QCD simulations with staggered fermions on GPUs

We report on our implementation of the RHMC algorithm for the simulation of lattice QCD with two staggered flavors on Graphics Processing Units, using the NVIDIA CUDA programming language. The main feature of our code is that the GPU is not used just as an accelerator, but instead the whole Molecular Dynamics trajectory is performed on it. After pointing out the main bottlenecks and how to circumvent them, we discuss the obtained performances. We present some preliminary results regarding OpenCL and multiGPU extensions of our code and discuss future perspectives.Comment: 22 pages, 14 eps figures, final version to be published in Computer Physics Communication

OBSERVING THE POLARIZED COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND FROM THE EARTH: SCANNING STRATEGY AND POLARIMETERS TEST FOR THE LSPE/STRIP INSTRUMENT

Detecting B-mode polarization anisotropies on large angular scales in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization pattern is one of the major challenges in modern observational cosmology since it would give us an important evidence in favor of the inflationary paradigm and would shed light on the physics of the very early Universe. Multi-frequency observations are required to disentangle the very weak CMB signal from diffuse polarized foregrounds originating by radiative processes in our galaxy. The \u201cLarge Scale Polarization Explorer\u201d (LSPE) is an experiment that aims to constrain the ratio between the amplitudes of tensor and scalar modes to r 48 0.03 and to study the polarized emission of the Milky Way. LSPE is composed of two instruments: SWIPE, a stratospheric balloon operating at 140, 210 and 240 GHz that will fly for two weeks in the Northern Hemisphere during the polar night of 2021, and STRIP, a ground-based telescope that will start to take data in early 2021 from the \u201cObservatorio del Teide\u201d in Tenerife observing the sky at 43 GHz (Q-band) and 95 GHz (W-band). In my thesis, I show the results of the unit-level tests campaign on the STRIP detectors that took place at \u201cUniversit\ue0 degli Studi di Milano Bicocca\u201d from September 2017 to July 2018, and I present the code I developed and the simulations I performed to study the STRIP scanning strategy. During the unit-level tests, more than 800 tests on 68 polarimeters have been performed in order to select the 55 (49 Q-band and 6 W-band) with the best performance in terms of central frequencies, bandwidths, noise temperatures, white noise levels, slopes and knee frequencies. The STRIP scanning strategy is based on spinning the telescope around the azimuth axis with constant elevation in order to overlap the SWIPE coverage maintaining a sensitivity of 1.6 \ub5K (on average) per sky pixels of 1\ub0. Individual sources will be periodically observed both for calibration and study purposes

Future challenges and recommendations

Rapid advances in information technology and telecommunications, and in particular mobile and wireless communications, converge towards the emergence of a new type of “infostructure” that has the potential of supporting a large spectrum of advanced services for healthcare and health. Currently the ICT community produces a great effort to drill down from the vision and the promises of wireless and mobile technologies and provide practical application solutions. Research and development include data gathering and omni-directional transfer of vital information, integration of human machine interface technology into handheld devices and personal applications, security and interoperability of date and integration with hospital legacy systems and electronic patient record. The ongoing evolution of wireless technology and mobile device capabilities is changing the way healthcare providers interact with information technologies. The growth and acceptance of mobile information technology at the point of care, coupled with the promise and convenience of data on demand, creates opportunities for enhanced patient care and safety. The developments presented in this section demonstrate clearly the innovation aspects and trends towards user oriented applications

OpenFPM: A scalable environment for particle and particle-mesh codes on parallel computers

Scalable and efficient numerical simulations continue to gain importance, as computation is firmly established tool of discovery, together with theory and experiment. Meanwhile, the performance of computing hardware grows with increasing heterogeneous hardware, enabling simulations of ever more complex models. However, efficiently implementing scalable codes on heterogeneous, distributed hardware systems becomes the bottleneck. This bottleneck can be alleviated by intermediate software layers that provide higher-level abstractions closer to the problem domain, hence allowing the computational scientist to focus on the simulation. Here, we present OpenFPM, an open and scalable framework that provides an abstraction layer for numerical simulations using particles and/or meshes. OpenFPM provides transparent and scalable infrastructure for shared-memory and distributed-memory implementations of particles-only and hybrid particle-mesh simulations of both discrete and continuous models, as well as non-simulation codes. This infrastructure is complemented with frequently used numerical routines, as well as interfaces to third-party libraries. This thesis will present the architecture and design of OpenFPM, detail the underlying abstractions, and benchmark the framework in applications ranging from Smoothed-Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) to Molecular Dynamics (MD), Discrete Element Methods (DEM), Vortex Methods, stencil codes, high-dimensional Monte Carlo sampling (CMA-ES), and Reaction-Diffusion solvers, comparing it to the current state of the art and existing software frameworks

