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We propose and discuss a paradigm that allows for expressing \emph{data-parallel} rendering with the classically non-parallel ANARI API. We propose this as a new standard for data-parallel sci-vis rendering, describe two different implementations of this paradigm, and use multiple sample integrations into existing apps to show how easy it is to adopt this paradigm, and what can be gained from doing so.

Virtual reality (VR) renderers driving CAVEs and similar immersive environments use the off-axis stereo camera model so that a tracked user can move freely in front of the projection plane. Geometrically, off-axis projection results in asymmetric viewing frusta and generalizes the ubiquitous perspective camera model to support positioning off the center of the projection plane. VR renderers often integrate with larger visualization systems that rely on libraries for position tracking and pose estimates, for ray tracing-based rendering, and for user interaction. We demonstrate different strategies to implement off-axis stereo projection within the constraints of given VR applications and ray tracing libraries. We aim for minimal to no adjustments required to the internal camera representation of such libraries. We include host and shader code with the article that can be directly integrated in custom applications.

Image- and data-parallel rendering across multiple nodes on high-performance computing systems is widely used in visualization to provide higher frame rates, support large data sets, and render data in situ. Specifically for in situ visualization, reducing bottlenecks incurred by the visualization and compositing is of key concern to reduce the overall simulation runtime. Moreover, prior algorithms have been designed to support either image- or data-parallel rendering and impose restrictions on the data distribution, requiring different implementations for each configuration. In this paper, we introduce the Distributed FrameBuffer, an asynchronous image-processing framework for multi-node rendering. We demonstrate that our approach achieves performance superior to the state of the art for common use cases, while providing the flexibility to support a wide range of parallel rendering algorithms and data distributions. By building on this framework, we extend the open-source ray tracing library OSPRay with a data-distributed API, enabling its use in data-distributed and in situ visualization applications.

Recent studies show that Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies propagate societal biases about demographic groups associated with attributes such as gender, race, and nationality. To create interventions and mitigate these biases and associated harms, it is vital to be able to detect and measure such biases. While existing works propose bias evaluation and mitigation methods for various tasks, there remains a need to cohesively understand the biases and the specific harms they measure, and how different measures compare with each other. To address this gap, this work presents a practical framework of harms and a series of questions that practitioners can answer to guide the development of bias measures. As a validation of our framework and documentation questions, we also present several case studies of how existing bias measures in NLP -- both intrinsic measures of bias in representations and extrinsic measures of bias of downstream applications -- can be aligned with different harms and how our proposed documentation questions facilitates more holistic understanding of what bias measures are measuring.

Computational Workflows are widely used in data analysis, enabling innovation and decision-making. In many domains (bioinformatics, image analysis, & radio astronomy) the analysis components are numerous and written in multiple different computer languages by third parties. However, many competing workflow systems exist, severely limiting portability of such workflows, thereby hindering the transfer of workflows between different systems, between different projects and different settings, leading to vendor lock-ins and limiting their generic re-usability. Here we present the Common Workflow Language (CWL) project which produces free and open standards for describing command-line tool based workflows. The CWL standards provide a common but reduced set of abstractions that are both used in practice and implemented in many popular workflow systems. The CWL language is declarative, which allows expressing computational workflows constructed from diverse software tools, executed each through their command-line interface. Being explicit about the runtime environment and any use of software containers enables portability and reuse. Workflows written according to the CWL standards are a reusable description of that analysis that are runnable on a diverse set of computing environments. These descriptions contain enough information for advanced optimization without additional input from workflow authors. The CWL standards support polylingual workflows, enabling portability and reuse of such workflows, easing for example scholarly publication, fulfilling regulatory requirements, collaboration in/between academic research and industry, while reducing implementation costs. CWL has been taken up by a wide variety of domains, and industries and support has been implemented in many major workflow systems., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures. For the LaTex source code of this paper, see https://github.com/mr-c/cwl_methods_included

New algorithmic and hardware developments over the past two decades have enabled interactive ray tracing of small to modest sized scenes, and are finding growing popularity in scientific visualization and games. However, interactive ray tracing has not been as widely explored in the context of production film rendering, where challenges due to the complexity of the models and, from a practical standpoint, their unavailability to the wider research community, have posed significant challenges. The recent release of the Disney Moana Island Scene has made one such model available to the community for experimentation. In this paper, we detail the challenges posed by this scene to an interactive ray tracer, and the solutions we have employed and developed to enable interactive path tracing of the scene with full geometric and shading detail, with the goal of providing insight and guidance to other researchers.

