Unified Governance and Planning for High Impact Events in Finance, Climate and Those Caused by Malice

In 2007, the US Transportation Security Administration agency said Boeing would use its Monte Carlo simulation model “to identify U.S. commercial aviation system vulnerabilities against a wide variety of attack scenarios.” The Boeing and TSA team that crafted the model said that because of the Monte Carlo method’s success, the agency is considering extending its use to the analysis of policy problems outside the realm of security. Perplexed by the complexity implied by the above announcement, I started looking for simpler ways of achieving the TSA objectives. Here are some of the conclusions.finance, transportation

DLR Schlussbericht e-Triage: Verbundprojekt Elektronische Betroffenenerfassung in Katastrophenfällen "e-Triage"; Teilvorhaben Synchronisation von verteilten Datenbanken über Satelliten- und terrestrische Netze

1. Derzeitiger Stand von Wissenschaft und Technik: Es existieren bereits eine Reihe frei verfügbarer und kommerziell vertriebener Replikationslösungen für Distributed Database Management Systems (DDBMS). Keines der bekannten Produkte erfüllte gänzlich die Anforderungen des e-Triage Projekts. 2. Begründung/Zielsetzung der Untersuchung: Die große Herausforderung im Einsatzgeschehen ist, verteilt vorliegende Daten zu aggregieren und allen beteiligten Entscheidungsträgern zeitgleich vorzulegen (Sanduhr-Modell). Die einzelnen Datenbanken müssen sich über die vorhandenen (möglicherweise unzuverlässigen) Übertragungskanäle automatisch synchronisieren. Außerdem müssen sich die Datenbanken gegenseitig finden. 3. Methode: Zunächst wurde ein passendes Open-Source-Projekt als Grundlage ausgewählt. In einem zweiten Schritt wurde der asynchrone Datenbankreplikator mit einer hocheffizienten Synchronisierungslösung verbunden. 4. Ergebnis: Die Arbeiten führten zu einem neuartigen Replikatorlösung, die problemlos mit Linkunterbrechungen umgehen kann. Die Ergebnisse wurden mit zwei Patenten geschützt. 5. Schlussfolgerung/Anwendungsmöglichkeiten: Neben dem MANV-Management sind alle Anwendungsbereiche denkbar, bei denen eine Instanz eines verteilten Datenbanksystems auf einem mobilen Terminal laufen soll. Möglich sind alle Bereiche der mobilen Datenerfassung, Logistik, Warenwirtschaft usw

General E-S-QUAL Scales Applied To Websites Satisfaction and Loyalty Model

This study considers E-S-QUAL and E-RecS-QUAL, the newly developed multiple-item scales for assessing electronic service quality (e-SQ) in E-commerce, as the antecedents to Website satisfaction and assesses their effects on online consumer satisfaction and loyalty. Using online survey data from those who had nonroutine encounters with Websites, this study examines and validates the effectiveness of the e-SQ in explaining the variance in the e-shoppers’ satisfaction and loyalty. The study results show that both E-S-QUAL and E-RecS-QUAL have strong and equal effects on satisfaction and loyalty, and all dimensions of these two constructs are important and influential factors to online satisfaction and loyalty. In addition, the mediating role of online satisfaction was assessed by using a structural equation modeling program when latent variables were included in the model. The findings constitute a contribution to, and extension of, the literature in the application of the e-SQ to Website service loyalty model and e-store management

Design and Implementation of a Remote Care Application Based on Microservice Architecture

Microservice Architecture (MSA) is an architectural style for service-based software systems. MSA puts a strong emphasis on high cohesion and loose coupling of the services that provide systems' functionalities. As a result of this, MSA-based software architectures exhibit increased scalability and extensibility, and facilitate the application of continuous integration techniques. This paper presents a case study of an MSA-based Remote Care Application (RCA) that allows caregivers to remotely access smart home devices. The goal of the RCA is to assist persons being cared in Activities of Daily Living. Employing MSA for the realization of the RCA yielded several lessons learned, e.g., (i) direct transferability of domain models based on Domain-driven Design; (ii) more efficient integration of features; (iii) speedup of feature delivery due to MSA facilitating automated deployment.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, 2 table

Component-aware Orchestration of Cloud-based Enterprise Applications, from TOSCA to Docker and Kubernetes

