We briefly present some aspects of information processing in the mammalian visual system. The chapter focuses on the problem of scaleindependent object recognition. We provide a simple model, based on spiking neurons that make use of shunting inhibition in order to optimally select their driving afferent inputs. The model is able to resist to some degree to scale changes of the stimulus. We dis...

Professor Ricardo Bianchini, Rutgers University, Piscataway Professor Tarek El-Ghazawi, George Washington University, Washington D.C. Professor Armando Fox, University of California, Berkeley Forest Godfrey, Cray, Minneapolis Dr. Adolfy Hoisie, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos Professor Kathryn McKinley, University of Texas, Austin Professor Rami Melhem, University of Pittsburgh, Pitt...

In this technical report we describe a storage system aimed on supporting collaborative applications in large-scale environments that include mobile computers. To maximize availability, it uses weakly consistent server replication and client caching with a read any/write any model of data access. To allow easy management of concurrent updates it provides an object framework that isolates the pr...

The rise of ubiquitous computing has created a need for wide-area durable storage. We propose a model and interface for such an archival system, that stores data in a durable, verifiable, available, and self-maintainable manner. We argue that such a system can be created by using novel techniques of erasure codes, secure hashing, and decentralized wide-area location infrastructures to distribut...