MSL Framework: (Minimum Service Level Framework) for Cloud Providers and Users

Cloud Computing ensures parallel computing and emerged as an efficient technology to meet the challenges of rapid growth of data that we experienced in this Internet age. Cloud computing is an emerging technology that offers subscription based services, and provide different models such as IaaS, PaaS and SaaS among other models to cater the needs of different user groups. The technology has enormous benefits but there are serious concerns and challenges related to lack of uniform standards or nonexistence of minimum benchmark for level of services offered across the industry to provide an effective, uniform and reliable service to the cloud users. As the cloud computing is gaining popularity, organizations and users are having problems to adopt the service ue to lack of minimum service level framework which can act as a benchmark in the selection of the cloud provider and provide quality of service according to the user’s expectations. The situation becomes more critical due to distributed nature of the service provider which can be offering service from any part of the world. Due to lack of minimum service level framework that will act as a benchmark to provide a uniform service across the industry there are serious concerns raised recently interms of security and data privacy breaches, authentication and authorization issues, lack of third party audit and identity management problems, integrity, confidentiality and variable data availability standards, no uniform incident response and monitoring standards, interoperability and lack of portability standards, identity management issues, lack of infrastructure protection services standards and weak governance and compliance standards are major cause of concerns for cloud users. Due to confusion and absence of universal agreed SLAs for a service model, different quality of services is being provided across the cloud industry. Currently there is no uniform performance model agreed by all stakeholders; which can provide performance criteria to measure, evaluate, and benchmark the level of services offered by various cloud providers in the industry. With the implementation of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and demand from cloud users to have Green SLAs that provides better resource allocations mechanism, there will be serious implications for the cloud providers and its consumers due to lack of uniformity in SLAs and variable standards of service offered by various cloud providers. This research examines weaknesses in service level agreements offered by various cloud providers and impact due to absence of uniform agreed minimum service level framework on the adoption and usage of cloud service. The research is focused around higher education case study and proposes a conceptual model based on uniform minimum service model that acts as benchmark for the industry to ensure quality of service to the cloud users in the higher education institution and remove the barriers to the adoption of cloud technology. The proposed Minimum Service Level (MSL) framework, provides a set of minimum and uniform standards in the key concern areas raised by the participants of HE institution which are essential to the cloud users and provide a minimum quality benchmark that becomes a uniform standard across the industry. The proposed model produces a cloud computing implementation evaluation criteria which is an attempt to reduce the adoption barrier of the cloud technology and set minimum uniform standards followed by all the cloud providers regardless of their hosting location so that their performance can be measured, evaluated and compared across the industry to improve the overall QoS (Quality of Service) received by the cloud users, remove the adoption barriers and concerns of the cloud users and increase the competition across the cloud industry.A computação em nuvem proporciona a computação paralela e emergiu como uma tecnologia eficiente para enfrentar os desafios do crescimento rápido de dados que vivemos na era da Internet. A computação em nuvem é uma tecnologia emergente que oferece