A User-Centric Perspective on Parallel Programming with Focus on OpenMP

The process of developing software that takes advantage of multiple processors is commonly referred to as parallel programming. For various reasons, this process is much harder than the sequential case. For decades, parallel programming has been a problem for a small niche only: engineers working on parallelizing mostly numerical applications in High Performance Computing. This has changed with the advent of multi-core processors in mainstream computer architectures. Parallel programming in our days becomes a problem for a much larger group of developers. The main objective of this thesis was to find ways to make parallel programming easier for them. Different aims were identified in order to reach the objective: research the state of the art of parallel programming today, improve the education of software developers about the topic, and provide programmers with powerful abstractions to make their work easier. To reach these aims, several key steps were taken. To start with, a survey was conducted among parallel programmers to find out about the state of the art. More than 250 people participated, yielding results about the parallel programming systems and languages in use, as well as about common problems with these systems. Furthermore, a study was conducted in university classes on parallel programming. It resulted in a list of frequently made mistakes that were analyzed and used to create a programmers' checklist to avoid them in the future. For programmers' education, an online resource was setup to collect experiences and knowledge in the field of parallel programming - called the Parawiki. Another key step in this direction was the creation of the Thinking Parallel weblog, where more than 50.000 readers to date have read essays on the topic. For the third aim (powerful abstractions), it was decided to concentrate on one parallel programming system: OpenMP. Its ease of use and high level of abstraction were the most important reasons for this decision. Two different research directions were pursued. The first one resulted in a parallel library called AthenaMP. It contains so-called generic components, derived from design patterns for parallel programming. These include functionality to enhance the locks provided by OpenMP, to perform operations on large amounts of data (data-parallel programming), and to enable the implementation of irregular algorithms using task pools. AthenaMP itself serves a triple role: the components are well-documented and can be used directly in programs, it enables developers to study the source code and learn from it, and it is possible for compiler writers to use it as a testing ground for their OpenMP compilers. The second research direction was targeted at changing the OpenMP specification to make the system more powerful. The main contributions here were a proposal to enable thread-cancellation and a proposal to avoid busy waiting. Both were implemented in a research compiler, shown to be useful in example applications, and proposed to the OpenMP Language Committee.

The roadmap to banking union: a call for consistency. CEPS Commentary, 30 August 2012

The proposal to move to a full banking union in the eurozone means a radical regime shift for the EU, since the European Central Bank will supervise the eurozone banks and effectively end ‘home country rule’. But how this is implemented raises a number of questions and needs close monitoring, explains CEPS CEO Karel Lannoo in this new Commentary.

Political economy of state-building: power after peace

The purpose of this volume is to examine and evaluate the impact of international state-building interventions on the political economy of post-conflict countries over the last 20 years. It analyses how international interventions have shaped political and economic dynamics and structures – both formal and informal – and what kind of state, and what kind of state-society relations have been created as a result, through three different lenses: first, through the approaches taken by different international actors like the UN, the International Financial Institutions, or the European Union, to state-building; second, through detailed analysis of key state-building policies; and third, through a wide range of country case studies. Amongst the recurring themes that are highlighted by the book’s focus on the political economy of state-building, and that help to explain why international state-building interventions have tended to fall short of the visions of interveners and local populations alike are evidence of important continuities between war-time and “post-conflict” economies and authority structures, which are often consolidated as a consequence of international involvement; tensions arising from what are often the competing interests and values held by different interveners and local actors; and, finally, the continuing salience of economic and political violence in state-building processes and war-to-peace transitions. The book aims to offer a more nuanced understanding of the complex impact of state-building practices on post-conflict societies, and of the political economy of post-conflict state-building.

Speech acts, responsibility and commitment in poetry

Philosophy has tended to regard poetry primarily in terms of truth and falsity, assuming that its business is to state or describe states of affairs. Speech act theory transforms philosophical debate by regarding poetry in terms of action, showing that its business is primarily to do things. The proposal can sharpen our understanding of types of poetry; examples of the ‘Chaucer-Type’ and its variants demonstrate this. Objections to the proposal can be divided into those that relate to the agent of actions associated with a poem, those that relate to the actions themselves, and those that relate to the things done. These objections can be answered. A significant consequence of the proposal is that it gives prominence to issues of responsibility and commitment. This prominence brings philosophical debate usefully into line with contemporary poetry, whose concern with such issues is manifest in characteristic forms of anxiety.

