This report describes the results of a performance assessment study of linear algebra packages in Java. Implementations of matrix multiplication, LU factorization and Cholesky factorization are compared to corresponding routines provided by CLapack and Atlas.

Object-oriented visualization-based software systems for biomedical data analysis must deal with complex and voluminous datasets within a flexible yet intuitive graphical user interface. In a research environment, the development of such systems are difficult to manage due to rapidly changing requirements, incorporation of newly developed algorithms, and the needs imposed by a diverse user base. One issue that research supervisors must contend with is an assessment of the quality of the system's software objects with respect to their extensibility, reusability, clarity, and efficiency.

EvIdent^TM (EVent IDENTification) is a user-friendly, algorithm-rich, graphical environment for detecting, investigating, and visualizing novelty in a set of images. Novelty is identified for a region of interest and its associated characteristics. For functional magnetic resonance imaging, for instance, a characteristic of the region of interest is a time course, which represents the intensity value of voxels over several discrete instances in time. Originally developed for a platform-specific environment using proprietary technology, a new incarnation of EvIdent has been designed using an application programming interface called VIStA^TM (VISualization Through Analysis). VIStA is written in Java^TM and offers a sophisticated generalized data model, an extensible algorithm framework, and a suite of graphical user interface constructs. This paper describes EvIdent and some of its features, the rationale behind the design of VIStA, and the motivations and challenges of scientific programming using Java.

and distribution of binaries to heterogeneous architectures