Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Towards Automatic Load Balancing of a Parallel File System with Subfile Based Migration

Nowadays scientific applications address complex problems in nature. As a consequence they have a high demand for computation power and for an I/O infrastructure providing performant access to data. These demands are satisfied by various supercomputers in order to engage grand challenges. From the operator's point of view it is important to keep the available resources of such a multi dollar machine busy, while the end-user is concerned about the runtime of the application. Evidently it is vital to avoid idle times in an application and congestion of network as well as of the I/O subsystem to ensure maximum concurrency and thus efficiency. Load balancing is a technique which tackles this issues. While load balancing has been evaluated in detail for computational parts of a program, analysis of load imbalance for complex storage environments in High Performance Computing has to be addressed as well. Often parallel file systems like Lustre, GPFS, or PVFS2 are deployed to meet the needs of a fast I/O infrastructure. This thesis evaluates the impact of unbalanced workloads in such parallel file systems exemplarily on PVFS2 and extends the environment to allow dynamic (and adaptive) load balancing. Some cases leading to unbalanced workloads are discussed, namely unbalanced access patterns, inhomogeneous hardware, and rebuilds after crashes in an environment promising high availability. Important factors related to the performance are described, this allows to build simple performance models on which the impact of such load imbalances can be assessed. Some potential countermeasures to fix these unbalanced workloads are discussed in the thesis. While most cases could be alleviated by static load balancing mechanisms a dynamic load balancing seems important to make up for environments with fluctuating performance characteristics. In the thesis extensions to the software environment are designed and realized that provide capabilities to detect bottlenecks and to fix them by moving data from higher loaded servers to lower loaded servers. Therefore, further mechanisms are integrated into PVFS2, which allow and support dynamic decisions to move data by a load-balancer. A first heuristics is implemented using the extensions to demonstrate how they can be used to build a dynamic load-balancer. Experiments are run with balanced as well as unbalanced workloads to show the server behavior.Also a few experiments with the developed load-balancer in a real environment are made. These results demonstrate problematic issues and demonstrate that load balancing techniques could be successfully applied to increase productivity.
Searching for Information in a P2P System

Abstract In relation to decentralized search on top of P2P communication paradigm, we study a proactive mechanism that is based on the dissemination of advertisements for new sources that join a system. The system design goal of limiting the state maintained by each peer and ensuring search efficiency is the driving reason for exploiting the small-world idea, and in particular the hierarchical network model, which provides theoretical bounds on search time. Starting from the study of this theoretical model, we try to reflect it into protocol design. Simulation results testify to the theoretical bounds on search time and provide a quantification view on the search time in relation to the directory capacity requirements of the peers.
Clinical Applications Of Physiome Project Models

The Physiome Project is contributing to the bioengineering analysis of human physiology and associated clinical applications by developing models of structure–function relations that incorporate accurate models of human anatomy. Biophysically based equations are solved, subject to measured boundary conditions, on these anatomical geometries. The primary goal is to include all relevant physical processes together with a multi-scale modelling approach that attempts to link protein level function in ion channel or signal transduction pathways, for example, to tissue structure and the integrative function of whole organs or organ systems. We give four examples of the physiome modelling approach, all motivated by clinically important problems: refl ux of stomach contents through the gastro-oesophageal junction, aspects of the musculo-skeletal function of the knee and leg, tracking the spread of melanoma in lymphatic ducts and analyzing ultrasound measurements of cardiac mechanical function.
Decades of Automation in the Newsroom

This case study takes a brief look at commercial operations with automated news in the United States as well as five European countries to explore how the logic of journalism has been interpreted and translated into software and how industry experts anticipate the future. The empirical material consists of 31 qualitative research interviews with data journalists, news managers, computer scientists, academics and industry experts that inhabit and reproduce this new ecosystem of computation, journalism and statistics. Theoretically the study is inspired by a social constructionist perspective, arguing that social action is a central element in technological development: there are many forms of friction that creates barriers to increased automation. It would be naive to think that the development of learning algorithms will not lead to more advanced forms of automated news, however, journalists have shown a strong capacity for adaptation and mitigation of new technology. The paper turns the usual discussion about job losses on its head and asks “Why are there still so many jobs in journalism after decades of newsroom automation? ” We argue that journalism as ideology, understanding how journalists give meaning to their work, probably will be a strong mitigating effect also in the future.
A distributed memory parallel implementation of the multigrid method for solving three‐dimensional implicit solid mechanics problems

