The temperature dependence of inelastic light scattering from small particles for use in combustion diagnostic instrumentation

A computer calculation of the expected angular distribution of coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) from micrometer size polystyrene spheres based on a Mie-type model, and a pilot experiment to test the feasibility of measuring CARS angular distributions from micrometer size polystyrene spheres by simply suspending them in water are discussed. The computer calculations predict a very interesting structure in the angular distributions that depends strongly on the size and relative refractive index of the spheres

Cloud Watch

The purpose of this activity is to explore the connections between cloud type, cloud cover, and weather and stimulate student interest in taking cloud type observations. Students observe cloud type and coverage and weather conditions over a five-day period and correlate these observations. Students make and test predictions using these observations. The intended outcome is that students learn to draw inferences from observations and use them to make and test predictions. Educational levels: Primary elementary, Intermediate elementary, Middle school, High school

Towards a Taxonomy of Performance Evaluation of Commercial Cloud Services

Cloud Computing, as one of the most promising computing paradigms, has become increasingly accepted in industry. Numerous commercial providers have started to supply public Cloud services, and corresponding performance evaluation is then inevitably required for Cloud provider selection or cost-benefit analysis. Unfortunately, inaccurate and confusing evaluation implementations can be often seen in the context of commercial Cloud Computing, which could severely interfere and spoil evaluation-related comprehension and communication. This paper introduces a taxonomy to help profile and standardize the details of performance evaluation of commercial Cloud services. Through a systematic literature review, we constructed the taxonomy along two dimensions by arranging the atomic elements of Cloud-related performance evaluation. As such, this proposed taxonomy can be employed both to analyze existing evaluation practices through decomposition into elements and to design new experiments through composing elements for evaluating performance of commercial Cloud services. Moreover, through smooth expansion, we can continually adapt this taxonomy to the more general area of evaluation of Cloud Computing.Comment: 8 pages, Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Cloud Computing (IEEE CLOUD 2012), pp. 344-351, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, June 24-29, 201

Cloud Migration: A Case Study of Migrating an Enterprise IT System to IaaS

This case study illustrates the potential benefits and risks associated with the migration of an IT system in the oil & gas industry from an in-house data center to Amazon EC2 from a broad variety of stakeholder perspectives across the enterprise, thus transcending the typical, yet narrow, financial and technical analysis offered by providers. Our results show that the system infrastructure in the case study would have cost 37% less over 5 years on EC2, and using cloud computing could have potentially eliminated 21% of the support calls for this system. These findings seem significant enough to call for a migration of the system to the cloud but our stakeholder impact analysis revealed that there are significant risks associated with this. Whilst the benefits of using the cloud are attractive, we argue that it is important that enterprise decision-makers consider the overall organizational implications of the changes brought about with cloud computing to avoid implementing local optimizations at the cost of organization-wide performance.Comment: Submitted to IEEE CLOUD 201