Grid: From EGEE to EGI and from INFN-GRID to IGI

In the last fifteen years the approach of the “computational Grid” has changed the way to use computing resources. Grid computing has raised interest worldwide in academia, industry, and government with fast development cycles. Great efforts, huge funding and resources have been made available through national, regional and international initiatives aiming at providing Grid infrastructures, Grid core technologies, Grid middleware and Grid applications. The Grid software layers reflect the architecture of the services developed so far by the most important European and international projects. In this paper Grid e-Infrastructure story is given, detailing European, Italian and international projects such as EGEE, INFN-Grid and NAREGI. In addition the sustainability issue in the long-term perspective is described providing plans by European and Italian communities with EGI and IGI

Hinderin, a five-domains protein including coiled-coil motifs that binds to SMC3

BACKGROUND: The structural maintenance of chromosome proteins SMC1 and SMC3 play an important role in the maintenance of chromosomal integrity by preventing the premature separation of the sister chromatids at the onset of anaphase. The two proteins are constitutive components of the multimeric complex cohesin and form dimers by interacting at their central globular regions. RESULTS: In order to identify proteins that by binding to SMC3 may interfere with the protein dimerization process, a human cDNA library was screened by the yeast two-hybrid system by using the hinge region of SMC3 as bait. This has lead to the identification of Hinderin, a novel five domains protein including two coiled-coil motifs and sharing a strikingly structural similarity to the SMC family of proteins. Hinderin is ubiquitously expressed in human tissues. Orthologue forms of the protein are present in other vertebrates but not in lower organisms. A mapping of the interaction sites revealed that the N- and C-terminal globular domains mediate the binding of Hinderin to SMC3. Hinderin/SMC3 complexes could be recovered by immunoprecipitation from cell lysates using an anti-SMC3 antibody, thus demonstrating that the two proteins interact in vivo. On the contrary, Hinderin did not interact with SMC1. In vivo the rate of SMC1/SMC3 interaction was decreased by the ectopic expression of Hinderin. CONCLUSIONS: Hinderin is a novel binding partner of SMC3. Based on its ability to modulate SMC1/SMC3 interaction we postulate that Hinderin affects the availability of SMC3 to engage in the formation of multimeric protein complexes

D-glucuronyl C5-epimerase acts in dorso-ventral axis formation in zebrafish

BACKGROUND: Heparan sulfate (HS) is an ubiquitous component of the extracellular matrix that binds and modulates the activity of growth factors, cytokines and proteases. Animals with defective HS biosynthesis display major developmental abnormalities however the processes that are affected remain to be defined. D-glucuronyl-C5-epimerase (Glce) is a key HS chain modifying enzyme that catalyses the conversion of glucuronic acid into iduronic acid, a biosynthetic step that enhances HS biological activity. In this study the role of Glce during early zebrafish development has been investigated. RESULTS: Two Glce-like proteins (Glce-A and -B) are expressed in zebrafish at all times. They are the products of two distinct genes that, based on chromosomal mapping, are both orthologues of the same single human gene. Transcripts for both proteins were detected in fertilized zebrafish embryos prior to the onset of zygotic transcription indicating their maternal origin. At later developmental stages the epimerases are expressed widely throughout gastrulation and then become restricted to the hindbrain at 24 h post-fertilization. By monitoring the expression of well characterized marker genes during gastrulation, we have found that misexpression of Glce causes a dose-dependent expansion of the ventral structures, whereas protein knockdown using targeted antisense morpholino oligonucleotides promotes axis dorsalization. The ventralizing activity of Bmp2b is enhanced by Glce overexpression whereas Glce knockdown impairs Bmp2b activity. CONCLUSION: Glce activity is an important determinant of of dorso-ventral axis formation and patterning in zebrafish. In particular Glce acts during gastrulation by affecting Bmp-mediated cell specification. The results obtained further corroborate the concept that HS encodes information that affect morphogenesis during early vertebrate development

Teams: Vehicle of Choice for Transporting the Organizational Future

Teamwork is much more than lip service paid to the concept. This article was writ- ten for the executive, the educator and the student to broaden awareness of the vast potential of teams and teamwork

Characterizing Poor Performance in For-Profit and Not-for-Profit Food Service Operations

In this article the authors explore the performance-related employee behaviors that are the most troublesome in food service. Four subsegments of food service were surveyed and differences in profit and not-for-profit operations analyzed. Significant differences were found between the two groups, with for-profit operations indicating more severe problems in all but one behavior category

