Assessment of natural resource conditions in and adjacent to Biscayne National Park. Natural Resource Report NPS/BISC/NRR—2012/598

This report is an assessment of the conditions of natural resources in Biscayne National Park (BNP) based on the compilation, review and evaluation of existing information on the Park’s natural resources. This review evaluates threats and stressors, and is intended to improve understanding of BNP resources to help guide Park management to address the identified threats, which are supported by enhanced data collection, research and assessment efforts. The report is focused on broad resource components, namely terrestrial resources and aquatic systems including: wetlands, canals, bay waters, marine/reef areas and ground waters. Biotic and abiotic resource components are considered in the review.

Improving resource management in virtualized data centers using application performance models

The rapid growth of virtualized data centers and cloud hosting services is making the management of physical resources such as CPU, memory, and I/O bandwidth in data center servers increasingly important. Server management now involves dealing with multiple dissimilar applications with varying Service-Level-Agreements (SLAs) and multiple resource dimensions. The multiplicity and diversity of resources and applications are rendering administrative tasks more complex and challenging. This thesis aimed to develop a framework and techniques that would help substantially reduce data center management complexity.^ We specifically addressed two crucial data center operations. First, we precisely estimated capacity requirements of client virtual machines (VMs) while renting server space in cloud environment. Second, we proposed a systematic process to efficiently allocate physical resources to hosted VMs in a data center. To realize these dual objectives, accurately capturing the effects of resource allocations on application performance is vital. The benefits of accurate application performance modeling are multifold. Cloud users can size their VMs appropriately and pay only for the resources that they need; service providers can also offer a new charging model based on the VMs performance instead of their configured sizes. As a result, clients will pay exactly for the performance they are actually experiencing; on the other hand, administrators will be able to maximize their total revenue by utilizing application performance models and SLAs. ^ This thesis made the following contributions. First, we identified resource control parameters crucial for distributing physical resources and characterizing contention for virtualized applications in a shared hosting environment. Second, we explored several modeling techniques and confirmed the suitability of two machine learning tools, Artificial Neural Network and Support Vector Machine, to accurately model the performance of virtualized applications. Moreover, we suggested and evaluated modeling optimizations necessary to improve prediction accuracy when using these modeling tools. Third, we presented an approach to optimal VM sizing by employing the performance models we created. Finally, we proposed a revenue-driven resource allocation algorithm which maximizes the SLA-generated revenue for a data center.^

Design and implementation of a web based shop floor control system to maintain schedule feasibility in a dynamic job shop environment

The effective control of production activities in dynamic job shop with predetermined resource allocation for all the jobs entering the system is a unique manufacturing environment, which exists in the manufacturing industry. In this thesis a framework for an Internet based real time shop floor control system for such a dynamic job shop environment is introduced. The system aims to maintain the schedule feasibility of all the jobs entering the manufacturing system under any circumstance. The system is capable of deciding how often the manufacturing activities should be monitored to check for control decisions that need to be taken on the shop floor. The system will provide the decision maker real time notification to enable him to generate feasible alternate solutions in case a disturbance occurs on the shop floor. The control system is also capable of providing the customer with real time access to the status of the jobs on the shop floor. The communication between the controller, the user and the customer is through web based user friendly GUI. The proposed control system architecture and the interface for the communication system have been designed, developed and implemented.

