Abstract

Abstract

Abstract
Nowadays, Universities and other Training Institutions need to clearly identify the Information Technology (IT) skills that companies demand from IT practitioners. This is essential not only for offering appropriate and reliable university degrees, but also to help future IT professionals on where to focus in order to achieve better job positions. In an attempt to address this issue, this study rely on 102 Chief Information Officers, from Iberian large companies, to characterize current IT professionals and what is expected from future hirings. Results revealed that IT Technicians and Senior Analysts are the predominant positions and also that future hiring will request candidates with at least two to five years of work experience. The two most important skills found were core functions at the IT department: business knowledge and user support. In contrast, traditional competences such as web development and management of emerging technologies were less demanded. © 2010, IGI Global.

Abstract
Fibre Bragg grating (FBG) sensors are finding increased usage in experimental mechanics for monitoring service conditions in structures and other equipment and are currently being tested for process monitoring. In FBG sensors, strain and temperature cause a shift in the Bragg wavelength reflected by the grating contained in these fibres. In situ monitoring of strain and temperature during welding processes increases knowledge of the welded material and the welding process itself. In the present work, two welding processes are monitored using FBG sensors and the complete measurement approach including sensor selection, calibration, instrumentation, welding monitoring and result interpretation is presented. Calibration for strain measurements at constant temperature was performed using a four-point bending test, and temperature calibration was carried out using an oven. Results for a sensor length of 5 mm are presented. Both transient and residual strains were recorded during experiments on metal inert gas and friction stir welding and the possible impact of this monitoring technology is discussed in the light of process optimization and subsequent structural health monitoring.

Abstract

Abstract
Parallel programming has become mandatory to fully exploit the potential of modern CPUs. The data-flow model provides a natural way to exploit parallelism. However, traditional data-flow programming is not trivial: specifying dependencies and control using fine-grained tasks (such as instructions) can be complex and present unwanted overheads. To address this issue we have built a coarse-grained data-flow model with speculative execution support to be used on top of widespread architectures, implemented as a hybrid Von Neumanm/data-flow execution system. We argue that speculative execution fits naturally with the data-flow model. Using speculative execution liberates the programmer to consider only the main dependencies, and still allows correct data-flow execution of coarse-grained tasks. More- over, our speculation mechanism does not demand centralised control, which is a key feature for upcoming many-core systems, where scalability has become an important concern. An initial study on a artificial bank server application suggests that there is a wide range of scenarios where speculation can be very effective. © 2010 IEEE,.