Heuristic Approach for Scheduling Dependent Real-Time Tasks

Reducing energy consumption is a critical issue in the design of battery-powered real time systems to prolong battery life. With dynamic voltage scaling (DVS) processors, energy consumption can be reduced efficiently by making appropriate decisions on the processor speed/voltage during the scheduling of real time tasks. Scheduling decision is usually based on parameters which are assumed to be crisp. However, in many circumstances the values of these parameters are vague. The vagueness of parameters suggests that to develop a fuzzy logic approach to reduce energy consumption by determining the appropriate supply-voltage/speed of the processor provided that timing constraints are guaranteed. Intensive simulated experiments and qualitative comparisons with the most related literature have been conducted in the context of dependent real-time tasks. Experimental results have shown that the proposed fuzzy scheduler saves more energy and creates feasible schedules for real time tasks. It also considers tasks priorities which cause higher system utilization and lower deadline miss time

An Efficient Cache Organization for On-Chip Multiprocessor Networks

To meet the growing computation-intensive applications and the needs of low-power, high-performance systems, the number of computing resources in single-chip has enormously increased. By adding many computing resources to build a system in System-on-Chip, its interconnection between each other becomes another challenging issue. In most System-on-Chip applications, a shared bus interconnection which needs an arbitration logic to serialize several bus access requests, is adopted to communicate with each integrated processing unit because of its low-cost and simple control characteristics. This paper focuses on the interconnection design issues of area, power and performance of chip multi-processors with shared cache memory. It shows that having shared cache memory contributes to the performance improvement, however, typical interconnection between cores and the shared cache using crossbar occupies most of the chip area, consumes a lot of power and does not scale efficiently with increased number of cores. New interconnection mechanisms are needed to address these issues. This paper proposes an architectural paradigm in an attempt to gain the advantages of having shared cache with the avoidance of penalty imposed by the crossbar interconnect. The proposed architecture achieves smaller area occupation allowing more space to add additional cache memory. It also reduces power consumption compared to the existing crossbar architecture. Furthermore, the paper presents a modified cache coherence algorithm called Tuned-MESI. It is based on the typical MESI cache coherence algorithm however it is tuned and tailored for the suggested architecture. The achieved results of the conducted simulated experiments show that the developed architecture produces less broadcast operations compared to the typical algorithm

A Computerized Tomographic Data Analysis System to Evaluate the Dental Implant Surface Roughness

AbstractDental implants have been progressively used in the recent years to support and retain dental prosthesis. Implant surface roughness has been suggested as a crucial factor in implant osseointegration and long term survival of the implant and prosthesis, where a key factor for the success or failure of dental implants is the manner in which stresses are transferred to surrounding bone. In this study completely edentulous patients were rehabilitated by implant retained over denture in which two implant systems with different surface roughness were used. Peri implant bone density in Hounsfield Units (HU) was evaluated by analyze Computerized Tomographic (CT) images to judge the behavior of an implant system under functional loading, where DICOM raw data was imported into the analysis proposed system to correlate the bone density regarding to the HU values. Results are compared with clinical readings and previous findings, which it showed that there is a difference in peri implant bone density around regularly patterned and randomly patterned implant surfaces

A family-based probabilistic method for capturing de novo mutations from high-throughput short-read sequencing data

Recent advances in high-throughput DNA sequencing technologies and associated statistical analyses have enabled in-depth analysis of whole-genome sequences. As this technology is applied to a growing number of individual human genomes, entire families are now being sequenced. Information contained within the pedigree of a sequenced family can be leveraged when inferring the donors' genotypes. The presence of a de novo mutation within the pedigree is indicated by a violation of Mendelian inheritance laws. Here, we present a method for probabilistically inferring genotypes across a pedigree using high-throughput sequencing data and producing the posterior probability of de novo mutation at each genomic site examined. This framework can be used to disentangle the effects of germline and somatic mutational processes and to simultaneously estimate the effect of sequencing error and the initial genetic variation in the population from which the founders of the pedigree arise. This approach is examined in detail through simulations and areas for method improvement are noted. By applying this method to data from members of a well-defined nuclear family with accurate pedigree information, the stage is set to make the most direct estimates of the human mutation rate to date

Genetic Variations of Leaf Trait in Maize (Zea mays L.) under Drought Stress in Different Growth Stages