Ocean acidification and the loss of phenolic substances in marine plants

Rising atmospheric CO2 often triggers the production of plant phenolics, including many that serve as herbivore deterrents, digestion reducers, antimicrobials, or ultraviolet sunscreens. Such responses are predicted by popular models of plant defense, especially resource availability models which link carbon availability to phenolic biosynthesis. CO2 availability is also increasing in the oceans, where anthropogenic emissions cause ocean acidification, decreasing seawater pH and shifting the carbonate system towards further CO2 enrichment. Such conditions tend to increase seagrass productivity but may also increase rates of grazing on these marine plants. Here we show that high CO2 / low pH conditions of OA decrease, rather than increase, concentrations of phenolic protective substances in seagrasses and eurysaline marine plants. We observed a loss of simple and polymeric phenolics in the seagrass Cymodocea nodosa near a volcanic CO2 vent on the Island of Vulcano, Italy, where pH values decreased from 8.1 to 7.3 and pCO2 concentrations increased ten-fold. We observed similar responses in two estuarine species, Ruppia maritima and Potamogeton perfoliatus, in in situ Free-Ocean-Carbon-Enrichment experiments conducted in tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay, USA. These responses are strikingly different than those exhibited by terrestrial plants. The loss of phenolic substances may explain the higher-than-usual rates of grazing observed near undersea CO2 vents and suggests that ocean acidification may alter coastal carbon fluxes by affecting rates of decomposition, grazing, and disease. Our observations temper recent predictions that seagrasses would necessarily be "winners" in a high CO2 world.

Responsibility and Well-Being: Resource Integration Under Responsibilization in Expert Services

Responsibilization, or the shift of functions and risks from providers and producers to consumers, has become an increasingly common policy in service systems and marketplaces (e.g., financial, health, governmental). As responsibilization is often considered synonymous with consumer agency and well-being, the authors take a transformative service research perspective and draw on resource integration literature to investigate whether responsibilization is truly associated with well-being. The authors focus on expert services, for which responsibilization concerns are particularly salient, and question whether this expanding policy is in the public interest. In the process, they develop a conceptualization of resource integration under responsibilization that includes three levels of actors (consumer, provider, and service system), the identification of structural tensions to resource integration, and three categories of resource integration practices (access, appropriation, and management) necessary to negotiate responsibilization. The findings have important implications for health care providers, public and institutional policy makers, and other service systems, all of which must pay more active attention to the challenges consumers face in negotiating responsibilization and the resulting well-being outcomes.

Responsibility and Well-being: Resource Integration under Responsibilization in Expert Services

Responsibilization, or the shift in functions and risks from providers and producers to the consumer, has become an increasingly common policy in service systems and marketplaces (e.g., financial, health, governmental). Responsibilization is often presented as synonymous with consumer agency and well-being. We take a transformative service research perspective and utilize the resource integration framework to investigate whether responsibilization is truly associated with well-being. We focus on expert services, where responsibilization concerns are particularly salient, and question whether this expanding policy is in the public interest. In the process, we develop a conceptualization of resource integration under responsibilization that includes three levels of actors (consumer, provider and service system), the identification of structural tensions to resource integration and three categories of resource integration practices (access, appropriation and management) necessary to negotiate responsibilization. Our findings have important implications for health care providers, public policy makers, and other service systems, all of which must pay more active attention to the challenges consumers face in negotiating responsibilization and the resulting well-being outcomes.

Décentralisation et allocation des ressources : les détours de la municipalisation du système de santé brésilien.

