bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Least-Laxity-First Scheduling Algorithm of Variable Time Slice for Periodic Tasks
Authors: Teng Shaohua , Zhang Wei , Zhu Haibin , Fu Xiufen , Su Jiangyi , Cui Baoliang
Published: March 2012

The LLF (Least Laxity First) scheduling algorithm assigns a priority to a task according to its executing urgency. The smaller the laxity value of a task is, the sooner it needs to be executed. When two or more tasks have same or approximate laxity values, LLF scheduling algorithm leads to frequent switches among tasks, causes extra overhead in a system, and therefore, restricts its application. The least switch and laxity first scheduling algorithm is proposed in this paper by searching out an appropriate common divisor in order to improve the LLF algorithm for periodic tasks.
Cognitive Location-Aware Information Retrieval by Agent-Based Semantic Matching
Authors: Chan Eddie C. L. , Baciu George , Mak S. C.
Published: March 2012

This paper proposes semantic TFIDF, an agent-based system for retrieving location-aware information that makes use of semantic information in the data to develop smaller training sets, thereby improving the speed of retrieval while maintaining or even improving accuracy. This proposed method first assigns intelligent agents to gathering location-aware data, which they then classify, match, and organize to find a best match for a user query. This is done using semantic graphs in the WordNet English dictionary. Experiments will compare the proposed system with three other commonly used systems and show that it is significantly faster and more accurate.
Delay-Range-Dependent Robust Stability for Uncertain Stochastic Neural Networks with Time-Varying Delays
Authors: Feng Wei , Wu Haixia
Published: March 2012

This paper is concerned with the robust stability analysis problem for uncertain stochastic neural networks with interval time-varying delays. By utilizing a Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional and conducting stochastic analysis, the authors show that the addressed neural networks are globally, robustly, and asymptotically stable if a convex optimization problem is feasible. Some stability criteria are derived for all admissible uncertainties, and these stability criteria are formulated by means of the feasibility of a linear matrix inequality (LMI), which can be effectively solved by some standard numerical packages. Five numerical examples are given to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed robust stability criteria.
Task Analysis and Motion Generation for Service Robots
Authors: Dai Jian S.
Published: March 2012

This chapter is to summarise research in the direction of domestic service robots particularly with reference to robotic implementation of ironing process. The chapter presents the garment handling and ironing from a procedural point of view and discusses the devices for handling. The handling is categorised into several steps with common handling operations, resulting in categorisation of gripping and handling devices with potential applications to domestic automation. Based on this, ironing paths are explored with an orientation-position representation. This is followed by the introduction of development of folding and unfolding and by the region segregation based garment folding. This involves path analysis, folding algorithms, and mechanisms review for ironing. The paths produced from the ironing process are presented with mathematical models to be possibly implemented in robotic automation and their orientation is presented, dependent on the regions of garment. The orientation analysis is useful in finding the similarity in motion to determine the effective and efficient way of ironing a garment with orientation region diagrams and workspace presentation.
Multidisciplinary Project-Based Learning of Robotics
Authors: Cabanes Itziar , Zubizarreta Asier , Pinto Charles , Artaza Fernando , Marcos Marga , Altuzarra Oscar
Published: March 2012

The interest in using mobile robots in education has increased over the last two decades, as it is a multidisciplinary exercise in which the student needs to apply different subjects related to robotics, control engineering, software engineering, and electronics. In this chapter, the design and development of a mobile robot focused on the assistance to people with restricted mobility is detailed. This application of the service robot in the assistance field has to be developed by the students of the last course of the Automatic Control and Electronic Engineering Career at the Engineering Faculty of Bilbao, resulting in a fully functional prototype. The aim of this design is to integrate the knowledge acquired through different subjects in order to design and develop a functional, low-cost assistance robot in the service robotics field.
Safer and Faster Humanitarian Demining with Robots
Authors: Kececi Emin Faruk
Published: March 2012

The need to clean almost 1 million landmines on the Turkish border poses a great challenge to the Turkish military, both as a safety and a feasibility issue. In order to achieve this task, an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) robot has been designed and a prototype has been manufactured. The robot has the capability of working in task space. The uniqueness of this research is that the design criteria and the prototype procedure is explained in detail. After the testing of the prototype, the research results are concluded—which functions the future EOD robots should have and how these functions can improve the performance and ease of use of this type of military robots. Autonomy, use of an advisory system, and automatic camera manipulation can improve the future EOD robots dramatically.
Mobile Worm-Like Robots for Pipe Inspection
Authors: Jatsun Sergey
Published: March 2012

