bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Software life cycle

management
Authors: Estell Robert G.
Published: January 2007

The distinguishing characteristic about top-down analysis and design is that one is enjoined to think through the entire problem at a given level before cluttering up the situation -- and perhaps compromising some alternative solutions -- by beginning the implementation. That is, the destination is determined before the mode of travel is selected. The purpose of the trip is evaluated before deciding who should go, or how long they should stay. If this sounds elementary, it is -- because this is how successful people (scientists, businessmen, students, housewives) run their lives. For some odd reason, it is not how we have -- in the past -- so frequently specified and procured software for computers.
So-Krates' second symposium
Authors: Plateau  , Green Kelly
Published: January 2007

This is a translation of the heretofore unknown manuscript of the famous Greek Dialogues of So-Krates. As the reader may know, these Dialogues were written by the Greek Philosopher Plateau. Now, it has never been clear whether So-Krates really existed or if he was merely a vehicle created by Plateau to promote a philosophical point of view. We shall never know, but it does not matter anyway. What is important are the insights that these ancients can bring to modern man. Even though technology has changed the world, there has been little, seemingly, to change the basic makeup of the character of mankind.
Who is incompetent?
Authors: Becker Douglas
Published: January 2007

Let the finger pointing begin! What you probably expect me to say is that either everyone is incompetent or that no one is incompetent. In matters of this nature the tendency is to degenerate into a verbal Armageddon.
Health report
Authors: Gerber T. L.
Published: January 2007

Reports have come in from a few, scattered localities of an increase in the rare, programming-effectiveness syndrome. While the increase is rather small in absolute numbers, it is statistically significant at the .01 level. We believe that this upsurge is transitory and most likely was caused by subtle environmental changes such as corporate cost reduction campaigns impacting a monotonically decreasing programmer employment opportunity curve.
Array languages and the challenge of modern computer architecture
Authors: Cockshott Paul
Published: January 2007

There has always been a close relationship between programming language design and computer design. Electronic computers and programming languages are both 'computers' in Turing's sense. They are systems which allow the performance of bounded universal computation. Each allows any computable function to be evaluated, up to some memory limit. This equivalence has been understood since the 30s' when Turing machines (Turing 1937) were shown to be of the same computational power as the λ calculus.
A Mobility-Resistant Efficient Clustering Approach for ad hoc and sensor networks
Authors: Li Jason H. , yu Miao , Levy Renato , Teittinen Anna
Published: January 2007

This paper presents a Mobility-Resistant, Efficient Clustering Approach (MRECA) for ad hoc and sensor networks. MRECA can provide robustness against moderate node mobility and at the same time render energy-eficiency. The identified clusterheads cover the whole network and each node in the network can determine its cluster and only one cluster. The algorithm terminates in deterministic time without iterations, and each node transmits only one message during the algorithm. We prove analytically the correctness and complexity of the algorithm, and simulation results demonstrate that MRECA is energy-efficient, resilient against node mobility, and robust against synchronization errors
Relative fitness models for storage
Authors: Mesnier Michael , Wachs Matthew , Salmon Brandon , Ganger Gregory R.
Published: January 2007

Relative fitness is a new black-box approach to modeling storage devices. Whereas conventional black-box models train to predict a device's performance given "device-independent" workload characteristics, relative fitness models learn to predict the
changes
in performance between specific devices. There are two advantages. First, unlike conventional modeling, relative fitness does not depend entirely on workload characteristics; performance and resource utilization (e.g., cache usage) can also be used to describe a workload. This is beneficial when workload characteristics are difficult to express (e.g., temporal locality). Second, because relative fitness models are constructed for each pair of devices, changes in workload characteristics (e.g., I/O inter-arrival delay) can be modeled. Therefore, unlike a conventional model, a relative fitness model can be used by applications with a
closed
I/O arrival process. In this article, we present relative fitness as an evolution of the conventional model and share some early results.
Batched disk scheduling with delays
Authors: Bachmat Eitan , Braverman Vladimir
Published: January 2007

One of the important performance enhancing capabilities of modern disk drives, is the ability to permute the order of service of incoming I/O requests in order to minimize total access time. Given a batch (set) of I/O requests, the problem of finding the optimal order of service is known as the
Batched Disk Scheduling Problem
(BDSP). BDSP is a well known instance of the Asymmetric Traveling Salesman Problem (ATSP), in fact it has been used as one of a few principal test cases for the examination of heuristic algorithms for the ATSP, [4], [12]. To specify an instance of BDSP amounts to a choice of a model for the mechanical motion of the disk and a choice of locations and lengths of the requested I/O in the batch. The distance between requests is the amount of time needed by the disk to move from the end of one request to the beginning of the other, thus the amount of time needed to read the data itself,
Transfer time
, is not counted since it is independent of the order of the requests, only the order dependent
Access time
is computed.
Maximizing throughput in wireless networks via gossiping
Authors: Modiano Eytan , Shah Devavrat , Zussman Gil
Published: January 2007