Opinion dynamics of learning agents: does seeking consensus lead to disagreement?

We study opinion dynamics in a population of interacting adaptive agents voting on a set of issues represented by vectors. We consider agents who can classify issues into one of two categories and can arrive at their opinions using an adaptive algorithm. Adaptation comes from learning and the information for the learning process comes from interacting with other neighboring agents and trying to change the internal state in order to concur with their opinions. The change in the internal state is driven by the information contained in the issue and in the opinion of the other agent. We present results in a simple yet rich context where each agent uses a Boolean perceptron to state their opinion. If the update occurs with information asynchronously exchanged among pairs of agents, then the typical case, if the number of issues is kept small, is the evolution into a society torn by the emergence of factions with extreme opposite beliefs. This occurs even when seeking consensus with agents with opposite opinions. If the number of issues is large, the dynamics becomes trapped, the society does not evolve into factions and a distribution of moderate opinions is observed. The synchronous case is technically simpler and is studied by formulating the problem in terms of differential equations that describe the evolution of order parameters that measure the consensus between pairs of agents. We show that for a large number of issues and unidirectional information flow, global consensus is a fixed point; however, the approach to this consensus is glassy for large societies.

A complex network approach to text summarization

Automatic summarization of texts is now crucial for several information retrieval tasks owing to the huge amount of information available in digital media, which has increased the demand for simple, language-independent extractive summarization strategies. In this paper, we employ concepts and metrics of complex networks to select sentences for an extractive summary. The graph or network representing one piece of text consists of nodes corresponding to sentences, while edges connect sentences that share common meaningful nouns. Because various metrics could be used, we developed a set of 14 summarizers, generically referred to as CN-Summ, employing network concepts such as node degree, length of shortest paths, d-rings and k-cores. An additional summarizer was created which selects the highest ranked sentences in the 14 systems, as in a voting system. When applied to a corpus of Brazilian Portuguese texts, some CN-Summ versions performed better than summarizers that do not employ deep linguistic knowledge, with results comparable to state-of-the-art summarizers based on expensive linguistic resources. The use of complex networks to represent texts appears therefore as suitable for automatic summarization, consistent with the belief that the metrics of such networks may capture important text features. (c) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Structural relationships in the solid state of the anti-chagas agent (E)-phenylethenylbenzofuroxan

The crystal structure and the vibrational spectrum of a potential drug for Chagas`s disease treatment, the (E)-isomer of phenylethenylbenzofuroxan 1 (5(6)(E)-[(2-phenylethenyl)]benzo[1,2-c]1,2,5-oxadiazole N-oxide), are reported. In order to provide insights into structural relationships, quantum mechanical calculations were employed starting from crystal structure. These results have given theoretical support to state interesting structural features, such as the effect of some intermolecular contacts on the molecule conformation and the electronic delocalization decreasing through atoms of the benzofuroxan moiety. Furthermore, the MOGUL comparative analysis in the Cambridge Structural Database provided additional evidences on these structural behaviors of compound 1. Intermolecular contacts interfere on the intramolecular geometry, as, for instance, on the phenyl group orientation, which is twisted by 12.32(6)A degrees from the ethenylbenzofuroxan plane. The experimental Raman spectrum of compound 1 presents unexpected frequency shift and also anomalous Raman activities. At last, the molecule skeleton deformation and the characteristic vibrational modes were correlated by matching the experimental Raman spectrum to the calculated one.

Minorias, localidade e inclusão social : uma proposta para o resgate da legitimidade estatal

o tema das minorias parece ter atingido um ponto importante de maturidade dialética no meio acadêmico. Em Estados democráticos, como são a maior parte dos estados contemporâneos, surge como algo premente a questão da inclusão social, da integração de todos os componentes, grupos e pessoas, neste projeto de construção de uma sociedade que seja, de fato, para todos. Sem isso, por outro lado, não há como se falar em legitimidade estatal, em legitimidade do poder político constituído. Hoje, a questão da inclusão social das minorias passa a ser não apenas uma opção, mas uma necessidade, se de fato quisermos conferir ao Estado democrático uma legitimidade popular genuína. Neste sentido, a valorização da comunidade local pode ser uma opção interessante, fazendo o Estado e a sociedade retornarem a uma situação de legitimidade mais evidente.

