This paper addresses opportunities for adaptation of the microclimate surrounding housing in response to climate change. It is based on study of an existing town and two local social housing organisations in South Wales, UK. It argues the design of external spaces around dwellings will become more important as changes in lifestyle and levels of outdoor activity are likely to increase, in natural response to changed climatic conditions. It suggests that: in South Wales housing is still being built that, in its fabric, risks overheating within perhaps two decades ( some overheating is already experienced); hence that external contextual environment adaptation measures may become increasingly critical; and that current regulations and codes focus overmuch on the building, so the external contextual environment is not addressed with the importance it deserves. This is compounded because mastery of integrated micro-climate simulation with building and urban modelling tools is a challenge for the average architectural designer. More data, more research, better tools and file data exchange are held necessary.

This paper reports on our experience with the implementation of the Real-time Specification for Java on the Ovm open source Java virtual machine. We describe the architecture and main design decisions involved in implementing real-time Java on Ovm. We present the first use of Real-time Java in avionics in the context of control software for a ScanEagle Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.

One of the most powerful features of the real-time specification for Java (RTSJ) is the new memory management model based on scoped memory areas. This model allows programmers to ensure timely reclamation of memory and predictable performance, at the cost of an unfamiliar programming model. We report on experience using and implementing scoped memory areas. Our contribution is twofold: (i) we give an informal introduction to the semantics of the scope management rules of the RTSJ, (ii) we present a number of design patterns for effectively using the scoped memory area API

Modem real-time programming languages and operating systems provide support for monitoring the amount of CPU time a thread consumes. However, no system in widespread use fully integrates this monitoring with the scheduling facilities. The real-time specification for Java (RTSJ) provides an integrated approach to scheduling periodic threads and monitoring their CPU execution time. It supports a cost enforcement model whereby a periodic thread is suspended when it consumes more time than it requested. Version 1.0 of the RTSJ is under specified and it is difficult to understand the full model. This paper clarifies the position and defines the conditions under which a real-time thread is resumed. The model presented is the one that is fully defined in version 1.0.1 of the RTSJ. Unfortunately, version 1.0.1 of the specification will not have a general model for handling cost enforcement and deadline monitoring for all schedulable objects. This paper proposes extensions to the RTSJ that allow the cost enforcement model and deadline monitoring model to be consistently applied across all schedulable objects, and for it to be fully integrated with scheduling

The concept of using a relational database to perform information retrieval (IR) search functions is well established. Prior work demonstrates the capability to perform common functions and advanced ranking algorithms using standard, unchanged SQL. The previous work does not address the preprocessing of unstructured text within the relational model. In fact, the parsing of the unstructured data into a structured data set was done outside of the database, usually using sequential programming languages such as C. This work proves that IR preprocessing does not require proprietary application code to build the framework necessary for searching document databases. Furthermore, the resulting environment is relational and integrates with other data sources within an organization.

Designing concurrent object-oriented programs is hard. Correct programs must coordinate multiple threads accessing composite objects, using low-level mechanisms such as locks and read-write sets. Efficient programs must balance the complexity and overhead of the coordination mechanisms against the increased performance possible through concurrency. A method-level algebra of exclusion provides a succinct description of the conditions under which a thread must be excluded from a component of a composite object. Using the algebra, programmers can check whether their programs meet their exclusion requirements, can eliminate redundant exclusion controls, and can remove synchronisation overhead by reducing concurrency.