A major challenge in the design of wireless networks is the need for distributed scheduling algorithms that will efficiently share the common spectrum. Recently, a few distributed algorithms for networks in which a node can converse with at most a single neighbor at a time have been presented. These algorithms guarantee 50% of the maximum possible throughput. We present the
first distributed scheduling framework that guarantees maximum throughput
. It is based on a combination of a distributed matching algorithm and an algorithm that compares and merges successive matching solutions. The comparison can be done by a deterministic algorithm or by randomized gossip algorithms. In the latter case, the comparison may be inaccurate. Yet, we show that if the matching and gossip algorithms satisfy simple conditions related to their performance and to the inaccuracy of the comparison (respectively), the framework attains the desired throughput.It is shown that the complexities of our algorithms, that achieve nearly 100% throughput, are comparable to those of the algorithms that achieve 50% throughput. Finally, we discuss extensions to general interference models. Even for such models, the framework provides a simple distributed throughput optimal algorithm.
Tail asymptotics for policies favoring short jobs in a many-flows regime
Authors: Yang Chang-Woo , Wierman Adam , Shakkottai Sanjay , Harchol-Balter Mor
Published: January 2007

Scheduling policies that prioritize short jobs have received growing attention in recent years. The class of SMART policies includes many such disciplines, e.g. Shortest-Remaining-Processing-Time (SRPT) and Preemptive-Shortest-Job-First (PSJF). In this work, we study the delay distribution of SMART policies and contrast this distribution with that of the Least-Attained-Service (LAS) policy, which indirectly favors short jobs by prioritizing jobs with the least attained service (age).We study the delay distribution (rate function) of LAS and the SMART class in a discrete-time queueing system under the many sources regime. Our analysis in this regime (large capacity and large number of flows) hinges on a novel two dimensional queue representation, which creates tie-break rules. These additional rules do not alter the policies, but greatly simplify their analysis. We demonstrate that the queue evolution of all the above policies can be described under this single two dimensional framework.We prove that all SMART policies have the same delay distribution as SRPT and illustrate the improvements SMART policies make over First-Come-First-Served (FCFS). Furthermore, we show that the delay distribution of SMART policies stochastically improves upon the delay distribution of LAS. However, the delay distribution under LAS is not too bad -- the distribution of delay under LAS for most jobs sizes still provides improvement over FCFS. Our results are complementary to prior work that studies delay-tail behavior in the large buffer regime under a single flow.
Fundamental characteristics of queues with fluctuating load
Authors: Gupta Varun , Harchol-Balter Mor , Wolf Alan Scheller , Yechiali Uri
Published: January 2007

Systems whose arrival or service rates fluctuate over time are very common, but are still not well understood analytically. Stationary formulas are poor predictors of systems with fluctuating load. When the arrival and service processes fluctuate in a Markovian manner, computational methods, such as Matrix-analytic and spectral analysis, have been instrumental in the numerical evaluation of quantities like mean response time. However, such computational tools provide only limited insight into the
functional behavior
of the system with respect to its primitive input parameters: the arrival rates, service rates, and rate of fluctuation.For example, the shape of the function that maps rate of fluctuation to mean response time is not well understood, even for an M/M/1 system. Is this function increasing, decreasing, monotonic? How is its shape affected by the primitive input parameters? Is there a simple closed-form approximation for the shape of this curve? Turning to user experience: How is the performance experienced by a user arriving into a "high load" period different from that of a user arriving into a "low load" period, or simply a random user. Are there stochastic relations between these? In this paper, we provide the first answers to these fundamental questions.
Confidence intervals for priority sampling
Authors: Thorup Mikkel
Published: January 2007

With a priority sample from a set of weighted items, we can provide an unbiased estimate of the total weight of any subset. The strength of priority sampling is that it gives the best possible estimate variance on any set of input weights.For a concrete subset, however, the variance on the estimate of its weight depends strongly on the total set of weights and the distribution of the subset in this set. The variance is, for example, much smaller if weights are heavy tailed.In this paper we show how to generate a confidence interval directly from a priority sample, thus complementing the weight estimates with concrete lower and upper bounds. In particularly we will tell how heavy subsets can likely be hidden when the priority estimate for a subset is zero.Our confidence intervals for priority sampling are evaluated on real and synthetic data and compared with confidence intervals obtained with uniform sampling, weighted sampling with replacement, and threshold sampling.
Fast statistical spam filter by approximate classifications
Authors: Li Kang , Zhong Zhenyu
Published: January 2007

Statistical-based Bayesian filters have become a popular and important defense against spam. However, despite their effectiveness, their greater processing overhead can prevent them from scaling well for enterprise-level mail servers. For example, the dictionary lookups that are characteristic of this approach are limited by the memory access rate, therefore relatively insensitive to increases in CPU speed. We address this scaling issue by proposing an acceleration technique that speeds up Bayesian filters based on approximate classification. The approximation uses two methods: hash-based lookup and lossy encoding. Lookup approximation is based on the popular Bloom filter data structure with an extension to support value retrieval. Lossy encoding is used to further compress the data structure. While both methods introduce additional errors to a strict Bayesian approach, we show how the errors can be both minimized and biased toward a false negative classification.We demonstrate a 6x speedup over two well-known spam filters (bogofilter and qsf) while achieving an identical false positive rate and similar false negative rate to the original filters.
Analysis of a new intra-disk redundancy scheme for high-reliability RAID storage systems in the presence of unrecoverable errors
Authors: Dholakia Ajay , Eleftheriou Evangelos , Hu Xiao--Yu , Iliadis Ilias , Menon Jai , Rao KK
Published: January 2007

Today's data storage systems are increasingly adopting low-cost disk drives that have higher capacity but lower reliability, leading to more frequent rebuilds and to a higher risk of unrecoverable media errors. We propose a new XOR-based intra-disk redundancy scheme, called interleaved parity check (IPC), to enhance the reliability of RAID systems that incurs only negligible I/O performance degradation. The proposed scheme introduces an additional level of redundancy inside each disk, on top of the RAID redundancy across multiple disks. The RAID parity provides protection against disk failures, while the proposed scheme aims to protect against media-related unrecoverable errors.We develop a new model capturing the effect of correlated unrecoverable sector errors and subsequently use it to analyze the proposed scheme as well as the traditional redundancy schemes based on Reed-Solomon (RS) codes and single-parity-check (SPC) codes. We derive closed-form expressions for the mean time to data loss (MTTDL) of RAID 5 and RAID 6 systems in the presence of unrecoverable errors and disk failures. We then combine these results for a comprehensive characterization of the reliability of RAID systems that incorporate the proposed IPC redundancy scheme. Our results show that in the practical case of correlated errors, the proposed scheme provides the same reliability as the optimum albeit more complex RS coding scheme. Finally, the throughput performance of incorporating the intra-disk redundancy on various RAID systems is evaluated by means of event-driven simulations. A detailed description of these contributions is given in [1].
Root finding and approximation approaches through neural networks
Authors: Epitropakis M. G. , Vrahatis M. N.
Published: January 2007

In this paper, we propose two approaches to approximate high order multivariate polynomials and to estimate the number of roots of high order univariate polynomials. We employ high order neural networks such as Ridge Polynomial Networks and Pi -- Sigma Networks, respectively. To train the networks efficiently and effectively, we recommend the application of stochastic global optimization techniques. Finally, we propose a two step neural network based technique, to estimate the number of roots of a high order univariate polynomial.
Stability of expanding homographic configurations
Authors: Mylläri Aleksandr
Published: January 2007

Stability of expanding homographic configurations formed by bodies of equal masses placed at the vertices of regular polyhedrons is considered in linear approximation. Perturbations growing faster than the general expansion of the system are considered to be unstable. These instabilities are studied in detail. Different ways to visualize 3D structure of unstable modes are discussed.
Application of CAS to constructing schemes of superhigh order of accuracy for heat conduction equation
Authors: Shapeev Vasily
Published: January 2007

The algorithm of indeterminate coefficients method for constructing difference schemes and its implementation in a computer algebra system (CAS) are described. The set of two-layer schemes with high order of convergence are constructed for the one-dimensional heat conduction equation. The conclusions are proved by numerical experiments.
An APL rule-based system architecture for image interpretation strategies
Authors: Bottoni P. , Protti M. , Mussio P.
Published: January 2007

APL is both a language of choice for image processing and image description tasks, and a language for artificial intelligence applications, typically expert systems. The paper presents the architecture of an APL rule-based system for realizing description synthesis strategies i.e., sequences of actions which allow the evaluation and interpretation of the properties of structures detected in an image. Descriptions of images are stored in a data structure which is formally presented in APL2 syntax. Describing an image often requires that reflective actions be taken i.e., actions in which the system examines the state of the computation and its internal state to select the next action to be executed. It is shown how APL provides all the features needed to implement a reflective mechanism through the use of metarules of the same format as rules.
Compiling APL for parallel and vector execution
Authors: Budd Timothy A. , Pandey Rajeev K.
Published: January 2007

The inherent parallelism of applicative languages such as APL and functional languages such as FP present a little-exploited and somewhat unorthodox means of parallel programming. Here we summarize our investigation of a new approach to compiling such programs for execution on various types of parallel hardware. Our method centers around an intermediate form that is an extension of the lambda calculus. We present evidence that APL programs are easily translated into this intermediate form, and that this intermediate representation lends itself readily to code generation for a variety of parallel hardware.
AP 527
Authors: Deerhake Stephen
Published: January 2007

