Modeling and Simulation as a Service (MSaaS) embodies the idea that simulations should be composed quickly for the task at hand from loosely coupled shared components, simulation services, in a cloud-based environment. These simulations are then offered, as composed simulation services, to human and technical consumers. Instrumental to this, is functionality that lets a simulation operator discover and compose simulation services and execute the composition. We describe this functionality in terms of what we call MSaaS infrastructure capabilities. Following the idea of stepwise refinement, the discovery and composition of simulation services can be done at design time using implementation-independent information about simulation services and at implementation time using implementation-specific information about simulation services. The execution environment can also be set up at design time and at implementation time. We therefore describe the MSaaS infrastructure capabilities in terms of how they are used on both implementation-independent and implementation-specific service information. By doing these elaborations, we intend to gain greater insight into how to perform simulation service discovery, composition, and execution. We conclude that although much of the required functionality for a MSaaS infrastructure is available through existing platforms and frameworks, it is necessary to offer this functionality as services, alongside (composed) simulation services, to fulfill the MSaaS vision.

Sports medicine assessment and treatment techniques are ever developing and becoming more holistic. Traditional musculoskeletal assessment is changing to incorporate neural tissue pathology. Neural tension tests assess the mobility of neural tissue in the extremities and spinal canal. Positive adverse neural tension tests suggest poor mobility of neural tissue. Athletes with adverse neural tension often present with pain and decreased range of motion. These disorders can occur individually or can be associated with sports injuries. Ankle sprains, hamstring strains, tennis elbow, and thoracic outlet syndrome are some conditions that respond well to treatment of adverse neural tension. Reports of improved treatment outcomes following neural tension assessment and treatment suggest that adverse neural tension should be considered as a possible source of pain and dysfunction. This paper outlines concepts necessary to understand adverse neural tension including neuroanatomy, pathology, assessment techniques, and common sports injuries that may have an adverse neural tension component.

Our research has included leveraging Virtualization Technologies to provide integration, configuration and execution relief of Modeling & Simulation (M&S) event planning, instantiation and analysis. We have achieved this through a single service that is used to deploy and execute stand-alone applications as well as separate, but cooperative, applications on a dynamic virtual machine-based cloud. This use of virtualization technology shows significant cost savings in reducing the human effort for integration, test and execution by providing a powerful virtual machine environment that combines new and existing applications and theirconfigurations. Our effort eliminates the time needed to manually configure and execute these applications on physical hardware once they are captured in the system.

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Interoperability among distributed models and simulations is complex, tedious and difficult to evaluate. Integrating models that were developed for various purposes with disparate technologies and managed by independent organizations is often the goal. This goal is underestimated due to misleading facts of commonalities between those applications. Common compliance with middleware architectures, modeling goals and even object models gives a false impression of complete interoperability. There are numerous considerations when developing a distributed simulation environment. The event's objectives drive the necessary simulation functions, but how those simulation functions interact needs to be meticulously designed for true interoperability. The semantics of the information transmitted, the behavior necessary across multiple applications, fidelity and resolution synchronization are only a subset of the systems engineering necessary for a coherent System of Systems. This paper covers interoperability complexities and proposes criteria to consider when developing, integrating and executing a distributed modeling and simulation architecture. BACKGROUNDTechnical integration frameworks evolve quickly. The technical leaders in the distributed modeling and simulation (M&S) industry cannot agree on the best technical path forward at any given time. Each program that develops a model or simulation has a specific purpose, set of requirements and limited funding. These programs cannot afford to coordinate with the entire industry to provide the most "interoperable" product. Even if they did meet with everyone to gather interoperability requirements, the task list would be too large to execute with limited funding. In some cases, the requirements would be mutually exclusive in the eventual implementation. The program offices should budget for and plan for coordination across domain projects within a limited scope to improve interoperability with those applications that are most appropriate, but the utopian goal of cross-Service and cross-domain interoperability cannot be solved by funding alone. We work on an Army project that has integrated dozens of models into a single System of Systems architecture. These models have a wide range of purposes, fidelity, resolution, managing organizations and technologies. The topics covered herein are inspired by lessons learned on this project, as well as our collaboration with many other efforts in the M&S community. INTEROPERABILITYInteroperability, described most simply, is the ability for multiple systems to work together for a larger goal than any one system could provide on its own. Some simple examples of interoperability by two disparate components include USB drives made by a multitude of manufacturers working with a computer, cell phones made by different companies using different communication protocols being able to allow da-2637 978-1-4577-2109-0/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE