The GENIUS Grid Portal and robot certificates: a new tool for e-Science

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Grid technology is the computing model which allows users to share a wide <it>pletora </it>of distributed computational resources regardless of their geographical location. Up to now, the high security policy requested in order to access distributed computing resources has been a rather big limiting factor when trying to broaden the usage of Grids into a wide community of users. Grid security is indeed based on the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) of X.509 certificates and the procedure to get and manage those certificates is unfortunately not straightforward. A first step to make Grids more appealing for new users has recently been achieved with the adoption of robot certificates.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Robot certificates have recently been introduced to perform automated tasks on Grids on behalf of users. They are extremely useful for instance to automate grid service monitoring, data processing production, distributed data collection systems. Basically these certificates can be used to identify a person responsible for an unattended service or process acting as client and/or server. Robot certificates can be installed on a smart card and used behind a portal by everyone interested in running the related applications in a Grid environment using a user-friendly graphic interface. In this work, the GENIUS Grid Portal, powered by EnginFrame, has been extended in order to support the new authentication based on the adoption of these robot certificates.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The work carried out and reported in this manuscript is particularly relevant for all users who are not familiar with personal digital certificates and the technical aspects of the Grid Security Infrastructure (GSI). The valuable benefits introduced by robot certificates in e-Science can so be extended to users belonging to several scientific domains, providing an asset in raising Grid awareness to a wide number of potential users.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The adoption of Grid portals extended with robot certificates, can really contribute to creating transparent access to computational resources of Grid Infrastructures, enhancing the spread of this new paradigm in researchers' working life to address new global scientific challenges. The evaluated solution can of course be extended to other portals, applications and scientific communities.</p

Contraception in chronic kidney disease: a best practice position statement by the Kidney and Pregnancy Group of the Italian Society of Nephrology

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Anti-Tumor Activity of a miR-199-dependent Oncolytic Adenovirus

Peer reviewe

Strategy for the management of diabetic macular edema: the European Vitreo-Retinal Society macular edema study

Objective. To compare the efficacy of different therapies in the treatment of diabetic macular edema (DME). Design. Nonrandomized, multicenter clinical study. Participants. 86 retina specialists from 29 countries provided clinical information on 2,603 patients with macular edema including 870 patients with DME. Methods. Reported data included the type and number of treatment(s) performed, the pre-and posttreatment visual acuities, and other clinical findings.The results were analyzed by the French INSEE (National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies). Main Outcome Measures. Mean change of visual acuity and mean number of treatments performed. Results.The change in visual acuity over time in response to each treatment was plotted in second order polynomial regression trend lines. Intravitreal triamcinolone monotherapy resulted in some improvement in vision. Treatmentwith threshold or subthreshold grid laser also resulted in minimal vision gain. Anti-VEGF therapy resulted in more significant visual improvement. Treatment with pars plana vitrectomy and internal limiting membrane (ILM) peeling alone resulted in an improvement in vision greater than that observed with anti-VEGF injection alone. In our DME study, treatment with vitrectomy and ILM peeling alone resulted in the better visual improvement compared to other therapies

CMS physics technical design report : Addendum on high density QCD with heavy ions

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Architettura longobarda in Puglia: il tempietto di Seppannibale a Fasano (BR), dall’analisi delle strutture alla restituzione in 3d

The Temple of Seppannibale originally known as the church of San Pietro lo Petraro is located in Fasano and is a quadrangular building with three internal naves, with two small domes arranged in axis. Inside there are remains of frescoes from the Benevento school showing scenes showing some figures (perhaps Prophets) and scenes from the book of the Apocalypse. In the nineties, Gioia Bertelli, professor of archeology at the Department of Classical and Christian Studies of the University of Bari, was responsible for the archaeological investigations of the religious building and the settlement related to it. As part of this research, this preliminary contribution is part of the architectural study of the churc

Il santuario longobardo di San Michele a Monte Sant’Angelo (FG): dall’analisi degli elevati allo studio ricostruttivo

Il santuario di San Michele a Monte Sant'Angelo (FG) costituisce uno dei iù impirtanti luoghi di culto dell'Occidente cristiano fino all'età altomedievale. In ragione della sua plurisecolare storia esso rappresenta un complesso architettonico estremamente articolato e frutto di una stratificazione ininterrotta dalle origini fino all'inizio del nuovo millennio. Il nerbo del complesso è costituito da una grotta collocata a mezzacosta sul versante settentrionale del rilievo montuoso. Il contributo vuole illustrare la ricostruzione delle fasi di vita del Santuario tra VII e X secolo