An auxiliary processor (AP) for interfacing ORACLE SQL with APL2/PC, modeled after APL2/370's AP 127 auxiliary processor, is described. While providing direct compatibility with AP 127 service requests, the AP described here also offers several enhancements to AP 127 service requests. Although written for ORACLE SQL and 16-bit APL2/PC, the programming style employed provides a great deal of isolation between the database management system (DBMS) and target interpreter, thus providing a high degree of portability to both other DBMS implementations (e.g., Database Manager under OS/2) and target interpreters. Besides providing SQL services for a desktop APL environment, the AP demonstrates that it is possible to write large auxiliary processors for APL2/PC using a high level language, and that the resultant AP can be installed in extended memory and run in protected 80x86 CPU execution mode.
Notes on C programming for APL programmers
Authors: Deerhake Stephen
Published: January 2007

As the domain of "callable" languages from APL increases, it is quite likely that APL programmers will find an increasing need for the ability to program in other languages as part of their support activities for APL programming. This is already becoming prevalent in mainframe APL2 (APL2/370), where it is not uncommon to find hybrid systems consisting of APL2, REXX, and/or FORTRAN.Since most "external language" activity in APL-based systems centers on manipulating APL arrays, it is appropriate to examine the programming techniques in callable languages from the standpoint of facilitating APL array manipulation. Specifically, C language programming techniques for handling APL2/PC arrays are reviewed. The techniques discussed emphasize isolation of the application code from the underlying array structure, thus maximizing application code portability. While immediately applicable to the management of APL2/PC arrays, the programming techniques and tips offered are applicable to other APL array implementations as well.
Programming for events
Authors: Eastwood David S.
Published: January 2007

Modern windowing user interfaces offer both a challenge and an opportunity to the APL programmer. This paper discusses some of the factors that need to be taken into account when designing APL applications in a windowing environment. In such an environment the application programmer needs to design the application to react to events which occur in the environment rather than design the application to take over the environment, especially when a number of independent applications are being run simultaneously. Some of the typical techniques required to produce a windowing application are discussed and applications examples are quoted using APL.68000 on the Apple Mac.
APL as an embedded language
Authors: Girardot Jean Jacques
Published: January 2007

This paper describes a new approach to the development of customized applications. It first discusses two problems whith APL programming: writting efficient programs, and building user interfaces. It then describes the proposed solution, that consists in writting the skeleton of the application in an efficient compiled language, using some predefined building blocks, and developing the other parts in APL.This approach is closer to integrated systems, such as spreadsheets, or data-base managers, than to traditional APL applications executed under the control of an interpreter. It differs from these integrated systems in the fact that the development cost is kept low, so that new applications, highly customized for specific end users may be built from scratch, or more exactly, from predefined building blocks.
On performance and space usage improvements for parallelized compiled APL code
Authors: Ju Dz-ching , Ching Wai-Mee , Wu Chuan-lin
Published: January 2007

Loop combination has been a traditional optimization technique employed in APL compilers, but may introduce dependencies into the combined loop. We propose an analysis method by which the compiler can keep track of the change of the parallelism when combining high-level primitives. The analysis is necessary when the compiler needs to decide a trade-off between more parallelism and a further combination. We also show how the space usage, as well as the performance, improves by using system calls with the aid of garbage collection to implement a dynamic memory allocation. A modification of the memory management scheme can also increase available parallelism. Our experimental results indicate that the performance and the space usage improve appreciably with the above enhancements.
L-one-two-three (L1:..L2:..L3:) considered harmful
Authors: van Batenburg F. H. D.
Published: January 2007

It is said by non-APL-programmers that APL code is hard to read and that it is unstructured. Here we argue that APL-programmers may refute this assertion by pointing out some misunderstandings, but admittedly a final analysis will show a deeper truth in these criticisms. We will show that APL gives ample opportunity for unstructured code. Two proposals are presented to address this problem.The first rejects the developed convention for labelling and suggests the adoption of a proper style of programming enforced by a new standard of labelling. This standard will abolish unstructured code. Both negative and positive aspects of this proposal are discussed.The second proposal revives an old idea of introducing one single proper control structure into the language. This would make the current jump (→) superfluous and enforce structured code.
The server network generator (SNG)
Authors: Zeidner L. E.
Published: January 2007

