Fly Swarms and Complexity

A system is considered complex if it is composed of individual parts that abide by their own set of rules while the system, as a whole, exhibits unexpected properties. The motivation for studying complexity spurs from the fact that it is a fundamental aspect of many systems, including forest fires, earthquakes, stock markets, fish schools, plant root growth, and fly swarms. We are particularly interested in fly swarms and the possible complex properties that the swarm exhibits, arising from the individual fly interactions. Fly swarms are a relatively simple complex system, but such systems are still not fully understood. In this research, various computational models were developed to assist with the understanding of fly swarms. These models were primarily described by analyzing the average distance from the center of mass, average distance between flies, and the inertia ratios. The inertia ratios indicated asymmetric fly systems, suggesting some accuracy in such models as physical fly swarms exhibit asymmetry. A major goal of this research was to provide a mathematical definition for swarming. While an arbitrary definition was developed, future research is required to pinpoint a definite definition

The Computational Study of Fly Swarms & Complexity

A system is considered complex if it is composed of individual parts that abide by their own set of rules, while the system, as a whole, will produce non-deterministic properties. This prevents the behavior of such systems from being accurately predicted. The motivation for studying complexity spurs from the fact that it is a fundamental aspect of innumerable systems. Among complex systems, fly swarms are relatively simple, but even so they are still not well understood. In this research, several computational models were developed to assist with the understanding of fly swarms. These models were primarily analyzed by using the average distance from the center of mass, average distance between flies, and the inertia ratios. The inertia ratios indicated asymmetric fly systems, suggesting some accuracy in such models, as physical fly swarms exhibit asymmetry. A major goal of this research was to provide a mathematical definition for swarming. While an arbitrary definition was developed, future research is required to pinpoint a definite definition

Inclusive Campus Recreation: Creating a Space Where All Belong

This thesis examines discrepancies that marginalize students, faculty and staff from utilizing or working in campus recreation facilities. More specifically, Campus Recreation departments lack strategies that ensure inclusion for all abilities, identity backgrounds and genders. This critical action research thesis considers the experiences of stakeholders and will integrate research that has been supported by seasoned scholars. In this thesis, a three-day diversity and inclusion workshop is proposed supplemented by monthly programming for faculty and staff that focuses on inclusion techniques to incorporate into departmental planning. Solid leadership of this programmatic intervention would focus on collaboration and dedication to lifelong learning. An evaluation plan is designed based on a sense of belonging survey from students, faculty and staff that help to understand feelings of acceptance and access to equal opportunities. Widespread application of this intervention signifies that colleges will prioritize their goals and values to strive to dismantle deeply rooted, systemic discrimination

Decoupling the Lookaside Buffer From IPv7 in Voice-over-IP

The deployment of semaphores is an unproven riddle. After years of extensive research into the lookaside buffer, we verify the improvement of courseware, which embodies the significant principles of noisy software engineering. RoralSizel, our new system for the exploration of virtual machines, is the solution to all of these issues [1]

Improving strategy for the Canadian Wildlife Service: A comparative study with the Parks Canada Agency and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans

This research evaluates the development of strategy and planning undertaken by the three federal protected areas management organisations in Canada. These organisations and the protected areas they manage are: the Canadian Wildlife Service (National Wildlife Areas and Migratory Bird Sanctuaries), the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (Oceans Act Marine Protected Areas), and the Parks Canada Agency (National Parks, National Marine Conservation Areas, and National Historic Sites). As non-renewable resources become more valuable, urban centres expand, and the climate changes, protected areas will face an increasing number of threats, the mitigation of which will require significant new financial resources. In order to acquire these new resources, protected areas management organisations will have to compete with other aspects of the government’s agenda. In this research, strategy is identified as an important component of successful competition. A review of literature from various disciplines explains some of the main theories of strategy development: strategic planning, strategic management, and collaborative planning. Management planning for protected areas helps to understand the congruence between strategy and site management. Using a qualitative approach, the research triangulates the results of interviews, reviews of documents, and participant-observation to evaluate the way that each of the organisations develops strategy and understands management planning activities. The research also includes a model strategic plan for the Canadian Wildlife Service protected areas network. The model plan stems from data collected during this research. This research supports the results from a previous study (Foresta, 1985) that found Parks Canada (now the Parks Canada Agency, or PCA) has been actively pursuing a coherent strategy through systematic management planning since the late 1960s. The PCA can attribute a significant degree of its ongoing success in creating and managing National Parks to its consistent strategy and systematic planning efforts. Another important part of the PCA success has been its external orientation, which demonstrates its awareness of the importance of maintaining public satisfaction and its high public profile. No prior research on the development of strategy or of systematic planning at the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) or the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) was uncovered. This research concludes that the CWS, which has many strategic plans on paper, has not actively pursued strategic or management planning. The lack of strategic thinking and planning contribute significantly to the relatively low budgets of the CWS, and to its low public profile. The DFO has decided to take a “learning approach” to its protected areas, by creating a set of pilot marine protected areas and then identifying the policies and procedures needed to manage the sites. The public profile of the DFO protected areas is even lower than that of the CWS. The CWS and the DFO are internally-oriented, do not have significant public outreach programs, long-range or strategic planning, and do not seem to have champions. The most important contributors to the PCA’s success are the finite nature and the simplicity of their goals, which Parks staff can easily communicate to decision-makers and to the public. The external orientation of the PCA, demonstrated by extensive public outreach programming, such as natural history interpretation and the provision of camping opportunities, is also an important part of its success. Another important contributor, identified in this research, is the support of a small number of key political champions. This research identifies means by which organisations could improve their competitiveness, including by improving public profile. The research highlights the importance of externally-focused strategic plans that include certain elements that are well-defined in the literature, and the importance of strategic thinking. The results suggest that there is a need for a new approach to developing strategy, and proposes the exploration of collaborative planning as a potential model. This research contributes to the academic literature and to planning practice by identifying key elements that created conditions of success for the PCA. The PCA experience highlights the importance of strategic thinking, in the context of developing a strategic plan

An 8 GeV H- multi-turn injection system for the Fermilab Main Injector

An 8 GeV superconducting linear accelerator (SCL) has been proposed [1] as a single stage H{sup -} injector into the Main Injector (MI) synchrotron . This would be the highest energy H{sup -} multi-turn injection system in the world. The conceptual design of an injection system has been further refined by addressing transverse phase space painting issues, chicane dipole fields and foil location, foil temperature issues, and initial longitudinal phase space painting simulations. We present the current state of design

Vascular defects and spinal cord hypoxia in spinal muscular atrophy

Acknowledgment S.H.P. is funded by The Euan MacDonald Center for Motor Neurone Disease Research and The SMA Trust. T.H.G. is funded by Muscular Dystrophy UK and The SMA Trust. K.T. is funded by The SMA Trust and the Motor Neurone Disease Association. H.Z. is funded by National Institute for Health Research and Great Ormond Street Hospital Biomedical Research Center, and F.M. is funded by the Medical Research Council and Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity. The MRC Center for Neuromuscular Diseases BioBank London (CNMD_BBL) is gratefully acknowledged.Peer reviewedPostprintPostprin

The Linked Data Benchmark Council (LDBC): Driving competition and collaboration in the graph data management space

Graph data management is instrumental for several use cases such as recommendation, root cause analysis, financial fraud detection, and enterprise knowledge representation. Efficiently supporting these use cases yields a number of unique requirements, including the need for a concise query language and graph-aware query optimization techniques. The goal of the Linked Data Benchmark Council (LDBC) is to design a set of standard benchmarks that capture representative categories of graph data management problems, making the performance of systems comparable and facilitating competition among vendors. LDBC also conducts research on graph schemas and graph query languages. This paper introduces the LDBC organization and its work over the last decade