Dans cette thèse, nous avons analysé le déroulement d’un processus de municipalisation du système de santé, effectué au Rio Grande do Norte (RN), un des états fédérés du nord-est du Brésil. En tenant compte des contextes historiques d’implantation, nous avons centré notre attention sur la contribution des acteurs impliqués dans ce processus, spécialement dans l’allocation des ressources financières du système. Les croyances, perceptions, attentes, représentations, connaissances, intérêts, l’ensemble des facteurs qui contribuent à la constitution des capacités cognitives de ces acteurs, favorise la réflexivité sur leurs actions et la définition de stratégies diverses de façon à poursuivre leurs objectifs dans le système de santé. Ils sont vus ainsi comme des agents compétents et réflexifs, capables de s’approprier des propriétés structurelles du système de santé (règles et ressources), de façon à prendre position dans l’espace social de ce système pour favoriser le changement ou la permanence du statu quo. Au cours du processus de structuration du Système unique de santé brésilien, le SUS, la municipalisation a été l’axe le plus développé d’un projet de réforme de la santé. Face aux contraintes contextuelles et de la dynamique complexe des espaces sociaux de la santé, les acteurs réformistes n’ont pas pu suivre le chemin de l’utopie idéalisée; quelques détours ont été parcourus. Au RN, la municipalisation de la santé a constitué un processus très complexe où la triade centralisation/décentralisation/recentralisation a suivi son cours au milieu de négociations, de conflits, d’alliances, de disputes, de coopérations, de compétitions. Malgré les contraintes des contextes successifs, des propriétés structurelles du système et des dynamiques sociales dans le système de santé, quelques changements sont intervenus : la construction de leaderships collectifs; l’émergence d’une culture de négociation; la création des structures et des espaces sociaux du système, favorisant les rencontres des acteurs dans chaque municipalité et au niveau de l’état fédéré; un apprentissage collectif sur le processus de structuration du SUS; une grande croissance des services de première ligne permettant d’envisager une inversion de tendance du modèle de prestation des services; les premiers pas vers la rupture avec la culture bureaucratique du système. Le SUS reste prisonnier de quelques enjeux institutionnalisés dans ce système de santé : la dépendance du secteur privé et de quelques groupes de professionnels; le financement insuffisant et instable; la situation des ressources humaines. Les changements arrivés sont convergents, incrémentiels, lents; ils résultent d’actions normatives, délibérées, formalisées. Elles aussi sont issues de l’inattendu, de l’informel, du paradoxe; quelques-unes plus localisées, d’autres plus généralisées, pour une courte ou une plus longue durée.

Modelling and Mining To Manage

In this talk, I will describe various computational modelling and data mining solutions that form the basis of how the office of Deputy Head of Department (Resources) works to serve you. These include lessons I learn about, and from, optimisation issues in resource allocation, uncertainty analysis on league tables, modelling the process of winning external grants, and lessons we learn from student satisfaction surveys, some of which I have attempted to inject into our planning processes.

Perceptions of European medical staff on the facilitators and barriers to physical closeness between parents and infants in neonatal units

AIM: Studies have provided insights into factors that may facilitate or inhibit parent-infant closeness in neonatal units, but none have specifically focused on the perspectives of senior neonatal staff. The aim of this study was to explore perceptions and experiences of consultant neonatologists and senior nurses in five European countries with regard to these issues. METHODS: Six small group discussions and three one-to-one interviews were conducted with 16 consultant neonatologists and senior nurses representing nine neonatal units from Estonia, Finland, Norway, Spain and Sweden. The interviews explored facilitators and barriers to parent-infant closeness and implications for policy and practice and thematic analysis was undertaken. RESULTS: Participants highlighted how a humanising care agenda that enabled parent-infant closeness was an aspiration, but pointed out that neonatal units were at different stages in achieving this. The facilitators and barriers to physical closeness included socio-economic factors, cultural norms, the designs of neonatal units, resource issues, leadership, staff attitudes and practices and relationships between staff and parents. CONCLUSION: Various factors affected parent-infant closeness in neonatal units in European countries. There needs to be the political motivation, appropriate policy planning, legislation and resource allocation to increase measures that support closeness agendas in neonatal units. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Essays in International Finance and Macroeconomics

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Trust, confidence, and equity affect the legitimacy of natural resource governance

Social-ecological systems are often highly complex, making effective governance a considerable challenge. In large, heterogeneous systems, hierarchical institutional regimes may be efficient, but effective management outcomes are dependent on stakeholder support. This support is shaped by perceptions of legitimacy, which risks being undermined where resource users are not engaged in decision-making. Although legitimacy is demonstrably critical for effective governance, less is known about the factors contributing to stakeholders’ perceptions of legitimacy or how these perceptions are socially differentiated. We quantitatively assessed stakeholder perceptions of legitimacy (indicated by support for rules) and their contributory factors among 307 commercial fishers and tourism operators in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Legitimacy was most strongly associated with trust in information from governing bodies, followed by confidence in institutional performance and the equity of management outcomes. Legitimacy differed both within and among resource user groups, which emphasizes the heterogeneous nature of commonly defined stakeholder groups. Overall, tourism operators perceived higher legitimacy than did commercial fishers, which was associated with higher trust in information from management agencies. For fishers, higher levels of trust were associated with: (1) engagement in fisheries that had high subsector cohesion and positive previous experiences of interactions with governing bodies; (2) location in areas with greater proximity to sources of knowledge, resources, and decision-making; and (3) engagement in a Reef Guardian program. These findings highlight the necessity of strategies and processes to build trust among all user groups in large social-ecological systems such as the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Furthermore, the social differentiation of perceptions that were observed within user groups underscores the importance of targeted strategies to engage groups that may not be heard through traditional governance channels.

Discrete-event Simulation and Optimization to Improve the Performance of a Healthcare System

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

A Research of Resource Scheduling Algorithm Based on Hadoop

With the development of electronic devices, more and more mobile clients are connected to the Internet and they generate massive data every day. We live in an age of “Big Data”, and every day we generate hundreds of million magnitude data. By analyzing the data and making prediction, we can carry out better development plan. Unfortunately, traditional computation framework cannot meet the demand, so the Hadoop would be put forward. First the paper introduces the background and development status of Hadoop, compares the MapReduce in Hadoop 1.0 and YARN in Hadoop 2.0, and analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of them. Because the resource management module is the core role of YARN, so next the paper would research about the resource allocation module including the resource management, resource allocation algorithm, resource preemption model and the whole resource scheduling process from applying resource to finishing allocation. Also it would introduce the FIFO Scheduler, Capacity Scheduler, and Fair Scheduler and compare them. The main work has been done in this paper is researching and analyzing the Dominant Resource Fair algorithm of YARN, putting forward a maximum resource utilization algorithm based on Dominant Resource Fair algorithm. The paper also provides a suggestion to improve the unreasonable facts in resource preemption model. Emphasizing “fairness” during resource allocation is the core concept of Dominant Resource Fair algorithm of YARM. Because the cluster is multiple users and multiple resources, so the user’s resource request is multiple too. The DRF algorithm would divide the user’s resources into dominant resource and normal resource. For a user, the dominant resource is the one whose share is highest among all the request resources, others are normal resource. The DRF algorithm requires the dominant resource share of each user being equal. But for these cases where different users’ dominant resource amount differs greatly, emphasizing “fairness” is not suitable and can’t promote the resource utilization of the cluster. By analyzing these cases, this thesis puts forward a new allocation algorithm based on DRF. The new algorithm takes the “fairness” into consideration but not the main principle. Maximizing the resource utilization is the main principle and goal of the new algorithm. According to comparing the result of the DRF and new algorithm based on DRF, we found that the new algorithm has more high resource utilization than DRF. The last part of the thesis is to install the environment of YARN and use the Scheduler Load Simulator (SLS) to simulate the cluster environment.

Impact of Thresholds and Load Patterns when Executing HPC Applications with Cloud Elasticity

Elasticity is one of the most known capabilities related to cloud computing, being largely deployed reactively using thresholds. In this way, maximum and minimum limits are used to drive resource allocation and deallocation actions, leading to the following problem statements: How can cloud users set the threshold values to enable elasticity in their cloud applications? And what is the impact of the application’s load pattern in the elasticity? This article tries to answer these questions for iterative high performance computing applications, showing the impact of both thresholds and load patterns on application performance and resource consumption. To accomplish this, we developed a reactive and PaaS-based elasticity model called AutoElastic and employed it over a private cloud to execute a numerical integration application. Here, we are presenting an analysis of best practices and possible optimizations regarding the elasticity and HPC pair. Considering the results, we observed that the maximum threshold influences the application time more than the minimum one. We concluded that threshold values close to 100% of CPU load are directly related to a weaker reactivity, postponing resource reconfiguration when its activation in advance could be pertinent for reducing the application runtime.

