The Making of Cloud Applications An Empirical Study on Software Development for the Cloud

Cloud computing is gaining more and more traction as a deployment and provisioning model for software. While a large body of research already covers how to optimally operate a cloud system, we still lack insights into how professional software engineers actually use clouds, and how the cloud impacts development practices. This paper reports on the first systematic study on how software developers build applications in the cloud. We conducted a mixed-method study, consisting of qualitative interviews of 25 professional developers and a quantitative survey with 294 responses. Our results show that adopting the cloud has a profound impact throughout the software development process, as well as on how developers utilize tools and data in their daily work. Among other things, we found that (1) developers need better means to anticipate runtime problems and rigorously define metrics for improved fault localization and (2) the cloud offers an abundance of operational data, however, developers still often rely on their experience and intuition rather than utilizing metrics. From our findings, we extracted a set of guidelines for cloud development and identified challenges for researchers and tool vendors

Prioritization of Companion Animal Transmissible Diseases for Policy Intervention in Europe

A number of papers have been published on the prioritization of transmissible diseases in farm animals and wildlife, based either on semiquantitative or truly quantitative methods, but there is no published literature on the prioritization of transmissible diseases in companion animals. In this study, available epidemiological data for diseases transmissible from companion animals to man were analysed with the aim of developing a procedure suitable for their prioritization within a European framework. A new method and its associated questionnaire and scoring system were designed based on methods described by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). Modifications were applied to allow for the paucity of specific information on companion animal transmissible diseases. The OIE method was also adapted to the subject and to the regional scope of the interprofessional network addressing zoonotic diseases transmitted via companion animals in Europe: the Companion Animals multisectoriaL interprofessionaL Interdisciplinary Strategic Think tank On zoonoses (CALLISTO). Adaptations were made based on information collected from expert groups on viral, bacterial and parasitic diseases using a structured questionnaire, in which all questions were closed-ended. The expert groups were asked to select the most appropriate answer for each question taking into account the relevance and reliability of the data available in the scientific literature. Subsequently, the scoring of the answers obtained for each disease covered by the questionnaire was analysed to obtain two final overall scores, one for human health impact and one for agricultural economic impact. The adapted method was then applied to select the 15 most important pathogens (five for each pathogen group: viral, bacterial and parasitic) on the basis of their overall impact on public health and agriculture. The result of the prioritization exercise was a joint priority list (available at www.callistoproject.eu) of relevant pathogens according to these two criteria. As the scope of CALLISTO was comprehensive in terms of geographical area, animal species involved and impact of the diseases, the list of prioritized diseases had to accommodate the realities in different European countries and the differences in biology and animalehuman relationships in a wide range of species including cats and dogs, pet pigs and sheep as well as captive reptiles. The methodology presented in this paper can be used to generate accurate priority lists according to narrower and more specific objectives

Functionalization of transparent conductive oxide electrode for TiO2-free perovskite solar cells

Many of the best performing solar cells based on perovskite-halide light absorbers use TiO2 as an electron selective contact layer. However, TiO2 usually requires high temperature sintering, is related to electrical instabilities in perovskite solar cells, and causes cell performance degradation under full solar spectrum illumination. Here we demonstrate an alternative approach based on the modification of transparent conductive oxide electrodes with self-assembled siloxane-functionalized fullerene molecules, eliminating TiO2 or any other additional electron transporting layer. We demonstrate that these molecules spontaneously form a homogenous monolayer acting as an electron selective layer on top of the fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) electrode, minimizing material consumption. We find that the fullerene-modified FTO is a robust, chemically inert charge selective contact for perovskite based solar cells, which can reach 15% of stabilised power conversion efficiency in a flat junction device architecture using a scalable, low temperature, and reliable process. In contrast to TiO2, devices employing a molecularly thin functionalized fullerene layer show unaffected performance after 67 h of UV light exposure

Fitting of photoluminescence spectra for structural characterisation of high current density resonant tunnelling diodes for THz applications

