Emergent behaviors in the Internet of things: The ultimate ultra-large-scale system

To reach its potential, the Internet of Things (IoT) must break down the silos that limit applications' interoperability and hinder their manageability. Doing so leads to the building of ultra-large-scale systems (ULSS) in several areas, including autonomous vehicles, smart cities, and smart grids. The scope of ULSS is both large and complex. Thus, the authors propose Hierarchical Emergent Behaviors (HEB), a paradigm that builds on the concepts of emergent behavior and hierarchical organization. Rather than explicitly programming all possible decisions in the vast space of ULSS scenarios, HEB relies on the emergent behaviors induced by local rules at each level of the hierarchy. The authors discuss the modifications to classical IoT architectures required by HEB, as well as the new challenges. They also illustrate the HEB concepts in reference to autonomous vehicles. This use case paves the way to the discussion of new lines of research.Damian Roca work was supported by a Doctoral Scholarship provided by Fundación La Caixa. This work has been supported by the Spanish Government (Severo Ochoa grants SEV2015-0493) and by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (contracts TIN2015-65316-P).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Hybrid Investigation on the Hydraulic Performance of a New Trapezoidal Fishway

The current study presents a new type of vertical slot pass. The main difference of this trapezoidal fish pass compared to the standard design of a vertical slot pass remains in the separation of the pools into two zones: the migration corridor and the energy dissipation zone. The structure is first investigated in a physical model to optimize the training walls and slot geometry in order to avoid recirculation of the flow. Velocity and flow depth data from experimental flow measurements is later compared to the three-dimensional numerical model which provides a deeper insight into the flow field. The proposed design is found to avoid large vortexes within the migration corridor. Moreover, uniform flow conditions are also found in the energy dissipation zone, thus providing an alternative corridor for fish passage

Linking turbulent waves and bubble diffusion in self-aerated open-channel flows: Two-state air concentration

High Froude-number flows become self-aerated when the destabilizing effect of turbulence overcomes gravity and surface tension forces. Traditionally, the resulting air concentration profile has been explained using single-layer approaches that invoke solutions of the advection-diffusion equation for air in water, i.e., bubbles' dispersion. Based on a wide range of experimental evidences, we argue that the complete air concentration profile shall be explained through the weak interaction of different canonical turbulent flows, namely a Turbulent Boundary Layer (TBL) and a Turbulent Wavy Layer (TWL). Motivated by a decomposition of the streamwise velocity into a pure wall flow and a free-stream flow [Krug et al., J. Fluid Mech. (2017), vol. 811, pp. 421--435], we present a physically consistent two-state formulation of the structure of a self-aerated flow. The air concentration is mathematically built upon a modified Rouse profile and a Gaussian error function, resembling vertical mass transport in the TBL and the TWL. We apply our air concentration theory to over 500 profiles from different data sets, featuring excellent agreement. Finally, we show that the turbulent Schmidt number, characterizing the momentum-mass transfer, ranges between 0.2 to 1, which is consistent with previous mass-transfer experiments in TBLs. Altogether, the proposed flow conceptualization sets the scene for more physically-based numerical modelling of turbulent mass diffusion in self-aerated flows.Comment: 47 pages, 7 figures, includes supplemental material, accepted for publication in Journal of Fluid Mechanic

Robust estimators for turbulence properties assessment

Robust estimators and different filtering techniques are proposed and their impact on the determination of a wide range of turbulence quantities is analysed. High-frequency water level measurements in a stepped spillway are used as a case study. The studied variables contemplated: the expected free surface level, the expected fluctuation intensity, the depth skewness, the autocorrelation timescales, the vertical velocity fluctuation intensity, the perturbations celerity and the one-dimensional free surface turbulence spectrum. When compared to classic techniques, the robust estimators allowed a more accurate prediction of turbulence quantities notwithstanding the filtering technique used

Three-dimensional Flow Structure Inside the Cavity of a Non-aerated Stepped Chute

Accurate friction factor estimation and better knowledge on stepped spillways and stepped revetments flow structure may allow safer design of hydraulic and coastal structures. In this study, an ADV Vectrino Profiler has been used to obtain dense observations of the three-dimensional flow structure occurring inside a cavity of 20 cm to 10 cm (length to height) for four flow cases. The obtained friction factors range from 0.090 to 0.172 with a strong (inverse) dependence on the Reynolds number. The displacement length also shows a reduction with increasing Reynolds number, which may indicate that the flow “feels” the cavity more at smaller streamwise velocities. Streamwise and normalwise velocities reveal both a turbulent boundary layer type of flow (main flow region) and a jet impact and recirculation inside of the cavity. Spanwise median velocities allowed insight on the uncertainty levels of the ADV Vectrino Profiler measurements

Quantifying the benefits of SPECint distant parallelism in simultaneous multithreading architectures

We exploit the existence of distant parallelism that future compilers could detect and characterise its performance under simultaneous multithreading architectures. By distant parallelism we mean parallelism that cannot be captured by the processor instruction window and that can produce threads suitable for parallel execution in a multithreaded processor. We show that distant parallelism can make feasible wider issue processors by providing more instructions from the distant threads, thus better exploiting the resources from the processor in the case of speeding up single integer applications. We also investigate the necessity of out-of-order processors in the presence of multiple threads of the same program. It is important to notice at this point that the benefits described are totally orthogonal to any other architectural techniques targeting a single thread.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Technological Innovation and Translation. Training Translators in the EU for the 21st century

¿Están ligadas la formación necesaria para la integración en el mundo laboral y la formación recibida en la universidad? ¿Qué esperan las empresas de los nuevos traductores? El objetivo de este artículo es abordar este tema desde los resultados de la investigación llevada a cabo sobre la formación de los traductores en la Unión Europea y el mercado de la traducción, utilizando como marco el proyecto OPTIMALE, Optimising Professional Translator Training in a Multilingual Europe. En primer lugar presentaremos brevemente el proyecto; a continuación describiremos la metodología utilizada; y seguidamente mostraremos los resultados de los estudios y discusiones llevadas a cabo por los miembros del equipo sobre las competencias que las empresas requieren. Finalmente, a través del mapa interactivo producido por OPTIMALE sobre los programas de traducción en la UE, trataremos de dar respuesta a la pregunta de si las universidades están realmente tratando de unir las expectativas de las empresas con las competencias de traducción que los graduados adquieren en la universidad.Are young translation graduates still leaving university with a high level of translation skills, but lacking the specific, professional competence needed in the workplace, as has often been suggested? The aim of this paper is to approach this question through the results of research on advanced university translator education and training in the European Union, conducted under the framework of the OPTIMALE project (“Optimising Professional Translator Training in a Multilingual Europe”). The paper will briefly present the aims of the project, describe the methodology followed in an extensive survey of translation employer competence requirements and will outline the main results, describing how these were received and discussed in a series of regional joint workshops. Finally, the OPTIMALE map of European translation degree programmes will be used to ask whether universities are indeed trying to bridge the gap between employer expectations and translation graduate competences

Determining the Number of Factors to Retain in EFA: An easy-to-use computer program for carrying out Parallel Analysis

Parallel Analysis is a Monte Carlo simulation technique that aids researchers in determining the number of factors to retain in Principal Component and Exploratory Factor Analysis. This method provides a superior alternative to other techniques that are commonly used for the same purpose, such as the Scree test or the Kaiser’s eigenvalue-greater-than-one rule. Nevertheless, Parallel Analysis is not well known among researchers, in part because it is not included as an analysis option in the most popular statistical packages. This paper describes and illustrates how to apply Parallel Analysis with an easy-to-use computer program called ViSta-PARAN. ViSta-PARAN is a user-friendly application that can compute and interpret Parallel Analysis. Its user interface is fully graphic and includes a dialog box to specify parameters, and specialized graphics to visualize the analysis output. Accessed 35,722 times on https://pareonline.net from February 01, 2007 to December 31, 2019. For downloads from January 1, 2020 forward, please click on the PlumX Metrics link to the right