9,393 research outputs found
Reporting an Experience on Design and Implementation of e-Health Systems on Azure Cloud
Electronic Health (e-Health) technology has brought the world with
significant transformation from traditional paper-based medical practice to
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)-based systems for automatic
management (storage, processing, and archiving) of information. Traditionally
e-Health systems have been designed to operate within stovepipes on dedicated
networks, physical computers, and locally managed software platforms that make
it susceptible to many serious limitations including: 1) lack of on-demand
scalability during critical situations; 2) high administrative overheads and
costs; and 3) in-efficient resource utilization and energy consumption due to
lack of automation. In this paper, we present an approach to migrate the ICT
systems in the e-Health sector from traditional in-house Client/Server (C/S)
architecture to the virtualised cloud computing environment. To this end, we
developed two cloud-based e-Health applications (Medical Practice Management
System and Telemedicine Practice System) for demonstrating how cloud services
can be leveraged for developing and deploying such applications. The Windows
Azure cloud computing platform is selected as an example public cloud platform
for our study. We conducted several performance evaluation experiments to
understand the Quality Service (QoS) tradeoffs of our applications under
variable workload on Azure.Comment: Submitted to third IEEE International Conference on Cloud and Green
Computing (CGC 2013
Notes on Cloud computing principles
This letter provides a review of fundamental distributed systems and economic
Cloud computing principles. These principles are frequently deployed in their
respective fields, but their inter-dependencies are often neglected. Given that
Cloud Computing first and foremost is a new business model, a new model to sell
computational resources, the understanding of these concepts is facilitated by
treating them in unison. Here, we review some of the most important concepts
and how they relate to each other
Requirements for implementing real-time control functional modules on a hierarchical parallel pipelined system
Analysis of a robot control system leads to a broad range of processing requirements. One fundamental requirement of a robot control system is the necessity of a microcomputer system in order to provide sufficient processing capability.The use of multiple processors in a parallel architecture is beneficial for a number of reasons, including better cost performance, modular growth, increased reliability through replication, and flexibility for testing alternate control strategies via different partitioning. A survey of the progression from low level control synchronizing primitives to higher level communication tools is presented. The system communication and control mechanisms of existing robot control systems are compared to the hierarchical control model. The impact of this design methodology on the current robot control systems is explored
Regulatory Imperatives for the Future of SADC’s “Digital Complexity Ecosystem”
This article uses a “digital complexity ecosystem” framing to delineate the challenges
facing regulation of the digital economy in the Southern African Development
Community (SADC) region. The digital complexity ecosystem approach, grounded
in the field of complexity science – and in particular the study of complex adaptive
systems (CASs) – is used to illuminate the sources of uncertainty, unpredictability
and discontinuity currently present in the SADC digital sphere. Drawing on
examples from three regulatory areas, namely mobile financial services, Internet of
Things (IoT) network and services markets, and e-health services, the article argues
that SADC regulatory bodies will themselves need to adopt highly adaptive, nonlinear
approaches if they are to successfully regulate activities in the digital ecosystem
moving forward. Based on the findings, recommendations are made on SADC
regional regulatory agendas and, at national levels, matters of concurrent jurisdiction.CA201
ReSHAPE: A Framework for Dynamic Resizing and Scheduling of Homogeneous Applications in a Parallel Environment
Applications in science and engineering often require huge computational
resources for solving problems within a reasonable time frame. Parallel
supercomputers provide the computational infrastructure for solving such
problems. A traditional application scheduler running on a parallel cluster
only supports static scheduling where the number of processors allocated to an
application remains fixed throughout the lifetime of execution of the job. Due
to the unpredictability in job arrival times and varying resource requirements,
static scheduling can result in idle system resources thereby decreasing the
overall system throughput. In this paper we present a prototype framework
called ReSHAPE, which supports dynamic resizing of parallel MPI applications
executed on distributed memory platforms. The framework includes a scheduler
that supports resizing of applications, an API to enable applications to
interact with the scheduler, and a library that makes resizing viable.
Applications executed using the ReSHAPE scheduler framework can expand to take
advantage of additional free processors or can shrink to accommodate a high
priority application, without getting suspended. In our research, we have
mainly focused on structured applications that have two-dimensional data arrays
distributed across a two-dimensional processor grid. The resize library
includes algorithms for processor selection and processor mapping. Experimental
results show that the ReSHAPE framework can improve individual job turn-around
time and overall system throughput.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, 5 tables Submitted to International Conference
on Parallel Processing (ICPP'07
A Qualitative Study of Perceived Risk for HIV Transmission among Police Officers in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Understanding people's views about HIV transmission by investigating a specific population may help to design effective HIV prevention strategies. In addition, knowing the inherent sexual practices of such a population, as well as the risky circumstances that may facilitate HIV transmission, is crucial for the said strategies to become effective. In this article, we report how police officers in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, perceived the problem of HIV and AIDS in their local context, particularly in relation to unsafe sexual practices. The study was done with the view to recommending ways by which HIV transmission could be minimised within the police force. The study was conducted among members of the police force in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Eight focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted, with a total of 66 participants who were mixed in terms of age, gender, and marital status. Some of these were caregivers to patients with AIDS. Data were analysed using the interpretive description approach. The participants believed that both individual sexual behaviour and work-related circumstances were sources of HIV infection. They also admitted that they were being tempted to engage in risky sexual practices because of the institutional rules that prohibit officers from getting married during their training and for three years after. Nevertheless, as members of the Police Force, they stressed the fact that the risky sexual behaviour that exposes them to HIV is not limited to the force; it is rather a common problem that is faced by the general population. However, they complained, the nature of their job exposes them to road accident victims, subjecting them further to possible infection, especially when they have to handle these road accident casualties without proper protective gear. Individual sexual behaviour and job-related circumstances are worth investigating if proper advice is to be given to the police regarding HIV prevention strategies. In order to improve the lives of these police officers, there is a need to review the existing institutional rules and practices to accommodate individual sexual needs. In addition, improving their working environment may minimize the risk of HIV transmission from handling casualties in emergency situations
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