Optimal Placement Algorithms for Virtual Machines

Cloud computing provides a computing platform for the users to meet their demands in an efficient, cost-effective way. Virtualization technologies are used in the clouds to aid the efficient usage of hardware. Virtual machines (VMs) are utilized to satisfy the user needs and are placed on physical machines (PMs) of the cloud for effective usage of hardware resources and electricity in the cloud. Optimizing the number of PMs used helps in cutting down the power consumption by a substantial amount. In this paper, we present an optimal technique to map virtual machines to physical machines (nodes) such that the number of required nodes is minimized. We provide two approaches based on linear programming and quadratic programming techniques that significantly improve over the existing theoretical bounds and efficiently solve the problem of virtual machine (VM) placement in data centers

Global features of upper-tropospheric zonal wind and thermal fields during anomalous monsoon situations

Global analyses of mean monthly zonal wind component and temperature at 200, 150 and 100 mb levels have been made for the region between 60°N and 60°S, for the months May through September during two poor monsoon years (1972 and 1979) and a good monsoon year (1975). Prominent and consistent contrasting features of the zonal wind and thermal fields have been identified, with reference to the monsoon performance over India. It has been noticed that the areal spreading of easterlies over the tropics and extratropics is significantly more during a good monsoon year. Shifting of the axis of the tropical easterly jet stream to a higher level and generally stronger easterlies also characterize good monsoon activity. The upper troposphere has been found to be considerably cooler during poor monsoon years

Letter to the editor:Are the undergradute medical students well-informed of organ transplantation?

No Abstrac

Unusual Cubital Fossa Anatomy – Case Report

The median nerve is known to show variations in its origin, course, relations and distribution. But in almost all cases it passes through the cubital fossa. We saw a cubital fossa without a median nerve. The median nerve had a normal course in the upper part of front of the arm but in the distal third of the arm it passed in front of the medial epicondyle of humerus, surrounded by fleshy fibres of pronator teres muscle. Its course and distribution in the forearm was normal. In the same limb, the fleshy fibres of the brachialis muscle directly continued into the forearm as brachioradialis, there being no fibrous septum separating the two muscles from each other. The close relationship of the nerve to the epicondyle might make it vulnerable in the fractures of the epicondyle. The muscle fibres surrounding the nerve might pull up on the nerve and result in altered sensory-motor functions of the hand. Since the brachialis and brachioradialis are two muscles supplied by two different nerves, this continuity of the muscles might result in compression/entrapment of the radial nerve in it.Keywords: Median nerve, cubital fossa, brachialis, brachioradialis, entrapmen

PADS: Privacy-preserving Auction Design forAllocating Dynamically Priced Cloud Resources

With the rapid growth of Cloud Computing technologies, enterprises are increasingly deploying their services in the Cloud. Dynamically priced cloud resources such as the Amazon EC2 Spot Instance provides an efficient mechanism for cloud service providers to trade resources with potential buyers using an auction mechanism. With the dynamically priced cloud resource markets, cloud consumers can buy resources at a significantly lower cost than statically priced cloud resources such as the on-demand instances in Amazon EC2. While dynamically priced cloud resources enable to maximize datacenter resource utilization and minimize cost for the consumers, unfortunately, such auction mechanisms achieve these benefits only at a cost significant of private information leakage. In an auction-based mechanism, the private information includes information on the demands of the consumers that can lead an attacker to understand the current computing requirements of the consumers and perhaps even allow the inference of the workload patterns of the consumers. In this paper, we propose PADS, a strategy-proof differentially private auction mechanism that allows cloud providers to privately trade resources with cloud consumers in such a way that individual bidding information of the cloud consumers is not exposed by the auction mechanism. We demonstrate that PADS achieves differential privacy and approximate truthfulness guarantees while maintaining good performance in terms of revenue gains and allocation efficiency. We evaluate PADS through extensive simulation experiments that demonstrate that in comparison to traditional auction mechanisms, PADS achieves relatively high revenues for cloud providers while guaranteeing the privacy of the participating consumers

Altered brain connectivity in sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) revealed using resting-state fMRI.

The circumstances surrounding SUDEP suggest autonomic or respiratory collapse, implying central failure of regulation or recovery. Characterisation of the communication among brain areas mediating such processes may shed light on mechanisms and noninvasively indicate risk. We used rs-fMRI to examine network properties among brain structures in people with epilepsy who suffered SUDEP (n = 8) over an 8-year follow-up period, compared with matched high- and low-risk subjects (n = 16/group) who did not suffer SUDEP during that period, and a group of healthy controls (n = 16). Network analysis was employed to explore connectivity within a 'regulatory-subnetwork' of brain regions involved in autonomic and respiratory regulation, and over the whole-brain. Modularity, the extent of network organization into separate modules, was significantly reduced in the regulatory-subnetwork, and the whole-brain, in SUDEP and high-risk. Increased participation, a local measure of inter-modular belonging, was evident in SUDEP and high-risk groups, particularly among thalamic structures. The medial prefrontal thalamus was increased in SUDEP compared with all other control groups, including high-risk. Patterns of hub topology were similar in SUDEP and high-risk, but were more extensive in low-risk patients, who displayed greater hub prevalence and a radical reorganization of hubs in the subnetwork. SUDEP is associated with reduced functional organization among cortical and sub-cortical brain regions mediating autonomic and respiratory regulation. Living high-risk subjects demonstrated similar patterns, suggesting such network measures may provide prospective risk-indicating value, though a crucial difference between SUDEP and high-risk was altered connectivity of the medial thalamus in SUDEP, which was also elevated compared with all sub-groups. Disturbed thalamic connectivity may reflect a potential non-invasive marker of elevated SUDEP risk

