Issues in using commodity operating systems for time-dependent tasks: experiences from a study of windows NT

ManuscriptThis paper presents a snapshot of early results from a study of Windows NT aimed at understanding and improving its limitations when used for time-dependent tasks, such as those that arise for audio and video processing. Clearly there are time scales for which it can achieve effectively perfect reliability, such as the onesecond deadlines present in the Tiger Video Filesystem. Other time scales, such as reliable sub-millisecond scheduling of periodic tasks in user space, are clearly out of reach. Yet, there is an interesting middle ground between these time scales in which deadlines may be met, but will not always be. This study focuses on system and application behaviors in this region with the short-term goals of understanding and improving the real-time responsiveness of applications using Windows NT 5.0 and a longer-term goal of prototyping and recommending possible scheduling and resource management enhancements to future Microsoft systems products. Finally, while this paper primarily contains examples and results from Windows NT, we believe that the kinds of limitations and artifacts identified may also apply to other commodity systems such as the many UNIX variants. Indeed, this paper is primarily intended to provide a starting point for fruitful discussions along these lines at the workshop and not as a record of completed work

No-tillage for flooded rice in Brazilian subtropical paddy fields: history, challenges, advances and perspectives.

No-tillage (NT) has been one of the main advances related to soil management in Brazilian agriculture in the last 30 years. However, its full adoption in lowland areas that are traditionally cultivated with flooded rice is still incipient (<5 %). The main reasons are associated with the soil hydromorphic condition and the management of highly recalcitrant residual crop biomass, demanding soil disturbance even occasionally. This review presents a historical survey about the soil management systems utilized in lowland areas in southern Brazil, emphasizing the experiences of NT adoption in areas with flooded rice. Results from studies focused on the main changes in chemical, physical, and microbiological soil properties due to NT adoption were addressed, as well as the NT effects on greenhouse gas emissions and crop yields. Finally, the main challenges and prospects for NT were discussed considering new emerging scenarios for flooded rice production in lowlands, especially soybean rotation and integrated agricultural production systems. No-tillage can increase the soil organic carbon, the cation exchangeable capacity and tends to promote the accumulation of nutrients as nitrogen in surface layers. Improvements in soil aggregation, porosity and water availability are usually observed in NT, but only if medium or long-term trials are considered. NT favors microbial activity in the shallower soil layer by promoting microbial biomass carbon (+45 %), microbial biomass nitrogen (+54 %) and basal respiration (+54 %) compared to conventional tillage (CT), while the activity of extracellular enzymes also may be stimulated. Crop yield tends to be similar among the soil managements systems over time. Seasonal CH4 emissions might be reduced by 21 % with NT adoption without increasing N2O. Plant breeding and geotechnology advances associated with soybean market valuation intensified the introduction of this crop in paddy fields. The main challenge for the full adoption of NT is the need for soil tillage after rice harvesting to correct soil surface irregularities or manage rice straw. In the future, advances in plant breeding and drainage techniques probably will favor the expansion of NT in southern Brazil lowlands. The traditional system of flooded rice cultivation, based on CT and monoculture associated with beef cattle under extensive grazing, is no longer viable and will not be further established.First online

A heuristic approach for big bucket multi-level production planning problems

Multi-level production planning problems in which multiple items compete for the same resources frequently occur in practice, yet remain daunting in their difficulty to solve. In this paper, we propose a heuristic framework that can generate high quality feasible solutions quickly for various kinds of lot-sizing problems. In addition, unlike many other heuristics, it generates high quality lower bounds using strong formulations, and its simple scheme allows it to be easily implemented in the Xpress-Mosel modeling language. Extensive computational results from widely used test sets that include a variety of problems demonstrate the efficiency of the heuristic, particularly for challenging problems

A computational analysis of lower bounds for big bucket production planning problems

In this paper, we analyze a variety of approaches to obtain lower bounds for multi-level production planning problems with big bucket capacities, i.e., problems in which multiple items compete for the same resources. We give an extensive survey of both known and new methods, and also establish relationships between some of these methods that, to our knowledge, have not been presented before. As will be highlighted, understanding the substructures of difficult problems provide crucial insights on why these problems are hard to solve, and this is addressed by a thorough analysis in the paper. We conclude with computational results on a variety of widely used test sets, and a discussion of future research

The Performance of Private Equity Funds: Does Diversification Matter?

This paper is the first systematic analysis of the impact of diversification on the performance of private equity funds. A unique data set allows the exact evaluation of diversification across the dimensions financing stages, industries, and countries. Very different levels of diversification can be observed across sample funds. While some funds are highly specialized others are highly diversified. The empirical results show that the rate of return of private equity funds declines with diversification across financing stages, but increases with diversification across industries. Accordingly, the fraction of portfolio companies which have a negative return or return nothing at all, increase with diversification across financing stages. Diversification across countries has no systematic effect on the performance of private equity funds

Catalyzing Environmental Results: Lessons in Advocacy Organization-Business Partnerships

Provides guidelines for environmental advocacy groups seeking to work with business partners. Distills the lessons of almost a decade of working with corporate partnership projects

Inventory management in railway sleepers: A simulation model for replacement strategies

This paper describes the development of a simulation model to assess the inventory requirements of alternative rail sleeper replacement strategies. The main aim of the model is to determine the optimal replacement strategy, given replacement costs and resultant train operating cost benefits. We consider the replacement problem under the following assumptions: The time to failure under constant stress follows a Weibull distribution and the scale parameter is a function of stress level and the three stress levels under normal (all adjacent units are good), medium-stress (one adjacent unit has failed) and high-stress conditions (two adjacent units are failed) are considered. The cumulative exposure model is used to model the failure distributions. The operational cost per unit time depends on the maximum number of consecutive failed units. The replacement cost consists of the fixed cost and variable cost proportional to the number of units replaced. A finite horizon is considered and total expected cost is a criterion for comparing the proposed policies. The model has been tested using rail system data and the results are presented in this paper