The Server Network Generator (SNG) is a CASE tool that employs a problem solver's ability to represent an application as an ordinary block diagram, a graphical specification of its macroscopic structure. This functional decomposition provides a natural mechanism for subdividing the application into processing tasks that can be distributed across a computing network. Each "server" is a software process that assumes the role of one block in the diagram, performing one processing task, employing interprocess communication as indicated graphically. This approach differs from related research in its use of a functional decomposition in the application context, and its use of graphical programming of the application's macroscopic structure. A distributed network of IBM 7437 VM/SP Technical Workstations are shown as a powerful platform for problem solving, using the SNG as a CASE tool. Distributed computing models based upon networks of microprocessors have long been proposed as an alternative to centralized mainframe computing. The 7437 provides a genuine VM/370 computing environment, so that this approach to distributed computing allows large mainframe systems to be the most powerful nodes in the network, rather than attempting to replace them. A recently completed auxiliary processor is presented that was required to support interprocess communication via the shared-variable interface between virtual machines on different hosts.
Online feedback-based estimation of dynamic page service time
Authors: Kumar Ashwini , Veeraraghavan Kaushik , Wester Benjamin , Shin Kang
Published: January 2007

We present a framework for estimating the service time of a dynamic HTTP request by using the service times of past requests to the same URL. Our framework tags incoming requests with a timestamp. As the request is processed, server state relevant to the estimation mechanism, such as the number of threads servicing incoming requests, is stored with each request. When a request is handled, it is timestamped again, allowing us to calculate its service time. This service time is added to the history table and used in the computation of future estimates. The estimators we evaluated do not produce accurate predictions when server resources change, leaving room for further work in estimator design.
The electric sheep
Authors: Draves Scott
Published: January 2007

Electric Sheep is a distributed screen-saver that harnesses idle computers into a render farm with the purpose of animating and evolving artificial life-forms known as
sheep
. The votes of the users form the basis for the fitness function for a genetic algorithm on a space of abstract animations. Users also may design sheep by hand for inclusion in the gene pool.
A brief survey of μGP
Authors: Schillaci Massimiliano , Sánchez Edgar Ernesto Sánchez
Published: January 2007

The first version of μ GP has been proposed at the Congress of Evolutionary Computation in Honolulu (Hawaii) in 2002. Stemming from a simpler GA for optimizing parameters in test programs [1], μ GP has undergone several revisions and enhancements, and is now a rather sophisticated tool that incorporates many key ideas from the theory of evolutionary computation [2, 3] as well as from extensive on-field experience [4, 5, 6].
The NLP task at INEX 2005
Authors: Geva Shlomo , Woodley Alan
Published: January 2007

With XML information retrieval, like in traditional IR, the user's information need is loosely defined, linguistic variations are frequent, and answers are a ranked list of relevant elements. Like in database querying, structure is of importance and a simple list of keywords may not be sufficient to define an XML query. Structured query languages for XML have been developed, but appear to be difficult to use even by system-level users, let alone end-users. Therefore developing natural language interfaces for XML-IR requires innovative solutions.INEX provides a framework (documents, topics and relevance assessments) for independent evaluation of XML-IR systems and approaches. In 2002 and 2003 systems in the Ad-hoc task accepted formal language queries (i.e.

elements) and produced results lists of relevant XML elements (usually well below the document root). In 2004 INEX introduced a Natural Language Processing task that operated in parallel with the Ad-hoc task (using the same topics and assessments) except that systems operated on XML natural language queries (i.e.

elements).In this report we describe the motivation for using NLP in XML IR, the general approaches that were tested at INEX 2005, and comment on the results.
Introduction to the special issue on successful real-world data mining applications
Authors: Melli Gabor , Zaïane Osmar R. , Kitts Brendan
Published: January 2007

Since its inception, the field of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery from Databases has been driven by the need to solve practical problems [4]. From scaling to large databases and handling noisy and high-dimensional data to finding associational patterns in grocery store transaction data, data mining is a research area rich in application [1]. Despite its practical roots few case studies of data mining applications have been published. The industrial track of the annual SIGKDD conference has provided one such forum, but rarely do these papers present complete descriptions of deployed systems [2]. This special issue attempts to address the gap by showcasing the choices, strategies, and lessons learned from building a real-world data mining application. In a sense this collection is a follow-up to the first workshop on data mining case studies held during ICDM-2006 [3]. This issue however introduces several new papers. Of the 29 papers reviewed 10 papers were accepted. The papers come from a broad range of application areas including Customer Relationship Management, Medicine, Taxation, and Software Development.
Closing the gap
Authors: DeBarr Dave , Eyler-Walker Zach
Published: January 2007

According to the most recent strategic plan for the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS), high-income individuals are a primary contributor to the "tax gap," the difference between the amount of tax that should be collected and the amount of tax that actually is collected [1]. This case study addresses the use of machine learning and statistical analysis for the purpose of helping the IRS target high-income individuals engaging in abusive tax shelters. Kernel-based analysis of known abuse allows targeting individual taxpayers, while associative analysis allows targeting groups of taxpayers who appear to be participating in a tax shelter being promoted by a common financial advisor. Unlike many KDD applications that focus on classification or density estimation, this analysis task requires estimating risk, a weighted combination of both the likelihood of abuse and the potential revenue losses.
Service quality improvement through business process management based on data mining
Authors: Ha Sung Ho , Park Sang Chan
Published: January 2007