Gauging Employee Theft and Other Unacceptable Behaviors in Food Service Operations

Unacceptable employee behavior ultimately results in higher prices for consumers. Members of the Indiana Hospitality and Restaurant Association were surveyed about the practices being used to safeguard their assets and control employee deviance in food service. They were also asked to estimate the losses that result from employee theft. This information was used to investigate whether certain policies and procedures were more effective than others in limiting their losses

StoRM: A Manager for Storage Resource in Grid

Nowadays, data intensive applications demand high-performance and large-storage systems capable of serving up to various Petabytes of storage space. Therefore, common solutions adopted in data centres include Storage Area Networks (SAN) and cluster parallel file systems, such as GPFS from IBM and Lustre from Sun Microsystems. In order to make these storage system solutions available in modern Data Grid architectures, standard interfaces are needed. The Grid Storage Resource Manager (SRM) interface is one of these standard interfaces. Grid storage services implementing the SRM standard provide common capabilities and advanced functionality such as dynamic space allocation and file management on shared storage systems. In this paper, we describe StoRM (STOrage Resource Manager). StoRM is a flexible and high-performing implementation of the standard SRM interface version 2.2. The software architecture of StoRM allows for an easy integration to different underlying storage systems via a plug-in mechanism. In particular, StoRM takes advantage from storage systems based on cluster file systems. Currently, StoRM is installed and used in production in various data centres, including the WLCG Italian Tier-1. In addition, Economics and Financial communities, as represented by the EGRID Project, adopt StoRM in production as well

Very large ensemble ocean forecasting experiment using the Grid computing infrastructure

Atmospheric and oceanic ensemble forecasting is a way to deal with uncertainty related to inaccurate knowledge of the initial state of the atmosphere and the ocean, the lateral and vertical boundary condition errors and the model physics shortfalls (Lewis, 2005, Epstein, 1969). Since the atmosphere and the ocean are extremely non-linear systems (Lorenz, 1993, Saravanan et al., 2000) initial uncertainties can amplify and limit the predictability of short term forecasts (Kleeman and Majda, 2005). For the ocean, ensemble forecasting is a novel field. Ensemble methods are used to compute the background error covariance matrix in data assimilation schemes (Evensen, 2003) but are not used yet to quantify the forecast uncertainty in short term ocean forecasting systems. Initial conditions uncertainty is a major source of unpredictability for ocean currents due to the limited observations available for nowcasting and the highly non-linear physics. In this study we explore the short term ensemble forecast variance generated by perturbing the initial conditions using a new computational facility, so-called Grid infrastructure (http://grid.infn.it/), distributed over the Italian territory. This infrastructure allowed us to perform several ensemble forecast experiments with 1000 members: they are completed within 5 hours of wall-clock time after their submission and the ensemble variance peaks at the mesoscales

Role of poultry meat in a balanced diet aimed at maintaining health and wellbeing: an Italian consensus document

The relationship between the consumption of meat and health is multifaceted, and it needs to be analyzed in detail, with specific attention to the relevant differences that characterize the effects of the different meat types, as yet considered by only a limited literature. A variable but moderate energy content, highly digestible proteins (with low levels of collagen) of good nutritional quality, unsaturated lipids (mainly found in the skin and easily removed), B-group vitamins (mainly thiamin, vitamin B6, and pantothenic acid), and minerals (like iron, zinc, and copper) make poultry meat a valuable food. Epidemiological studies performed across the world, in highly diverse populations with different food preferences and nutritional habits, provide solid information on the association between poultry consumption, within a balanced diet, and good health. Consumption of poultry meat, as part of a vegetable-rich diet, is associated with a risk reduction of developing overweight and obesity, cardiovascular diseases, and type 2 diabetes mellitus. Also, white meat (and poultry in particular) is considered moderately protective or neutral on cancer risk. The relevance of poultry meat for humans also has been recognized by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), who considers this widely available, relatively inexpensive food to be particularly useful in developing countries, where it can help to meet shortfalls in essential nutrients. Moreover, poultry meat consumption also contributes to the overall quality of the diet in specific ages and conditions (prior to conception, during pregnancy up to the end of breastfeeding, during growth, and in the geriatric age) and is suitable for those who have an increased need for calorie and protein compared to the general population