Online Bi-Objective Scheduling for IaaS Clouds Ensuring Quality of Service

This paper focuses on a bi-objective experimental evaluation of online scheduling in the Infrastructure as a Service model of Cloud computing regarding income and power consumption objectives. In this model, customers have the choice between different service levels. Each service level is associated with a price per unit of job execution time, and a slack factor that determines the maximal time span to deliver the requested amount of computing resources. The system, via the scheduling algorithms, is responsible to guarantee the corresponding quality of service for all accepted jobs. Since we do not consider any optimistic scheduling approach, a job cannot be accepted if its service guarantee will not be observed assuming that all accepted jobs receive the requested resources. In this article, we analyze several scheduling algorithms with different cloud configurations and workloads, considering the maximization of the provider income and minimization of the total power consumption of a schedule. We distinguish algorithms depending on the type and amount of information they require: knowledge free, energy-aware, and speed-aware. First, to provide effective guidance in choosing a good strategy, we present a joint analysis of two conflicting goals based on the degradation in performance. The study addresses the behavior of each strategy under each metric. We assess the performance of different scheduling algorithms by determining a set of non-dominated solutions that approximate the Pareto optimal set. We use a set coverage metric to compare the scheduling algorithms in terms of Pareto dominance. We claim that a rather simple scheduling approach can provide the best energy and income trade-offs. This scheduling algorithm performs well in different scenarios with a variety of workloads and cloud configurations.     

The anatomy of vampire

We present an implementation technique for a class of bottom-up logic procedures. The technique is based oncode trees. It is intended to speed up most important and costly operations, such as subsumption and resolution. As an example, we consider the forward subsumption problem which is the bottleneck of many systems implementing first-order logic.To efficiently implement subsumption, we specialize subsumption algorithms at run time, using theabstract subsumption machine. The abstract subsumption machine makes subsumption-check using sequences of instructions that are similar to the WAM instructions. It gives an efficient implementation of the clause at a time subsumption problem. To implement subsumption on the set at a time basis, we combine sequences of instructions incode trees.We show that this technique yields a new way of indexing clauses. Some experimental results are given.The code trees technique may be used in various procedures, including binary resolution, hyper-resolution, UR-resolution, the inverse method, paramodulation and rewriting, OLDT-resolution, SLD-AL-resolution, bottom-up evaluation of logic programs, and disjunctive logic programs.Supported by Swedish TFR grant No. 93–409     

High‐efficiency transmission‐line inverse Class F power amplifiers for 2‐GHz WCDMA systems

In this article, a novel load‐network solution to implement the transmission‐line inverse Class F power amplifiers for base station WCDMA applications is presented. The theoretical analysis is based on an analytical derivation of the optimum load‐network parameters to control the second and third harmonics at the device output, including the device output parasitic shunt capacitance and series inductance. The transmission‐line inverse Class F LDMOSFET and GaN HEMT power amplifiers using NXP BLF6G22LS‐75 and CREE CGH27060F devices, respectively, were designed and measured. The high‐performance results with the drain efficiency of 70.2% and power gain of 18.0 dB for a 60‐W LDMOSFET power amplifier and with the drain efficiency of 82.3% and power gain of 14.3 dB for a 50‐W GaN HEMT power amplifier were achieved at an operating frequency of 2.14 GHz. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2011.     

Animatronic shader lamps avatars

Applications such as telepresence and training involve the display of real or synthetic humans to multiple viewers. When attempting to render the humans with conventional displays, non-verbal cues such as head pose, gaze direction, body posture, and facial expression are difficult to convey correctly to all viewers. In addition, a framed image of a human conveys only a limited physical sense of presence—primarily through the display’s location. While progress continues on articulated robots that mimic humans, the focus has been on the motion and behavior of the robots rather than on their appearance. We introduce a new approach for robotic avatars of real people: the use of cameras and projectors to capture and map both the dynamic motion and the appearance of a real person onto a humanoid animatronic model. We call these devices animatronic Shader Lamps Avatars (SLA). We present a proof-of-concept prototype comprised of a camera, a tracking system, a digital projector, and a life-sized styrofoam head mounted on a pan-tilt unit. The system captures imagery of a moving, talking user and maps the appearance and motion onto the animatronic SLA, delivering a dynamic, real-time representation of the user to multiple viewers.     

FM radio for indoor localization with spontaneous recalibration

The position of mobile users has become highly important information in pervasive computing environments. Indoor localization systems based on Wi–Fi signal strength fingerprinting techniques are widely used in office buildings with an existing Wi–Fi infrastructure. Our previous work has proposed a solution based on exploitation of a FM signal to deal with environments not covered with Wi–Fi signal or environments with only a single Wi–Fi access point. However, a general problem of indoor wireless positioning systems pertains to signal degradation due to the environmental factors affecting signal propagation. Therefore, in order to maintain a desirable level of localization accuracy, it becomes necessary to perform periodic calibrations of the system, which is either time consuming or requires dedicated equipment and expert knowledge. In this paper, we present a comparison of FM versus Wi–Fi positioning systems and a combination of both systems, exploiting their strengths for indoors positioning. We also address the problem of recalibration by introducing a novel concept of spontaneous recalibration and demonstrate it using the FM localization system. Finally, the results related to device orientation and localization accuracy are discussed.     

New aspect-oriented constructs for security hardening concerns

In this paper, we present new pointcuts and primitives to Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) languages that are needed for systematic hardening of security concerns. The two proposed pointcuts allow to identify particular join points in a program's control-flow graph (CFG). The first one is the GAFlow, Closest Guaranteed Ancestor, which returns the closest ancestor join point to the pointcuts of interest that is on all their runtime paths. The second one is the GDFlow, Closest Guaranteed Descendant, which returns the closest child join point that can be reached by all paths starting from the pointcut of interest. The two proposed primitives are called ExportParameter and ImportParameter and are used to pass parameters between two pointcuts. They allow to analyze a program's call graph in order to determine how to change function signatures for passing the parameters associated with a given security hardening. We find these pointcuts and primitives to be necessary because they are needed to perform many security hardening practices and, to the best of our knowledge, none of the existing ones can provide their functionalities. Moreover, we show the viability and correctness of the proposed pointcuts and primitives by elaborating and implementing their algorithms and presenting the result of explanatory case studies.     

Microfluidic device for continuous magnetophoretic separation of white blood cells

This paper presents a microfluidic device for magnetophoretic separation of red blood cells from blood under continuous flow. The separation method consists of continuous flow of a blood sample (diluted in PBS) through a microfluidic channel which presents on the bottom “dots” of ferromagnetic layer. By applying a magnetic field perpendicular on the flowing direction, the ferromagnetic “dots” generate a gradient of magnetic field which amplifies the magnetic force. As a result, the red blood cells are captured on the bottom of the microfluidic channel while the rest of the blood is collected at the outlet. Experimental results show that an average of 95% of red blood cells is trapped in the device.     

On spiking neural P systems and partially blind counter machines

A k-output spiking neural P system (SNP) with output neurons, , generates a tuple of positive integers if, starting from the initial configuration, there is a sequence of steps such that during the computation, each O _i generates exactly two spikes aa (the times the pair aa are generated may be different for different output neurons) and the time interval between the first a and the second a is n _i . After the output neurons generate their pairs of spikes, the system eventually halts. We give characterizations of sets definable by partially blind multicounter machines in terms of k-output SNPs operating in a sequential mode. Slight variations of the models make them universal.