Exergetic, energetic, economic and environmental evaluation of concentrated solar power plants in Libya

The PhD project addresses the potential of using concentrating solar power (CSP) plants as a viable alternative energy producing system in Libya. Exergetic, energetic, economic and environmental analyses are carried out for a particular type of CSP plants. The study, although it aims a particular type of CSP plant – 50 MW parabolic trough-CSP plant, it is sufficiently general to be applied to other configurations. The novelty of the study, in addition to modeling and analyzing the selected configuration, lies in the use of a state-of-the-art exergetic analysis combined with the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The modeling and simulation of the plant is carried out in chapter three and they are conducted into two parts, namely: power cycle and solar field. The computer model developed for the analysis of the plant is based on algebraic equations describing the power cycle and the solar field. The model was solved using the Engineering Equation Solver (EES) software; and is designed to define the properties at each state point of the plant and then, sequentially, to determine energy, efficiency and irreversibility for each component. The developed model has the potential of using in the preliminary design of CSPs and, in particular, for the configuration of the solar field based on existing commercial plants. Moreover, it has the ability of analyzing the energetic, economic and environmental feasibility of using CSPs in different regions of the world, which is illustrated for the Libyan region in this study. The overall feasibility scenario is completed through an hourly analysis on an annual basis in chapter Four. This analysis allows the comparison of different systems and, eventually, a particular selection, and it includes both the economic and energetic components using the “greenius” software. The analysis also examined the impact of project financing and incentives on the cost of energy. The main technological finding of this analysis is higher performance and lower levelized cost of electricity (LCE) for Libya as compared to Southern Europe (Spain). Therefore, Libya has the potential of becoming attractive for the establishment of CSPs in its territory and, in this way, to facilitate the target of several European initiatives that aim to import electricity generated by renewable sources from North African and Middle East countries. The analysis is presented a brief review of the current cost of energy and the potential of reducing the cost from parabolic trough- CSP plant. Exergetic and environmental life cycle assessment analyses are conducted for the selected plant in chapter Five; the objectives are 1) to assess the environmental impact and cost, in terms of exergy of the life cycle of the plant; 2) to find out the points of weakness in terms of irreversibility of the process; and 3) to verify whether solar power plants can reduce environmental impact and the cost of electricity generation by comparing them with fossil fuel plants, in particular, Natural Gas Combined Cycle (NGCC) plant and oil thermal power plant. The analysis also targets a thermoeconomic analysis using the specific exergy costing (SPECO) method to evaluate the level of the cost caused by exergy destruction. The main technological findings are that the most important contribution impact lies with the solar field, which reports a value of 79%; and the materials with the vi highest impact are: steel (47%), molten salt (25%) and synthetic oil (21%). The “Human Health” damage category presents the highest impact (69%) followed by the “Resource” damage category (24%). In addition, the highest exergy demand is linked to the steel (47%); and there is a considerable exergetic demand related to the molten salt and synthetic oil with values of 25% and 19%, respectively. Finally, in the comparison with fossil fuel power plants (NGCC and Oil), the CSP plant presents the lowest environmental impact, while the worst environmental performance is reported to the oil power plant followed by NGCC plant. The solar field presents the largest value of cost rate, where the boiler is a component with the highest cost rate among the power cycle components. The thermal storage allows the CSP plants to overcome solar irradiation transients, to respond to electricity demand independent of weather conditions, and to extend electricity production beyond the availability of daylight. Numerical analysis of the thermal transient response of a thermocline storage tank is carried out for the charging phase. The system of equations describing the numerical model is solved by using time-implicit and space-backward finite differences and which encoded within the Matlab environment. The analysis presented the following findings: the predictions agree well with the experiments for the time evolution of the thermocline region, particularly for the regions away from the top-inlet. The deviations observed in the near-region of the inlet are most likely due to the high-level of turbulence in this region due to the localized level of mixing resulting; a simple analytical model to take into consideration this increased turbulence level was developed and it leads to some improvement of the predictions; this approach requires practically no additional computational effort and it relates the effective thermal diffusivity to the mean effective velocity of the fluid at each particular height of the system. Altogether the study indicates that the selected parabolic trough-CSP plant has the edge over alternative competing technologies for locations where DNI is high and where land usage is not an issue, such as the shoreline of Libya.