Some research ideas on Journal Impact Factors as a crucial topic in science dynamics

In the interesting and provocative paper on Journal Impact Factors by Vanclay (in press) there are some interesting points worth further reflection. In this short commentary I will focus in those that I consider most relevant because they suggest some ideas that could be addressed by researchers interested in this topic.     

Impact of the radio channel modelling on the performance of?VANET communication protocols

The expected traffic safety and efficiency benefits that can be achieved through the development and deployment of vehicular ad-hoc networks has attracted a significant interest from the networking research community that is currently working on novel vehicular communication protocols. The time-critical nature of vehicular applications and their reliability constraints require a careful protocol design and dimensioning. To this aim, adequate and accurate models should be employed in any research study. One of the critical aspects of any wireless communications system is the radio channel propagation. This is particularly the case in vehicular networks due to their low antenna heights, the fast topology changes and the reliability and latency constraints of traffic safety applications. Despite the research efforts to model the vehicle-to-vehicle communications channel, many networking studies are currently simplifying and even neglecting the radio channel effects on the performance and operation of their protocols. As this work demonstrates, it is critical that realistic and accurate channel models are employed to adequately understand, design and optimize novel vehicular communications and networking protocols.     

DATA ANALYSIS PRIOR TO A CIRCULATION MODEL IN GRAN CANARIA

The use of numerical models in physical oceanography, with the aim of reproducing and predicting water movements, is a common practice, especially for coastal areas. Nevertheless, results will be accurate only if the assumptions are appropriate and include all significant characteristics of the domain under modeling. Two-dimensional models are often used for shallow-water areas, but the implicit assumptions of conservation of a characteristic vertical profile for the horizontal velocities all over the domain and negligible vertical circulation must be exhaustively checked. Here a case is presented in which two-dimensionality would have led to inaccurate results, as the analysis of the field data showed a three-layer behavior. This case concerns the eastern coast of Gran Canaria island (Canary Islands) and illustrates how mathematical models will describe the phenomena they try to represent correctly only if all assumptions are right.     

Where does model-driven engineering help? Experiences from three industrial cases

There have been few experience reports from industry on how Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is applied and what the benefits are. This paper summarizes the experiences of three large industrial participants in a European research project with the objective of developing techniques and tools for applying MDE on the development of large and complex software systems. The participants had varying degrees of previous experience with MDE. They found MDE to be particularly useful for providing abstractions of complex systems at multiple levels or from different viewpoints, for the development of domain-specific models that facilitate communication with non-technical experts, for the purposes of simulation and testing, and for the consumption of models for analysis, such as performance-related decision support and system design improvements. From the industrial perspective, a methodology is considered to be useful and cost-efficient if it is possible to reuse solutions in multiple projects or products. However, developing reusable solutions required extra effort and sometimes had a negative impact on the performance of tools. While the companies identified several benefits of MDE, merging different tools with one another in a seamless development environment required several transformations, which increased the required implementation effort and complexity. Additionally, user-friendliness of tools and the provision of features for managing models of complex systems were identified as crucial for a wider industrial adoption of MDE.     

Parallelization of the FMM on distributed-memory GPGPU systems for acoustic-scattering prediction

In this work, we carry out the parallelization of the single level Fast Multipole Method (FMM) for solving acoustic-scattering problems (using the Helmholtz equation) on distributed-memory GPGPU systems. With the aim of enlarging the scope of feasible simulations, the presented solution combines the techniques developed for our distributed-memory CPU solver with our shared-memory GPGPU solver. The performance of the developed solution is proved using two different GPGPU clusters: the first one consists of two workstations with NVIDIA GTX 480 GPUs linked by a Gigabit Ethernet network, and the second one comprises four nodes with NVIDIA Tesla M2090 GPUs linked by an Infiniband network.