Balanced Decomposition Research Articles

A performance-based contract of employment as an innovative mechanism for stimulating the work of scientific and pedagogical workers

The modern education system is subject to changes, accompanied by the introduction of a number of innovations, because it must adapt to the requirements of a dynamically developing society. Among such innovations is the introduction of an effective contract in the state universities as an innovative mechanism for stimulating the work of scientific and pedagogical workers. The need for criteria-based assessment of the effectiveness of a higher school teacher, depending on the individual results of his work, has actualized the importance of studying the problem of an effective contract model in higher education and identified the research problem: what is the essence of an effective contract as an innovative mechanism for stimulating the work of scientific and pedagogical workers? The purpose of the research is to reveal the essence of an effective contract as an innovative aspect of stimulating the professional activity of a university teacher and its main components. The following research methods were used: analysis, synthesis, description, interpretation, comparison. Systematic and logical approaches were used. The results of the research: 1) the concept of «performance-based contract of employment» in the legal and scientific-pedagogical field has been described; 2) a brief overview of the concept of an performance-based contract of employment abroad and in Russia has been carried out; 3) the principles for developing criteria for professional achievements of teaching staff have been substantiated. Key conclusions: 1) performance-based contract of employment is a balanced decomposition of criteria and performance indicators of the professional activity of a higher school teacher; 2) foreign and domestic concepts of a performance-based contract of employment are largely similar and include a set of interrelated components that reveal all aspects of a teacher’s professional activity: teaching, methodological, scientific,educational and sports; 3) the main principles of criteria-based assessment of scientific and pedagogical workers are: complexity, objectivity, quantitative assessment, adaptability, stimulation and motivation.

It takes a community to maintain a tree hollow: Food web complexity enhances decomposition and wood mould production

AbstractVeteran trees are keystone structures and play vital roles in ecosystems. Tree hollows, which are filled with a mix of leaves and wood that is transformed by the biotic community into wood mould, represent an important microhabitat. Tree hollow communities consist of three major groups of organisms: microbes, mesofauna (nematodes, mites and springtails) and macrofauna (beetles, millipedes and other insects). Little is known about the interplay between associated biota and their importance for decomposition and wood mould production. The aim of this study was to test how initial food web complexity in artificial tree hollows influences community structure, decomposition, and wood mould production. We used large wooden boxes to imitate natural hollows, and mounted them on 20 veteran oaks in Southern Norway. The food webs were manipulated into three levels: (i) a complex community with macrofauna and mesofauna, (ii) a simple community without macrofauna, and (iii) only the defaunated material. Three boxes (one of each treatment, N = 60 boxes) were mounted on each oak and left in the field from May 2017 to October 2019 (28 months). After the field experiment, macrofauna and mesofauna were collected and identified, mass loss in the boxes was determined, and nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations in the wood mould were measured. We found that the complex community treatment had the greatest diversity of beetles and the highest number of predatory macrofauna. The nematodes within the complex community treatment had greater trophic structuring with K‐selected species associated with stable conditions. The nematodes communities also indicated that the complex community had a balanced decomposition pathway, while the simple community was dominated by fungi and the defaunated community by bacteria. Lastly, we found that the boxes with the complex community treatment had the highest overall rate of mass loss, and greater amounts of wood mould with higher concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus. Our results indicate that macrofauna in artificial hollows increase trophic structuring, enhance decomposition rates and wood mould production, and mediate the decomposition pathway. These findings highlight the importance of food web complexity for promoting biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in veteran tree hollows.Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Mechanism of carbonating recycled concrete fines in aqueous environment: The particle size effect

