Instructional planning (IP) technology has begun to reach large online environments. However, many approaches rely on having centralized metadata structures about the learning objects (LOs). For dynamic open-ended learning environments (DOELEs), an approach is needed that does not rely on centralized structures such as prerequisite graphs that would need to be continually rewired as the LOs cha...

Structural control systems have shown the potential to effectively reduce the response of civil structures to a variety of loads including strong winds and earthquakes. However, current structural control systems necessitate the installation of a wired monitoring system to provide communication between a centralized controller and system sensors and actuators. As semi-active control systems con...

Wireless operators, in developed or emerging regions, must support triple-play service offerings as demanded by the market or mandated by regulatory bodies through so-called Universal Service Obligations (USOs). Since individual operators might face different constraints such as available spectrum licenses, technologies, cost structures or a low energy footprint, the EU FP7 CARrier grade wirele...

Unlike traditional wireless networks, characterized by the presence of last-mile, static and reliable infrastructures, Mobile ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) are dynamically formed by collections of mobile and static terminals that exchange data by enabling each other’s communication. Supporting multi-hop communication in a MANET is a challenging research area because it requires cooperation between d...

Performance of parallel processing systems is sensitive to various hardware and software overheads and contention for hardware and software resources. Hardware resources such as interconnection network and memory introduce communication contention and memory contention that could seriously impact overall system performance. Software resources include critical data structures maintained by appli...

The bypass paths and multiported register files in microprocessors serve as an implicit interconnect to communicate operand values between pipeline stages and multiple ALUs. Previous superscalar designs used centralized structures for this interconnect and do not scale with increasing ILP demands. In search of scalability, recent microprocessor designs in industry and academia reveal a trend to...

This work describes a distributed framework for routing path optimization in Optical Burst-Switched (OBS) networks that loosely mimics the foraging behaviour of ants observed in nature, which in the past has originated the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) metaheuristic. The framework consists of additional data structures stored at the nodes and of special control packets that traverse the network...

INTRODUCTION The extent of obesity prevention activities conducted by local health departments (LHDs) varies widely. The purpose of this qualitative study was to characterize how state obesity prevention program directors perceived the role of LHDs in obesity prevention and factors that impact LHDs' success in obesity prevention. METHODS From June 2011 through August 2011, we conducted 28 sem...

This paper uses simulations to identify what types of human influence are afforded by the flocking and swarming structures that emerge from Couzin’s bio-inspired model [4]. The goal is to allow a human to influence a decentralized agent collective without resorting to centralized human control. Evidence is provided that, when nominal agents use switching-based control to respond to human-guided...

Answering performance to business queries, mainly of aggregated nature, known as On-Line Analytical Processing queries, depends heavily on the proper selection of multidimensional structures, known as materialized subcubes or views. As user’s queries profiles change, these structures have to be recalibrated, once elected the new appropriated selection through a cube view selection algorithm. In...