The Grid[Way] Job Template Manager, a tool for parameter sweeping

Parameter sweeping is a widely used algorithmic technique in computational science. It is specially suited for high-throughput computing since the jobs evaluating the parameter space are loosely coupled or independent. A tool that integrates the modeling of a parameter study with the control of jobs in a distributed architecture is presented. The main task is to facilitate the creation and deletion of job templates, which are the elements describing the jobs to be run. Extra functionality relies upon the GridWay Metascheduler, acting as the middleware layer for job submission and control. It supports interesting features like multi-dimensional sweeping space, wildcarding of parameters, functional evaluation of ranges, value-skipping and job template automatic indexation. The use of this tool increases the reliability of the parameter sweep study thanks to the systematic bookkeping of job templates and respective job statuses. Furthermore, it simplifies the porting of the target application to the grid reducing the required amount of time and effort.Comment: 26 pages, 1 figure

Review of tools to assist in the selection of sustainable building assemblies

Este artículo presenta un estado del arte de las herramientas existentes a nivel internacional de asistencia en la selección de soluciones constructivas sostenibles de edificación basadas en el Análisis de Ciclo de Vida (ACV), identificándose las características de estas que pueden ayudar a los proyectistas en las fases iniciales de diseño. En una primera fase, se clasifican las herramientas existentes. En una segunda fase, analizamos en detalle las herramientas mejor valoradas por los autores del artículo como apoyo al proyectista en las fases iniciales del proyecto. En este análisis se describen las ventajas y limitaciones que presentan estas herramientas. Como conclusión, se elabora un listado de directrices para el desarrollo, en España, de una herramienta que sirva de apoyo al proyectista para la selección de materiales y soluciones constructivas en la fase de diseño.This paper presents a survey of the state-of-the-art in tools to assist in the selection of sustainable building assemblies based on Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). The tools are analysed to identify the characteristics that make them suitable to assist in the early phases of design. In a first phase of analysis, the existing tools are classified. In a second phase of analysis, the tools found to be more suitable to assist in building design are further analysed, by describing their advantages and limitations. In conclusion, a list of guidelines for the development of a Spanish tool to assist building designers in the selection of sustainable building assemblies is proposed

A model for the sustainable selection of building envelope assemblies

The aim of this article is to define an evaluation model for the environmental impacts of building envelopes to support planners in the early phases of materials selection. The model is intended to estimate environmental impacts for different combinations of building envelope assemblies based on scientifically recognised sustainability indicators. These indicators will increase the amount of information that existing catalogues show to support planners in the selection of building assemblies.To define the model, first the environmental indicators were selected based on the specific aims of the intended sustainability assessment. Then, a simplified LCA methodology was developed to estimate the impacts applicable to three types of dwellings considering different envelope assemblies, building orientations and climate zones. This methodology takes into account the manufacturing, installation, maintenance and use phases of the building. Finally, the model was validated and a matrix in Excel was created as implementation of the model

Distributed scheduling and data sharing in late-binding overlays

Pull-based late-binding overlays are used in some of today’s largest computational grids. Job agents are submitted to resources with the duty of retrieving real workload from a central queue at runtime. This helps overcome the problems of these very complex environments, namely, heterogeneity, imprecise status information and relatively high failure rates. In addition, the late job assignment allows dynamic adaptation to changes in the grid conditions or user priorities. However, as the scale grows, the central assignment queue may become a bottleneck for the whole system. This article presents a distributed scheduling architecture for late-binding overlays, which addresses these scalability issues. Our system lets execution nodes build a distributed hash table and delegates job matching and assignment to them. This reduces the load on the central server and makes the system much more scalable and robust. Moreover, scalability makes fine-grained scheduling possible, and enables new functionalities like the implementation of a distributed data cache on the execution nodes, which helps alleviate the commonly congested grid storage services

Cloud-like Management of Grid Sites 2.0 Software

This document presents the features implemented for the automatic deployment and dynamic provision of grid services, and for the scalable cloud-like management of grid site resources in the second year of the project. These features, developed largely in Work Package 6 (WP6), are integrated into the StratusLab Toolkit by Work Package 4 (WP4)

Analysis of the influence of different variables on the impacts related with the envelope of buildings for residential use, with estimation of the interaction of the user

