CARBON MARKET: BUSINESS INCENTIVES FOR SUSTAINABILITY

The Protocol resulting from the 1997 Conference of Parties in Kyoto finally set emission caps for several developed countries and introduced the possibility of market creation mechanisms on carbon emission trading. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) was then created for emission trading between countries with caps and those with no caps. The CDM market will pursue the opportunities for lowest costs on carbon reductions available in each country with no emission target, as is the case of Brazil. The positive differentials of Brazil will only be realized if there is, mainly in national terms, a favorable atmosphere to the development of new business and the proper importance to the environmental commitments of reduction of the greenhouse effect. The excess of bureaucracy and governmental controls added to the lack of a policy and of a clear institutional guidance of support to the consistent initiatives of CDM projects. They are decisive obstacles for the achievement of the potentialities and for a good position of Brazil in the trade of CERs. Making use of the teachings of Nobel Prize Ronald Coase, this paper has as a goal to show the necessary institutional conditions for Brail to make use of the development from this market.Environmental Economics and Policy,

A concern-oriented sustainability approach

Sustainability and sustainable development has become a concern worldwide, hence introduced in roadmaps and strategies of public and private organizations. This trend has not been neglected by the computer science community, who is increasingly considering sustainability as a first class entity in software development. To properly address sustainability, its various dimensions need to be reasoned about and their impact on each other and on other system concerns studied from the very early stages of software development. To this purpose, we present a concern-oriented requirements approach that allows both, modeling sustainability concepts and their relationships, and managing conflicting situations triggered by impacts among sustainability dimensions or between those and other system concerns. To tackle the complexity of conflict management, a rigorous trade-off analysis technique based on multi-criteria decision making methods is used to rank, stakeholders and effects between concerns' responsibilies. We use a real project to validate our proposal, discuss the results obtained and synthesize major points that require further research

Évaluation qualitative de la contribution des rôles CanMEDS dans la création de diplômes de domaine de compétence ciblée

Background: While many Area of Focused Competency (AFC) Diplomas are available to those who have completed Pediatric residency training, it is not known which competencies are enhanced within each AFC discipline. Our objective was to determine which CanMEDS roles were targeted by existing AFCs available to those who have completed Pediatric residency training and identify gaps within CanMEDs roles that may be fulfilled by the development of new AFCs. Methods: A qualitative study was undertaken using document analysis methodology to compare CanMEDS competencies across AFCs available to those with Royal College examination eligibility or certification in Pediatrics.  RCPSC Competency Training Requirements documents were used to compare and contrast the competencies in each AFC with competencies established in Pediatric residency training. Key and Enabling Competencies were compared for each CanMEDS role to identify differences. Results: Ten AFCs were identified with eligibility requirements including Royal College examination eligibility or certification in Pediatrics. All 10 AFCs included at least one new Medical Expert competency, for a total of 42 unique competencies in this role across all AFCs. The Scholar role had only 10 new competencies across seven AFCs, while only one AFC added a single unique competency in the Collaborator role. Conclusions: The majority of new competencies contributed by AFCs lie within the CanMEDS role of Medical Expert. The Scholar and Collaborator roles have the least differences when comparing competencies of existing AFCs to those competencies established in Pediatric residency training. Developing additional AFCs that offer advanced skills in these roles may help close this gap within the discipline of Pediatrics.Contexte : Bien que de nombreux diplômes de domaines de compétence ciblée (DCC) soient accessibles aux personnes ayant terminé leur résidence en pédiatrie, nous ne savons pas quelles sont les compétences qui sont approfondies dans chaque discipline de DCC. Notre objectif était de déterminer les rôles CanMEDS visés par les DCC actuellement accessibles aux personnes ayant terminé leur résidence en pédiatrie et de repérer les lacunes dans les rôles CanMEDS qui pourraient être comblées par l’élaboration de nouveaux DCC. Méthodes : Nous avons réalisé une étude qualitative au moyen d’analyse de documents pour comparer les compétences CanMEDS dans les DCC ouverts aux personnes admissibles à l’examen du Collège royal ou ayant une certification en pédiatrie. Les documents sur les exigences de formation du CRMCC ont été utilisés pour comparer les compétences de chaque DCC et les compétences visées dans le cadre de la formation postdoctorale en pédiatrie. Les compétences clés et les compétences habilitantes ont été comparées pour chaque rôle CanMEDS afin de repérer les différences. Résultats : Nous avons trouvé 10 DCC dont les conditions d’admissibilité comprennent l’admissibilité à l’examen du Collège royal ou la certification en pédiatrie. Chacun de ces 10 DCC comprenait au moins une nouvelle compétence d’expert médical et un total de 42 nouvelles compétences propres à ce rôle ont été répertoriées pour l’ensemble des DCC. Pour le rôle d’érudit, nous n’avons trouvé que 10 nouvelles compétences dans sept programmes de DCC, et pour celui de collaborateur, il n’y a qu’une nouvelle compétence dans un programme de DCC. Conclusions : La majorité des nouvelles compétences développées dans les DCC relèvent du rôle CanMEDS d’expert médical. Les rôles d’érudit et de collaborateur présentent le moins de différences lorsqu’on compare les compétences ciblées dans les DCC existants et celles visées dans le cadre de la formation postdoctorale en pédiatrie. La création de DCC supplémentaires permettant l’acquisition de compétences plus poussées dans ces rôles pourrait contribuer à combler cette carence au sein de la discipline de la pédiatrie

