Lambda Station: Alternate Network Path Forwarding for Production SciDAC Applications

The LHC era will start very soon, creating immense data volumes capable of demanding allocation of an entire network circuit for task-driven applications. Circuit-based alternate network paths are one solution to meeting the LHC high bandwidth network requirements. The Lambda Station project is aimed at addressing growing requirements for dynamic allocation of alternate network paths. Lambda Station facilitates the rerouting of designated traffic through site LAN infrastructure onto so-called 'high-impact' wide-area networks. The prototype Lambda Station developed with Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach in mind will be presented. Lambda Station has been successfully integrated into the production version of the Storage Resource Manager (SRM), and deployed at US CMS Tier1 center at Fermilab, as well as at US-CMS Tier-2 site at Caltech. This paper will discuss experiences using the prototype system with production SciDAC applications for data movement between Fermilab and Caltech. The architecture and design principles of the production version Lambda Station software, currently being implemented as Java based web services, will also be presented in this paper

Fermilab central mass storage system as a test bed for HPSS

Fermilab Central Mass Storage System (FCMSS) provides mass storage related services to 16 groups of users, mainly Fermilab Fixed Target Experiments. FCMSS is also used as a test bed for High Performance Storage System (HPSS). We report on our more than a year and a half long production experience of using HPSS and show results of various performance tests

The Fermilab data storage infrastructure

Fermilab, in collaboration with the DESY laboratory in Hamburg, Germany, has created a petabyte scale data storage infrastructure to meet the requirements of experiments to store and access large data sets. The Fermilab data storage infrastructure consists of the following major storage and data transfer components: Enstore mass storage system, DCache distributed data cache, ftp and Grid ftp for primarily external data transfers. This infrastructure provides a data throughput sufficient for transferring data from experiments' data acquisition systems. It also allows access to data in the Grid framework

Sarcolemmal cardiac KATP channels as a target for the cardioprotective effects of the fluorine-containing pinacidil analogue, flocalin

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSEA class of drugs known as K-ATP-channel openers induce cardioprotection. This study examined the effects of the novel K-ATP-channel opener, the fluorine-containing pinacidil derivative, flocalin, on cardiac-specific K-ATP-channels, excitability of native cardiac myocytes and on the ischaemic heart.EXPERIMENTAL APPROACHThe action of flocalin was investigated on: (i) membrane currents through cardiac-specific K-ATP-channels (I-KATP) formed by K(IR)6.2/SUR2A heterologously expressed in HEK-293 cells (HEK-293(6.2/2A)); (ii) excitability and intracellular Ca2+ ([Ca2+](i)) transients of cultured rat neonatal cardiac myocytes; and (iii) functional and ultrastructural characteristics of isolated guinea-pig hearts subjected to ischaemia-reperfusion.KEY RESULTSFlocalin concentration-dependently activated a glibenclamide-sensitive I-KATP in HEK-293(6.2/2A) cells with an EC50 = 8.1 +/- 0.4 mu M. In cardiac myocytes, flocalin (5 mu M) hyperpolarized resting potential by 3-5 mV, markedly shortened action potential duration, reduced the amplitude of [Ca2+](i) transients by 2-3-fold and suppressed contraction. The magnitude and extent of reversibility of these effects depended on the type of cardiac myocytes. In isolated hearts, perfusion with 5 mu mol center dot L-1 flocalin, before inducing ischaemia, facilitated restoration of contraction during reperfusion, decreased the number of extrasystoles, prevented the appearance of coronary vasoconstriction and reduced damage to the cardiac tissue at the ultrastructural level (state of myofibrils, membrane integrity, mitochondrial cristae structure).CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONSFlocalin induced potent cardioprotection by activating cardiac-type K-ATP-channels with all the benefits of the presence of fluorine group in the drug structure: higher lipophilicity, decreased toxicity, resistance to oxidation and thermal degradation, decreased metabolism in the organism and prolonged therapeutic action

