Thermodynamic Computing

The hardware and software foundations laid in the first half of the 20th Century enabled the computing technologies that have transformed the world, but these foundations are now under siege. The current computing paradigm, which is the foundation of much of the current standards of living that we now enjoy, faces fundamental limitations that are evident from several perspectives. In terms of hardware, devices have become so small that we are struggling to eliminate the effects of thermodynamic fluctuations, which are unavoidable at the nanometer scale. In terms of software, our ability to imagine and program effective computational abstractions and implementations are clearly challenged in complex domains. In terms of systems, currently five percent of the power generated in the US is used to run computing systems - this astonishing figure is neither ecologically sustainable nor economically scalable. Economically, the cost of building next-generation semiconductor fabrication plants has soared past $10 billion. All of these difficulties - device scaling, software complexity, adaptability, energy consumption, and fabrication economics - indicate that the current computing paradigm has matured and that continued improvements along this path will be limited. If technological progress is to continue and corresponding social and economic benefits are to continue to accrue, computing must become much more capable, energy efficient, and affordable. We propose that progress in computing can continue under a united, physically grounded, computational paradigm centered on thermodynamics. Herein we propose a research agenda to extend these thermodynamic foundations into complex, non-equilibrium, self-organizing systems and apply them holistically to future computing systems that will harness nature's innate computational capacity. We call this type of computing "Thermodynamic Computing" or TC.Comment: A Computing Community Consortium (CCC) workshop report, 36 page

The P3C2R+GIRD Paradigm of Creating a Reading Comprehension Lesson for EFL Students: From Conceptual Model to Model Lesson

This academic article is aiming at creating a reading comprehension lesson with a new paradigm called the P3C2R+GIRD model developed by a 9-year-experience author in teaching English reading skill who always found that one of the problems of EFL students in learning English language is the lack of reading comprehension which is an important skill in receiving information and the foundation of the other skills. The model is systematically developed into six steps, i.e. 1) providing unknown collocations from the lesson at the first part of the lesson, 2) creating a prediction question to elicit students’ schemata and open their imagination, 3) choosing/creating a realistic story that is currently catching interest or popularity of the world—this story is the model passage of the lesson, 4) constructing questions with the GIRD model consisting of finding gist, drawing inferences, tracing references, and skimming/ scanning for details, 5) rebooting vocabulary and grammar by bringing interesting words from the lesson for creating exercises to activate students’ knowledge of vocabulary and understanding how it works/applies in other contexts, and 6) rechecking students’ reading comprehension by creating another passage that contains some words and collocations they have learnt from the model passage so that a teacher can examine whether students are able to apply what they have just learnt into another context. More interestingly, the last section of this article provides a model lesson developed from the concept of the P3C2R+GIRD model which gives teachers the illuminating insights of designing a reading comprehension lesson. Keywords: P3C2R+GIRD model, P3C2R+GIRD paradigm, creating a reading comprehension lesson, reading model, teaching reading comprehensio

Jutge.org

Jutge.org is an open access educational online programming judge where students can try to solve more than 800 problems using 22 programming languages. The verdict of their solutions is computed using exhaustive test sets run under time, memory and security restrictions. By contrast to many popular online judges, Jutge.org is designed for students and instructors: On one hand, the problem repository is mainly aimed to beginners, with a clear organization and gradding. On the other hand, the system is designed as a virtual learning environment where instructors can administer their own courses, manage their roster of students and tutors, add problems, attach documents, create lists of problems, assignments, contests and exams. This paper presents Jutge.org and offers some case studies of courses using it.Postprint (published version

Solving Factored MDPs with Hybrid State and Action Variables

Efficient representations and solutions for large decision problems with continuous and discrete variables are among the most important challenges faced by the designers of automated decision support systems. In this paper, we describe a novel hybrid factored Markov decision process (MDP) model that allows for a compact representation of these problems, and a new hybrid approximate linear programming (HALP) framework that permits their efficient solutions. The central idea of HALP is to approximate the optimal value function by a linear combination of basis functions and optimize its weights by linear programming. We analyze both theoretical and computational aspects of this approach, and demonstrate its scale-up potential on several hybrid optimization problems