Processing waste concrete in recycling facilities inevitably generates by-products such as very fine particles (<2.36 mm) and powders (<0.15 mm). The resourcing of these low-value recycled concrete fines (RCFs) has attracted increasing interest from the construction industry. This study attempts to elucidate the underlying mechanisms of particle size effects on carbonating RCFs via aqueous route. The results suggested that the relatively coarse particles (0.6–1.18 mm and 1.18–2.36 mm) experienced two positive effects i.e., i) improvement of surface properties by the formation of a reactive shell, and ii) significant densification of the microstructure. This was due to an initial carbonation mediated in the bulk solution, and then the internal carbonation due to the inward diffusion of carbonate species. Meanwhile, the finer particles (<0.15 mm) showed significantly different effects i.e., being totally disintegrated and converted to a calcium carbonate and silica gel composite. Such a difference was attributed to the long alkalinity maintaining ability and extensive dissolution and leaching associated with the high fineness. Whereas 0.15–0.6 mm was regarded as a transition particle size where balanced decomposition and densification were observed. Finally, after carbonating for only 6 h, the carbonated RCFs was found to enhance the compressive strength of pastes (as cement substitute) and mortars (as fine aggregate substitute) by an average of 13.2% and 9.0% in comparison with those prepared with raw RCFs.

Next-generation sequencing of the soil nematode community enables the sustainability of banana plantations to be monitored

Uganda faces a considerable challenge to match its food production to an annual population growth rate of 3%. Cooking bananas are the country's most produced staple crop but the annual national harvest is not increasing. The crop grows on infertile soils that are normally fertilised organically and often susceptible to erosion. Soil nematodes are well-established as bioindicators of soil quality that can support environmental monitoring and assessment of the sustainability of agricultural systems. These invertebrates are a highly ranked indicator of biodiversity with molecular approaches available. Consequently, we have applied next-generation DNA sequencing of soil nematodes to evaluate soil quality of Ugandan banana plantations. The aim is to establish a method for constructing an aspect of an environmental biosafety dossier with the future aim of assessing the impact of transgenic crops and improving current cropping systems. The soil samples did not differ significantly in any of the measured soil chemistry factors, soil texture or percentage of organic matter. Thirty taxons of soil nematodes other than the plant parasites were recovered from soil supporting nine banana plantations plus three each from coffee and banana-coffee interplants from East and West Uganda. Cluster analysis correctly allocated each plantation to the crop/intercrop being grown when based on the abundance of taxa rather than taxa presence or absence. This indicates that the host has considerable effects on the abundance of specific nematode species within the soil. Overall, nematodes were more abundant in soil from coffee plantations than from banana-coffee interplants with the lowest values being from fields supporting just banana. Only the basal and trophic diversity indices and the percentage of nematodes that are rapid colonisers varied between the three plantation types. The soil of all fifteen plantations can be classified as having a mature soil web condition with low physical disturbance, limited chemical stressors, moderately high nutrient enrichment and balanced decomposition channels.

Common complexes of decompositions and complex balanced equilibria of chemical reaction networks

A decomposition of a chemical reaction network (CRN) is produced by partitioning its set of reactions. The partition induces networks, called subnetworks, that are "smaller" than the given CRN which, at this point, can be called parent network. A complex is called a common complex if it occurs in at least two subnetworks in a decomposition. A decomposition is said to be incidence independent if the image of the incidence map of the parent network is the direct sum of the images of the subnetworks' incidence maps. It has been recently discovered that the complex balanced equilibria of the parent network and its subnetworks are fundamentally connected in an incidence independent decomposition. In this paper, we utilized the set of common complexes and a developed criterion to investigate decomposition’s incidence independence properties. A framework was also developed to analyze decomposition classes with similar structure and incidence independence properties. We identified decomposition classes that can be characterized by their sets of common complexes and studied their incidence independence. Some of these decomposition classes occur in some biological and chemical models. Finally, a sufficient condition was obtained for the complex balancing of some power law kinetic (PLK) systems with incidence independent and complex balanced decompositions. This condition led to a generalization of the Deficiency Zero Theorem for some PLK systems.

