CloudHealth: A Model-Driven Approach to Watch the Health of Cloud Services

Cloud systems are complex and large systems where services provided by different operators must coexist and eventually cooperate. In such a complex environment, controlling the health of both the whole environment and the individual services is extremely important to timely and effectively react to misbehaviours, unexpected events, and failures. Although there are solutions to monitor cloud systems at different granularity levels, how to relate the many KPIs that can be collected about the health of the system and how health information can be properly reported to operators are open questions. This paper reports the early results we achieved in the challenge of monitoring the health of cloud systems. In particular we present CloudHealth, a model-based health monitoring approach that can be used by operators to watch specific quality attributes. The CloudHealth Monitoring Model describes how to operationalize high level monitoring goals by dividing them into subgoals, deriving metrics for the subgoals, and using probes to collect the metrics. We use the CloudHealth Monitoring Model to control the probes that must be deployed on the target system, the KPIs that are dynamically collected, and the visualization of the data in dashboards.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl

Delay Tolerant Networking over the Metropolitan Public Transportation

We discuss MDTN: a delay tolerant application platform built on top of the Public Transportation System (PTS) and able to provide service access while exploiting opportunistic connectivity. Our solution adopts a carrier-based approach where buses act as data collectors for user requests requiring Internet access. Simulations based on real maps and PTS routes with state-of-the-art routing protocols demonstrate that MDTN represents a viable solution for elastic nonreal-time service delivery. Nevertheless, performance indexes of the considered routing policies show that there is no golden rule for optimal performance and a tailored routing strategy is required for each specific case

High-throughput analysis of the RNA-induced silencing complex in myotonic dystrophy type 1 patients identifies the dysregulation of miR-29c and its target ASB2

Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is a multi-systemic disorder caused by abnormally expanded stretches of CTG DNA triplets in the DMPK gene, leading to mutated-transcript RNA-toxicity. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short non-coding RNAs that, after maturation, are loaded onto the RISC effector complex that destabilizes target mRNAs and represses their translation. In DM1 muscle biopsies not only the expression, but also the intracellular localization of specific miRNAs is disrupted, leading to the dysregulation of the relevant mRNA targets. To investigate the functional alterations of the miRNA/target interactions in DM1, we analyzed by RNA-sequencing the RISC-associated RNAs in skeletal muscle biopsies derived from DM1 patients and matched controls. The mRNAs found deregulated in DM1 biopsies were involved in pathways and functions relevant for the disease, such as energetic metabolism, calcium signaling, muscle contraction and p53-dependent apoptosis. Bioinformatic analysis of the miRNA/mRNA interactions based on the RISC enrichment profiles, identified 24 miRNA/mRNA correlations. Following validation in 21 independent samples, we focused on the couple miR-29c/ASB2 because of the role of miR-29c in fibrosis (a feature of late-stage DM1 patients) and of ASB2 in the regulation of muscle mass. Luciferase reporter assay confirmed the direct interaction between miR-29c and ASB2. Moreover, decreased miR-29c and increased ASB2 levels were verified also in immortalized myogenic cells and primary fibroblasts, derived from biopsies of DM1 patients and controls. CRISPR/Cas9-mediated deletion of CTG expansions rescued normal miR-29c and ASB2 levels, indicating a direct link between the mutant repeats and the miRNA/target expression. In conclusion, functionally relevant miRNA/mRNA interactions were identified in skeletal muscles of DM1 patients, highlighting the dysfunction of miR-29c and ASB2

Energy use in Urban Transport sector within the Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SEAPs) of three Italian Big Cities

Promising Renewable Energy solutions could be installed in cities, but they require specific morphological conditions as well as architectural integration. Transport sector is still neglected from a strong policy initiative. A first attempt along with a defined framework to attract economic resources as well as interested stakeholders is the Covenant of Mayors (CoM). Within this agreement, the Municipality has to design a plan, the so-called Sustainable Energy Action Plan (SEAP). The plan must contain a clear outline of the strategy and relative actions to be taken by the local authority to reach its commitments in 2020, in terms of sustainability goals set by EU 20-20-20. The aim of this paper is to discuss and evaluate the differences of fuel usage and transport sector interaction in Italian urban scenarios, taking into account geographical and morphological constraints, and to compare the forecasts for 2020 and 2030scenarios, in accordance with European and National laws in force

From viability to sustainability: the contribution of the viable systems approach (VSA)

The current dynamics of business systems require new ways of conceiving the role of single entities. On this basis, a complex of interactions between the company and the reference context must be activated to guarantee survival dynamics. From these considerations re-emerge the ideas of Peccei (2013) and King (2013) that recognise in the systemic thought the foundations for a sustainable society. The present study derives from these considerations, and aims at contributing to the advancement of the knowledge necessary to overcome the challenges in the sustainability field. The methodological approach, albeit heuristic, can be traced back to the positive scientific and constructivist method. The results of the study showed the prevalence of qualitative and subjective techniques, accompanied by the so-called inductive method, testifying to the intense interaction between the scholar and the object investigated. With regard to future research, it would be interesting to construct a flexible, scalable and extensible model to recover both a database and an ontology for the theoretical framework

Discourse network analysis: policy debates as dynamic networks

Political discourse is the verbal interaction between political actors. Political actors make normative claims about policies conditional on each other. This renders discourse a dynamic network phenomenon. Accordingly, the structure and dynamics of policy debates can be analyzed with a combination of content analysis and dynamic network analysis. After annotating statements of actors in text sources, networks can be created from these structured data, such as congruence or conflict networks at the actor or concept level, affiliation networks of actors and concept stances, and longitudinal versions of these networks. The resulting network data reveal important properties of a debate, such as the structure of advocacy coalitions or discourse coalitions, polarization and consensus formation, and underlying endogenous processes like popularity, reciprocity, or social balance. The added value of discourse network analysis over survey-based policy network research is that policy processes can be analyzed from a longitudinal perspective. Inferential techniques for understanding the micro-level processes governing political discourse are being developed