Visual Occam: High level visualization and design of process networks

With networks, multiprocessors, and multi-threaded systems becoming more common in our world it is increasingly evident that concurrent programming is not something to be ignored or marginalized even though many takes on concurrency (mainly by means of monitors or shared resources) have proven to be difficult to deal with on large scales. Thankfully, a good deal of work has already been done to combat this, through CSP, occam, and other such derivatives, to produce a scalable process oriented paradigm. Still, it is cumbersome to attempt to deal with the intricacies of such communicating networks down to every minutia; if, instead, it was possible to manage communicating elements on a higher level it would be far more practical to design large scale networks of processes! As such, Visual Occam has been designed to automate some of the inner workings of occam to allow any user (novice or otherwise) the ability to create complex networks of communicating processes through easy to understand user interactions and interfaces. Taking a number of cues from digital circuit design software and modern integrated development environments, it is possible to select components (both predefined and arbitrarily complex user created systems) from a library of objects, hook them together in a network, and produce compilable code without having to worry about how or why the chosen components perform their function. Since any of these components may themselves be networks of processes, it becomes trivial to construct large systems that would otherwise be unwieldy to put together by hand. The end result? A high level, easy to understand, visual abstraction of those concurrent networks previously so frustrating to develop

Data Technology in Materials Modelling

This open access book discusses advances in semantic interoperability for materials modelling, aiming at integrating data obtained from different methods and sources into common frameworks, and facilitating the development of platforms where simulation services in computational molecular engineering can be provided as well as coupled and linked to each other in a standardized and reliable way. The Virtual Materials Marketplace (VIMMP), which is open to all service providers and clients, provides a framework for offering and accessing such services, assisting the uptake of novel modelling and simulation approaches by SMEs, consultants, and industrial R&D end users. Semantic assets presented include the EngMeta metadata schema for research data infrastructures in simulation-based engineering and the collection of ontologies from VIMMP, including the ontology for simulation, modelling, and optimization (OSMO) and the VIMMP software ontology (VISO)

Developing the system of collecting, storing and processing information from solar collectors

В данной статье представлена новая методика управления системой сбора, хранения и обработки информации от солнечных коллекторов, которая может применяться для обогрева промышленных и бытовых отсеков для горячего водоснабжения. Наиболее выгодное использование солнечных коллекторов в промышленности - замена помех от человека сетями беспроводных датчиков. Стандартная система солнечного коллектора потребляет в среднем 30% тепла из-за плохого управления и конфигурации. Наша система контроля и управления позволяет повысить производительность обогрева производственных и бытовых помещений с помощью солнечного коллектора для горячего водоснабжения

An Examination of Open- and Closed-Economic Conditions in Operant Research

The effect of economic condition on the relation between responding and overall rate of reinforcement has been an area of recent interest in operant research. The present research was conducted to determine whether the manipulation of the economic condition, by the systematic manipulation of the provision of substitute food, has an effect on this relation and whether open- and closed-economies represent two opposing alternatives or two parametric extremes along- a continuum. The results of two experiments conducted with pigeons using variable-interval and fixed-ratio schedules of reinforcement suggest that the manipulation of economic condition has a controlling effect on the relation between responding and overall rate of reinforcement, that open- and closed- economies are likely to represent points along- a continuum rather than all-or-none conditions, and that the differences in the response-to- reinforcement relation between open- and closed-economies are likely due to an interaction of incentive and regulatory effects. Additionally, specific methodological considerations for further research in this area are suggested

HALO: Post-Link Heap-Layout Optimisation

Today, general-purpose memory allocators dominate the landscape of dynamic memory management. While these so- lutions can provide reasonably good behaviour across a wide range of workloads, it is an unfortunate reality that their behaviour for any particular workload can be highly suboptimal. By catering primarily to average and worst-case usage patterns, these allocators deny programs the advantages of domain-specific optimisations, and thus may inadvertently place data in a manner that hinders performance, generating unnecessary cache misses and load stalls. To help alleviate these issues, we propose HALO: a post-link profile-guided optimisation tool that can improve the layout of heap data to reduce cache misses automatically. Profiling the target binary to understand how allocations made in different contexts are related, we specialise memory-management routines to allocate groups of related objects from separate pools to increase their spatial locality. Unlike other solutions of its kind, HALO employs novel grouping and identification algorithms which allow it to create tight-knit allocation groups using the entire call stack and to identify these efficiently at runtime. Evaluation of HALO on contemporary out-of-order hardware demonstrates speedups of up to 28% over jemalloc, out-performing a state-of-the-art data placement technique from the literature

Co-sourcing in software development offshoring: A case study of risk perception and alleviation

Software development projects are increasingly geographical distributed with offshoring, which introduce complex risks that can lead to project failure. Co-sourcing is a highly integrative and cohesive approach, seen successful, to software development offshoring. However, research of how co-sourcing shapes the perception and alleviation of common offshoring risks is limited. We present a case study of how a certified CMMI-level 5 Danish software supplier approaches these risks in offshore co-sourcing. The paper explains how common offshoring risks are perceived and alleviated when adopting the co-sourcing strategy in a mature (CMMI level 5) software development organization. We found that most of the common offshoring risks were perceived and alleviated in accordance with previous research, with the exception of the task distribution risk area. In this case, high task uncertainty, equivocality, and coupling across sites was perceived more as risk alleviation than risk taking. This perception of task distribution was combined with high attention to the closely interrelated structure and technology components in terms of CMMI and the actors’ cohesion and integration in terms of Scrum