Grouping in Elementary Education

The prime objective of this paper is to explore the question; Can a classroom teacher through investigation of relevant professional literature, receive adequate guidance in the use of grouping as a means of organization for instruction? Literature on this topic suggests that grouping is not only of value, but probably essential in many learning situations. Furthermore, grouping is one of the few feasible methods for individualized instruction that may be incorporated into our present educational framework of one teacher classrooms. The above hypothesis has led the researcher to: Examine relevant professional literature in an attempt to bring to light many of the ramifications involved in the organization and evaluation of instructional groups. Engage in a field project, basing the grouping procedures on currently accepted practices as identified in the above mentioned literature. Evaluate the quality of guidance received from the literature. Recommendations for further research are included as a result of the experience described above

Evolution, The Story of Life

The prime objective of this paper is to present some of the theories concerning human development beginning with some of the earliest theories and progressing to some of a more recent nature. A general definition of the word evolution means change. There is no doubt that there are many changes occurring about us every day. The evolution with which this paper is concerned is a special kind of change called organic evolution. This subdivision of evolution deals with changes undergone by living things

Cholesterol activates the G-protein coupled receptor Smoothened to promote Hedgehog signaling

Cholesterol is necessary for the function of many G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs). We find that cholesterol is not just necessary but also sufficient to activate signaling by the Hedgehog (Hh) pathway, a prominent cell-cell communication system in development. Cholesterol influences Hh signaling by directly activating Smoothened (SMO), an orphan GPCR that transmits the Hh signal across the membrane in all animals. Unlike most GPCRs, which are regulated by cholesterol through their heptahelical transmembrane domains, SMO is activated by cholesterol through its extracellular cysteine-rich domain (CRD). Residues shown to mediate cholesterol binding to the CRD in a recent structural analysis also dictate SMO activation, both in response to cholesterol and to native Hh ligands. Our results show that cholesterol can initiate signaling from the cell surface by engaging the extracellular domain of a GPCR and suggest that SMO activity may be regulated by local changes in cholesterol abundance or accessibility

Self-supervised learning: When is fusion of the primary and secondary sensor cue useful?

Self-supervised learning (SSL) is a reliable learning mechanism in which a robot enhances its perceptual capabilities. Typically, in SSL a trusted, primary sensor cue provides supervised training data to a secondary sensor cue. In this article, a theoretical analysis is performed on the fusion of the primary and secondary cue in a minimal model of SSL. A proof is provided that determines the specific conditions under which it is favorable to perform fusion. In short, it is favorable when (i) the prior on the target value is strong or (ii) the secondary cue is sufficiently accurate. The theoretical findings are validated with computational experiments. Subsequently, a real-world case study is performed to investigate if fusion in SSL is also beneficial when assumptions of the minimal model are not met. In particular, a flying robot learns to map pressure measurements to sonar height measurements and then fuses the two, resulting in better height estimation. Fusion is also beneficial in the opposite case, when pressure is the primary cue. The analysis and results are encouraging to study SSL fusion also for other robots and sensors

Sonic Hedgehog Induces the Segregation of Patched and Smoothened in Endosomes

AbstractBackground: Sonic hedgehog (Shh) signal transduction involves the ligand binding Patched1 (Ptc1) protein and a signaling component, Smoothened (Smo). A select group of compounds inhibits both Shh signaling, regulated by Ptc1, and late endosomal lipid sorting, regulated by the Ptc-related Niemann-Pick C1 (NPC1) protein. This suggests that Ptc1 regulates Smo activity through a common late endosomal sorting pathway also utilized by NPC1. During signaling, Ptc accumulates in endosomal compartments, but it is unclear if Smo follows Ptc into the endocytic pathway.Results: We characterized the dynamic subcellular distributions of Ptc1, Smo, and activated Smo mutants individually and in combination. Ptc1 and Smo colocalize extensively in the absence of ligand and are internalized together after ligand binding, but Smo becomes segregated from Ptc1/Shh complexes destined for lysosomal degradation. In contrast, activated Smo mutants do not colocalize with nor are cotransported with Ptc1. Agents that block late endosomal transport and protein sorting inhibit the ligand-induced segregation of Ptc1 and Smo. We show that, like NPC1-regulated lipid sorting, Shh signal transduction is blocked by antibodies that specifically disrupt the internal membranes of late endosomes, which provide a platform for protein and lipid sorting.Conclusions: These data support a model in which Ptc1 inhibits Smo only when in the same compartment. Ligand-induced segregation allows Smo to signal independently of Ptc1 after becoming sorted from Ptc1/Shh complexes in the late endocytic pathway