Promoting Component Reuse by Separating Transmission Policy from Implementation

In this paper we present a methodology and set of tools which assist the construction of applications from components, by separating the issues of transmission policy from component definition and implementation. This promotes a greater degree of software reuse than is possible using traditional middleware environments. Whilst component technologies are usually presented as a mechanism for promoting reuse, reuse is often limited due to design choices that permeate component implementation. The programmer has no direct control over inter-address-space parameter passing semantics: it is fixed by the distributed application's structure, based on the remote accessibility of the components. Using traditional middleware tools and environments, the application designer may be forced to use an unnatural encoding of application level semantics since application parameter passing semantics are tightly coupled with the component deployment topology. This paper describes how inter-address-space parameter passing semantics may be decided independently of component implementation. Transmission policy may be dynamically defined on a per-class, per-method or per-parameter basis.Comment: Submitted to ICDCS 200

Non-Music Major Participation in Collegiate Marching Bands: A Necessary Demographic Required for the Survival of the Collegiate Marching Band

The collegiate marching band can be the face of a university and the heartbeat of campus. Marching bands attract students from all majors across the campus, where those who major in music have the opportunity to be the smallest demographic in the ensemble if the ensemble is open to the entire college or university. Without non-music majors’ participation in collegiate marching bands, programs would not thrive as they do today. Numerous researchers have discovered that many students who had joined an ensemble did not participate in a collegiate performing ensemble after high school graduation. In particular, Mantie and Dorfman described “that approximately 75-80% of non-music majors with high school music involvement did not join ensembles on college campuses. They also noted that only 14.6% of participants reported partaking in regular music-making activities.” Through interviews of non-music major students who participate in collegiate marching bands and collegiate marching band directors, this study will answer the following questions: What factors influence non-music majors’ participation in collegiate marching bands? What recruitment tools do collegiate marching band directors use to attract and retain non-music major students in their ensemble? By answering these questions, the importance of the non-music majors’ participation in collegiate marching bands will be made apparent, and tips to recruit and retain those students

RAFDA: A Policy-Aware Middleware Supporting the Flexible Separation of Application Logic from Distribution

Middleware technologies often limit the way in which object classes may be used in distributed applications due to the fixed distribution policies that they impose. These policies permeate applications developed using existing middleware systems and force an unnatural encoding of application level semantics. For example, the application programmer has no direct control over inter-address-space parameter passing semantics. Semantics are fixed by the distribution topology of the application, which is dictated early in the design cycle. This creates applications that are brittle with respect to changes in distribution. This paper explores technology that provides control over the extent to which inter-address-space communication is exposed to programmers, in order to aid the creation, maintenance and evolution of distributed applications. The described system permits arbitrary objects in an application to be dynamically exposed for remote access, allowing applications to be written without concern for distribution. Programmers can conceal or expose the distributed nature of applications as required, permitting object placement and distribution boundaries to be decided late in the design cycle and even dynamically. Inter-address-space parameter passing semantics may also be decided independently of object implementation and at varying times in the design cycle, again possibly as late as run-time. Furthermore, transmission policy may be defined on a per-class, per-method or per-parameter basis, maximizing plasticity. This flexibility is of utility in the development of new distributed applications, and the creation of management and monitoring infrastructures for existing applications.Comment: Submitted to EuroSys 200

The Evolution of the Police Analyst and the Influence of Evidence-Based Policing

The National Intelligence Model (NIM), implemented in the UK during 2000, was at the centre of the police reform agenda and catalyst for a growth in the number of police analyst posts within UK police agencies. Since then, commentators have questioned whether the role of the police analyst has lived up to expectation. This has been an interesting development considering that crime analysis is an essential component in influencing policing activity. This study explores the status of police analysts in the UK and outlines why the position may have been undermined. However, it also asks whether the growing emphasis towards evidence-based policing (EBP) provides a renewed opportunity for police analysts and the integration of crime analysis. It argues the integration of EBP (interpreted in its widest sense) could be an evolutionary step in finally establishing the police analyst as a true law enforcement professional. In doing so, it examines the role of the analyst both as a producer of information and as a bridge to partners, including academia, to assist in co-production of rigorous analysis that can be used to direct policing resources and influence policy

A peer-to-peer infrastructure for resilient web services

This work is funded by GR/M78403 “Supporting Internet Computation in Arbitrary Geographical Locations” and GR/R51872 “Reflective Application Framework for Distributed Architectures”, and by Nuffield Grant URB/01597/G “Peer-to-Peer Infrastructure for Autonomic Storage Architectures”This paper describes an infrastructure for the deployment and use of Web Services that are resilient to the failure of the nodes that host those services. The infrastructure presents a single interface that provides mechanisms for users to publish services and to find hosted services. The infrastructure supports the autonomic deployment of services and the brokerage of hosts on which services may be deployed. Once deployed, services are autonomically managed in a number of aspects including load balancing, availability, failure detection and recovery, and lifetime management. Services are published and deployed with associated metadata describing the service type. This same metadata may be used subsequently by interested parties to discover services. The infrastructure uses peer-to-peer (P2P) overlay technologies to abstract over the underlying network to deploy and locate instances of those services. It takes advantage of the P2P network to replicate directory services used to locate service instances (for using a service), Service Hosts (for deployment of services) and Autonomic Managers which manage the deployed services. The P2P overlay network is itself constructed using novel Web Services-based middleware and a variation of the Chord P2P protocol, which is self-managing.Postprin

