The Northbound (NB) APIs that SDN controllers provide differ in terms of architecture, syntax, naming convention, data resources, and usage. Using NB APIs to write SDN applications makes each application dependent on the API of a specific controller. To bring NB APIs from different vendors under one umbrella and make programming of SDN applications independent of specific controllers, we propose a unified software defined development framework that we call Umbrella. This paper presents the key components of the software and reports some preliminary results.

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In this article, we present for the first time a research analysis for the size-dependent effects on thermal buckling and post-buckling behaviors of functionally graded material micro-plates with porosities (imperfect FGM) using isogeometric analysis. A seventh-order shear deformation plate theory associated with the modified couple stress theory (MCST) is particularly imposed to capture the size-dependent phenomenon within imperfect FGM micro-plates. The material properties of imperfect FGM micro-plates with three different distributions of porosities including even, uneven and logarithmic-uneven varying across the plate thickness are derived from the modified rule-of-mixture assumption. The nonlinear governing equation for sizedependent imperfect FGM micro-plate under uniform, linear and nonlinear temperature rise is derived using the Von-Kármán assumption and Hamilton's principle. Through numerical example, the effect of temperature rise, boundary conditions, power index, porosity volume fraction, porosity distribution pattern and material length scale parameter on thermal buckling and post-buckling behaviors of FGP micro-plates are investigated.

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This study examines the determinants of dividend payout policy by analyzing the behavior of 226 nonfinancial firms in three emerging markets in the ASEAN region from 2012 to 2016. The OLS regression model is employed to investigate the impacts of firms' characteristics and countries' factor on dividend payout decisions. The results show that the dividend payout is positively related with profitability. In contrast, growth opportunity has a negative effect on dividend payout. Other factors such as firm size, free cash flow, financial leverage and liquidity have little or no significant relationships with dividend payout decisions. A further contribution of this research is that it considers the impact of law on firms and their investor relationships. The results from this analysis reveal that firms in countries with higher investor protection tend to pay more dividends. Contribution/ Originality: This research has examined the impact of determinants on dividend payouts. OLS is used in this study. We found that profitability is positively related with dividend payouts but that growth opportunity has a negative effect. Other determinants such as firm size, free cash flow, financial leverage and liquidity have little or no significant relationships with dividend payouts.

Abstract-Content-Centric Networking (CCN) is designed for efficient content dissemination and supports caching contents on the path from content providers to content consumers to improve user experience and reduce costs. However, this strategy is not optimal inside a domain. In this paper, we propose a solution to improve caching in CCN using a Software-Defined Networking approach.

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We study fluctuations around the warped conifold supergravity solution of Klebanov and Tseytlin [1], known to be dual to a cascading N = 1 gauge theory. Although this supergravity background is not asymptotically AdS, corresponding to a non-conformal field theory, it is possible to apply the usual methods of AdS/CFT duality to extract the high energy behavior of field theory correlators by solving linearized equations of motion for fluctuations around the background. We consider the Goldstone vector dual to the anomalous R-symmetry current and compute its mass, which exactly matches the general prediction of [14]. We find the high energy 2-point functions for the R-current and two other vectors. As expected, the R-current 2-point function has a longitudinal part because R-symmetry is broken. We also calculate the high energy 2-point function of the energymomentum tensor from fluctuations of modes in the graviton sector. This 2-point function has a trace part corresponding to broken conformal symmetry.Keywords: AdS-CFT and dS-CFT Correspondence, Anomalies in Field and String Theories.As usual, we transform to momentum space, and seek normalized solutions of the form ∂ · W 1 (r, k)(r → ∞) → 1 , ∂ · W 2 (r, k)(r → ∞) → 0 , C(r, k)(r → ∞) → 0 , W r (r, k)(r → ∞) → 0 , K r (r, k)(r → ∞) → 0 . (4.69)