Dominant Resource Fairness in Cloud Computing Systems with Heterogeneous Servers

We study the multi-resource allocation problem in cloud computing systems where the resource pool is constructed from a large number of heterogeneous servers, representing different points in the configuration space of resources such as processing, memory, and storage. We design a multi-resource allocation mechanism, called DRFH, that generalizes the notion of Dominant Resource Fairness (DRF) from a single server to multiple heterogeneous servers. DRFH provides a number of highly desirable properties. With DRFH, no user prefers the allocation of another user; no one can improve its allocation without decreasing that of the others; and more importantly, no user has an incentive to lie about its resource demand. As a direct application, we design a simple heuristic that implements DRFH in real-world systems. Large-scale simulations driven by Google cluster traces show that DRFH significantly outperforms the traditional slot-based scheduler, leading to much higher resource utilization with substantially shorter job completion times

Changes in plant species richness distribution in Tibetan alpine grasslands under different precipitation scenarios

Species richness is the core of biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) research. Nevertheless, it is difficult to accurately predict changes in plant species richness under different climate scenarios, especially in alpine biomes. In this study, we surveyed plant species richness from 2009 to 2017 in 75 alpine meadows (AM), 199 alpine steppes (AS), and 71 desert steppes (DS) in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, China. Along with 20 environmental factors relevant to species settlement, development, and survival, we first simulated the spatial pattern of plant species richness under current climate conditions using random forest modelling. Our results showed that simulated species richness matched well with observed values in the field, showing an evident decrease from meadows to steppes and then to deserts. Summer precipitation, which ranked first among the 20 environmental factors, was further confirmed to be the most critical driver of species richness distribution. Next, we simulated and compared species richness patterns under four different precipitation scenarios, increasing and decreasing summer precipitation by 20% and 10%, relative to the current species richness pattern. Our findings showed that species richness in response to altered precipitation was grassland-type specific, with meadows being sensitive to decreasing precipitation, steppes being sensitive to increasing precipitation, and deserts remaining resistant. In addition, species richness at low elevations was more sensitive to decreasing precipitation than to increasing precipitation, implying that droughts might have stronger influences than wetting on species composition. In contrast, species richness at high elevations (also in deserts) changed slightly under different precipitation scenarios, likely due to harsh physical conditions and small species pools for plant recruitment and survival. Finally, we suggest that policymakers and herdsmen pay more attention to alpine grasslands in central Tibet and at low elevations where species richness is sensitive to precipitation changes

Deforming black holes with even multipolar differential rotation boundary

Motivated by the novel asymptotically global AdS$_4$ solutions with deforming horizon in [JHEP {\bf 1802}, 060 (2018)], we analyze the boundary metric with even multipolar differential rotation and numerically construct a family of deforming solutions with quadrupolar differential rotation boundary, including two classes of solutions: solitons and black holes. In contrast to solutions with dipolar differential rotation boundary, we find that even though the norm of Killing vector $\partial_t$ becomes spacelike for certain regions of polar angle $\theta$ when $\varepsilon>2$, solitons and black holes with quadrupolar differential rotation still exist and do not develop hair due to superradiance. Moreover, at the same temperature, the horizonal deformation of quadrupolar rotation is smaller than that of dipolar rotation. Furthermore, we also study the entropy and quasinormal modes of the solutions, which have the analogous properties to that of dipolar rotation.Comment: 18 pages, 21 figure

NPRF: A Neural Pseudo Relevance Feedback Framework for Ad-hoc Information Retrieval

Pseudo-relevance feedback (PRF) is commonly used to boost the performance of traditional information retrieval (IR) models by using top-ranked documents to identify and weight new query terms, thereby reducing the effect of query-document vocabulary mismatches. While neural retrieval models have recently demonstrated strong results for ad-hoc retrieval, combining them with PRF is not straightforward due to incompatibilities between existing PRF approaches and neural architectures. To bridge this gap, we propose an end-to-end neural PRF framework that can be used with existing neural IR models by embedding different neural models as building blocks. Extensive experiments on two standard test collections confirm the effectiveness of the proposed NPRF framework in improving the performance of two state-of-the-art neural IR models.Comment: Full paper in EMNLP 201

(E)-Benzo­yl[1-(2-hydroxy­ethyl)imidazolidin-2-yl­idene]acetonitrile

In the title compound, C14H15N3O2, the C=C(H)—C=O grouping and the imidazolidine ring are coplanar as a result of an intra­molecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bond and extended electronic conjugation. Inter­molecular N—H⋯O and O—H⋯N hydrogen bonds help to establish the packing