A GPGPU Transparent Virtualization Component for High Performance Computing Clouds

The GPU Virtualization Service (gVirtuS) presented in this work tries to fill the gap between in-house hosted computing clusters, equipped with GPGPUs devices, and pay-for-use high performance virtual clusters deployed via public or private computing clouds. gVirtuS allows an instanced virtual machine to access GPGPUs in a transparent and hypervisor independent way, with an overhead slightly greater than a real machine/GPGPU setup. The performance of the components of gVirtuS is assessed through a suite of tests in different deployment scenarios, such as providing GPGPU power to cloud computing based HPC clusters and sharing remotely hosted GPGPUs among HPC nodes

Finding File Fragments in the Cloud

Part 4: CLOUD FORENSICSInternational audienceAs the use – and abuse – of cloud computing increases, it becomes necessary to conduct forensic analyses of cloud computing systems. This paper evaluates the feasibility of performing a digital forensic investigation on a cloud computing system. Specifically, experiments were conducted on the Nimbula on-site cloud operating system to determine if meaningful information can be extracted from a cloud system. The experiments involved planting known, unique files in a cloud computing infrastructure, and subsequently performing forensic captures of the virtual machine image that executes in the cloud. The results demonstrate that it is possible to extract key information about a cloud system and, in certain cases, even re-start a virtual machine

A new British subject : the creation of a common ethnicity in Gibraltar

In recent decades, scholars of nationalism have paid increasing attention to the role of ethnicity in the formation of nations. In fact, nationalist narratives often structure the nation around a core ethnic group and a hegemonic language. Nevertheless, there are communities (such as many former colonies) which cannot easily define their nationhood in terms of a shared ethnic background, and Gibraltar is one such example. It offers an exceptional opportunity to shed light on the political strategies for the creation of a discursive common ethnicity from a community with a very culturally diverse background. With two powerful countries determining their identity, Gibraltarians found it difficult to develop their own national narrative, much less a claim for independence. In the 1940s, however, the Spanish dictator, General Franco, began a campaign to recover Gibraltar, and it was during this campaign that Gibraltarians developed the clearest articulation of their unique collective identity through a nationalist discourse that would make them new British subjects, albeit with their own ethnic peculiarities. This chapter analyses how a nationalist narrative helped Gibraltarians form their own ethnic identity, incorporating, at least discursively, a diverse ethnic background that would make the Gibraltarian a ‘melting pot’. It explores how political actors gave birth to a new British subject, the Gibraltarian, during the postwar period, and charts the reception of this ideological discourse on the Rock

Permanent and panerythroid correction of murine β thalassemia by multiple lentiviral integration in hematopoietic stem cells

Achieving long-term pancellular expression of a transferred gene at therapeutic level in a given hematopoietic lineage remains an important goal of gene therapy. Advances have recently been made in the genetic correction of the hemoglobinopathies by means of lentiviral vectors and large locus control region (LCR) derivatives. However, panerythroid β globin gene expression has not yet been achieved in β thalassemic mice because of incomplete transduction of the hematopoietic stem cell compartment and position effect variegation of proviruses integrated at a single copy per genome. Here, we report the permanent, panerythroid correction of severe β thalassemia in mice, resulting from a homozygous deletion of the β major globin gene, by transplantation of syngeneic bone marrow transduced with an HIV-1-derived [β globin gene/LCR] lentiviral vector also containing the Rev responsive element and the central polypurine tract/DNA flap. The viral titers produced were high enough to achieve transduction of virtually all of the hematopoietic stem cells in the graft with an average of three integrated proviral copies per genome in all transplanted mice; the transduction was sustained for >7 months in both primary and secondary transplants, at which time ≈95% of the red blood cells in all mice contained human β globin contributing to 32 ± 4% of all β-like globin chains. Hematological parameters approached complete phenotypic correction, as assessed by hemoglobin levels and reticulocyte and red blood cell counts. All circulating red blood cells became and remained normocytic and normochromic, and their density was normalized. Free α globin chains were completely cleared from red blood cell membranes, splenomegaly abated, and iron deposit was almost eliminated in liver sections. These findings indicate that virtually complete transduction of the hematopoietic stem cell compartment can be achieved by high-titer lentiviral vectors and that position effect variegation can be mitigated by multiple events of proviral integration to yield balanced, panerythroid expression. These results provide a solid foundation for the initiation of human clinical trials in β thalassemia patients