A universal parallel scheduling approach to polyline and polygon vector data buffer analysis on conventional GIS platforms

AbstractWith the increasing volume of spatial data, conventional vector data buffer analysis algorithms cannot meet the demands of fast data processing, so parallel computing is introduced to accelerate vector data analysis. However, it is difficult for these GIS platforms to adopt parallel approaches to conduct buffer analysis due to their conventional data format and vector buffer analysis algorithms. To address the problem, a universal parallel scheduling approach to buffer analysis on conventional GIS platforms is proposed in this study. First, the key impacting factor of buffer analysis computing time is identified. The relationship between the impacting factor and the buffer analysis computing time is analyzed to generate computational intensity transformation functions. Then, computational intensity grids (CIGs) of polyline and polygon are constructed by partially computing the computational intensity of a lattice. Using the corresponding CIGs, a two‐stage adaptive spatial decomposition method for parallel buffer analysis is developed. Firstly, the whole domain of the spatial vector dataset is divided into sub‐domains, with the computational intensity of each sub‐domain being equal as far as possible; secondly, the features are evenly assigned within the sub‐domains into parallel buffer analysis tasks for load balance. The experiments demonstrate that the approach presented in this article can effectively evaluate and spatially represent the computational intensity of buffer analysis for polylines and polygons. Compared with typical spatial adaptive decomposition methods and regular domain decomposition methods, the new approach accomplishes greater balanced decomposition of computational intensity for parallel buffer analysis and achieves near‐linear speedups. The new approach achieves excellent performance on three conventional GIS platforms, indicating that our approach is an effective parallel scheduling approach to vector data buffer analysis for conventional GIS platforms.

Numerical analysis of ablative behavior of silicone resin coated carbon fabric

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the ablative behavior of the silicone resin-coated carbon fabric (coated fabric) that will swell significantly during ablation. Design/methodology/approach The ablation experiments of three coated fabrics were conducted by quartz lamp radiant. Based on the experimental analysis, a numerical model was proposed for the coated fabrics to study the ablative process in term of the energy balance, mass conservation and thermal decomposition equations. Findings Results showed that the average relative errors between the simulated temperatures and experimental values of back surfaces of coated fabric 1, 2 and 3 were 10.01, 7.53 and 7.32%, respectively. The average density of silicone resin of coated fabric 1 was reduced by 47.96%, and the closer the distance from the heated surface was, the more the density decreased. The thermal conductivity and specific heat capacity of silicone resin of coated fabric 1 increased with time. Before 50 s, each decomposition rate curve showed an inflection point, at which the silicone resin decomposed most intensely. Research limitations/implications Based on experimental observations, the ablative behavior of the material with fixed expansion layer was simulated. In the further research, the moving expansion layer could be considered. Originality/value This paper provides the theoretical basis to evaluate the effectiveness of thermal protection materials that will swell during ablation.

Self-adjusted decomposition for multi-model predictive control of Hammerstein systems based on included angle

A self-adjusted multi-model decomposition (SAMMD) method is proposed based on included angle (IA) to realize multi-model predictive control (MMPC) of Hammerstein systems. Given an initial value for threshold and a step-size, a balanced decomposition in terms of Measurement of Nonlinearity (MoN) is obtained with an appropriate linear model set to approximate the considered Hammerstein system. Based on the linear model set, a MMPC is designed for set-point tracking and anti-disturbance control using an offline weighting method. Thus, time-consuming tuning of threshold value is largely avoided; reliance on experience is greatly decreased. And the efficiency and quality of decomposition are largely raised. A CSTR process and a Lab-tank system that can be approximated by Hammerstein models are investigated. Simulations illustrate that the proposed SAMMD method is both effective and efficient.

The rise of national central banks' TARGET balances: a response to Andrea Terzi

In response to our paper, ‘ECB monetary expansions and euro area TARGET2 imbalances: a balance-of-payment-based decomposition,’ Professor Andrea Terzi has criticized our approach of TARGET2 balance decomposition, by highlighting a lack of causality between balance-of-payments (BP) flows and TARGET2 net balances. Proving a strong causality link was not within the scope of our paper; while acknowledging that causal relationships are difficult to prove from data that have to fulfill an accounting identity, we still believe that useful information can be extracted from the analysis of BP accounting correspondences. From this perspective a long-term BP reconstruction for Italy and Germany is performed that confirms Terzi's claim about the rise of TARGET2 balances under specific monetary policy configurations.

