A thermal-aware VM consolidation mechanism with outage avoidance

Efficient energy and temperature management techniques are essential elements for operators of cloud data centers. Dynamic virtual machine (VM) consolidation using live migration techniques presents a great opportunity for cloud service providers to adaptively reduce energy consumption and optimize their resource utilization. In recent studies, power consumption readings of individual physical hosts were chosen as the main monitoring parameters in their allocation policies, whereas very few have considered host temperature, which has shown to have a negative impact on server reliability, as a migration criterion. In this work, a thermal-aware VM consolidation mechanism is proposed for resource allocation optimization and server reliability assurance. We consider the variability in host temperature as a migration criterion to avoid outage incidents via having better VM consolidations. Extensive simulation results obtained from CloudSim show the promising performance of the proposed mechanism in energy saving while reducing the number of server outage incidents due to fluctuations in host temperature.     

X图书馆

X图书馆位于虹口岸边的沙泾港.虹口是上海的十个中心区之一.它南濒黄浦江和苏州河,北接宝山,西连闸北,东邻杨浦.占地面积23.4km2,下辖8个街道办事处,居住人口达797 000人.图书馆紧邻的1933老场坊,周边将成为现代化的综合社区,城市肌理正在发生改变.社区以居住为主,商业、办公、娱乐、教育、体育、文化、景观与休闲功能为辅,充满活力.在此基础上,图书馆由7个近似立面单元的体量侧面叠成,一条西南一东北走向的对角线走道贯穿整个体量,实现了对周边社区的连接.     

Batch adsorption of organic pollutants from oxidation pond effluents using fly ashes

The batch shaking adsorption study was conducted to determine the potential of fly and volcanic ashes in removing organic pollutants from oxidation pond effluents. Factors affecting organic pollutant removals, such as concentrations and sizes of fly and volcanic ashes, initial pond effluent organic concentrations, washed and unwashed conditions of fly and volcanic ashes, were investigated. The TOC (total organic carbon) removal efficiency varied from 30 to 58 percent. The organic removal efficiency increased with increasing ash concentrations, with decreasing initial pond effluent organic concentrations and with decreasing sizes of ashes.     

Matching housing supply and demand: an empirical study of Hong Kong's market

This paper has the objective of improving on the issue of forecasting new housing construction, and highlights differences between space demand and investment demand in housing markets. Further, it indicates how these differences will affect construction decisions. The first step is to identify the factors associated with estimating residential property prices in Hong Kong, based on a demand-supply adjustment process. Specifically, this study examines the role of population growth, transaction volume, inflation and interest rate in determining house prices. Second, based on these estimations, a methodology is developed to estimate the investment demand schedule and new construction of residential property.     

Evaluating interfaces with children

Children are very different from adults—they have developing motor skills, limited reach, short attention spans, limited exposure to traditional user interfaces and social protocols. How do we evaluate user interfaces for children? In this paper, we present four evaluative techniques that we have successfully used with children.     

A state-space approach to Walsh series solution of linear systems

A state-space procedure for solving linear dynamic systems by the Walsh series is developed. A new operational matrix plays the main role and a new Kronecker product formula is established. The laborious use of Corrington'B tables is eliminated. Several examples illustrate the process and demonstrate the power of the approach.     

Lung Cancer Assistant: a hybrid clinical decision support application for lung cancer care

Multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings are becoming the model of care for cancer patients worldwide. While MDTs have improved the quality of cancer care, the meetings impose substantial time pressure on the members, who generally attend several such MDTs. We describe Lung Cancer Assistant (LCA), a clinical decision support (CDS) prototype designed to assist the experts in the treatment selection decisions in the lung cancer MDTs. A novel feature of LCA is its ability to provide rule-based and probabilistic decision support within a single platform. The guideline-based CDS is based on clinical guideline rules, while the probabilistic CDS is based on a Bayesian network trained on the English Lung Cancer Audit Database (LUCADA). We assess rule-based and probabilistic recommendations based on their concordances with the treatments recorded in LUCADA. Our results reveal that the guideline rule-based recommendations perform well in simulating the recorded treatments with exact and partial concordance rates of 0.57 and 0.79, respectively. On the other hand, the exact and partial concordance rates achieved with probabilistic results are relatively poorer with 0.27 and 0.76. However, probabilistic decision support fulfils a complementary role in providing accurate survival estimations. Compared to recorded treatments, both CDS approaches promote higher resection rates and multimodality treatments.     

Process parameters selection for laser polishing DF2 (AISI O1) by Nd:YAG pulsed laser using orthogonal design

Mechanisms of laser polishing metals in a continuous scanning mode, as envisaged and analyzed in this paper, are rather complex, and experimental optimization of laser polishing metallic material is very time-consuming and difficult. Aiming at shortening the experimental time in achieving a better surface finishing of DF2 (AISI 01) tool steel by pulse Nd:YAG laser, we used the orthogonal experimental design for selecting the laser operational parameters. The results showed that the orthogonal design (OD) allowed the optimum technological parameters for the laser polishing to be obtained quickly and effectively. According to the OD analysis and experimental data, the attainable optimum laser smoothening/polishing parameters from this study are pulse energy (P)?=?1?J, feed rate?=?300–400?mm/min, pulse duration?=?3?ms, and pulse frequency (f)?=?20–25?Hz. The work in this paper demonstrates the relative superiority of orthogonal design in saving experimental times and providing good laser polishing surface in surface texturing and the smoothening process.     

Monte Carlo Data Envelopment Analysis with Genetic Algorithm for Knowledge Management performance measurement

The paper targets to devise a genuine Knowledge Management (KM) performance measurement model in a stochastic setting based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Monte Carlo simulation and Genetic Algorithm (GA). The proposed model evaluates KM using a set of proxy measures correlated with the major KM processes. Data Collection Budget Allocation (DCBA) that maximizes the model accuracy is determined using GA. Additional data are generated and analyzed using a Monte-Carlo-enhanced DEA model to obtain the overall KM efficiency and KM processes’ efficiency scores. An application of the model has been carried out to evaluate KM performance in higher educational institutions. It is found that with GA, the accuracy of the model has been greatly improved. Lastly, comparing with a conventional deterministic DEA model, the results from the proposed model would be more useful for managers to determine future strategies to improve their KM.     

为下一代作准备:林后四林平地森林园区规划

林后四林平地森林园区是一处集平地造林、在地文化、栖地营造、资源利用与环境教育为一体的学习园区.在其不断的发展下,现成为大武山低海拔自然森林园区,作为生态栖地修复、区域文化体验及休闲游憩的场域.从环境修复的角度保有农垦地和草生地生态环境,并营造大武山低海拔森林的栖地环境,提供猛禽、鸟类及两栖类动物栖息繁衍之地.重视生态保育意义的同时,发挥环境教育和生态旅游的价值.因气候环境变迁,以分散排水、贮流、自然人渗及自然过滤方式为主,同时进行土壤地利改良,达到环境保全修复的功效.以现地环境保育及生态演变历史延续对自然环境的关怀,营造合宜的生态栖地、掌握水资源的保存与再利用,为下一代的自然生态环境作准备.