Increasing performance of computers and ability to connect computers with high speed communication networks make distributed databases systems an attractive research area. In this study, we evaluate communication and data processing capabilities of a HPC machine. We calculate accurate cost formulas for high volume data communication between processing nodes and experimentally measure sorting times. A left deep query plan executer has been implemented and experimentally used for executing plans generated by two different genetic algorithms for a distributed database environment using message passing paradigm to prove that a parallel system can provide scalable performance by increasing the number of nodes used for storing database relations and processing nodes. We compare the performance of plans generated by genetic algorithms with optimal plans generated by exhaustive search algorithm. Our results have verified that optimal plans are better than those of genetic algorithms, as expected.

Service-oriented engineering is an emerging software development paradigm for distributed collaborative applications. Such an application is made up of several entities abstracted as services, each of them being for example a Web application, a Web service, or even a human. The services can be developed independently and are composed to achieve common requirements through interactions among them. Service choreographies define such requirements from a global perspective, based on interactions among a set of participants. This thesis aims to formalize the problems and attempts to develop a framework by which service choreographies can be developed correctly for both top-down and bottom-up approaches. It consists in analyzing the relation between a choreography specification and a choreography implementation at both model level and real implementation level. Particularly, it concerns the composition/decomposition service design, the verification, and the testing of choreography implementation. The first key point of our framework is to support value-passing among services by using symbolic technique and SMT solver. It overcomes false negatives or state space explosion issues due by abstracting or limiting the data domain of value-passing in existing approaches. The second key point is the black-box passive testing of choreography implementation. It does not require neither to access to source codes nor to make the implementation unavailable during the testing process. Our framework is fully implemented in our toolchains, which can be downloaded or used online at address: http://schora.lri.fr.

No description available.

This thesis presents a class of graphical models for directly representing the joint cumulative distribution function (CDF) of many random variables, called cumulative distribution networks (CDNs). Unlike graphical models for probability density and mass functions, in a CDN, the marginal probabilities for any subset of variables are obtained by computing limits of functions in the model. We will show that the conditional independence properties in a CDN are distinct from the conditional independence properties of directed, undirected and factor graph models, but include the conditional independence properties of bidirected graphical models. As a result, CDNs are a parameterization for bidirected models that allows us to represent complex statistical dependence relationships between observable variables. We will provide a method for constructing a factor graph model with additional latent variables for which graph separation of variables in the corresponding CDN implies conditional independence of the separated variables in both the CDN and in the factor graph with the latent variables marginalized out. This will then allow us to construct multivariate extreme value distributions for which both a CDN and a corresponding factor graph representation exist. In order to perform inference in such graphs, we describe the `derivative-sum-product' (DSP) message-passing algorithm where messages correspond to derivatives of the joint cumulative distribution function. We will then apply CDNs to the problem of learning to rank, or estimating parametric models for ranking, where CDNs provide a natural means with which to model multivariate probabilities over ordinal variables such as pairwise preferences. We will show that many previous probability models for rank data, such as the Bradley-Terry and Plackett-Luce models, can be viewed as particular types of CDN. Applications of CDNs will be described for the problems of ranking players in multiplayer team-based games, document retrieval and discovering regulatory sequences in computational biology using the above methods for inference and estimation of CDNs.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 222-230).

