Towards a unified management of applications on heterogeneous clouds

J. Carrasco, F. Durán y E. Pimentel. "Towards a Unified Management of Applications on Heterogeneous Clouds". Proceedings of the PhD Symposium at the 5th European Conference on Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing. G. Zavattaro and W. Zimmermann (eds). University Halle-Wittenberg. Technical Report 2016/02, 40-47. 2016.The diversity in the way cloud providers o↵er their services, give their SLAs, present their QoS, or support di↵erent technologies, makes very difficult the portability and interoperability of cloud applications, and favours the well-known vendor lock-in problem. We propose a model to describe cloud applications and the required resources in an agnostic, and providers- and resources-independent way, in which individual application modules, and entire applications, may be re-deployed using different services without modification. To support this model, and after the proposal of a variety of cross-cloud application management tools by different authors, we propose going one step further in the unification of cloud services with a management approach in which IaaS and PaaS services are integrated into a unified interface. We provide support for deploying applications whose components are distributed on different cloud providers, indistinctly using IaaS and PaaS services.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Component-wise application migration in bidimensional cross-cloud environments

We propose an algorithm for the migration of cloud applications' components between different providers, possibly changing their service level between IaaS and PaaS. Our solution relies on three of the key ingredients of the trans-cloud approach: a unified API, agnostic topology descriptions, and mechanisms for the independent specification of providers. We show how our approach allows us to overcome some of the current interoperability and portability issues of cloud environments to propose a solution for migration, present an implementation of our proposed solution, and illustrate it with a case study and experimental results.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Unobserved Heterogeneity in Multi-Spell Discrete Time Duration Models

This paper considers the estimation of discrete time duration models. We highlight the enhance identification opportunities embedded in multiple spell data to separately identify the effect of duration dependence and individual time invariant unobserved heterogeneity. We consider two types of models: (i) random effects models specifying a mass point distribution for the unobserved heterogeneity; and (ii) fixed effects models in which the distribution of the effects is left unrestricted. The availability of multiple spell data allows us to consider this type of models, in the spirit of fixed effects discrete choice panel data models. We study the finite sample properties of different estimators for previous models by means of Monte Carlo simulations. Finally, as an empirical illustration, we estimate unemployment duration models using Spanish administrative data with information on the entire labor history of the individuals.Duration models; Discrete choice; Multiple spells; Unobserved heterogeneity; Unemployment.

Unemployment Duration among Immigrants and Natives: Unobserved Heterogeneity in a Multi-Spell Duration Model

This paper studies whether the unemployment dynamics of immigrants differ from those of natives, paying special attention to the impact of accounting for unobserved heterogeneity among individuals. Using a large administrative data set for Spain, we estimate multiple-spell discrete duration models which disentangle unobserved heterogeneity from duration dependence. Specifically, we estimate random effects models assuming that the distribution of the effects is discrete with finite support, and fixed effects models in which the distribution of the unobserved effects is left unrestricted. Our results show the importance of accounting for unobserved heterogeneity and that mistaken policy implications can be derived due to improper treatment of unmeasured variables. We find that lack of control for unobserved heterogeneity leads to the conclusion that immigrant males have a higher probability of leaving unemployment than natives and that the negative effect of unemployment benefits for immigrants lasts longer than for natives. Nonetheless, the estimates which do control for unobserved heterogeneity show the opposite results.Duration models; Discrete choice; Multiple spells; Unobserved heterogeneity; Unemployment; Immigration.

Unobserved heterogeneity in multi-spell discrete time duration model

This paper considers the estimation of discrete time duration models. We highlight the enhance identification opportunities embedded in multiple spell data to separately identify the effect of duration dependence and individual time invariant unobserved heterogeneity.Duration models, Discrete choice, Multiple spells, Unobserved heterogeneity, Unemployment.

