Heterogeneity, High Performance Computing, Self-Organization and the Cloud

application; blueprints; self-management; self-organisation; resource management; supply chain; big data; PaaS; Saas; HPCaa

Artificial Collective Intelligence Engineering: a Survey of Concepts and Perspectives

Collectiveness is an important property of many systems--both natural and artificial. By exploiting a large number of individuals, it is often possible to produce effects that go far beyond the capabilities of the smartest individuals, or even to produce intelligent collective behaviour out of not-so-intelligent individuals. Indeed, collective intelligence, namely the capability of a group to act collectively in a seemingly intelligent way, is increasingly often a design goal of engineered computational systems--motivated by recent techno-scientific trends like the Internet of Things, swarm robotics, and crowd computing, just to name a few. For several years, the collective intelligence observed in natural and artificial systems has served as a source of inspiration for engineering ideas, models, and mechanisms. Today, artificial and computational collective intelligence are recognised research topics, spanning various techniques, kinds of target systems, and application domains. However, there is still a lot of fragmentation in the research panorama of the topic within computer science, and the verticality of most communities and contributions makes it difficult to extract the core underlying ideas and frames of reference. The challenge is to identify, place in a common structure, and ultimately connect the different areas and methods addressing intelligent collectives. To address this gap, this paper considers a set of broad scoping questions providing a map of collective intelligence research, mostly by the point of view of computer scientists and engineers. Accordingly, it covers preliminary notions, fundamental concepts, and the main research perspectives, identifying opportunities and challenges for researchers on artificial and computational collective intelligence engineering.Comment: This is the author's final version of the article, accepted for publication in the Artificial Life journal. Data: 34 pages, 2 figure

Heterogeneity, High Performance Computing, Self-Organization and the Cloud

application; blueprints; self-management; self-organisation; resource management; supply chain; big data; PaaS; Saas; HPCaa

Oxidative Stress and Mitochondrial Injury in Chronic Multisymptom Conditions: From Gulf War Illness to Autism Spectrum Disorder

Background: Overlapping chronic multisymptom illnesses (CMI) include Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, multiple chemical sensitivity, and Gulf War illness (GWI), and subsets of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). GWI entails a more circumscribed set of experiences that may provide insights of relevance to overlapping conditions.
Objectives: To consolidate evidence regarding a role for oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction (OSMD), as primary mediators in CMI, using GWI as a departure point.
Methods: Exposure relations, character, timecourse and multiplicity of symptoms, and objective correlates of GWI are compared to expectation for OSMD. Objective correlates of OSMD in GWI and overlapping conditions are examined. 
Discussion: OSMD is an expected consequence of known GWI exposures; is compatible with symptom characteristics observed; and accords with objective markers and health conditions linked to GWI, extending to autoimmune disease and infection. Emergent triangulating evidence directly supports OSMD in multisymptom “overlap” CMI conditions, with similarities to, and diagnosed at elevated rates in, GWI, suggesting a common role in each. 
Conclusions: GWI is compatible with a paradigm by which uncompensated exposure to oxidative/nitrative stressors accompanies and triggers mitochondrial dysfunction, cell energy compromise, and multiple downstream effects such as vulnerability to autoantibodies. This promotes a profile of protean symptoms with variable latency emphasizing but not confined to energy-demanding post-mitotic tissues, according with (and accounting for) known properties of multisystem overlap conditions. This advances understanding of GWI; health conditions attending GWI at elevated rates; and overlap conditions like CFS and ASD, providing prospects for vulnerability assessment, mitigation of progression, treatment, and future prevention – with implications germane to additive and excessive environmental oxidative stressor exposures in the civilian setting.
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Malware Detection in Cloud Computing Infrastructures

Cloud services are prominent within the private, public and commercial domains. Many of these services are expected to be always on and have a critical nature; therefore, security and resilience are increasingly important aspects. In order to remain resilient, a cloud needs to possess the ability to react not only to known threats, but also to new challenges that target cloud infrastructures. In this paper we introduce and discuss an online cloud anomaly detection approach, comprising dedicated detection components of our cloud resilience architecture. More specifically, we exhibit the applicability of novelty detection under the one-class support Vector Machine (SVM) formulation at the hypervisor level, through the utilisation of features gathered at the system and network levels of a cloud node. We demonstrate that our scheme can reach a high detection accuracy of over 90% whilst detecting various types of malware and DoS attacks. Furthermore, we evaluate the merits of considering not only system-level data, but also network-level data depending on the attack type. Finally, the paper shows that our approach to detection using dedicated monitoring components per VM is particularly applicable to cloud scenarios and leads to a flexible detection system capable of detecting new malware strains with no prior knowledge of their functionality or their underlying instructions. Index Terms—Security, resilience, invasive software, multi-agent systems, network-level security and protection

Dance Movement Therapy for Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders

The objective of this literature review is to look for the possible benefits of using DMT for hypermobile Ehlers Danlos (hEDS) and Hypermobile Spectrum Disorders (HSD). This research can help create a new theoretical framework in which DMT can be connected to this population as it is with similar populations. There is a gap in the literature review that this work tries to fill. However, further research with this population using DMT will be necessary.L'objectiu d'aquesta revisió de la literatura és buscar els possibles beneficis de l'ús de DMT per a Ehlers Danlos hipermòbils (hEDS) i trastorns de l'espectre hipermòbil (HSD). Aquesta investigació pot ajudar a crear un nou marc teòric en què la DMT es pugui connectar a aquesta població com passa amb poblacions similars. Hi ha un buit en la revisió de la literatura que aquest treball intenta omplir. Tanmateix, caldrà més investigació amb aquesta població que utilitzi DMT. Hi ha un buit en la revisió de la literatura que aquest treball intenta omplir. Tanmateix, caldrà més investigació amb aquesta població que utilitzi DMT

Nonlinear Dynamical Systems for Theory And Research In Ergonomics

Nonlinear dynamical systems (NDS) theory offers new constructs, methods and explanations for phenomena that have in turn produced new paradigms of thinking within several disciplines of the behavioural sciences. This article explores the recent developments of NDS as a paradigm in ergonomics. The exposition includes its basic axioms, the primary constructs from elementary dynamics and so-called complexity theory, an overview of its methods, and growing areas of application within ergonomics. The applications considered here include: psychophysics, iconic displays, control theory, cognitive workload and fatigue, occupational accidents, resilience of systems, team coordination and synchronisation in systems. Although these applications make use of different subsets of NDS constructs, several of them share the general principles of the complex adaptive system

Heterogeneity, high performance computing, self-organization and the Cloud

This open access book addresses the most recent developments in cloud computing such as HPC in the Cloud, heterogeneous cloud, self-organising and self-management, and discusses the business implications of cloud computing adoption. Establishing the need for a new architecture for cloud computing, it discusses a novel cloud management and delivery architecture based on the principles of self-organisation and self-management. This focus shifts the deployment and optimisation effort from the consumer to the software stack running on the cloud infrastructure. It also outlines validation challenges and introduces a novel generalised extensible simulation framework to illustrate the effectiveness, performance and scalability of self-organising and self-managing delivery models on hyperscale cloud infrastructures. It concludes with a number of potential use cases for self-organising, self-managing clouds and the impact on those businesses