On Balanced Clustering (Indices, Models, Examples)

The paper describes and approach to balanced clustering problems. The list of balanced structures includes balanced partitioning of a set, balanced trees, balanced decomposition of a graph, and balanced multilevel structures. Balance indices (characteristics) for balanced structures (clustering solutions) are based on the difference between the cluster parameters: cardinality of a cluster, the total cluster weight, the total weight of edges/arcs of a cluster, and the structure of a cluster in terms of the types of its elements. The proposed balance indices are used as components for optimization models of balanced clustering: objective functions and constraints. Three numerical examples are presented: (1) calculating the balance indices for clustering based on the structure of a cluster in terms of the types of its elements; (2) calculating the balance indices for a clustering solution for a sample network; (3) balanced clustering for forming several student teams.

Balanced Decomposition of Hypercube

A balanced vertex coloring of G is a pair R, B of subsets R , B VGsuch that RB   and R  B . A subset U of V G is called a balanced set if U induces a connected subgraph with U R  U B . A balanced decomposition of a balanced coloring R, B of G is a partition of vertices   r V G V1 V2 V such that all parts V s i , are balanced sets. The size of the balanced decomposition is defined as the maximum of r V , , V 1  . The balanced decomposition number of a graph is the maximum size of the balanced decompositions with R  B  k , where 0  k  n 2 . In this paper, some results about balanced decomposition of n -dimensional cube n Q are given.

An energy balance perspective on regional CO2-induced temperature changes in CMIP5 models

An energy balance decomposition of temperature changes is conducted for idealized transient CO2-only simulations in the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. The multimodel global mean warming is dominated by enhanced clear-sky greenhouse effect due to increased CO2 and water vapour, but other components of the energy balance substantially modify the geographical and seasonal patterns of the change. Changes in the net surface energy flux are important over the oceans, being especially crucial for the muted warming over the northern North Atlantic and for the seasonal cycle of warming over the Arctic Ocean. Changes in atmospheric energy flux convergence tend to smooth the gradients of temperature change and reduce its land-sea contrast, but they also amplify the seasonal cycle of warming in northern North America and Eurasia. The three most important terms for intermodel differences in warming are the changes in the clear-sky greenhouse effect, clouds, and the net surface energy flux, making the largest contribution to the standard deviation of annual mean temperature change in 34, 29 and 20 % of the world, respectively. Changes in atmospheric energy flux convergence mostly damp intermodel variations of temperature change especially over the oceans. However, the opposite is true for example in Greenland and Antarctica, where the warming appears to be substantially controlled by heat transport from the surrounding sea areas.

A spatially adaptive decomposition approach for parallel vector data visualization of polylines and polygons

With the wide adoption of big spatial data and the emergence of CyberGIS, the nontrivial computational intensity introduced by massive amount of data poses great challenges to the performance of vector map visualization. The parallel computing technologies provide promising solutions to such problems. Evenly decomposing the visualization task into multiple subtasks is one of the key issues in parallel visualization of vector data. This study focuses on the decomposition of polyline and polygon data for parallel visualization. Two key factors impacting the computational intensity were identified: the number of features and the number of vertices of each feature. The computational intensity transform functions (CITFs) were constructed based on the linear relationships between the factors and the computing time. The computational intensity grid (CIG) can then be constructed using the CITFs to represent the spatial distribution of computational intensity. A noninterlaced continuous space-filling curve is used to group the lattices of CIG into multiple sub-domains such that each sub-domain entails the same amount of computational intensity as others. The experiments demonstrated that the approach proposed in this paper was able to effectively estimate and spatially represent the computational intensity of visualizing polylines and polygons. Compared with the regular domain decomposition methods, the new approach generated much more balanced decomposition of computational intensity for parallel visualization and achieved near-linear speedups, especially when the data is greatly heterogeneously distributed in space.

