Carex elata All. ssp elata, new for Algarve in the lower Guadiana basin

Carex elata All. ssp elata novedad para el Algarve en la cuenca del rio Guadian

In-memory application-level checkpoint-based migration for MPI programs

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Journal of Supercomputing. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-014-1120-2[Abstract] Process migration provides many benefits for parallel environments including dynamic load balancing, data access locality or fault tolerance. This paper describes an in-memory application-level checkpoint-based migration solution for MPI codes that uses the Hierarchical Data Format 5 (HDF5) to write the checkpoint files. The main features of the proposed solution are transparency for the user, achieved through the use of CPPC (ComPiler for Portable Checkpointing); portability, as the application-level approach makes the solution adequate for any MPI implementation and operating system, and the use of the HDF5 file format enables the restart on different architectures; and high performance, by saving the checkpoint files to memory instead of to disk through the use of the HDF5 in-memory files. Experimental results prove that the in-memory approach reduces significantly the I/O cost of the migration process.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación; TIN2010-16735Galicia. Consellería de Economía e Industria; 10PXIB105180P

Failure Avoidance in MPI Applications Using an Application-Level Approach

[Abstract] Execution times of large-scale computational science and engineering parallel applications are usually longer than the mean-time-between-failures. For this reason, hardware failures must be tolerated by the applications to ensure that not all computation done is lost on machine failures. Checkpointing and rollback recovery is one of the most popular techniques to provide fault tolerance support to parallel applications. However, when a failure occurs, most checkpointing mechanisms require a complete restart of the parallel application from the last checkpoint. New advances in the prediction of hardware failures have led to the development of proactive process migration approaches, where tasks are migrated in a preventive way when node failures are anticipated, avoiding the restart of the whole application. The work presented in this paper extends an application-level checkpointing framework to proactively migrate message passing interface (MPI) processes when impending failures are notified, without having to restart the entire application. The main features of the proposed solution are: low overhead in failure-free executions, avoiding the checkpoint dumping associated to rolling back strategies; low overhead at migration time, by means of the design of a light and asynchronous protocol to achieve a consistent global state; transparency for the user, thanks to the use of a compiler tool and a runtime library and portability, as it is not locked into a particular architecture, operating system or MPI implementation.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación; TIN2010-16735Galicia. Consellería de Economía e Industria; 10PXIB105180P

Mexican Women’s Parliament: Is it the way to reach gender equity

One of the most important decisions taken by the Mexican Assembly is to approve the annual budget of the country. Beijing Agreements in 1995 change the perception in the parliament which was merely for men. So, the few Mexican women in the parliament from the different parties organized the “Women’s Parliament” to reach gender equity not only in the different parties but in political, economic and social life. This year the women deputies and senators divided the country in five regions and had meetings outside of the central parliament office. at San Lázaro in Mexico City. These meetings tried to include the rich diversity demands from the different states, municipals and NGOs that participate during three weeks between February and March 2005. At the end of the regional meetings all the agreements were approved in the federal parliament. After Beijing Agreements + 10 not only the government but politicians are aware of improving empowerment women which has been a goal in a “machista” and traditional societ

Extending an Application-Level Checkpointing Tool to Provide Fault Tolerance Support to OpenMP Applications

[Abstract] Despite the increasing popularity of shared-memory systems, there is a lack of tools for providing fault tolerance support to shared-memory applications. CPPC (ComPiler for Portable Checkpointing) is an application-level checkpointing tool focused on the insertion of fault tolerance into long-running MPI applications. This paper presents an extension to CPPC to allow the checkpointing of OpenMP applications. The proposed solution maintains the main characteristics of CPPC: portability and reduced checkpoint file size. The performance of the proposal is evaluated using the OpenMP NAS Parallel Benchmarks showing that most of the applications present small checkpoint overheads.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; TIN2013-42148-

Analysis of Performance-impacting Factors on Checkpointing Frameworks: The CPPC Case Study

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in The Computer Journal. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/comjnl/bxr018[Abstract] This paper focuses on the performance evaluation of Compiler for Portable Checkpointing (CPPC), a tool for the checkpointing of parallel message-passing applications. Its performance and the factors that impact it are transparently and rigorously identified and assessed. The tests were performed on a public supercomputing infrastructure, using a large number of very different applications and showing excellent results in terms of performance and effort required for integration into user codes. Statistical analysis techniques have been used to better approximate the performance of the tool. Quantitative and qualitative comparisons with other rollback-recovery approaches to fault tolerance are also included. All these data and comparisons are then discussed in an effort to extract meaningful conclusions about the state-of-the-art and future research trends in the rollback-recovery field.Minsiterio de Ciencia e Innovación; TIN2010-1673

Improving Scalability of Application-Level Checkpoint-Recovery by Reducing Checkpoint Sizes

