Optimized Strategy in Cloud-Native Environment for Inter-Service Communication in Microservices

Cloud computing has become a prominent technology in the software development industry. The term “cloud-native” is derived from cloud computing technologies and refers to the development and deployment of applications in a cloud environment. In the software industry, most enterprise-grade software buildings use the microservice architecture and cloud natively, ultimately leading to an expansive development in the software development framework. Microservices are deployed in a distributed environment and function as independent services. However, they need to communicate with each other in order to fulfill the functional requirement. Additional latency will be introduced when communicating with other services. Hence, it will impact the overall application response time and throughput. This research proposes a solution for the aforementioned problem in the cloud-native environment. A Request-response-based TCP communication solution has been developed and tested in the cloud-native, containerized environment. Experimental results showed that the turnaround time of the proposed solution is shorter than that of traditional HTTP communication methods. Furthermore, the results summarize that both vertical and horizontal scaling are improving the overall performance of the systems performance in terms of response time. Conclusively, the proposed solution improved the microservice performance and preserved the existing cloud-native qualities, such as scalability, maintainability, and portability

Priority-based initial access for URLLC traffic in massive IoT networks: Schemes and performance analysis

At a density of one million devices per square kilometer, the10’s of billions of devices, objects, and machines that form a massive Internet of things (mIoT) require ubiquitous connectivity. Among a massive number of IoT devices, a portion of them require ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC) provided via fifth generation (5G) networks, bringing many new challenges due to the stringent service requirements. Albeit a surge of research efforts on URLLC and mIoT, access mechanisms which include both URLLC and massive machine type communications (mMTC) have not yet been investigated in-depth. In this paper, we propose three novel schemes to facilitate priority-based initial access for mIoT/mMTC devices that require URLLC services while also considering the requirements of other mIoT/mMTC devices. Based on a long term evolution-advanced (LTEA) or 5G new radio frame structure, the proposed schemes enable device grouping based on device vicinity or/and their URLLC requirements and allocate dedicated preambles for grouped devices supported by flexible slot allocation for random access. These schemes are able not only to increase the reliability and minimize the delay of URLLC devices but also to improve the performance of all involved mIoT devices. Furthermore, we evaluate the performance of the proposed schemes through mathematical analysis as well as simulations and compare the results with the performance of both the legacy LTE-A based initial access scheme and a grant-free transmission scheme.acceptedVersio

Priority Enabled Grant-Free Access With Dynamic Slot Allocation for Heterogeneous mMTC Traffic in 5G NR Networks

Although grant-based mechanisms have been a predominant approach for wireless access for years, the additional latency required for initial handshake message exchange and the extra control overhead for packet transmissions have stimulated the emergence of grant-free (GF) transmission. GF access provides a promising mechanism for carrying low and moderate traffic with small data and fits especially well for massive machine type communications (mMTC) applications. Despite a surge of interest in GF access, how to handle heterogeneous mMTC traffic based on GF mechanisms has not been investigated in depth. In this paper, we propose a priority enabled GF access scheme which performs dynamic slot allocation in each 5G new radio subframe to devices with different priority levels on a subframe-by-subframe basis. While high priority traffic has access privilege for slot occupancy, the remaining slots in the same subframe will be allocated to low priority traffic. To evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme, we develop a two-dimensional Markov chain model which integrates these two types of traffic via a pseudo-aggregated process. Furthermore, the model is validated through simulations and the performance of the scheme is evaluated both analytically and by simulations and compared with two other GF access schemes.publishedVersio

Preamble Transmission Prediction for mMTC Bursty Traffic : A Machine Learning based Approach

Author's accepted manuscript.© 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.acceptedVersio

Use of Mobile Phones for Infant and Young Child Feeding Counseling in Sri Lankan Tea Estates: A Formative Study

Despite the availability of free health services, children residing in Sri Lanka’s less developed plantation sector are more likely to be undernourished than children in urban and rural sectors. Hence, we need new approaches to improve their nutritional status. One promising approach involves mobile health initiatives, which is used effectively in other countries in primary health care settings. We studied the nature of mobile phone use in this community, and their perceptions on using m-health counseling for infant and young child feeding. Focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were the study methods. We found that mobile phone usage is common in this community hence; m-health platform could be a promising initiative to strengthen the existing face to face nutritional advice provided by the field health workers to improve the nutritional status of children

Strengthening social capital in the Sri Lankan population: A qualitative exploration of factors driving the mothers’ support groups initiative during economic crisis

Background: Social capital is a concept that has been identified to improve health outcomes in many populations. Due to COVID-19 and many other factors, Sri Lanka faced a massive economic crisis that affected the nutrition of communities. Many community engagement initiatives have begun to promote the country’s nutrition during the worst-hit years. The Mothers’ Support Groups initiative is one of the existing community engagement initiatives that is well known for strengthening community social capital. This article discusses how the Mothers’ Support Groups (MSG) initiative in Sri Lanka contributed to improving social capital in Sri Lanka during the economic crisis, focusing on nutrition. Methods: We conducted a case study on the activities undertaken by mothers’ support groups in view of how they focused on social capital. We selected all activities presented by districts that improved social capital related to nutrition promotion captured in the YouTube video stream. We analyzed these qualitative data to identify the main themes related to social capital and nutritional promotion. Two coders transcribed the video recordings. We analyzed the data using the iterative thematic inquiry (ITI) method and initially assessed beliefs about concepts, building new beliefs through encounters with data, listing tentative themes, and evaluating themes through coding. Results: Six major themes were identified (that social capital had been strengthened to promote nutrition): awareness creation of nutrition, home gardening promotion, promoting livestock farming, minimizing food waste, improving the home economy, and psychosocial health promotion. The most common forms of social capital encountered in these themes were bonding, bridging, and linking. Furthermore, strengthening structural social capital is more prominent than strengthening cognitive social capital. Conclusion: Social capital can improve nutritional status during crises. Activities that can be used to achieve this vary from simple awareness creation among communities to more advanced psychosocial health promotion. Overall, social capital contributed to the community development aspect of health promotion to a greater extent