Bidimensional Cross-Cloud Application Management with TOSCA and Brooklyn (summary)

The diversity in the way different cloud providers offer their services, give their SLAs, present their QoS, support different technologies, etc., complicates the portability and interoperability of cloud applications, and favors vendor lock-in. Standards like TOSCA, and tools supporting them, have come to help in the provider-independent description of cloud applications. After the variety of proposed cross-cloud application management tools, we propose going one step further in the unification of cloud services with a deployment tool in which IaaS and PaaS services are integrated into a unified interface. We provide support for applications whose components are to be deployed on different providers, indistinctly using IaaS and PaaS services. The TOSCA standard is used to define a portable model describing the topology of the cloud applications and the required resources in an agnostic, and providers- and resources-independent way. We include in this paper some highlights on our implementation on Apache Brooklyn and present a non-trivial example that illustrates our approach. Resumen del artículo publicado en: Jose Carrasco, Javier Cubo, Francisco Durán, Ernesto Pimentel. Bidimensional Cross-Cloud Application Management with TOSCA and Brooklyn, 9th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing (CLOUD 2016), San Francisco, (EEUU). IEEE Computer Society, 2016.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Consumption and habits : evidence from panel data

The purpose of this paper is to test for the presence of habit formation in consumption decisions using household panel data. We use the test proposed by Meghir and Weber (1996) and estimate the within -period marginal rate of substitution between commodities, which is robust to the presence of liquidity constraints. To that end, we use a Spanish panel data set in which households are observed up to eight consecutive quarters. This temporal dimension is crucial, since it allows us to take into account time invariant unobserved heterogeneity across households ("fixed effects") and, therefore, to investigate if the relationship between current and past consumption reflects habits or heterogeneity. Our results conf irm the importance of accounting for fixed effects when analyzing intertemporal consumption decisions allowing for time non-separabilities. Once fixed effects are controlled for and a proper set of instruments is used, the results yield supporting evidence of habit formation in the demand system of food at home, transport and services

The level of provision of specialist palliative care services in Scotland: an international benchmarking study

Objectives: Comparative benchmarking of specialist palliative care (SPC) services across jurisdictions can be used to assess the adequacy of provision. Published in 2016, the Scottish Atlas of Palliative Care unlocks the possibility of benchmarking Scotland’s provision against other European Union (EU) countries. Our objectives were to describe the provision of SPC services in Scotland and compare this with other EU countries, assessing coverage against European norms. Methods: We conducted a secondary analysis of data collected as part for the Scottish Atlas by structured telephone (n=33) or online (n=3) survey with informants from 14 territorial health boards and 15 hospices who provided information about SPC services in their locality. National-level Scottish data were compared with data from other EU countries allowing ranking for each service type and service coverage as calculated against European Association for Palliative Care norms. Results: Scotland had a total of 23 SPC inpatient units containing 349 beds, 27 SPC hospital support teams and 38 SPC home care teams. Relative to other EU countries, Scotland ranked seventh for provision of SPC inpatient units and hospital support teams, and fifth for home care teams. Coverage for these services was 85%, 100% and 72%, respectively. Conclusion: Scotland is positioned among the top 10 EU countries for the level of provision of SPC services. National policy in Scotland has focused on the delivery of palliative care at home or in a homely setting. These data support a focus on developing services in community settings to meet Scotland’s policy ambitions

Core excitation effects in halo nuclei using a transformed oscillator basis

A recent generalization of the Transformed Harmonic Oscillator basis, intended to consider core excitations in the structure of one nucleon halo nuclei, is applied to the break up of 11Be. The reaction studied is 11Be+208Pb at 69 MeV/nucleon. The experimental set up is designed to ensure pure dipole Coulomb excitations. Making use of the Equivalent Photon Method and the electromagnetic transition probabilities obtained with the transformed oscillator basis, a relevant contribution of the quadrupole excitations of the core is found. The inclusion of core excitations is, therefore, necessary for the correct extraction of the dipole electromagnetic transition probability of halo nuclei.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación FIS2011-28738-c02-01, FPA2009- 07653, FPA2009-08848, CSD2007-00042Junta de Andalucía FQM160, P07-FQM-0289

Stabilization method in two-body systems with core excitations

The validity of the stabilization method in core+valence systems including the possibility of exciting the core is studied. A pseudostate method, based on the transformed harmonic oscillator basis, is extended to include the core degrees of freedom. The method is applied to the case of 11Be structure considering the 0+ ground state and the 2+ first excited state of the 10Be core. The stabilization method is defined in terms of one parameter that can be chosen either discrete or continuous. In the application to 11Be, both cases are analyzed.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación FIS2011-28738-c02-01, FPA2009-07653, FPA2009-08848, CSD2007-00042Junta de Andalucía FQM160, P07-FQM-0289