A Functional Approach to Standard Binary Heaps

This paper describes a new and purely functional implementation technique of binary heaps. A binary heap is a tree-based data structure that implements priority queue operations (insert, remove, minimum/maximum) and guarantees at worst logarithmic running time for them. Approaches and ideas described in this paper present a simple and asymptotically optimal implementation of immutable binary heap

Hospital Community Benefits After the ACA: Partnerships for Community Health Improvement

Examines states' and localities' efforts to promote community health and systemic change through collaborations focused on community health needs assessments, priority setting, strategic planning, and the implementation of health improvement initiatives

Time Driven Priority Router Implementation and First Experiments

This paper reports on the implementation of Time-Driven Priority (TDP) scheduling on a FreeBSD platform. This work is part of a TDP prototyping and demonstration project aimed at showing the implications of TDP deployment in packet-switched networks, especially benefits for real-time applications. This paper focuses on practical aspects related to the implementation of the technology on a Personal Computer (PC)-based router and presents the experimental results obtained on a testbed network. The basic building blocks of a TDP router are described and implementation choices are discussed. The relevant results achieved and here presented can be categorized into two types: qualitative results, including the successful integration of all needed blocks and the insight obtained on the complexity related to the implementation of a TDP router, and quantitative ones, including measures of achievable network utilization and of jitter experienced on a fully-loaded TDP network. The outcome demonstrates the effectiveness of the presented implementation while confirming TDP points of strengt

Involving citizens in priority setting for public health research: Implementation in infection research

Background Public sources fund the majority of UK infection research, but citizens currently have no formal role in resource allocation. To explore the feasibility and willingness of citizens to engage in strategic decision making, we developed and tested a practical tool to capture public priorities for research. Method A scenario including six infection themes for funding was developed to assess citizen priorities for research funding. This was tested over two days at a university public festival. Votes were cast anonymously along with rationale for selection. The scenario was then implemented during a three-hour focus group exploring views on engagement in strategic decisions and in-depth evaluation of the tool. Results 188/491(38%) prioritized funding research into drug-resistant infections followed by emerging infections(18%). Results were similar between both days. Focus groups contained a total of 20 citizens with an equal gender split, range of ethnicities and ages ranging from 18 to >70 years. The tool was perceived as clear with participants able to make informed comparisons. Rationale for funding choices provided by voters and focus group participants are grouped into three major themes: (i) Information processing; (ii) Knowledge of the problem; (iii) Responsibility; and a unique theme within the focus groups (iv) The potential role of citizens in decision making. Divergent perceptions of relevance and confidence of “non-experts” as decision makers were expressed. Conclusion Voting scenarios can be used to collect, en-masse, citizens' choices and rationale for research priorities. Ensuring adequate levels of citizen information and confidence is important to allow deployment in other formats

Recent Developments in Bulgarian Transport Privatization Policy

Expanding Bulgaria’s political, economic, and cultural cooperation with the countries of Asia is a major priority of the Bulgarian government policy. Transport plays a key role in the implementation of this priority both by providing the necessary conditions for international transit traffic and by meeting the needs of the Bulgarian economy and population. Structural reform in transport to a great extent depends on a sustainable investment policy. At present, prevailing conditions are likely to attract investments, especially to the airports of Sofia and Bourgas. In recent years, the Bulgarian State Railways (“BDZh”) has lagged behind in its development in comparison with the other transport modes in the country and the railways in other European countries. The rehabilitation of the railways is crucial not only for BDZh itself but also for the entire country because the railways are the backbone of the international transport corridors that cross Bulgaria. The management of the Ministry of Transport considers privatization a significant element of the structural reform in the branch. The introduction details how expanding Bulgaria\u27s political, economic, and cultural cooperation with the countries of Asia is a major priority of the Bulgarian government policy, and how transport plays a key role in the implementation of this priority both by providing the necessary conditions for international transit traffic and by meeting the needs of the Bulgarian economy and population. Part I addresses how structural reform in transport to a great extent depends on a sustainable investment policy. Part II focuses on the opportunities which investment in airports present. Part III addresses the advantages of investment in ports. Part IV focusses on Bulgarian State Railways. Finally, Part V addresses how privatization intersects with each of these transport sectors and is a significant element of structural reform

Recent Developments in Bulgarian Transport Privatization Policy

Expanding Bulgaria’s political, economic, and cultural cooperation with the countries of Asia is a major priority of the Bulgarian government policy. Transport plays a key role in the implementation of this priority both by providing the necessary conditions for international transit traffic and by meeting the needs of the Bulgarian economy and population. Structural reform in transport to a great extent depends on a sustainable investment policy. At present, prevailing conditions are likely to attract investments, especially to the airports of Sofia and Bourgas. In recent years, the Bulgarian State Railways (“BDZh”) has lagged behind in its development in comparison with the other transport modes in the country and the railways in other European countries. The rehabilitation of the railways is crucial not only for BDZh itself but also for the entire country because the railways are the backbone of the international transport corridors that cross Bulgaria. The management of the Ministry of Transport considers privatization a significant element of the structural reform in the branch. The introduction details how expanding Bulgaria\u27s political, economic, and cultural cooperation with the countries of Asia is a major priority of the Bulgarian government policy, and how transport plays a key role in the implementation of this priority both by providing the necessary conditions for international transit traffic and by meeting the needs of the Bulgarian economy and population. Part I addresses how structural reform in transport to a great extent depends on a sustainable investment policy. Part II focuses on the opportunities which investment in airports present. Part III addresses the advantages of investment in ports. Part IV focusses on Bulgarian State Railways. Finally, Part V addresses how privatization intersects with each of these transport sectors and is a significant element of structural reform

A Bulk-Parallel Priority Queue in External Memory with STXXL

We propose the design and an implementation of a bulk-parallel external memory priority queue to take advantage of both shared-memory parallelism and high external memory transfer speeds to parallel disks. To achieve higher performance by decoupling item insertions and extractions, we offer two parallelization interfaces: one using "bulk" sequences, the other by defining "limit" items. In the design, we discuss how to parallelize insertions using multiple heaps, and how to calculate a dynamic prediction sequence to prefetch blocks and apply parallel multiway merge for extraction. Our experimental results show that in the selected benchmarks the priority queue reaches 75% of the full parallel I/O bandwidth of rotational disks and and 65% of SSDs, or the speed of sorting in external memory when bounded by computation.Comment: extended version of SEA'15 conference pape