Esta dissertação apresenta uma leitura do romance Passing, com o foco na caracterização e enredo a partir da perspectiva de duas questões inter-relacionadas. Primeiro, a leitura examina a questão da maternidade e a questão da raça na caracterização de duas protagonistas, considerando que ambas as questões sustentam uma importância histórica no contexto de vida das mulheres negras daquele período, como os biógrafos de autores testemunham. Segundo, a leitura enfatiza as correlações de enredo e desejo como uma forma de entender o que está em jogo na narrativa. O romance foi publicado em 1929 pela escritora Afro-Americana Nella Larsen durante o movimento estético e cultural chamado Harlem Renaissance, um movimento cujo apogeu na década de 20 do século passado causou um crescimento da consciência social e o surgimento da literatura moderna Afro-Americana. Em uma década, o tema ‘passing’ constituiu um dos tópicos privilegiados em vários romances por escritores Afro-Americanos. Minha análise se sustenta a partir de diferentes fontes: relações entre mãe/filha a partir de Marianne Hirsch e Nancy J. Chodorow; a questão da raça e conflitos de ‘passing’ a partir de Thadious M. Davis, Elaine K. Ginsberg e Martha J. Cutter, assim como enredo e desejo de Peter Brooks. Na interligação de elementos biográficos, psicológicos, culturais e literários, minha leitura apresenta como a novela dramatiza o conflito insolúvel de raça divida – branca e preta – que destaca as lutas e dificuldades dos personagens quando enfrentando o vazio do pertencimento que acompanha a experiência de ‘passing’. / The thesis presents a reading of the novel Passing, with a focus on characterization and plot from the perspective of two interrelated issues. First, the reading examines the question of motherhood and the question of race in the characterization of the two major female protagonists, considering that both questions bear historical importance in the context of black women’s lives of the period, as the author’s biographers testify. Second, the reading highlights the connections of plot and desire as a way of understanding what is at stake in the narrative design. The novel was published in 1929 by the Afro-American writer Nella Larsen during the cultural and aesthetic movement called the Harlem Renaissance, a movement whose heyday in the 20´s in the last century brought about the uplifting of racial consciousness and the emergence of modern Afro-American literature. In the decade, the theme of ‘passing’ constituted one of the privileged topics in several novels by Afro-American writers. My analysis draws support from different sources: mother/daughter relationships from Marianne Hirsch and Nancy J. Chodorow; the question of race and ensuing conflicts of ‘passing’ from Thadious M. Davis, Elaine K. Ginsberg and Martha J. Cutter; and plot and desire from Peter Brooks. In the interweaving of biographical, psychological, cultural and literary elements, my reading shows how the novel dramatizes the insoluble conflict of the racial divide – white and black - which underlies the characters´ struggles and difficulties when facing the void in belongingness that attends the experience of passing.

En algorithmique distribuée, le modèle asynchrone par envoi de messages et à pannes est connu et utilisé dans de nombreux articles de par son réalisme,par ailleurs il est suffisamment simple pour être utilisé et suffisamment complexe pour représenter des problèmes réels. Dans ce modèle, les n processus communiquent en s'échangeant des messages, mais sans borne sur les délais de communication, c'est-à-dire qu'un message peut mettre un temps arbitrairement long à atteindre sa destination. De plus, jusqu'à f processus peuvent tomber en panne, et ainsi arrêter définitivement de fonctionner. Ces pannes indétectables à cause de l'asynchronisme du système limitent les possibilités de ce modèle. Dans de nombreux cas, les résultats connus dans ces systèmes sont limités à une stricte minorité de pannes. C'est par exemple le cas de l'implémentation de registres atomiques et de la résolution du renommage. Cette barrière de la majorité de pannes, expliquée par le théorème CAP, s'applique à de nombreux problèmes, et fait que le modèle asynchrone par envoi de messages avec une majorité de pannes est peu étudié. Il est donc intéressant d'étudier ce qu'il est possible de faire dans ce cadre.Cette thèse cherche donc à mieux comprendre ce modèle à majorité de pannes, au travers de deux principaux problèmes. Dans un premier temps, on étudie l'implémentation d'objets partagés similaires aux registres habituels, en définissant les bancs de registres x-colorés et les α-registres. Dans un second temps, le problème du renommage est étendu en renommage k-redondant, dans ses versions à-un-coup et réutilisable, et de même pour les objets partagés diviseurs, étendus en k-diviseurs. / In distributed computing, asynchronous message-passing model with crashes is well-known and considered in many articles, because of its realism and it issimple enough to be used and complex enough to represent many real problems.In this model, n processes communicate by exchanging messages, but withoutany bound on communication delays, i.e. a message may take an arbitrarilylong time to reach its destination. Moreover, up to f among the n processesmay crash, and thus definitely stop working. Those crashes are undetectablebecause of the system asynchronism, and restrict the potential results in thismodel.In many cases, known results in those systems must verify the propertyof a strict minority of crashes. For example, this applies to implementationof atomic registers and solving of renaming. This barrier of a majority ofcrashes, explained by the CAP theorem, restricts numerous problems, and theasynchronous message-passing model with a majority of crashes is thus notwell-studied and rather unknown. Hence, studying what can be done in thiscase of a majority of crashes is interesting.This thesis tries to analyse this model, through two main problems. The first part studies the implementation of shared objects, similar to usual registers,by defining x-colored register banks, and α-registers. The second partextends the renaming problem into k-redundant renaming, for both one-shotand long-lived versions, and similarly for the shared objects called splitters intok-splitters.

