Collaborative networks: a new scientific discipline

Collaborative networks manifest in a large variety of forms, including virtual organizations, virtual enterprises, dynamic supply chains, professional virtual communities, collaborative virtual laboratories, etc. A large body of empiric knowledge related to collaborative networks is already available, but there is an urgent need to consolidate this knowledge and build the foundations for a more sustainable development of this area. The establishment of a scientific discipline for collaborative networks is a strong instrument in achieving this purpose. In this article the main characteristics of a “discipline” are analyzed in the context of collaborative networks, showing that the pre-conditions necessary for building this new discipline are available.     

Chemoinformatics——an important scientific discipline

Chemoinformatics is the application of informatics methods to solve chemical problems. Although this term was introduced only a few years ago, this field has a long history with its roots going back more than 40 years. These different origins have now merged into a discipline of its own that is full of activities. All areas of chemistry from analytical chemistry to drug design can benefit from che-moinformatics methods. And there are still many challenging chemical problems waiting for solutions through the further development of chemoinformatics.     

Software engineering as a scientific and engineering discipline

A new interpretation of software engineering from scientific, engineering, and practical standpoints is proposed. Software engineering is defined as a successor of programming and computer science, namely, its management theory. Features and attributes of software engineering as an original discipline are founded. The structure, content, and concepts of this discipline and its basic elements are presented. __________ Translated from Kibernetika i Sistemnyi Analiz, No. 3, pp. 19–28, May–June 2008.     

Agility through discipline: a debate

While Beck asserts that agility is only possible through greater discipline on the part of everyone involved, Boehm counters that you don't broaden the definition of "discipline" by rejecting parts of it. Yet, from inside extreme programming, it seems that the only way to achieve the desired results is to view the world in 'both-and" terms instead of "either-or" terms.     

SPIRE: a digital library for scientific information

In this paper we describe the architecture and implementation of a digital library framework for scientific data, particularly imagery, with a focus on support for content-based search. Content is specified by the user at one or more of the following abstraction levels: pixel, feature, and semantic. An object-definition mechanism has been developed that supports example-based and constraint-based specification of both simple and complex query targets.This framework incorporates a methodology yielding a computationally efficient implementation of image processing algorithms, thus allowing the interactive, real-time extraction and manipulation of user-specified features and content during the execution of queries. The framework is well-suited for searching scientific databases, including satellite imagery, and medical and seismic data repositories, where the richness of the information does not allow the a priori generation of exhaustive indexes.     

Immersive VR for scientific visualization: a progress report

Immersive virtual reality (IVR) has the potential to be a powerful tool for the visualization of burgeoning scientific data sets and models. We sketch a research agenda for the hardware and software technology underlying IVR for scientific visualization. In contrast to Brooks' (1999) excellent survey which reported on the state of IVR and provided concrete examples of its production use, this article is somewhat speculative. It does not present solutions but rather a progress report, a hope, and a call to action, to help scientists cope with a major crisis that threatens to impede their progress     

PSO-DS: a scheduling engine for scientific workflow managers

Cloud computing, an important source of computing power for the scientific community, requires enhanced tools for an efficient use of resources. Current solutions for workflows execution lack frameworks to deeply analyze applications and consider realistic execution times as well as computation costs. In this study, we propose cloud user–provider affiliation (CUPA) to guide workflow’s owners in identifying the required tools to have his/her application running. Additionally, we develop PSO-DS, a specialized scheduling algorithm based on particle swarm optimization. CUPA encompasses the interaction of cloud resources, workflow manager system and scheduling algorithm. Its featured scheduler PSO-DS is capable of converging strategic tasks distribution among resources to efficiently optimize makespan and monetary cost. We compared PSO-DS performance against four well-known scientific workflow schedulers. In a test bed based on VMware vSphere, schedulers mapped five up-to-date benchmarks representing different scientific areas. PSO-DS proved its efficiency by reducing makespan and monetary cost of tested workflows by 75 and 78%, respectively, when compared with other algorithms. CUPA, with the featured PSO-DS, opens the path to develop a full system in which scientific cloud users can run their computationally expensive experiments.     

JASMIN: a parallel software infrastructure for scientific computing

The exponential growth of computer power in the last 10 years is now creating a great challenge for parallel programming toward achieving realistic performance in the field of scientific computing. To improve on the traditional program for numerical simulations of laser fusion in inertial confinement fusion (ICF), the Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics (IAPCM) initializes a software infrastructure named J Adaptive Structured Meshes applications INfrastructure (JASMIN) in 2004. The main objective of JASMIN is to accelerate the development of parallel programs for large scale simulations of complex applications on parallel computers. Now, JASMIN has released version 1.8 and has achieved its original objectives. Tens of parallel programs have been reconstructed or developed on thousands of processors. JASMIN promotes a new paradigm of parallel programming for scientific computing. In this paper, JASMIN is briefly introduced.     