Worm-Like Robots (WLR) have a simple construction, and they do not need any special actuators such as wheels, caterpillars, or legs. Therefore, mobile vibration robots can move not only in space, but also in dense materials, which are not available for wheeled or leg-equipped robots. Worm-like motion allows moving on rough surfaces and inside liquid environments. Mobile devices, which can move without special movers interacting with the environment directly by their frame, possess a number of advantages, as compared to wheeled, crawling, and walking systems. This advantage allows creating miniature microrobots capable for moving in narrow channels, slits, vessels, and environments, inaccessible for other mobile objects. In this chapter, design of robots with worm-like locomotion is discussed, as well as an analysis of Worm-Like Robot (WLR) movement.
Self-Calibration of Eye-to-Hand and Workspace for Mobile Service Robot
Authors: Hu Jwu-Sheng , Chang Yung-Jung
Published: March 2012

The geometrical relationships among robot arm, camera, and workspace are important to carry out visual servo tasks. For industrial robots, the relationships are usually fixed and well calibrated by experienced operators. However, for service robots, particularly in mobile applications, the relationships might be changed. For example, when a mobile robot attempts to use the visual information from environmental cameras to perform grasping, it is necessary to know the relationships before taking actions. Moreover, the calibration should be done automatically. This chapter proposes a self-calibration method using a laser distance sensor mounted on the robot arm. The advantage of the method, as compared with pattern-based one, is that the workspace coordinate is also obtained at the same time using the projected laser spot. Further, it is not necessary for the robot arm to enter the view scope of the camera for calibration. This increases the safety when the workspace is unknown initially.
Digital Storytelling with Web 2.0 Tools for Collaborative Learning
Authors: Smeda Najat , Dakich Eva , Sharda Nalin
Published: March 2012

The purpose of this chapter is to present the vision of a framework for developing Web 2.0 tools for collaborative learning using digital storytelling as the underlying pedagogical model. Storytelling can be used as a pedagogical tool to enhance learning outcomes across the curriculum, and digital storytelling is its new manifestation, as it can be used to enhance collaboration and creativity when learning in the classroom. A number of story development models have been created in recent years to help educators achieve better outcomes with digital storytelling. This chapter shows how, by creating an innovative e-Learning system based on Web 2.0 tools, a constructivist learning environment for knowledge remixing, sharing, and reusing through digital storytelling is also created.
Redrawing the Boundaries in Online Education through Media Literacy, OER, and Web 2.0
Authors: Bujokas de Siqueira Alexandra , Rothberg Danilo , Prata-Linhares Martha Maria
Published: March 2012

This chapter presents lessons learnt after reflecting on a distance learning course based on Web 2.0 tools, which was promoted in order to teach visual communication concepts to students on a teaching degree programme at a Federal University in Brazil (UFTM, Minas Gerais State). The authors assessed the potential of open learning to bring changes in education to the new generations of teachers, in pace with cultural transformations induced by the emergence of a digital culture. The course was structured in four modules: About visual language; Elements of visual communication; Design and style and Non-verbal text coding and decoding. The exercises in each one of the four modules mixed resources of a variety of sources, but all of them had in common the fact that they were open, free to use, and available to the general public. Results suggest that this is a productive approach to introduce new subjects into traditional curricula, but it forces educators to rethink established uses, particularly those related to assessment.
Open Educational Resources and Web 2.0 for Formal Learning in Information and Computer Sciences
Authors: Ferreira Giselle , Wilson Tina
Published: March 2012

The availability of Web 2.0 and open educational resources affords the emergence of novel learning spaces, but debate on these innovations has tended to emphasise technical, logistical, and legal issues. This chapter focuses on pedagogy, reporting on the experiences from a piece of action research that has taken students’ views to its heart. The context for this research has been provided by a distance-learning project-based course in information and computer sciences, equivalent to a final year project in a face-to-face setting. The study consisted of a practical investigation into the potential of such resources to support the necessarily intense episodes of interaction required for productive supervision, whilst providing a space where students can be encouraged to identify, engage with, and discuss ethical issues that arise in their work.
Crowdsourcing Education on the Web
Authors: Corneli Joseph , Mikroyannidis Alexander
Published: March 2012

Learning online has significantly evolved over the past decade due to the emergence of Web 2.0 and 3.0 technologies that facilitate social learning in adaptive online environments. The open content movement and the associated techniques of crowdsourcing (i.e. assimilating several small contributions into resources of high quality) have further influenced education on the Web. This chapter investigates the concept of crowdsourcing in education through an analysis of case studies dealing with two open online learning communities, Peer 2 Peer University, and PlanetMath.org. The case studies proceed via an analysis of the various roles played by the individuals involved in each organization. The outcomes of this analysis are used to extract general recommendations for building online communities and applying crowdsourcing techniques in educational contexts.
Experiencing Information Systems Research and Phenomenology
Authors: Depaoli Paolo
Published: March 2012