serviços baseados em assinatura e oferece diferentes modelos como IaaS, PaaS e SaaS, entre outros modelos para atender as necessidades de diferentes grupos de utilizadores. A tecnologia tem enormes benefícios, mas subsistem sérias preocupações e desafios relacionados com a falta de normas uniformes ou inexistência de um referencial mínimo para o nível de serviços oferecidos, na indústria, para proporcionar uma oferta eficaz, uniforme e confiável para os utilizadores da nuvem. Como a computação em nuvem está a ganhar popularidade, tanto organizações como utilizadores estão enfrentando problemas para adotar o serviço devido à falta de enquadramento de nível de serviço mínimo que possa agir como um ponto de referência na seleção de provedor da nuvem e fornecer a qualidade dos serviços de acordo com as expectativas do utilizador. A situação torna-se mais crítica, devido à natureza distribuída do prestador de serviço, que pode ser oriundo de qualquer parte do mundo. Devido à falta de enquadramento de nível de serviço mínimo que irá agir como um benchmark para fornecer um serviço uniforme em toda a indústria, existem sérias preocupações levantadas recentemente em termos de violações de segurança e privacidade de dados, autenticação e autorização, falta de questões de auditoria de terceiros e problemas de gestão de identidade, integridade, confidencialidade e disponibilidade de dados, falta de uniformidade de normas, a não resposta a incidentes e o monitoramento de padrões, a interoperabilidade e a falta de padrões de portabilidade, questões relacionadas com a gestão de identidade, falta de padrões de serviços de proteção das infraestruturas e fraca governança e conformidade de padrões constituem outras importantes causas de preocupação para os utilizadores. Devido à confusão e ausência de SLAs acordados de modo universal para um modelo de serviço, diferente qualidade de serviços está a ser fornecida através da nuvem, pela indústria da computação em nuvem. Atualmente, não há desempenho uniforme nem um modelo acordado por todas as partes interessadas; que pode fornecer critérios de desempenho para medir, avaliar e comparar o nível de serviços oferecidos por diversos fornecedores de computação em nuvem na indústria. Com a implementação do Regulamento Geral de Protecção de Dados (RGPD) e a procura da nuvem com base no impacto ambiental (Green SLAs), são acrescentadas precupações adicionais e existem sérias implicações para os forncedores de computação em nuvem e para os seus consumidores, também devido à falta de uniformidade na multiplicidade de SLAs e padrões de serviço oferecidos. A presente pesquisa examina as fraquezas em acordos de nível de serviço oferecidos por fornecedores de computação em nuvem e estuda o impacto da ausência de um quadro de nível de serviço mínimo acordado sobre a adoção e o uso no contexto da computação em nuvem. A pesquisa está orientada para a adoção destes serviços para o caso do ensino superior e as instituições de ensino superior e propõe um modelo conceptualt com base em um modelo de serviço mínimo uniforme que funciona como referência para a indústria, para garantir a qualidade do serviço para os utilizadores da nuvem numa instituição de ensino superior de forma a eliminar as barreiras para a adoção da tecnologia de computação em nuvem. O nível de serviço mínimo proposto (MSL), fornece um conjunto mínimo de normas uniformes e na áreas das principais preocupações levantadas por responsáveis de instituições de ensino superior e que são essenciais, de modo a fornecer um referencial mínimo de qualidade, que se possa tornar um padrão uniforme em toda a indústria. O modelo proposto é uma tentativa de reduzir a barreira de adoção da tecnologia de computação em nuvem e definir normas mínimas seguidas por todos os fornecedores de computação em nuvem, independentemente do seu local de hospedagem para que os seus desempenhos possam ser medidos, avaliados e comparados em toda a indústria, para melhorar a qualidade de serviço (QoS) recebida pelos utilizadores e remova as barreiras de adoção e as preocupações dos utilizadores, bem como fomentar o aumento da concorrência em toda a indústria da computação em nuvem