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in New Generation Computing. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00354-013-0302-4[Abstract] The execution times of large-scale parallel applications on nowadays multi/many-core systems are usually longer than the mean time between failures. Therefore, parallel applications must tolerate hardware failures to ensure that not all computation done is lost on machine failures. Checkpointing and rollback recovery is one of the most popular techniques to implement fault-tolerant applications. However, checkpointing parallel applications is expensive in terms of computing time, network utilization and storage resources. Thus, current checkpoint-recovery techniques should minimize these costs in order to be useful for large scale systems. In this paper three different and complementary techniques to reduce the size of the checkpoints generated by application-level checkpointing are proposed and implemented. Detailed experimental results obtained on a multicore cluster show the effectiveness of the proposed methods to reduce checkpointing cost.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación; TIN2010-16735Galicia. Consellería de Economía e Industria; 10PXIB105180P

Diseño de estrategias mercadológicas para la línea de repostería de la Empresa Plásticos Modernos, S.A., de la ciudad de Managua, correspondiente al primer semestre del año 2014

presente trabajo corresponde a un requisito establecido para la Modalidad de Seminario de Graduación para optar al título de Licenciado en Mercadotecnia el que fue realizado en la Empresa Plásticos Modernos, S.A, ubicada en la ciudad de Managua en el periodo comprendido de Agosto a Diciembre 2013, con el objetivo principal de diseñar estrategias mercadológicas que mejoren el posicionamiento en la nueva línea de productos de repostería. Se inicia con la descripción de la gestión administrativa que expresa los antecedentes, razón social, misión, visión, valores, objetivos y estructura organizacional. La aplicación de la cadena de valor permitió describir el desarrollo de las actividades de la Gerencia de Alimentos donde se elaboran las reposterías, se identificaron acciones que se realizan y generan valor a los clientes y a la empresa. Dos relevantes debilidades que se detectaron son: las inadecuadas condiciones en las que se transporta el producto al cliente y la carencia de una publicidad fuerte y constante para posicionarse en la mente del consumidor. El diseño y análisis de la matriz FODA condujo a detectar las variables internas y externas que inciden en el buen funcionamiento de la línea de repostería, así como aquellas que la frenan o tensionan su desarrollo en la dinámica del mercado. El análisis del mercado describe el perfil de los clientes actuales y potenciales, la descripción de la competencia y características principales de los competidores. Se recomiendan estrategias sostenibles para la mezcla de marketing, ampliar el sistema de entrega a tres veces por semana, además de un roll de visitar para las promotoras de ventas. La Jefatura Administrativa de la Gerencia de Alimentos de la empresa considera de mayor prioridad las relacionadas al producto y la de promoción, para las que se diseñó un presupuesto que asciende a C$ 55,000. Se sugiere que sea la Gerencia de Ventas Consumo y la Gerencia de Alimentos,quien asuma el control y evaluación de las misma

Impact of Myo-inositol supplementation in the prevention of neural tube defects

Motivation: Neural tube defects (NTDs) occur during early development by failure of neural tube closure and cause severe birth problems like spina bifida. It has been demonstrated that the mechanisms required during neural tube closure are regulated by genetic and environmental factors, such as maternal diet. Folic acid supplementation during pregnancy prevents the appearance of NTDs in 70% of the cases and the remaining 30% are considered folate resistant. For that reason, there is a need to find new supplements that could help preventing NTDs. One compound that is being tested is inositol, a simple carbon six sugar alcohol that participates in a diverse range of cellular functions. In clinical trials, inositol was used to prevent NTDs and the offspring from mothers that included inositol and folic acid in their diet during pregnancy did not develop NTDs. In our laboratory we are using Loop-tail, mutant of the member of the Wnt-PCP Vangl2, that in heterozygosity presents an incidence of 6% spina bifida. Previous studies using Loop-tail, revealed that a cellular aggregate originates in neural tube dorsal zone of heterozygous embryos. This aggregate, Sox10 positive, is formed by cells from the neural crest which did not migrate correctly. Besides, this cellular aggregate shares similarities with lipomyelomeningocele, the most common type of spina bifida occulta. In order to prevent the appearance of this cellular aggregate our laboratory previously used D-Chiro-inositol in Loop-tail mice as a supplement. Although the aggregate size and prevalence was reduced, crown-rump length of heterozygous embryos was significantly shorter than control embryos. Therefore, we are currently testing Myo-inositol, the isomeric form of inositol used in the human trials designed to prevent NTDs. Methods: Myo-inositol was administered in the drinking water to pregnant females from day E1.5 of gestation until E11,5 and embryos were collected at stage E12,5. From each litter, data referring to number of implants, resorptions and genotype of the embryos was registered for possible effects on embryotoxicity. In situ hybridization using a Sox10 probe, neural crest marker, was later performed in order to study the presence and intensity of cellular aggregates