Desconstruindo o Dilema Glaser-Strauss: Uma Discussão Integrativa da Grounded Theory em Administração

The Grounded Theory was developed in the 1960s by sociologists Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss as methodological or research style. New investigative paths have emerged from Grounded Theory application. The aim of the present study is to highlight the antagonism between Glaser and Strauss from a conceptual complementary perspective that opened room for a highly structured and inherently flexible methodology based on the integrative approach. The goal of the Grounded Theory is to develop theories based on systematically collected and analyzed empirical data. The classical approach proved to be excessively subjective to meet empirical research demands inmanagement, overtime. Accordingly, several authors advocate for Strauss and Corbin’s (1990) ideas. The current essay-style study focuses on proposing and assessing an integrative approachframework for the Grounded Theory. Emphasis is given to the complementary qualities suggested by these authors, which are treated as non-exclusionary, despite being influenced by both Strauss and Corbin’s (1998) positivist style and Glaser and Strauss’ (1967) interpretive style. Furthermore, this theory adheres to the fundamental principle of the classical approach, although it emerged from the research process. This methodology’s application can be a promising option for scientific development, since it can disclose potentialities that give researchers flexibility and freedom to create. Thus, ontological and methodological assumptions are choices made by researchers, themselves, since they can gather research methods (mixed-methodology) and follow the combinedand sequential use of quantitative and qualitative techniques to create well-founded theories.A Grounded Theory, desenvolvida na década de 1960 pelos sociólogos Barney Glaser e Anselm Strauss, foi definida como metodologia ou estilo de pesquisa. Novos caminhos investigativos têm emergido com aplicações da Grounded Theory (ou Teoria Fundamentada em Dados). O objetivo deste estudo é mostrar que o antagonismo de Glaser e Strauss pode ser examinado numa perspectiva de complementaridade conceitual, fazendo emergir desta abordagem integrativa uma metodologia altamente estruturada e de caráter eminentemente flexível. A Grounded Theory possui como objetivo desenvolver teorias, fundamentando-se em dados empíricos, sistematicamente coletados e analisados. Com o passar do tempo, a abordagem clássica mostrou-se demasiadamente subjetiva para atender às demandas de pesquisas empíricas em administração. Por essa razão, diversos autores defendem as ideias de Strauss e Corbin (1990). Este estudo, de natureza ensaística,propõe e examina um framework de abordagem integrativa da Grounded Theory. Busca-se enfatizar as qualidades complementares propostas pelos autores, tratadas como não excludentes, mesmo enviesadas ao estilo positivista de Strauss e Corbin (1998) e ao estilo interpretativista de Glaser e Strauss (1967), sem infringir o princípio elementar da abordagem clássica de que a teoria emergeao longo da pesquisa. A aplicação desta metodologia pode tornar-se uma opção promissora para o desenvolvimento científico, revelando potencialidades que proporcionem ao pesquisador flexibilidade e liberdade para criar. Nesse contexto, os pressupostos ontológicos e metodológicos são escolhas do pesquisador, que pode mesclar métodos de pesquisa (mixed-methodology) e propor o uso combinado e sequencial de técnicas quantitativas e qualitativas no processo de criação de teorias substantivas.

