Network edge packet-processing systems, as are commonly implemented on network processor platforms, are increasingly required to support a rich set of services. These multi-service systems are also subjected to widely varying and unpredictable traffic. Current network processor systems do not simultaneously deal well with a variety of services and fluctuating workloads. For example, current methods of worst-case, static provisioning can meet performance requirements for any workload, but provisioning each service for its worst case reduces the total number of services that can be supported. Alternately, profiledriven automatic-partitioning compilers create efficient binaries for multi-service applications for specific workloads but they are sensitive to workload fluctuations. Run-time adaptation is a potential solution to this problem. With run-time adaptation, the mapping of services to system resources can be dynamically adjusted based on the workload. We have implemented an adaptive system that automatically changes the mapping of services to processors, and handles migration of services between different processor core types to match the current workload. In this paper we explain our adaptive system built on the Intel ® IXP2400 network processor. We demonstrate that it outperforms multiple different profile-driven compiled solutions for most workloads and performs within 20% of the optimal compiled solution for the remaining workloads.

The context for the paper is the inclusion of a 64-year old cartoon in the Political Science textbook that caused an uproar in the Indian parliament in 2012. The controversy draws attention to the two-facedness of any political cartoon which is an artistic representation of a historical event. It is, hence, ambivalent by being an expression of artistic freedom as well as a humorous comment on history where the axis of representation intersects the axis of history. The representation of the Dalit icon, Ambedkar, was objectionable to the political party espousing the Dalit cause which, through its leader, Tirumavalavan, raised the issue in parliament. The paper posits that the reaction was an event that was hitherto dormant and that it erupted on account of elements that fed its potential for virality in the environment, thereby, turning it into a fact. To this end, the paper revives interest in the imitation theory of the French sociologist, Gabriel Tarde, who, incidentally, was an intellectual influence on Ambedkar. Moreover, it employs Zeno Vendler’s distinction between an “event” and a "fact”, the Deleuzian idea of “assemblage,” and the idea of “conceptual metaphor” as laid out by Lakoff and Johnson. The paper reads the vicissitudes of the cartoon in order to theorize the elements that cause virality in a communicative environment.

Political cartooning was one among the many cultural products that colonial rule introduced in India. This British legacy has been used to produce narratives about the nature and history of Indian cartooning. However, these narratives have, invariably, overlooked the distinctly Indian cultural ethos as well as the Indian satirical tradition. The paper proposes an alternative model by positing that in the Indian satirical tradition, the Vidusaka – the comic figure in Sanskrit drama - has been an antecedent to the political cartoonist in terms of the social and political role as well as the nature and purpose of the humour.      The paper also locates the principles of caricaturing in precolonial Indian visual arts, and presents the early vernacular cartoons as the point of convergence between the local satirical tradition and the western format of the political cartoon which laid the foundation for a modern yet specifically Indian sensibility

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AbstractThe paper elucidates the “paradox of comedy”—a perpetual philosophical concern regarding the nature of theatrical/stage comedy—through a cross-cultural comparison between Bharatamuni’s (circa 500 A.D.) and Henri Bergson’s (1859–1941) theorization of the comic and thereupon, fathoms the Indian comic tradition in the canon of comedy studies. Bharata’s hāsya in Nāṭya Śāstra and Bergson’s Laughter become tenable for a comparative aesthetic study as they approach the stagecraft of the comic socio-aesthetically. The comic paradox implies the tension in the nature of comedy, which on one hand has to arouse emotion in the audience and simultaneously, has to detach them from the emotion for the comic manifestation. This is further elaborated through: the personal and social nature of the comic; the absence and presence of feeling; the degrees of the comic paradox through detachment and indifference; the identification and isolation of the character; the aim of the comedy. The authors argue for Bergson’s position of the comic as an ‘outward’ and Bharata’s as an ‘inward-outward’ operation. The study also includes an appendix, which validates Bergson’s approach to laughter as the earliest attempt to dedicate an elaborate study on the nature of the comic.