Twitter and this blog

I am not updating this blog very often given the quantity of work I have to do.

To put a remedy to that I have opened a Twitter account where I post almost everyday interesting links and comments related to my research interests and technology news.
Follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/diegostream

Anyway I will keep posting from time to time also in this blog when a twitter post length is not enough.

PS: I am currently developing an iPhone app so this could be the topic of my next post…

EDIT: Thanks to Stuart for the suggestion to add a twitter widget to the blog Now the blog will hopefully show a little bit of activity.

Next generation devices

An incredible talk/demo at TED from MIT Media Lab research team:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html

This makes me happy to be a researcher

Dealing with literature in your research

How To Read a Paper  - S. Keshav
http://ccr.sigcomm.org/online/files/p83-keshavA.pdf

DevonThink and DevonAgent by Devon Technologies – intelligent document management and associative research
http://www.devon-technologies.com

Zotero – firefox extension reference manager
http://www.zotero.org

Comparison of reference management tools:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software

Cut-throat savings in italian university

From Nature:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v455/n7215/full/455835b.html

Side-by-Side Algorithms in LaTex

Here is the code of how to put two (or more) algorithms side by side in latex using algorithmic and algorithm packages. (The principle is the same used to put figures side-by-side).
NB: remeber to put [H] as a parameter for \begin{algorithm} (I lost a lot of time trying to understand this very simple thing)

 

\begin{figure*}[ttt!]

 \begin{minipage}[t]{3.15in}

 \begin{algorithm}[H]

\caption{Mission-side Greedy} 

\label{alg1} 

\begin{algorithmic}[1]

\STATE whatever your alg does

\FOR{each mission $M_{j}$ in sorted order} 

\STATE do something

\ENDFOR

\end{algorithmic}

\end{algorithm}

 \end{minipage}

 \hfill

 \begin{minipage}[t]{3.15in}

\begin{algorithm}[H]

\caption{Mission-side2 Greedy} 

\label{alg2} 

\begin{algorithmic}[1]

\STATE whatever your alg does

\FOR{each mission $M_{j}$ in sorted order} 

\STATE do something

\ENDFOR

\end{algorithmic}

\end{algorithm}

 \end{minipage}

 \hfill

\end{figure*}

First ITA Doctoral Symposium (ITADS)….on rails

I am organizing the First ITA Doctoral Symposium (ITADS) with the help of other PhD students involved in ITA, it will run as a workshop during the Annual Conference of ITA (ACITA) 2008 in London on Tuesday (September 16th). http://www.usukita.org/?q=acita_2008 

The main aim is to provide a forum for PhD students within ITA which will give us support/feedback and will build a student research community.

ITA project is indeed creating a new research community with unique aspects (In the Bootcamp, our annual brainstorming meeting, the participants were over 140!). One over all is the interdisciplinary aspect (psychology, computer scientists, military experts, etc. ) with which we are addressing sensor network problems.

So in my opinion ITA should do something to build a future for this research comunity, and since PhD students are (hopefully) going to be the next generation of scientists/researchers, they should feel part of the same research community.

You can find more information about this event at this URL:
http://users.cs.cf.ac.uk/D.Pizzocaro/ITADS

Any comment on the program/conference is more than welcomed.

Using lp_solve in Java with Mac OS X

Sometimes research (at least in my case) means to spend (a lot of) time to configure some application, in this case lp_solve a linear programming solver written in C.

As it often happens there were not so many informations on how to use lp_solve in Java in Mac OS X, the reason is that not a lot of people try to do it in MAC OS X…

If you do it in Windows it is really easy, in Unix you just follow the instructions, but in the Java wrapper the instructions to set up everything (lp_solve + lp_solve Java wrapper) in MAC OS X are WRONG (or incomplete)!

So if you have a mac and want to use lp_solve in your java applications, this post is for you!

After a day of browsing I found in a mailing list a step-by-step guide at this URL: http://osdir.com/ml/mathematics.lpsolve/2006-02/msg00189.html
Thanks to John Gleeson who wrote it.

This is the guide (a mirror in this blog for this guide is always helpful!):

How to build and install the lp_solve Java extension on Mac OS X:

Download and expanded lp_solve_5.5_source.tar.gz into a
directory named 'lp_solve_5.5'.

Download and expand lp_solve_5.5_java.zip into a
directory named 'lp_solve_5.5_java'.

1) Build the lp_solve library.

$ cd lp_solve_5.5/lpsolve55
$ sh ccc.osx

This creates two new files in the lpsolve55 subdirectory:

$ ls liblp*
liblpsolve55.a     liblpsolve55.dylib

2) Install the lp_solve library.

If not already in directory lpsolve55, cd to it.  Copy liblpsolve55.a
and
liblpsolve55.dylib to /usr/local/lib (you may need to create
/usr/local/lib first: sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/lib):

$ sudo cp liblpsolve55.a liblpsolve55.dylib /usr/local/lib

3) Test the build and installation.

$ cd lp_solve_5.5/demo

The ccc.osx script is broken.  The good news is that version 5.5 of
lp_solve fixes the "malloc.h" incompatibility on the Mac that was in
earlier versions.  The Unix/Linux script now works on OS X.  Be
patient...
it may take several seconds to build 'demo':

$ sh ccc

The example problems in the demo should issue no errors and have
"Excellent numeric accuracy ||*|| = 0":

$ ./demo

4) Build the lp_solve JNI extension.