On the Balanced Decomposition Number

A balanced coloring of a graph $$G$$G means a triple $$\{P_1,P_2,X\}$${P1,P2,X} of mutually disjoint subsets of the vertex-set $$V(G)$$V(G) such that $$V(G)=P_1 \dot{\cup } P_2 \dot{\cup } X$$V(G)=P1??P2??X and $$|P_1|=|P_2|$$|P1|=|P2|. A balanced decomposition associated with the balanced coloring $$V(G)=P_1 \dot{\cup } P_2 \dot{\cup } X$$V(G)=P1??P2??X of $$G$$G is defined as a partition of $$V(G)=V_1 \dot{\cup } \cdots \dot{\cup } V_r$$V(G)=V1?????Vr (for some $$r$$r) such that, for every $$i \in \{1,\ldots ,r\}$$i?{1,?,r}, the subgraph $$G[V_i]$$G[Vi] of $$G$$G is connected and $$|V_i \cap P_1| = |V_i \cap P_2|$$|Vi?P1|=|Vi?P2|. Then the balanced decomposition number of a graph $$G$$G is defined as the minimum integer $$s$$s such that, for every balanced coloring $$V(G)=P_1 \dot{\cup } P_2 \dot{\cup } X$$V(G)=P1??P2??X of $$G$$G, there exists a balanced decomposition $$V(G)=V_1 \dot{\cup } \cdots \dot{\cup } V_r$$V(G)=V1?????Vr such that every element $$V_i (i=1, \ldots , r)$$Vi(i=1,?,r) has at most $$s$$s vertices. Fujita and Liu (SIAM J Discret Math 24:1597---1616, 2010) proved an interesting theorem which states that the balanced decomposition number of a graph $$G$$G is at most $$3$$3 if and only if $$G$$G is $$\lfloor \frac{|V(G)|}{2}\rfloor $$?|V(G)|2?-connected. Unfortunately, their proof is long (about 10 pages) and complicated. Here we give an immediate proof of the theorem. This proof makes clear a relationship between balanced decomposition number and graph matching.

Balanced multiresolution for symmetric/antisymmetric filters

Given a set of symmetric/antisymmetric filter vectors containing only regular multiresolution filters, the method we present in this article can establish a balanced multiresolution scheme for images, allowing their balanced decomposition and subsequent perfect reconstruction without the use of any extraordinary boundary filters. We define balanced multiresolution such that it allows balanced decomposition i.e. decomposition of a high-resolution image into a low-resolution image and corresponding details of equal size. Such a balanced decomposition makes on-demand reconstruction of regions of interest efficient in both computational load and implementation aspects. We find this balanced decomposition and perfect reconstruction based on an appropriate combination of symmetric/antisymmetric extensions near the image and detail boundaries. In our method, exploiting such extensions correlates to performing sample (pixel/voxel) split operations. Our general approach is demonstrated for some commonly used symmetric/antisymmetric multiresolution filters. We also show the application of such a balanced multiresolution scheme in real-time focus+context visualization.

Multi-objectivization Via Decomposition: An analysis of helper-objectives and complete decomposition

Abstract Multi-objectivization has been used to solve several single objective problems with improved results over traditional genetically inspired optimization methods. Multi-objectivization reformulates the single objective problem into a multiple objective problem. The reformulated problem is then solved with a multiple objective method to obtain a resulting solution to the original problem. Multi-objectivization Via Decomposition (MVD) and the addition of novel objectives are the two major approaches used in multi-objectivization. This paper focuses on analysis of two major MVD methods: helper-objectives and complete decomposition. Helper-objectives decomposition methods identify one or more decomposed objectives that are used simultaneously with the main objective to focus attention on components of the decomposed objectives. Complete decomposition, unlike helper-objectives does not explicitly use the main objective and instead uses decomposed objectives that exhaustively cover all portions of the main objective. This work examines the relationship between helper-objective decompositions and complete decomposition using both an analytic and experimental methodology. Pareto dominance relationships are examined analytically to clarify the relationship between dominant solutions in both types of decompositions. These results more clearly characterize how solutions from the two approaches rank in Pareto-frontier based fitness algorithms such as NSGA-II. An empirical study on job shop scheduling problems shows how fitness signal and fitness noise are affected by the balance of decomposition size. Additionally we provide evidence that, for the settings and instances studied, complete decompositions have a better on-average performance when compared to analogous helper-objective decompositions. Lastly we examine the underlying forces that determine effective decomposition size. We argue that it is advantageous to use less balanced decompositions as within-decomposition conflict increases and as heuristic strength increases.

