Computer

PrePrint: Augmented Reading. Present and future of electronic scientific publications

Papers have traditionally been the most common tool to disseminate scientific knowledge. Today, technology advances as well as the new communication and social media possibilities are driving several exciting changes in the publication world. Also in the realm of scientific publications, the transition from the classical paper form to electronic manuscripts is quickly spreading in all scientific domains. In this paper we discuss how this can transition could be taken as an opportunity to further improve the traditional reading and learning experiences. We refer to the term “Augmented Reading” to identify a framework designed to pave the road to future electronic scientific publications by integrating different tools to facilitate and improve the transfer of knowledge from Authors to Readers.

PrePrint: Concurrent Average Memory Access Time

Concurrency is a common technique used in modern memory systems. However, the effectiveness of memory concurrency is application dependent. It varies largely from application to application and from implementation to implementation. Understanding and utilizing memory concurrency is a vital and timely task for data intensive applications. Traditional memory performance metrics, such as Average Memory Access Time (AMAT), are designed for sequential data accesses, and have inherent limitations in characterizing concurrency. In this study, we propose Concurrent Average Memory Access Time (C-AMAT) as an accurate metric for modern memory systems. C-AMAT has the ability to examine concurrent memory behavior and provides a quantitative performance measurement at both the component and system level of modern memory systems. First, the concept and formulation of C-AMAT is introduced. Then, several processor architecture and cache design choices, such as multiple issue pipeline, non-blocking cache, CMP, etc., are studied to validate the feasibility and validity of the C-AMAT metric. Finally, experimental results show some of the rules of thumb used in today’s industry are confirmed by C-AMAT as optimal design choices. C-AMAT is a good guide for design choices, while other conventional memory metrics often mislead in measurement when concurrency is present.

PrePrint: How Different Are Malware Collected Actively and Passively?

A new open-source tool chain with malware collection, detection, and analysis is presented, evaluated, and open sourced. It actively collects malware through two channels: web-links and peer-to-peer. Then it detects malware with multiple anti-virus scanners and analyzes their host and network activities on virtual machines. The evaluation shows the differences between the malware collected by the traditional passive honeypot approach and this active approach, in the aspects of distribution, timeliness, and degree of network and host activity, i.e., activeness. These two collections are quite distinct and disjoint. Among the 800 and 354 malware programs collected in one month actively and passively, respectively, 79% of the passively captured malware are active bots and 59% of the actively captured malware are passive Trojan horses. 16% of actively captured are zero-day malware, but no zero-day malware had been captured by the passive approach. Moreover, the passive approach receives mostly, 98%, malware with network behavior while the active approach collects both, i.e., 77% with network behavior and 23% with only host behavior or no action.

PrePrint: Software Considered Harmful: IO Systems for the Future of Storage

Emerging non-volatile storage technologies promise orders of magnitude bandwidth increases and latency reductions. These performance changes upset the relatively stable landscape of disk-based storage that has existed for the last forty years. Over that time, elegant and composable, but thick software layers have emerged to simplify and optimize accessing slow disk-based devices. As new technologies drive storage hardware latencies down, the relative cost of these thick software layers will become increasingly harmful to the performance of accessing fast non-volatile storage. This paper describes a series of prototype storage systems based on these memories, and describes three principles we employed to minimize software overheads while preserving compatibility with large portions of existing storage infrastructure (e.g., file systems). These principles are: Refactoring storage software and hardware to eliminate software bottlenecks, reducing and eliminating harmful software overheads where possible, and recycling existing components to maintain compatibility and reduce engineering costs. We have found that aggressively applying these optimizations leads to fast, flexible, and efficient NVM-based storage systems.

