Steve McKeever - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Steve McKeever

Communications in computer and information science, 2023

Annual Simulation Symposium, Apr 23, 2017

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, Jun 25, 2008

In scientific applications, physical quantities and units of measurement are used regularly. If t... more In scientific applications, physical quantities and units of measurement are used regularly. If the inherent incompatibility between these units is not handled properly it can lead to major, sometimes catastrophic, problems. Although the risk of a miscalculation is high and the cost equally so, almost none of the major programming languages has support for physical quantities. Instead, scientific code developers often make their own tools or rely on external libraries to help them spot or prevent these mistakes. We employed a systematic approach to examine and analyse all available physical quantity open-source libraries. Approximately 3700 search results across seven repository hosting sites were condensed into a list of 82 of the most comprehensive and well-developed libraries currently available. In this group, 30 different programming languages are represented. Out of these 82 libraries, 38 have been updated within the last two years. These 38 are summarised in this paper as they are deemed the most relevant. The conclusion we draw from these results is that there is clearly too much diversity, duplicated efforts, and a lack of code sharing and harmonisation which discourages use and adoption.

arXiv (Cornell University), Oct 22, 2022

Updates on Software Usability [Working Title]

Quantities in engineering and the physical sciences are expressed as units of measurement (UoM). ... more Quantities in engineering and the physical sciences are expressed as units of measurement (UoM). If a software system fails to maintain the algebraic attributes of a system’s UoM information correctly when evaluating expressions then disastrous problems can arise. However, it is perhaps the more mundane unit mismatches and lack of interoperability that over time incurs a greater cost. Global and existential challenges, from infectious diseases to environmental breakdown, require high-quality data. Ensuring software systems support quantities explicitly is becoming less of a luxury and more of a necessity. While there are technical solutions that allow units of measurement to be specified at both the model and code level, a detailed assessment of their strengths and weaknesses has only recently been undertaken. This chapter provides both a formal introduction to managing quantities and a practical comparison of existing techniques so that software users can judge the robustness of th...

International Conference on Software Engineering, May 3, 2003

Perspectives of System Informatics, 2018

Journal of Big Data, 2019

Simulating the human heart is a challenging problem, with simulations being very time con-suming,... more Simulating the human heart is a challenging problem, with simulations being very time con-suming, to the extent that some can take days to compute even on high performance computing resources. There is considerable interest in computational optimisation techniques, with a ...

The Journal of antimicrobial chemotherapy, Jan 10, 2015

The global burden of antibiotic resistance is tremendous and, without new anti-infective strategi... more The global burden of antibiotic resistance is tremendous and, without new anti-infective strategies, will continue to increase in the coming decades. Despite the growing need for new antibiotics, few pharmaceutical companies today retain active antibacterial drug discovery programmes. One reason is that it is scientifically challenging to discover new antibiotics that are active against the antibiotic-resistant bacteria of current clinical concern. However, the main hurdle is diminishing economic incentives. Increased global calls to minimize the overuse of antibiotics, the cost of meeting regulatory requirements and the low prices of currently marketed antibiotics are strong deterrents to antibacterial drug development programmes. New economic models that create incentives for the discovery of new antibiotics and yet reconcile these incentives with responsible antibiotic use are long overdue. DRIVE-AB is a €9.4 million public-private consortium, funded by the EU Innovative Medicine...

Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development, 2022

doi:10.1098/rsta.2008.0094