Egg parasitoids of the genus Trichogramma (Hymenoptera, Trichogrammatidae) in olive groves of the Mediterranean region

A survey of egg parasitoids of the genus Trichogramma (Hymenoptera, Trichogrammatidae) was carried out in olive groves in Portugal, Greece, Egypt, and Tunisia during the years 2002–2004. Parasitoids were obtained either by exposing sentinel eggs (Sitotroga cerealella Olivier or Ephestia kuehniella Zeller) on olive trees or by collecting eggs of lepidopterous olive pests. Parasitized egg samples were reared separately in the laboratory for emergence of parasitoids. These were further reared in separate lines and processed by morphological and molecular biology techniques for species characterization. The recorded fauna of Trichogramma parasitoids in olive groves was species poor and consisted of species mainly known from the Mediterranean region. Trichogramma bourarachae Pintureau and Babault was found in Tunisia and Egypt, T. cordubensis Vargas and Cabello, and T. euproctidis Girault in Egypt, Trichogramma cacoeciae Marchal in Portugal, Greece, Egypt, Tunisia and Trichogramma nerudai Pintureau and Gerding in Portugal. Apart from that, Trichogramma oleae Voegele´ and Pointel was collected in Tunisia. This species is probably not indigenous, but has established after several releases of a French strain were made in recent years. For selected strains, the sequence of the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS-2) region of rDNA was determined and deposited in the GenBank database. Differences in important biological attributes were found among collected strains of T. bourarachae, suggesting the existence of biotypes. The results contribute to the limited knowledge on distribution and biodiversity of the genus Trichogramma in the Mediterranean region. They can be helpful for the preservation and use of indigenous Trichogramma species in biological control of lepidopterous pests in olive and other local crops

Mobile Transport and Computing Platform for 5G Verticals: resource abstraction and implementation

This paper has been presented at: 2018 IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Define Networks (IEEE NFV-SDN)The 5G-TRANSFORMER project aims at transforming today's mobile transport networks into an SDN/NFV-based platform, which offers slices tailored to the needs of vertical industries. The paper describes the 5G-TRANSFORMER resource management layer, namely MTP, and its main functionalities such as resource abstraction, resource information modeling and orchestration, and service instantiation. Then, it focuses on the ETSI-based interfaces exploited for the interaction between the control and management plane elements. Finally, the paper reports an MTP implementation including messages reporting resource abstraction.This work has been partially funded by the EU H2020 5G-TRANSFORMER Project (grant no. 761536)

Resource Orchestration of 5G Transport Networks for Vertical Industries

The future 5G transport networks are envisioned to support a variety of vertical services through network slicing and efficient orchestration over multiple administrative domains. In this paper, we propose an orchestrator architecture to support vertical services to meet their diverse resource and service requirements. We then present a system model for resource orchestration of transport networks as well as low-complexity algorithms that aim at minimizing service deployment cost and/or service latency. Importantly, the proposed model can work with any level of abstractions exposed by the underlying network or the federated domains depending on their representation of resources.This work has been partially funded by the EU H2020 5G-Transformer Project (grant no. 761536)

Effects of impurities on oxygen transfer rate in the electroflotation process

513-518In this work, three different types of impurities: soybean oil, surfactant and diatomaceous earth were doped to simulate the impurities in wastewaters issued from edible oil refinery plant. The effects of the impurities on the oxygen transfer rate were investigated in an electroflotation cell. The volumetric mass transfer coefficient was studied for a batch mode involving different values of the current density for different impurities concentrations. The capacity of oxygenation and the corrective alpha factor were also studied. Models which relate the volumetric mass transfer coefficient to the current density and the concentration of the impurities were established. The results showed that the presence of impurities significantly reduce the volumetric mass transfer coefficient KLa

CDN slicing over a multi-domain edge cloud

Abstract We present an architecture for the provision of video Content Delivery Network (CDN) functionality as a service over a multi-domain cloud. We introduce the concept of a CDN slice, that is, a CDN service instance which is created upon a content provider’s request, is autonomously managed, and spans multiple, potentially heterogeneous, edge cloud infrastructures. Our design is tailored to a 5G mobile network context, building on its inherent programmability, management flexibility, and the availability of cloud resources at the mobile edge level, thus close to end users. We exploit Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) technologies, proposing a system which is aligned with the recent NFV and MEC standards. To deliver a Quality-of-Experience (QoE) optimized video service, we derive empirical models of video QoE as a function of service workload, which, coupled with multi-level service monitoring, drive our slice resource allocation and elastic management mechanisms. These management schemes feature autonomic compute resource scaling, and on-the-fly transcoding to adapt video bit-rate to the current network conditions. Their effectiveness is demonstrated via testbed experiments.</P

Network slicing-based customization of 5G mobile services

Abstract Through network slicing, different requirements of different applications and services can be met. These requirements can be in terms of latency, bandwidth, mobility support, defining service area, and security. Through fine and dynamic tuning of network slices, services can have their delivery platforms constantly customized according to their changing needs. In this article, we present our implementation of an E2E network slice orchestration platform, evaluate its performance in terms of dynamic deployment of network slices in an E2E fashion, and discuss how its functionality can be enhanced to better customize the network slices according to the needs of their respective services

Service orchestration and federation for verticals

The next generation mobile transport networks shall transform into flexible and agile SDN/NFV-based transport and computing platforms, capable of simultaneously supporting the needs of different vertical industries, e.g., automotive, e-health and media, by meeting a diverse range of networking and computing requirements. Network slicing, has emerged as the most promising approach to address this challenge by enabling per-slice management of virtualized resources and provisioning and managing slices tailored to the needs of different vertical industries. Service orchestration is the key enabler for slicing that allows efficient placement of virtual network functions over the infrastructure as well as optimal allocation of virtual resources among all network slices to deliver guaranteed, reliable and scalable services of different verticals. Besides, due to the limited footprint of infrastructure operators, it is also required to enable the interconnection and federation of multiple administrative domains, to effectively allow services to span across several providers. This paper presents the design of Service Orchestrator (SO) in the 5G-TRANSFORMER system, which deals with service orchestration and federation across multiple domains