MSL Framework: (Minimum Service Level Framework) for cloud providers and users

Cloud Computing ensures parallel computing and emerged as an efficient technology to meet the challenges of rapid growth of data that we experienced in this Internet age. Cloud computing is an emerging technology that offers subscription based services, and provide different models such as IaaS, PaaS and SaaS among other models to cater the needs of different user groups. The technology has enormous benefits but there are serious concerns and challenges related to lack of uniform standards or nonexistence of minimum benchmark for level of services offered across the industry to provide an effective, uniform and reliable service to the cloud users. As the cloud computing is gaining popularity, organizations and users are having problems to adopt the service ue to lack of minimum service level framework which can act as a benchmark in the selection of the cloud provider and provide quality of service according to the user’s expectations. The situation becomes more critical due to distributed nature of the service provider which can be offering service from any part of the world. Due to lack of minimum service level framework that will act as a benchmark to provide a uniform service across the industry there are serious concerns raised recently interms of security and data privacy breaches, authentication and authorization issues, lack of third party audit and identity management problems, integrity, confidentiality and variable data availability standards, no uniform incident response and monitoring standards, interoperability and lack of portability standards, identity management issues, lack of infrastructure protection services standards and weak governance and compliance standards are major cause of concerns for cloud users. Due to confusion and absence of universal agreed SLAs for a service model, different quality of services is being provided across the cloud industry. Currently there is no uniform performance model agreed by all stakeholders; which can provide performance criteria to measure, evaluate, and benchmark the level of services offered by various cloud providers in the industry. With the implementation of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and demand from cloud users to have Green SLAs that provides better resource allocations mechanism, there will be serious implications for the cloud providers and its consumers due to lack of uniformity in SLAs and variable standards of service offered by various cloud providers. This research examines weaknesses in service level agreements offered by various cloud providers and impact due to absence of uniform agreed minimum service level framework on the adoption and usage of cloud service. The research is focused around higher education case study and proposes a conceptual model based on uniform minimum service model that acts as benchmark for the industry to ensure quality of service to the cloud users in the higher education institution and remove the barriers to the adoption of cloud technology. The proposed Minimum Service Level (MSL) framework, provides a set of minimum and uniform standards in the key concern areas raised by the participants of HE institution which are essential to the cloud users and provide a minimum quality benchmark that becomes a uniform standard across the industry. The proposed model produces a cloud computing implementation evaluation criteria which is an attempt to reduce the adoption barrier of the cloud technology and set minimum uniform standards followed by all the cloud providers regardless of their hosting location so that their performance can be measured, evaluated and compared across the industry to improve the overall QoS (Quality of Service) received by the cloud users, remove the adoption barriers and concerns of the cloud users and increase the competition across the cloud industry.A computação em nuvem proporciona a computação paralela e emergiu como uma tecnologia eficiente para enfrentar os desafios do crescimento rápido de dados que vivemos na era da Internet. A computação em nuvem é uma tecnologia emergente que oferece serviços baseados em assinatura e oferece diferentes modelos como IaaS, PaaS e SaaS, entre outros modelos para atender as necessidades de diferentes grupos de utilizadores. A tecnologia tem enormes benefícios, mas subsistem sérias preocupações e desafios relacionados com a falta de normas uniformes ou inexistência de um referencial mínimo para o nível de serviços oferecidos, na indústria, para proporcionar uma oferta eficaz, uniforme e confiável para os utilizadores da nuvem. Como a computação em nuvem está a ganhar popularidade, tanto organizações como utilizadores estão enfrentando problemas para adotar o serviço devido à falta de enquadramento de nível de serviço mínimo que possa agir como um ponto de referência na seleção de provedor da nuvem e fornecer a qualidade dos serviços de acordo com as expectativas do utilizador. A situação torna-se mais crítica, devido à natureza distribuída do prestador de serviço, que pode ser oriundo de qualquer parte do mundo. Devido à falta de enquadramento de nível de serviço mínimo que irá agir como um benchmark para fornecer um serviço uniforme em toda a indústria, existem sérias preocupações levantadas recentemente em termos de violações de segurança e privacidade de dados, autenticação e autorização, falta de questões de auditoria de terceiros e problemas de gestão de identidade, integridade, confidencialidade e disponibilidade de dados, falta de uniformidade de normas, a não resposta a incidentes e o monitoramento de padrões, a interoperabilidade e a falta de padrões de portabilidade, questões relacionadas com a gestão de identidade, falta de padrões de serviços de proteção das infraestruturas e fraca governança e conformidade de padrões constituem outras importantes causas de preocupação para os utilizadores. Devido à confusão e ausência de SLAs acordados de modo universal para um modelo de serviço, diferente qualidade de serviços está a ser fornecida através da nuvem, pela indústria da computação em nuvem. Atualmente, não há desempenho uniforme nem um modelo acordado por todas as partes interessadas; que pode fornecer critérios de desempenho para medir, avaliar e comparar o nível de serviços oferecidos por diversos fornecedores de computação em nuvem na indústria. Com a implementação do Regulamento Geral de Protecção de Dados (RGPD) e a procura da nuvem com base no impacto ambiental (Green SLAs), são acrescentadas precupações adicionais e existem sérias implicações para os forncedores de computação em nuvem e para os seus consumidores, também devido à falta de uniformidade na multiplicidade de SLAs e padrões de serviço oferecidos. A presente pesquisa examina as fraquezas em acordos de nível de serviço oferecidos por fornecedores de computação em nuvem e estuda o impacto da ausência de um quadro de nível de serviço mínimo acordado sobre a adoção e o uso no contexto da computação em nuvem. A pesquisa está orientada para a adoção destes serviços para o caso do ensino superior e as instituições de ensino superior e propõe um modelo conceptualt com base em um modelo de serviço mínimo uniforme que funciona como referência para a indústria, para garantir a qualidade do serviço para os utilizadores da nuvem numa instituição de ensino superior de forma a eliminar as barreiras para a adoção da tecnologia de computação em nuvem. O nível de serviço mínimo proposto (MSL), fornece um conjunto mínimo de normas uniformes e na áreas das principais preocupações levantadas por responsáveis de instituições de ensino superior e que são essenciais, de modo a fornecer um referencial mínimo de qualidade, que se possa tornar um padrão uniforme em toda a indústria. O modelo proposto é uma tentativa de reduzir a barreira de adoção da tecnologia de computação em nuvem e definir normas mínimas seguidas por todos os fornecedores de computação em nuvem, independentemente do seu local de hospedagem para que os seus desempenhos possam ser medidos, avaliados e comparados em toda a indústria, para melhorar a qualidade de serviço (QoS) recebida pelos utilizadores e remova as barreiras de adoção e as preocupações dos utilizadores, bem como fomentar o aumento da concorrência em toda a indústria da computação em nuvem