To improve the quality of service, internal business processes should be managed like the intermediate products are controlled for quality of final products in the manufacturing industry. The Business Process Management (BPM) aims to improve processes and requires both analysis and evaluation of practices. In this paper, we introduce the voice of call center customers (VOC) as a data source for BPM in the service industry. We adopt a VOC management framework that acquires data about business processes performance and quality of services. We develop a Web-based system for analyzing the VOC of a life insurance company, which helps decision makers understand customer needs better and helps them make consistent decisions regarding customer support. It uses conventional statistical and data mining techniques to identify customer voice patterns. We gather actual customer complaints from the service operation of the target company. Using this data, the system pinpoints problematic areas where complaints happened, the relationship among problems, and the root cause of problems.
Data-driven modeling and prediction of acute toxicity of pesticide residues
Authors: Lemke Frank , Benfenati Emilio , Müller Johann-Adolf
Published: January 2007

This paper outlines and implements a concept for developing alternative tools for toxicity modeling and prediction of chemical compounds to be used for evaluation and authorization purposes of public regulatory bodies to help minimizing animal tests, costs, and time associated with registration and risk assessment processes. Starting from a general problem description we address and introduce concepts of multileveled self-organization for high-dimensional modeling, model validation, model combining, and decision support within the frame of a knowledge discovery from noisy data.
Spatial data mining to support pandemic preparedness
Authors: Bailey-Kellogg Chris , Ramakrishnan Naren , Marathe Madhav V.
Published: January 2007

Effective detection of and response to pandemic disease outbreaks require significant advances in data mining. Contributions to the recently held
SIAM DM 2006 Workshop on Spatial Data Mining
highlighted key challenges, directions, and progress in this context. We summarize here the main themes presented at the workshop as well as promising research directions for the data mining community.
Application of cost/effectiveness analysis to EDP system selection
Authors: Porter J. D.
Published: January 2007

A conceptual approach for evaluating and selecting among alternative Electronic Data Processing (EDP) systems proposed to meet a set of EDP user needs has been developed by applying cost-effectiveness methods and techniques to the source selection problem. The report provides a framework that allows the EDP system eveluator to combine the selected relevant system performance measures and the related cost elements to arrive at a rational defendable selection decision.
Standards for control and operations
Authors: Bearden G. D.
Published: January 2007

When we talk about standards in a data processing environment, I think too many of us feel the same way as the young lady who went to a psychiatrist for counseling. He asked her to describe her problem and she related the following-"Doctor, my problem is that I am 24 years old, have been married three times, and am still a virgin. When I was 18 years old, I married a man 75 and while he was willing, there wasn't a way and after about three months he died of a heart attack. About a year later, I met an airline pilot and within three months, we were married. However, on our way from the wedding to start on our honeymoon, we were involved in an automobile accident. He was seriously injured and after two days died. Last year, I met a man who is manager of standards in data processing. We were married three months ago and all he does each night is sit on the edge of the bed and tell me how good it is going to be!"
Evaluating EDP operations
Authors: Miller Terry
Published: January 2007

The advent of computers with sophisticated operating systems is making most computer operations managers aware of the importance of good operations personnel in the overall computer system. Any computer system requires systems analysis, programing and computer operations. Each segment is equally important, and a failure in any of them can be disastrous.
Computer performance measurement
Authors: Warner C. Dudley
Published: January 2007

Current computer systems are inefficient; the average CPU is processing only 30% of the time. What is needed is fine-tuning--better coordination of all system resources. To do this, an evaluation is necessary based on facts obtained through measurement of computer performance. Although software monitors have merit, hardware monitoring is preferred because it doesn't interact with the system.The first hardware monitor was built by IBM in 1961; the latest is the SUM built by Computer Synectics. Monitors work by way of sensors or probes attached to certain signal lines which measure the presence and duration of an electrical impulse without interfering with it. Different signals represent different functions, such as CPU active, I/O channel busy, etc. AND/OR logic enables the monitor to combine functions and produce complete measurement statistics. Results are written on tape.
Introduction
Authors: Ramsay W. Bruce
Published: January 2007

Ramsay:
As Chairman of the Special Interest Group on Computer Systems Installation Management of the Association for Computing Machinery, it's my pleasure to welcome you to the National Bureau of Standards and to the First Annual Symposium sponsored by SIGCOSIM.
Software techniques
Authors: Kolence Kenneth
Published: January 2007

