Duas abordagens de acesso a objetos em ambientes distribuidos

Orientador: Edmundo Roberto Mauro MadeiraDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Matematica, Estatistica e Ciencia da ComputaçãoResumo: O propósito dessa dissertação é a apresentação e a análise de formas de acesso a objetos em ambientes distribuídos com o objetivo de otimizar e facilitar ao cliente o acesso a serviços disponíveis em sistemas distribuídos. Para o desenvolvimento de nosso trabalho consideramos as especificações referentes ao processamento distribuído aberto (ODP - Open Distributed Processing), modelos de interfaces para programas de aplicação(APls - Application Program Interface) e plataformas comerciais de serviços distribuídos. A primeira forma propõe especificar uma interface para programas de aplicação, baseada na metodologia orientada a objetos, oferecendo um conjunto de serviços distribuídos fornecidos por plataformas comerciais existentes, para o desenvolvimento, manutenção e execução de aplicações. A segunda forma é baseada na arquitetura CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture), no qual especificamos um esquema de acesso aos objetos desta arquitetura. Este esquema é baseado em repositórios de interfaces e implementações. Este esquema possibilita que as informações referentes a estes repositórios sejam obtidas de forma mais rápida e segura. Com isso espera-se que a CORBA proporcione melhores condições à camada Middleware de prover facilidades no processamento distribuído para as aplicações, em especial para as aplicações da plataforma Multiware que está sendo desenvolvida na UNICAMPAbstract: The purpose of this dissertation is to present and to analyse ways to access objects in distributed environments, as a means to optimize and to facilitate to the client the access to the distributed system services. The specifications of the open distributed processing (ODP - Open Distributed Processing), the models of the application program interfaces (APIs - Application Program Interface) and commercial distributed plataforms were considered for the development of this work. The first proposed specifies an application program interface, using an oriented-object methodology, to offer a group of services supplied by the existent commercial distributed plataforms to the development, running and management of distributed applications. The second proposed is based on the CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) architecture, where we specified an access scheme to the objects of this environment. This scheme is based on implementation and interface repositories. This scheme provides that the repository information is got quickly and safely. Then the Middleware layer provides distributed processing facilities to the applications, specially to the applications of the Multiware plataform, that is being developed at UNICAMPMestradoMestre em Ciência da Computaçã

Global Technical Communication and Content Management: A Study of Multilingual Quality

The field of technical communication (TC) is facing a dilemma. Content management (CM) strategies and technologies that completely reshape writing and translation practices are adopted in an increasing number of TC work groups. One driving factor in CM adoption is the promise of improving quality of multilingual technical texts, all the while reducing time/cost of technical translation and localization. Yet, CM relies on automation and privileges consistency¯an approach that is problematic in global TC with its focus on adapting texts based on the characteristics of end-users. To better understand the interdisciplinary dilemma of multilingual quality in CM, during my dissertation project I conducted a twelve-month long qualitative case study of multilingual quality at a leading manufacturer of medical equipment who had adopted CM strategies and technologies to create technical texts in several languages three years before my study began. In my study, I drew upon an interdisciplinary theoretical base (genre ecology framework, activity theory, actor-network theory, and Skopos theory) to examine the construction of multilingual quality understandings and approaches by global TC stakeholders who are employees and contractors of the company and the role of CM in their practices. Examination of the extensive data I collected through observations, interviews, questionnaires, document collection/content analysis, and software exploration uncovered the staggering disconnects in understandings of and approaches to multilingual quality. These disconnects resulted from the lack communication between stakeholders and were promoted by the different relations to CM technology and the mediating work of the new genre, chunks of content. Inhibited knowledge sharing, risk of expertise invisibility and loss, and constrained new ideas about improving multilingual quality were some of the rhetorical, social, and political implications of these disconnects. As a result of my analysis, I sketched strategies for achieving contextualized multiple-stakeholder approaches to multilingual quality and outlined leadership possibilities for technical communicators in global information development. This analysis provides TC practitioners with strategies for improving multilingual quality in CM contexts; TC educators with ideas for expanding teaching approaches by combining digital and cross-cultural literacies; and TC researchers with opportunities for rhetorical action through critiquing, theorizing, and innovating CM

Improving Cognitive Visual-Motor Abilities in Individuals with Down Syndrome

Down syndrome causes a reduction in cognitive abilities, with visual-motor skills being particularly affected. In this work, we have focused on this skill in order to stimulate better learning. The proposal relies on stimulating the cognitive visual-motor skills of individuals with Down Syndrome (DS) using exercises with a gestural interaction platform based on the KINECT sensor named TANGO:H, the goal being to improve them. To validate the proposal, an experimental single-case study method was designed using two groups: a control group and an experimental one, with similar cognitive ages. Didactic exercises were provided to the experimental group using visual cognitive stimulation. These exercises were created on the TANGO:H Designer, a platform that was designed for gestural interaction using the KINECT sensor. As a result, TANGO:H allows for visual-motor cognitive stimulation through the movement of hands, arms, feet and head. The “Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA)” was applied to both groups as a pre-test and post-test in its four reference sections: visual comprehension, visual-motor sequential memory, visual association, and visual integration. Two checks were made, one using the longitudinal comparison of the pre-test/post-test of the experimental group, and another that relied on comparing the difference of the means of the pre-test/post-test. We also used an observational methodology for the working sessions from the experimental group. Although the statistical results do not show significant differences between the two groups, the results of the observations exhibited an improvement in visual-motor cognitive skills