We describe the parallel implementation of a multigrid method for unstructured finite element discretizations of solid mechanics problems. We focus on a distributed memory programming model and use the MPI library to perform the required interprocessor communications. We present an algebraic framework for our parallel computations, and describe an object‐based programming methodology using Fortran90. The performance of the implementation is measured by solving both fixed‐ and scaled‐size problems on three different parallel computers (an SGI Origin2000, an IBM SP2 and a Cray T3E). The code performs well in terms of speedup, parallel efficiency and scalability. However, the floating point performance is considerably below the peak values attributed to these machines. Lazy processors are documented on the Origin that produce reduced performance statistics. The solution of two problems on an SGI Origin2000, an IBM PowerPC SMP and a Linux cluster demonstrate that the algorithm performs well when applied to the unstructured meshes required for practical engineering analysis. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
E-confidence or incompetence: Are teachers ready to teach in the 21st century?

Despite high levels of government funding over the last decade, recent research would appear to indicate that a diverse landscape still exists in primary and secondary schools in terms of teachers’ ICT skills, use of resources, and implementation of pedagogy and practice in UK schools. Following the recent change of British government in May 2010, however, there have been significant cuts in funding for ICT in education despite evidence which suggests that the percentage of schools considered to be e-mature is relatively low. This small-scale study, which was commissioned by Becta from September 2008 to March 2009, sought to answer the question: What is the extent and nature of the ICT skills and competencies of the teaching workforce? The aim of this research, when it was commissioned, was, primarily, in order to inform the government at the time as to the on going implementation of the Harnessing Technology Strategy. The main purpose of the research was to gain a better understanding of the CPD needs of teachers so that mechanisms could be put in to place to bring about a step-change in order to further evolve the ICT skills and competencies of the UK teaching workforce. The findings which emerge here would not only support the view that teachers’ skills and competencies are diverse, but would also indicate that the continuing professional development needs of teachers could benefit by reconfiguring the learning community to facilitate an environment in which pupils are teachers and teachers become learners. Keywords: e-confidence/e-maturity; ICT; primary education; secondary education; teachers
Adaptive Mean-Shift Kalman Tracking of Laparoscopic Instruments

Laparoscopic surgery becomes increasingly popular due to high benefits to both surgeon and patients. In this paper, we propose the adaptive mean-shift Kalman tracking algorithm based on the mean-shift algorithm and the Kalman filter for tracking a laparoscopic instrument in laparoscopic surgery. An iterative update of the target candidate in the mean-shift process can improve the tracking performance over a typical mean-shift algorithm. In addition, the Kalman filter is employed to enhance the chance of tracking accuracy, especially when the object disappears from the scene. In this study, we tested the tracking performance of our proposed algorithm by using the different situations from simulated videos. Our experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can locate the target object correctly even when the size and the shape of the target have been changed. In the difficult situation when the target is hiding behind an obstacle, this algorithm can still track the target object correctly after it becomes apparent. Therefore, this proposed algorithm can be used for locating the tip of the laparoscopic instrument in real laparoscopic surgery. the color tracking algorithm to control a robotic laparoscope instead of using human; however, this method cannot track many types of instruments. Casals et al. (3) introduced feature tracking algorithm based on shape information of a surgical instrument; however, it works only with a specific surgical instrument. Lee et al. (4) proposed a color and shape tracking algorithm by using the contour of the surgical instrument. This algorithm worked well in the normal situation, but not when the instrument is blocked by some obstacles. Wei et al. (5) presented a simple algorithm for tracking target features. However, this algorithm is based on the artificial color marks attached to a surgical instrument, but there are many disadvantages, such as sterilization of the mark on the surgical instrument and its convenience in the real practice. Because of some limitations in previous methods, in this paper, we propose a new object tracking algorithm to track the laparoscopic instrument called the adaptive mean-shift Kalman algorithm (6), which is based on the mean-shift algorithm (7) and the Kalman filter (8). In this algorithm, the size of the target candidate can be adjusted during tracking processes to increase the chance of tracking. We simulated videos with different scenarios to test the performance of our proposed algorithm. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm is intended to use for controlling our new laparoscopic-holder assistant robot (9-10) and tracking the tip of its instruments in laparoscopic surgery.
Classification of speech under stress based on physical characteristics of vocal folds vibration

