Contributions to High-Throughput Computing Based on the Peer-to-Peer Paradigm

XII, 116 p.This dissertation focuses on High Throughput Computing (HTC) systems and how to build a working HTC system using Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technologies. The traditional HTC systems, designed to process the largest possible number of tasks per unit of time, revolve around a central node that implements a queue used to store and manage submitted tasks. This central node limits the scalability and fault tolerance of the HTC system. A usual solution involves the utilization of replicas of the master node that can replace it. This solution is, however, limited by the number of replicas used. In this thesis, we propose an alternative solution that follows the P2P philosophy: a completely distributed system in which all worker nodes participate in the scheduling tasks, and with a physically distributed task queue implemented on top of a P2P storage system. The fault tolerance and scalability of this proposal is, therefore, limited only by the number of nodes in the system. The proper operation and scalability of our proposal have been validated through experimentation with a real system. The data availability provided by Cassandra, the P2P data management framework used in our proposal, is analysed by means of several stochastic models. These models can be used to make predictions about the availability of any Cassandra deployment, as well as to select the best possible con guration of any Cassandra system. In order to validate the proposed models, an experimentation with real Cassandra clusters is made, showing that our models are good descriptors of Cassandra's availability. Finally, we propose a set of scheduling policies that try to solve a common problem of HTC systems: re-execution of tasks due to a failure in the node where the task was running, without additional resource misspending. In order to reduce the number of re-executions, our proposals try to nd good ts between the reliability of nodes and the estimated length of each task. An extensive simulation-based experimentation shows that our policies are capable of reducing the number of re-executions, improving system performance and utilization of nodes

Estudio constructivo, propuesta de rehabilitación y cambio de uso de la antigua leprosería de Barcelona Can Masdeu

Can Masdeu, antigua leprosería de Barcelona. Desde su origen hasta la actualidad, ha sufrido una serie de cambios provocados por las necesidades funcionales en cada momento. La información más antigua obtenida de esta masía consta del 1901, cuando fue abjudicada por subasta al Hospital de la Santa Cruz hasta el 1977 que finalmente cerró durante más de 25 años, mostrando en la actualidad un avanzado estado de degradación constructiva con el agotamiento de sus elementos estructurales y constructivos. En el 2001 fue ocupada y rehabilitada como vivienda y centro social. El proyecto se centra en la masía de Can Masdeu, conocida como la antigua leproseria del Hospital de Sant Pau, ubicada en uno de los valles no urbanizados del Parque de Collserola, en Barcelona. Por estos motivos el edificio presenta cierta dificultad a la hora de estudiarlo, las ampliaciones y pequeñas intervenciones que se han ido realizando a lo largo de todos estos años nos han creado muchos conflictos para establecer la tipología constructiva correspondiente a cada época. Los objetivos de nuestro proyecto serán: - Un estudio histórico de la evolución de Can Masdeu. - Un levantamiento gráfico. - Un estudio de los elementos constructivos. - Un análisis de las lesiones existentes con sus propuestas de actuación. - Una propuesta de intervención del edificio

Hong Kong Urban Classroom Culture. Local Dilemmas and Opportunities in EMI-based Multilingual Schools

Contemporary classrooms are a major focus of public debate in contemporary world, particularly in the current context of Hong Kong where wide-ranging educational reforms have been undertaken since the early 2000's. In this context of on-going reform, language education policies have been the centre of a controversial debate which involves all administrative levels and societal actors, from politicians to educators, families and youngsters. Thus, official guidelines and public demands are increasingly emphasizing monitoring of curriculum and pedagogy from a top-down perspective. As a result, Hong Kong teachers, students and school heads find themselves under great pressure to apply abstract guidelines designed outside the confines of the schools with no guidance or consideration on how are they supposed to be localised in everyday lives of their specific school communities. Against this background, the aim of this material is to provide a systematic set of classroom-based naturally occurring data, complementary activities and materials for educators to reflect upon (Hong Kong's contemporary reforms of its language education policies, from a bottom-up perspective which takes into consideration real and localised experiences of teachers and students who are supposed to make such reforms a reality. This is not an academic book in which classroom data are analyzed against or in relation to a given theoretical framework; rather, this package attempts to allow Hong Kong teachers to reflect around the provided classroom materials under the guidance of a facilitator, on the basis of which further interpretations and (academic/non-academic) discourses/perspectives available in wider society are progressively brought into being. Indeed, these complementary perspectives are introduced in a way that seeks consolidation / re-consideration / challenging of initial interpretations by teachers and, therefore, opens new paths for discussion and reflection

Collaborative learning and pandemic situation with online teaching. The experience in Management Skills for Engineers

[EN] In the subject of Management Skills for Engineers in the last 2020/21 academic year, it was necessary to modify radically the full teaching scheme. Given that the number of students was small and that they already knew the conceptual management basis, this subject had traditionally been developed through reverse teaching and carrying out cases and group works in a collaborative learning context. COVID and the need of structuring teaching and tutorials based on TEAMS, which the UPV has standardized, raised an important turning point and decision: moving to a traditional teaching methodology or keeping the one used until now adapting it to take advantage of the potential of TEAMS and the rest of the UPV's applications. In this communication the theoretical foundations, the planning of the subject and the most significant results are summarized.Dema Pérez, CM.; Estelles Miguel, S.; Fernández Llatas, C. (2022). Collaborative learning and pandemic situation with online teaching. The experience in Management Skills for Engineers. En Proceedings INNODOCT/21. International Conference on Innovation, Documentation and Education. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 197-205. https://doi.org/10.4995/INN2021.2021.13936OCS19720

Morphologic matrix application as a tool to spring on creativity

[EN] Morphological analysis methodology has a broad spectrum of application: from technological management to the design of new products and services. Among the techniques applied for spurring creativity in “Managerial Skills to Engineers”, Morphological Analysis has been that has had more success along the years. Traditionally has the feature of being a technique very structured that easily can be applied by the students for resolving different kind of problems, and actually the results confirm this asseveration. Our group has applied this methodology since many years ago. First on doctorate courses of “Technology Management” and afterwards on training in different companies, degree and master subjects, and on Continuous Improvement actions (Kaizen blitz) in Almusaffes Ford Factory and first line suppliers. On this paper we discuss the experience applying it as a tool for developing new products combining with other techniques for spurring creativity as brain storming, lateral thinking, de Bono’s hats, nominal group, etc. In this communication are resumed some of the technique application results and the most interesting answers to the final questionnaire each year is passed for knowing directly student’s real opinion.Dema Pérez, CM.; Estelles Miguel, S.; Fernández Llatas, C. (2022). Morphologic matrix application as a tool to spring on creativity. En Proceedings INNODOCT/21. International Conference on Innovation, Documentation and Education. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 207-214. https://doi.org/10.4995/INN2021.2021.1393720721

The logarithmic spiral, autoisoptic curve

In the Line of Investigation that in the department of “Technical Drawing” in the School of Agriculture Engineering of Madrid, we carry out on the study of The Technical Curves and his singularities, we demonstrate an interesting property of the Logarithmic Spiral. The demonstrated property consists of which the logarithmic spiral is a autoisoptic curve, that is to say that if from a point P anyone of the spiral tangent straight lines draw up to the previous arc, these form a constant angle α. This demonstration is novel and in addition we get to contribute a method to calculate the angle α given the equation of the spiral

Towards a Sustainable City for Cyclists: Promoting Safety through a Mobile Sensing Application

[EN] Riding a bicycle is a great manner to contribute to the preservation of our ecosystem. Cycling helps to reduce air pollution and traffic congestion, and so, it is one of the simplest ways to lower the environmental footprint of people. However, the cohabitation of cars and vulnerable road users, such as bikes, scooters, or pedestrians, is prone to cause accidents with serious consequences. In this context, technological solutions are sought that enable the generation of alerts to prevent these accidents, thereby promoting a safer city for these road users, and a cleaner environment. Alert systems based on smartphones can alleviate these situations since nearly all people carry such a device while traveling. In this work, we test the suitability of a smartphone based alert system, determining the most adequate communications architecture. Two protocols have been designed to send position and alert messages to/from a centralized server over 4G cellular networks. One of the protocols is implemented using a REST architecture on top of the HTTP protocol, and the other one is implemented over the UDP protocol. We show that the proposed alarm system is feasible regarding communication response time, and we conclude that the application should be implemented over the UDP protocol, as response times are about three times better than for the REST implementation. We tested the applications in real deployments, finding that drivers are warned of the presence of bicycles when closer than 150 m, having enough time to pay attention to the situation and drive more carefully to avoid a collision.This work was partially supported by the "Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades, Programa Estatal de Investigacion, Desarrollo e Innovacion Orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad, Proyectos I+D+I 2018", Spain, under Grant RTI2018-096384-B-I00.Boronat, P.; Pérez-Francisco, M.; Tavares De Araujo Cesariny Calafate, CM.; Cano, J. (2021). Towards a Sustainable City for Cyclists: Promoting Safety through a Mobile Sensing Application. Sensors. 21(6):1-18. https://doi.org/10.3390/s2106211611821

