Evidence for increased immune mobilization in First Episode Psychosis compared with the prodromal stage in males

The aim of the study was to gauge both the immune and neuroendocrine function in Ultra High Risk for psychosis (UHR) subjects and compare them with a cohort presenting with First Episode Psychosis (FEP). We recruited two groups, the first group consisted of 12 UHR males and the second of 25 males with FEP. We measured serum cortisol levels at 08:00, 12:00, 18:00 with their Area Under Curve with respect to the ground (AUCg) and the increase (AUCi) and we measured serum cytokines levels, Interleukin-1a, IL-1a, IL-2, IL-4,IL-5,IL-6,IL-8, IL-10,IL-12, IL-17a, Tumor Necrosis Factor-a (TNF-a), Interferon-γ (IFN-γ). Dexamethasone Suppression Test (DST) was also performed. The results suggest higher levels of both pro-inflammatory (TNF-a, IL-2, IL-12, IFN-γ) and anti-inflammatory (IL-10) cytokines in the FEP group compared with the UHR counterparts. Regarding the HPA axis function, the prodromal subjects showed a trend for higher AUCg and AUCi change/decrease cortisol levels. On the contrary, the DST results did not differ between the groups. No significant associations were demonstrated within each group among cytokines, cortisol and psychopathology. The findings favor a hypothesis of a relatively increased mobilization of both the pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokine networks, in FEP compared with that of UHR subjects

First Year Infrastructure Operations Report

This document summarizes the achievements of the infrastructure operations activity during the first year of the project. It describes the technical specifications of the infrastructure that has been put into operation, the process that was followed to establish it, the problems encountered and the various solutions that were applied. It also provides statistics about the usage of cloud resources and an assessment of their utilization

Operation of Site Running StratusLab toolkit v1.0

This document reports on one of the significant project milestones concerning the operation of a cloud site running StratusLab's cloud distribution (or toolkit). It is currently running v0.3 of the StratusLab distribution-a beta release of the upcoming 1.0 production release. In particular it presents the WP5 reference cloud service, the evolution of the service up to Month 10 of the project, and the way this service has been exploited to date. A major milestone regarding the exploitation has been the deployment of the first virtualized production grid site running on the project's reference cloud service

Infrastructure Specifications

This document presents the computing infrastructure deployed in the context of StratusLab project, details the configuration of the computing resources used and the commitments made from the project partners to contribute with computing resources in the project. During the first months of operation this infrastructure has already been significantly exploited to deliver the first results towards the project's goals. The OpenNebula virtual management software has been used to install private clouds on different OS platforms. Two pre-production grid sites have been deployed in the private cloud and are used to test the implications of providing grid services in cloud environments. Experience from the deployment and operation of the above sites will help us identify the required tools and procedures for offering grid production sites over computing clouds. Finally the document presents related work, relevant to infrastructure operations, taking place in other projects and initiatives

Final Report on the Evaluation of StratusLab Products

Over the course of the project, the project's software releases have been evaluated against identified requirements and against the needs of real users. Most of the formal requirements have been satisfied, with work in the second year concentrating on extentions to commercial applications, multi-platform support and sandboxing. Feedback from applications running on the StratusLab cloud can be grouped into four broad categories: Ease of Use, Integration & Operation, Better Informaton Flow, and High-Level Services. These categories provide a broad roadmap for the evolution of the StratusLab cloud distribution past the end of the project

Quarterly Report (QR1)

In the first quarter of the project, the participants have successfully laid the foundations for creating a stable, comprehensive, open-source cloud platform. The project has put in place the tools and processes to quickly build and expand the StratusLab distribution. Through dialog with targeted communities and through the partners' experience it has developed the initial architecture of the StratusLab distribution. The initial releases have been validated on the project's cloud infrastructure and the project has put in place the mechanisms for disseminating release information once StratusLab makes its first public release

Cloud-like Management of Grid Sites 1.0 Software

This document presents the features implemented for the automatic deployment and dynamic provision of grid services, and for the scalable cloud-like management of grid site resources. These features, developed largely in Work Package 6 (WP6) are integrated into the StratusLab Toolkit by Work Package 4 (WP4). They involve cloud-like APIs, a service definition language, contextualization, scalable cloud frameworks, monitoring and accounting solutions. Some functionalities developed include TCloud and OCCI implementations, a library to process OVF, the Claudia framework and integration with Ganglia monitoring information

Quarterly Report (QR2)

In the second quarter, the project has successfully created the first public release of the StratusLab cloud distribution. To complement the release, the project participants have provided user support, deployed a reference infrastructure for outside users, and increased awareness of the release and the project. High-level features, including advanced service management features, have been defined and will be progressively added to the series of public releases leading to the v1.0 release due at the end of the first year

Final Report on StratusLab Adoption

The StratusLab cloud distribution has been adopted by users from a wide range of scientific disciplines: astrophysics, software engineering, machine learning, high- energy physics, meteorology, and bioinformatics. In addition, there has been commercial update of the distribution for a turnkey private cloud solution aimed at SMEs and a large public deployment by Atos within the Helix Nebula initiative. Both partner and non-partner institutes have used the StratusLab distribution to provide cloud services to their users

Infrastructure Operations Final Report

This document serves as a final report of the activities and achievements of WP5 throughout the whole duration of the project. The document covers the areas of infrastructure operation, service provisioning, support, testing and benchmarking. In addition, the document provides a record of the practical knowledge accumulated during the provision of various public cloud services over a period of almost two years