PrePrint: Web Information at Your Fingertips with a Paper Metaphor

There are two dominant web activities: browsing and searching. In the Hypertext-defined web universe, web publishers compose pages and hyperlinks, and users follow the Hypertext structure to consume information. Pointing and clicking served as a major interaction metaphor. On the other hand, users can only stay within the walled garden of whatever is defined by the publisher. If users want to visit a different website, they have to either remember the address or use a search engine such as Google or Bing to find related websites. With the adoption of touch-enabled tablet and mobile devices, we experimented new web interaction metaphors. The O system was implemented on iPad with an analogous paper-like metaphor as if iPad were a piece of paper with the finger acting as a highlight pen. Users can get enhanced web search results while browsing any web content with a paper-and-pen like fully integrated searching and browsing experience as demonstrated in the video snippet.

PrePrint: The Case for Validated Tools in Computing Education Research

Measuring student learning is fundamental to any educational endeavor. However, accurately and reliably measuring learning is often more easily said than done. It is an even greater challenge in fields, like computing, where standard valid instruments are not commonly available to educators and researchers. This article presents an argument for the importance of developing and using validated assessment tools in computing education. We provide an introduction to validity and present an overview of two prevalent epistemologies of validity theory. We also describe two case studies of instrument development and validation for discipline-specific measures in computing. We conclude with a discussion of new investigations that validated instruments could enable.

PrePrint: Learning Computing through Creating and Connecting

All young people should have opportunities to learn about computing. Together, creating interactive media (by programming) and connecting with others (as audience, collaborators, or advisors) form the basis of a powerful and meaningful approach to computing education. Teachers have an important role in making this type of learning opportunity accessible to a wide range of kids, but teachers need support to implement creative and social learning activities in formal learning environments. The Scratch and ScratchEd initiatives serve as central examples for supporting this approach to computing education in K-12 classrooms.

PrePrint: Electronic Personal Health Records and the Question of Privacy

Personal health records (PHRs), centralized places for consumers to electronically store, manage, and share their personal health information, offer new opportunities to help consumers manage their own health and health care. However, ensuring the privacy and confidentiality of health information contained within PHRs is challenging. This paper analyzes the major properties of existing PHR systems and identifies specific privacy and security issues with each type of PHR. It proposes a consumer-controlled privacy protection approach that includes high-minded privacy principles such as independent consent management, independent privacy and security audits, and regulatory compliance requirements. It further presents a consumer-controlled system architecture that embodies these principles in the web-based PHR system.

PrePrint: Empirical Evaluation of Internet Voting

Internet voting is a controversial subject with respect to both its security and its potential benefits. Because of the heated debate and prevailing concerns, there is little empirical evidence regarding the plusses and minuses of Internet voting. In this paper, we present the empirical results of one of the pioneering Internet voting systems, which was first introduced in 2004 in the Canton Zurich, Switzerland. The results are based on eleven tests conducted using this system over a three year test phase, where approximately 100’000 votes were cast over a representative region of the overall electorate of the Canton Zurich. The findings of this test provide important insights for realizing large-scale Internet voting.

PrePrint: The NVM Transformation of Client Storage

The introduction of solid state drives in mainstream systems is reshaping the client storage landscape. At the interface level, Serial ATA is giving way to PCI Express for higher bandwidth combined with lower latency, which is needed for high performance next generation NVM storage devices. At the storage system level, caching solutions are extending the benefits of NVM to a wider segment of users with a more affordable price point. In the market, this is taking the form of discrete HDD + small SSD as cache, or hybrid HDDs which include NVM on-board in the same package.

PrePrint: Review of New Memory Technology Development Status

As current major memory devices are approaching to the technical limit of scaling down, there is a growing interest of developing new memory devices such as phase-change random access memory (PRAM), magnetic RAM (MRAM), and resistive RAM (RRAM). They possess strong advantages over the conventional memory in terms of scalability, fast speed, and power consumption. Recent works reported outstanding results in view of mass production as well as feasibility for next-generation device. In this paper, we review the basic operation, current technology development status, and future direction of three new memory devices

PrePrint: The Current and Future State of NAND Flash Memory

NAND Flash memory, known for its fast performance, high IOPS, and low power consumption, has become the memory of choice for mobile applications such as smartphones and tablets. It is also replacing hard disk drives in many client and enterprise applications. In recent years, significant progress has been made in two-dimensional (2D) NAND Flash scaling by overcoming numerous challenges. Sub-20nm technology has already been established. However, further 2D NAND scalability faces considerable complexity. New technologies are on the horizon, with strong potential to replace 2D NAND Flash. Considering NAND’s unrivaled position among nonvolatile storage options, coupled with its low power consumption, NAND will be difficult to replace, and can be expected to retain its dominance as the nonvolatile memory of choice for the foreseeable future. This paper reviews the current state and future trends for NAND Flash in memory and systems management, with emphasis on reliability, performance, low power consumption, and high-speed I/O. It also addresses application-specific systems management to maintain reliability at the product level, and ongoing attention to reduced endurance as NAND Flash devices continue to scale down.

PrePrint: Impact of Persistent Random Access Memory on Software Systems

In the last decade, NAND-flash in the form of solid state drives has revolutionized the storage sub-system. With two orders of magnitude less latency compared to magnetic disks, SSDs have changed how applications perceive storage. Persistent random access memory technologies like phase change memory promise to create a similar revolution for the memory sub-system. PRAM promises to be byte-addressable, non-volatile and at the same time scalable to an order of magnitude better capacity when compared to DRAM. Additionally, it promises to work at a latency close to DRAM’s – atleast for reads. Researchers of various software systems fields have stepped up efforts to embrace this impending new technology. In this paper, we review the current state-of-the-art and comment on what the future holds. We start by reviewing how the storage technologies like filesystems and databases can exploit PRAM’s byte-addressability. We then review how virtual memory managers must evolve to exploit the non-volatility of PRAM. We describe these new models of using memory and storage systems via PRAM, and suggest future research directions. We conclude the paper by discussing some of the shortcomings of the new technology and how systems must evolve to tackle them early on. We draw these conclusions from our experience with building systems for flash.

PrePrint: Application Transparency: How and Why are Providers Manipulating Our Information?

In contrast to network neutrality, application transparency has so far received little scientific or media attention. Consequently, little is being done to ensure that Internet users understand how the information they receive may have been manipulated, let alone ensuring that they know whether they really are being given the information they asked for. We initiate a discussion of this problem by attempting a definition of application transparency, describing a categorization system for the reasons behind application manipulation, presenting and analysing some real-world examples of unexpected service behavior, and finally providing suggestions for achieving true application transparency.

PrePrint: Application Transparency: How and Why are Providers Manipulating Our Information?

PrePrint: Rapid Prototyping of Advanced Cloud-Based Systems

Deploying muti-tier business, retail, financial or social networks on the computing cloud is a complex, expensive and challenging task. While frameworks such as Software as a Service (SaaS) or Platform as a Service (PaaS) appear to offer a pathway to rapid deployment, on closer examination these approaches are both language-specific and architecture-specific, and often tied to a vendor through use of predefined application templates. The authors propose a new approach to constructing, deploying and optimizing complex cloud-based applications in a language-independent and vendor-neutral manner, allowing rapid prototyping of business applications in a manner that assists targeted performance optimization. The proposed approach, Cloud Component Model (CCM), relies on logical functional decomposition of the application, utilizing loosely coupled components in a manner that realizes the promise of the cloud, while freeing the design from the restrictive constraints of a particular programming style or architectural pattern. Our experience using a complex e-Commerce benchmark provides describes CCM's application and resulting benefits in terms of reduction in prototyping time, testing cost, and performance.

PrePrint: Enhanced IP: IPv4 with 64 Bit Addresses

This paper briefly surveys on IPv4, Carrier Grade NATs, and IPv6. Next, it introduces an extension to IPv4 called Enhanced IP (EnIP) that offers a solution to IPv4 address depletion. EnIP does not replace IPv4 but builds on top of it, attempting to maximize backward compatibility. EnIP is currently deployed between two nodes at the University of Maryland and the University of Delaware, connected via Internet 2. Applications such as http, samba, and ssh have been demonstrated between the two EnIP networks without modification of the software or routers in the path.

PrePrint: Smart Cities in China

Smart Cities, change the traditional production mode and lifestyle, enrich people's material and cultural life, and promote economic and social progress. This paper introduces the research from Digital Cities to Smart Cities, discusses major projects of Smart Cities in China, analyzes their theoretical basis, key technology and framework, reflects on existing problems, draws lessons, and makes suggestions and explores possible development in the future.

PrePrint: Understanding Blood-Flow Dynamics: Challenges in Visualization

Blood-flow velocity information can nowadays be obtained through imaging and simulation, providing time-varying volumetric vector-fields. The 4D blood-flow data contain valuable information for diagnosis, prognosis, and risk assessment of cardiovascular diseases, which currently form the leading cause of death worldwide. However, these complex blood-flow data are still rarely analyzed, because conventional inspection is insufficient to extract useful information. Therefore, comprehensive visualization techniques are necessary to effectively communicate the essential blood-flow dynamics. In recent years, the blood-flow application has gained interest in the visualization research field, and new techniques have been proposed to convey the complex hemodynamics. Still, many challenges remain in terms of the visualization and interaction. This work first describes the main applications, and the current blood-flow analysis process. Subsequently, we set out key challenges for blood-flow visualization research, and describe to what extent the challenges have been achieved in the state of the art in this field.

PrePrint: The Ultra-scale Visualization Climate Data Analysis Tools (UV-CDAT): Data Analysis and Visualization for Geoscience Data

To support interactive visualization and analysis of complex, large-scale climate data sets, UV-CDAT integrates a powerful set of scientific computing libraries and applications to foster more efficient knowledge discovery. Connected through a provenance framework, the UV-CDAT components can be loosely coupled for fast integration or tightly coupled for greater functionality and communication with other components. This framework addresses many challenges in interactive visual analysis of distributed large-scale data for the climate community.

PrePrint: Blindfolded Searching of Data via Secure Pattern Matching

The pervasive use of information technology in the past decade has given rise to several settings where it is desired to securely share data between different private organizations, law enforcement agencies, and state, local and international governments, while ensuring privacy of law-abiding citizens. Balancing security and privacy concerns with information sharing remains a top priority for several organizations. Secure pattern matching (SPM) can address some of the challenges facing sharing and searching such data. This paper surveys the state of the art in SPM protocols, providing clear technical descriptions and detailed performance comparisons thereof.

PrePrint: Providing Medical-Grade QoS for Real-Time M-Health Telemetry with Cellular Technology

We evaluate the the use of cellular communications mobile wireless healthcare by examining the implementation of an example wireless electrocardiogram application in a CDMA2000 1xEV-DO network. We endeavor to quantify "medical-grade" real-time quality of service in terms of data integrity and delay, and show how this might be achieved by designing a CDMA2000 protocol stack for wireless ECG.

PrePrint: Critical Control System Protection in the 21st Century: Threats and Solutions

Information systems, networks, and technologies have become an integral part of modern critical control systems that manage many of today’s critical infrastructures. The continuous operation, maintenance, and protection of critical infrastructures have become a high national priority for governments around the world because our society heavily depends on them for most of our daily activities (travel, power usage, banking transactions, telecommunications, etc) and safety. It is therefore critical that these infrastructures have to be protected from potential accidental incidents or cyberattacks. We present the fundamental architectural components of critical control systems which manage most critical infrastructures. We identify some of the vulnerabilities and threats to modern critical control systems followed by protection solutions that can be deployed to mitigate attacks exploiting these vulnerabilities.

