W poszukiwaniu nowego systemu orzekania o niepełnosprawności w świetle Konwencji OZN o prawach osób niepełnosprawnych i idei niezależnego życia

The article concerns the possibility of building a new disability assessment system based upon the human rights model of disability and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The commentary on the current disability assessment system, based on a medical model of disability, as well as the discussion about the projected nomenclature regarding the upcoming reform of the Polish disability assessment system, have led to the demand for the development of a new system based on the principle of dignity of people with disabilities. The new system of positive assessment is focused on capabilities of a person and a need of support in contrast to the foregoing systems based on deficits. The proposal contains areas of persons’ with disabilities lives necessary to consider regarding disability assessment, as well as new solutions related to the benefit and annuities system.Artykuł dotyczy możliwości zbudowania nowego systemu orzekania o niepełnosprawności opartego na prawnoczłowieczym modelu niepełnosprawności i Konwencji o prawach osób niepełnosprawnych (KPON). Przeprowadzona krytyka obecnego systemu orzekania jako opartego na modelu medycznym niepełnosprawności, jak również dyskusja z nomenklaturą proponowaną w zbliżającej się reformie orzecznictwa w Polsce, prowadzą do postulatu o wypracowanie orzekania respektującego zasadę godności osób z niepełnosprawnością. Proponowany nowy system orzekania pozytywnego opiera się nie na deficytach jednostki, ale na jej możliwościach i potrzebie wsparcia. W propozycji znalazły się obszary życia osób z niepełnosprawnością, które powinny być brane pod uwagę w procesie orzekania, jak również nowe rozwiązania w obszarze świadczeń i rent

A Massive Data Parallel Computational Framework for Petascale/Exascale Hybrid Computer Systems

Heterogeneous systems are becoming more common on High Performance Computing (HPC) systems. Even using tools like CUDA and OpenCL it is a non-trivial task to obtain optimal performance on the GPU. Approaches to simplifying this task include Merge (a library based framework for heterogeneous multi-core systems), Zippy (a framework for parallel execution of codes on multiple GPUs), BSGP (a new programming language for general purpose computation on the GPU) and CUDA-lite (an enhancement to CUDA that transforms code based on annotations). In addition, efforts are underway to improve compiler tools for automatic parallelization and optimization of affine loop nests for GPUs and for automatic translation of OpenMP parallelized codes to CUDA. In this paper we present an alternative approach: a new computational framework for the development of massively data parallel scientific codes applications suitable for use on such petascale/exascale hybrid systems built upon the highly scalable Cactus framework. As the first non-trivial demonstration of its usefulness, we successfully developed a new 3D CFD code that achieves improved performance.Comment: Parallel Computing 2011 (ParCo2011), 30 August -- 2 September 2011, Ghent, Belgiu

Human Re-identification System On Highly Parallel GPU and CPU Architectures

International audienceThe paper presents a new approach to the human reindetification problem using covariance features. In many cases, a distance operator between signatures, based on generalized eigenvalues, has to be computed efficiently, especially once the real-time response time is expected from the system. This is a challenging problem as many procedures are in fact computationally intensive tasks and must be repeated constantly. To deal with this problem we have successfully designed and then tested a new video surveillance system. To obtain the required high efficiency we took the advantage of highly parallel computing architectures such as FPGA, GPU and CPU units to perform calculations. However, we had to propose a new GPU-based implementation of the distance operator for querying the example database. Thus, in this paper we present experimental evaluation of the proposed solution in the light of the database response time depending on its size

New Science Gateways for Advanced Computing Simulations and Visualization Using Vine Toolkit in PL-Grid

A Science Gateway is a connection between scientists and their computational tools in the form of web portal. It creates a space for communities, collaboration and data sharing and visualization in a comprehensive and efficient manner. The main purpose of such a solution is to allow users to access the computational resources, process and analyze their data and get the results in a uniform and user friendly way. In this paper we propose a complex solution based on the Rich Internet Application (RIA) approach consisting of a web portal powered by Vine Toolkit with Adobe Flex/BlazeDs technologies. There are two Science Gateways described in detail one for engineers to manage computationally intensive workflows used in advanced airplane construction simulations, and one for nanotechnology scientists to manage experiments in nano-science field calculated with Density Functional Theory (DFT). In both cases the results show how modern web solution can help scientists in their work. &nbsp