Task-based programming in COMPSs to converge from HPC to big data

Task-based programming has proven to be a suitable model for high-performance computing (HPC) applications. Different implementations have been good demonstrators of this fact and have promoted the acceptance of task-based programming in the OpenMP standard. Furthermore, in recent years, Apache Spark has gained wide popularity in business and research environments as a programming model for addressing emerging big data problems. COMP Superscalar (COMPSs) is a task-based environment that tackles distributed computing (including Clouds) and is a good alternative for a task-based programming model for big data applications. This article describes why we consider that task-based programming models are a good approach for big data applications. The article includes a comparison of Spark and COMPSs in terms of architecture, programming model, and performance. It focuses on the differences that both frameworks have in structural terms, on their programmability interface, and in terms of their efficiency by means of three widely known benchmarking kernels: Wordcount, Kmeans, and Terasort. These kernels enable the evaluation of the more important functionalities of both programming models and analyze different work flows and conditions. The main results achieved from this comparison are (1) COMPSs is able to extract the inherent parallelism from the user code with minimal coding effort as opposed to Spark, which requires the existing algorithms to be adapted and rewritten by explicitly using their predefined functions, (2) it is an improvement in terms of performance when compared with Spark, and (3) COMPSs has shown to scale better than Spark in most cases. Finally, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both frameworks, highlighting the differences that make them unique, thereby helping to choose the right framework for each particular objective.This work is supported by the Spanish Government (SEV2015-0493), by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (contract TIN2015-65316-P), by Generalitat de Catalunya (contracts 2014-SGR-1051 and 2014-SGR-1272). Javier Conejero’s postdoctoral contract is cofinanced by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under the Juan de la Cierva Formación postdoctoral fellowship number FJCI-2015-24651. This work is also supported by the Intel-BSC Exascale Lab. The Human Brain Project receives funding from the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no 604102.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Enabling Python to execute efficiently in heterogeneous distributed infrastructures with PyCOMPSs

Python has been adopted as programming language by a large number of scientific communities. Additionally to the easy programming interface, the large number of libraries and modules that have been made available by a large number of contributors, have taken this language to the top of the list of the most popular programming languages in scientific applications. However, one main drawback of Python is the lack of support for concurrency or parallelism. PyCOMPSs is a proved approach to support task-based parallelism in Python that enables applications to be executed in parallel in distributed computing platforms. This paper presents PyCOMPSs and how it has been tailored to execute tasks in heterogeneous and multi-threaded environments. We present an approach to combine the task-level parallelism provided by PyCOMPSs with the thread-level parallelism provided by MKL. Performance and behavioral results in distributed computing heterogeneous clusters show the benefits and capabilities of PyCOMPSs in both HPC and Big Data infrastructures.Thiswork has been supported by the Spanish Government (SEV2015-0493), by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (contract TIN2015-65316-P), by Generalitat de Catalunya (contracts 2014-SGR-1051 and 2014-SGR-1272). Javier Conejero postdoctoral contract is co-financed by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Juan de la Cierva Formación postdoctoral fellowship number FJCI- 2015-24651. Cristian Ramon-Cortes predoctoral contract is financed by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under the contract BES-2016-076791. This work is supported by the Intel-BSC Exascale Lab. This work has been supported by the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program under contract 687584 (TANGO project).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Executing linear algebra kernels in heterogeneous distributed infrastructures with PyCOMPSs

