The Value of Converged IT Infrastructures

This paper analyzes the economic value of implementing converged systems based on different research conducted by analyst firm last year, in particular: Converged Infrastructure Platform in May 2014 and Trends in Private Cloud Infrastructure April. Particularly we discuss in first sections the value of converging solutions and the diffusion development of converged computing infrastructure. Finally we talk about the advantages of this solution with particular emphasis on management and economic aspect

Unicam Activity Framework (UAF)

This presentation illustrates the framework of processing performance of the faculty of the University of Camerino. The evaluation criteria are explained and the technological structure that allows automatic performance assessment available online anywhere and anytime. The designed framework is usually applied to the performance evaluation of staff working for Università di Camerino (ITALY). It has provided excellent results which were positively judged by those who underwent the assessment, who also found that it portrayed their work quite properly

Security-Oriented Formal Techniques

Security of software systems is a critical issue in a world where Information Technology is becoming more and more pervasive. The number of services for everyday life that are provided via electronic networks is rapidly increasing, as witnessed by the longer and longer list of words with the prefix "e", such as e-banking, e-commerce, e-government, where the "e" substantiates their electronic nature. These kinds of services usually require the exchange of sensible data and the sharing of computational resources, thus needing strong security requirements because of the relevance of the exchanged information and the very distributed and untrusted environment, the Internet, in which they operate. It is important, for example, to ensure the authenticity and the secrecy of the exchanged messages, to establish the identity of the involved entities, and to have guarantees that the different system components correctly interact, without violating the required global properties

Possible role of vitamin D in celiac disease onset

Beside skeletal system maintenance and protection, possible extra-calcium roles of vitaminD have been recently described. In particular, studies have investigated possible roles of vitamin D as a key modulator of inflammation and immune mechanisms and of the intestinal mucosa barrier. In this regard, vitamin D has been considered as a factor that affects different conditions such as immune-mediated diseases. The new emerging role of vitamin D and its involvement in immune modulation has led it to be considered as a possible key factor involved in celiac disease (CD) onset. CD is a chronic immune-mediated enteropathy of the small intestine that is triggered by dietary gluten protein exposure in individuals who are genetically predisposed. However, along with gluten, other environmental factors are also involved in CD onset. The renewed interest in a molecule that offers great possibilities for new roles has led to an increase in studies, although there remains a lack of studies aimed at contextualizing the role of vitamin D on CD. This review aims to define the possible role of vitamin D in CD onset as it is presently understood, taking into account potential links among vitamin D, the immune system and CD

Formal methods to improve public administration business processes

Starting from late 90’s the public administration has started to employ a quite relevant amount of its budget in develop ing ICT solutions to better deliver services to citizens. In spite of this effort many statistics show that the mere availability of ICT based services does not guarantee per se their usage. Citizens have continued to largely access services through “traditional” means. In our study we suggest that the highlighted situation is partly due to the fact that relevant domain dependent requirements, mainly related to the delivery process of e-government digital services, are often ignored in the development of e-government solutions. We provide here a domain related quality framework and encoded it in a set of formal statements, so that we can apply automatic verification techniques to assess and improve ICT solutions adopted by public administrations. The paper discusses both the defined quality framework and the tool chain we developed to enable automatic assessment of ICT solutions. The tool chain is based on a denotational mapping of business process modeling notation elements into process algebraic descriptions and to the encoding of quality requirements in linear temporal logic formulas. The resulting approach has been applied to real case studies with encouraging results

Dietary Intake of Vitamin D from Dairy Products Reduces the Risk of Osteoporosis

Background: Vitamin D and calcium are important dietary compounds that affect bone mass, even if other minerals (potassium, zinc, etc.) and vitamins (A, C and K) are also involved. Vitamin D and certain minerals, in fact, play an important role in calcium homeostasis and calcium absorption. Hip fracture incidence is higher in Europe and the United States, where calcium is frequently included in the human diet; while the occurrence of these fractures is lower in developing countries, where diets are often poor in calcium. This condition is named the "calcium paradox", and may be partially explained by phosphate toxicity, which can negatively affect mineral metabolism. It is important to maintain correct dietary calcium-phosphate balance in order to have a healthy life, reducing the risk of osteoporotic fractures in older people. Vitamin D can also act as a hormone; vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) is derived from the UV-B radiation of ergosterol, the natural vitamin D precursor detected in plants, fungi, and invertebrates. Vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) is synthesized by sunlight exposure from 7-dehydrocholesterol, a precursor of cholesterol that can also act as provitamin D3. Dietary intake of vitamin D3 is essential when the skin is exposed for short periods to ultraviolet B light (UV-B), a category of invisible light rays such as UV-A and UV-C. This can be considered the usual situation in northern latitudes during the winter season, or the typical lifestyle for older people and/or for people with very white delicate skin. The actual recommended daily intake of dietary vitamin D is strictly correlated with age, ranging from 5 mu g for infants, children, teenagers, and adults-including pregnant and lactating women-to 15 mu g for people over 65 years

Livelock and Deadlock Detection for PA Inter-organizational Business Processes.

The Public Administration domain is characterized by the dominance of inter-organizational Business Processes. These are a set of interrelated and sequential activities shared and executed by two or more Public Administration officies to achieve a business objective that is of value to citizens or companies in term of services. A Business Process results from the un-trivial integration of internal administration processes, so that structural problems such as livelock or deadlock may easily occur and in reality they are generally solved by involved civil servants. Nevertheless with the shift versus an electronic government this problem becomes particularly relevant. The paper presents a suitable approach for inter-organizational Business Process detection of livelock and deadlock situations. In particular, we introduce an approach to directly verify a Business Process modeled using the BPMN 2.0 semi-formal notation. The verification uses a state evaluation technique with an optimized unfolding algorithm considering specific BPMN 2.0 characteristics. A plug-in for the Eclipse platform has been also developed, which permits to have an integrated environment in which to design Business Process, using the Eclipse BPMN 2.0 Modeler, and to automatically verify it. The approach and the tool prototype have been successfully applied to real scenarios such as family reunion, grant citizenship and buoncer registration

Comparison of carcass and meat quality obtained from mule and donkey

The aim of this study was to compare the carcass characteristics and the chemical and physical parameters of the meat produced by 10 male crossbred donkeys and 10 male mules slaughtered at 16 ± 1 years of age. The carcass weight and dressing percentage were significantly (p < 0.05) higher in mules. Samples of the muscle Longissimus thoracis (LT) were analyzed. Donkey meat showed a higher fat content, while the glycogen content was higher in the mule LT. The total collagen content was higher in the mule LT; in this muscle, the shear force values were higher compared to the donkey LT. The lightness parameter (L*) was lower in the mule LT, while the redness index (a*) was higher in the mule LT; this muscle showed a higher content of iron, while zinc was higher in the donkey muscle LT. The donkey LT muscle showed a higher content of essential amino acids (52.2%) compared to the mule LT (50.1%). The results obtained demonstrated that the chemical and physical traits of mule and donkey meat were similar to those of other kinds of equid meat

Cloud for eGov: the state of the art

Specifically, the paper provides a detailed analysis of the state of the art regarding technological, regulatory and interoperability aspects, devoting particular attention to those projects (and related experience) in the field of cloud and distributed computing. The paper's aim is to evaluate benefits and risks of the applicability of solutions that are already in place for the specified areas of interest. The key factors that determine relevant regulations, with particular emphasis on the European target, have been listed in the paper. Finally, the main Italian projects and the situation in some European countries have also been mentioned