Kolence:
Thank you very much, Fran. You know, it's really a pleasure to be here; I doubt if Mr. Ramsay realizes that I'm the one that founded SIGCOSIM--back in 1960 when I was in New Jersey at RCA. I felt very deeply the need for installation management techniques for improvement of ways to run an installation. That was while I was at RCA, and shortly thereafter, I moved to North American. I tried to get people in L. A. interested in forming a chapter and moving ahead with SIGCOSIM. It turned out that most of the people there were interested in SHARE; I got involved with the SHARE Installation Management Division. I did quite a bit in SHARE, but finally turned SIGCOSIM over to somebody else because I realized I wasn't able to make it successful. I suppose now somebody turned it over to you, and you're doing a great job. I want to applaud you very, very strongly.
Problems in managing computer networks
Authors: Weis Allan
Published: January 2007

Weis:
This presentation describes some of the experimental Computer Network activities at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center and elsewhere during the past three years. Design philosophy and functional capabilities of the various netting activities are explored. A network connecting several universities and industrial laboratories in the United States is now operational. The current operation of the network interfaces, and the expansion of these as a result of the experience gained, are discussed, along with some of the outstanding technical and managerial problems that will have to be addressed during the coming years in the area of computer networks.
Installing and operating terminals in a computer network system
Authors: Reitz Robert
Published: January 2007

Reitz:
There are three central computer systems at the Tele-Computer Center. Of the three the Univac System is the oldest. It was originally installed in December '62 and consisted of 1-32K Univac 490 Computer, 1 high speed drum, communication peripherals and the usual complement of tapes, printers, drums, etc. The system was installed to replace the AT&T 81-D-1 manual message switching operation, centralize order processing and inventory control systems, and provide facilities for the corporate accounting function.
Installation management abstracts
Authors: Kolasa Susan , Hilleary Roger R.
Published: January 2007

The following magazines are being searched in the preparation of these abstracts:Communications of the ACMComputer DecisionsComputers and AutomationData Processing MagazineDatamationEDP AnalyzerInnovationJournal of Systems ManagementModern DataSoftware Age
An end-system approach to mobility management for 4G networks and its application to thin-client computing
Authors: Patanapongpibul Leo , Mapp Glenford , Hopper Andy
Published: January 2007

This paper describes work centred around providing greater autonomy for mobile nodes to roam in Mobile IPv6 wireless networks based on a new handoff mechanism. This technique, called the Client-based Handoff, enables mobile nodes to roam in foreign wireless networks without having to be controlled by the network infrastructure. The mechanism incorporates three algorithms: a router advertisement cache, the invocation of TCP mechanisms and techniques to handle subnetwork outages in order to reduce packet loss and handoff latency. An experimental Mobile IPv6 testbed was developed to evaluate the proposed mechanism and is described in this paper. The testbed supports both horizontal and vertical handoffs. Experimental results are also presented.The outcome of this approach was used to support mobile thin-client computing using a Virtual Network Computer (VNC) environment. Relevant experiments were carried out and the results show a compelling improvement in throughput of up to 50% compared to a VNC environment without the supporting architecture.
HotMobile 2006
Authors: Ebling Maria R.
Published: January 2007

Like the first WMCSA, the goal of this workshop was to foster interaction between practitioners of mobile computing. In keeping with this goal, we decided to return a small, informal workshop with few papers, but significant discussions. We accepted just nine papers, but we had two significant group discussions, two exciting panels, and an insightful keynote address. Approximately 40 people attended the two-day event.
Comments on the Arjen Markus article
Authors: Gardner Henry J. , Decyk Viktor K.
Published: January 2007

The article by Markus [1] discusses the subject of object-oriented (OO) design patterns and describes ways in which three well-known patterns might be implemented in Fortran 90/95. It appears that the idea of object-oriented design patterns in Fortran might just be coming of age and it is a very appropriate subject for discussion in a Forum such as this.We have been developing our own implementations of design patterns in Fortran 90/95 for some time and have one paper under review [2] and another being presented at the 6th Workshop on Parallel/High-Performance Object Oriented Scientific Computing (POOSC) in Nantes, France in July 2006 [3]. Our application area is particle-in-cell simulations in plasma physics, but the results that we have obtained will, we hope, be of interest to Fortran 90/95 programmers in general.Our own starting point with design patterns in Fortran 90/95 stems from the literature on object-based programming in that language [4-10]. Several authors have observed that the obvious unit of encapsulation, the Fortran 90/95 module, can be thought of as an object-based
class
: it can support a type which defines the stored data together with subprograms which can operate on that data. With some discipline and ingenuity, these authors have shown how to emulate the notions of object construction and destruction, inheritance and polymorphism. These emulations were actually implemented using
object composition
. For example, one
child
module might include another
parent
module in order to simulate inheritance. As Markus correctly points out, most of the famous design patterns are based on object composition and the authors of [4-10] have, frequently, been using design patterns as a way of simulating OO behaviour.Because the subject of OO design patterns in Fortran 90/95 is so fresh, there is ample scope for them to be presented in different ways by different authors. Whilst appreciating the clarity and relevance of Markus' expositions, we would like to make some points of criticism which we believe are important to a further discussion of this topic. The points we make refer to the ideas expressed in the book by Gamma et al. [11] which is considered to be the fundamental exposition of the topic of OO design patterns.
The major features of the next revision of Fortran
Authors: Reid John
Published: January 2007