Is socioeconomic position associated with risk of attempted suicide in rural Sri Lanka? A cross sectional study of 165,000 individuals

Background: Lower socioeconomic position (SEP) is associated with an increased risk of suicidal behaviour in high-income countries, but this association is unclear in low-income and middle-income countries. Methods: We investigated the association of SEP with attempted suicide in a cross-sectional survey of 165 233 Sri Lankans. SEP data were collected at the household (assets, social standing (highest occupation of a household member), foreign employment and young (≤40 years) female-headed households) and individual level (education and occupation). Respondent-reported data on suicide attempts in the past year were recorded. Random-effects logistic regression models, accounting for clustering, were used to investigate the association of SEP with attempted suicide. Results: Households reported 398 attempted suicides in the preceding year (239 per 100 000). Fewer assets (OR 3.2, 95% CI 2.4 to 4.4) and having a daily wage labourer (ie, insecure/low-income job; OR 2.3, 95% CI 1.6 to 3.2) as the highest occupation increased the risk of an attempted suicide within households. At an individual level, daily wage labourers were at an increased risk of attempted suicide compared with farmers. The strongest associations were with low levels of education (OR 4.6, 95% CI 2.5 to 8.4), with a stronger association in men than women. Conclusions: We found that indicators of lower SEP are associated with increased risk of attempted suicide in rural Sri Lanka. Longitudinal studies with objective measures of suicide attempts are needed to confirm this association

Effectiveness of Household Lockable Pesticide Storage to Reduce Pesticide Self-Poisoning in Rural Asia: a Community-Based Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial

Background Agricultural pesticide self-poisoning is a major public health problem in rural Asia. The use of safer household pesticide storage has been promoted to prevent deaths, but there is no evidence of effectiveness. We aimed to test the effectiveness of lockable household containers for prevention of pesticide self-poisoning. Methods We did a community-based, cluster-randomised controlled trial in a rural area of North Central Province, Sri Lanka. Clusters of households were randomly assigned (1:1), with a sequence computer-generated by a minimisation process, to intervention or usual practice (control) groups. Intervention households that had farmed or had used or stored pesticide in the preceding agricultural season were given a lockable storage container. Further promotion of use of the containers was restricted to community posters and 6-monthly reminders during routine community meetings. The primary outcome was incidence of pesticide self-poisoning in people aged 14 years or older during 3 years of follow-up. Identification of outcome events was done by staff who were unaware of group allocation. Analysis was by intention to treat. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT1146496. Findings Between Dec 31, 2010, and Feb 2, 2013, we randomly assigned 90 rural villages to the intervention group and 90 to the control group. 27 091 households (114 168 individuals) in the intervention group and 26 291 households (109 693 individuals) in the control group consented to participate. 20 457 household pesticide storage containers were distributed. In individuals aged 14 years or older, 611 cases of pesticide self-poisoning had occurred by 3 years in the intervention group compared with 641 cases in the control group; incidence of pesticide self-poisoning did not differ between groups (293·3 per 100 000 person-years of follow-up in the intervention group vs 318·0 per 100 000 in the control group; rate ratio [RR] 0·93, 95% CI 0·80–1·08; p=0·33). We found no evidence of switching from pesticide self-poisoning to other forms of self-harm, with no significant difference in the number of fatal (82 in the intervention group vs 67 in the control group; RR 1·22, 0·88–1·68]) or non-fatal (1135 vs 1153; RR 0·97, 0·86–1·08) self-harm events involving all methods. Interpretation We found no evidence that means reduction through improved household pesticide storage reduces pesticide self-poisoning. Other approaches, particularly removal of highly hazardous pesticides from agricultural practice, are likely to be more effective for suicide prevention in rural Asia

A community-based cluster randomised trial of safe storage to reduce pesticide self-poisoning in rural Sri Lanka: study protocol

BACKGROUND: The WHO recognises pesticide poisoning to be the single most important means of suicide globally. Pesticide self-poisoning is a major public health and clinical problem in rural Asia, where it has led to case fatality ratios 20-30 times higher than self-poisoning in the developed world. One approach to reducing access to pesticides is for households to store pesticides in lockable "safe-storage" containers. However, before this approach can be promoted, evidence is required on its effectiveness and safety. METHODS/DESIGN: A community-based cluster randomised controlled trial has been set up in 44,000 households in the North Central Province, Sri Lanka. A census is being performed, collecting baseline demographic data, socio-economic status, pesticide usage, self-harm and alcohol. Participating villages are then randomised and eligible households in the intervention arm given a lockable safe storage container for agrochemicals. The primary outcome will be incidence of pesticide self-poisoning over three years amongst individuals aged 14 years and over. 217,944 person years of follow-up are required in each arm to detect a 33% reduction in pesticide self-poisoning with 80% power at the 5% significance level. Secondary outcomes will include the incidence of all pesticide poisoning and total self-harm. DISCUSSION: This paper describes a large effectiveness study of a community intervention to reduce the burden of intentional poisoning in rural Sri Lanka. The study builds on a strong partnership between provincial health services, local and international researchers, and local communities. We discuss issues in relation to randomisation and contamination, engaging control villages, the intervention, and strategies to improve adherence