Python is a popular programming language due to the simplicity of its syntax, while still achieving a good performance even being an interpreted language. The adoption from multiple scientific communities has evolved in the emergence of a large number of libraries and modules, which has helped to put Python on the top of the list of the programming languages [1]. Task-based programming has been proposed in the recent years as an alternative parallel programming model. PyCOMPSs follows such approach for Python, and this paper presents its extensions to combine task-based parallelism and thread-level parallelism. Also, we present how PyCOMPSs has been adapted to support heterogeneous architectures, including Xeon Phi and GPUs. Results obtained with linear algebra benchmarks demonstrate that significant performance can be obtained with a few lines of Python.This work has been supported by the Spanish Government (SEV2015-0493), by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (contract TIN2015-65316-P), by Generalitat de Catalunya (contracts 2014-SGR-1051 and 2014-SGR-1272). Javier Conejero postdoctoral contract is co-financed by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Juan de la Cierva Formación postdoctoral fellowship number FJCI-2015-24651. Cristian Ramon-Cortes predoctoral contract is financed by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under the contract BES-2016-076791. This work is supported by the Intel-BSC Exascale Lab. This work has been supported by the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program under contract 687584 (TANGO project).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Telecochips: Promoting Telecommunications Engineering among Young Students.

The study of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) has suffered a strong decrease during the last decade in Western Countries. The causes of this decrease are very diverse, but it seems necessary to take actions to improve the perception that the future students have about these studies and to approach technology to high school classrooms. Telecochips is a pool of activities designed for promoting the engagement of high school students for Telecommunication and Electronic Engineering in the UPV Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain).Bachiller Martin, MC.; Conejero, JA. (2015). Telecochips: Promoviendo la Ingeniería en Telecomunicación entre los Jóvenes Estudiantes. VAEP-RITA. Versión Abierta Español-Portugués. 3(2):68-75. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/65948S68753

A taxonomic revision of the myrmecophilous species of the rattan genus Korthalsia (Arecaceae)

The rattan genus Korthalsia Blume (Arecaceae: Calamoideae: Calameae) is widespread in the Malesian region. Among the 28 accepted species are 10 species that form intimate associations with ants. The ants inhabit the conspicuous ocreas that are produced by these species, using them as domatia to care for their young and to husband scale insects. As a foundation for future work, we present here a taxonomic treatment of the myrmecophilous Korthalsia species, based on extensive research both in the herbarium and the field. In addition, we conduct detailed morphological characterisation of the structure and development of ocrea using light and scanning electron microscopy. Descriptions, illustrations, keys and distribution maps are presented for all 10 species, along with microscopic images of ocrea morphology and development for selected species

PyCOMPSs as an instrument for translational computer science

With the advent of distributed computing, the need for frameworks that facilitate its programming and management has also appeared. These tools have typically been used to support the research on application areas that require them. This poses good initial conditions for translational computer science (TCS), although this does not always occur. This article describes our experience with the PyCOMPSs project, a programming model for distributed computing. While it is a research instrument for our team, it has also been applied in multiple real use cases under the umbrella of European Funded projects, or as part of internal projects between various departments at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. This article illustrates how the authors have engaged in TCS as an underlying research methodology, collecting experiences from three European projects.This work was supported in part by Spanish Government under Contract TIN2015-65316-P, in part by the Generalitat de Catalunya under Contract 2014-SGR-1051, and in part by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Framework program through BioExcel Center of Excellence under Contract 823830 and Contract 675728, in part by the ExaQUte Project under Contract 800898, in part by the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (JU) under Grant 955558, in part by the MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, and in part by the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft