It takes two to tango:if you want students to harness culturally diverse syndicate groups for their learning, assure high interdependence and students value cultural differences

On how cultural diversity is a double edged sword that can undermine students’ learning in work groups, but also has the potential to enrich students’ learning experiences

Checkpointing algorithms and fault prediction

This paper deals with the impact of fault prediction techniques on checkpointing strategies. We extend the classical first-order analysis of Young and Daly in the presence of a fault prediction system, characterized by its recall and its precision. In this framework, we provide an optimal algorithm to decide when to take predictions into account, and we derive the optimal value of the checkpointing period. These results allow to analytically assess the key parameters that impact the performance of fault predictors at very large scale.Comment: Supported in part by ANR Rescue. Published in Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1207.693

Reclaiming the energy of a schedule: models and algorithms

We consider a task graph to be executed on a set of processors. We assume that the mapping is given, say by an ordered list of tasks to execute on each processor, and we aim at optimizing the energy consumption while enforcing a prescribed bound on the execution time. While it is not possible to change the allocation of a task, it is possible to change its speed. Rather than using a local approach such as backfilling, we consider the problem as a whole and study the impact of several speed variation models on its complexity. For continuous speeds, we give a closed-form formula for trees and series-parallel graphs, and we cast the problem into a geometric programming problem for general directed acyclic graphs. We show that the classical dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) model with discrete modes leads to a NP-complete problem, even if the modes are regularly distributed (an important particular case in practice, which we analyze as the incremental model). On the contrary, the VDD-hopping model leads to a polynomial solution. Finally, we provide an approximation algorithm for the incremental model, which we extend for the general DVFS model.Comment: A two-page extended abstract of this work appeared as a short presentation in SPAA'2011, while the long version has been accepted for publication in "Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience

Analysis and Diversion of Duqu's Driver

The propagation techniques and the payload of Duqu have been closely studied over the past year and it has been said that Duqu shared functionalities with Stuxnet. We focused on the driver used by Duqu during the infection, our contribution consists in reverse-engineering the driver: we rebuilt its source code and analyzed the mechanisms it uses to execute the payload while avoiding detection. Then we diverted the driver into a defensive version capable of detecting injections in Windows binaries, thus preventing further attacks. We specifically show how Duqu's modified driver would have detected Duqu.Comment: Malware 2013 - 8th International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software (2013

Polarizers, optical bridges and Sagnac interferometers for nanoradian polarization rotation measurements

The ability to measure nanoradian polarization rotations, $\theta_F$, in the photon shot noise limit is investigated for partially crossed polarizers (PCP), a static Sagnac interferometer and an optical bridge, each of which can in principal be used in this limit with near equivalent figures-of-merit (FOM). In practice a bridge to PCP/Sagnac source noise rejection ratio of $1/4\theta_F^2$ enables the bridge to operate in the photon shot noise limit even at high light intensities. The superior performance of the bridge is illustrated via the measurement of a 3 nrad rotation arising from an axial magnetic field of 0.9 nT applied to a terbium gallium garnet. While the Sagnac is functionally equivalent to the PCP in terms of the FOM, unlike the PCP it is able to discriminate between rotations with different time ($T$) and parity ($P$) symmetries. The Sagnac geometry implemented here is similar to that used elsewhere to detect non-reciprocal ($\overline{T}P$) rotations like those due to the Faraday effect. Using a Jones matrix approach, novel Sagnac geometries uniquely sensitive to non-reciprocal $\overline{TP}$ (e.g. magneto-electric or magneto-chiral) rotations, as well as to reciprocal rotations (e.g. due to linear birefringence, $TP$, or to chirality, $T\overline{P}$) are proposed.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure

Co-Scheduling Algorithms for High-Throughput Workload Execution

This paper investigates co-scheduling algorithms for processing a set of parallel applications. Instead of executing each application one by one, using a maximum degree of parallelism for each of them, we aim at scheduling several applications concurrently. We partition the original application set into a series of packs, which are executed one by one. A pack comprises several applications, each of them with an assigned number of processors, with the constraint that the total number of processors assigned within a pack does not exceed the maximum number of available processors. The objective is to determine a partition into packs, and an assignment of processors to applications, that minimize the sum of the execution times of the packs. We thoroughly study the complexity of this optimization problem, and propose several heuristics that exhibit very good performance on a variety of workloads, whose application execution times model profiles of parallel scientific codes. We show that co-scheduling leads to to faster workload completion time and to faster response times on average (hence increasing system throughput and saving energy), for significant benefits over traditional scheduling from both the user and system perspectives

Views of pi : definition and computation

We study several formal proofs and algorithms related to the number pi in the context of Coq's standard library.  In particular, we clarify the relation between roots of the cosine function and the limit of the alternated series whose terms are the inverse of odd natural numbers (known as Leibnitz' formula).We give a formal description of the arctangent function and its expansion as a power series.  We then study other possible descriptions of pi, first as the surface of the unit disk, second as the limit of perimeters of regular polygons with an increasing number of sides.In a third section, we concentrate on techniques to effectively compute approximations of pi in the proof assistant by relying on rational numbers and decimal representations

A split analysis of nasal harmony in Mbyá

This paper proposes an optimality theoretic analysis of nasal harmony in Mbyá Guaraní. I propose that nasal harmony in Mbyá is best understood as the product of two distinct phenomena: (i) nasal harmony between adjacent syllable nuclei and (ii) nasal coarticulation from a vowel to an adjacent consonant edge. The proposed analysis, which is laid out in optimality theory (OT), is inspired by the work of Piggott and van der Hulst (1997)

Quasi-interpretations a way to control resources

International audienceThis paper presents in a reasoned way our works on resource analysis by quasi- interpretations. The controlled resources are typically the runtime, the runspace or the size of a result in a program execution. Quasi-interpretations allow analyzing system complexity. A quasi-interpretation is a numerical assignment, which provides an upper bound on computed func- tions and which is compatible with the program operational semantics. Quasi- interpretation method offers several advantages: (i) It provides hints in order to optimize an execution, (ii) it gives resource certificates, and (iii) finding quasi- interpretations is decidable for a broad class which is relevant for feasible com- putations. By combining the quasi-interpretation method with termination tools (here term orderings), we obtained several characterizations of complexity classes starting from Ptime and Pspace