A balanced decomposition approach to real-time visualization of large vector maps in CyberGIS

With the dramatic development of spatial data infrastructure, CyberGIS has become significant for geospatial data sharing. Due to the large number of concurrent users and large volume of vector data, CyberGIS faces a great challenge in how to improve performance. The real-time visualization of vector maps is themost common function in CyberGIS applications, and it is time-consuming especially when the data volume becomes large. So, how to improve the efficiency of visualization of large vector maps is still a significant research direction for GIScience scientists. In this research, we review the existing three optimization strategies, and determine that the third category strategy (i.e., parallel optimization) is appropriate for the real-time visualization of large vector maps. One of the key issues of parallel optimization is how to decompose the real-time visualization tasks into balanced sub tasks while taking into consideration the spatial heterogeneous characteristics. We put forward some rules that the decomposition should conform to, and design a real-time visualization framework for large vector maps. We focus on a balanced decomposition approach that can assure efficiency and effectiveness. Considering the spatial heterogeneous characteristic of vector data, we use a "horizontal grid, verticalmultistage" approach to construct a spatial point distribution information grid. The load balancer analyzes the spatial characteristics of the map requests and decomposes the real-time viewshed into multiple balanced sub viewsheds. Then, all the sub viewsheds are distributed to multiple server nodes to be executed in parallel, so as to improve the realtime visualization efficiency of large vector maps. A group of experiments have been conducted by us. The analysis results demonstrate that the approach proposed in this research has the ability of balanced decomposition, and it is efficient and effective for all geometry types of vector data.

An Efficient Approach to Load Balancing of Vector Maps in CyberGIS Cluster Environment

The real-time visualization of vector maps is the most common function in CyberGIS, and it is timeconsuming, especially as the data volume becomes larger. How to improve the efficiency of visualization of large vector maps is still a significant research direction for GIS scientists. In this research, we point out that parallel optimization is appropriate for the real-time visualization of large vector maps. The main purpose of this research is to investigate a balanced decomposition approach which can balance the load of each server node in a CyberGIS cluster environment. The load balancer analyzes the spatial characteristics of the map requests and decomposes the real-time viewshed into multiple balanced sub viewsheds, so as to balance the load of all the server nodes in the cluster environment. The test results demonstrate that the approach proposed in this research has the ability to balance the load in CyberGIS cluster environment.

On Heterogeneous Decompositions of Uniform Complete Multigraphs into Spanning Trees

Let be the order n uniform complete multigraph with edge multiplicity r. A spanning tree decomposition of partitions its edge set into a family J of edge-induced spanning trees. In a purely heterogeneous decomposition J no trees are isomorphic. Every order n tree occurs in a fully heterogeneous decomposition J. All trees have equal multiplicity in a balanced decomposition J. We show: (1) has 16 decomposition classes, four of which contain the 24 fully heterogeneous decompositions; (2) has 34 fully heterogeneous decomposition classes; exactly one lacks decompositions reducible to two decompositions; (3) when k ≥ 1, many balanced fully heterogeneous decompositions of reduce to “smaller” decompositions, but one such decomposition of is irreducible.

Функциональность и технологии алгебраических решателей в библиотеке Krylov

Article describes functional capabilities and software implementation peculiarities of parallel algorithms library Krylov, which is oriented on the solution of large systems of linear algebraic equations with sparse symmetric and unsymmetric matrices (positive definite and semi-definite) obtained from discrete approximations of multidimensional boundary value problems for partial differential equations on unstructured meshes. The library includes two-level iterative methods in Krylov subspaces; preconditioning of the latter is based on the balanced decomposition of the computational domain with variable sizes of subdomain overlapping and different boundary conditions on interfacing boundaries. Program implementations use typical compressed sparse matrix data formats. Results of numerical experiments are presented which demonstrate the efficiency of parallelization for typical ill-conditioned problems.