Enterprise IT is currently facing the challenge of coordinating the management of complex, multi-component applications across heterogeneous cloud platforms. Containers and container orchestrators provide a valuable solution to deploy multi-component applications over cloud platforms, by coupling the lifecycle of each application component to that of its hosting container. We hereby propose a solution for going beyond such a coupling, based on the OASIS standard TOSCA and on Docker. We indeed propose a novel approach for deploying multi-component applications on top of existing container orchestrators, which allows to manage each component independently from the container used to run it. We also present prototype tools implementing our approach, and we show how we effectively exploited them to carry out a concrete case study

Multi-level Service Approach for Flexible Support of Design Processes

Part III: Sustainable ServicesInternational audienceThe need to answer quickly to new market opportunities and the high variability of consumer demands tend industrial companies to review their adopted organisation, so to improve their reactivity and to facilitate the coupling with the business enactment. Therefore, these companies require agility in their information systems to allow business needs scalability and design process flexibility. We propose in this paper, the business activities as a service based on the service paradigm and whereas a design process is made of agile services orchestrations. We discuss the interest to use a service-oriented approach and propose a layered architecture for design process enactment

A Development Framework Enabling the Design of Service-Based Cloud Applications

Cloud application platforms gain popularity and have the potential to change the way applications are developed, involving composition of platform basic services. In order to enhance the developer’s experience and reduce the barriers in the software development, a new paradigm of cloud application creation should be adopted. According to that developers are enabled to design their applications, leveraging multiple platform basic services, independently from the target application platforms. To this end, this paper proposes a development framework for the design of service-based cloud applications comprising two main components: the meta-model and the Platform Service Manager. The meta-model describes the building blocks which enable the construction of Platform Service Connectors in a uniform way while the Platform Service Manager coordinates the interaction of the application with the concrete service providers and further facilitates the administration of the deployed platform basic services

Composition and Self-Adaptation of Service-Based Systems with Feature Models

The adoption of mechanisms for reusing software in pervasive systems has not yet become standard practice. This is because the use of pre-existing software requires the selection, composition and adaptation of prefabricated software parts, as well as the management of some complex problems such as guaranteeing high levels of efficiency and safety in critical domains. In addition to the wide variety of services, pervasive systems are composed of many networked heterogeneous devices with embedded software. In this work, we promote the safe reuse of services in service-based systems using two complementary technologies, Service-Oriented Architecture and Software Product Lines. In order to do this, we extend both the service discovery and composition processes defined in the DAMASCo framework, which currently does not deal with the service variability that constitutes pervasive systems. We use feature models to represent the variability and to self-adapt the services during the composition in a safe way taking context changes into consideration. We illustrate our proposal with a case study related to the driving domain of an Intelligent Transportation System, handling the context information of the environment.Work partially supported by the projects TIN2008-05932, TIN2008-01942, TIN2012-35669, TIN2012-34840 and CSD2007-0004 funded by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and FEDER; P09-TIC-05231 and P11-TIC-7659 funded by Andalusian Government; and FP7-317731 funded by EU. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Properties of Lactobacillus reuteri chitosan-calcium-alginate encapsulation under simulated gastrointestinal conditions

The protective effects of encapsulation on the survival of Lactobacillus reuteri and the retention of the bacterium’s probiotic properties under simulated gastrointestinal conditions were investigated. Viable counts and the remaining probiotic properties of calcium (Ca)-alginate encapsulated (A group), chitosan-Ca-alginate encapsulated (CA group), and unencapsulated, free L. reuteri (F group) were determined. Encapsulation improved the survival of L. reuteri subjected to simulated gastrointestinal conditions, with the greatest protective effect achieved in the CA group. The degree of cell membrane injury increased with increasing bile salt concentrations at constant pH, but the extent of injury was less in the encapsulated than in the free cells. Adherence rates were, in descending order: CA (0.524%) > A (0.360%) > F (0.275%). Lactobacillus reuteri cells retained their antagonistic activity toward Listeria monocytogenes even after incubation of the lactobacilli under simulated gastrointestinal conditions. Displacement of the pathogen by cells released from either of the encapsulation matrices was higher than that by free cells. The safety of L. reuteri was demonstrated in an in vitro invasion assay. [Int Microbiol 2015; 18(1):61-69]Keywords: Lactobacillus reuteri · Listeria monocytogenes · chitosan–calcium-alginate encapsulation · probiotic properties · simulated gastrointestinal condition