Enabling Adaptive Grid Scheduling and Resource Management

Wider adoption of the Grid concept has led to an increasing amount of federated computational, storage and visualisation resources being available to scientists and researchers. Distributed and heterogeneous nature of these resources renders most of the legacy cluster monitoring and management approaches inappropriate, and poses new challenges in workflow scheduling on such systems. Effective resource utilisation monitoring and highly granular yet adaptive measurements are prerequisites for a more efficient Grid scheduler. We present a suite of measurement applications able to monitor per-process resource utilisation, and a customisable tool for emulating observed utilisation models. We also outline our future work on a predictive and probabilistic Grid scheduler. The research is undertaken as part of UK e-Science EPSRC sponsored project SO-GRM (Self-Organising Grid Resource Management) in cooperation with BT

Self-organising management of Grid environments

This paper presents basic concepts, architectural principles and algorithms for efficient resource and security management in cluster computing environments and the Grid. The work presented in this paper is funded by BTExacT and the EPSRC project SO-GRM (GR/S21939)

Real-Time Mobile Personalized Simulations of Impaired Colour Vision

Colour forms an essential element of day-to-day life for most people, but at least 5% of the world have Impaired Colour Vision (ICV) - seeing fewer colours than everyone else. Those with typical colour vision find it difficult to understand how people with ICV perceive colour, leading to misunderstanding and challenges for people with ICV. To help improve understanding, personalized simulations of ICV have been developed, but are computationally demanding (so limited to static images), which limits the value of these simulations. To address this, we extended personalized ICV simulations to work in real time on a mobile device to allow people with typical colour vision greater freedom in exploring ICV. To validate our approach, we compared our real-time simulation technique to an existing adjustable simulation technique and found general agreement between the two. We then deployed three real-time personalized ICV simulations to nine people with typical colour vision, encouraging them to take photos of interesting colour situations. In just over one week, participants recorded over 450 real-world images of situations where their simulation presented a distinct challenge for their respective ICV participant. Through a questionnaire and discussion of photos with participants, we found that our solution provides a valuable mechanism for building understanding of ICV for people with typical colour vision

Cosmic Calibration: Constraints from the Matter Power Spectrum and the Cosmic Microwave Background

Several cosmological measurements have attained significant levels of maturity and accuracy over the last decade. Continuing this trend, future observations promise measurements of the statistics of the cosmic mass distribution at an accuracy level of one percent out to spatial scales with k~10 h/Mpc and even smaller, entering highly nonlinear regimes of gravitational instability. In order to interpret these observations and extract useful cosmological information from them, such as the equation of state of dark energy, very costly high precision, multi-physics simulations must be performed. We have recently implemented a new statistical framework with the aim of obtaining accurate parameter constraints from combining observations with a limited number of simulations. The key idea is the replacement of the full simulator by a fast emulator with controlled error bounds. In this paper, we provide a detailed description of the methodology and extend the framework to include joint analysis of cosmic microwave background and large scale structure measurements. Our framework is especially well-suited for upcoming large scale structure probes of dark energy such as baryon acoustic oscillations and, especially, weak lensing, where percent level accuracy on nonlinear scales is needed.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figure

Apolipoprotein E in VLDL and LDL With Apolipoprotein C‐III is Associated With a Lower Risk of Coronary Heart Disease

Background: Low‐density lipoprotein (LDL) with apolipoprotein C‐III (apoC‐III) is the lipoprotein species that most strongly predicts initial and recurring coronary heart disease (CHD) events in several cohorts. Thus, a large portion of the CHD risk conferred by LDL may be attributable to LDL that contains apoC‐III. Very‐low‐density lipoprotein (VLDL) and LDL with apoC‐III have varying amounts of apoE. We hypothesized that a high content of apoE lessens the adverse influence of apoC‐III on the risk of CHD because it promotes the clearance of VLDL and LDL from plasma. Methods and Results: We studied 2 independent cohorts, the Nurses' Health Study, composed of women, and the Health Professionals Follow‐up Study, composed of men. These cohorts contributed to this study 322 women and 418 men initially free of CVD who developed a fatal or nonfatal myocardial infarction during 10 to 14 years of follow‐up and matched controls who remained free of CHD. The apoE content of LDL with apoC‐III was inversely associated with CHD after multivariable adjustment (relative risk for top versus bottom quintile 0.53, 95% CI 0.35 to 0.80). The apoE content of VLDL with apoC‐III had a similar inverse association with CHD. The highest risks were associated with a high apoB concentration and a low apoE content of LDL with apoC‐III or of VLDL+LDL with apoC‐III. The observed associations were in both male and female cohorts and independent of traditional CHD risk factors and of C‐reactive protein. Conclusions: An increased apoE content in VLDL and LDL with apoC‐III was associated with a lower risk of CHD. Strategies to enrich VLDL and LDL in apoE are worth exploring for the prevention of CHD

