CMS: Modernizing a CMS Production Code Base

Unified is a tool employed by the CMS offline and computing team to preform checks during the scheduling process of physics workflows on the computing grid available to the CMS group. The whole framework comprising of the WMCore and Unified operates as a finite state machine, starting from requesting a workflow to be scheduled on one of the available nodes. The process includes verifying the credentials of the requester, performing various validity checks on the workflow, scheduling and executing it, and assessing whether the produced results meet a minimum threshold. If the results meet the threshold, the workflow is announced; if not, it is resubmitted as an ACDC workflow. Despite its critical role, Unified was originally written without adhering to coding best practices. It featured several scripts/services comprising of a single, large function handling all tasks, resulting in redundant code and the absence of dedicated classes where necessary. This led to a complex and difficult-to-understand codebase. The task of this project was to refactor these scripts to improve their structure and maintainability

Security Issues in Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a paradigm that gives user an efficient and scalable business model to perform various technology functions like network, hardware, storage, bandwidth, software etc. Services are provided by some other company and these can be accessed over internet therefore it is just an alias of using computer hardware and software beyond firewall. Benefits include unlimited storage, universal access, collaboration, scalability and revolutionizing the way modern computing works. But with benefits comes the problems like organizations are transferring data and applications over cloud but security remains a very important concern. There are many threats related to cloud security like data loss, data breaches, Malicious attacks, privacy etc. In this article we have studied the current problems in cloud security and proposed a security model using encryption techniques like SHA and RSA to tackle such situations. nbs

An analytical cross-sectional study on the determinants of nutritional anemia among children aged 1 to 5 years from Muzaffarnagar, India

Background: Nutritional anemia, one of the common causes of anemia, may result from the deficiency of a number of micronutrients. The present study was conducted to assess the prevalence of nutritional anemia and the clinico-haematological profile of anemia among the hospitalized children aged 1 to 5 years. Materials and Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among 250 anemic children between age one and five years attending the tertiary care hospital at Northern India. An interviewer administered questionnaire was used to obtain the data. Peripheral blood samples were used to assess the hematological parameters. Results: The prevalence of nutritional anemia among the anemic 1-5 years old children was 27.6%, in which Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) prevalence was 21.2%. Vitamin B12 deficiency was found among 8% of the anemic children and folic acid deficiency was prevalent among the 1.6% of the cases. The mean hemoglobin levels were significantly lower in among the nutritional anemia children (8.75 g/dl). Conclusion: Overall, the proportion of nutritional anemia among children aged one to five years is significant in Northern India, with IDA being the most common nutritional deficiency anemia

Challenges and outcomes for bariatric surgery in patients with paraplegia: Case series and systematic review.

INTRODUCTION Obesity contributes to a plethora of significant chronic diseases. Bariatric surgery has been demonstrated to be the most cost-effective treatment for severe obesity and significantly reduces morbidity and mortality from metabolic syndrome. Patients with paraplegia have significantly impaired mobility and are therefore at a much higher risk of developing severe obesity and its sequelae. Bariatric surgery may bring significant improvements to mobility, morbidity and quality of life for patients with paraplegia, but evidence in the literature is poor for this group of patients. METHODS A systematic review was conducted conforming to PRISMA guidelines. The MEDLINE and Cochrane databases were searched for all articles published prior to April 2019 matching all of the keywords 'bariatric', 'paraplegia' and 'spinal cord'. Articles were assessed for relevance and full texts reviewed. In addition, clinical records were reviewed for three patients who underwent bariatric surgery at a single UK private institution. Non-identifiable demographic, clinical, operative and outcome data were obtained from electronic records. RESULTS Twenty seven articles were retrieved from the initial database search, of which nine eligible full texts were reviewed. Eight articles were case reports or case series and the final article was a systematic review. All cases reported had positive outcomes with significant weight loss, improvement in mobility and increased quality of life. Outcomes from the three diversely aged patients in our case series were similarly positive, with no significant post-operative complications. DISCUSSION Patients with obesity and paraplegia may significantly benefit from bariatric surgery. There is a need for multi-centre cohort studies to evaluate outcomes and the choice of bariatric intervention. UK guidelines do not include criteria based on mobility or neurological deficit, resulting in a potential missed opportunity to offer a cost-effective treatment that can significantly improve quality of life for patients with severe obesity and paraplegia

Influence of social deprivation on provision of bariatric surgery: 10-year comparative ecological study between two UK specialist centres.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the effect of residential location and socioeconomic deprivation on the provision of bariatric surgery. DESIGN Retrospective cross-sectional ecological study. SETTING Patients resident local to one of two specialist bariatric units, in different regions of the UK, who received obesity surgery between 2003 and 2013. METHODS Demographic data were collected from prospectively collected databases. Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD 2010) was used as a measure of socioeconomic status. Obesity prevalences were obtained from Public Health England (2006). Patients were split into three IMD tertiles (high, median, low) and also tertiles of time. A generalised linear model was generated for each time period to investigate the effect of socioeconomic deprivation on the relationship between bariatric case count and prevalence of obesity. We used these to estimate surgical intervention provided in each population in each period at differing levels of deprivation. RESULTS Data were included from 1163 bariatric cases (centre 1-414, centre 2-749). Incidence rate ratios (IRRs) were calculated to measure the associations between predictor and response variables. Associations were highly non-linear and changed over the 10-year study period. In general, the relationship between surgical case volume and obesity prevalence has weakened over time, with high volumes becoming less associated with prevalence of obesity. DISCUSSION As bariatric services have matured, the associations between demand and supply factors have changed. Socioeconomic deprivation is not apparently a barrier to service provision more recently, but the positive relationships between obesity and surgical volume we would expect to find are absent. This suggests that interventions are not being taken up in the areas of need. We recommend a more detailed national analysis of the relationship between supply side and demand side factors in the provision of bariatric surgery

First narrow-band search for continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars in advanced detector data

International audienceSpinning neutron stars asymmetric with respect to their rotation axis are potential sources of continuous gravitational waves for ground-based interferometric detectors. In the case of known pulsars a fully coherent search, based on matched filtering, which uses the position and rotational parameters obtained from electromagnetic observations, can be carried out. Matched filtering maximizes the signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio, but a large sensitivity loss is expected in case of even a very small mismatch between the assumed and the true signal parameters. For this reason, narrow-band analysis methods have been developed, allowing a fully coherent search for gravitational waves from known pulsars over a fraction of a hertz and several spin-down values. In this paper we describe a narrow-band search of 11 pulsars using data from Advanced LIGO’s first observing run. Although we have found several initial outliers, further studies show no significant evidence for the presence of a gravitational wave signal. Finally, we have placed upper limits on the signal strain amplitude lower than the spin-down limit for 5 of the 11 targets over the bands searched; in the case of J1813-1749 the spin-down limit has been beaten for the first time. For an additional 3 targets, the median upper limit across the search bands is below the spin-down limit. This is the most sensitive narrow-band search for continuous gravitational waves carried out so far