A gestão do processo de negociação complexa: uma avaliação da 5ª Conferência Ministerial da Organização Mundial do Comércio - OMC, em Cancun, México

Pretende-se no presente trabalho avaliar a gestão do processo de negociação complexa da 5ª Conferência Ministerial da Organização Mundial do Comércio em Cancún, ocorrida entre os dias 10 e 14 de setembro de 2003, no México, apontando os problemas e questões que resultaram no colapso de um possível acordo. O futuro da OMC é incerto e mudanças traumáticas sofridas por muitos países que vivem sob as regras da OMC indicam que alguma coisa na OMC terá que mudar, principalmente nos processos de negociação complexa, de forma que a integridade da organização não seja comprometida. Buscou-se respostas na análise e avaliação da gestão do processo de negociação, estudando e pesquisando os conceitos de barganha posicional, detalhando o processo de negociação baseado em princípios, explorando em profundidade o estado da arte para gestão de conversas difíceis. Dissecando a questão dos conflitos e das coalizões, mostrando a dificuldade existente na resolução de disputas públicas e no uso de instrumentos para quebrar o impasse nas negociações buscou-se estabelecer o instrumental teórico que possibilitasse aprofundar o diagnóstico da situação atual na OMC. Como recomendação explorou-se a avaliação de conflitos, com base na eficiência - teoria dos jogos-, justiça e na eqüidade, a melhor forma de negociação baseada em princípios, de gestão de público demandante, no diálogo dos multistakeholders, a importância das conversas informais paralelas, o ambiente da complexidade e a visão ampla que proporciona o enfoque do funcionamento de sistemas decisórios autopoiéticos.

Mapas de Conhecimento: Em Busca de um Instrumento de Aplicação nas Organizações para Operacionalização da Gestão do Conhecimento

The present work consists on the development and exploration of a knowledge mapping model. It is aimed in presenting and testing that model in an exploratory manner for the operationalization in theoretical terms and its practical application. For this proposal, it approaches ¿knowledge management¿ by three dimensions of management: processes control, results control and leadership. Assuming the inherently personal character of knowledge and admitting the impossibility for the management to command the individuals knowledge mental processes, this study states the possibility for management to control the organizations information processes, to state and to monitor the objectives and to lead people. Therefore, the developed tool searches to graphically represent the people¿s knowledge, which becomes, consequently, information. Also it evaluates the individual¿s maturity against the identified knowledge and prescribes, according to the Situational Leadership Theory, a style of leadership in compliance with the respective maturities. The knowledge map considered here translates the graphical representation of the relevant knowledge that is said to reach the objectives of the organization. That fact allows the results management for two reasons: first, the knowledge items are directly or indirectly connected to an objective and second, the knowledge map developed indicates a importance grade of the identified knowledge for the main objective stated. The research strategy adopted to explore the model of knowledge mapping and to test its applicability, also identifying its possible contributions and limitations, is the Actionresearch. Following the research strategy¿s prescribed stages, the knowledge map, as considered by this study, was applied in a software development company to hospitals, clinics and restaurants management which is called ¿Tergus Systems and Consulting¿. More precisely, the knowledge map was applied in the customer support company¿s area for hospitals. The research¿s empirical evidences had concluded that the model is applicable with low level of complexity, but with great demand of time. The more important contributions are related to the identification of the relevant knowledge to the department objectives in set with a prescription of the knowledge capture and transference necessities, as well as, the orientation for the appropriate leadership style for each subordinate related to the knowledge item in question.

