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This paper introduces nonblocking transaction composition (NBTC), a new methodology for atomic composition of nonblocking operations on concurrent data structures. Unlike previous software transactional memory (STM) approaches, NBTC leverages the linearizability of existing nonblocking structures, reducing the number of memory accesses that must be executed together, atomically, to only one per operation in most cases (these are typically the linearizing instructions of the constituent operations). Our obstruction-free implementation of NBTC, which we call Medley, makes it easy to transform most nonblocking data structures into transactional counterparts while preserving their liveness and high concurrency. In our experiments, Medley outperforms Lock-Free Transactional Transform (LFTT), the fastest prior competing methodology, by 40--170%. The marginal overhead of Medley's transactional composition, relative to separate operations performed in succession, is roughly 2.2$\times$. For persistent data structures, we observe that failure atomicity for transactions can be achieved "almost for free" with epoch-based periodic persistence. Toward that end, we integrate Medley with nbMontage, a general system for periodically persistent data structures. The resulting txMontage provides ACID transactions and achieves throughput up to two orders of magnitude higher than that of the OneFile persistent STM system.

This clinical consensus document addresses the assessment, selection, and fitting considerations for non-surgical bone conduction hearing devices (BCHD) for children under the age of 5 years identified as having unilateral or bilateral, permanent conductive or mixed hearing losses. Children with profound unilateral sensorineural hearing losses are not addressed. The document was developed based on evidence review and consensus by The Paediatric Bone Conduction Working Group, which is composed of audiologists from North America who have experience working with BCHDs in children. The document aims to provide clinical direction for an area of paediatric audiology practice that is under development and is therefore lacking in standard protocols or guidelines. This work may serve as a basis for future research and clinical contributions to support prospective paediatric audiology practices.

Increasing demand for river water now conflicts with an increasing desire to maintain riparian ecosystems. Efficiently managing river flows for riparian vegetation requires an understanding of the time scale of flow effects, but this information is limited by the absence of long-term studies of vegetation change in response to flow variation. To investigate the influence of short- and long-term flow variability and dam operation on riparian vegetation, we determined the occurrence of 107 plant species in 133 permanent plots of known inundating discharge along the Gunnison River in Colorado on five different occasions between 1990 and 2013. Individual species moved up and down the gradient of inundating discharge coincident with increases and decreases in mean annual flow, and the correlations between flow and species occurrence were strongest when flows were weighted by time before vegetation sampling with a median half-life of 1.5 years. Some tall, rhizomatous, perennial species, however, responded to flows on a longer time scale. Logistic regression of species occurrence showed a significant relation with inundation duration for 70 out of 107 species. Plot species richness and total vegetative cover decreased in association with desiccation at low inundation durations and with fluvial disturbance at high inundation durations. Within-plot similarity in species occurrence between years decreased strongly with increasing inundation duration. Moderate inundation durations were dominated by tall, rhizomatous, perennial herbs, including invasive Phalaris arundinacea (reed canary grass). Over the 23-year study period, species richness declined, and the proportion of rhizomatous perennials increased, consistent with the hypothesis that decreases in flow peaks and increases in low flows caused by flow regulation have decreased establishment opportunities for disturbance-dependent species. In summary, annual-scale changes in vegetation were strongly influenced by flow variation, and decadal-scale changes were influenced by decreases in fluvial disturbance from upstream flow regulation beginning decades prior to the onset of this study.