111 research outputs found
Introducing risk management into the grid
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are explicit statements about all expectations and obligations in the business partnership between customers and providers. They have been introduced in Grid computing to overcome the best effort approach, making the Grid more interesting for commercial applications. However, decisions on negotiation and system management still rely on static approaches, not reflecting the risk linked with decisions. The EC-funded project "AssessGrid" aims at introducing risk assessment and management as a novel decision paradigm into Grid computing. This paper gives a general motivation for risk management and presents the envisaged architecture of a "risk-aware" Grid middleware and Grid fabric, highlighting its functionality by means of three showcase scenarios
Can we continue research in splenectomized dogs? Mycoplasma haemocanis: Old problem - New insight
We report the appearance of a Mycoplasma haemocanis infection in laboratory dogs, which has been reported previously, yet, never before in Europe. Outbreak of the disease was triggered by a splenectomy intended to prepare the dogs for a hemorrhagic shock study. The clinical course of the dogs was dramatic including anorexia and hemolytic anemia. Treatment included allogeneic transfusion, prednisone, and oxytetracycline. Systematic follow-up (n=12, blood smears, antibody testing and specific polymerase chain reaction) gives clear evidence that persistent eradication of M. haemocanis is unlikely. We, therefore, had to abandon the intended shock study. In the absence of effective surveillance and screening for M. haemocanis, the question arises whether it is prudent to continue shock research in splenectomized dogs. Copyright (C) 2004 S. Karger AG, Basel
Adsorption of benzene on Si(100) from first principles
Adsorption of benzene on the Si(100) surface is studied from first
principles. We find that the most stable configuration is a
tetra--bonded structure characterized by one C-C double bond and four
C-Si bonds. A similar structure, obtained by rotating the benzene molecule by
90 degrees, lies slightly higher in energy. However, rather narrow wells on the
potential energy surface characterize these adsorption configurations. A
benzene molecule impinging on the Si surface is most likely to be adsorbed in
one of three different di--bonded, metastable structures, characterized
by two C-Si bonds, and eventually converts into the lowest-energy
configurations. These results are consistent with recent experiments.Comment: 4 pages, RevTex, 2 PostScript gzipped figure
Ab initio Green's function formalism for band structures
Using the Green's function formalism, an ab initio theory for band structures
of crystals is derived starting from the Hartree-Fock approximation. It is
based on the algebraic diagrammatic construction scheme for the self-energy
which is formulated for crystal orbitals (CO-ADC). In this approach, the poles
of the Green's function are determined by solving a suitable Hermitian
eigenvalue problem. The method is not only applicable to the outer valence and
conduction bands, it is also stable for inner valence bands where strong
electron correlations are effective. The key to the proposed scheme is to
evaluate the self-energy in terms of Wannier orbitals before transforming it to
a crystal momentum representation. Exploiting the fact that electron
correlations are mainly local, one can truncate the lattice summations by an
appropriate configuration selection scheme. This yields a flat configuration
space; i.e., its size scales only linearly with the number of atoms per unit
cell for large systems and, under certain conditions, the computational effort
to determine band structures also scales linearly. As a first application of
the new formalism, a lithium fluoride crystal has been chosen. A minimal basis
set description is studied, and a satisfactory agreement with previous
theoretical and experimental results for the fundamental band gap and the width
of the F 2p valence band complex is obtained.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, RevTeX4, new section on lithium
fluorid
Water Chemisorption and Reconstruction of the MgO Surface
The observed reactivity of MgO with water is in apparent conflict with
theoretical calculations which show that molecular dissociation does not occur
on a perfect (001) surface. We have performed ab-initio total energy
calculations which show that a chemisorption reaction involving a
reconstruction to form a (111) hydroxyl surface is strongly preferred with
Delta E = -90.2kJ/mol. We conclude that protonation stabilizes the otherwise
unstable (111) surface and that this, not the bare (001), is the most stable
surface of MgO under ambient conditions.Comment: RevTeX, 4 pages, 1 Encapsulated Postscript Figur
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