Nodal liquid and s-wave superconductivity in transition metal dichalcogenides

We explore the physical properties of a unified microscopic theory for the coexistence of superconductivity and charge density waves in two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides. In the case of particle-hole symmetry the elementary particles are Dirac fermions at the nodes of the charge density wave gap. When particle-hole symmetry is broken electron (hole) pockets are formed around the Fermi surface. The superconducting ground state emerges from the pairing of nodal quasi-particles mediated by acoustic phonons via a piezoelectric coupling. We calculate several properties in the s-wave superconducting phase, including specific heat, ultra-sound absorption, nuclear magnetic relaxation, thermal, and optical conductivities. In the case with particle-hole symmetry, the specific heat jump at the transition deviates strongly from ordinary superconductors. The nuclear magnetic response shows an anomalous anisotropy due to the broken time-reversal symmetry of the superconducting gap, induced by the triple charge density wave state. The loss of lattice inversion symmetry in the charge density wave phase leads to anomalous coherence factors in the optical conductivity and to the appearance of an absorption edge at the optical gap energy. Furthermore, optical and thermal conductivities display anomalous peaks in the infrared when particle-hole symmetry is broken.Comment: 23 pages, 16 figures. Published versio

Story in health and social care

This paper offers a brief consideration of how narrative, in the form of people‟s own stories, potentially figures in health and social care provision as part of the impulse towards patient-centred care. The rise of the epistemological legitimacy of patients‟ stories is sketched here. The paper draws upon relevant literature and original writing to consider the ways in which stories can mislead as well as illuminate the process of making individual treatment care plans

Open TURNS: An industrial software for uncertainty quantification in simulation

The needs to assess robust performances for complex systems and to answer tighter regulatory processes (security, safety, environmental control, and health impacts, etc.) have led to the emergence of a new industrial simulation challenge: to take uncertainties into account when dealing with complex numerical simulation frameworks. Therefore, a generic methodology has emerged from the joint effort of several industrial companies and academic institutions. EDF R&D, Airbus Group and Phimeca Engineering started a collaboration at the beginning of 2005, joined by IMACS in 2014, for the development of an Open Source software platform dedicated to uncertainty propagation by probabilistic methods, named OpenTURNS for Open source Treatment of Uncertainty, Risk 'N Statistics. OpenTURNS addresses the specific industrial challenges attached to uncertainties, which are transparency, genericity, modularity and multi-accessibility. This paper focuses on OpenTURNS and presents its main features: openTURNS is an open source software under the LGPL license, that presents itself as a C++ library and a Python TUI, and which works under Linux and Windows environment. All the methodological tools are described in the different sections of this paper: uncertainty quantification, uncertainty propagation, sensitivity analysis and metamodeling. A section also explains the generic wrappers way to link openTURNS to any external code. The paper illustrates as much as possible the methodological tools on an educational example that simulates the height of a river and compares it to the height of a dyke that protects industrial facilities. At last, it gives an overview of the main developments planned for the next few years

Music in advertising and consumer identity: The search for Heideggerian authenticity

This study discusses netnographic findings involving 472 YouTube postings categorized to identify themes regarding consumers’ experience of music in advertisements. Key themes relate to musical taste, musical indexicality, musical repetition and musical authenticity. Postings reveal how music conveys individual taste and is linked to personal memories and Heidegger’s coincidental time where moments of authenticity may be triggered in a melee of emotions, memories and projections. Identity protection is enabled as consumers frequently resist advertisers’ attempts to use musical repetition to impose normative identity. Critiques of repetition in the music produce Heideggerian anxiety leading to critically reflective resistance. Similarly, where advertising devalues the authenticity of iconic pieces of music, consumers often resist such authenticity transgressions as a threat to their own identity. The Heideggerian search for meaning in life emphasizes the significance of philosophically driven ideological authenticity in consumers’ responses to music in advertisements