The performance of automatic speech recognition systems (ASR) is degraded by stressinducing environments, such as those where noisy backgrounds, multi-tasking, fatigue, emotional situations, adverse physical conditions, and high workload stress are present. The study of speech under stress, also referred to as stressed speech, can help maintain and improve the robustness of speech recognition systems in these situations. The primary objective of this dissertation is to perform the classification of speech under stress based on a physical model. Presence of stress will cause speakers to change their physiological system to react and adapt himself to the stressed condition. Changes in physiological characteristics can result in variations in aerodynamics in the glottis and the vocal tract, and the stressed speech is produced. Therefore, a physical model is necessary to model airflow patterns in the physiological system in order to represent the process of speech production. An investigation on how physical model is used for classification of speech under stress (stress classification) is explored. This dissertation includes following objectives: I. Explore the physical characteristics of the vocal folds during speech under stress and estimate the physical parameters of the vocal folds for stress classification (the first study); II. Explore the physical characteristics of both the vocal folds and the vocal tract for stressed speech and propose the effective physical parameters (the second study); III. Model the aerodynamics in the laryngeal ventricle and the false vocal folds, and estimate a parameter for classification of stressed speech (the third study); IV. Use different classifiers to perform classification and compare their performance (the
Argument‐based explanation of the British nationality act as a logic program

Abstract Explanations are a significant component of any knowledge‐based system in the legal domain. We have previously proposed a method by which explanations can be improved by making use of annotations on program clauses as to the role of the clause, and organising the explanation according to an argument schema based on that of Stephen Toulmin. In this paper we describe an application of this approach to a part of the British Nationality Act. This serves to illustrate both the practicality of making the required annotations on a legal logic program, and the gains in terms of explanation that can be achieved.
Stata for the Behavioral Sciences

Warming up. Introduction. Descriptive statistics. Basic inferential statistics. Between-subjects ANOVA models. One-way between-subjects ANOVA. Contrasts for a one-way ANOVA. Analysis of covariance. Two-way factorial between-subjects ANOVA. Analysis of covariance with interactions. Three-way between-subjects analysis of variance. Supercharge your analysis of variance (via regression). Power analysis for analysis of variance and covariance. Repeated measures and longitudinal designs. Repeated measures designs. Longitudinal designs. Regression models. Simple and multiple regression. More details about the regress command. Presenting regression results. Tools for model building. Regression diagnostics. Power analysis for regression. Stata overview. Common features of estimation commands. Postestimation commands. Stata data management commands. Stata equivalents of common IBM SPSS Commands.
Taxonomy of Swarm Optimization

Swarm intelligence is a relatively new subfield of artificial intelligence which studies the social behavior of simple agents. It can be seen in ants’ colonies, fireflies, flocks of birds, bee hives etc. The goal of this research paper is to describe the taxonomy of swarm optimization. In the beginning two main algorithms of swarm optimization are ant colony optimization and particle swarm optimization presented. In recent years, new swarm intelligence algorithms have come into light that are being presented in this paper. Keywords—Swarm Optimization, ACO, PSO, BioInspired Algorithms
Report on shape analysis and matching and on semantic matching

In GRAVITATE, two disparate specialities will come together in one working platform for the archaeologist: the fields of shape analysis, and of metadata search. These fields are relatively disjoint at the moment, and the research and development challenge of GRAVITATE is precisely to merge them for our chosen tasks. As shown in chapter 7 the small amount of literature that already attempts join 3D geometry and semantics is not related to the cultural heritage domain. Therefore, after the project is done, there should be a clear ‘before-GRAVITATE’ and ‘after-GRAVITATE’ split in how these two aspects of a cultural heritage artefact are treated. This state of the art report (SOTA) is ‘before-GRAVITATE’. Shape analysis and metadata description are described separately, as currently in the literature and we end the report with common recommendations in chapter 8 on possible or plausible cross-connections that suggest themselves. These considerations will be refined for the Roadmap for Research deliverable. Within the project, a jargon is developing in which ‘geometry’ stands for the physical properties of an artefact (not only its shape, but also its colour and material) and ‘metadata’ is used as a general shorthand for the semantic description of the provenance, location, ownership, classification, use etc. of the artefact. As we proceed in the project, we will find a need to refine those broad divisions, and find intermediate classes (such as a semantic description of certain colour patterns), but for now the terminology is convenient – not least because it highlights the interesting area where both aspects meet. On the ‘geometry’ side, the GRAVITATE partners are UVA, Technion, CNR/IMATI; on the metadata side, IT Innovation, British Museum and Cyprus Institute; the latter two of course also playing the role of internal users, and representatives of the Cultural Heritage (CH) data and target user’s group. CNR/IMATI’s experience in shape analysis and similarity will be an important bridge between the two worlds for geometry and metadata. The authorship and styles of this SOTA reflect these specialisms: the first part (chapters 3 and 4) purely by the geometry partners (mostly IMATI and UVA), the second part (chapters 5 and 6) by the metadata partners, especially IT Innovation while the joint overview on 3D geometry and semantics is mainly by IT Innovation and IMATI. The common section on Perspectives was written with the contribution of all.
Online removal of eye movement and blink artifacts from EEG signals without EOG