Little attention is paid to the civil remedies available when infringement of a trade mark or the right to goodwill occurs. Yet, for the owners of ~uch rights, these remedies are of much greater importance than theoretical considerations regarding the nature of the rights or what constitutes their infringement. This thesis analyses the civil remedies for trade mark infringement granted by the South African Trade Marks Act 194 of 1993. In the South African context, any consideration of civil remedies is rendered problematic by the attempted graft of English remedies onto a legal system with a different common-law background. It is, therefore, essential first to trace the English origin and application of these remedies, and then to determine whether each remedy is acceptable in terms of the South African common law. This is necessary, as our courts have previously rejected or adapted English remedies which were unknown to our common law but which Parliament introduced in legislation. The remedies of interdict (or injunction) in final and interlocutory form, compensatory damages, reasonable royalties, and delivery up are analysed from a substantive law and a procedural perspective. The procedural innovation of an inquiry as to damages is also considered. In respect of each remedy, (1) the English roots and development of the remedy are traced; (2) differences of approach in two other Commonwealth jurisdictions, Australia and Canada, are highlighted; (3) the development of the South African equivalent is detailed; and (4) suggestions for the future implementation of the remedy in South Africa are made. In the penultimate chapter, our common law and legislation (including the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa 108 of 1996 ) are measured against the requirements of the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Recommendations for the effective utilization of each remedy in South Africa are then made. They include suggestions for legislative amendment in respect of delivery up and an inquiry as to damages, and the introduction of statutory damages as an further civil remedy. / Mercentile Law / LL. D. (Laws)

Esta dissertação apresenta uma leitura do romance Passing, com o foco na caracterização e enredo a partir da perspectiva de duas questões inter-relacionadas. Primeiro, a leitura examina a questão da maternidade e a questão da raça na caracterização de duas protagonistas, considerando que ambas as questões sustentam uma importância histórica no contexto de vida das mulheres negras daquele período, como os biógrafos de autores testemunham. Segundo, a leitura enfatiza as correlações de enredo e desejo como uma forma de entender o que está em jogo na narrativa. O romance foi publicado em 1929 pela escritora Afro-Americana Nella Larsen durante o movimento estético e cultural chamado Harlem Renaissance, um movimento cujo apogeu na década de 20 do século passado causou um crescimento da consciência social e o surgimento da literatura moderna Afro-Americana. Em uma década, o tema ‘passing’ constituiu um dos tópicos privilegiados em vários romances por escritores Afro-Americanos. Minha análise se sustenta a partir de diferentes fontes: relações entre mãe/filha a partir de Marianne Hirsch e Nancy J. Chodorow; a questão da raça e conflitos de ‘passing’ a partir de Thadious M. Davis, Elaine K. Ginsberg e Martha J. Cutter, assim como enredo e desejo de Peter Brooks. Na interligação de elementos biográficos, psicológicos, culturais e literários, minha leitura apresenta como a novela dramatiza o conflito insolúvel de raça divida – branca e preta – que destaca as lutas e dificuldades dos personagens quando enfrentando o vazio do pertencimento que acompanha a experiência de ‘passing’. / The thesis presents a reading of the novel Passing, with a focus on characterization and plot from the perspective of two interrelated issues. First, the reading examines the question of motherhood and the question of race in the characterization of the two major female protagonists, considering that both questions bear historical importance in the context of black women’s lives of the period, as the author’s biographers testify. Second, the reading highlights the connections of plot and desire as a way of understanding what is at stake in the narrative design. The novel was published in 1929 by the Afro-American writer Nella Larsen during the cultural and aesthetic movement called the Harlem Renaissance, a movement whose heyday in the 20´s in the last century brought about the uplifting of racial consciousness and the emergence of modern Afro-American literature. In the decade, the theme of ‘passing’ constituted one of the privileged topics in several novels by Afro-American writers. My analysis draws support from different sources: mother/daughter relationships from Marianne Hirsch and Nancy J. Chodorow; the question of race and ensuing conflicts of ‘passing’ from Thadious M. Davis, Elaine K. Ginsberg and Martha J. Cutter; and plot and desire from Peter Brooks. In the interweaving of biographical, psychological, cultural and literary elements, my reading shows how the novel dramatizes the insoluble conflict of the racial divide – white and black - which underlies the characters´ struggles and difficulties when facing the void in belongingness that attends the experience of passing.