Extending Irksome: improvements in automated Runge--Kutta time stepping for finite element methods

Irksome is a library based on the Unified Form Language (UFL) that enables automated generation of Runge--Kutta methods for time-stepping finite element spatial discretizations of partial differential equations (PDE). Allowing users to express semidiscrete forms of PDE, it generates UFL representations for the stage-coupled variational problems to be solved at each time step. The Firedrake package then generates efficient code for evaluating these variational problems and allows users a wide range of options to deploy efficient algebraic solvers in PETSc. In this paper, we describe several recent advances in Irksome. These include alternate formulations of the Runge--Kutta time-stepping methods and optimized support for diagonally implicit (DIRK) methods. Additionally, we present new and improved tools for building preconditioners for the resulting linear and linearized systems, demonstrating that these can lead to efficient approaches for solving fully implicit Runge-Kutta discretizations. The new features are demonstrated through a sequence of computational examples demonstrating the high-level interface and obtained solver performance

Translating policy to place: exploring cultural ecosystem services in areas of Green Belt through participatory mapping

\ua9 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.Green Belts are longstanding planning designations, which primarily seek to prevent urban sprawl. Importantly, they form the open spaces close to where most people live, but we lack clarity over how Green Belts are used and valued by publics, and the cultural ecosystem services they provide. To address this policy and research gap, a public participatory mapping survey was conducted on the North-East England Green Belt, with 779 respondents plotting 2388 points. The results show for the first time that in addition to being a planning policy zone, Green Belts are important, and widely used open spaces for ‘everyday nature’, providing several cultural ecosystem services including recreation, connection with nature, sense of place and aesthetic value. Several factors were found to influence the supply of cultural ecosystem services in Green Belts, including proximity to urban areas, woodland land cover and access designations. Whereas most demand pressures on Green Belts were on public rights-of-way, nature designations and deciduous woodlands. Pervasive barriers inhibiting Green Belt’s full potential were identified including management issues, concerns over personal safety and lack of access. We argue that opportunities to further enhance the cultural ecosystem services provided Green Belts and peri-urban landscapes more broadly, not only come from planning policies themselves, but from the design and delivery of approaches integrating urban, rural and land-use policy silos. The findings have wider implications for policy including potential conflict with future development, and opportunities for greater access to greenspace

Topological Optimization of the Evaluation of Finite Element Matrices

We present a topological framework for finding low-flop algorithms for evaluating element stiffness matrices associated with multilinear forms for finite element methods posed over straight-sided affine domains. This framework relies on phrasing the computation on each element as the contraction of each collection of reference element tensors with an element-specific geometric tensor. We then present a new concept of complexity-reducing relations that serve as distance relations between these reference element tensors. This notion sets up a graph-theoretic context in which we may find an optimized algorithm by computing a minimum spanning tree. We present experimental results for some common multilinear forms showing significant reductions in operation count and also discuss some efficient algorithms for building the graph we use for the optimization

Defining Vulnerability: From the Conceptual to the Operational

Whilst police agencies are increasingly being asked to assist vulnerable individuals, the concept of vulnerability, and how it how it should be policed, remains ambiguous. This study compares current academic thinking with the views and experiences of serving police employees. It presents a conceptual map to depict intersecting individual, social and environmental factors, to assist practitioners understand the concept of vulnerability, that also supports data sharing and partnership working. Further, it highlights the central importance of the police in a multi-agency triage process, signposting vulnerable individuals to the most appropriate service

Secondary Electron Yield Measurements of Fermilab's Main Injector Vacuum Vessel

We discuss the progress made on a new installation in Fermilab's Main Injector that will help investigate the electron cloud phenomenon by making direct measurements of the secondary electron yield (SEY) of samples irradiated in the accelerator. In the Project X upgrade the Main Injector will have its beam intensity increased by a factor of three compared to current operations. This may result in the beam being subject to instabilities from the electron cloud. Measured SEY values can be used to further constrain simulations and aid our extrapolation to Project X intensities. The SEY test-stand, developed in conjunction with Cornell and SLAC, is capable of measuring the SEY from samples using an incident electron beam when the samples are biased at different voltages. We present the design and manufacture of the test-stand and the results of initial laboratory tests on samples prior to installation.Comment: 3 pp. 3rd International Particle Accelerator Conference (IPAC 2012) 20-25 May 2012, New Orleans, Louisian