Concurrency and Consistency

• Is Ordering of Disk Updates Required to Maintain File-System Crash-Consistency?
  
  Not only is it possible to maintain file-system crash-consistency without ordering updates, but doing so may actually increase performance.
  Vijay Chidambaram (University of Wisconsin - Madison)
• Smart Thread Scheduling is the Key for OLTP
  
  Instructions need capacity: Use multiple L1-I.
  Data misses are compulsory: Share within a socket.
  Thread scheduling is the key for OLTP.
  Pinar Tözün (EPFL), Ippokratis Pandis (IBM Almaden Research Center)
• C/C++ Causal Cycles Confound Compositionality
  
  C/C++ permit seemingly-impossible cycles in causality. This breaks compositionality: two apparently safe programs may fault when composed.
  Mike Dodds (University of York), Mark Batty (University of Cambridge), Alexey Gotsman (IMDEA Software Institute)

Genomes, Theory, and Quantum Computing

• Clustering reveals ubiquitous heterogeneity and asymmetry of genomic signals at functional elements
  
  Aggregation plots cannot represent asymmetrical signals around sets of unoriented sites. Clustering is necessary for such analysis.
  Anshul Kundaje, Sofia Kyriazopoulou-Panagiotopoulou, Max W. Libbrecht, Cheryl L. Smith (Stanford), Debasish Raha (Yale), Elliott E. Winters, Steven M. Johnson (Brigham Young), Michael Snyder, Serafim Batzoglou, Arend Sidow (Stanford )
• First-order theorem proving in the exploration of Andrews-Curtis conjecture
  
  Potential counterexamples to Andrews-Courtis conjecture can be refuted efficiently by automated theorem proving.
  Alexei Lisitsa (University of Liverpool)
• Towards Provable Remote Data Deletion Through Quantum Entanglement
  
  If we connect two qubits via quantum entanglement, the fate of one can be controlled by the other so shared secrets can be deleted remotely.
  Jon Crowcroft (University of Cambridge), Gerard Briscoe (Queen Mary University London)

Information, Data, Language, and HCI

• Predicting Recommender System Performance from an Information Retrieval Perspective
  
  We develop new recommendation effectiveness prediction methods based on query clarity. Recommendation performance is, in fact, predictable.
  Alejandrio Bellogín, Pablo Castells, Iván Cantador (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid)
• Experienced old eyes can look young in HCI research
  
  When experience is controlled for, older adults' eye movements resemble younger adults. Age alone is less important than previously assumed.
  Robin L. Hill (University of Edinburgh), Anna Dickinson, John L. Arnott (University of Dundee)
• Punctuation has a point, so use it!
  
  Too many TTS and ASR systems ignore punctuation. Mistake! Little things can make a difference for the better.
  Robin L. Hill (University of Edinburgh), Wayne S. Murray (University of Dundee)
• A Restriction-Centered Theory of Reasoning and Computation to materialize a Web 3.0
  
  Mimicking human thinking, the RRC theory allows building reasoners, which can deal with fuzzy reality. Such reasoners may enable a Web 3.0.
  Edy Portmann (University of California Berkeley)
• HW Databases, Where art Thou?
  
  We need an open HW specification database that is comprehensive, extensible, maintainable, and accessible by both humans and machines.
  Sangjin Han, Aurojit Panda, Sylvia Ratnasamy (University of California Berkeley)

Networking

• See straight through data center bandwidth limitations with X-Rays
  
  Reconfigurable wireless X-Ray links in data centers could deliver 40 Pb/sec, but would have to be turned off while operators are present.
  George Porter (University of California San Diego)
• Using MOOCs as a global testbed for network measurement
  
  Researchers gain insights on global scale internet by using #MOOC students as vantage points. Students learn from the assignments. Win win.
  Ravi Bhoraskar (University of Washington)
• Detecting DNS Censorship without an internal vantage point
  
  DNS censorship can be detected through anomalies when querying public DNS servers. At least 13 countries block otherwise available sites.
  Will Scott, Sujit Packiaraj, Arvind Krishnamurthy (University of Washington)

