Meter Scoping Study

This report presents a summary of metering technology and cost information from past studies in an attempt to identify key barriers to more widespread implementation

A comparison of CMB- and HLA-based approaches to type I interoperability reference model problems for COTS-based distributed simulation

Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) simulation packages (CSPs) are software used by many simulation modellers to build and experiment with models of various systems in domains such as manufacturing, health, logistics and commerce. COTS distributed simulation deals with the interoperation of CSPs and their models. Such interoperability has been classified into six interoperability reference models. As part of an on-going standardisation effort, this paper introduces the COTS Simulation Package Emulator, a proposed benchmark that can be used to investigate Type I interoperability problems in COTS distributed simulation. To demonstrate its use, two approaches to this form of interoperability are discussed, an implementation of the CMB conservative algorithm, an example of a so-called “light” approach, and an implementation of the HLA TAR algorithm, an example of a so-called “heavy” approach. Results from experimentation over four federation topologies are presented and it is shown the HLA approach out performs the CMB approach in almost all cases. The paper concludes that the CSPE benchmark is a valid basis from which the most efficient approach to Type I interoperability problems for COTS distributed simulation can be discovered

New Opportunities for Integrating and Improving Health Care for Women, Children, and Their Families

Outlines provisions in the Affordable Care Act for integrating healthcare services for low-income women and children to improve outcomes and cut costs. Examines public-private partnerships and other efforts in Colorado, Florida, Ohio, and Vermont

Constructing social division to support cooperation : theory and evidence from Nepal

Many societies are divided into multiple smaller groups. The defining feature of these groups is that certain kinds of interaction are more likely to take place within a group than across groups. I build a model in which group divisions are enforced through a reputational penalty for interacting with members of different groups. Agents who interact with members of different groups find that they can support lower levels of cooperation in the future. The model explains why agents may be punished by the other members of their group for interacting with members of different groups and why agents are punished for interacting with members of some groups but not others. I test the empirical implication that there should be less cooperation among members of groups that make up a larger percentage of their communities. I discuss the origin and possible future of social division

The Implications of Diverse Applications and Scalable Data Sets in Benchmarking Big Data Systems

Now we live in an era of big data, and big data applications are becoming more and more pervasive. How to benchmark data center computer systems running big data applications (in short big data systems) is a hot topic. In this paper, we focus on measuring the performance impacts of diverse applications and scalable volumes of data sets on big data systems. For four typical data analysis applications---an important class of big data applications, we find two major results through experiments: first, the data scale has a significant impact on the performance of big data systems, so we must provide scalable volumes of data sets in big data benchmarks. Second, for the four applications, even all of them use the simple algorithms, the performance trends are different with increasing data scales, and hence we must consider not only variety of data sets but also variety of applications in benchmarking big data systems.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure