Dynamic service-based integration of mobile clusters in grids

February 2008 and is reprinted here with permission. The report is available on the CoreGRID website, at

Comparative Analysis Of The Structure And Content Of Faculties Of Pharmacy Curricula For Pharmacy Master Degree In Bulgaria

Фармацевтичната професия е регулирана, защото представлява дейност от обществена значимост и е от съществено значение за живота и здравето на хората. Правото за упражняването ѝ е определено чрез законови, подзаконови или административни разпоредби. Проучени и анализирани са актуалните учебни планове в петте факултета по фармация в България. Минималният хорариум по задължителните, общо 26 учебни дисциплини е 3015 часа, съгласно Единните държавни изисквания (ЕДИ). Всеки един от петте фармацевтични факултета в България се характеризира с различия в заложената в учебния план теоретична подготовка и брой учебни дисциплини.The pharmaceutical profession is regulated because it is an activity of social significance and is essential for the lifeand health of people. The right to practice it is determined by laws, regulations or administrative provisions. The current curricula at the five faculties of pharmacy in Bulgaria have been studied and analyzed. The minimum horarium of the compulsory, totally 26 subjects is 3015 hours, according to the Unified State Requirements. Each of the five faculties of pharmacy in Bulgaria is characterized by differences in the theoretical education set in the curriculum and the number of subjects

Environment, Ram Pressure, and Shell Formation in HoII

Neutral hydrogen VLA D-array observations of the dwarf irregular galaxy HoII, a prototype galaxy for studies of shell formation, are presented. HI is detected to radii over 16' or 4 R_25, and M_HI=6.44x10^8 M_sun. The total HI map has a comet-like appearance suggesting that HoII is affected by ram pressure from an intragroup medium (IGM). A rotation curve corrected for asymmetric drift was derived and an analysis of the mass distribution yields a total mass 6.3x10^9 M_sun, of which about 80% is dark. HoII lies northeast of the M81 group's core, along with Kar52 (M81dwA) and UGC4483. No signs of interaction are observed and it is argued that HoII is part of the NGC2403 subgroup, infalling towards M81. A case is made for ram pressure stripping and an IGM in the M81 group. Stripping of the disk outer parts would require an IGM density n_IGM>=4.0x10^-6 atoms/cm^3 at the location of HoII. This corresponds to 1% of the virial mass of the group uniformly distributed over a volume just enclosing HoII and is consistent with the X-ray properties of small groups. It is argued that existing observations of HoII do not support self-propagating star formation scenarios, whereby the HI holes and shells are created by supernova explosions and stellar winds. Many HI holes are located in low surface density regions of the disk, where no star formation is expected or observed. Ram pressure has the capacity to enlarge preexisting holes and lower their creation energies, helping to bridge the gap between the observed star formation rate and that required to create the holes. (abridged)Comment: 43 pages, including 7 figures. 4 figures available as JPEG only. Complete manuscript including full resolution figures available at http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~bureau/pub_list.html . Accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journa

Mapping genetic variations to three- dimensional protein structures to enhance variant interpretation: a proposed framework

The translation of personal genomics to precision medicine depends on the accurate interpretation of the multitude of genetic variants observed for each individual. However, even when genetic variants are predicted to modify a protein, their functional implications may be unclear. Many diseases are caused by genetic variants affecting important protein features, such as enzyme active sites or interaction interfaces. The scientific community has catalogued millions of genetic variants in genomic databases and thousands of protein structures in the Protein Data Bank. Mapping mutations onto three-dimensional (3D) structures enables atomic-level analyses of protein positions that may be important for the stability or formation of interactions; these may explain the effect of mutations and in some cases even open a path for targeted drug development. To accelerate progress in the integration of these data types, we held a two-day Gene Variation to 3D (GVto3D) workshop to report on the latest advances and to discuss unmet needs. The overarching goal of the workshop was to address the question: what can be done together as a community to advance the integration of genetic variants and 3D protein structures that could not be done by a single investigator or laboratory? Here we describe the workshop outcomes, review the state of the field, and propose the development of a framework with which to promote progress in this arena. The framework will include a set of standard formats, common ontologies, a common application programming interface to enable interoperation of the resources, and a Tool Registry to make it easy to find and apply the tools to specific analysis problems. Interoperability will enable integration of diverse data sources and tools and collaborative development of variant effect prediction methods

Multiparadigm communications in Java for grid computing

this article, we argue that the rapid development of Java technology now makes it possible to support, in a single object-oriented framework, the different communication and coordination structures that arise in scientific applications. We outline how this integrated approach can be achieved, reviewing in the process the state-of-the-art in communication paradigms within Java. We also present recent evaluation results indicating that this integrated approach can be achieved without compromising on performance. Communication Requirements Analysi

Performance visualisation in a portable parallel programming environment

In order to obtain the highest possible performance from programs running on massively parallel machines it is essential to identify precisely where and when computational resources are consumed during their execution. A number of performance visualisation tools have evolved to meet this need for particular systems but they are often not portable to other machines. We regard portability as crucial to the widespread acceptance and use of such tools, and have investigated several approaches to achieving it. Each approach has been based on the public domain ParaGraph tool, which enables trace data collected during a program's execution to be viewed from various different visual perspectives. One approach is for programs to use the portable instrumented communication library PICL, which directly generates trace data in the appropriate format. Alternatively, trace files produced by applications using other libraries can be converted into ParaGraph format using trace filter programs. In this paper we report on an implementation of PICL for transputers and on trace filters we developed for the PARMACS and Express libraries. We also describe ongoing work within the PPPE Esprit project to integrate ParaGraph into a portable parallel programming environment based on the PCTE portable common tool environment.<br/