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The unprecedented growth of computing power and communication bandwidth in the last few decades has driven an explosion in the size and complexity of application software. Specifically, it has spurred an almost universal adoption of modular and extensible software designs, from ordinary PC applications, to operating systems kernels, and even to embedded systems. In many cases, however, the ability to extend software systems has come hand in hand with the need to isolate them from untrusted or potentially faulty extensions. This dissertation will focus on the important problem of code isolation, where existing techniques vary in many and often interrelated dimensions such as granularity, code complexity, invocation latency, dynamism, isolation strategy, permissible extension functionality, and degree of integration with the operating system kernel. Specifically, the implementation of a particular technique imposes restrictions on the properties of extensions. Examples include proof-based techniques that are only applicable to simple extensions of small granularity, hardware-based isolation techniques that typically incur a measurable invocation latency due to hardware re-configuration overhead, and programming language techniques that impose implementation and compiler restrictions. The goal of this dissertation is to explore the design space of code isolation techniques, identify characteristics of individual approaches, and then argue for and design a hybrid approach that combines their advantages while avoiding their drawbacks. The contributions of this thesis will be threefold: (1) a taxonomy of metrics and properties relevant to software code isolation techniques, (2) the design and implementation of a novel hybrid architecture for safe kernel extension with pliable characteristics, and (3) an evaluation of the hybrid approach and comparison with homogeneous alternatives.

Master of Philosophy (MPhil) / Background: Physical deconditioning is often associated with chronic pain and is believed to be a result of gradual movement inhibition and reduction of physical activities. It is common for chronic pain sufferers to present with limited muscle extensibility and poor tolerance to physical movement. Exercises are therefore prescribed to assist in regaining muscle extensibility, strength, fitness and endurance. Of particular interest is stretch, a type of exercise aimed at increasing muscle extensibility. Stretch is commonly prescribed as part of physical rehabilitation in pain management programs, yet little is known of its effectiveness in the chronic pain population. Aim: The aim of this randomised controlled trial was to investigate the effects of a three-week stretch program on muscle extensibility and stretch tolerance in patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Methods: Thirty adults with pain persisting for at least three months and limited hamstring muscle extensibility were recruited from patients enrolled in a multidisciplinary pain management program at a Sydney Hospital. A within-subject design was used, with one leg of each participant randomly allocated to an experimental (stretch) condition and the other to a control (no stretch) condition. The hamstring muscles of the experimental leg were stretched for one minute a day over a three-week period, whilst the hamstring muscles of the control leg were not stretched during this time. This intervention was embedded within a pain management program and supervised by physiotherapists. Primary outcome measures were muscle extensibility and stretch tolerance, reflected by passive hip flexion angles produced with standardised and non-standardised torques, respectively. Initial measures were taken prior to the first stretch on day one and final measures were taken one to two days after the last stretch. A blinded assessor was used for all testing. Results: After three weeks of intervention, stretch did not increase muscle extensibility (mean between-group difference in hip flexion was 1 degree; 95% CI -2 to 4 degrees) but did improve stretch tolerance (mean between-group difference in hip flexion was 8 degrees; 95% CI 5 to 10 degrees). Conclusion: Three weeks of stretch increases tolerance to the discomfort associated with stretch but does not change muscle extensibility in patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain. This study provides support for the ongoing incorporation of stretch in pain management programs, where stretch may be conceptualised as a graded exposure to movement and assisting in the restoration of normal activity and function.

