North Carolina State University

About: North Carolina State University is a education organization based out in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Thin film. The organization has 44161 authors who have published 101744 publications receiving 3456774 citations. The organization is also known as: NCSU & North Carolina State University at Raleigh.

A removal model for estimating detection probabilities from point-count surveys

Abstract: Use of point-count surveys is a popular method for collecting data on abundance and distribution of birds. However, analyses of such data often ignore potential differences in detection probability. We adapted a removal model to directly estimate detection probability during point-count surveys. The model assumes that singing frequency is a major factor influencing probability of detection when birds are surveyed using point counts. This may be appropriate for surveys in which most detections are by sound. The model requires counts to be divided into several time intervals. Point counts are often conducted for 10 min, where the number of birds recorded is divided into those first observed in the first 3 min, the subsequent 2 min, and the last 5 min. We developed a maximum-likelihood estimator for the detectability of birds recorded during counts divided into those intervals. This technique can easily be adapted to point counts divided into intervals of any length. We applied this method to unlimi...

Proactive fault tolerance for HPC with Xen virtualization

Abstract: Large-scale parallel computing is relying increasingly on clusters with thousands of processors. At such large counts of compute nodes, faults are becoming common place. Current techniques to tolerate faults focus on reactive schemes to recover from faults and generally rely on a checkpoint/restart mechanism. Yet, in today's systems, node failures can often be anticipated by detecting a deteriorating health status.Instead of a reactive scheme for fault tolerance (FT), we are promoting a proactive one where processes automatically migrate from "unhealthy" nodes to healthy ones. Our approach relies on operating system virtualization techniques exemplified by but not limited to Xen. This paper contributes an automatic and transparent mechanism for proactive FT for arbitrary MPI applications. It leverages virtualization techniques combined with health monitoring and load-based migration. We exploit Xen's live migration mechanism for a guest operating system (OS) to migrate an MPI task from a health-deteriorating node to a healthy one without stopping the MPI task during most of the migration. Our proactive FT daemon orchestrates the tasks of health monitoring, load determination and initiation of guest OS migration. Experimental results demonstrate that live migration hides migration costs and limits the overhead to only a few seconds making it an attractive approach to realize FT in HPC systems. Overall, our enhancements make proactive FT a valuable asset for long-running MPI application that is complementary to reactive FT using full checkpoint/restart schemes since checkpoint frequencies can be reduced as fewer unanticipated failures are encountered. In the context of OS virtualization, we believe that this is the first comprehensive study of proactive fault tolerance where live migration is actually triggered by health monitoring.

Intestinal short-chain fatty acids alter Salmonella typhimurium invasion gene expression and virulence through BarA/SirA

Abstract: Salmonella typhimurium causes enteric and systemic disease by invading the intestinal epithelium of the distal ileum, a process requiring the invasion genes of Salmonella pathogenicity island 1 (SPI-1). BarA, a sensor kinase postulated to interact with the response regulator SirA, is required for the expression of SPI-1 invasion genes. We found, however, that a barA null mutation had little effect on virulence using the mouse model for septicaemia. This confounding result led us to seek environmental signals present in the distal ileum that might supplant the need for BarA. We found that acetate restored the expression of invasion genes in the barA mutant, but had no effect on a sirA mutant. Acetate had its effect only at a pH that allowed its accumulation within the bacterial cytoplasm and not with the deletion of ackA and pta, the two genes required to produce acetyl-phosphate. These results suggest that the rising concentration of acetate in the distal ileum provides a signal for invasion gene expression by the production of acetyl-phosphate in the bacterial cytoplasm, a pathway that bypasses barA. We also found that a Delta(ackA-pta) mutation alone had no effect on virulence but, in combination with Delta(barA), it increased the oral LD50 24-fold. Thus, the combined loss of the BarA- and acetate-dependent pathways is required to reduce virulence. Two other short-chain fatty acids (SCFA), propionate and butyrate, present in high concentrations in the caecum and colon, had effects opposite to those of acetate: neither restored invasion gene expression in the barA mutant, and both, in fact, reduced expression in the wild-type strain. Further, a combination of SCFAs found in the distal ileum restored invasion gene expression in the barA mutant, whereas colonic conditions failed to do so and also reduced expression in the wild-type strain. These results suggest that the concentration and composition of SCFAs in the distal ileum provide a signal for productive infection by Salmonella, whereas those of the large intestine inhibit invasion.

A Social Semantics for Agent Communication Languages

Abstract: The ability to communicate is one of the salient properties of agents. Although a number of agent communication languages (ACLs) have been developed, obtaining a suitable formal semantics for ACLs remains one of the greatest challenges of multiagent systems theory. Previous semantics have largely been mentalistic in their orientation and are based solely on the beliefs and intentions of the participating agents. Such semantics are not suitable for most multiagent applications, which involve autonomous and heterogeneous agents, whose beliefs and intentions cannot be uniformly determined. Accordingly, we present a social semantics for ACLs that gives primacy to the interactions among the agents. Our semantics is based on social commitments and is developed in temporal logic. This semantics, because of its public orientation, is essential to providing a rigorous basis for multiagent protocols.

A review of 3-D packaging technology

Abstract: This paper reviews the state-of-the-art in three-dimensional (3-D) packaging technology for very large scale integration (VLSI). A number of bare dice and multichip module (MCM) stacking technologies are emerging to meet the ever increasing demands for low power consumption, low weight and compact portable systems. Vertical interconnect techniques are reviewed in detail. Technical issues such as silicon efficiency, complexity, thermal management, interconnection density, speed, power etc. are critical in the choice of 3-D stacking technology, depending on the target application, and are briefly discussed.