In this thesis, two novel methods are presented for online removal of ocular artifacts (OA) from EEG without the need for EOG electrodes attached to the face. Both methods are fully automated and can remove the effects of both eye movements and blinks. The first method employs a high speed eye tracker and three frontal EEG electrodes as a reference to any nonlinear adaptive filter to remove OAs without any calibration. For the filters considered, at some frontal electrodes, using the eye tracker-based reference was shown to significantly (p < .05) improve the ability to remove OAs over using either EOG or only frontal EEG as a reference. Using an eye tracker provides the means for recording point-of-gaze and blink dynamics simultaneously with EEG, which is often desired or required in clinical studies and a variety of human computer interface applications. The second method uses a biophysical model of the head and movement of the eyes to remove OAs. It only requires a short once-per-subject calibration and does not require subject-specific MRI. It was compared to four existing methods, and was shown to perform consistently over a variety of tasks. In removing both saccades and blinks, it removed more than 4 times as much OA as the other methods. In terms of distortion, it was the only method that never removed more power than was present in the original EEG. To carry out the above studies, several related original investigations and developments were needed. These included a novel algorithm to extract the blink time course from eye tracker images, a new measure of OA removal distortion, a high speed eye tracker recording system, a study to determine whether frontal EEG could be used to replace EOG for OA removal and studies of the frequency content of blinks, the effects of an electromagnetic sensor on EEG, and the effects of varying mental states on OA removal methods. In summary this thesis has helped pave the way towards a real-time EEG-based human interface that is free of OAs and does not require EOG electrodes in its operation.
Aslib Cranfield research project - Factors determining the performance of indexing systems; Volume 1, Design; Part 2, Appendices

and is still engaged on the final stages of the project. In addition, some sixty-three other persons have worked part-time at some stage. To all these people, I have to express my appreciation for their efforts. An essential requirement of the project involved cooperation of a large number of research scientists. The response to our request was most satisfactory, and I acknowledge with thanks the generous assistance of some two hundred scientists, many of whom are known to me only by name. i As before, As lib administered the grant and also, on this occasion made accommodation available in their headquarters in London, and I am grateful for the help given by the Director, Mr. Leslie Wilson, and many members of his staff. I would also express my appreciation to the Principal and Senate of the College of Aeronautics for agreeing to my taking part in this project while continuing my normal duties. Finally, there are many friends and colleagues with whom, during the past three years, I have had the opportunity of discussing the Aslib-Cranfield projects. Their comments and suggestions have always been helpful, and I am most grateful for the interest which they have shown.
An insight into the opening path to semi-open conformation of HIV-1 protease by molecular dynamics simulation

Investigation of the opening process of HIV-1 protease is highly useful for understanding its functional mechanism and substrate/inhibitor binding dynamics, and for facilitating inhibitor drug design. Previous molecular dynamics simulations have revealed some opening paths and conformations, but they appear to be insufficient to explain some experimentally detected opening behaviors. We evaluated the possibility of the existence of alternative opening paths to the semi-open conformation by performing the molecular dynamics simulation of the early opening process of an inhibitor-free HIV-1 protease with explicit solvation. The closed form of the HIV-1 protease transforms to the semi-open form in 2500 ps via a path significantly different from those detected by other reported molecular dynamics simulations of the same protein. Some characteristics of this alternative path are consistent with the experimentally detected opening behavior. Our study combined with earlier studies suggested the existence of multiple opening paths.
Semiautomatic video layering using 2D mesh tracking

We describe a method for video layering using 2D tracking. We represent the video as sets of non-overlapping layers, and model the motion and shape of each layer by a 2D mesh. Assuming that the object boundaries are marked interactively on some key-frames, we find the segmentation maps in all other frames using only the YUV data and track the 2D meshes corresponding to video layers during their lifespan.
An Innovative Interpolation Technique for Aeroacoustic Hybrid Methods

The present work constitutes a fraction of a more extensive study that is dedicated to the improvement of hybrid methods for aeroacoustics. More precisely, we address here the interpolation step that is to be achieved between their CFD and CAA stages, when the latter are weakly coupled. First, thanks to theoretical investigations, we analyze the interpolation process and the mechanisms underlying its two main issues, which are the spurious modes generation and the signal degradation. The former is then more particularly studied, before an innovative interpolation technique is proposed for minimizing its e ects. This innovative procedure is then assessed/validated against several test cases of increasing complexity. Finally, the way such procedure can help in improving and/or lightening hybrid methods processes is discussed.