High-resolution X-ray diffraction (HR-XRD), and low-temperature photoluminescence spectroscopy (LT-PL) are used to investigate the structural properties and inhomogeneities of high current density InGaAs/AlAs/InP resonant tunnelling diode (RTD) wafer structures. The non-destructive assessment of these structures is challenging, with structural variables: well and barriers thickness and the well indium molar fraction, in addition to electronic variables such as the band-offsets being functions of strain, growth sequence, etc.. Experimental PL data are compared with simulations allowing the deconvolution of the PL spectra, that includes Type I and Type II transitions broadened by interface fluctuations on length scales smaller and much larger than the exciton. This method provides details of the non-uniformity of the epitaxial material nondestructively

Skyline: Interactive In-Editor Computational Performance Profiling for Deep Neural Network Training

Training a state-of-the-art deep neural network (DNN) is a computationally-expensive and time-consuming process, which incentivizes deep learning developers to debug their DNNs for computational performance. However, effectively performing this debugging requires intimate knowledge about the underlying software and hardware systems---something that the typical deep learning developer may not have. To help bridge this gap, we present Skyline: a new interactive tool for DNN training that supports in-editor computational performance profiling, visualization, and debugging. Skyline's key contribution is that it leverages special computational properties of DNN training to provide (i) interactive performance predictions and visualizations, and (ii) directly manipulatable visualizations that, when dragged, mutate the batch size in the code. As an in-editor tool, Skyline allows users to leverage these diagnostic features to debug the performance of their DNNs during development. An exploratory qualitative user study of Skyline produced promising results; all the participants found Skyline to be useful and easy to use.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures. Appears in the proceedings of UIST'2

Genetic Covariance Structure of Reading, Intelligence and Memory in Children

This study investigates the genetic relationship among reading performance, IQ, verbal and visuospatial working memory (WM) and short-term memory (STM) in a sample of 112, 9-year-old twin pairs and their older siblings. The relationship between reading performance and the other traits was explained by a common genetic factor for reading performance, IQ, WM and STM and a genetic factor that only influenced reading performance and verbal memory. Genetic variation explained 83% of the variation in reading performance; most of this genetic variance was explained by variation in IQ and memory performance. We hypothesize, based on these results, that children with reading problems possibly can be divided into three groups: (1) children low in IQ and with reading problems; (2) children with average IQ but a STM deficit and with reading problems; (3) children with low IQ and STM deficits; this group may experience more reading problems than the other two

Reduction of late stillbirth with the introduction of fetal movement information and guidelines – a clinical quality improvement

We have performed a full cross-validation of this clinical Femina data collection against the routinely collected data of the Medical Birth Registry of Norway to validate the estimates of reduced mortality in the total population. The original estimate of fewer deaths during the intervention with OR 0.7 remains virtually unchanged for the original data collection

Fixed and volatile constituents oF genus Croton plants: C. adenoCalyx Baill -euphorBiaceae

aBstract This work describes the phytochemical analysis of Croton adenocalyx Baill (Euphorbiaceae), a plant that is representative of the species from Ceará State (Brazil). The GC-MS analysis of the essential oil, obtained by hydrodistillation of the leaves from C. adenocalyx, allowed the identification of eleven volatile constituents; the main components were identified as α-pinene (32.63%); bicyclogermacrene (13.96%); trans-caryophyllene (10.23%); germacrene D (10.14%); β-pinene (10.11%) and β-elemene (8.31%). The chromatographic purification of the ethanolic extract from the trunk bark, allowed the isolation and identification of the 6-methoxy-7-hydroxycoumarin (1) and 3´,5-dihydroxy-3,4´,7-trimethoxyflavone (2). Keywords: Euphorbiaceae, Croton adenocalyx, Essential oil, GC-MS, Flavonoid, Coumarin. resumen Este trabajo describe el análisis fitoquímico de Croton adenocalyx Baill (Euphorbiaceae), una planta representativa de las especies del Estado de Ceará-Brasil. El análisis por CG-EM del aceite esencial, obtenido por hidrodestilación de las hojas de C. adenocalyx Baill, permitió la identificación de diez constituyentes volátiles. Los componentes mayoritarios fueron identificados como α-pineno (32.63%), biciclogermacreno (13.96%), trans-cariofileno (10.23%), germacreno D (10.14%), β-pineno (10.11%) y β-elemeno (8.31%). La purificación cromatográfica del extracto etanólico de la corteza del tronco, permitió aislar e identificar la coumarina 6-metoxi-7-hidroxicumarina (1) y el 3´,5-dihidroxi-3,4´,7-trimetoxiflavona (2)