Given the ongoing debate on the explicit and implicit foundations of theories and methods within the IS discipline, this chapter examines the circumstances that appear to favor a close connection between Information Systems (IS) research and philosophy (phenomenology in the specific case examined). The question addressed is whether references to philosophy are typically made when a researcher is confronted with issues and topics that she considers crucial and which she believes inappropriately treated or neglected by current theories and practice. To answer this question the influence of Heidegger on Ciborra’s work is explored. The method adopted is the review of Ciborra’s publications and his references to Heidegger; meaningful issues were identified and significant passages of both authors compared. It appears that Heidegger’s influence has been substantial in terms of support for both Ciborra’s critical analysis and innovative solutions for the IS-related world. Given the multiplication and growing pervasiveness of information technology and IS and the consequent growing need for policies based on sound research, the “escalation” to philosophy (and especially the engagement with phenomenology), though demanding and difficult, will probably become increasingly useful.
Knowing and Living as Data Assembly
Authors: Kallinikos Jannis
Published: March 2012

The environment of information affluence and media convergence characteristic of our time is constructing a comprehensive living and knowing habitat that induces the framing of life issues in terms of data availability and the concomitant data permutations this encourages. It also promotes the understanding of knowledge as data assembled into meaningful categories and structures by algorithmic reasoning and statistical techniques. Placed in a wider historical purview, these trends attest to the prominence which cognition qua computation is acquiring and the concomitant retraction of perception as an axial principle of everyday conduct tied to palpable reality and situated encounters.
About Representational Artifacts and Their Role in Engineering
Authors: Tellioglu Hilda
Published: March 2012

This chapter is about showing how artifacts impact engineering work processes by representing important issues of individual and collaborative design work. After summarizing the state of the art of engineering as a design process, artifacts, and their representational role in design and engineering, a selection of rich descriptions of artifacts’ creation and use in engineering work including team-based coordination and decision activities will be presented. The studies are based on ethnographic research carried out for several years in different design and engineering companies. Artifacts used in these studies will be analyzed from their representational point of view to discuss their important role in design and engineering, by considering users’ motivation to use and sometimes adapt them as well as internal and external constraints given in work settings which call for improvisations, before concluding this chapter.
Strategic Ethnography and the Biography of Artefacts
Authors: Pollock Neil , Williams Robin
Published: March 2012

In health research and services, and in many other domains, the authors note the emergence of large-scale information systems intended for long-term use with multiple users and uses. These e-infrastructures are becoming more widespread and pervasive and, by enabling effective sharing of information and coordination of activities between diverse, dispersed groups, are expected to transform knowledge-based work. Social scientists have sought to analyse the significance of these systems and the processes by which they are created. Much current attention has been drawn to the often-problematic experience of those attempting to establish them. By contrast, this chapter is inspired by concerns about the theoretical and methodological weakness of many studies of technology and work organisation—particularly the dominance of relatively short-term, often single site studies of technology implementation. These weaknesses are particularly acute in relation to the analysis of infrastructural technologies. The authors explore the relevance to such analysis of recent developments in what they call the Biography of Artefacts (BoA) perspective—which emphasises the value of strategic ethnography: theoretically-informed, multi-site, and longitudinal studies. They seek to draw insights from a programme of empirical research into the long-term evolution of corporate e-infrastructures (reflected in current Enterprise Resource Planning systems) and review some new conceptual tools arising from recent research into e-Infrastructures (e-Is). These are particularly relevant to understanding the current and ongoing difficulties encountered in attempts to develop large-scale Health Infrastructures.
Social Practice Design
Authors: Jacucci Gianni , Campagnolo Gian Marco
Published: March 2012

This chapter introduces an action research methodology called Social Practice Design and its application in the case of a small-medium enterprise production management innovation process. Social Practice Design includes three main phases: observation and the production of how questions; analysis and the production of visions of solutions; synthesis and the production of action plans or SPD paths. Social Practice Design is proposed as an extension of Participatory Design to the implementation phase of Information Systems Development. The research team in Social Practice Design includes three modes of knowing: the ethnographer, the counsellor, and the action researcher modes of knowing.
A Drifting Service Development
Authors: Loser Kai-Uwe , Nolte Alexander , Prilla Michael , Skrotzki Rainer , Herrmann Thomas
Published: March 2012

Drift is one of the visible phenomena observed in an ambient assisted living project. In this project, services for elderly people were developed that would be ordered using a digital pen technology. In this project, the method of the Sociotechnical Walkthrough (STWT) for an integrated development was applied to clarify technology usage, technical aspects, and the work processes. This approach was combined with several other methods to form a multi-facetted sociotechnical design approach. During the course of the project several shifts in perspectives, breakdowns of understanding, and negotiations could be observed. This chapter describes how using this approach of sociotechnical design facilitated the identification of drift phenomena and its processing in service design. The authors observations also clearly show the limitations of up-front process planning for complex environments such as service processes.
Connectivity as a Fundamental Characteristic of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks
Authors: Abdullah Jiwa
Published: March 2012

