A parallel future for Ocean research?

[EN] Today, science is difficult to pursue because funding is so tenuous. In such a financial climate, researchers need to consider parallel alternatives to ensure that scientific research can continue. Based on this thinking, we created BIOCEANSolutions, a company born of a research group. A great variety of environmental regulations and standards have emerged over recent years with the purpose of protecting natural ecosystems. These have enabled us to link our research to the market of environmental management. Marine activities can alter environmental conditions, resulting in changes in physiological states, species diversity, abundance, and biomass in the local biological communities. In this way, we can apply our knowledge, to plankton ecophysiology and biochemical oceanography. We measure enzyme activities as bio-indicators of energy metabolism and other physiological rates and biologic-oceanographic processes in marine organisms. This information provides insight into the health of marine communities, the stress levels of individual organisms, and potential anomalies that may be affecting them. In the process of verifying standards and complying with regulations, we can apply our analytic capability and knowledge. The main analyses that we offer are: (1) the activity of the electron transport system (ETS) or potential respiration (Φ), (2) the physiological measurement of respiration (oxygen consumption), (3) the activity of Isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH), (4) the respiratory CO2 production, and (5) the activity of Glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) and (6) the physiological measurement of ammonium excretion. In addition, our experience in a productive research group allows us to pursue and develop technical-experimental activities such as marine and freshwater aquaculture, oceanographic field sampling, as well as providing guidance, counseling, and academic services. In summary, this new company will permit us to create a symbiosis between public and private sectors that serve clients and will allow us to grow and expand as a research team.

The application of parallel processing methods to vibrational analysis

The trend in modal extraction algorithms is to use all the available frequency response functions data to obtain a global estimate of the natural frequencies, damping ratio and mode shapes. Improvements in transducer and signal processing technology allow the simultaneous measurement of many hundreds of channels of response data. The quantity of data available and the complexity of the extraction algorithms make considerable demands on the available computer power and require a powerful computer or dedicated workstation to perform satisfactorily. An alternative to waiting for faster sequential processors is to implement the algorithm in parallel, for example on a network of Transputers. Parallel architectures are a cost effective means of increasing computational power, and a larger number of response channels would simply require more processors. This thesis considers how two typical modal extraction algorithms, the Rational Fraction Polynomial method and the Ibrahim Time Domain method, may be implemented on a network of transputers. The Rational Fraction Polynomial Method is a well known and robust frequency domain 'curve fitting' algorithm. The Ibrahim Time Domain method is an efficient algorithm that 'curve fits' in the time domain. This thesis reviews the algorithms, considers the problems involved in a parallel implementation, and shows how they were implemented on a real Transputer network.

A single-code software model for multiphysics analysis-engine on parallel and distributed computers with the PHYSICA toolkit

Abstract not available

A list merging processor for inverted file information retrieval systems /

Originally presented as the author's thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.