Submitted by Alison Vanceto (alison-vanceto@hotmail.com) on 2016-12-19T10:21:33Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DissADHI.pdf: 1668973 bytes, checksum: 66675509e8ba3ae17c94da9b605df4d4 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marina Freitas (marinapf@ufscar.br) on 2017-01-16T18:00:17Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissADHI.pdf: 1668973 bytes, checksum: 66675509e8ba3ae17c94da9b605df4d4 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marina Freitas (marinapf@ufscar.br) on 2017-01-16T18:00:38Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissADHI.pdf: 1668973 bytes, checksum: 66675509e8ba3ae17c94da9b605df4d4 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-01-16T18:00:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DissADHI.pdf: 1668973 bytes, checksum: 66675509e8ba3ae17c94da9b605df4d4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-05-12 / Não recebi financiamento / The multi-core processors represent the industry response for the physical barriers encountered during the development of computing processors during the last decades, and brought new advances on computing system performance. The complex superscalar unicore processors with high frequency clocks gave way to processing units with two or more cores in just one encapsulation, generally with low clock frequencies, allowing one or more execution threads per core. On this context, the existing programming models using serial and concurrent paradigms do not allow exploring the real potential provided by the new hardware elements incorporated, generating a necessity of new programming methodologies that does allow exploring parallelism aggregated by the use of multi-core processors. This work presents LX-MCAPI, a library based on modern IPC (Inter-Process Communication) and memory sharing mechanisms, developed over the hypothesis that message passing is a viable, flexible and scalable abstraction, compared to conventional programming methods using shared-memory on multi-core systems. LX-MCAPI offers a message-passing, zerocopy memory sharing mechanism between processes and ready to use scalability patterns to facilitate the process of abstraction and construction of applications. It has performed well in therms of transmission latency and transfer rate on x86-64 and ARM environments. / Os processadores multi-core representaram a resposta da indústria às barreiras físicas encontradas no desenvolvimento de processadores computacionais nas últimas décadas, e trouxeram novo fôlego ao avanço do desempenho de sistemas computacionais. Os complexos processadores superescalares de núcleo único com frequências de clock relativamente altas deram espaço a unidades de processamento com dois ou mais núcleos em um mesmo encapsulamento, geralmente mais “lentos”, possibilitando uma ou mais threads por núcleo. Nesse contexto, os modelos de programação existentes utilizando os paradigmas sequencial e concorrente não permitiam a exploração do potencial real proporcionado pelos novos elementos de hardware introduzidos, gerando uma necessidade de criação de novas metodologias de programação que permitissem tirar proveito do paralelismo agregado à utilização dos processadores multi-core. Este trabalho apresenta a LX-MCAPI, biblioteca baseada em mecanismos modernos de IPC (Inter-Process Communication) e compartilhamento de memória, desenvolvida sobre a hipótese em que a passagem de mensagens é uma abstração viável, flexível e escalável, quando comparada a métodos de programação convencionais utilizando memória-compartilhada em sistemas multi-core. LX-MCAPI oferece um mecanismo de passagem de mensagem e compartilhamento zero-copy de memória entre processos, além de padrões de programação paralela prontos para uso, que facilitam o processo de abstração e construção de aplicações. Além disso, apresentando bom desempenho em termos de latências de transmissão e taxas de transferência em ambientes x86-64 e ARM.