In this chapter, the idea of formulating the node connectivity into a form suitable for the purpose of monitoring the dynamic of any given node pair was proposed. It had been able to show that the node connectivity time constitutes the length of time where node-pairs are connected and communication sessions can be established. By analytical calculation and simulation, the node connectivity time depends on the relative velocity of the node-pair. It shows that there is an upper limit and a lower limit for the connection time. Between these limits, communication sessions can be carried out. In order to monitor the quality of connection between a node-pair and for the whole route which is made up of a collection of node-pairs, npem, npcm, and nci are introduced. The nci is shown to be a viable way to estimate the quality of node-pair connection in terms of its timeliness. The index, nci, could be used as one of the metrics to identify and select the best path to the destination.
Topology-based Classification of Multicast Routing Protocols for Mobile Ad hoc Networks
Authors: Meghanathan Natarajan
Published: March 2012

This chapter presents an exhaustive survey on the different categories of topology-based multicast routing protocols that have been proposed for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). Due to the inherent broadcast nature of the wireless medium, one-to-many multicast communications are characteristic of most of the MANET applications. MANET multicast routing protocols are primarily classified as tree-based and mesh-based protocols depending on the underlying topology used for communication. Tree-based protocols are further classified to source-tree based and shared-tree based depending on whether the tree is rooted at the multicast source or a common node. Further, there are several sub-categories of source-tree based and shared-tree based multicast routing protocols. The mesh-based multicast protocols are primarily categorized to source-initiated and receiver-initiated protocols depending on which entity (the source node or the receiver nodes) initiates the mesh formation. The book chapter explains in detail the working of eleven different multicast routing protocols, covering all of the sub-categories of tree-based and mesh-based routing protocols.
Key Generation for Wireless Sensor Networks Using Symmetric Balanced Incomplete Block Design
Authors: Srinivasa K. G. , Archana V. , Poornima V. , Reshma C.
Published: March 2012

Wireless sensor networks consist of many tiny sensor nodes deployed at a high density over region, requiring surveillance and monitoring. The sensor nodes typically consist of one or more sensing elements, battery, low powered radio transmitter/receiver, microprocessor, and limited memory. Sensor networks deployed in a hostile environment are prone to malicious attacks like eavesdropping, masquerading, traffic analysis, et cetera. Hence, security is more important in sensor networks than in traditional networks. An important challenge in sensor network security is the design of effective bootstrapping protocols for the nodes, which are pre-initialized with some secret information and have had no prior direct contact with each other. Each node has a set of keys, called a key chain, rather than a single shared key. The keys in the key chain are picked randomly from a key pool. Two neighboring nodes either share a common key or should be able to establish a key path such that every pair in the path shares a key. One problem in such a solution is to select a proper key chain so that the network remains connected with a high probability.
Security Issues and Models in Mobile ad hoc Networks
Authors: Venkataraman Revathi , Rao T. Rama
Published: March 2012

This chapter covers issues related to security in mobile ad hoc networks. It acts as a comprehensive survey material covering the cryptographic schemes and trust modeling techniques traditionally found in mobile ad hoc network (MANET) survey articles. The need for hybrid security techniques, involving both cryptographic approach and trust based model, in a resource constrained ad hoc network, is also emphasized in this work. Additionally, the lack of realism in the research works related to ad hoc network security is also pointed out. The state of the art in ad hoc security should employ hybrid techniques that can be easily implemented in an ad hoc network. This will lead to the large scale deployment of mobile ad hoc networks in various context-aware applications.
Incorporating Security and Energy Efficiency for Multimedia Communications in WANets
Authors: Kaddar Lamia
Published: March 2012

The security of multimedia data in Wireless Ad hoc Networks (WANet) is commonly provided by encryption, which consists in transforming a plain text message into an unintelligible ciphertext. Nevertheless, the classical and modern ciphers have all been developed without taking into consideration the intrinsic characteristics of multimedia flows. In this chapter, the author proposes to reduce the computational requirements for the multimedia flow’s encryption when the energy is a limited resource, as it is the case of WANets. Thus, the chapter defines a new profile of Secure Real Time Protocol (SRTP), named EE_SRTP. EE_SRTP provides energy efficiency to SRTP, which provides essentially confidentiality, message authentication, and replay protection to the RTP traffic. In EE_SRTP, the author exploits the dependency existing between the frames created by the inter-frame coding to further improve the energy-efficiency of the encryption process. In contrast with the existing approaches, this chapter presents an experimental model that integrates EE_SRTP to Video LAN Coding (VLC). Therefore, to validate EE_SRTP, the author implements a secure version of VLC (SecVLC). The performance evaluation demonstrates clearly that using this new scheme in the context of wireless ad hoc nodes allows saving energy while ensuring a high level of content confidentiality, without adding an overhead to the wireless network.
Energy Conservation Issues and Challenges in MANETs
Authors: Ray Niranjan Kumar , Turuk Ashok Kumar
Published: March 2012