There is an important mismatch, or gap, between the predicted and actual measurements of the impacts that are produced, mainly during the use phase of buildings. In this study, the authors estimated the weight of the different explanatory variables used to define the model for predicting the impacts in the evaluation of the dependent variables considered: ‘CO2 equivalent emissions’ and ‘primary energy consumption’. The study explores the extent to which the intervention of high- or low-energy users (depending on their purchasing power) influences the impacts of the use phase linked to the envelope, ‘user interaction’ being considered as a variable that modifies the impact predicted by the model. The results obtained show that, without taking the user into account, climate zone is the variable with the greatest influence, since it accounts for over 80% of the variation in heating consumption in the use phase. However, on analysing the influence of the user in zones with a continental climate, the results varied with respect to the predicted value, from 5% in the case of low-energy users up to more than 53% when they are very high-energy users

Análisis de sistemas de valoración de la sostenibilidad en la edificación en relación con la norma CEN/TC 350

Numerous sustainability rating systems have been developed in the building sector. In this paper we distinguish between those whose aim is to allow companies striving for improved performance to gain an objective basis for communicating their efforts, such as LEED, and those that aim to communicate the life cycle environmental impact of goods, such as ATHENA Impact Estimator. We name the former effort-driven assessment and the latter data-driven assessment. This work undertakes a state-of-the-art review of all these assessment systems and assesses their effectiveness comparing the indicators used for assessment against the established standards by the Technical Committee (TC) 350 of the European Committee for standardization (CEN/TC 350). About 62% of the social and economic indicators remain unconsidered by the existing data-driven assessment tools, whereas effort-driven assessment tools have a higher consideration of social and economic aspects, with about half of the indicators unconsidered.En el sector de la construcción se han desarrollado numerosos sistemas de califcación de sostenibilidad. En este documento distinguimos entre aquellos que pretenden que las empresas que luchan por mejorar su sostenibilidad obtengan una base objetiva para comunicar sus esfuerzos, como LEED, y aquellos que evalúan el impacto medioambiental de los productos durante el ciclo de vida, como ATHENA Impact Estimador. Denominamos a los primeros, sistemas de evaluación basada en el esfuerzo y a los segundos, sistemas de evaluación basada en datos. Este trabajo revisa el estado del arte de estos sistemas y evalúa su efectividad comparando los indicadores utilizados con los estándares establecidos por el the Technical Committee (TC) 350 of the European Committee for standardization (CEN). Observamos que un 62% de los indicadores sociales y económicos propuestos por el CEN/TC 350 no son considerados por los sistemas de evaluación basados en datos mientras que los sistemas de evaluación basados en el esfuerzo tienen en cuenta aproximadamente la mitad de estos indicadores

Interoperating Grid Infrastructures with the GridWay Metascheduler

This paper describes the GridWay Metascheduler and exposes its latest and future developments, mainly related to interoperability and interoperation. GridWay enables large-scale, reliable and efficient sharing of computing resources over grid middleware. To favor interoperability, it shows a modular architecture based on drivers, which access middleware services for resource discovery and monitoring, job execution and management, and file transfer. This paper presents two new execution drivers for BES and CREAM services, and introduces a remote BES interface for GridWay. This interface allows users to access GridWay’s job metascheduling capabilities, using the BES implementation of GridSAM. Thus, GridWay now provides to end-users more possibilities of interoperability and interoperation

Quantitative systematic review of the associations between short-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide and mortality and hospital admissions.

BACKGROUND: Short-term exposure to NO₂ has been associated with adverse health effects and there is increasing concern that NO₂ is causally related to health effects, not merely a marker of traffic-generated pollution. No comprehensive meta-analysis of the time-series evidence on NO₂ has been published since 2007. OBJECTIVE: To quantitatively assess the evidence from epidemiological time-series studies published worldwide to determine whether and to what extent short-term exposure to NO₂ is associated with increased numbers of daily deaths and hospital admissions. DESIGN: We conducted a quantitative systematic review of 204 time-series studies of NO₂ and daily mortality and hospital admissions for several diagnoses and ages, which were indexed in three bibliographic databases up to May 2011. We calculated random-effects estimates by different geographic regions and globally, and also tested for heterogeneity and small study bias. RESULTS: Sufficient estimates for meta-analysis were available for 43 cause-specific and age-specific combinations of mortality or hospital admissions (25 for 24 h NO₂ and 18 of the same combinations for 1 h measures). For the all-age group, a 10 µg/m(3) increase in 24 h NO₂ was associated with increases in all-cause, cardiovascular and respiratory mortality (0.71% (95% CI 0.43% to 1.00%), 0.88% (0.63% to 1.13%) and 1.09% (0.75% to 1.42%), respectively), and with hospital admissions for respiratory (0.57% (0.33% to 0.82%)) and cardiovascular (0.66% (0.32% to 1.01%)) diseases. Evidence of heterogeneity between geographical region-specific estimates was identified in more than half of the combinations analysed. CONCLUSIONS: Our review provides clear evidence of health effects associated with short-term exposure to NO₂ although further work is required to understand reasons for the regional heterogeneity observed. The growing literature, incorporating large multicentre studies and new evidence from less well-studied regions of the world, supports further quantitative review to assess the independence of NO₂ health effects from other air pollutants

