The U.S. Department of Defense Humanitarian Demining Training Center: A Center of Excellence

Humanitarian mine action (HMA) is a field known for its paradigm shifts. Just as technological advances create more efficient and less expensive alternatives to old products and methodologies, emerging technologies offer newer and safer ways to detect landmines. Integrating these advances into the HMA community and thereby the training curriculum, is one challenge faced by the staff of the U.S. Department of Defense Humanitarian Demining Training Center (HDTC)

A DSL for multi-scale and autonomic software deployment

International audienceIn this paper, we present an ongoing work which aims at defining and experimenting a Domain-Specific Language (DSL) dedicated to multi-scale and autonomic software deployment. Autonomic software deployment in open environments is an open issue. There, the topology of target hosts is not always known due either to unforeseen hardware failures or limitations (network links, hosts, etc.) or to device arrival and disappearance. In a previous work, we proposed to describe deployment constraints using a DSL and then to satisfy them using a middleware for autonomic deployment, rather than classically building and executing a deployment plan. As deployment of multi-scale distributed systems demands the expression of specific constraints related to dimensions and scales, it is necessary to think over and define a new Domain-Specific Language. In this paper, we propose a new DSL designed to support the expression of constraints and properties related to multi-scale and autonomic software deployment

Opportunistic software composition: benefits and requirements

International audienceTraditional software development relies on building and assembling pieces of software in order to satisfy explicit requirements. Component-based software engineering simplifies composition and reuse, but software adaptation to the environment remains a challenge. Opportunistic composition is a new approach for building and re-building software in open and dynamic contexts. It is based on the ability to compose software components in a bottom-up manner, merely because they are available at a point and not because the construction of a specific software has been demanded. In this way, software emerges from the environment. This paper analyzes the advantages of such an approach in terms of flexibility and reuse, along with the requirements that an infrastructure supporting opportunistic composition should satisfy: it should be decentralized, autonomic, and dynamically adaptive. The state of the art of automatic software composition shows that few solutions are actually bottom-up, and that none of them fully satisfies the requirements of opportunistic composition

Formalisation de l'expression d'un plan de déploiement autonomique à base de contraintes

International audienceLes systèmes ambiants sont devenus massivement distribués. Le nombre d'appareils hétérogènes, et la variété de composants logiciels à déployer sur ces systèmes pour en assurer le bon fonctionnement ne cessent de croître. Leur topologie est en évolution constante, liée à l'apparition et la disparition des dispositifs mobiles. De ce fait, le déploiement de logiciel dans ces systèmes est un problème ouvert. Notre approche pour diminuer la complexité de cette opération, est le déploiement autonomique. Dans cet article, nous partons d'un langage dédié (DSL) nommé MuScADeL, pour lequel nous proposons une formalisation de l'expression du déploiement autonomique. Ensuite, nous montrons comment traduire les propriétés de déploiement en un problème de satisfaction de contraintes, et comment nous obtenons un plan de déploiement conforme qui sera enfin interprété par un intergiciel de déploiement autonomique

Composition opportuniste de fragments d'IHM pour une interaction adaptative en environnement ambiant

International audienceDans ce papier nous proposons une approche basée sur un système multi-agents adaptatif, en utilisant les principes de Méta-Interactions Homme-Machine et d'Opportunisme dans le but de résoudre le problème de la Composition d'Interactions Homme-Machine dans les espaces interactifs ambiants. L'idée de cette approche est de voir chaque composant comme un agent capable d'interagir avec les autres composants pour composer de manière autonome et ainsi suggérer à l'utilisateur de manière opportuniste des compositions de son environnement ambiant interactif. Nous avons choisi de présenter principalement deux aspects de la composition d'interactions homme-machine, la contrôlabilité et l'objectif de la composition. Enfin nous illustrons notre approche avec des cas d'utilisation dans le cadre d'un projet nommé neoCampus. Mots-clés informatique ubiquitaire ; espaces ambiants interactifs ; interactions homme-machine ; composition opportuniste de composants ; méta-interactions homme-machine ; théorie des systèmes multi-agents adaptatif