Energy efficiency is a major issue of concern in wireless ad hoc networks as mobile nodes rely on batteries, which are limited sources of energy, and, in many environments, it is quite a cumbersome task to replace or recharge them. Despite the progress made in battery technology, the lifetime of battery powered devices continues to be a key challenge, requiring additional research on efficient design of platforms, protocols, and systems. Many tangible efforts are made by many researchers to reduce the power consumption at protocol level by designing an energy efficient protocol to prolong the lifetime of the networks. The main focus of this chapter is to present a comprehensive analysis of energy efficient techniques in wireless ad hoc networks, integrating various issues and challenges to provide a big picture in this area. This chapter addresses energy management techniques in wireless ad hoc networks, especially in decentralized ad hoc environments.
Potential Area of Research in MANET
Authors: Singh Sudha , Singh D. K. , Mondal Mr. Sudipta
Published: March 2012

The growth of laptop and 802.11/Wi-Fi wireless networking have made Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) a popular research topic since the mid to late 1990s. Many academic papers evaluate protocols and abilities assuming varying degrees of mobility within a bounded space, usually with all nodes within a few hops of each other and usually with nodes sending data at a constant rate. Different protocols are then evaluated based on the packet drop rate, the overhead introduced by the routing protocols, and other measures. Research in MANET is like playing in a vast playground with only few known rules and large number of unknown rules applied to its different areas. Some areas are still unknown and some areas are at its early stage. Some of the research challenges that MANET present are dynamic topologies, battery lifetime, disconnected operations, security, et cetera. In general there are three types of MANET: vehicular ad hoc networks, intelligent vehicular ad hoc network, and Internet based mobile ad hoc networks. Each of these three types has its own research areas.
A Cloud Portal Architecture for Large-Scale Application Services
Authors: Jeng Jun-Jang , Mohindra Ajay , Yang Jeaha , Chang Henry
Published: March 2012

Application services entail multi-billion dollars of market in IT industry. However, to construct an application service is a labor- intensive and error-prone process. Application services developed through traditional development methods expose the same pitfalls witnessed in most development processes of enterprise applications such as late delivery, over budget, unpredictable quality, lack of reuse and so forth. We have leveraged clouds in developing application services within the context of large corporate with the magnitude of thousands of application services being built, delivered and used. Instead of using cloud simply for a better runtime engine, it is being used as the development platform to accelerate and optimize the solution development process based on large scale application services. This paper will focus on the portal architecture of this framework—coined as Cogito-C that contains four spaces: (a) infrastructure space; (b) application space; (c) business space; and (d) presentation space. This paper illustrates Cogito-C by scrutinizing the models in the aforementioned spaces. This paper will focus on the descriptive models of this framework. Examples are used to explain how this framework is organized and exploited for large-scale application services.
Using WSRP 2.0 with JSR 168 and 286 Portlets
Authors: Polgar Jana
Published: March 2012

WSRP—Web Services for Remote Portlets—specification builds on current standard technologies, such as WSDL (Web Services Definition Language), UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration), and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). It aims to solve the problem of traditional data oriented web services which required the applications to be aggregated prior to any specific presentation logic could be applied for presenting the content. Portlet standard (Java Community Process, 2005) complements WSRP mechanism by defining a common platform and APIs for developing UI in the form of portlets. WSRP enables reuse of an entire user interface. One of the advantages is that only one generic proxy is required to establish the connection.At present, portlets based on JSR 168 (Java Community Process, 2005) as well as JSR 286 (Java Community Process, 2008) specification are often used in portal applications. This paper examines the relationship of WSRP specification with the portlet specification JSR 168 and evaluate some and shortcomings of WSRP specification 1.0 (OASIS, 2003). We discuss the impact of WSRP 2.0 (OASIS, 2009) and portlet specification JSR 286 (Java Community Process, 2008) on “on glass” integration paradigm.
Using Ajax to Track Student Attention
Authors: Newmarch Jan
Published: March 2012

Tracking the behaviour of users of online learning systems is an important issue, but current techniques have not been able to give deep views on what users do with Web-based learning systems. This paper shows how the use of Ajax can provide a richer model of how users interact with Web systems. In this paper, the authors will discuss a case study used to better track behaviours of online learning systems and how Ajax improves this understanding of user interactions.
The Philosophy of Software Architecture
Authors: Goel Amit
Published: March 2012

Computer Software Intensive systems have become ingrained in our daily life. Apart from obvious scientific and business applications, various embedded devices are empowered with computer software. Such a diverse application of Computer Software has led to inherent complexity in building such systems. As civilizations moved forward, the concept of architectural thinking and practice was introduced to grapple with the complexity and other challenges of creating buildings, skyscrapers, townships, and cities. The Practice of Software Architecture is an attempt to understand and handle similar challenges in Software Intensive Systems. This paper introduces software architecture and the underlying philosophy thereof. This paper provokes a discussion around the present and future of Software Architecture. The authors discuss skills and roles of Software Architect.
Containers and Connectors as Elements in a Portal Design Framework
Authors: Lamantia Joe
Published: March 2012