Generador de fenómenos atmosféricos para three.js

En la actualidad, gracias a lenguajes como javascript y estándares como HTML5, el desarrollo web está en su momento de mayor auge. Por otro lado, gracias al incremento de la capacidad de computo de los ordenadores y a los lenguajes orientados a gráficos de bajo nivel cada vez los desarrollos web incluyen más habitualmente aplicaciones 3D integradas. Estas dos circunstancias se dan la mano en el desarrollo de aplicaciones web de nueva generación que , por un lado, permiten la independencia de la plataforma o sistema operativo, ya que estos se ejecutan sobre el navegador y por otro, permite aprovechar la potencia de la librería gráfica WebGL o la versatilidad de javascript. En este contexto nos encontramos con three.js un framework javascript que permite trabajar con WebGL de una manera muy sencilla, abstrayendo al programador de la complejidad de WebGL. En este trabajo fin de grado se pretende crear una librería de apoyo para three.js que permita añadir efectos climatológicos de una manera sencilla. Para ello dividiremos el trabajo en dos grandes bloques. Por un lado la generación de la textura para el cielo y por otro un motor de partículas. Para el cielo utilizaremos un algoritmo de ruido de Perlin que nos permitirá generar texturas de forma procedural de gran calidad y de una forma rápida. Para las partículas usaremos un motor de partículas que nos permitirá, además de crearlas, darles un movimiento realista. Tal y como se ha planteado el desarrollo, la librería es bastante versátil y se dan unas pautas para el uso básico y para un uso avanzado. Esto es debido a que se ha separado la generación de los datos y el renderizado de los mismos y también se ha realizado el motor de partículas que puede funcionar junto a los datos o de forma independiente. De esta forma, el código es mucho más claro y legible permitiendo además, a los programadores más experimentados, adaptar los datos a una renderización propia, adaptar el renderizado a los datos generados por el mismo y utilizar las partículas de una forma personalizada. El resultado final es un prototipo de la librería que, de forma transparente al programador, permite crear distintos tipos de cielo y varios fenómenos atmosféricos como lluvia, nieve, tormentas de arena, ventiscas y viento. En la parte de conclusiones se explora el camino que podría seguir la librería de cara a aumentar su funcionalidad.Today, thanks to languages like javascript and standards like HTML5, web development is at its peak moment. On the other hand , thanks to increased computing capacity and low level graphics oriented languages, web developments include most commonly integrated 3D applications. These two circumstances come together at the new generation web developments, that allows the independence of the platform or operating system , as these run on the browser and can harness the power of the WebGL graphics library or the versatility of javascript. In this context we find Three.js a javascript library that allows working with WebGL in a very simple way , abstracting the programmer from the complexity of WebGL. In this bachellor tesis we create a library of support for allowing three.js add weather effects in a simple way . To do so we divide the work into two blocks . On the one hand the generation of texture to the sky and the other a particle engine. For the sky we will use a Perlin noise algorithm that will allow us to generate procedural textures of high quality in a quick way . For particles we will develop a particle engine that allows create and giving them a realistic movement. The final library is quite versatile and we provide guidelines for basic and advanced use. This is because we have separated data generation and rendering and has also performed the particle engine operable with data or independently . Thus , the code is much clearer and readable also allowing more experienced programmers , adapt the data to a personal rendering, adapt the rendering of an own data and use the particles in a custom way. The final result is a prototype library that, transparently to the programmer, allows to create different types of sky and various atmospheric phenomena such as rain, snow, sand storms, blizzards and wind. In the conclusions part we explore the way that could follow the library in order to increase its functionality