Legal issues in clouds: towards a risk inventory.

Cloud computing technologies have reached a high level of development, yet a number of obstacles still exist that must be overcome before widespread commercial adoption can become a reality. In a cloud environment, end users requesting services and cloud providers negotiate service-level agreements (SLAs) that provide explicit statements of all expectations and obligations of the participants. If cloud computing is to experience widespread commercial adoption, then incorporating risk assessment techniques is essential during SLA negotiation and service operation. This article focuses on the legal issues surrounding risk assessment in cloud computing. Specifically, it analyses risk regarding data protection and security, and presents the requirements of an inherent risk inventory. The usefulness of such a risk inventory is described in the context of the OPTIMIS project

How a spin-glass remembers. Memory and rejuvenation from intermittency data: an analysis of temperature shifts

The memory and rejuvenation aspects of intermittent heat transport are explored theoretically and by numerical simulation for Ising spin glasses with short-ranged interactions. The theoretical part develops a picture of non-equilibrium glassy dynamics recently introduced by the authors. Invoking the concept of marginal stability, this theory links irreversible `intermittent' events, or `quakes' to thermal fluctuations of record magnitude. The pivotal idea is that the largest energy barrier $b(t_w,T)$ surmounted prior to $t_w$ by thermal fluctuations at temperature $T$ determines the rate $r_q \propto 1/t_w$ of the intermittent events occurring near $t_w$. The idea leads to a rate of intermittent events after a negative temperature shift given by $r_q \propto 1/t_w^{eff}$, where the `effective age' $t_w^{eff} \geq t_w$ has an algebraic dependence on $t_w$, whose exponent contains the temperatures before and after the shift. The analytical expression is verified by numerical simulations. Marginal stability suggests that a positive temperature shift $T \to T'$ could erase the memory of the barrier $b(t_w,T)$. The simulations show that the barrier $b(t_w,T') \geq b(t_w,T)$ controls the intermittent dynamics, whose rate is hence $r_q \propto 1/t_w$. Additional `rejuvenation' effects are also identified in the intermittency data for shifts of both signs.Comment: Revised introduction and discussion. Final version to appear in Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experimen

The nucleotide and partial amino acid sequences of rat fetuin

Fetuins are among the major plasma proteins, yet their biological role has remained elusive. Here we report the molecular cloning of rat fetuin and the sequence analysis of a full-length clone, RF619 of 1456 bp with an open reading frame of 1056 bp encoding 352 amino acid residues. The coding part of RF619 was identical with the cDNA sequence of the natural inhibitor of the insulin receptor tyrosine kinase from rat (pp63) except for four substitutions and a single base insertion causing divergence of the predicted protein sequences. Partial amino acid sequences of rat plasma fetuin were in agreement with the predictions based on the RF619 cDNA. Purified rat fetuin inhibited the insulin receptor tyrosine kinase in vitro. Therefore, we conclude that RF619 and pp63 cDNA encode the same protein, i.e. authentic rat fetuin which is a functional tyrosine kinase inhibitor

Global transcriptional profiles of beating clusters derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells and embryonic stem cells are highly similar

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Functional and molecular integrity of cardiomyocytes (CMs) derived from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells is essential for their use in tissue repair, disease modelling and drug screening. In this study we compared global transcriptomes of beating clusters (BCs) microdissected from differentiating human iPS cells and embryonic stem (ES) cells.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Hierarchical clustering and principal component analysis revealed that iPS-BCs and ES-BCs cluster together, are similarly enriched for cardiospecific genes and differ in expression of only 1.9% of present transcripts. Similarly, sarcomeric organization, electrophysiological properties and calcium handling of iPS-CMs were indistinguishable from those of ES-CMs. Gene ontology analysis revealed that among 204 genes that were upregulated in iPS-BCs vs ES-BCs the processes related to extracellular matrix, cell adhesion and tissue development were overrepresented. Interestingly, 47 of 106 genes that were upregulated in undifferentiated iPS vs ES cells remained enriched in iPS-BCs vs ES-BCs. Most of these genes were found to be highly expressed in fibroblasts used for reprogramming and 34% overlapped with the recently reported iPS cell-enriched genes.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These data suggest that iPS-BCs are transcriptionally highly similar to ES-BCs. However, iPS-BCs appear to share some somatic cell signature with undifferentiated iPS cells. Thus, iPS-BCs may not be perfectly identical to ES-BCs. These minor differences in the expression profiles may occur due to differential cellular composition of iPS-BCs and ES-BCs, due to retention of some genetic profile of somatic cells in differentiated iPS cell-derivatives, or both.</p

