networks. In particular, ...colorless flexible-grid reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers, bandwidth-variable transceivers, and the ability to choose a variety of optical source types are integral for cloud network operators to improve network efficiency while supporting a variety of service types. We take an in-depth look at Microsoft's deployed network infrastructure and discuss the impact of elasticity on network capacity and flexibility. As a proof-of-concept, a new elastic open line system (OLS), in which the line system components and the signal sources are disaggregated, was assembled in a laboratory environment, and 4000 km of propagation over primarily nonzero dispersion-shifted fiber using multiple source types is demonstrated. Finally, the long-term goal of unifying the control plane of the OLS, DWDM signal sources, routers, and Ethernet switches under a single software-defined network controller is briefly addressed.
Pliny’s Natural History, a large-scale encyclopedia containing more than 1.1 million words from the first century CE, provides a snapshot of scientific knowledge in the Roman Empire with sections ...devoted to topics such as geography, geology, zoology, botany, anthropology, minerology and an important overview of the history of Greek art. While scholars have used the Natural History as an ad hoc source for investigations about specific aspects of scientific knowledge in the Roman Empire, it is much more difficult to define the broader models that unify the work’s disparate parts because of its size and scope. Quantitative and computational text technologies provide a methodology that help us understand the nature of this monumental compendium of scientific knowledge from the Roman Empire and allow us to answer specific questions such as the nature of sources that were used, the interrelations of the topics covered in the text, and the ways that these topics have been adopted or reflected in the publication history of the work. This paper explores the ways that other scholars and editors have tried to make this massive work more manageable, and then talk about the ways that network analysis and other quantitative approaches can help us understand the sources that Pliny used when writing his work.
Working through the COVID-19 pandemic, many community colleges were driven to continue operations in a time of extreme uncertainty, all while dealing with enrollment declines, helping those already ...marginalized through wrap around services, and transforming educational service delivery in an online environment. Throughout rapidly changing circumstances of the pandemic and post-pandemic environments, equity-minded leaders are prompted to ask, "Are we doing enough?" The current article describes the COVID-19 responses of two community colleges in North Carolina, Forsyth Technical Community College, an urban institution serving the areas in and around Winston-Salem, and Wilkes Community College, serving a three-county service area in a more rural area of the North Carolina mountains. The approaches of the two colleges from different geographic areas shows both common and unique challenges, as we describe how they took action to (1) maintain continuity, (2) address enrollment declines and engage the disengaged, and (3) lead for the future through academic, workforce, and equity initiatives. The colleges benefited from a strong commitment among their faculty and staff to convert to virtual service delivery, engaged in bold actions that will pay dividends for years to come, and experienced their share of challenges implementing safety protocols. Some of the post-pandemic recommendations based on the experiences of the two colleges include: expecting greater demand for virtual learning, considering the needs of colleges from diverse geographies, committing to varied forms of communication in crisis, staying innovative even in uncertain times, and considering the needs of the whole student.
This article examined the extent to which residents living in the Midland-Saginaw-Bay City area in Eastern Michigan felt stigmatized due to industrial contamination. Seventy in-depth interviews were ...conducted with local residents, focusing on the extent to which they experienced three aspects of stigma--affective, cognitive, and behavioral. Results indicated that although some participants were not concerned with living in a contaminated community, local residents largely perceived dioxin as a risk to individual health and the local environment. Concern, shock, and irritation were typical affective responses at the time participants learned of the contamination. Several participants indicated a feeling of embarrassment and fear of being rejected by others because of the stigma associated with industrial contamination. Instead of actively seeking information about dioxin contamination and remediation, participants often relied on information provided to them by government officials. Behaviorally, participants avoided eating locally caught fish and prepared fish more carefully in order to avoid exposure to contaminants. As a whole, this study provided insight to understand affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses to environmental stigma.
The article presents a narrative review of scholarship on social support through social networking sites (SNSs) published from 2004 to 2015. By searching keywords related to social support and SNSs ...in major databases for social sciences, we identified and content analyzed directly relevant articles (N = 88). The article summarizes the prevalence of theory usage; the function of theory usage (e.g., testing a theory, developing a theory); major theories referenced; and methodologies, including research designs, measurement, and the roles of social support and SNS examined in this literature. It also reports four themes identified across the studies, indicating the trends in the current research. Based on the review, the article presents a discussion about study sites, conceptualization of social support, theoretical coherence, the role of social networks, and the dynamic relationships between SNS use and social support, which points out potential avenues for shaping a future research agenda.
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