The topological derivative represents the sensitivity of a domain-dependent functional with respect to a local perturbation of the domain and is a valuable tool in topology optimization. Motivated by an application from electrical engineering, we derive the topological derivative for an optimization problem which is constrained by the quasilinear equation of two-dimensional magnetostatics. Here, the main ingredient is to establish a sufficiently fast decay of the variation of the direct state at scale 1 as $|x|\rightarrow \infty$. In order to apply the method in a bi-directional topology optimization algorithm, we derive both the sensitivity for introducing air inside ferromagnetic material and the sensitivity for introducing material inside an air region. We explicitly compute the arising polarization matrices and introduce a way to efficiently evaluate the obtained formulas. Finally, we employ the derived formulas in a level-set based topology optimization algorithm and apply it to the design optimization of an electric motor., Comment: 54 pages, 9 figures

The functions of the Low-Level Radio Frequency (LLRF) system at European Spallation Source (ESS) are implemented on different Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) boards in a Micro Telecommunications Computing Architecture (MTCA) crate. Besides the algorithm, code that provides access to the peripherals connected to the FPGA is necessary. In order to provide a common platform for the FPGA developments at ESS - the ESS FPGA Framework has been designed. The framework facilitates the integration of different algorithms on different FPGA boards. Three functions are provided by the framework: (1) Communication interfaces to peripherals, e.g. Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs) and on-board memory, (2) Upstream communication with the control system over Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe), and (3) Configuration of the on-board peripherals. To keep the framework easily extensible by Intellectual Property (IP) blocks and to enable seamless integration with the Xilinx design tools, the Advanced eXtensible Interface version 4 (AXI4) bus is the chosen communication interconnect. Furthermore, scripts automatize the building of the FPGA configuration, software components and the documentation. The LLRF control algorithms have been successfully integrated into the framework., Comment: Poster presented at LLRF Workshop 2017 (LLRF2017, arXiv:1803.07677)

A new pixel detector for the CMS experiment was built in order to cope with the instantaneous luminosities anticipated for the Phase~I Upgrade of the LHC. The new CMS pixel detector provides four-hit tracking with a reduced material budget as well as new cooling and powering schemes. A new front-end readout chip mitigates buffering and bandwidth limitations, and allows operation at low comparator thresholds. In this paper, comprehensive test beam studies are presented, which have been conducted to verify the design and to quantify the performance of the new detector assemblies in terms of tracking efficiency and spatial resolution. Under optimal conditions, the tracking efficiency is $99.95\pm0.05\,\%$, while the intrinsic spatial resolutions are $4.80\pm0.25\,\mu \mathrm{m}$ and $7.99\pm0.21\,\mu \mathrm{m}$ along the $100\,\mu \mathrm{m}$ and $150\,\mu \mathrm{m}$ pixel pitch, respectively. The findings are compared to a detailed Monte Carlo simulation of the pixel detector and good agreement is found.

Altering the optics in one section of a linear accelerator beamline will in general cause an alteration of the optics in all downstream sections. In circular accelerators, changing the optical properties of any beamline element will have an impact on the optical functions throughout the whole machine. In many cases, however, it is desirable to change the optics in a certain beamline section without disturbing any other parts of the machine. Such a local optics manipulation can be achieved by adjusting a number of additional corrector magnets that restore the initial optics after the manipulated section. In that case, the effect of the manipulation is confined in the region between the manipulated and the correcting beamline elements. Introducing a manipulation continuously, while the machine is operating, therefore requires continuous correction functions to be applied to the correcting quadrupole magnets. In this paper we present an analytic approach to calculate such continuous correction functions for six quadrupole magnets by means of a homotopy method. Besides a detailed derivation of the method, we present its application to an algebraic example, as well as its implementation at the seeding experiment sFLASH at the free-electron laser FLASH located at DESY in Hamburg., Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, to be submitted to PRAB

Reviews recent literature on family literacy programs and examines the assumptions made by many programs in light of cultural and educational implications. Explores research methodology and interpretation in family literacy and describes some promising practices for public schools that can affect such programs positively. (SLD)

