Introduction—Special Issue “Dystopian Scenarios in Contemporary Australian Narrative”

The main aim of this Special Issue is to expose how a variety of contemporary Australian dystopias delve into a number of worrying global issues, thus making it clear that our contemporary world is already corroborating and bearing witness to a number of futuristic nightmares [...

A Jacobi-based algorithm for computing symmetric eigenvalues and eigenvectors in a two-dimensional mesh

The paper proposes an algorithm for computing symmetric eigenvalues and eigenvectors that uses a one-sided Jacobi approach and is targeted to a multicomputer in which nodes can be arranged as a two-dimensional mesh with an arbitrary number of rows and columns. The algorithm is analysed through simple analytical models of execution time, which show that an adequate choice of the mesh configuration (number of rows and columns) can improve performance significantly, with respect to a one-dimensional configuration, which is the most frequently considered scenario in current proposals. This improvement is especially noticeable in large systems.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

A methodology for user-oriented scalability analysis

Scalability analysis provides information about the effectiveness of increasing the number of resources of a parallel system. Several methods have been proposed which use different approaches to provide this information. This paper presents a family of analysis methods oriented to the user. The methods in this family should assist the user in estimating the benefits when increasing the system size. The key issue in the proposal is the appropriate combination of a scaling model, which reflects the way the users utilize an increasing number of resources, and a figure of merit that the user wants to improve with the larger system. Another important element in the proposal is the approach to characterize the scalability, which enables quick visual analyses and comparisons. Finally, three concrete examples of methods belonging to the proposed family are introduced in this paper.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Cinderella Wants to Decide: A Feminist Study of Several Versions of This Fairy Tale Over the Years

Abstract The literary fairy tale, present along history since the Middle Ages, is a device that portrays the ideology, politics, values, and morals of a society. However, they have also worked as an acculturation device for many centuries now. The language used in these tales is a key element, for it is selected by the tale collector or the tale writer with a purpose. A clear example is the fairy tale "Cinderella". People with power, men in the majority of cases, have articulated some specific discourse in order to reproduce or, rather, create, a reality in which men are strong while women are weak, men are active while women are passive, men are the leaders while women are the followers, just to mention a few dichotomies. Male collectors of fairy tales such as Basile, the brothers Grimm, and Charles Perrault have used their power as storytellers to reproduce a hierarchical structure of society, namely, patriarchy. These biased ideas on women, which the literary fairy tale has helped spread, have negatively affected the formation of gender identity in young people for a long time, since gender identity is socially constructed. Feminist scholarship denounced this biased discourse, and has tried to subvert it in different ways. While some female authors, such as Emma Donoghue and Tanith Lee, have re-read traditional fairy tales and written their own versions, other feminist authors have created brand new fairy tales. In all of them, though, the female figure is portrayed in ways which widely differ from the representations that can be found in tales written or collected by male authors. As this Master thesis will try to show, fairy tales are not as inoffensive as one might think at first. They have been a political weapon which leaves women in a position of weakness and dependence, under a powerful and controlling male figure. However, femininist scholarship, and by extension the feminist re-writing of traditional fairy tales, has denounced this phenomenon and has tried hard to fight it

The Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Environments (IE 09): a report

The development of intelligent environments is considered an important step towards the realization of the ambient intelligence vision. Intelligent environments are technologically augmented everyday spaces, which intuitively support human activity. The IE conferences traditionally provide a leading edge forum for researchers and engineers to present their latest research and to discuss future directions in the area of intelligent environments. This article briefly presents the content of the Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Environments (IE09), which was held July 20–21 at the Castelldefels campus, of the Technical University of Catalonia, near Barcelona, Spain.Postprint (published version

Diversity and Genetic structure of the Spanish collection of durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L) landraces

The objectives of this study were to assess diversity and genetic structure of a collection of Spanish durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L) landraces, using SSRs, DArTs and gliadin-markers, and to correlate the distribution of diversity with geographic and climatic features, as well as agro-morphological traits. A high level of diversity was detected in the genotypes analyzed, which were separated into nine populations with a moderate to great genetic divergence among them. The three subspecies taxa, dicoccon, turgidum and durum, present in the collection, largely determined the clustering of the populations. Genotype variation was lower in dicoccon (one major population) and turgidum (two major populations) than in durum (five major populations). Genetic differentiation by the agro-ecological zone of origin was greater in dicoccon and turgidum than in durum. DArT markers revealed two geographic substructures, east-west for dicoccon and northeast-southwest for turgidum. The ssp. durum had a more complex structure, consisting of seven populations with high intra-population variation. DArT markers allowed the detection of subgroups within some populations, with agro-morphological and gliadin differences, and distinct agro-ecological zones of origin. Two different phylogenetic groups were detected; revealing that some durum populations were more related to ssp. turgidum from northern Spain, while others seem to be more related to durum wheats from North Afric

