Transparent Orchestration of Task-based Parallel Applications in Containers Platforms

This paper presents a framework to easily build and execute parallel applications in container-based distributed computing platforms in a user-transparent way. The proposed framework is a combination of the COMP Superscalar (COMPSs) programming model and runtime, which provides a straightforward way to develop task-based parallel applications from sequential codes, and containers management platforms that ease the deployment of applications in computing environments (as Docker, Mesos or Singularity). This framework provides scientists and developers with an easy way to implement parallel distributed applications and deploy them in a one-click fashion. We have built a prototype which integrates COMPSs with different containers engines in different scenarios: i) a Docker cluster, ii) a Mesos cluster, and iii) Singularity in an HPC cluster. We have evaluated the overhead in the building phase, deployment and execution of two benchmark applications compared to a Cloud testbed based on KVM and OpenStack and to the usage of bare metal nodes. We have observed an important gain in comparison to cloud environments during the building and deployment phases. This enables better adaptation of resources with respect to the computational load. In contrast, we detected an extra overhead during the execution, which is mainly due to the multi-host Docker networking.This work is partly supported by the Spanish Government through Programa Severo Ochoa (SEV-2015-0493), by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology through TIN2015-65316 project, by the Generalitat de Catalunya under contracts 2014-SGR-1051 and 2014-SGR-1272, and by the European Union through the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant 690116 (EUBra-BIGSEA Project). Results presented in this paper were obtained using the Chameleon testbed supported by the National Science Foundation.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

An Architecture for Programming Distributed Applications on Fog to Cloud Systems

This paper presents a framework to develop and execute applications in distributed and highly dynamic computing systems composed of cloud resources and fog devices such as mobile phones, cloudlets, and micro-clouds. The work builds on the COMPSs programming framework, which includes a programming model and a runtime already validated in HPC and cloud environments for the transparent execution of parallel applications. As part of the proposed contribution, COMPSs has been enhanced to support the execution of applications on mobile platforms that offer GPUs and CPUs. The scheduling component of COMPSs is under design to be able to offload the computation to other fog devices in the same level of the hierarchy and to cloud resources when more computational power is required. The framework has been tested executing a sample application on a mobile phone offloading task to a laptop and a private cloud.This work is partly supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology through project TIN2015-65316-P and grant BES-2013-067167, by the Generalitat de Catalunya under contracts 2014-SGR-1051 and 2014-SGR-1272, and by the European Union through the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant 730929 (mF2C Project).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Safety Evaluation of New Polymer Materials Proposed for Relining Drinking Water Pipes in the City of Milano

Relining is a trenchless technology of recoating the inside walls of damaged water pipes using composite materials. In the Safe Pipe project, co-financed by Regione Lombardia, alternative polymeric materials for relining the drinking water distribution system of the city of Milan have been developed. Relining polymers have been evaluated for their toxicity. The identification of product impurities was performed by HPLC/HRMS and GC/MS analysis and safety evaluation was conducted applying toxicity data, when available, or applying QSAR models. Results showed low level of toxic substances in polymerized resins and in water samples in a migration/leaching test performed in a field experiment

Development of a monitoring system for heroin-assisted substitution treatment in Switzerland

Summary: Objectives: Switzerland introduced heroin-assisted treatment as a routine treatment for drug addicts. As a result the evaluation instruments were changed from a detailed scientific project to a routine monitoring system. The process for developing this monitoring system is described. Methods: The questionnaires and assessment instruments were restyled with staff of the treatment agencies. Indicators measuring quality of treatment and measures from the future national statistic on the addiction support system were integrated into admission, course and discharge questionnaires. Currently a system for feedback to treatment agencies is being developed. Results: All 21 treatment agencies are participating in the monitoring. Assessment quality is high. Conclusions: The described monitoring should provide continuous delivery of basic relevant data on patient

Plastic Optical Fiber Technology for Reliable Home Networking: Overview and Results of the EU Project POF-ALL

The rising performance of broadband connections for residential users, particularly in conjunction with fiber to the home, will present a new challenge for telecom operators in the short and medium terms: how to deliver the high bit rate digital signals with high quality-of-service to all consumer devices scattered inside the building of final users? Among the many different solutions for the home network, we review in this article the use of polymer optical fibers for short-reach and high-capacity optical communications for residential customer premises. POF is an easy-to-install, low-cost, and eye-safe solution for these networks, with the potential of being future-proof. In this article the state of the art in POF technology is presented by summarizing significant results achieved in the European project POF-ALL. Data transmission rates of more than 1 Gb/s over 50+ m and 100 Mb/s over 200+ m of standard step-index POF have been show