New Shop Floor Control Approaches for Virtual Enterprises

The virtual enterprise paradigm seems a fit response to face market instability and the volatile nature of business opportunities increasing enterprise’s interest in similar forms of networked organisations. The dynamic environment of a virtual enterprise requires that partners in the consortium own reconfigurable shop floors. This paper presents new approaches to shop floor control that meet the requirements of the new industrial paradigms and argues on work re-organization at shop floor level.virtual enterprise; networked organisations

A Computer-Based Intervention with Elements of Virtual Reality and Limited Therapist Assistance for the Treatment of PTSD : Efficacy, Acceptance and Future Implications

The main objective of this dissertation was to investigate the overall efficacy, acceptance and future implications of the 3MR (Multi Modal Memory Restructuring) intervention for the treatment of PTSD (‘post-traumatic stress disorder’). The 3MR intervention is a computer-based trauma intervention with elements of Virtual Reality (VR) and limited therapist involvement for the treatment of PTSD. To determine the efficacy of the 3MR intervention, we conducted a randomized controlled trial (RCT) amongst traumatized victims of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and war veterans. In this trial we compared the effects of the 3MR intervention to those of more regular, evidence-based treatment methods (‘treatment as usual’, TAU). A total of 44 patients with PTSD was included in the RCT and results showed that symptoms of PTSD and depression both significantly decreased and that there was no significant difference found between the two treatment conditions (3MR and TAU). This research may form an adequate first step in the direction of future use of this computer-based intervention for the treatment of PTSD. This research is part of the VESP (‘Virtual eCoaching and Storytelling technology for Post-traumatic stress disorder treatment’) project

New Shop Floor Control Approaches for Virtual Enterprises

The virtual enterprise paradigm seems a fit response to face market instability and the volatile nature of business opportunities increasing enterprise’s interest in similar forms of networked organisations. The dynamic environment of a virtual enterprise requires that partners in the consortium own reconfigurable shop floors. This paper presents new approaches to shop floor control that meet the requirements of the new industrial paradigms and argues on work re-organization at shop floor level

Research and Education in Computational Science and Engineering

Over the past two decades the field of computational science and engineering (CSE) has penetrated both basic and applied research in academia, industry, and laboratories to advance discovery, optimize systems, support decision-makers, and educate the scientific and engineering workforce. Informed by centuries of theory and experiment, CSE performs computational experiments to answer questions that neither theory nor experiment alone is equipped to answer. CSE provides scientists and engineers of all persuasions with algorithmic inventions and software systems that transcend disciplines and scales. Carried on a wave of digital technology, CSE brings the power of parallelism to bear on troves of data. Mathematics-based advanced computing has become a prevalent means of discovery and innovation in essentially all areas of science, engineering, technology, and society; and the CSE community is at the core of this transformation. However, a combination of disruptive developments---including the architectural complexity of extreme-scale computing, the data revolution that engulfs the planet, and the specialization required to follow the applications to new frontiers---is redefining the scope and reach of the CSE endeavor. This report describes the rapid expansion of CSE and the challenges to sustaining its bold advances. The report also presents strategies and directions for CSE research and education for the next decade.Comment: Major revision, to appear in SIAM Revie

Efficient I/O for Computational Grid Applications

High-performance computing increasingly occurs on computational grids composed of heterogeneous and geographically distributed systems of computers, networks, and storage devices that collectively act as a single virtual computer. A key challenge in this environment is to provide efficient access to data distributed across remote data servers. This dissertation explores some of the issues associated with I/O for wide-area distributed computing and describes an I/O system, called Armada, with the following features: a framework to allow application and dataset providers to flexibly compose graphs of processing modules that describe the distribution, application interfaces, and processing required of the dataset before or after computation; an algorithm to restructure application graphs to increase parallelism and to improve network performance in a wide-area network; and a hierarchical graph-partitioning scheme that deploys components of the application graph in a way that is both beneficial to the application and sensitive to the administrative policies of the different administrative domains. Experiments show that applications using Armada perform well in both low- and high-bandwidth environments, and that our approach does an exceptional job of hiding the network latency inherent in grid computing