Uwagi o uregulowaniach rozporządzenia Rzym II i ich stosowaniu na tle doświadczeń polskiej judykatuty

Regulation (EC) No 864/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 July 2007 on the law applicable to non‑contractual obligations (the Rome II Regulation) defines the conflict‑of‑law rules applicable to non‑contractual obligations in civil and commercial matters. It has been in force since 11 January 2009. Article 30 of the Regulation foresees an evaluation report on its application. The European Commission already asked the Polish Ministry of Justice for an input via a Questionnaire issued in 2012 (see M. Pazdan, M. Jagielska, W. Kurowski, M. Świerczyński, M.‑A. Zachariasiewicz, M. Zachariasiewicz, Ł. Żarnowiec: Materials: The Response to Commission’s Questionnaire to the Member States Regarding the Application of the Regulation 864/2007 on the Law. „Problemy Prawa Prywatnego Międzynarodowego” 2013, vol. 12, p. 165—197). At that stage — it was not yet possible to present a developed picture of our courts’ approach to the Regulation as no extensive case‑law was available in Poland. With the new Questionnaire dated June 2015 the Commission‑Directorate A: Civil Justice asked the Polish Ministry of Justice for new information and insights on the application of the Rome II Regulation in Poland that have been gathered in the meantime. Similarly to the original response to the Commission’s Questionnaire, this supplement was prepared jointly, by a group of authors under a lead of professor Maksymilian Pazdan. The supplement constituted the basis for the reply given to the Commission by the Polish Codification Committee on behalf of the Polish government. Since the preparation of the original response time has passed and experience has accrued. Accordingly, a number of issues concerning the application of the Regulation have surfaced. The new opinion brings additional information on Polish case law to the attention of the Commission. The authors are of the of the view that the reason why the Regulation has been finally noticed by Polish courts may be the reference to this act included in Art. 33 of Polish Private International Law. Jurisprudential analysis presented in this supplement indicates that Polish courts face many difficulties when applying the Rome II Regulation. These concern, among others, the scope of the Regulation itself, as well are of its particular provisions, the demarcation of the Regulation and the Hague Convention of 1971, the interpretation of the criterion of a„manifestly closer connection” and the criterion of a „close connection of a tort with an earlier contract”, the determination of the place of damage and admissibility of the application of Arts. 16 and 17 of the Rome II Regulation. Unfortunately there are cases when the Regulation was ignored by Polish courts. The authors of the supplement propose a number of possible amendments to the Regulation, including changes to conflict rules for traffic accidents, the protection of privacy and other personal rights, intellectual property, unfair competition and the protection of third party rights

A Massive Data Parallel Computational Framework for Petascale/Exascale Hybrid Computer Systems

large scale scientific applicatio

The ESCAPE project : Energy-efficient Scalable Algorithms for Weather Prediction at Exascale

In the simulation of complex multi-scale flows arising in weather and climate modelling, one of the biggest challenges is to satisfy strict service requirements in terms of time to solution and to satisfy budgetary constraints in terms of energy to solution, without compromising the accuracy and stability of the application. These simulations require algorithms that minimise the energy footprint along with the time required to produce a solution, maintain the physically required level of accuracy, are numerically stable, and are resilient in case of hardware failure. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) led the ESCAPE (Energy-efficient Scalable Algorithms for Weather Prediction at Exascale) project, funded by Horizon 2020 (H2020) under the FET-HPC (Future and Emerging Technologies in High Performance Computing) initiative. The goal of ESCAPE was to develop a sustainable strategy to evolve weather and climate prediction models to next-generation computing technologies. The project partners incorporate the expertise of leading European regional forecasting consortia, university research, experienced high-performance computing centres, and hardware vendors. This paper presents an overview of the ESCAPE strategy: (i) identify domain-specific key algorithmic motifs in weather prediction and climate models (which we term Weather & Climate Dwarfs), (ii) categorise them in terms of computational and communication patterns while (iii) adapting them to different hardware architectures with alternative programming models, (iv) analyse the challenges in optimising, and (v) find alternative algorithms for the same scheme. The participating weather prediction models are the following: IFS (Integrated Forecasting System); ALARO, a combination of AROME (Application de la Recherche a l'Operationnel a Meso-Echelle) and ALADIN (Aire Limitee Adaptation Dynamique Developpement International); and COSMO-EULAG, a combination of COSMO (Consortium for Small-scale Modeling) and EULAG (Eulerian and semi-Lagrangian fluid solver). For many of the weather and climate dwarfs ESCAPE provides prototype implementations on different hardware architectures (mainly Intel Skylake CPUs, NVIDIA GPUs, Intel Xeon Phi, Optalysys optical processor) with different programming models. The spectral transform dwarf represents a detailed example of the co-design cycle of an ESCAPE dwarf. The dwarf concept has proven to be extremely useful for the rapid prototyping of alternative algorithms and their interaction with hardware; e.g. the use of a domain-specific language (DSL). Manual adaptations have led to substantial accelerations of key algorithms in numerical weather prediction (NWP) but are not a general recipe for the performance portability of complex NWP models. Existing DSLs are found to require further evolution but are promising tools for achieving the latter. Measurements of energy and time to solution suggest that a future focus needs to be on exploiting the simultaneous use of all available resources in hybrid CPU-GPU arrangements

The ESCAPE project: Energy-efficient Scalable Algorithms for Weather Prediction at Exascale

Abstract. In the simulation of complex multi-scale flows arising in weather and climate modelling, one of the biggest challenges is to satisfy strict service requirements in terms of time to solution and to satisfy budgetary constraints in terms of energy to solution, without compromising the accuracy and stability of the application. These simulations require algorithms that minimise the energy footprint along with the time required to produce a solution, maintain the physically required level of accuracy, are numerically stable, and are resilient in case of hardware failure. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) led the ESCAPE (Energy-efficient Scalable Algorithms for Weather Prediction at Exascale) project, funded by Horizon 2020 (H2020) under the FET-HPC (Future and Emerging Technologies in High Performance Computing) initiative. The goal of ESCAPE was to develop a sustainable strategy to evolve weather and climate prediction models to next-generation computing technologies. The project partners incorporate the expertise of leading European regional forecasting consortia, university research, experienced high-performance computing centres, and hardware vendors. This paper presents an overview of the ESCAPE strategy: (i) identify domain-specific key algorithmic motifs in weather prediction and climate models (which we term Weather & Climate Dwarfs), (ii) categorise them in terms of computational and communication patterns while (iii) adapting them to different hardware architectures with alternative programming models, (iv) analyse the challenges in optimising, and (v) find alternative algorithms for the same scheme. The participating weather prediction models are the following: IFS (Integrated Forecasting System); ALARO, a combination of AROME (Application de la Recherche à l'Opérationnel à Meso-Echelle) and ALADIN (Aire Limitée Adaptation Dynamique Développement International); and COSMO–EULAG, a combination of COSMO (Consortium for Small-scale Modeling) and EULAG (Eulerian and semi-Lagrangian fluid solver). For many of the weather and climate dwarfs ESCAPE provides prototype implementations on different hardware architectures (mainly Intel Skylake CPUs, NVIDIA GPUs, Intel Xeon Phi, Optalysys optical processor) with different programming models. The spectral transform dwarf represents a detailed example of the co-design cycle of an ESCAPE dwarf. The dwarf concept has proven to be extremely useful for the rapid prototyping of alternative algorithms and their interaction with hardware; e.g. the use of a domain-specific language (DSL). Manual adaptations have led to substantial accelerations of key algorithms in numerical weather prediction (NWP) but are not a general recipe for the performance portability of complex NWP models. Existing DSLs are found to require further evolution but are promising tools for achieving the latter. Measurements of energy and time to solution suggest that a future focus needs to be on exploiting the simultaneous use of all available resources in hybrid CPU–GPU arrangements