Topological landscapes: a terrain metaphor for scientific data

Scientific visualization and illustration tools are designed to help people understand the structure and complexity of scientific data with images that are as informative and intuitive as possible. In this context the use of metaphors plays an important role since they make complex information easily accessible by using commonly known concepts. In this paper we propose a new metaphor, called "Topological Landscapes," which facilitates understanding the topological structure of scalar functions. The basic idea is to construct a terrain with the same topology as a given dataset and to display the terrain as an easily understood representation of the actual input data. In this projection from an $n$-dimensional scalar function to a two-dimensional (2D) model we preserve function values of critical points, the persistence (function span) of topological features, and one possible additional metric property (in our examples volume). By displaying this topologically equivalent landscape together with the original data we harness the natural human proficiency in understanding terrain topography and make complex topological information easily accessible.     

RCDA: Architecting as a risk- and cost management discipline

We propose to view architecting as a risk- and cost management discipline. This point of view helps architects identify the key concerns to address in their decision making, by providing a simple, relatively objective way to assess architectural significance. It also helps business stakeholders to align the architect's activities and results with their own goals. We examine the consequences of this point of view on the architecture process. The point of view is the basis of RCDA, the Risk- and Cost Driven Architecture approach. So far, more than 150 architects have received RCDA training. For a majority of the trainees, RCDA has a significant positive impact on their architecting work.     

ViennaX: a parallel plugin execution framework for scientific computing

We present the free open source plugin execution framework ViennaX for modularizing and parallelizing scientific simulations. In general, functionality is abstracted by the notion of a task, which is implemented as a plugin. The plugin system facilitates the utilization of both, already available functionality as well as new implementations. Each task can define arbitrary data dependencies which are used by ViennaX to build a task graph. The framework supports the execution of this dependence graph based on the message passing interface in either a serial or a parallel fashion. The applied modular approach allows for defining highly flexible simulations, as plugins can be easily exchanged. The framework’s general design as well as implementation details are discussed. Applications based on the Mandelbrot set and the solution of a partial differential equation are investigated, and performance results are shown.     

Undergraduate software engineering education: the mark of a discipline

Undergraduate software engineering education is now well established in many countries, and many of these degree programs have received formal accreditation by the relevant country's professional body for computing. SE 2004 represents an enormous effort by numerous individuals across the discipline. Its quality has been clearly recognized by the sponsoring organizations. The developmental team confidently looks forward to the volume's use and to your participation in future evaluations and in the next phase of development. The volume provides usable results for those in emerging economies who wish to enter the software engineering community, and we know that individual project members and the participating national bodies are ready to assist.     

Toward a discipline of software engineering

Despite rapid changes in computing and software development, some fundamental ideas have remained constant. This article describes eight such concepts that together constitute a viable foundation for a software engineering discipline: abstraction, analysis and design methods and notations, user interface prototyping, modularity and architecture, software life cycle and process, reuse, metrics, and automated support     

The emergence of a discipline: Automatic control 1940–1960

The period 1940–1960 saw an enormous growth in both the theory and practice of automatic control, a growth which led in 1957 to the founding of IFAC. This paper examines some of the organizational developments which took place in Britain and the U.S.A. and which accompanied and helped to foster the growth of automatic control as a distinct discipline. It provides an account of government and professional institution activities and of the establishment of standards, the publication of books and bibliographies and the response of the public to automatic control.     

1988 Snowbird report: a discipline matures [computer scienceeducation]

Chairs of departments in the US and Canada that offer doctorates in computer science and engineering had their biannual meeting in Snowbird, Utah, July 11-13, 1988. The authors sum up the views expressed at that meeting. The impression emerged that the discipline of computing is maturing and should take a more active role in articulating how its own needs, concerns, and basic research impact other disciplines. The concensus was that the Computing Research Board should take aggressive steps to articulate and represent the needs and opportunities of computing research     

A semantically-based formatting discipline for Pascal

The abstract (or semantic) syntax of the Pascal language is identified, and a linear representation for the trees so formed within the framework of the concrete syntax for that language is imposed. The indentation scheme so formed, augmented with a small number of pragmatic considerations, is compared with several previously proposed formatting schemes for Pascal and an example of the use of this new method is given.