Study of drug mediated effects in mice: Histology based findings

Aackground: Drugs induce numerous kinds of pharmacological effects in different body organs. For protecting organs from damage and destruction from drugs, the study of such effects is extremely important. Rapidly accumulating experimental data has opened new horizons for a comprehensive re-conceptualization of chemical modulated changes in histological features of body tissues.Methods: In this study we studied dextromethorphan, ethanol, methanol and midazolam induced changes in histological specimen from different organs in post-treated mice.Results: No pathological changes were observed in heart, liver and kidney by administering dextromethorphan at a dose of 61 mg/kg. While, ethanol causes pathological changes in heart, liver and kidney tissue at high dose i.e. 2000 mg/kg. Gross Pathological changes were observed in heart, liver and kidney by giving midazolam at a dose of 200 mg/kg.Conclusion: Dextromethorphan showed lesser side effects and is less toxic as compared with other drugs, such as, ethanol, methanol and midazolam. Lesser toxic effects were observed when drugs were administered alone, but in combination, these drugs produced higher toxic effects

Formulation and evaluation of Ketoprofen cream containing natural anti-inflammatory agent curcuma longa in treatment of rheumatoid arthritis

Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory drugs have their origin as the derivatives of plants which were observed to have strong analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects in various disease states. Ketoprofen is a better tolerated NSAID because of its limited numbers of adverse effects and topical formulation has excellent permeation and absorption into the skin. The present investigation was to develop novel Ketoprofen cream formulation in combination of most effective and potent anti-inflammatory agent curcuma longa, which is reported to possess strong anti-inflammatory effects in Rheumatoid Arthritis and Osteoarthritis, according to the study by university of Arizona researchers. Combination of Ketoprofen and curcuma longa is good rational, where curcuma longa produces synergistic anti-inflammatory effects with ketoprofen. Formulation containing fixed concentrations (3%) of ketoprofen with curcuma longa was prepared. To access the efficacy of formulation stability studies, spread ability, tube extrudability, viscosity, pH, skin irritation test, in vitro drug diffusion study and anti- inflammatory effects were evaluated. The results obtained were encouraging and formulation containing Ketoprofen (3%) with curcuma longa was found better than alone Ketoprofen cream formulation

Abetalipoproteinemia: two case reports and literature review

Abetalipoproteinemia (ABL, OMIM 200100) is a rare, autosomal recessive disorder, characterized by fat malabsorption, acanthocytosis and hypocholesterolemia in infancy. Later in life, deficiency of fat-soluble vitamins is associated with development of atypical retinitis pigmentosa, coagulopathy, posterior column neuropathy and myopathy. ABL results from mutations in the gene encoding the large subunit of microsomal triglyceride transfer protein (MTP; OMIM 157147). To date at least 33 MTP mutations have been identified in 43 ABL patients. We describe the clinical progress of two patients, both currently in the fifth decade of life, who were diagnosed with ABL as children and were treated with high oral doses of fat soluble vitamins, including vitamin E over the last three decades. Treatment appears to have been associated with arrest of the neuropathy and other complications in both patients. Because pharmacologic inhibition of MTP is being developed as a novel approach to reduce plasma cholesterol for prevention of cardiovascular disease, defining the long-term clinical features of patients with a natural deficiency in MTP might provide some insight into the possible effects of such treatments. We review the range of clinical, biochemical and molecular perturbations in ABL