This article defines the standardized elements used in the building blocks portal design framework in detail, as the second in a series of articles on a Portal Design Framework. This article explains the (simple) rules and relationships for combining Containers and Connectors into portal structures. This article shares best practices, examples, and guidelines for effectively using the building blocks framework during portal design efforts.
Using the Building Blocks
Authors: Lamantia Joe
Published: March 2012

This article is a case study that explores the use of the Building Blocks portal design framework over a series of enterprise portal projects spanning several years. This article describes the business contexts that shaped each portal as it was designed, showing the use and reuse of design and development elements based on the Building Blocks. This article discusses the changes and adaptations that shaped the elements of the Building Blocks design framework over time.
Towards a More Scalable Schema Matching
Authors: Sellami Sana , Benharkat Aïcha-Nabila , Amghar Youssef
Published: March 2012

With the development and the use of a large variety of DB schemas and ontologies, in many domains (e.g. semantic web, digital libraries, life science, etc), matching techniques are called to overcome the challenge of aligning and reconciling these different interrelated representations. Matching field is becoming a very attractive research topic. In this paper, the authors are interested in studying scalable matching problem. The authors survey the approaches and tools of large scale matching, when a large number of schemas/ontologies and attributes are involved. They attempt to cover a variety of techniques for schema matching called Pair-wise and Holistic. One can acknowledge that this domain is on top of effervescence and scalable matching needs many more advances. Therefore, they propose our scalable schema matching methodology that deals with the creation of a hybrid approach combining these techniques. Their architecture includes a pre-matching approach based on XML schemas decomposition. As shown by their experiments, their proposed methodology has been evaluated and implementing in a PLASMA (Platform for LArge Scale MAtching) prototype.
Load Balancing to Increase the Consistency of Replicas in Data Grids
Authors: Belalem Ghalem , Belayachi Naima , Behidji Radjaa , Yagoubi Belabbes
Published: March 2012

Data grids are current solutions to the needs of large scale systems and provide a set of different geographically distributed resources. Their goal is to offer an important capacity of parallel calculation, ensure a data effective and rapid access, improve the availability, and tolerate the breakdowns. In such systems, however, these advantages are possible only by using the replication technique. The use of this technique raises the problem of maintaining consistency of replicas of the same data set. In order to guarantee replica set reliability, it is necessary to have high coherence. This fact, however, penalizes performance. In this paper, the authors propose studying balancing influence on replica quality. For this reason, a service of hybrid consistency management is developed, which combines the pessimistic and optimistic approaches and is extended by a load balancing service to improve service quality. This service is articulated on a hierarchical model with two levels.
On the Path to Exascale
Authors: Alvin Ken , Barrett Brian , Brightwell Ron , Dosanjh Sudip , Geist Al , Hemmert Scott , Heroux Michael , Kothe Doug , Murphy Richard , Nichols Jeff , Oldfield Ron , Rodrigues Arun , Vetter Jeffrey S.
Published: March 2012

There is considerable interest in achieving a 1000 fold increase in supercomputing power in the next decade, but the challenges are formidable. In this paper, the authors discuss some of the driving science and security applications that require Exascale computing (a million, trillion operations per second). Key architectural challenges include power, memory, interconnection networks and resilience. The paper summarizes ongoing research aimed at overcoming these hurdles. Topics of interest are architecture aware and scalable algorithms, system simulation, 3D integration, new approaches to system-directed resilience and new benchmarks. Although significant progress is being made, a broader international program is needed.
Application Performance on the Tri-Lab Linux Capacity Cluster -TLCC
Authors: Rajan Mahesh , Doerfler Douglas , Vaughan Courtenay T. , Epperson Marcus , Ogden Jeff
Published: March 2012

In a recent acquisition by DOE/NNSA several large capacity computing clusters called TLCC have been installed at the DOE labs: SNL, LANL and LLNL. TLCC architecture with ccNUMA, multi-socket, multi-core nodes, and InfiniBand interconnect, is representative of the trend in HPC architectures. This paper examines application performance on TLCC contrasting them with Red Storm/Cray XT4. TLCC and Red Storm share similar AMD processors and memory DIMMs. Red Storm however has single socket nodes and custom interconnect. Micro-benchmarks and performance analysis tools help understand the causes for the observed performance differences. Control of processor and memory affinity on TLCC with the numactl utility is shown to result in significant performance gains and is essential to attenuate the detrimental impact of OS interference and cache-coherency overhead. While previous studies have investigated impact of affinity control mostly in the context of small SMP systems, the focus of this paper is on highly parallel MPI applications.
A Grid-Aware Emergency Response Model (G-AERM) for Disaster Management
Authors: Asimakopoulou Eleana , Anumba Chimay J , Bouchlaghem Dino
Published: March 2012

The emergency management community is working toward developments associated with the reduction of losses in lives, property and the environment caused by natural disasters. However, several limitations with the particular collaborative nature of current Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in use have been reported. In particular, how emergency management stakeholders within an ICT environment can bring together all their resources in a collaborative and timely manner so as to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of emergency response tasks. With this in mind, the authors describe the Grid-Aware Emergency Response Model (G-AERM) to make the best of functionality offered by emerging ICT to support intelligence in decision making toward a more effective and efficient emergency response management.
The Bac(chus) experiment: blood alcohol concentrations after wine tasting
Authors: Van de Wiel Albert , Moolenaar David , Wielders Jos
Published: March 2012

Blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) were measured in ten volunteers after a wine tasting event with and without the swallowing of 15 mL of each wine. In case ten wines were tasted within one hour without swallowing, buccal mucosa absorption did not result in problematic BAC’s; however in case 15 mL of each wine was swallowed, BAC’s may exceed the legal driving limit of most countries. It is recommended to eat beforehand, but also to wait at least one hour after the session before driving back home.
Integrated Analysis Reveals hsa-miR-142 as a Representative of a Lymphocyte-Specific Gene Expression and Methylation Signature
Authors: Andreopoulos Bill , Anastassiou Dimitris
Published: March 2012

Gene expression profiling has provided insights into different cancer types and revealed tissue-specific expression signatures. Alterations in microRNA expression contribute to the pathogenesis of many types of human diseases. Few studies have integrated all levels of gene expression, miRNA and methylation to uncover correlations between these data types. We performed an integrated profiling to discover instances of miRNAs associated with a gene expression and DNA methylation signature across multiple cancer types. Using data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), we revealed a concordant gene expression and methylation signature associated with the microRNA hsa-miR-142 across the same samples. In all cancer types examined, we found a signature of co-expression of a gene set R and methylated sites M, which correlate positively (M+) or negatively (M–) with the expression of hsa-miR-142. The set R consistently contains many genes, such as TRAF3IP3, NCKAP1L, CD53, LAPTM5, PTPRC, EVI2B, DOCK2, LCP2, CYBB and FYB. The signature is preserved across glioblastoma, ovarian, breast, colon, kidney, lung, uterine and rectum cancer. There is 28% overlap of methylation sites in M between glioblastoma (GBM) and ovarian cancer. There is 60% overlap of genes in R between GBM and ovarian ( P = 1.3e−-11). Most of the genes in R are known to be expressed in lymphocytes and haematopoietic stem cells, while M reflects membrane proteins involved in cell-cell adhesion functions. We speculate that the hsa-miR-142 associated signature may signal haematopoietic-specific processes and an accumulation of methylation events triggering a progressive loss of cell-cell adhesion. We also observed that GBM samples belonging to the proneural subtype tend to have underexpressed hsa-miR-142 and R genes, hypomethylated M+ and hypermethylated M–, while the mesenchymal samples have the opposite profile.
Real-Time Quantitative Reverse Transcription PCR for Monitoring of Blood-Stage Plasmodium falciparum Infections in Malaria Human Challenge Trials
Authors: Murphy Sean C. , Prentice Jennifer L. , Williamson Kathryn , Wallis Carolyn K. , Fang Ferric C. , Fried Michal , Pinzon Cris , Wang Ruobing , Talley Angela K. , Kappe Stefan H. I. , Duffy Patrick E. , Cookson Brad T.
Published: March 2012

To detect pre-patent parasitemia, we developed a real-time quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) for the asexual 18S ribosomal RNA (rRNAs) of Plasmodium falciparum. Total nucleic acids extracted from whole blood were combined with control RNA and tested by qRT-PCR. The assay quantified > 98.7% of parasite-containing samples to ±0.5 log10 parasites/mL of the nominal value without false positives. The analytical sensitivity was ≥ 20 parasites/mL. The coefficient of variation was 0.6% and 1.8% within runs and 1.6% and 4.0% between runs for high and low parasitemia specimens, respectively. Using this assay, we determined that A-type 18S rRNAs are stably expressed at 1×104 copies per ring-stage parasite. When used to monitor experimental P. falciparum infection of human volunteers, the assay detected blood-stage infections 3.7 days earlier on average than thick blood smears. This validated, internally controlled qRT-PCR method also uses a small (50 μL) sample volume requiring minimal pre-analytical handling, making it useful for clinical trials.
Efficacy of Artemether-Lumefantrine in Area of High Malaria Endemicity in India and Its Correlation with Blood Concentration of Lumefantrine
Authors: Valecha Neena , Mohanty Suman , Srivastava Prakriti , Sharma Surya , Tyagi Prajesh , Bergqvist Yngve , Ringwald Pascal
Published: March 2012

This study was conducted to correlate blood concentrations of lumefantrine with treatment outcome for patients with Plasmodium falciparum malaria when the drug was given without specific instructions for administration with food. Patients with P. falciparum malaria in the highly endemic state of Orissa, India, were enrolled during 2008 and followed-up for 28 days after admistration of artemether-lumefantrine for three days according to a World Health Organization protocol. Drug concentration in whole blood was determined by using blood spots placed on filter paper on day 7. The technology is suitable for field studies. One hundred percent of the patients had an adequate clinical and parasitological response. These results confirm the efficacy of artemether-lumefantrine in persons from poor tribal communities when given without specific instructions regarding co-administration with food, despite high inter-individual variability in blood concentrations of lumefantrine.
Rethinking Indicators of Microbial Drinking Water Quality for Health Studies in Tropical Developing Countries: Case Study in Northern Coastal Ecuador
Authors: Levy Karen , Nelson Kara L. , Hubbard Alan , Eisenberg Joseph N. S.
Published: March 2012