Estrutura organizacional versus desempenho profissional. Estudo de caso de uma autarquia federal

During the 1980¿s and the 1990¿s, the Brazilian federal government started to set up a new public administration policy called ¿managerial¿ conceived of new patterns of efficiency and effectiveness and extremelly concerned about optimizing state administration to grant best results for people. This decision has been taken due to three main reasons; (i) the worst fiscal crisis considering the last decades; (ii) exhaustion on interfering with Brazilian economy due to its opening to globalization, and (iii) extremelly deep-rooted burocratic methods. The Brazilian state reform presented as a diagnosis of the human resource government area: (i) gradual raising costs in payroll, allied to (ii) huge raising inefficiency in public services, and (iii) civil servants are unprepared to improve better responses to currents citizen demands and to adopt new methods of management based on the best professional performance and the best quality of public services. We have concluded that the federal government often tries to make civil servants redundant instead of adopting a real policy of management that would give them better conditions to improve their performance. This paper presents a concrete proposal to improve quality in civil servants performance by taking advantage of information technology and of our assumed country¿s democratization. We suggest that the Brazilian state reform must be and should be a new path of social growth and development not only in economic basis.

Gestão associada de prestação de serviço público jurisdicional nos juizados especiais federais

Por mais que a informatização esteja avançada (interligação por melO da rede internet de computadores entre os órgãos e entidades públicas pelo Estado), máquina alguma substituirá os dramas do homem contemporâneo, principalmente aqueles que sempre estiveram alijados da cidadania. Os problemas do homem, principalmente os hiposuficientes, dentro do caso concreto, nem sempre podem ser solucionados por máquinas distantes uma da outra e, o pior, em locais distantes, sem permitir o acesso direto ao ser humano que comanda a máquina. Esse cidadão, que tem no princípio da dignidade da pessoa humana sua maior proteção e garantia outorgada pelo Estado de Direito, tem o direito de ser tratado com dignidade pelo Estado que monopoliza a pacificação social através da jurisdição, principalmente quando o réu é o próprio Estado, como é o caso do subsistema dos Juizados Especiais Federais (os réus são a União, ou suas entidades autárquicas, ou empresas públicas federais). A humanização no atendimento do cidadão, que busca e deposita no Estado Judiciário (Federal), no subsistema do Juizado Especial Federal, sua última esperança na resposta de seus direitos violados pelo próprio Estado Administração (Federal), se materializará por uma nova proposta de prestação de serviço público - a unitariedade (concentração de todos os partícipes desse subsistema em um único local - Judiciário e Executivo juntos) - de forma permanente e estática, nas cidades de maior demanda social, pela gestão associada de prestação de serviço público jurisdicional entre o Judiciário e Executivo (Legislativo eventualmente) onde a entrega do bem da vida litigioso ou a pacificação (meios alternativos de solução do conflito, como a conciliação) se dê dentro de um ambiente de respeito ao ser humano, ou seja, dentro de um prazo razoável, com padrões de atendimento de eficiência compatíveis com a contemporaneidade e principalmente de forma efetiva (com efetividade plena). Os Juizados Especiais, que foram criados para serem rápidos, ágeis e efetivos, não podem se banalizar e terem os mesmos estigmas da morosidade, da não efetividade e do desapego a qualidade no atendimento ao usuário. Tal humanização, como proposta na dissertação, desse subsistema judiciário - Juizado Especial Federal - com a unitariedade desse serviço público, atende e concretiza os valores e princípios constitucionais, sem necessidade de mudança legislativa, além de reforçar a legitimidade do Estado e solidificar a cidadania. O que se quer nessa dissertação é retirar o Judiciário do isolamento, o que é fundamental sobretudo no plano da efetividade (execução de suas decisões e prevenção e postergação de litígios criando uma mecanismos de conciliação prévia permanente). A dissertação propõe um novo desenho institucional entre Poderes da República para prestação de serviço público jurisdicional buscando contribuir para o aperfeiçoamento das atividades judiciárias em sentido amplo, ou seja, atividades administrativas ou não jurisdicionais (função atípica do Poder Judiciário). O paradigma proposto, além da valorização do consensualismo, implica a efetividade das normas jurídicas e a eficiência do sistema.

Hudumia: a platform to support spontaneous volunteers' situational awareness, coordination and safety underemergency scenarios

Spontaneous volunteers always emerge under emergency scenarios and are vital to a successful community response, yet some uncertainty subsists around their role and its inherent acceptance by official entities under emergency scenarios. In our research we have identified that most of the spontaneous volunteers do have none or little support from official entities, hence they end up facing critical problems as situational awareness, safety instructions and guidance, motivation and group organization. We argue that official entities still play a crucial role and should change some of their behaviors regarding spontaneous volunteerism. We aim with this thesis to design a software architecture and a framework in order to implement a solution to support spontaneous volunteerism under emergency scenarios along with a set of guidelines for the design of open information management systems. Together with the collaboration from both citizens and emergency professionals we have been able to attain several important contributions, as the clear identification of the roles taken by both spontaneous volunteers and professionals, the importance of volunteerism in overall community response and the role which open collaborative information management systems have in the community volunteering efforts. These conclusions have directly supported the design guidelines of our software solution proposal. In what concerns to methodology, we first review literature on technologies support to emergencies and how spontaneous volunteers actually challenge these systems. Following, we have performed a field research where we have observed that the emerging of spontaneous volunteer’s efforts imposes new requirements for the design of such systems, which leaded to the creation of a cluster of design guidelines that supported our software solution proposal to address the volunteers’ requirements. Finally we have architected and developed an online open information management tool which has been evaluated via usability engineering methods, usability user tests and heuristic evaluations.

Formação continuada e representação social: implicações para a educação inclusiva

This study is part of the line of research on Teacher Education, circumscribed to the Graduate Program in Education of Federal University Rio Grande do Norte. In it, we have a qualitative research, whose object returned to the influence of continued education in social representation of inclusive education of Elementary School teachers. The same was done in an Elementary School of Cruzeiro do Sul city (Brasil/Acre) and performed with the participation of 11 teachers. We assume that thinking a continuing education inclusive presupposes reflect on the redefinition and resignification of practices undertaken by the teacher. Therefore, the teacher education is conceived as a continuum in which the teacher will be graduating in forming, shaping their way of being in social situations. We argue that in the context of interactions, we are going to reconstruct social representations that guide actions and attitudes about the objects that have meaning for the group. It was with the aim of identify the influence of these social representations and at the same time submit a proposal for continuing training in structured formative needs teachers who made use of collaborative action research. Since we believe that this can either meet the assumptions of a research and vocational training to enable that researcher and other teachers, collectively, problematizing situations of practice and, at the same time able to intervene in the same it. As procedures for obtaining information and analysis of the data, we performed, respectively, semi-structured interviews (individual and collective); reflective studies sessions and the analysis of content. The path of research revealed two social representations integrated one of inclusive education and another for student with disabilities. We noticed that although the teachers criticize the character sealed and limited of continued education courses that have frequented, reveal social representations of inclusive education and students with disabilities based on theories and concepts originated from such courses. As a result, represent inclusive education as an "education for all" and student with disabilities as someone "abnormal, different, but able to learn something . It is possible to state that from the moment the teachers approched theories about the principles of inclusive education and on the possibilities of student with disabilities took new discourses, and showed signs of change in the social representations before presented. In addition, we evidenced in this production that a proposal for training within the school, fomented by the needs teachers and having as methodology to collaborative action research, provides the (re)construction of collective knowledges and practices, sharing of experiences, hopes, discoveries and concerns and the development of cooperation and attitude for the (re)development of strategies to overcome the difficulties present in everyday teaching

Fibras de licuri: um reforço vegetal alternativo de compósitos poliméricos

This research is based, at first, on the seeking of alternatives naturals reinforced in place of polymeric composites, also named reinforced plastics. Therein, this work starts with a whole licuri fiber micro structural characterization, as alternative proposal to polymeric composites. Licuri fiber is abundant on the Bahia state flora, native from a palm tree called Syagrus Coronata (Martius) Beccari. After, it was done only licuri fiber laminar composite developing studies, in order to know its behavior when impregnated with thermofix resin. The composite was developed in laminar structure shape (plate with a single layer of reinforcement) and produced industrially. The layer of reinforcement is a fabric-fiber unidirectional of licuri up in a manual loom. Their structure was made of polyester resin ortofitálica (unsaturated) only reinforced with licuri fibers. Fiber characterization studies were based on physical chemistry properties and their constitution. It was made by tension, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray diffraction (RDX) and thermal analyses (TG and DTA) tests, besides fiber chemistry analyses. Relating their mechanical properties of strength and hardness testing, they were determined through unit axial tension test and flexion in three points. A study in order to know fiber/matrix interface effects, in the final composites results, was required. To better understand the mechanical behavior of the composite, macroscopic and microscopic optical analysis of the fracture was performed