Cuidados continuos. Una necesidad del paciente oncológico

Los cuidados continuos pueden ser entendidos como la atención integral a la persona enferma en su realidad total: biológica, psicológica, familiar, laboral y social. Por tanto para realizar una atención total, se deben atender todas las fases de la enfermedad oncológica cubriendo desde la prevención y el diagnóstico, abarcando el tratamiento de soporte y sintomático, llegando a los cuidados paliativos del enfermo en fase avanzada, y el manejo de la crisis al final de la vida. Por tanto, los cuidados continuos son aplicables a lo largo de todo el proceso evolutivo del tratamiento del cáncer y de sus diferentes etapas, enfatizando los recursos empleados y su intensidad en función de las necesidades o complejidad requerida, y no solo aplicándolos en los pacientes avanzados al final de la vida.Continuity of care might be defined as an integral care to the patient as a whole: biological psychological social and the care of the family. That ´s why to get this global care, we need to care all the phases of the illness, since prevention and diagnosis, covering supportive care and reaching the palliative care when the cure is not possible and patients approach the end of life. Then, we need to apply the continuity of care along all the illness process in function of the needs and the resources and not only at the end of life

Sobre la datación alarconiana de “La belleza ideal”

Entre 1881 y 1882 Pedro Antonio de Alarcón inauguró la colección de sus Obras completas con tres tomos de relatos cortos, todos los cuales habían sido publicados con anterioridad en periódicos y revistas —a veces también en forma de libro—. El presente artículo analiza uno de esos cuentos, La belleza ideal, atendiendo fundamentalmente a su carácter paródico y a la conclusión moralizante que de él se desprende, con vistas a esclarecer el problema planteado por el desacuerdo entre la fecha asignada al relato por su autor (1854) y la que, según todos los indicios, es la fecha real (1858), coincidente con la de la primera versión conocida. Between 1881 and 1882 Pedro Antonio de Alarcón started his Obras completas by bringing out three volumes of short stories, all of which had been published in newspapers and magazines sometimes in books before. This journal article analyses one of these stories, La belleza ideal, by paying special attention to its parodie carácter and its moral so as to solve the problem of the disagreement between the date which the author assigned to the story (1854) and the date which is probably the real one (1858) and wich coincides with the first known versión

OLSRp: predicting control information to achieve scalability in OLSR ad hoc networks

Scalability is a key design challenge that routing protocols for ad hoc networks must properly address to maintain the network performance when the number of nodes increases. We focus on this issue by reducing the amount of control information messages that a link state proactive routing algorithm introduces to the network. Our proposal is based on the observation that a high percentage of those messages is always the same. Therefore, we introduce a new mechanism that can predict the control messages that nodes need for building an accurate map of the network topology so they can avoid resending the same messages. This prediction mechanism, applied to OLSR protocol, could be used to reduce the number of messages transmitted through the network and to save computational processing and energy consumption. Our proposal is independent of the OLSR configuration parameters and it can dynamically self-adapt to network changes.Postprint (published version

H-RADIC: una solución de tolerancia a fallos para clústeres virtuales en ambientes multi-nube

Even though the cloud platform promises to be reliable, several availability incidents prove that it is not. How can we be sure that a parallel application finishes it´s execution even if a site is affected by a failure? This paper presents H-RADIC, an approach based on RADIC architecture, that executes parallel applications protected by RADIC in at least 3 different virtual clusters or sites. The execution state of each site is saved periodically in another site and it is recovered in case of failure. The paper details the configuration of the architecture and the experiment´s results using 3 clusters running NAS parallel applications protected with DMTCP, a very well-known distributed multi-threaded checkpoint tool. Our experiments show that by adding a cluster protector it will be possible to implement the next level in the hierarchy, where the first level in the RADIC hierarchy works as an observer at a site level. In adition, the experiments showed that the protection implementation is out of the critical path of the application and it depends on the utilized resources.Aunque las plataformas en la nube parecen ser muy confiables, varios incidentes de disponibilidad han podemos asegurarnos que una aplicación paralela termina su ejecución cuando el sitio en la nube ha sido afectado por una falla? Este articulo presenta HRADIC, un enfoque basado en la arquitectura RADIC, esta ejecuta aplicaciones paralelas en al menos 3 diferentes sitios o clústeres virtuales, todos protegidos por RADIC, donde el estado de la ejecución de cada sitio es guardado periódicamente en otro de los sitios y de ahí es recuperado en el caso de una falla. El articulo detalla la configuración de la arquitectura y los resultados de los experimentos usando 3 clústeres ejecutando aplicaciones NAS en paralelo, protegidas con DMTCP (una herramienta para realizar múltiples checkpoints). Nuestros experimentos muestran que al agregar un protector del clúster es posible implementar un nivel más en la jerarquía de RADIC, donde el primer nivel funciona como observador. Los experimentos muestran que la implementación de este protector esta fuera del camino critico de la ampliación y depende solamente de la utilización de recursos.Facultad de Informátic