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, bronchial asthma and allergic rhinitis in the adult population within the Commonwealth of Independent States: rationale and design of the CORE study

Abstract Background Main treatable Chronic Respiratory Diseases (CRDs) like Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), Bronchial Asthma (BA) and Allergic Rhinitis (AR) are underdiagnosed and undertreated worldwide. CORE study was aimed to assess the point prevalence of COPD, BA and AR in the adult population of major cities of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries – Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine based on study questionnaires and/or spirometry, and to document risk factors, characterize the COPD, BA and AR population to provide a clearer “epidemiological data”. Methods A descriptive, cross-sectional, population-based epidemiological study conducted from 2013 to 2015 with two-stage cluster geographical randomization. Interviewers conducted face-to-face visits at respondent’s household after informed consent and eligibility assessment including interviews, anthropometry, spirometry (with bronchodilator test) and completion of disease-specific questionnaires. Results Two thousand eight hundred forty-two respondents (Ukraine: 964 from Ukraine; 945 from Kazakhstan; 933 Azerbaijan) were enrolled. Mean age was 40–42 years and males were 37%–42% across three countries. In Kazakhstan 62.8% were Asians, but in Ukraine and in Azerbaijan 99.7% and 100.0%, respectively, were Caucasians. Manual labourers constituted 40.5% in Ukraine, 22.8% in Kazakhstan and 22.0% in Azerbaijan, while office workers were 16.1%, 31.6% and 36.8% respectively. 51.3% respondents in Ukraine, 64.9% in Kazakhstan and 69.7% in Azerbaijan were married. Conclusion CORE study collected information that can be supportive for health policy decision makers in allocating healthcare resources in order to improve diagnosis and management of CRDs. The detailed findings will be described in future publications. Trial registration Study Protocol Summary is disclosed at GlaxoSmithKline Clinical Study Register on Jun 06, 2013, study ID 116757

Fermilab's multi-petabyte scalable mass storage system

Fermilab provides a multi-Petabyte scale mass storage system for High Energy Physics (HEP) Experiments and other scientific endeavors. We describe the scalability aspects of the hardware and software architecture that were designed into the Mass Storage System to permit us to scale to multiple petabytes of storage capacity, manage tens of terabytes per day in data transfers, support hundreds of users, and maintain data integrity. We discuss in detail how we scale the system over time to meet the ever-increasing needs of the scientific community, and relate our experiences with many of the technical and economic issues related to scaling the system. Since the 2003 MSST conference, the experiments at Fermilab have generated more than 1.9 PB of additional data. We present results on how this system has scaled and performed for the Fermilab CDF and D0 Run II experiments as well as other HEP experiments and scientific endeavors

Correction to: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, bronchial asthma and allergic rhinitis in the adult population within the commonwealth of independent states: rationale and design of the CORE study

Abstract After publication of this work [1] it was noticed three author names were spelt incorrectly. Liudmila Iashyna should be Liudmyla Iashyna, Marina Polyanskaya should be Maryna Polianska and Elcan Mamamdbayov should be Eljan Mammadbayov

HEPCloud, an Elastic Hybrid HEP Facility using an Intelligent Decision Support System

HEPCloud is rapidly becoming the primary system for provisioning compute resources for all Fermilab-affiliated experiments. In order to reliably meet the peak demands of the next generation of High Energy Physics experiments, Fermilab must plan to elastically expand its computational capabilities to cover the forecasted need. Commercial cloud and allocation-based High Performance Computing (HPC) resources both have explicit and implicit costs that must be considered when deciding when to provision these resources, and at which scale. In order to support such provisioning in a manner consistent with organizational business rules and budget constraints, we have developed a modular intelligent decision support system (IDSS) to aid in the automatic provisioning of resources spanning multiple cloud providers, multiple HPC centers, and grid computing federations. In this paper, we discuss the goals and architecture of the HEPCloud Facility, the architecture of the IDSS, and our early experience in using the IDSS for automated facility expansion both at Fermi and Brookhaven National Laboratory