Maize is the third most important food crop worldwide, and it is more sensitive to drought. Two field experiments were conducted under drought in different growth stages at two locations, the Demonstration Farm, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Khartoum, at Shambat, and the Gezira Research Station Farm, at Medani, in season (2003/2004). To estimate the pattern of inheritance, determine the relative magnitude of genetic variation effects for a number of leaves/plant and leaf area index in fifteen maize genotypes. A split-plot design, layout within randomized complete block design with three replications was used for the experiment. Significant differences among genotypes were detected in all traits, except, leaf area index (30 and 60 days) and number of leaves/plant (45 days). High genotypic coefficient of variation, genetic advance and heritability were exhibited by a number of leaves/plant for 60 days. Grain yield was significantly and positively associated at the phenotypic level with the leaf area index and a number of leaves/plant at 60 days. Thus the characters leaf area index and number of leaves/plant to be the important traits which would be an effectual in selection for maize improvement under drought stress at different growth stages. Based on their positive association with grain  yield, the traits  leaf area index and number of leaves/plant would be the exploited for improving grain yield and facilitate further efforts in the maize improvement program in the country. Keywords: correlation; heritability; morphological traits; vegetative and reproductive phases; water stres

Modeling the Global Water Resource System in an Integrated Assessment Modeling Framework: IGSM-WRS

Abstract and PDF report are also available on the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change website (http://globalchange.mit.edu/)The availability of water resources affects energy, agricultural and environmental systems, which are linked together as well as to climate via the water cycle. As such, watersheds and river basins are directly impacted by local and regional climate variations and change. In turn, these managed systems provide direct inputs to the global economy that serve and promote public health, agricultural and energy production, ecosystem surfaces and infrastructure. We have enhanced the Integrated Global System Model (IGSM) framework capabilities to model effects on the managed water-resource systems of the influence of potential climate change and associated shifts in hydrologic variation and extremes (i.e. non-stationarity in the hydro-climate system), and how we may be able to adapt to these impacts. A key component of this enhancement is the linkage of the Water Resources System (WRS) into the IGSM framework. WRS is a global river basin scale model of water resources management, agricultural (rain-fed and irrigated crops and livestock) and aquatic environmental systems. In particular, WRS will provide the capability within the IGSM framework to explore allocation of water among irrigation, hydropower, urban/industrial, and in-stream uses and investigate how society might adapt water resources due to shifts in hydro-climate variations and extremes. This paper presents the overall design of WRS, its linkages to the land system and economic models of the IGSM, and results of test bed runs of WRS components to address issues of temporal and spatial scales in these linkages.This study received support from the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, which is funded by a consortium of government, industry and foundation sponsors

Effect of Progesterone Therapy versus Diet Modification on Constipation during Pregnancy

Background: Pregnant women may experience constipation for the first time or their existing constipation symptoms increase in severity during pregnancy.Aim: To compare the effect of progesterone versus diet modification in the treatment of constipation during pregnancy.Subjects and Methods: Women aged ≥18 years with functional constipation according to the Rome III criteria from obstetrics outpatients’ clinic and midwife practices included in this study. Participants divided into two groups; control group managed with diet modifications and study group pregnant women with threatened miscarriage and advised to take vaginal progesterone ≥1 week. Participants completed a nonvalidated questionnaire created by the authors during the whole week before intake of progesterone or diet modifications and after treatment phase. Independent Student’s t‑test and Chi‑square (X2) test were used for statistical analysis to compare between two studied groups. Primary outcome measures; change in defecation frequency.Results: Sensation of anorectal obstruction and sensation of incomplete evacuation were significantly less in Group B (progesterone therapy) compared to Group A (diet modification) (54% [154/281] and 62.98% [177/281] vs. 89.76% [614/684] and 91.08% [623/684], respectively) (P = 0.04 and 0.03, respectively). Straining during defecation and manual maneuvers to facilitate evacuation were significantly less in Group B compared to Group A (63.7% [179/281] and 19.9% [56/281] vs. 94.59% [647/684] and 86.54% [592/684], respectively) (P < 0.01 and 0.02, respectively). Episodes of abdominal pain and presence of reflux episodes were also significantly less in Group B compared to Group A (18.5% [52/281] and 17.43% [49/281] vs. 84.11% [589/684] and 75% [513/684], respectively) (P = 0.01 and 0.03, respectively). Conclusions: Estrogen, rather than progesterone, may be a detrimental factor of constipation during pregnancy via decreased bowel movement. Progesterone therapy seems to be effective in the treatment of functional constipation during pregnancy. A randomized placebo controlled trial is required to confirm the data of this study.KEY WORDS: Constipation, diet modification, pregnancy, progesteron