Vittorio Scarano

SambVca 2. A Web Tool for Analyzing Catalytic Pockets with Topographic Steric Maps

Developing more efficient catalysts remains one of the primary targets of organometallic chemists. To accelerate reaching this goal, effective molecular descriptors and visualization tools can represent a remarkable aid. Here, we present a Web application for analyzing the catalytic pocket of metal complexes using topographic steric maps as a general and unbiased descriptor that is suitable for every class of catalysts. To show the broad applicability of our approach, we first compared the steric map of a series of transition metal complexes presenting popular mono-, di-, and tetracoordinated ligands and three classic zirconocenes. This comparative analysis highlighted similarities and differences between totally unrelated ligands. Then, we focused on a recently developed Fe(II) catalyst that is active in the asymmetric transfer hydrogenation of ketones and imines. Finally, we expand the scope of these tools to rationalize the inversion of enantioselectivity in enzymatic catalysis, achieved by point mutat...

COCOMAPS: a web application to analyze and visualize contacts at the interface of biomolecular complexes.

SUMMARY Herein we present COCOMAPS, a novel tool for analyzing, visualizing and comparing the interface in protein-protein and protein-nucleic acids complexes. COCOMAPS combines traditional analyses and 3D visualization of the interface with the effectiveness of intermolecular contact maps. AVAILABILITY COCOMAPS is accessible as a public web tool at http://www.molnac.unisa.it/BioTools/cocomaps CONTACT romina.oliva@uniparthenope.it; lcavallo@unisa.it.

VENNFS: a Venn-diagram file manager

We present a prototypal file manager, VENNFS, that is designed to overcome some of the limitations of the current desktop interfaces, that are strongly based on hierarchical file systems. VENNFS allows users to place documents and categories on a plane so that files may belong to multiple categories at once, where proximity on the plane can represent similarity and time filtering is allowed.

Embedding graphs onto the Supercube

In this paper we consider the Supercube, a new interconnection network derived from the hypercube. The Supercube, introduced by A. Sen (1989), has the same diameter and connectivity as a Hypercube but can be realized for any number of nodes, not only powers of 2. We study the Supercubes ability to execute parallel programs, using graph-embedding techniques. We show that complete binary trees and bidimensional meshes (with a side length power of 2) are spanning subgraphs of the Supercube. We then prove that the Supercube is Hamiltonian and, when the number of nodes is not a power of 2, it contains all cycles of length greater than 3 as subgraphs. >

CoFFEE : Cooperative Face2Face educational environment

Co-located collaboration in classroom is the topic we tackle in this paper. We present COFFEE a tailorable collaborative environment that is designed for interactive, co-located (i.e. Face2Face) collaboration in classroom. We present the requirements for tailorability that have driven our design, CoFFEE architecture, some tools that have been deployed and discuss the latecomer management issue that is offered by the core of our architecture to all the tools that can be developed within the framework.

Efficient edge-services for colorblind users

Web Content Accessibility guidelines by W3C (http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/) provideseveralsuggestionsforWebdesignersonhowtoauthorWebpagesinordertomakethemaccessible to everyone. In this context, we are proposing touse edge services as an efficient and general solution to theproblem of colorblind users: we, first, describe an efficientalgorithm that modifies any color in Web pages, by increas-ing contrast and lightness, in order to make them accessiblefor users with such a disability; then, the algorithm is im-plemented as an edge service called the

Distributed Load Balancing for Parallel Agent-Based Simulations

We focus on agent-based simulations where a large number of agents move in the space, obeying to some simple rules. Since such kind of simulations are computational intensive, it is challenging, for such a contest, to let the number of agents to grow and to increase the quality of the simulation. A fascinating way to answer to this need is by exploiting parallel architectures. In this paper, we present a novel distributed load balancing schema for a parallel implementation of such simulations. The purpose of such schema is to achieve an high scalability. Our approach to load balancing is designed to be lightweight and totally distributed: the calculations for the balancing take place at each computational step, and in?uences the successive step. To the best of our knowledge, our approach is the ?rst distributed load balancing schema in this context. We present both the design and the implementation that allowed us to perform a number of experiments, with up-to 1, 000, 000 agents. Tests show that, in spite of the fact that the load balancing algorithm is local, the workload distribution is balanced while the communication overhead is negligible.

MIMOSA: context-aware adaptation for ubiquitous web access

The ubiquitous computing scenario is characterized by heterogeneity of devices used to access services, and by frequent changes in the user’s context. Hence, adaptation according to the user’s context and the used devices is necessary to allow mobile users to efficiently exploit Internet-based services. In this paper, we present a distributed framework, named MIMOSA, that couples a middleware for context-awareness with an intermediary-based architecture for content adaptation. MIMOSA provides an effective and efficient solution for the adaptation of Internet services on the basis of a comprehensive notion of context, by means of techniques for aggregating context data from distributed sources, deriving complex contextual situations from raw sensor data, evaluating adaptation policies, and solving possible conflicts. The middleware allows programmers to modularly build complex adaptive services starting from simple ones, and includes tools for assisting the user in declaring her preferences, as well as mechanisms for detecting incorrect system behaviors due to a wrong choice of adaptation policies. The effectiveness and efficiency of MIMOSA are shown through the development of a prototype adaptive service, and by extensive experimental evaluations.

Interactive 3D environments by using videogame engines

In this paper we study state-of-the-art technologies to design interactive and cooperative 3D environments that are based on videogame 3D engines. We provide, first, a categorization of videogame 3D engines from the point of view of their usage in creating interactive 3D worlds and show a comparison of the most important characteristics. Then, we show an example of how we used a commercial videogame engine to create an interactive an enjoyable visit to an archaeological site.

F-Chord: Improved Uniform Routing on Chord

We propose a family of novel schemes based on Chord retain- ing all positive aspects that made Chord a popular topology for routing in P2P networks. The schemes, based on the Fibonacci number system, allow to improve on the maximum/average number of hops for lookups and the routing table size per node.