Using MapReduce Streaming for Distributed Life Simulation on the Cloud

Distributed software simulations are indispensable in the study of large-scale life models but often require the use of technically complex lower-level distributed computing frameworks, such as MPI. We propose to overcome the complexity challenge by applying the emerging MapReduce (MR) model to distributed life simulations and by running such simulations on the cloud. Technically, we design optimized MR streaming algorithms for discrete and continuous versions of Conway’s life according to a general MR streaming pattern. We chose life because it is simple enough as a testbed for MR’s applicability to a-life simulations and general enough to make our results applicable to various lattice-based a-life models. We implement and empirically evaluate our algorithms’ performance on Amazon’s Elastic MR cloud. Our experiments demonstrate that a single MR optimization technique called strip partitioning can reduce the execution time of continuous life simulations by 64%. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to propose and evaluate MR streaming algorithms for lattice-based simulations. Our algorithms can serve as prototypes in the development of novel MR simulation algorithms for large-scale lattice-based a-life models.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/scs_books/1014/thumbnail.jp

Distributing Cognition: A Defense of Collective Mentality

While ordinary language allows for the attribution of mental states to collectivities, there is broad agreement among philosophers and cognitive scientists that such attributions should not be taken literally because they are at best explanatorily superfluous and at worst wildly implausible. I argue that the widely shared philosophical assumption that mentality is exclusively a property of individuals is mistaken. One prominent objection to the idea that collectives could be in genuinely mental states is that they lack self-consciousness and the capacity for qualitative consciousness. I argue that neither self-consciousness nor qualitative consciousness is necessary for mentality. But I also show that both collective self-consciousness and qualitative consciousness are possible. Another objection states that collectives cannot possess representations above and beyond the representations in the minds of the individuals that compose them. I counter that representations in individual minds often depend on representations in lower-level subsystems and I argue that collective representations can arise in a similar way. I conclude by demonstrating that collective cognition is not a mere possibility; there are cases of collective cognition in the actual world

CACIC 2015 : XXI Congreso Argentino de Ciencias de la Computación. Libro de actas

Actas del XXI Congreso Argentino de Ciencias de la Computación (CACIC 2015), realizado en Sede UNNOBA Junín, del 5 al 9 de octubre de 2015.Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Brainlesion: Glioma, Multiple Sclerosis, Stroke and Traumatic Brain Injuries

This two-volume set LNCS 12962 and 12963 constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 7th International MICCAI Brainlesion Workshop, BrainLes 2021, as well as the RSNA-ASNR-MICCAI Brain Tumor Segmentation (BraTS) Challenge, the Federated Tumor Segmentation (FeTS) Challenge, the Cross-Modality Domain Adaptation (CrossMoDA) Challenge, and the challenge on Quantification of Uncertainties in Biomedical Image Quantification (QUBIQ). These were held jointly at the 23rd Medical Image Computing for Computer Assisted Intervention Conference, MICCAI 2020, in September 2021. The 91 revised papers presented in these volumes were selected form 151 submissions. Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held virtually. This is an open access book

John Ashbery in the World: Space, time and work

This thesis will argue that Ashbery’s subject is the contemporary world: a world of the automation of blue-collar labour, of suburbanisation, of surveillance, currency instability and the AIDs crisis. It begins from the premise that Ashbery’s poetry is intimately concerned with both experiencing and representing the world, and that the world that it describes is one that the reader can recognise and understand. As a corollary, it will situate Ashbery in the world in a philosophical, phenomenological and ecological sense, arguing that his poetry is fundamentally engaged in trying to represent not only the contingent, subjective experience of consciousness, but also a broader, collective experience of living through time and history. Although it will acknowledge the rich complexity, and, at times, the intractability, of Ashbery’s poetry, it will argue against the notion that it describes a world that is unrecognisable to, or unknowable by, the reader. Through close readings of both individual poems and collections, it will explore the way in which Ashbery’s poetry conveys meaning, and, in doing so, it will seek to identify what, and how, Ashbery’s poetry enables us to know about the world, even when this world cannot be adequately or comprehensively described