PrePrint: Quantifying the impact of software

Software has become an integral part of many products over the last decades. In 2010 we started a series of columns in IEEE Software with the goal to develop a better quantitative understanding of the impact of software on different industries. The columns are written by industry insiders from companies like Honeywell, Microsoft, Oracle, Shell Oil, Fujitsu, Hitachi and Philips Electronics. A frame of reference is presented that allows comparing the impact of software on different companies and industries. Summarizing the results of the first 15 columns, we are able to propose new metrics such as “Compound Average Growth Rate” (CAGR) for software and “software mileage”. The data shows that software typically grows with 16 percent a year, doubling every 4 to 5 years. The CAGR data presented fall within a surprisingly small range. Software mileage captures the impact of size and volume of software in one ratio and starts to explain how relatively small software companies can dominate large industries. The limitations of the data is discussed and next steps are outlined.

PrePrint: Empirical Study of Renren - A Large-scale Online Social Network

The study of social networks has attracted much attention in the research community. With abundant data produced by online social applications, much effort has been devoted to mining their patterns. In this paper, we analyze the structural and evolutionary properties of Renren (http://www.renren.com/), a large-scale online social network website, and discuss potential applications. Our empirical results show that Renren exhibits exponentially truncated power law in degree distribution, and has a short average node distance. The network demonstrates temporal locality in the edge creation process, and follows a power law in the distribution of the longevity of the disconnected components.

PrePrint: The Future of Human-in-the-Loop Cyber-Physical Systems

Human-in-the-Loop Cyber-Physical-Systems (HiLCPS) is a challenging and very promising class of applications with immense potential of impacting daily lives of many people. HiLCPS systems measure cognitive activity through body and brain sensors, infer the intent through analysis on an embedded system, they then translate the intent into robot control signals influencing the physical environment by robotic actuators, where the effects are then again observed by the human as an input for new decisions -- closing the loop. This article overviews HiLCPS opportunities and design challenges from the view of 4 disciplines: embedded system design, brain-computer interface algorithm design, assistive robotics, and innovative networking. The article outlines a common design scheme unifying these disciplines.

PrePrint: The Next Challenge for Database Systems: to Satisfy Users

Database management systems are designed to handle large amounts of data as efficiently as possible. This means that every request and every piece of data is treated in the same best-effort manner, regardless of user expectations. Yet, the last few years have seen a consistent drive towards designing software (and hardware) that focuses on providing high Quality of Experience (QoE) to users. The focus is shifted from blind performance optimization into optimizing user satisfaction. This led to important changes in many areas of the software development industry. In this paper, we discuss how to provide high levels of QoE to database users. We present how to provide QoE by considering user-defined requirements. We describe the main types of execution-related requirements and present how to measure the QoE level the system provides. Experimental results obtained over two widely adopted DBMS (Oracle 11g and SQL Server 2008) prove the usefulness of proposed strategies.

PrePrint: Reflecting on the foundations and qualities of tangible interaction

In the past decade, the field of Tangible Interaction (TI) has gained significant interest. As a result, numerous systems, theories and frameworks have been developed with this vision in mind. This has led to various instantiations of TI that seem developed to make digital information tangible, rather than to optimally use and combine all important qualities of TI. We believe that TI has more to offer than what has been used advantageously so far. Therefore, this paper reflects on the foundations of TI and identifies three qualities of control and representation in TI based on existing systems, theories and frameworks.

PrePrint: Systems Biology Feedback (of the Collaborative Kind)

Modern, computationally-driven, interdisciplinary research demands close collaboration between individuals from many disciplines. Systems biology is one such interdisciplinary field, drawing on computational and experimental expertise to elucidate complex biological systems and processes. In our efforts to better understand the regulation of cell division in budding yeast, the development of a shared, project-specific style of communication became just as much a goal of the collaboration as the development of our models. Finding this common language for the collaboration helped us overcome cultural barriers, understand the nuances of each other’s work, and enhance the precision and interpretability of our models.

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