Master of Philosophy (MPhil) / Background: Physical deconditioning is often associated with chronic pain and is believed to be a result of gradual movement inhibition and reduction of physical activities. It is common for chronic pain sufferers to present with limited muscle extensibility and poor tolerance to physical movement. Exercises are therefore prescribed to assist in regaining muscle extensibility, strength, fitness and endurance. Of particular interest is stretch, a type of exercise aimed at increasing muscle extensibility. Stretch is commonly prescribed as part of physical rehabilitation in pain management programs, yet little is known of its effectiveness in the chronic pain population. Aim: The aim of this randomised controlled trial was to investigate the effects of a three-week stretch program on muscle extensibility and stretch tolerance in patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Methods: Thirty adults with pain persisting for at least three months and limited hamstring muscle extensibility were recruited from patients enrolled in a multidisciplinary pain management program at a Sydney Hospital. A within-subject design was used, with one leg of each participant randomly allocated to an experimental (stretch) condition and the other to a control (no stretch) condition. The hamstring muscles of the experimental leg were stretched for one minute a day over a three-week period, whilst the hamstring muscles of the control leg were not stretched during this time. This intervention was embedded within a pain management program and supervised by physiotherapists. Primary outcome measures were muscle extensibility and stretch tolerance, reflected by passive hip flexion angles produced with standardised and non-standardised torques, respectively. Initial measures were taken prior to the first stretch on day one and final measures were taken one to two days after the last stretch. A blinded assessor was used for all testing. Results: After three weeks of intervention, stretch did not increase muscle extensibility (mean between-group difference in hip flexion was 1 degree; 95% CI -2 to 4 degrees) but did improve stretch tolerance (mean between-group difference in hip flexion was 8 degrees; 95% CI 5 to 10 degrees). Conclusion: Three weeks of stretch increases tolerance to the discomfort associated with stretch but does not change muscle extensibility in patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain. This study provides support for the ongoing incorporation of stretch in pain management programs, where stretch may be conceptualised as a graded exposure to movement and assisting in the restoration of normal activity and function.

Title: Extensibility Framework for a Generic Benchmarking Environment Type: Master thesis Author: Tadeáš Palusga Department: Department of Distributed and Dependable Systems Faculty of Mathematics and Physics Charles University Supervisor: RNDr. Andrej Podzimek, Ph.D. Department of Distributed and Dependable Systems Faculty of Mathematics and Physics Charles University Abstract: In 2004, at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, a project called BEEN (Benchmarking Environment) was introduced. The original aim of this project was to create a highly configurable and modular environment for middleware applications benchmarking. This project was successfully defended in 2007. In 2011, another group of students introduced a successor of this project called WillBEEN. Finally, in 2013 a project entitled EverBEEN, which was a complete reimplementation of the WillBEEN project, was successfully defended. The goal of the EverBEEN project was to bring newer technologies, asynchronous communication and stability improvements into the BEEN project family and resulted in a reimplementation from scratch. Despite all the effort, project EverBEEN remained tightly coupled with underlying libraries and technologies, contained a lot of generated code hard to maintain nor extend and last but not least the...

The domain of distributed simulation is growing rapidly. This growth leads to larger and more complex supporting network architectures with high requirements on availability and reliability. For this purpose, efficient fault-monitoring is required. This work is an attempt to evaluate the viability of an Active probing approach in a distributed simulation system in a wide area network setting. In addition, some effort was directed towards building the probing-software with future extensions in mind. The Active probing approach was implemented and tested against certain performance requirements in a simulated environment. It was concluded that the approach is viable for detecting the health of the network components. However, additional research is required to draw a conclusion about the viability in more complicated scenarios that depend on more than the responsiveness of the nodes. The extensibility of the implemented software was evaluated with the QMOOD-metric and not deemed particularly extensible.

<p>We present an indirection architecture for the Internet called SelNet. SelNet provides a uniform indirection mechanism for controlling the route that packets take through the network and which functions are invoked to process these packets. In the current Internet, at least for the majority of users, there is only one way that a packet can go and that is to the default route. Whilst this is sufficient for many applications, numerous applications have arisen which require alternative routes or processing to be present not only at the application-layer of the protocol stack, but at the network-layer itself. Solutions to such scenarios attempt to place an indirection point between the communicating end-systems either with a middlebox (such as a proxy) or by altering one or more of the Internet's naming systems. However these approaches lead to an application-specific network, which is against the Internet's design goals. We argue for a uniform approach to indirection instead of building multiple, partially overlapping structures as is the current trend. SelNet differs from existing indirection approaches in that it is function-orientated, rather than node-orientated and that it provides an explicit, controllable resolution mechanism for resolving host names and services. The motivation behind our approach is to create efficient indirection structures for supporting new applications which have indirection requirements. We present a detailed design and specification of SelNet. We then go on to describe implementation work with the LUNAR ad-hoc routing protocol and the Janus middleware for accessing sensor networks systems. The purpose of this implementation work is to demonstrate the feasibility of SelNet and its ability to reach its goals.</p>