Security and Privacy

• Securing Two-factor Authentication for Smartphones in a Usable Way by Adding a Connected Token
  
  Two-factor authentication for smartphones is easy to break and can be secured by using a smart watch which acts as a connected token.
  Matthias Lange (Technische Universität Berlin)
• Don't show your hand: on the security leakages of *BFT systems
  
  The reply messages of the *BFT distributed systems expose the status of your servers and turn you into a target for malicious attackers.
  Antonio Davoli (Sapienza University of Rome)
• How soon can you decide whether Alice is permitted to communicate or share resources with Bob?
  
  Guaranteeing access control policy evaluation performance is hard. Results from scalable web systems and semantic analysis show promise.
  Bernard Butler, Brendan Jennings (Waterford Institute of Technology)
• Android Apps: What are they doing with your precious Internet?
  
  The majority of Android apps are not malicious, but use internet access in ways that are not compatible with the user's interests.
  Amy Tang (University of California Berkeley), Ashwin Rao (INRIA), Justine Sherry (University of California Berkeley), Dave Choffnes (University of Washington)

Social Networks

• Recency is good: expanding with fresh news improves event detection in Twitter
  
  Expanding tweets with fresh and with stale newswire improves event detection by 21% and 17% respectively, compared to not using expansion.
  Saša Petrović, Miles Osborne, Victor Lavrenko (University of Edinburgh)
• Men at work: the StackOverflow case
  
  StackOverflow users presenting themselves as women participate less and earn less reputation than those presenting themselves as men.
  Bogdan Vasilescu (Eindhoven University of Technology), Andrea Capiluppi (Brunel University), Alexander Serebrenik (Eindhoven University of Technology)
• Exploiting User Behaviors from Today's Online Social Networks to Build Distributed Alternatives
  
  Can we make decentralized online social networks highly available by mining online trends of users on today's OSNs?
  Rammohan Narendula (EPFL)
• The Case of Coopetition: Facebook and Decentralized Alternatives
  
  A new way of social networking: decentralized alternatives can plug into Facebook as 3rd party apps to overcome the network effect.
  Rammohan Narendula (EPFL)

Software Engineering

• The next step in software metrics research
  
  To enable the effective application of software metrics, a pattern catalog based on real-world usage scenarios must be developed.
  Eric Bouwers (Software Improvement Group)
• Adaptation is a Game
  
  Control data variants of game models such as Interface Automata are suitable for the design and analysis of self-adaptive systems.
  Roberto Bruni, Andrea Corradini, Fabio Gadducci (Universita di Pisa), Alberto Lluch Lafuente, Andrea Vandin (IMT Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca>
• Applying existing software metrics to development release cycles
  
  We think product metrics can help us understand release cycles. This understanding can in turn improve the software development process.
  Jos Kraaijeveld (Delft University of Technology)

Tiny ToCS Volume 2 Organizers

• Yonatan Bisk, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Franziska Roesner, University of Washington

• Samantha Ainsley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Peter Bailis, University of California—Berkeley
• Gilbert Bernstein, University of Washington
• Michele Catasta, EPFL
• Raymond Cheng, University of Washington
• Eva Darulova, EPFL
• Lucas DiCioccio, Technicolor / UPMC Sorbonne Universités
• Aaron J Elmore, University of California—Santa Barbara
• Kyle Fox, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Sunil Garg, Amazon.com
• Dimitrios C. Gklezakos, University of Washington
• Kevin Karsch, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Heidy Khlaaf, Florida State University
• Jonathan Kummerfeld, University of California—Berkeley
• Alessandra Mazzia, University of Michigan
• Michael Netter, University of Regensburg
• Eoin O'Mahony, Cornell University
• Sunil Pedapudi, Google
• Mark Reitblatt, Cornell University
• Malte Schwarzkopf, University of Cambridge
• Will Scott, University of Washington
• Justine Sherry, University of California—Berkeley
• Pinar Tozun, EPFL