$ cd lp_solve_5.5_java/lib/mac

The script "build-osx" in the mac subdirectory is a DOS text file:

$ file build-osx
build-osx: ASCII English text, with CRLF line terminators

If you try execute this file, you will get "command not found"
errors.  To
convert it into a Unix file, remove the carriage returns:

$ tr -d "\r" < build-osx > build-osx1

Edit build-osx1 to set LPSOLVE_DIR to the location of directory
lp_solve_5.5 on your computer. Change the two occurrences of '5.1' to
'5.5' and the two occurrences of '51' to '55' in the last line of
build-osx1.

$ sh build-osx1

This creates the extension library liblpsolve55j.jnilib.

5) Install  the lp_solve JNI extension.

The file liblpsolve55j.jnilib should be copied to /Library/Java/
Extensions
if you want it to be available to all users.  We assume this will be a
private installation (create the Java extensions directory if necessary;
e.g., mkdir -p ~/Library/Java/Extensions):

$ cp liblpsolve55j.jnilib ~/Library/Java/Extensions

6) Test the Java extension:

$ cd lp_solve_5.5_java/demo
$ java -cp ./demo.jar:../lib/lpsolve55j.jar Demo

The numerical results of the Java Demo should be identical to those
of the
C demo.

There is a Java unit test.  Out of 122 tests, I got 5 errors and 3
failures, all of which could be explained (missing XLI applications,
missing BFP libraries, outdated version numbers in tests, negligible
floating point differrences):

$ java -cp ./unittests.jar:../lib/lpsolve55j.jar:../lib/junit.jar
LpSolveTest

7) For more information about Java programming on Mac OS X:

Java Frequently Asked Questions: Common Development Questions
<http://developer.apple.com/java/faq/development.html>

OPFOCUS.ORG – an independent journal on optics & Photonics

 


www.opfocus.org

OPFOCUS.ORG snapshot

 

 

Recently Giorgio Volpe, a PhD student in ICFO (Barcelona – Spain), one of my best friend told me he is involved in this interesting project. Here is how they describe this initiative:
“Optics & Photonics Focus (OPFocus) is an independent journal reviewing important recent developments in the fields of optics and photonics. OPFocus’ goal is to feature cutting edge research and to make it accessible to a wide range of readers, while preserving the accuracy of the information delivered. For this reason, all OPFocus’ stories are written by scientists actively working in the field. In this way, OPFocus provides an interesting review for fellow scientists and fascinating insights for laymen and journalists. ”

In my opinion it is a promising project, I appreciate a lot the effort of communicating research results also to people not directly involved with it. This is one of the reason why I like magazines such as the American scientists that is written by experts but for a wide range of audience; but also research blogs like Theory of Computing Blog.

Moreover as Einsten said once: “You haven’t really understood something if you are not able to explain it to your granny.”

I am actually planning to write an article for OPFocus, I’ve started to look for an interdisciplinary paper which faces resource allocation problems in the optics and photonics field…any suggestion is welcomed!

Access Rights For The Sensor-Mission Assignment Tool in Coalition Operations

This is a movie which demonstrates a working prototype developed by Konrad Borowiecki of a Sensor-Mission assignment tool. Hopefully this tool will be the base on which we will developed a more detailed prototype of a Sensor-Task Allocation tool in Heterogeneous Sensor Networks.

Click here to Download the movie: AR-desktop.m4v
Step-by-Step description of the demo (written by Konrad Borowiecki):
Login as JohnOfUK who has Access Rights level equal 2.
 loading mission, 
 selecting task region, 
 selecting requirements for this task,
 querying Sensing Resource Registry of US-UK coalition,
 browsing visible Sensing Resources.
Repeating above instructions for the user MikeOfUS who has Access Rights are equal 4.
You can notice the difference between resources that are visible for these users, additionally for MikeOfUS You can see that One British Sensing Resource is not taskable (lock sign in front of the resource) because his level of access is one level too low (the number on the right of the lock icon) to task this resource. 

First post!

Who am I?

My name is Diego Pizzocaro, I am originally from Italy but now I live in Cardiff, Wales (UK). I graduated (BSc) at University of Padova (Italy) in Information Engineering where I also got an MSc in Computer Engineering. Now I am a PhD Student in the School of Computer Science at Cardiff University (UK) where I am a member of the Knowledge and Information Systems (KIS) research group. My principal supervisor is Prof. Alun Preece and my co-supervisor is Dr. Roger M. Whitaker.

My research is focused primarily on resource allocation in heterogeneous wireless sensor networks while supporting different type of tasks (e.g. military missions, humanitarian missions, search-and-rescue, disaster response, etc).

And what about this blog?

In this blog I will sporadically post what I find interesting, relevant to my work, or more in general worth to mention to everybody in the research community.

I will do my best in trying to regularly post something (even if as a PhD student I tend not to have too much spare time). I am sure anyway that this blog could be useful also to me to keep vaguely track of my research.

Hope you find this interesting!

Cheers,

- Diego Pizzocaro