Interpreting Attoclock Measurements of Tunnelling Times

Resolving in time the dynamics of light absorption by atoms and molecules, and the electronic rearrangement this induces, is among the most challenging goals of attosecond spectroscopy. The attoclock is an elegant approach to this problem, which encodes ionization times in the strong-field regime. However, the accurate reconstruction of these times from experimental data presents a formidable theoretical challenge. Here, we solve this problem by combining analytical theory with ab-initio numerical simulations. We apply our theory to numerical attoclock experiments on the hydrogen atom to extract ionization time delays and analyse their nature. Strong field ionization is often viewed as optical tunnelling through the barrier created by the field and the core potential. We show that, in the hydrogen atom, optical tunnelling is instantaneous. By calibrating the attoclock using the hydrogen atom, our method opens the way to identify possible delays associated with multielectron dynamics during strong-field ionization.Comment: 33 pages, 10 figures, 3 appendixe

General psychopathology links burden of recent life events and psychotic symptoms in a network approach

Recent life events have been implicated in the onset and progression of psychosis. However, psychological processes that account for the association are yet to be fully understood. Using a network approach, we aimed to identify pathways linking recent life events and symptoms observed in psychosis. Based on previous literature, we hypothesized that general symptoms would mediate between recent life events and psychotic symptoms. We analyzed baseline data of patients at clinical high risk for psychosis and with recent-onset psychosis (n = 547) from the Personalised Prognostic Tools for Early Psychosis Management (PRONIA) study. In a network analysis, we modeled links between the burden of recent life events and all individual symptoms of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale before and after controlling for childhood trauma. To investigate the longitudinal associations between burden of recent life events and symptoms, we analyzed multiwave panel data from seven timepoints up to month 18. Corroborating our hypothesis, burden of recent life events was connected to positive and negative symptoms through general psychopathology, specifically depression, guilt feelings, anxiety and tension, even after controlling for childhood trauma. Longitudinal modeling indicated that on average, burden of recent life events preceded general psychopathology in the individual. In line with the theory of an affective pathway to psychosis, recent life events may lead to psychotic symptoms via heightened emotional distress. Life events may be one driving force of unspecific, general psychopathology described as characteristic of early phases of the psychosis spectrum, offering promising avenues for interventions

Consumer price indexes: an analysis of heterogeneity across sub-populations

La rilevanza dell'Indece dei Prezzi al Consumo quale misura dell'inflazione è stata a lungo dibattuta in particolare esminando le differenti cause di distorsione dovute all'utilizzo di un paniere fisso di beni e servizi. Di conseguenza la letteratura ha proposto indici dei prezzi sperimentali per particolari sottogruppi di popolazioni. tali indici hanno rilevanza ai fini della politica economica e sociale, poiché è probabile che differenti gruppi di popolazione abbiano comportamenti nei consumi differenti dalla media, ad esempio i consumatori poveri (Garner, Johnson & Kokoski, 1996) e quelli anziani (Stewart, 2008). Lo scopo di questo lavoro è quello di esaminare le possibilità offerte da metodi di costruzione alternativi degli Indici dei Prezzi al Consumo ai fini di cogliere la variabilità dei tassi di inflazione relativi a differenti categorie di consumatori.The soundeness of Consumer Price Indexes (CPI) as a measure of inflation has long been debeate, focusing on the different sources of bias inherent to use of a constant basket of goods and services. Thus experimental consumer price indexes have been proposed for targeted sub-populations specifically relevant for social and economic policy, that are likely to have consumption patterns different from yhe average, i.e poor (Garner, Johnson & Kokoski, 1996) and elderly (Stewart, 2008)houseolds. Aim of this work is to investigate the possibilities offered by alternative methods of construction of consumer price indices in order to capture the variability of inflation rates facing different houseolds' types

Urban living in healthy Tanzanians is associated with an inflammatory status driven by dietary and metabolic changes

Sub-Saharan Africa currently experiences an unprecedented wave of urbanization, which has important consequences for health and disease patterns. This study aimed to investigate and integrate the immune and metabolic consequences of rural or urban lifestyles and the role of nutritional changes associated with urban living. In a cohort of 323 healthy Tanzanians, urban as compared to rural living was associated with a pro-inflammatory immune phenotype, both at the transcript and protein levels. We identified different food-derived and endogenous circulating metabolites accounting for these differences. Serum from urban dwellers induced reprogramming of innate immune cells with higher tumor necrosis factor production upon microbial re-stimulation in an in vitro model of trained immunity. These data demonstrate important shifts toward an inflammatory phenotype associated with an urban lifestyle and provide new insights into the underlying dietary and metabolic factors, which may affect disease epidemiology in sub-Sahara African countries. Rapid urbanization can be associated with adverse health implications. de Mast and colleagues compare urban and rural Tanzanian populations using multi-omics and observe that urbanization is associated with an elevated but reversible inflammatory state