Creativity and innovation in science and technology: Bridging the gap between secondary and tertiary levels of education

Purpose: This paper stems from a study which was conducted as a means to first, find out whether there is a gap between the secondary and tertiary education levels, second identify any existing gap in Science and Technology education, and third, examine the impact of the above upon students’ creativity and innovativeness at university level. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach: As such, a group of teachers and students at both secondary and tertiary levels were selected as the sample of the study. Questionnaires were administered to trained secondary school teachers and to university students. Interviews were also conducted to triangulate data. These enabled an analysis of the current situation in terms of students’ engagement/creativity/innovativeness in Science and Technology at secondary and tertiary levels. Findings: The findings reveal a problematic situation arising with respect to beliefs and what truly prevails in the education sector at secondary and tertiary levels. This study has revealed a number of salient issues related to the gap existing between the secondary and tertiary levels of education in Mauritius, with special bearing on creativity and innovation in Science and Technology. Research limitations/implications: Only three institutions were involved, with a small sample of students, so that the findings cannot be generalised. Moreover, gender is a variable that has not been taken into consideration. Practical implications: The study has proposed a number of recommendations to enable Mauritian students (at secondary and tertiary levels) to develop creativity and hopefully become innovators. This leads us to believe that the recommendations emerging from this study will be beneficial to various stakeholders who wish to understand the gap existing between secondary and tertiary education in Science and Technology education. Originality/value: This study takes a case study approach adopting a mixture of interviews, surveys and observations to understand the research problems with regards to the younger generations need to be equipped with scientific and technological advances in acquiring knowledge, new sets of skills and values. Therefore, this study endeavours to document the perceptions of learners and faculty staff

Theoretical and Software Considerations for General Dynamic Analysis Using Multilevel Substructured Models

An approach is presented for the dynamic analysis of complex structure sy~t'=!!!S using the finite element method and multilevel substructured models. The fixedinterface method is selected for substructure reduction because of its efficiency, accurac and adaptability to restart and reanalysis. This method is extended to reduction of substructures which are themselves composed of reduced substructures. Emphasis is placed on the implementation and performance of the method in a general purpose software system. Solution algorithms consistent with the chosen data structures are presented in detail. This study demonstrates that successful finite element software requires the use of software executives to supplement the algorithmic language. As modeling and analysis techniques become more complex, proportionally more implementation effort is spent on data and computer resource management. Executive systems are essential tools for these tasks. The complexity of the implementation of restart and reanalysis porcedures also illustrate the need for executive systems to support the non computational aspects of the software. The example problems show that significant computational efficiencies can be achieved through proper use of substructuring and reduction techniques without sacrificing solution accuracy. The unique restart and reanalysis capabilities developed in this study and the flexible procedures for multilevel substructured modeling allow analysts to achieve economical yet accurate analyses of complex structural systems

A Multilevel Introspective Dynamic Optimization System For Holistic Power-Aware Computing

Power consumption is rapidly becoming the dominant limiting factor for further improvements in computer design. Curiously, this applies both at the "high end" of workstations and servers and the "low end" of handheld devices and embedded computers. At the high-end, the challenge lies in dealing with exponentially growing power densities. At the low-end, there is a demand to make mobile devices more powerful and longer lasting, but battery technology is not improving at the same rate that power consumption is rising. Traditional power-management research is fragmented; techniques are being developed at specific levels, without fully exploring their synergy with other levels. Most software techniques target either operating systems or compilers but do not explore the interaction between the two layers. These techniques also have not fully explored the potential of virtual machines for power management. In contrast, we are developing a system that integrates information from multiple levels of software and hardware, connecting these levels through a communication channel. At the heart of this system are a virtual machine that compiles and dynamically profiles code, and an optimizer that reoptimizes all code, including that of applications and the virtual machine itself. We believe this introspective, holistic approach enables more informed power-management decisions