The New Confrontation Clause

Article published in the Michigan State University School of Law Student Scholarship Collection

Swept time-space domain decomposition on GPUs and heterogeneous computing systems

Modern scientific and engineering problems often require simulations with a level of resolution difficult to achieve in reasonable amounts of time—even in effectively parallelized programs. Therefore, applications that exploit high performance computing (HPC) systems have become invaluable in academia and industry over the past two decades. Addressing the questions that arise from continual scientific advancement requires solutions from hardware and software are required to supply the necessary throughput for demand across scientific disciplines. The most important development on the hardware side has been the General Purpose Graphics Processing Unit (GPGPU), a class of massively parallel device that now composes a substantial portion of the computational power of the top 500 supercomputers. As these systems grow, barriers to increased performance arise from small costs accumulated over innumerable iterations such as latency, the fixed cost of memory accesses, which becomes significantly larger when access requires communication between two distant CPU processes. This thesis implements and analyzes swept time-space domain decomposition, a communication avoiding scheme for time-stepping stencil codes, for GPGPU and heterogeneous (CPU/GPU) architectures. The GPGPU program significantly improves the execution time of finite-difference solvers for relatively simple one-dimensional time-stepping partial differential equations (PDEs). The swept decomposition code showed speedups of 2-9x compared with simple GPU domain decompositions and 7-300x compared with parallel CPU versions over a range of problem sizes: 10­­3 – 106 spatial points. However, for a more sophisticated one-dimensional system of equations discretized with a second-order finite-volume scheme, the swept rule performs 1.2-1.9x than a standard implementation for all problem sizes. The program targeting heterogeneous systems with distributed memory patterns performs significantly better on both simple problems, speedup 4-18x, and more complex equation systems, speedup 1.5-3x, over the range of problem sizes: 105-107 spatial points. This demonstrates the benefit of GPU architecture and the contingent effectiveness of swept time-space decomposition for accelerating explicit PDE solvers on current computational architectures

A comprehensive study of infrared OH prompt emission in two comets. I. Observations and effective g-factors

We present high-dispersion infrared spectra of hydroxyl (OH) in comets C/2000 WM1 (LINEAR) and C/2004 Q2 (Machholz), acquired with the Near Infrared Echelle Spectrograph at the Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Most of these rovibrational transitions result from photodissociative excitation of H_2O giving rise to OH "prompt" emission. We present calibrated emission efficiencies (equivalent g-factors, measured in OH photons s^(-1) [H_2O molecule]^(-1)) for more than 20 OH lines sampled in these two comets. The OH transitions analyzed cover a broad range of rotational excitation. This infrared database for OH can be used in two principal ways: (1) as an indirect tool for obtaining water production in comets simultaneously with the production of other parent volatiles, even when direct detections of H_2O are not available; and (2) as an observational constraint to models predicting the rotational distribution of rovibrationally excited OH produced by water photolysis

Accelerating solutions of one-dimensional unsteady PDEs with GPU-based swept time-space decomposition

The expedient design of precision components in aerospace and other high-tech industries requires simulations of physical phenomena often described by partial differential equations (PDEs) without exact solutions. Modern design problems require simulations with a level of resolution difficult to achieve in reasonable amounts of time-even in effectively parallelized solvers. Though the scale of the problem relative to available computing power is the greatest impediment to accelerating these applications, significant performance gains can be achieved through careful attention to the details of memory communication and access. The swept time-space decomposition rule reduces communication between sub-domains by exhausting the domain of influence before communicating boundary values. Here we present a GPU implementation of the swept rule, which modifies the algorithm for improved performance on this processing architecture by prioritizing use of private (shared) memory, avoiding interblock communication, and overwriting unnecessary values. It shows significant improvement in the execution time of finite-difference solvers for one-dimensional unsteady PDEs, producing speedups of 2-9 x for a range of problem sizes, respectively, compared with simple GPU versions and 7-300 x compared with parallel CPU versions. However, for a more sophisticated one-dimensional system of equations discretized with a second-order finite-volume scheme, the swept rule performs 1.2-1.9 x worse than a standard implementation for all problem sizes. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

ESD Terms and Definitions (Version 12)

Basic terms related to engineering system

Assembly of the Candida albicans genome into sixteen supercontigs aligned on the eight chromosomes

For Assembly 20 of the Candida albicans genome, the sequence of each of the eight chromosomes was determined, revealing new insights into gene family creation and dispersion, subtelomere organization, and chromosome evolution

Overexpression of the RNA-binding protein HuR impairs tumor growth in triple negative breast cancer associated with deficient angiogenesis [abstract]

Breast cancer is the second most common cancer in women and causes the death of 519,000 people worldwide. Many cancer genes are posttranscriptionally regulated by RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) and microRNAs. The RBP HuR binds to the AU-rich (ARE) regions of labile mRNAs, such as proto-oncogenes, stabilizing their mRNA and facilitating their translation into protein. HuR has been described to control genes in multiple areas of the acquired capabilities model of cancer and has been hypothesized to be a tumor maintenance gene, allowing for cancers to proliferate once they are established. We investigated the role of HuR in aggressive and difficult to treat triple-negative breast cancer

The Los Alamos Supernova Light Curve Project: Computational Methods

We have entered the era of explosive transient astronomy, in which upcoming real-time surveys like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) and Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) will detect supernovae in unprecedented numbers. Future telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope may discover supernovae from the earliest stars in the universe and reveal their masses. The observational signatures of these astrophysical transients are the key to unveiling their central engines, the environments in which they occur, and to what precision they will pinpoint cosmic acceleration and the nature of dark energy. We present a new method for modeling supernova light curves and spectra with the radiation hydrodynamics code RAGE coupled with detailed monochromatic opacities in the SPECTRUM code. We include a suite of tests that demonstrate how the improved physics is indispensable to modeling shock breakout and light curves.Comment: 18 pages, 19 figures, published in ApJ Supplement