Anytime algorithms exchange execution time for quality of results [8]. Anytime algorithms can be executed in two modes: either by being given a contract time (a set amount of time to execute), or an interruptible method. To improve the solution, anytime algorithms can be continued after they have halted. Instead of correctness, an anytime algorithm returns a result with a “quality measure” whic...

A contract algorithm is an algorithm which is given, as part of its input, a specified amount of allowable computation time. In contrast, interruptible algorithms may be interrupted throughout their execution, at which point they must report their current solution. Simulating interruptible algorithms by means of schedules of executions of contract algorithms in parallel processors is a wellstud...

The rigorous and comprehensive verification of communication-based software is an important engineering challenge in distributed systems. Drawn from our industrial collaborations [32,35,26] on Scribble, a choreography description language based on multiparty session types, this paper proposes a dynamic verification framework for structured interruptible conversation programming. We first presen...

Disclination lines in nematic liquid crystals can be used as "soft rails" for the transport of colloids or droplets through microfluidic channels [A. Sengupta, C. Bahr and S. Herminghaus, Soft Matter, 2013, 9, 7251]. In the present study we report on a method to connect and disconnect disclination lines in microfluidic channels using the interplay between anchoring, flow, and electric field. We...

With today’s demands for continuous availability of mission-critical databases, on-line reorganization is a necessity. In this paper we present a new on-Iine reorganization algorithm which defers secondary index updates and piggybacks them with user transactions. In addition to the significant reduction of the total I/O cost, the algorithm also assures that almost all the database is available ...

This paper investigates the integration of the employee timetabling and production scheduling problems. At the first level, we manage a classical employee timetabling problem. At the second level, we aim at supplying a feasible production schedule for a set of interruptible tasks with qualification requirements and time-windows. Instead of hierarchically solving these two problems as in the cur...

This paper discusses to which extent the concept of anytime algorithms can be applied to parsing algorithms with feature uni cation We rst try to give a more precise de nition of what an anytime algorithm is We argue that parsing algorithms have to be classi ed as contract algorithms as opposed to truly interruptible algorithms With the restriction that the transaction being active at the time ...

The success that banks have had deploying remote deposit capture has been tremendous over the past few years. The ability to decrease manual handling of checks and increases deposit breadth has certainly been a positive in what otherwise has not been the greatest of times in the banking community. However, as with any success along comes scrutiny. Echoes from the halls of Congress of not enough...

Production of nursery crops in the US is accomplished in containerand field-growing conditions, with propagation and seedling-rearing carried out in greenhouses; 11% of the US national farm-product is represented by these crops. Container-grown crops represent 60% of the US market and represent a highly labor-intensive and thus costly segment of ornamental crop production. The USDA, NASA and th...