Restorative virtual environments for rehabilitation: interactive technologies for enhanced recovery following critical illness and injury

The expectation for patients surviving admission to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is that they make the best possible functional recovery. Rehabilitation from the point of physiological stability is directed at reducing the impact of the consequences of critical illness. It was proposed that interactive technologies (iTech) could be used by patients on the ICU to enhance their trajectory and experience of recovery. The aim of this research was to develop and evaluate methodologies to investigate the feasibility of introducing novel iTech-based systems to the ICU. Four novel Virtual Natural Environments were combined with commercial-off-the-shelf technologies to produce interventions to improve pain management and sleep and enhance deep breathing and cycling exercises. Cohort and intervention choice were informed by the development of programme theories describing how the interventions might work. These were further developed and used to investigate mediators and modifiers of response to the interventions. Human Centred Design and Usability Engineering techniques were combined with methods to evaluate complex interventions in clinical settings. The four feasibility studies developed and refined methodologies to evaluate their usefulness and effectiveness. This research concludes with lessons learned and a guide to inform future development and implementation

Johnson Space Center Research and Technology 1993 Annual Report

Johnson Space Center research and technology accomplishments during fiscal year 1993 are described and principle researchers and technologists are identified as contacts for further information. Each of the four sections gives a summary of overall progress in a major discipline, followed by detailed, illustrated descriptions of significant tasks. The four disciplines are Life Sciences, Human Support Technology, Solar Systems Sciences, and Space Systems Technology. The report is intended for technical and management audiences throughout the NASA and worldwide aerospace community. An index lists project titles, funding codes, and principal investigators

Towards lattice Boltzmann models for climate sciences : The GeLB programming language with applications

The complexity of Earth system models (ESMs) is continuously increasing a both quantitatively (higher spatio-temporal resolution for existing models) and qualitatively (accounting for additional processes). These trends are sustained by growing capabilities of computers and (equally important) by innovative algorithms. Better algorithms can lead to more accurate and/or more efficient numerical solutions. Efficiency attracted more attention during the last decade when, due to thermal limitations, the driving force behind increased computing performance has shifted from higher clock-frequencies (lower latencies) to more hardware parallelism (higher throughput). Not all numerical algorithms are suited for the new massively-parallel machines a some established approaches can reach plateaus in terms of performance scalability, which motivates ongoing research to find alternatives that thrive on the new hardware. In this thesis the potential of the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is analyzed, as a promising alternative for modeling processes relevant to ESMs . During the last two decades, this relatively new approach was successfully applied to many flow problems in engineering (simulation of multi-phase and multi-component flows, melting processes, flows in porous media, and direct numerical simulation (DNS) of turbulence). At the core of any LBM algorithm is a simplified physical landscape inspired by the kinetic theory of gases, with a mesoscopica particles which interact (collisions) and then propagate freely (streaming). This idealized dynamics (usually with local interactions) leads to algorithms which are particularly suited for parallel execution a a key property, which is also interesting for ESMs . However, the impact of LBM on Earth system models was small so far, due to limitations of the early LBM algorithms. The method deserves reconsideration, due to recent advances on improving its stability, a simplified implementation of accurate body-forces, and accurate simulation of thermal flows. This thesis adds two main contributions to this direction: (a) From a computer science (CS) / technical perspective, the new GeLB domain-specific language (DSL) is introduced, to facilitate testing and development of new LBM algorithms. By isolating many of the technical implementation side-issues away from the core physical algorithm, this new tool aims to counteract some of the a fragmentationa of the LBM research, by: (i) shortening the time to develop a parallel simulation from an algorithm idea, (ii) serving as a basis for objective comparisons of different physical algorithms, and by (iii) facilitating sharing of algorithms. (b) From a physical point of view, several flow-problems related to climate sciences are simulated, taking advantage of the recent progress in the LBM research literature. First, the Rayleigh-Benard ( RB ) problem is simulated (in 2D and 3D configurations). The evolution of the flow in this problem is driven by buoyancy forces which can trigger convection (similar to convection in the atmosphere, or to the intermittent bursts of deep-reaching convection, which significantly influence the composition and circulation of oceanic water-masses). As a last application, simulation results are shown for the wind-driven ocean circulation (WDOC) of an idealized barotropic ocean, to which one of the more recent LBM algorithms is applied for the first time (first with an idealized geometry, then with a realistic global land-mask)