Impact of emission mitigation on ozone-induced wheat and rice damage in India

In this study, we evaluate the potential impact of ground level ozone (O3) on rice and wheat yield in top 10 states in India during 2005. This study is based on simulated hourly O3 concentration from the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem), district-wise seasonal crop production datasets and accumulated daytime hourly O3 concentration over a threshold of 40 ppbv (AOT40) indices to estimate crop yield damage resulting from ambient O3 exposure. The response of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOC) mitigation action is evaluated based on ground level O3 simulations with individual reduction in anthropogenic NOx and VOC emissions over the Indian domain. The total loss of wheat and rice from top 10 producing states in India is estimated to be 2.2 million tonnes (3.3%) and 2.05 million tonnes (2.5%) respectively. Sensitivity model study reveals relatively 93% decrease in O3-induced crop yield losses in response to anthropogenic NOx emission mitigation. The response of VOC mitigation action results in relatively small changes of about 24% decrease in O3-induced crop yield losses, suggesting NOx as a key pollutant for mitigation. VOC also contribute to crop yield reduction but their effects are a distant second compared to NOx effects

Optimum sowing dates for soybean in Central India using CROPGRO and ClimProb symbiosis

The optimum sowing dates for soybean cv. Gaurav were derived for Jabalpur, Raipur and Gwalior in the state of Madhya Pradesh in central India. Dates were derived based on two strategies: (a) probabilities of rainfall and temperature events using ClimProb, a PC based software package, and (b) the CROPGRO Soybean v3.0 crop growth simulation model. In Madhya Pradesh, the optimum sowing dates for multiple cropping, with the first crop as soybean under rainfed conditions, are between weeks 25 and 27, while the optimum sowing dates for rainfed mono-cropping are between weeks 28 and 29

Association of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (Val66Met) polymorphism with the risk of Parkinson’s disease and influence on clinical outcome

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disease. Motor symptoms of rigidity, tremor, and bradykinesia and non-motor symptoms like the cognitive deficit, autonomic dysfunction, dementia, anxiety and depression all contribute to morbidity. Emerging shreds of evidence suggest the role of BDNF (Val66Met) polymorphism in PD risk and associated cognitive deficit. Hence, the current study is aimed to investigate the role of BDNF Val66Met in the risk of PD development and associated cognitive abnormalities. A total of 269 PD cases and 271 healthy, age, ethnicity and gender matched controls were recruited in the study. Genomic DNA was isolated, amplified and SNP was identified using the RFLP method and validated by Sanger’s sequencing. There was a significant association of BDNF Val66Met with PD risk in both Dominant and recessive models (GG vs GA+AA: OR: 1.47, CI: 1.04-2.09, P =0.03, GG+GA vs AA: OR: 2.32, CI: 1.07-5.00, P =0.02). The main nonmotor symptom i.e. cognitive impairment was significantly associated with the variant genotype of BDNF Val66Met Polymorphism (GG vs GA+AA: OR: 1.47, CI: 1.04-2.09, P =0.03, GG+GA vs AA: OR: 2.32, CI: 1.07-5.00, P =0.02).We found a significant association of variant genotype with disease severity, the activity of daily living as assessed by S & E score as it was found to better with wild genotype and a significant decrease in quality of life with homozygous mutant genotype. We did not find significant differences in disease duration, absolute levodopa response among the genotypes. Our results implicate BDNF Val66Met polymorphism is associated with the risk of PD, cognitive impairment, poor quality of life and greater disease severity in PD

Association of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (Val66Met) polymorphism with the risk of Parkinson’s disease and influence on clinical outcome

192-201Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disease. Motor symptoms of rigidity, tremor, and bradykinesia and non-motor symptoms like the cognitive deficit, autonomic dysfunction, dementia, anxiety and depression all contribute to morbidity. Emerging shreds of evidence suggest the role of BDNF (Val66Met) polymorphism in PD risk and associated cognitive deficit. Hence, the current study is aimed to investigate the role of BDNF Val66Met in the risk of PD development and associated cognitive abnormalities. A total of 269 PD cases and 271 healthy, age, ethnicity and gender matched controls were recruited in the study. Genomic DNA was isolated, amplified and SNP was identified using the RFLP method and validated by Sanger’s sequencing. There was a significant association of BDNF Val66Met with PD risk in both Dominant and recessive models (GG vs GA+AA: OR: 1.47, CI: 1.04-2.09, P =0.03, GG+GA vs AA: OR: 2.32, CI: 1.07-5.00, P =0.02). The main nonmotor symptom i.e. cognitive impairment was significantly associated with the variant genotype of BDNF Val66Met Polymorphism (GG vs GA+AA: OR: 1.47, CI: 1.04-2.09, P =0.03, GG+GA vs AA: OR: 2.32, CI: 1.07-5.00, P =0.02).We found a significant association of variant genotype with disease severity, the activity of daily living as assessed by S & E score as it was found to better with wild genotype and a significant decrease in quality of life with homozygous mutant genotype. We did not find significant differences in disease duration, absolute levodopa response among the genotypes. Our results implicate BDNF Val66Met polymorphism is associated with the risk of PD, cognitive impairment, poor quality of life and greater disease severity in PD