Feasibility of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy for the study of the temporal distribution of trace elements trapped in snow collected from greater himalayan range

The potential merit of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has been demonstrated for detection and quantification of trace pollutants trapped in snow/ice samples. In this technique, a high-power pulsed laser beam from Nd:YAG Laser (Model no. Surelite III-10, Continuum, Santa Clara, CA, USA) is focused on the surface of the target to generate plasma. The characteristic emissions from laser-generated plasma are collected and recorded by a fiber-coupled LIBS 2000+ (Ocean Optics, Santa Clara, CA, USA) spectrometer. The fingerprint of the constituents present in the sample is obtained by analyzing the spectral lines by using OOI LIBS software. Reliable detection of several elements like Zn, Al, Mg, Fe, Ca, C, N, H, and O in snow/ice samples collected from different locations (elevation) of Manali and several snow samples collected from the Greater Himalayan region (from a cold lab in Manali, India) in different months has been demonstrated. The calibration curve approach has been adopted for the quantitative analysis of these elements like Zn, Al, Fe, and Mg. Our results clearly demonstrate that the level of contamination is higher in those samples that were collected in the month of January in comparison to those collected in February and March.

Runtime dependence computation and execution of loops on heterogeneous systems

GPUs have been used for parallel execution of DOALL loops. However, loops with indirect array references can potentially cause cross iteration dependences which are hard to detect using existing compilation techniques. Applications with such loops cannot easily use the GPU and hence do not benefit from the tremendous compute capabilities of GPUs. In this paper, we present an algorithm to compute at runtime the cross iteration dependences in such loops. The algorithm uses both the CPU and the GPU to compute the dependences. Specifically, it effectively uses the compute capabilities of the GPU to quickly collect the memory accesses performed by the iterations by executing the slice functions generated for the indirect array accesses. Using the dependence information, the loop iterations are levelized such that each level contains independent iterations which can be executed in parallel. Another interesting aspect of the proposed solution is that it pipelines the dependence computation of the future level with the actual computation of the current level to effectively utilize the resources available in the GPU. We use NVIDIA Tesla C2070 to evaluate our implementation using benchmarks from Polybench suite and some synthetic benchmarks. Our experiments show that the proposed technique can achieve an average speedup of 6.4x on loops with a reasonable number of cross iteration dependences.

Mechanism design for time critical and cost critical task execution via crowdsourcing

An exciting application of crowdsourcing is to use social networks in complex task execution. In this paper, we address the problem of a planner who needs to incentivize agents within a network in order to seek their help in executing an atomic task as well as in recruiting other agents to execute the task. We study this mechanism design problem under two natural resource optimization settings: (1) cost critical tasks, where the planner's goal is to minimize the total cost, and (2) time critical tasks, where the goal is to minimize the total time elapsed before the task is executed. We identify a set of desirable properties that should ideally be satisfied by a crowdsourcing mechanism. In particular, sybil-proofness and collapse-proofness are two complementary properties in our desiderata. We prove that no mechanism can satisfy all the desirable properties simultaneously. This leads us naturally to explore approximate versions of the critical properties. We focus our attention on approximate sybil-proofness and our exploration leads to a parametrized family of payment mechanisms which satisfy collapse-proofness. We characterize the approximate versions of the desirable properties in cost critical and time critical domain.

CUDA-for-clusters: a system for efficient execution of CUDA kernels on multi-core clusters

Rapid advancements in multi-core processor architectures coupled with low-cost, low-latency, high-bandwidth interconnects have made clusters of multi-core machines a common computing resource. Unfortunately, writing good parallel programs that efficiently utilize all the resources in such a cluster is still a major challenge. Various programming languages have been proposed as a solution to this problem, but are yet to be adopted widely to run performance-critical code mainly due to the relatively immature software framework and the effort involved in re-writing existing code in the new language. In this paper, we motivate and describe our initial study in exploring CUDA as a programming language for a cluster of multi-cores. We develop CUDA-For-Clusters (CFC), a framework that transparently orchestrates execution of CUDA kernels on a cluster of multi-core machines. The well-structured nature of a CUDA kernel, the growing popularity, support and stability of the CUDA software stack collectively make CUDA a good candidate to be considered as a programming language for a cluster. CFC uses a mixture of source-to-source compiler transformations, a work distribution runtime and a light-weight software distributed shared memory to manage parallel executions. Initial results on running several standard CUDA benchmark programs achieve impressive speedups of up to 7.5X on a cluster with 8 nodes, thereby opening up an interesting direction of research for further investigation.

Third order trace formula

In J. Funct. Anal. 257 (2009) 1092-1132, Dykema and Skripka showed the existence of higher order spectral shift functions when the unperturbed self-adjoint operator is bounded and the perturbation is Hilbert-Schmidt. In this article, we give a different proof for the existence of spectral shift function for the third order when the unperturbed operator is self-adjoint (bounded or unbounded, but bounded below).

Geochemical behaviour of dissolved trace elements in a monsoon-dominated tropical river basin, Southwestern India

The study presents a 3-year time series data on dissolved trace elements and rare earth elements (REEs) in a monsoon-dominated river basin, the Nethravati River in tropical Southwestern India. The river basin lies on the metamorphic transition boundary which separates the Peninsular Gneiss and Southern Granulitic province belonging to Archean and Tertiary-Quaternary period (Western Dharwar Craton). The basin lithology is mainly composed of granite gneiss, charnockite and metasediment. This study highlights the importance of time series data for better estimation of metal fluxes and to understand the geochemical behaviour of metals in a river basin. The dissolved trace elements show seasonality in the river water metal concentrations forming two distinct groups of metals. First group is composed of heavy metals and minor elements that show higher concentrations during dry season and lesser concentrations during the monsoon season. Second group is composed of metals belonging to lanthanides and actinides with higher concentration in the monsoon and lower concentrations during the dry season. Although the metal concentration of both the groups appears to be controlled by the discharge, there are important biogeochemical processes affecting their concentration. This includes redox reactions (for Fe, Mn, As, Mo, Ba and Ce) and pH-mediated adsorption/desorption reactions (for Ni, Co, Cr, Cu and REEs). The abundance of Fe and Mn oxyhydroxides as a result of redox processes could be driving the geochemical redistribution of metals in the river water. There is a Ce anomaly (Ce/Ce*) at different time periods, both negative and positive, in case of dissolved phase, whereas there is positive anomaly in the particulate and bed sediments. The Ce anomaly correlates with the variations in the dissolved oxygen indicating the redistribution of Ce between particulate and dissolved phase under acidic to neutral pH and lower concentrations of dissolved organic carbon. Unlike other tropical and major world rivers, the effect of organic complexation on metal variability is negligible in the Nethravati River water.

DEFINING alpha-HELIX GEOMETRY BY C-alpha ATOM TRACE vs (phi-psi) TORSION ANGLES: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

A regular secondary structure is described by a well defined set of values for the backbone dihedral angles (phi,psi and omega) in a polypeptide chain. However in real protein structures small local variations give rise to distortions from the ideal structures, which can lead to considerable variation in higher order organization. Protein structure analysis and accurate assignment of various structural elements, especially their terminii, are important first step in protein structure prediction and design. Various algorithms are available for assigning secondary structure elements in proteins but some lacunae still exist. In this study, results of a recently developed in-house program ASSP have been compared with those from STRIDE, in identification of alpha-helical regions in both globular and membrane proteins. It is found that, while a combination of hydrogen bond patterns and backbone torsional angles (phi-psi) are generally used to define secondary structure elements, the geometry of the C-alpha atom trace by itself is sufficient to define the parameters of helical structures in proteins. It is also possible to differentiate the various helical structures by their C-alpha trace and identify the deviations occurring both at mid-positions as well as at the terminii of alpha-helices, which often lead to occurrence of 3(10) and pi-helical fragments in both globular and membrane proteins.

Trace Formulae for Curvature of Jet Bundles over Planar Domains

For a domain Omega in C and an operator T in B-n(Omega), Cowen and Douglas construct a Hermitian holomorphic vector bundle E-T over Omega corresponding to T. The Hermitian holomorphic vector bundle E-T is obtained as a pull-back of the tautological bundle S(n, H) defined over by Gr(n, H) a nondegenerate holomorphic map z bar right arrow ker(T - z), z is an element of Omega. To find the answer to the converse, Cowen and Douglas studied the jet bundle in their foundational paper. The computations in this paper for the curvature of the jet bundle are rather intricate. They have given a set of invariants to determine if two rank n Hermitian holomorphic vector bundle are equivalent. These invariants are complicated and not easy to compute. It is natural to expect that the equivalence of Hermitian holomorphic jet bundles should be easier to characterize. In fact, in the case of the Hermitian holomorphic jet bundle J(k)(L-f), we have shown that the curvature of the line bundle L-f completely determines the class of J(k)(L-f). In case of rank Hermitian holomorphic vector bundle E-f, We have calculated the curvature of jet bundle J(k)(E-f) and also obtained a trace formula for jet bundle J(k)(E-f).

Trace Formulae in Operator Theory

In this article, we survey several kinds of trace formulas that one encounters in the theory of single and multi-variable operators. We give some sketches of the proofs, often based on the principle of finite-dimensional approximations to the objects at hand in the formulas.

Diez años de investigación sobre teatro traducido en España: el proyecto TRACE y los archivos de censura

[EN] This contribution offers a brief overview of research undertaken for the last few years under the TRACE (translation and censorship, or censored translations) project with respect to theatre. The AGA (General Administration Archive in Alcala de Henares, Madrid), a unique source for information for translation scholars, has become the focus of TRACE-theatre investigations on Francoist Spain in the last few years. In Spain, these censorship archives have proved to be an essential source of information, and a rich reservoir of data that, when explored in depth, help draw a history of Spanish theatre in translation. Contrary to what one may think at first, the purpose of using censorship archives in TRACE is not only to check what got censored (banned, crossed out or modified) but rather to trace back all written evidence left by plays that underwent the bureaucratic censoring process which was applied to all cultural manifestations, national or foreign, theatrical as well as non-dramatic. And it is precisely when tracing back censorship records that one finds a way to uncover a history of Spanish theatre in translation that is yet to be written but can now be outlined.

Presentación de la Base de Datos TRACE. (Traducciones censuradas Inglés-Español)

Eterio Pajares, Raquel Merino y José Miguel Santamaría (eds.)

La labor del equipo TRACE: metodología descriptiva de la censura en traducción

Raquel Merino Álvarez, José Miguel Santamaría, Eterio Pajares (eds.)

Traducciones (censuradas) de teatro inglés en la España de Franco. TRACE: Una perspectiva histórica

[ES] La historia del teatro traducido en la España del siglo XX está aún por escribirse. Este segmento de nuestra cultura traducida ha sido tradicionalmente ignorado en las historias del teatro español. Por suerte, lo que hace sólo veinte años se describía como un páramo investigador es hoy un terreno mucho mejor abonado y roturado. Las investigaciones sobre teatro traducido que han visto la luz progresivamente en estos años nos permitirán en breve escribir y documentar la historia del teatro traducido. Se ofrece en este artículo una visión del modo en que podría acometerse esa tarea,partiendo de lo ya investigado en el proyecto TRACE desde la perspectiva de lo archivado por la censura (de teatro) en la época de Franco.

Trace element concentrations in muscle tissue of the benthopelagic grenadier (Coryphaenoides armatus) from the Iberian deep-sea

11 specimens of Coryphaenoides armatus were collected at former dumping sites for radioactive material in the Iberian deep sea at a depth of 4700 m and their muscle tissue was analysed for four trace elements (copper, zinc, cadmium and lead) by differential pulse anodic stripping voltammetry (DPSAV). Concentrations of zinc were typical for fish muscle in general; copper content was somewhat higher than generally found in fish. The cadmium and lead contents were at a level found in fish from the open sea but the lead content of 2 specimens taken in area East-B was found to be higher.