Describes a survey at the University of Wyoming in which faculty and academic professionals were asked how they acquire information and how they require or encourage students to access and use information. Highlights include characteristics and roles of faculty who use technology; and who has responsibility for developing students' information access skills. (Author/LRW)

Fracture tests were conducted on 2.3mm thick, 305mm wide sheets of 2024-T3 aluminum alloy with from one to five collinear cracks. The cracks were introduced (crack history) into the specimens by three methods: saw cutting, fatigue precracking at a low stress range, and fatigue precracking at a high stress range. For the single crack tests, the initial crack history influenced the stress required for the onset of stable crack growth and the first 10mm of crack growth. The effect on failure stress was about 4 percent or less. For the multiple crack tests, the initial crack history was shown to cause differences of more than 20 percent in the link-up stress and 13 percent in failure stress. An elastic-plastic finite element analysis employing the CTOA fracture criterion was used to predict the fracture behavior of the single and multiple crack tests. The numerical predictions were within 7 percent of the observed link-up and failure stress in all the tests.

Fracture tests were conducted on 2.3mm thick, 305mm wide sheets of 2024-T3 aluminum alloy with 1-5 collinear cracks. The cracks were introduced (crack history) into the specimens by three methods: (1) saw cutting; (2) fatigue precracking at a low stress range; and (3) fatigue precracking at a high stress range. For the single crack tests, the initial crack history influenced the stress required for the onset of stable crack growth and the first 10mm of crack growth. The effect on failure stress was about 4 percent or less. For the multiple crack tests, the initial crack history was shown to cause differences of more than 20 percent in the link-up stress and 13 percent in failure stress. An elastic-plastic finite element analysis employing the Crack Tip Opening Angle (CTOA) fracture criterion was used to predict the fracture behavior of the single and multiple crack tests. The numerical predictions were within 7 percent of the observed link-up and failure stress in all the tests.

One common paradigm used to study moral reasoning involves assessing the reasoning leading to choices among alternative actions, each with moral implications. Preconventional reasoning emphasizes external rewards and punishments, conventional reasoning centers on acceptance of societal rules and expectations, and postconventional reasoning is based on abstract, internalized principles of ethical behavior. To address the problems associated with the confusion between reasoning and values in moral reasoning research a group of high school freshmen responded to four nonmoral social judgment tasks. Subjects (N=32) in the training group participated in discussions which led them from simpler to more configural reasoning. Controls (N=32) responded to the same tasks without discussion. All subjects then took a moral choice task involving eight basic scenarios, each providing a choice dilemma involving conflicting moral principles. Comparison between training and control groups revealed that trained subjects were more configural in integrating information about preconventional, conventional, and postconventional outcomes in subsequent moral choice dilemmas. Although trained subjects combined the rationales in a more complex manner than did the controls, there was no tendency for trained subjects to uniformly choose more moral alternatives. These results suggest that reasoning complexity can be directly trained, and trained separately from moral values. Training complex reasoning in nonmoral tasks appeared to avoid the pitfall of inculcating moralistic values. (NRB)

An advisory council was appointed to study the status of international studies and foreign language education in Maine and to make recommendations for strengthening and broadening these programs. The report of this commission is presented and organized as follows: (1) Maine's position in the world scene, (2) foreign language education, (3) internationalizing the curriculum, (4) professional leadership, (5) perspectives for the future, and (6) recommendations according to the group addressed. The report is given in the context of the monolingual U.S. position and the situation of Maine with regard to its geographical position and the size of its French-speaking population. In order to strengthen foreign language instruction within the state, the council recommends involvement by all segments of the professional, academic, and educational community. With regard to internationalization of the curriculum, the recommendations deal with emphasis on global interdependence, and the cooperation of teachers of various subjects with each other and with other educators and administrators. The final chapter summarizes the recommendations according to group. Appendices that provide the survey instrument and a proposed international studies curriculum outline complete the report. (AMH)

The tapered wing shape increases the lift in the middle of the wing and thus reduces the bending moment of the lifting forces in the plane of symmetry. Since this portion of the wing is the thickest, the stresses of the wing material are reduced and desirable space is provided for stowing the loads in the wing. This statically excellent form of construction, however, has aerodynamic disadvantages which must be carefully weighed, if failures are to be avoided. This treatise is devoted to the consideration of these problems.