Two important meetings for the next revision of Fortran were held recently. WG5 met jointly with J3 in Fairfax, Virginia, Feb. 13-17 and J3 met in Las Vegas, May 8-12.The framework was decided at last years' WG5 meeting and was not substantially changed at this year's WG5 meeting. Two large items (
bits and intelligent macros
) were left as
do if time
, which made the May J3 meeting important, since the schedule that we have adopted (aiming for the revision to be Fortran 2008) demanded that edits against Fortran 2003 for all the new features be completed at that meeting.In the event both were deemed to be ready, but
interoperability of pointers, allocatables, assumed-shape arrays, and optional arguments
was not ready and will be deferred to a Technical Report.There was a discussion at the J3 meeting over moving co-arrays to a Technical Report or another part of the standard, despite the WG5 decision at the February meeting that it be a
first priority
item. However, the major vendors reported pressure from users to provide co-arrays and it was decided (straw vote 6-3-2) to keep them. A significant argument was that it would be unsatisfactory to renege on the decision of last year that co-arrays would be there.This seems a good moment to give a quick summary of the new features. For further details, see the WG5 repositoryftp://ftp.nag.co.uk/sc22wg5/N1601-N1650/N1649.txtand the J3 Work Planhttp://j3-fortran.org/doc/meeting/176/06-010r2.pdfEach of the items in the Repository has been given an estimated severity level, as defined in N1594. I will devote separate sections to the three large items (above level 5) and list those with severity level 4 or 5.
CMieux
Authors: Benisch Michael , Sardinha Alberto , Andrews James , Sadeh Norman
Published: January 2007

Existing supply chain management practices consist primarily of static interactions between established partners. Global competition, shorter product life cycles and the emergence of Internet-mediated business solutions create an incentive for exploring more dynamic supply chain practices. The Supply Chain Trading Agent Competition (TAC SCM) was designed to explore approaches to dynamic supply chain trading. TAC SCM pits against one another trading agents developed by teams from around the world. This paper presents Carnegie Mellon University's 2005 TAC SCM entry, the CMieux supply chain trading agent. CMieux implements a novel approach to coordinating supply chain bidding, procurement and planning, with an emphasis on the ability to rapidly adapt to changing market conditions. We present empirical results based on 200 games involving agents entered by 25 different teams during what can be seen as the most competitive phase of the 2005 tournament. Not only did CMieux perform among the top five agents, it significantly outperformed these agents in procurement while matching their bidding performance.
A reputation mechanism for layered communities
Authors: Fourquet Elodie , Larson Kate , Cowan William
Published: January 2007

The exchange of digital goods via peer-to-peer (P2P) systems is a challenging problem for e-commerce. Participants rarely know each other, and may be completely anonymous, so the self-interest of the participants works against trust and they miss out on the benefits of cooperation. Reputation mechanisms help to remedy selfish misbehaviour. In this paper a new layered reputation mechanism establishes a trusted P2P environment, with bad content filtered out and novel content continuously introduced, by giving appropriate incentives to participants. A simulation was created and experiments run to validate the design.
About a consistent APL notation for structured programming
Authors: Langlet Géard A.
Published: January 2007

For now quite a number of years, I haven't used a label or a branch within the numerous APL functions I programmed for many purposes. So, the
colon
symbol ":" has become free... for a brand-new use.
Reinventing the wheel, revisited
Authors: Taylor Gregg W.
Published: January 2007

I am a cyclist. I've ridden since before my paper route at age twelve; I rode to high school; and for 12 years I rode to work. I no longer ride to work, but I try to ride about an hour a day. In all those years I never really paid much attention to my wheels. Sure, I repaired flats, greased the bearings, and learned that the axle hung from the top of the wheel rather being supported from the bottom. But all-in-all, I mostly took my wheels for granted. They worked fine, did their job, and I never considered there was much else to worry about.
A quote quad interview
Authors: Polivka Ray
Published: January 2007

APL usage occurs in many places throughout the world. Many have heard that APL is popular in the financial world. To find that APL is in use in the banking industry should not be surprising. But to find APL playing an important role in a bank whose only customers are other banks is exciting. The Bank for International Settlements in Zurich, Switzerland is such a bank.