Architettura altomedievale nel Santuario di San Michele: analisi stratigrafica degli elevati e studio ricostruttivo 3D

Il Santuario di San Michele a Monte Sant’Angelo (FG) costituisce uno dei più importanti e antichi luoghi della cristianità occidentale. La sede del culto riservato all’Angelo è posta all’interno di una Caverna situata a metà del fianco settentrionale del rilievo montuoso sul cui pianoro si estende il centro abitato. Il contributo riguarda lo studio architettonico, dal rilievo alla lettura stratigrafica muraria fino alla ricostruzione virtuale, del monumento di età longobardaThe Sanctuary of San Michele in Monte Sant’Angelo (FG) is one of the most important and ancient places of Western Christianity. The seat of the cult reserved for the Angel is placed inside a Cave located in the middle of the northern side of the mountainous relief on whose plateau the inhabited center extends. The contribution concerns the architectural study, from the relief to the stratigraphic wall reading up to the virtual reconstruction, of the Longobard monumen

Integration of the Italian cache federation within the CMS computing model

The next decades at HL-LHC will be characterized by a huge increase of both storage and computing requirements (between one and two orders of magnitude). Moreover we foresee a shift on resources provisioning towards the exploitation of dynamic (on private or public cloud and HPC facilities) solutions. In this scenario the computing model of the CMS experiment is pushed towards an evolution for the optimization of the amount of space that is managed centrally and the CPU efficiency of the jobs that run on "storage-less" resources. In particular the computing resources of the "Tier2" sites layer, for the most part, can be instrumented to read data from a geographically distributed cache storage based on unmanaged resources, reducing, in this way, the operational efforts by a large fraction and generating additional flexibility. The objective of this contribution is to present the first implementation of an INFN federation of cache servers, developed also in collaboration with the eXtreme Data Cloud EU project. The CNAF Tier-1 plus Bari and Legnaro Tier-2s provide unmanaged storages which have been organized under a common namespace. This distributed cache federation has been seamlessly integrated in the CMS computing infrastructure, while the technical implementation of this solution is based on XRootD, largely adopted in the CMS computing model under the "Anydata, Anytime, Anywhere project" (AAA). The results in terms of CMS workflows performances will be shown. In addition a complete simulation of the effects of the described model under several scenarios, including dynamic hybrid cloud resource provisioning, will be discussed. Finally a plan for the upgrade of such a prototype towards a stable INFN setup seamlessly integrated with production CMS computing infrastructure will be discussed.The next decades at HL-LHC will be characterized by a huge increase of both storage andcomputing requirements (between one and two orders of magnitude). Moreover we foresee a shift on resources provisioning towards the exploitation of dynamic (on private or public cloud and HPC facilities) solutions. In this scenario the computing model of the CMS experiment ispushed towards an evolution for the optimization of the amount of space that is managed centrally and the CPU efficiency of the jobs that run on "storage-less" resources. In particular the computing resources of the "Tier2" sites layer, for the most part, can be instrumented to read data from a geographically distributed cache storage based on unmanaged resources, reducing, in this way, the operational efforts by a large fraction and generating additionalflexibility.The objective of this contribution is to present the first implementation of an INFN federation of cache servers, developed also in collaboration with the eXtreme Data Cloud EU project. The CNAF Tier-1 plus Bari and Legnaro Tier-2s provide unmanaged storages which have been organized under a common namespace. This distributed cache federation has been seamlessly integrated in the CMS computing infrastructure, while the technical implementation of this solution is based on XRootD, largely adopted in the CMS computing model under the "Anydata, Anytime, Anywhere project" (AAA).The results in terms of CMS workflows performances will be shown. In addition a complete simulation of the effects of the described model under several scenarios, including dynamic hybrid cloud resource provisioning, will be discussed. Finally a plan for the upgrade of such a prototype towards a stable INFN setup seamlessly integrated with production CMS computing infrastructure will be discussed

ITSoneWB: profiling global taxonomic diversity of eukaryotic communities on Galaxy

ITSoneWB (ITSone WorkBench) is a Galaxy-based bioinformatic environment where comprehensive and high-quality reference data are connected with established pipelines and new tools in an automated and easy-to-use service targeted at global taxonomic analysis of eukaryotic communities based on Internal Transcribed Spacer 1 variants high-throughput sequencing