In this paper, we study the problem of designing new mechanisms for selling reserved instances (also referred to as virtual machines) in cloud computing. Unlike the practice in today’s clouds in which users only have a few predefined options to reserve instances (i.e., either 1-year reservation or 3-year reservation), we allow users to reserve resources for any length and from any time point in...

R eserves are a state’s first line of defense in a ~fiscal crisis. In the late 1980s, they bought New England’s state policymakers valuable time in which to devise strategies for stabilizing their ,budgets. While the region’s state budgets are currently balanced, how well are its states reserved against possible future fiscal instability? In addressing this issue, one should consider both the d...

In this proposal, we introduce the reserved delivery subnetwork (RDS), a mechanism that can allow information service providers to deliver more consistent service to their customers without per flow resource reservation. In addition to service performance improvements, reserved delivery subnetworks can also provide protection against network resource attacks. Many applications such as web conte...

In this chapter, we illustrate benefits of thinking in terms of thread management techniques when using a centralized scheduler model along with interoperability of MPI and PThreads. This is facilitated through an exploration of thread placement strategies for an algorithm modeling radiative heat transfer with special attention to the 61 core. This algorithm plays a key role within the Uintah C...

At one extreme there are several instances of a single hospital working a scheme through its own secretary and treasurer; at the other, there is a scheme worked by a highly organised hospital council on which there are representatives of all the hospitals in the area, the City Corporation and various trade associations and public bodies. Between these two extremes many varieties of organisation...

There are many obstacles to the implementation of sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) in England and Wales as a viable alternative to conventional pipe systems. However, in Scotland these obstacles have been largely overcome and many SuDS schemes have been successfully implemented over the past decade. This paper will review SuDS in Scotland and compare the structure of the water companies nort...

A vast number of prioritization schemes have been developed to help conservation navigate tough decisions about the allocation of finite resources. However, the application of quantitative approaches to setting priorities in conservation frequently includes mistakes that can undermine their authors' intention to be more rigorous and scientific in the way priorities are established and resources...

Various coarse graining schemes have been proposed to speed up computer simulations of the motion within large biomolecules, which can contain hundreds of thousands of atoms. We point out here that there is a very natural way of doing this, using the rigid regions identified within a biomolecule as the coarse grain elements. Subsequently, computer resources can be concentrated on the flexible c...

P2P networks suffer from the free-riding problem, wherein users connect to the network only to use the resources, but do not donate any resources themselves. A popular approach to overcome this problem is to reward peers who share their resources, through payments. This has given a fresh lease of life to micropayments schemes, which are now being used in such networks. P2P Micropayment schemes ...