The mOxy-CaL Process: Integration of Membrane Separation, Partial Oxy-combustion and Calcium Looping for CO2 Capture

CO2 capture and storage (CCS) is considered as a key strategy in the short to medium term to mitigate global warming. The Calcium-Looping process, based on the reversible carbonation/calcination of CaO particles, is a promising technology for post-combustion CO2 capture because of the low cost and non-toxicity of natural CaO precursors and the minor energy penalty on the power plant in comparison with amines capture based technologies (4-9 % compared to 8-12 %). Another interesting process to reduce CO2 emissions in power plants is oxy-combustion, which is based on replacing the air used for combustion by a highly concentrated (~95 % v/v) O2 stream. This work proposes a novel process (mOxy-CaL) for post-combustion CO2 capture based on the integration of membrane separation, partial oxy-combustion and the Calcium-Looping process. An oxygenenriched air stream, which is obtained from air separation by using highly permeable polymeric membranes, is used to carry out partial oxy-combustion. The flue gas exiting partial oxy-combustion shows a CO2 concentration of ~30 % v/v (higher than 15 % v/v typical in coal power plants). After that, the flue gas is passed to the CaL process where the CO2 reacts with CaO solids according to the carbonation reaction. Thermogravimetric analysis show that the multicycle CaO conversion is enhanced as the CO2 concentration in the flue gas stream is increased. Process simulations show that the mOxy-CaL process has a high CO2 capture efficiency (~95%) with lower energy consumption per kg of CO2 avoided than previously proposed post-combustion CO2 capture technologies. Moreover, the overall system size is significantly lower that state-of-the-art CaL systems, which allows for an important reduction in the capital cost of the technology

Optimal pricing for electricity retailers based on data-driven consumers' price-response

In the present work, we tackle the problem of fnding the optimal price tarif to be set by a risk-averse electric retailer participating in the pool and whose customers are price sensitive. We assume that the retailer has access to a sufciently large smart-meter dataset from which it can statistically characterize the relationship between the tarif price and the demand load of its clients. Three diferent models are analyzed to predict the aggregated load as a function of the electricity prices and other parameters, as humidity or temperature. More specifcally, we train linear regression (predictive) models to forecast the resulting demand load as a function of the retail price. Then, we will insert this model in a quadratic optimization problem which evaluates the optimal price to be ofered. This optimization problem accounts for diferent sources of uncertainty including consumer"s response, pool prices and renewable source availability, and relies on a stochastic and risk-averse formulation. In particular, one important contribution of this work is to base the scenario generation and reduction procedure on the statistical properties of the resulting predictive model. This allows us to properly quantify (data-driven) not only the expected value but the level of uncertainty associated with the main problem parameters. Moreover, we consider both standard forward-based contracts and the recently introduced power purchase agreement contracts as risk-hedging tools for the retailer. The results are promising as profts are found for the retailer with highly competitive prices and some possible improvements are shown if richer datasets could be available in the future. A realistic case study and multiple sensitivity analyses have been performed to characterize the risk-aversion behavior of the retailer considering price-sensitive consumers. It has been assumed that the energy procurement of the retailer can be satisfed from the pool and diferent types of contracts. The obtained results reveal that the risk-aversion degree of the retailer strongly infuences contracting decisions, whereas the price sensitiveness of consumers has a higher impact on the selling price ofered.The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Spanish government through projects PID2020-116694GB-I00 and PID2019-111211RBI00/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033, and from the Madrid Government (Comunidad de Madrid) under the Multiannual Agreement with UC3M in the line of “Fostering Young Doctors Research” (ZEROGASPAIN-CM-UC3M), and in the context of the V PRICIT (Regional Programme of Research and Technological Innovation