We present an indirection architecture for the Internet called SelNet. SelNet provides a uniform indirection mechanism for controlling the route that packets take through the network and which functions are invoked to process these packets. In the current Internet, at least for the majority of users, there is only one way that a packet can go and that is to the default route. Whilst this is sufficient for many applications, numerous applications have arisen which require alternative routes or processing to be present not only at the application-layer of the protocol stack, but at the network-layer itself. Solutions to such scenarios attempt to place an indirection point between the communicating end-systems either with a middlebox (such as a proxy) or by altering one or more of the Internet's naming systems. However these approaches lead to an application-specific network, which is against the Internet's design goals. We argue for a uniform approach to indirection instead of building multiple, partially overlapping structures as is the current trend. SelNet differs from existing indirection approaches in that it is function-orientated, rather than node-orientated and that it provides an explicit, controllable resolution mechanism for resolving host names and services. The motivation behind our approach is to create efficient indirection structures for supporting new applications which have indirection requirements. We present a detailed design and specification of SelNet. We then go on to describe implementation work with the LUNAR ad-hoc routing protocol and the Janus middleware for accessing sensor networks systems. The purpose of this implementation work is to demonstrate the feasibility of SelNet and its ability to reach its goals.

[pt] Existe uma abordagem de projeto para aumentar a flexibilidade de sistemas operacionais, chamada sistema operacional extensível, que sustenta que sistemas operacionais devem permitir extensoes para poderem atender a novos requisitos. Existe também uma abordagem de projetos no desenvolvimento de aplicações que sustenta que sistemas complexos devem permitir que usuários escrevam scripts para que eles possam tomar as suas próprias decisões de configuração em tempo de execução. Seguindo estas duas abordagens de projeto, nos construímos uma infra-estrutura que possibilita que usuários carreguem e executem dinamicamente scripts Lua dentro de kernels de sistema operacional, aumentando a flexibilidade deles. Nesta dissertação, nos apresentamos Lunatik, a nossa infra-estrutura para scripting de kernel baseada em Lua, e mostramos um cenário de uso real no escalonamento dinâmico da frequência e voltagem de CPU. Lunatik está implementado atualmente tanto para NetBSD quanto para Linux. / [en] There is a design approach to improve operating system flexibility, called extensible operating system, that supports that operating systems must allow extensions in order to meet new requirements. There is also a design approach in application development that supports that complex systems should allow users to write scripts in order to let them make their own configuration decisions at run-time. Following these two design approaches, we have built an infrastructure that allows users to dynamically load and run Lua scripts into operating system kernels, improving their flexibility. In this thesis we present Lunatik, our scripting subsystem based on Lua, and show a real usage scenario in dynamically scaling CPU frequency and voltage. Lunatik is currently implemented both for NetBSD and Linux.

This dissertation provides the motivation for and evidence in favour of an approach to language extension via dynamic loading of plug-ins. There is a growing realisation that language features are often a superior choice to software libraries for implementing applications. Among the benefits are increased usability, safety and efficiency. Unfortunately, designing and implementing new languages is difficult and time consuming. Thus, reuse of language infrastructure is an attractive implementation avenue. The central question then becomes, what is the best method to extend languages? Much research has focussed on methods of extension based on using features of the language itself such as macros or reflection. This dissertation focuses on a complementary solution: plug-in compilers. In this approach languages are extended at run-time via dynamic extensions to compilers, called plug-ins. Plug-ins can be used to extend the expressiveness, safety and efficiency of languages. However, a plug-in compiler provides other benefits. Plug-in compilers encourage modularity, lower the barrier of entry to development, and facilitate the distribution and use of experimental language extensions. This dissertation describes how plug-in support is added, to both the front and back-end of a compiler, and demonstrates their application through a pair of case studies.