In a conventional client-server database system (CSDBS), a transaction and its requisite data have to be colocated at a single site for the operation to proceed. This has traditionally been achieved by moving either the data or the transaction. Today, the availability of powerful workstations and high-bandwidth networking options has led users to expect real-time guarantees about the completion...

A number of industrial applications advocate the use of time triggered approaches for reasons of predictability, cost, product reuse, and maintenance. The rigid offline scheduling schemes used for time triggered systems, however, do not provide for flexibility. At runtime, aperiodic tasks can only be included into the unused resources of the offline schedule, supporting neither guarantees nor f...

Exception handling in a complex concurrent and distributed system (e.g. one involving cooperating rather than just competing activities) is often a necessary, but a very difficult, task. No widely accepted models or approaches exist in this area. The object-oriented paradigm, for all its structuring benefits, and real-time requirements each add further difficulties to the design and implementat...

The problem of finding a high quality timetable for personnel in a hospital ward has been addressed by many researchers, personnel managers and schedulers over a number of years. Nevertheless, automated nurse rostering practice is not common yet in hospitals. Many head nurses are currently still spending several days per month on constructing their rosters by hand. In recent years, the emergenc...

The electroencephalogram (EEG) time series is a measure of electrical activity received from multiple electrodes placed on the scalp of a human brain. It provides a direct measurement for characterizing the dynamic aspects of brain activities. These EEG signals are formed from a series of spatial and temporal data with multiple dimensions. Missing data could occur due to fault electrodes. These...

Real time group editors allow two or more users at different locations to work on a shared document at the same time. In a mobile network environment with nondeterministic communication latency, a replicated architecture is usually adopted for the storage of the shared document in order to provide high responsiveness. A conflict occurs when two or more users have different intentions for editin...

In previous work, we have developed a generate, test, and debug methodology for detecting, classifying, and responding to sensing failures in autonomous and semi-autonomous mobile robots. An important issue has arisen from these efforts: how much time is there available to classify the cause of the failure and determine an alternative sensing strategy before the robot mission must be terminated...

Peer-to-peer systems are distinguished from traditional distributed systems in that nodes join and leave the p2p system at high rates, called churn problem. SChord, a p2p system, is illustrated in this paper, which is constructed on Chord system and aims to handle churn. We analyze the past experimental studies on churn of p2p systems and do some theoretical analysis on the probability distribu...

Graphics processing units (GPUs) are becoming increasingly important in today’s platforms as their increased generality allows for them to be used as powerful co-processors. However, unlike standard CPUs, GPUs are treated as I/O devices and require the use of interrupts to facilitate communication with the CPU. Interrupts cause delays in the execution of real-time tasks, challenges in realtime ...

Students enrolled in veterinary degrees often come from an urban background with little previous experience in handling horses and other large animals. Many veterinary degree programmes place importance on the teaching of appropriate equine handling skills, yet within the literature it is commonly reported that time allocated for practical classes often suffers due to time constraint pressure f...