COMPARATIVE EVALUATION OF KETOPROFEN CREAM WITH DICLOFENAC AND PIROXICAM CREAM IN PATIENTS WITH RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS DISORDERS:

Non steroidal Anti- inflammatory drugs have their origin as the derivatives of plants, which were observed to have their therapeutic effects in different disease states. They have the advantage of local action without developing central adverse effects and cognitive impairments. Side effects have been well described, although partly neglected. Topical delivery of NSAID has its therapeutic applications in management of pain and inflammation in Rheumatoid arthritis patients. Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic systemic inflammatory disorder that may affect many tissues and organs but principally attacks the synovial joints. It can be disabling and painful condition, which can lead to substantial loss of functioning and mobility if not adequately treated. The aim of the present investigation was to compare the Ketoprofen cream with Diclofenac and Piroxicam cream in a group of volunteers suffered from Rheumatoid arthritis and to compare the efficacy of these creams in reduction of inflammation. This single blind comparative study was done to determine the efficacy, tolerability and acceptability of topical application of Ketoprofen cream (1%w/w) vs diclofenac cream (1%w/w) and piroxicam cream (0.5%w/w) in Rheumatoid arthritis patients. In this study, one hundred and twenty five volunteers suffering with acute Rheumatoid arthritis and age group between 40-70 years were analyzed for assessing the intensity of pain and anti-inflammatory effects of these three creams. The study revealed that Ketoprofen cream provides a good level of pain relief removes swelling and tenderness and improves the functional impairment, without the systemic adverse events associated with oral NSAIDs.Key Words: Cream, Diclofenac, Ketoprofen, Piroxicam, Rheumatoid arthriti

Experimental and Numerical investigation of hot-jet ignition with shock effects in a constant-volume combustor

poster abstractA wave rotor, an array of channels arranged around the axis of a cylindrical drum, can be used as a combustor in gas turbine engines in order to reduce the consumption of the fuel by increasing the fuel efficiency. Since the wave rotor combustor consumes fuel in constant volume channels, the engine system derives benefit from not only high temperature of the combusted gas, but also high pressure by containing the hot gas in the channels. Combustion of gas mixture in one of channels ignited by hot jet penetration under the necessity of rapid ignition accompanies complex non-steady phenomena, such as shock wave propagation, shock-flame interaction, and vortex generation in the channel. Especially, when a shock wave passes through the flame surface, the heat release rate and fuel consumption rate can be suddenly increased by a deformation of the flame surface, which are closely related with the combustion time of the fuel mixture. This research aims to investigate the ignition process, and the shock-flame interaction in a constant volume combustor experimentally and numerically to extract useful information for future wave rotor combustor design. Varıous mixtures of CH4 and H2 with equivalence ratio 1.0 were set as fuel for the main chamber, providing variation in chemical kinetic timescale. The hot gas jet consists of combusted gas mixture of a fuel composed of 50% CH4+ 50% H2 (by volume), burned in the pre-chamber with air at equivalence ratio 1.1. For experimental research, three dynamic pressure transducers were installed on the main chamber to measure the pressure changes caused by shock waves and flame propagation in the main chamber. Time-dependent flame and shock wave images up to 20,000 fps were obtained by a high speed camera, and a Z-type schlieren system. The schlieren technique, an optimum system to capture shock waves in the channel, utilizes light deviation due to flow density gradient, visualizing flows which are invisible to the human eye. In numerical research, adaptive mesh refinement for velocity and temperature, and multi-zone reaction modeling to speed up the kinetics were used to analyze turbulent combustion with minimum computational cost. Advanced post-processing techniques were used to calculate flame surface area, heat release rate, and vorticity deposited on flame surface to understand the flame wrinkling and surface increase. Finally, pressure data in main chamber, flame propagation speed, and the large scale of vortices under different initial conditions obtained from the experimental study were compared to the numerical results under the same conditions in order to suggest reference data for designing future wave rotors