To address the problem of the health impacts of unsafe drinking water, methods are needed to assess microbiologic contamination in water. However, indicators of water quality have provided mixed results. We evaluate five assays (three for Escherichia coli and one each for enterococci and somatic coliphage) of microbial contamination in villages in rural Ecuador that rely mostly on untreated drinking water. Only membrane filtration for E. coli using mI agar detected a significant association with household diarrheal disease outcome (odds ratio = 1.29, 95% confidence interval = 1.02–1.65 in household containers and odds ratio = 1.18, 95% confidence interval = 1.02–1.37) in source samples. Our analysis and other published research points to the need for further consideration of study design factors, such as sample size and variability in measurements, when using indicator organisms, especially when relating water quality exposure to health outcomes. Although indicator organisms are used extensively in health studies, we argue that their use requires a full understanding of their purposes and limitations.
Serosurveillance of Eastern Equine Encephalitis Virus in Amphibians and Reptiles from Alabama, USA
Authors: Graham Sean P. , Hassan Hassan K. , Chapman Taryn , White Gregory , Guyer Craig , Unnasch Thomas R.
Published: March 2012

Eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV) is among the most medically important arboviruses in North America, and studies suggest a role for amphibians and reptiles in its transmission cycle. Serum samples collected from 351 amphibians and reptiles (27 species) from Alabama, USA, were tested for the presence of antibodies against EEEV. Frogs, turtles, and lizards showed little or no seropositivity, and snakes had high seropositivity rates. Most seropositive species were preferred or abundant hosts of Culex spp. mosquitoes at Tuskegee National Forest, that target ectothermic hosts. The cottonmouth, the most abundant ectotherm sampled, displayed a high prevalence of seropositivity, indicating its possible role as an amplification and/or over-wintering reservoir for EEEV.
Isolation and Characterization of Hantaviruses in Far East Russia and Etiology of Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome in the Region
Authors: Kariwa Hiroaki , Yoshikawa Keisuke , Tanikawa Yoichi , Seto Takahiro , Sanada Takahiro , Saasa Ngonda , Ivanov Leonid I. , Slonova Raisa , Zakharycheva Tatyana A. , Nakamura Ichiro , Yoshimatsu Kumiko , Arikawa Jiro , Yoshii Kentaro , Takashima Ikuo
Published: March 2012

Hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) is a serious public health issue in Far East Russia. Two different hantaviruses were isolated from rodents captured in the Khabarovsk region: Amur virus (AMRV; Khekhtsir/AP209/2005 strain from Apodemus peninsulae) and Hantaan virus (HTNV; Galkino/AA57/2002 strain from A. agrarius). Genetic analysis of the new isolates revealed that the M and L segments were apparently different between AMRV and HTNV, but S segments of the two viruses were closer. The antigenicities of AMRV, HTNV, and Seoul virus (SEOV) were differentiated by cross-neutralization. Serological differential diagnoses of 67 HFRS patients in the Prymorsky and Khabarovsk regions of Far East Russia were conducted using a neutralization test. The results revealed that the major cause of HFRS varied with location in Far East Russia: SEOV for Vladivostok city in the Prymorsky region, AMRV in rural areas of the Primorsky region, and probably HTNV for the Khabarovsk region.
Disseminated Sporothrix brasiliensis Infection with Endocardial and Ocular Involvement in an HIV-Infected Patient
Authors: Silva-Vergara Mario León , de Camargo Zoilo Pires , Silva Patricia Ferreira , Abdalla Michel Reis , Sgarbieri Ricardo Nilsson , Rodrigues Anderson Messias , dos Santos Keila Cristina , Barata Cristina Hueb , Ferreira-Paim Kennio
Published: March 2012

Disseminated sporotrichosis occurs in individuals with impaired cellular immunity, such as in cases of neoplasia, transplantation, diabetes, and especially, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. This report presents a 32-year-old Brazilian human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patient who developed a protracted condition of disseminated sporotrichosis with endocarditis, bilateral endophthalmitis, and lymphatic involvement. He needed cardiac surgery to replace the mitral valve. Sporothrix brasiliensis isolates were recovered from cultures of subcutaneous nodules and mitral valve fragments. Species identification was based on classical and molecular methods. The patient received amphotericin B for 52 days and subsequently, oral itraconazole. He remains asymptomatic, and he is on maintenance therapy with itraconazole. Despite his positive clinical outcome, he developed bilateral blindness. To our knowledge, this case is the first report of endocarditis and endophthalmitis caused by S. brasiliensis.