Opportunistic Composition of Human-Computer Interactions in Ambient Spaces

International audienceWe propose an approach based on Adaptive Multi-Agent Systems, using the principles of Meta-User Interfaces and Opportunism in order to solve Human-Computer Interaction Composition in Ambient interactive spaces. The idea of this approach is to see every component as an agent able to interact with other components to compose autonomously in order to opportunistically suggest to users smart compositions of his interactive ambient environment. We present the notions of component, composition, and human-computer interaction composition. We chose mainly two aspects of the composition of human-computer interaction which are the controllability and finality of the composition. Finally, we illustrate our approach with use cases taken from the neoCampus project

Neurobehavioral Alterations from Noise Exposure in Animals: A Systematic Review

Ecosystems are increasingly involved and influenced by human activities, which are ever-increasing. These activities are mainly due to vehicular, air and sea transportation, thus causing possible repercussions on the fauna that exists there. The aim of this systematic review is to investigate the possible consequences that these activities may have in the field of animal neurobehavior, with special emphasis on the species involved, the most common environment concerned, the noise source and the disturbance that is caused. This research includes articles published in the major databases (PubMed, Cochrane Library, Scopus, Embase, Web of Sciences); the online search yielded 1901 references. After selection, 49 articles (14 reviews and 35 original articles) were finally scrutinized. The main problems that were reported were in relation to movement, reproduction, offspring care and foraging. In live experiments carried out, the repercussions on the marine environment mainly concerned altered swimming, shallower descents, less foraging and an escape reaction for fear of cetaceans and fish. In birds, alterations in foraging, vocalizations and nests were noted; laboratory studies, on the other hand, carried out on small mammals, highlighted spatio-temporal cognitive alterations and memory loss. In conclusion, it appears that greater attention to all ecosystems should be given as soon as possible so as to try to achieve a balance between human activity and the well-being of terrestrial fauna

Ptk7-Deficient Mice Have Decreased Hematopoietic Stem Cell Pools as a Result of Deregulated Proliferation and Migration

International audienceHematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) located in adult bone marrow or fetal liver in mammals produce all cells from the blood system. Atthe top of the hierarchy are long-term HSCs endowed with lifelong self-renewal and differentiation properties. These features arecontrolled through key microenvironmental cues and regulatory pathways, such as Wnt signaling.We showed previously that PTK7,a tyrosine kinase receptor involved in planar cell polarity, plays a role in epithelial Wnt signaling; however, its function in hematopoiesishas remained unexplored. In this article, we show that PTK7 is expressed by hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells, withthe highest level of protein expression found on HSCs. Taking advantage of a Ptk7-deficient mouse strain, we demonstrate that loss ofPtk7 leads to a diminished pool of HSCs but does not affect in vitro or in vivo hematopoietic cell differentiation. This is correlatedwith increased quiescence and reduced homing abilities of Ptk7-deficient hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells, unraveling noveland unexpected functions for planar cell polarity pathways in HSC fate

Asynchronized Concurrency: The Secret to Scaling Concurrent Search Data Structures

We introduce "asynchronized concurrency (ASCY),'' a paradigm consisting of four complementary programming patterns. ASCY calls for the design of concurrent search data structures (CSDSs) to resemble that of their sequential counterparts. We argue that ASCY leads to implementations which are portably scalable: they scale across different types of hardware platforms, including single and multi-socket ones, for various classes of workloads, such as read-only and read-write, and according to different performance metrics, including throughput, latency, and energy. We substantiate our thesis through the most exhaustive evaluation of CSDSs to date, involving 6 platforms, 22 state-of-the-art CSDS algorithms, 10 re-engineered state-of-the-art CSDS algorithms following the ASCY patterns, and 2 new CSDS algorithms designed with ASCY in mind. We observe up to 30% improvements in throughput in the re-engineered algorithms, while our new algorithms out-perform the state-of-the-art alternatives

Projet INCOME : INfrastructure de gestion de COntexte Multi-Echelle pour l'Internet des Objets

International audienceCet article donne un aperçu du projet de recherche INCOME financé par l'Agence Nationale de la Recherche française en décrivant la fiche d'identité du projet, ses principaux enjeux scientifiques ainsi que les premiers résultats obtenus