Trans Affects: Performance, Technology, and the Racialization of Femininity

Recognizing performance and technology as entangled modes of bodily expression, Trans Affects: Performance, Technology, and the Racialization of Femininity examines how Western tropes of Asian and Asian American femininity continue to shape differently sexed and gendered bodies. Drawing on Asian and Asian American artists in relation to U.S. contexts, this study enacts close readings of performances of hypersexuality, drag, and the trans body as they intersect with photography, Internet culture, multimedia installations, viral videos, biomedia, and emerging technologies. Specifically, the dissertation focuses on four contemporary artists: Laurel Nakadate, Ming Wong, Luo, and Yozmit. Employing “trans” as a theoretical lens to highlight affective capacities of art, I argue that “trans affects” in these performances resist the binary choice to either reject tropes or accept them as totalizing. The set of artists I explore do not engage in direct opposition to the stereotypes or tropes forwarded by processes of racialized femininity. Instead, they operate in more diffuse modes of affirmation, destabilization, confusion, and play, pointing to the possibilities that indeterminacy might offer politics and ethics. Trans affects accounts for the temporal crossings of affect and the political resistances of trans. As such, trans affects offers modes both of reading and politics. This study employs critical cultural methodologies, historically situating contemporary medial performances in cultural, linguistic, and political context. Through critical race/ethnic studies, queer theory, trans studies, and feminist theory, this interdisciplinary project demonstrates how performing and media-making might counter dominant normativizing modes of representation. Where scholarship on performance and technology has tended to eschew connections amongst race, gender, and sexuality, this project advances a comparative account of transnational racialized femininity in women, men, and those who defy the gender/sex binary. Moreover, where Asian and Asian American gender and sexuality studies have tended to focus on problems of representation, this dissertation offers tactics for resistance.Doctor of Philosoph

The Music Sound

A guide for music: compositions, events, forms, genres, groups, history, industry, instruments, language, live music, musicians, songs, musicology, techniques, terminology , theory, music video. Music is a human activity which involves structured and audible sounds, which is used for artistic or aesthetic, entertainment, or ceremonial purposes. The traditional or classical European aspects of music often listed are those elements given primacy in European-influenced classical music: melody, harmony, rhythm, tone color/timbre, and form. A more comprehensive list is given by stating the aspects of sound: pitch, timbre, loudness, and duration. Common terms used to discuss particular pieces include melody, which is a succession of notes heard as some sort of unit; chord, which is a simultaneity of notes heard as some sort of unit; chord progression, which is a succession of chords (simultaneity succession); harmony, which is the relationship between two or more pitches; counterpoint, which is the simultaneity and organization of different melodies; and rhythm, which is the organization of the durational aspects of music

Tematski zbornik radova međunarodnog značaja. Tom 3 / Međunarodni naučni skup “Dani Arčibalda Rajsa”, Beograd, 10-11. mart 2016.

In front of you is the Thematic Collection of Papers presented at the International Scientific Conference “Archibald Reiss Days”, which was organized by the Academy of Criminalistic and Police Studies in Belgrade, in co-operation with the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia, National Police University of China, Lviv State University of Internal Affairs, Volgograd Academy of the Russian Internal Affairs Ministry, Faculty of Security in Skopje, Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security in Ljubljana, Police Academy “Alexandru Ioan Cuza“ in Bucharest, Academy of Police Force in Bratislava and Police College in Banjaluka, and held at the Academy of Criminalistic and Police Studies, on 10 and 11 March 2016. The International Scientific Conference “Archibald Reiss Days” is organized for the sixth time in a row, in memory of the founder and director of the first modern higher police school in Serbia, Rodolphe Archibald Reiss, PhD, after whom the Conference was named. The Thematic Collection of Papers contains 165 papers written by eminent scholars in the field of law, security, criminalistics, police studies, forensics, informatics, as well as by members of national security system participating in education of the police, army and other security services from Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and United Kingdom. Each paper has been double-blind peer reviewed by two reviewers, international experts competent for the field to which the paper is related, and the Thematic Conference Proceedings in whole has been reviewed by five competent international reviewers. The papers published in the Thematic Collection of Papers contain the overview of contemporary trends in the development of police education system, development of the police and contemporary security, criminalistic and forensic concepts. Furthermore, they provide us with the analysis of the rule of law activities in crime suppression, situation and trends in the above-mentioned fields, as well as suggestions on how to systematically deal with these issues. The Collection of Papers represents a significant contribution to the existing fund of scientific and expert knowledge in the field of criminalistic, security, penal and legal theory and practice. Publication of this Collection contributes to improving of mutual cooperation betw