Architecture-based Qualitative Risk Analysis for Availability of IT Infrastructures

An IT risk assessment must deliver the best possible quality of results in a time-effective way. Organisations are used to customise the general-purpose standard risk assessment methods in a way that can satisfy their requirements. In this paper we present the QualTD Model and method, which is meant to be employed together with standard risk assessment methods for the qualitative assessment of availability risks of IT architectures, or parts of them. The QualTD Model is based on our previous quantitative model, but geared to industrial practice since it does not require quantitative data which is often too costly to acquire. We validate the model and method in a real-world case by performing a risk assessment on the authentication and authorisation system of a large multinational company and by evaluating the results w.r.t. the goals of the stakeholders of the system. We also perform a review of the most popular standard risk assessment methods and an analysis of which one can be actually integrated with our QualTD Model

A2THOS: Availability Analysis and Optimisation in SLAs

IT service availability is at the core of customer satisfaction and business success for today’s organisations. Many medium-large size organisations outsource part of their IT services to external providers, with Service Level Agreements describing the agreed availability of outsourced service components. Availability management of partially outsourced IT services is a non trivial task since classic approaches for calculating availability are not applicable, and IT managers can only rely on their expertise to fulfil it. This often leads to the adoption of non optimal solutions. In this paper we present A2THOS, a framework to calculate the availability of partially outsourced IT services in the presence of SLAs and to achieve a cost-optimal choice of availability levels for outsourced IT components while guaranteeing a target availability level for the service

Nonadiabatic effects in the dynamics of atoms confined in a cylindric time-orbiting-potential magnetic trap

In a time-orbiting-potential magnetic trap the neutral atoms are confined by means of an inhomogeneous magnetic field superimposed to an uniform rotating one. We perform an analytic study of the atomic motion by taking into account the nonadiabatic effects arising from the spin dynamics about the local magnetic field. Geometric-like magnetic-fields determined by the Berry's phase appear within the quantum description. The application of a variational procedure on the original quantum equation leads to a set of dynamical evolution equations for the quantum average value of the position operator and of the spin variables. Within this approximation we derive the quantum-mechanical ground state configuration matching the classical adiabatic solution and perform some numerical simulations.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

A novel protocol for the one-pot borylation/Suzuki reaction provides easy access to hinge-binding groups for kinase inhibitors

The one-pot borylation/Suzuki reaction is a very efficient means of accessing cross-coupling products of two aryl-halide partners that generally requires the use of specific catalysts or ligands and/or relatively long reaction times. This new microwave-assisted method provides a quick one-pot borylation/Suzuki reaction protocol that we applied to the synthesis of various bi- or poly-aryl scaffolds, including a variety of aryl and heteroaryl ring systems and the core frameworks of kinase inhibitors vemurafenib and GDC-0879

The asymmetry of Nathair Facula: A volcanologic mystery on Mercury

[Introduction] Nathair Facula is the largest and most spectrally-distinct of nearly 200 ‘bright red’ spots on Mercury’s surface, most of which are accepted to be deposits from explosive volcanic eruptions. Like most of Mercury’s faculae, it hosts a central pit (in this case about 40 km wide and over 3 km deep). However the centre of this facula does not coincide with the vent, but is displaced about 20 km northwards. This poses as-yet unresolved questions about the nature of the eruption mechanism. Furthermore, the vent area is almost certainly a ‘compound vent’ (Pegg et al., 2019) within which the locus of eruption has migrated between eruptive episodes, and it is unclear how the same asymmetry could be repeatedly en-gendered and reinforced by a series of eruptions rather than averaging out to a symmetrical distribution

Risk and protective factors for meningococcal disease in adolescents: matched cohort study

Objective: To examine biological and social risk factors for meningococcal disease in adolescents. Design: Prospective, population based, matched cohort study with controls matched for age and sex in 1:1 matching. Controls were sought from the general practitioner. Setting: Six contiguous regions of England, which represent some 65% of the country’s population. Participants: 15-19 year olds with meningococcal disease recruited at hospital admission in six regions (representing 65% of the population of England) from January 1999 to June 2000, and their matched controls. Methods: Blood samples and pernasal and throat swabs were taken from case patients at admission to hospital and from cases and matched controls at interview. Data on potential risk factors were gathered by confidential interview. Data were analysed by using univariate and multivariate conditional logistic regression. Results: 144 case control pairs were recruited (74 male (51%); median age 17.6). 114 cases (79%) were confirmed microbiologically. Significant independent risk factors for meningococcal disease were history of preceding illness (matched odds ratio 2.9, 95% confidence interval 1.4 to 5.9), intimate kissing with multiple partners (3.7, 1.7 to 8.1), being a university student (3.4, 1.2 to 10) and preterm birth (3.7, 1.0 to 13.5). Religious observance (0.09, 0.02 to 0.6) and meningococcal vaccination (0.12, 0.04 to 0.4) were associated with protection. Conclusions: Activities and events increasing risk for meningococcal disease in adolescence are different from in childhood. Students are at higher risk. Altering personal behaviours could moderate the risk. However, the development of further effective meningococcal vaccines remains a key public health priority

Spatial and temporal characterization of a Bessel beam produced using a conical mirror

We experimentally analyze a Bessel beam produced with a conical mirror, paying particular attention to its superluminal and diffraction-free properties. We spatially characterized the beam in the radial and on-axis dimensions, and verified that the central peak does not spread over a propagation distance of 73 cm. In addition, we measured the superluminal phase and group velocities of the beam in free space. Both spatial and temporal measurements show good agreement with the theoretical predictions.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

Integration of Dirac-Jacobi structures

We study precontact groupoids whose infinitesimal counterparts are Dirac-Jacobi structures. These geometric objects generalize contact groupoids. We also explain the relationship between precontact groupoids and homogeneous presymplectic groupoids. Finally, we present some examples of precontact groupoids.Comment: 10 pages. Brief changes in the introduction. References update

The valuation of European financial firms

We extend the recent literature concerning accounting based valuation models to investigate financial firms from six European countries with substantial financial sectors: France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK. Not only are these crucial industries worthy of study in their own right, but unusual accounting practices, and inter-country differences in those accounting practices, provide valuable insights into the accounting-value relationship. Our sample consists of 7,714 financial firm/years observations from 1,140 companies drawn from 1989-2000. Sub-samples include 1,309 firm/years for banks, 650 for insurance companies, 1,705 for real estate firms, and 3,239 for investment companies. In most countries we find that the valuation models work as well or better in explaining cross-sectional variations in the market-to-book ratio for financial firms as they do for industrial and commercial firms in the same countries, although Switzerland is an exception to this generalization. As expected, the results are sensitive to industrial differences, accounting regulation and accounting practices. In particular, marking assets to market value reduces the relevance of earnings figures and increases that of equity