A deep multimodal system for provenance filtering with universal forgery detection and localization

[EN] Traditional multimedia forensics techniques inspect images to identify, localize forged regions and estimate forgery methods that have been applied. Provenance filtering is the research area that has been evolved recently to retrieve all the images that are involved in constructing a morphed image in order to analyze an image, completely forensically. This task can be performed in two stages: one is to detect and localize forgery in the query image, and the second integral part is to search potentially similar images from a large pool of images. We propose a multimodal system which covers both steps, forgery detection through deep neural networks(CNN) followed by part based image retrieval. Classification and localization of manipulated region are performed using a deep neural network. InceptionV3 is employed to extract key features of the entire image as well as for the manipulated region. Potential donors and nearly duplicates are retrieved by using the Nearest Neighbour Algorithm. We take the CASIA-v2, CoMoFoD and NIST 2018 datasets to evaluate the proposed system. Experimental results show that deep features outperform low-level features previously used to perform provenance filtering with achieved Recall@50 of 92.8%.Jabeen, S.; Khan, UG.; Iqbal, R.; Mukherjee, M.; Lloret, J. (2021). A deep multimodal system for provenance filtering with universal forgery detection and localization. Multimedia Tools and Applications. 80(11):17025-17044. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-09623-w1702517044801

Electrochemical Corrosion Properties of Ternary Al and Quaternary Zr Added Bell Metal in 0.1M NaCl Solution

The electrochemical corrosion property of ternary Al and quaternary Zr added Bell metal in 0.1M Sodium Chloride solution has been experimentally conducted at room temperature. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) method and Potentiodynamic polarization technique are used to carry out the electrochemical investigation. Microhardness test is also conducted for all three alloys and it reveals that Al addition increases the hardness of bell metal due to the formation of different intermetallic precipitates of Cu and Al. Optical Micrograph as well as Scanning Electron Micrograph have also been studied to characterize their surface condition. It is found that Zr addition refines the grain structure of the alloy and results in increase of hardness. The EIS study reveals that the corrosion resistance is seem to be augmented with the addition of ternary Al and quaternary Zr to bell metal. The potentiodynamic polarization curves disclose that both ternary Al added and quaternary Zr added alloy show better corrosion performance than the base bell metal alloy due to the formation of stable aluminium oxide film. The currentdensity (Icorr) of base bell metal showed higher value than both ternary Al added and quaternary Zr added bell metal alloys. The corrosion potential (Ecorr) and the open circuit potential (OCP) were seen to be moved to the more positive direction for the Al and Zr added alloys. Microstructure and SEM study of the alloys after corrosion revealed a formation of an oxide film on the surface of the ternary A and quaternary Zr added alloys, the probable cause of which is the presence of Al in the respective alloys

Three-Dimensional Simulation of Turbulent Hot-Jet Ignition for Air-CH4-H2 Deflagration in a Confined Volume

This work describes essential aspects of the ignition and deflagration process initiated by the injection of a hot transient gas jet into a narrowly confined volume containing air-CH4-H2 mixture. Driven by the pressure difference between a prechamber and a long narrow constant-volume-combustion (CVC) chamber, the developing jet or puff involves complex processes of turbulent jet penetration and evolution of multi-scale vortices in the shear layer, jet tip, and adjacent confined spaces. The CVC chamber contains stoichiometric mixtures of air with gaseous fuel initially at atmospheric conditions. Fuel reactivity is varied using two different CH4/H2 blends. Jet momentum is varied using different pre-chamber pressures at jet initiation. The jet initiation and the subsequent ignition events generate pressure waves that interact with the mixing region and the propagating flame, depositing baroclinic vorticity. Transient three-dimensional flow simulations with detailed chemical kinetics are used to model CVC mixture ignition. Pre-ignition gas properties are then examined to develop and verify criteria to predict ignition delay time using lower-cost non-reacting flow simulations for this particular case of study