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  Soap Bubble Clusters in Thin Enclosures

  Said Shakerin

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  On-Demand Visualization on Scalable Shared Infrastructure

  Liu Huadong, Jinzhu Gao, Jian Huang, Micah Beck, and Terry Moore

  The emergence of high-resolution simulation, where simulation outputs have grown to terascale levels and beyond, raises major new challenges for the visualization community, which is serving computational scientists who want adequate visualization services provided to them on-demand. Many existing algorithms for parallel visualization were not designed to operate optimally on time-shared parallel systems or on heterogeneous systems. They are usually optimized for systems that are homogeneous and have been reserved for exclusive use. This chapter explores the possibility of developing parallel visualization algorithms that can use distributed, heterogeneous processors to visualize cutting edge simulation datasets. The authors study how to effectively support multiple concurrent users operating on the same large dataset, with each focusing on a dynamically varying subset of the data. From a system design point of view, they observe that a distributed cache offers various advantages, including improved scalability. They develop basic scheduling mechanisms that were able to achieve fault-tolerance and load-balancing, optimal use of resources, and flow-control using system-level back-off, while still enforcing deadline driven (i.e. time-critical) visualization.

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  Wind Power for Farming and Food Processing

  C. P. Van Dam, Henry Shiu, Scott Johnson, and Scott Larwood

  Wind power can reliably and economically provide electricity to farms and other food processing applications. Wind turbines are available in a wide range of sizes, from under 1 kW to more than 3 MW of capacity. A farmer can invest in wind power in a number of ways: 1) land leasing to a wind plant developer, in which the farmer receives royalties for wind turbines installed on his land; 2) direct ownership of a wind turbine, in which the farmer buys a wind turbine and consumes the electricity it generates, reducing the amount of energy purchased from other sources; and 3) through a power purchase agreement, in which the farmer contracts to a third party, which owns, installs, and operates a wind turbine on the farmer's land, selling the wind-generated electricity back to the farmer at a mutually beneficial rate. Prospective investors/owners should make a careful economic assessment, weighing factors including resource availability (i.e., windiness), permitting requirements, and eligibility for incentive programs (e.g., rebates, tax benefits, and grants).

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  Design of scalable parallel algorithms for large-scale data analysis and visualization

  Qishi Wu and Jinzhu Gao