In-Production Continuous Testing for Future Telco Cloud

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging paradigm to design, build and operate networks. The driving motivation of SDN was the need for a major change in network technologies to support a configuration, management, operation, reconfiguration and evolution than in current computer networks. In the SDN world, performance it is not only related to the behaviour of the data plane. As the separation of control plane and data plane makes the latter significantly more agile, it lays off all the complex processing workload to the control plane. This is further exacerbated in distributed network controller, where the control plane is additionally loaded with the state synchronization overhead. Furthermore, the introduction of SDNs technologies has raised advanced challenges in achieving failure resilience, meant as the persistence of service delivery that can justifiably be trusted, when facing changes, and fault tolerance, meant as the ability to avoid service failures in the presence of faults. Therefore, along with the “softwarization” of network services, it is an important goal in the engineering of such services, e.g. SDNs and NFVs, to be able to test and assess the proper functioning not only in emulated conditions before release and deployment, but also “in-production”, when the system is under real operating conditions.   The goal of this thesis is to devise an approach to evaluate not only the performance, but also the effectiveness of the failure detection, and mitigation mechanisms provided by SDN controllers, as well as the capability of the SDNs to ultimately satisfy nonfunctional requirements, especially resiliency, availability, and reliability. The approach consists of exploiting benchmarking techniques, such as the failure injection, to get continuously feedback on the performance as well as capabilities of the SDN services to survive failures, which is of paramount importance to improve the effective- ness of the system internal mechanisms in reacting to anomalous situations potentially occurring in operation, while its services are regularly updated or improved. Within this vision, this dissertation first presents SCP-CLUB (SDN Control Plane CLoUd-based Benchmarking), a benchmarking frame- work designed to automate the characterization of SDN control plane performance, resilience and fault tolerance in telco cloud deployments. The idea is to provide the same level of automation available in deploying NFV function, for the testing of different configuration, using idle cycles of the telco cloud infrastructure. Then, the dissertation proposes an extension of the framework with mechanisms to evaluate the runtime behaviour of a Telco Cloud SDN under (possibly unforeseen) failure conditions, by exploiting the software failure injection

Adrenal venous sampling as a method of primary hyperaldosteronism assessment

We read with great interest the article by Orczyk et. al which discussed an unusual presentation and clinical course of primary hyperaldosteronism, which is frequently caused by Conn’s syndrome. Inspired by their engrossing work, we would like to address a diagnostic method that has not been employed in the aforecited case report despite accumulating evidence of its efficacy, called adrenal venous sampling

The Benefit of Sleeve Gastrectomy in Obese Adolescents on Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis and Hepatic Fibrosis

Objective To determine whether bariatric surgery is effective for the treatment of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) in adolescence, we compared the efficacy of laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG) with that of lifestyle intervention (nonsurgical weight loss [NSWL]) for NASH reversal in obese adolescents. Study design Obese (body mass index ≥ 35 kg/m2) adolescents (13-17 years of age) with biopsy-proven NAFLD underwent LSG, lifestyle intervention plus intragastric weight loss devices (IGWLD), or only NSWL. At baseline and 1 year after treatment, patients underwent clinical and psychosocial evaluation, blood tests, liver biopsy, polysomnography, and 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure estimation. Results Twenty patients (21%) underwent LSG, 20 (21%) underwent IGWLD, and 53 (58%) received lifestyle intervention alone (NSWL). One year after treatment, patients who underwent LSG lost 21.5% of their baseline body weight, whereas patients who underwent IGWLD lost 3.4%, and patients who underwent NSWL increase 1.7%. In patients who underwent LSG, NASH reverted completely in all patients and hepatic fibrosis stage 2 disappeared in 18 patients (90%). After IGWLD, NASH reverted in 6 patients (24%) and fibrosis in 7 (37%). Patients who received the NSWL intervention did not improve significantly. Hypertension resolved in all patients who underwent LSG with preoperative hypertension (12/12) versus 50% (4/8) of the patients who underwent IGWLD (P = .02). The cohort-specific changes in impaired glucose metabolism were similar: 100% (9/9) of affected patients who underwent LSG versus 50% (1/2) of patients who underwent IGWLD (P = .02). LSG was also more affective in resolving dyslipidemia (55% [7/12] vs 26% [10/19]; P = .05) and sleep apnea (78% [2/9] vs 30% [11/20]; P = .001). Conclusion LSG was more effective than lifestyle intervention, even when combined with intragastric devices, for reducing NASH and liver fibrosis in obese adolescents after 1 year of treatment

Metabolic Syndrome in Italian Obese Children and Adolescents: Stronger Association with Central Fat Depot than with Insulin Sensitivity and Birth Weight

Aim. To evaluate whether body fat distribution, birth weight, and family history for diabetes (FHD) were associated with metabolic syndrome (MetS) in children and adolescents. Methods. A total of 439 Italian obese children and adolescents (5–18 years) were enrolled. Subjects were divided into 2 groups: prepubertal and pubertal. MetS was diagnosed according to the adapted National Cholesterol Education Program criteria. Birth weight percentile, central obesity index (measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry), insulin sensitivity (ISI), and disposition index were evaluated. Multivariate logistic regression models were used to determine variables associated with MetS. Results. The prevalence of MetS was 17%, with higher percentage in adolescents than in children (21 versus 12%). In the overall population, central obesity index was a stronger predictor of MetS than insulin sensitivity and low birth weight. When the two groups were considered, central fat depot remained the strongest predictor of MetS, with ISI similarly influencing the probability of MetS in the two groups and birth weight being negatively associated to MetS only in pubertal individuals. Neither FHD nor degree of fatness was a significant predictor of MetS. Conclusion. Simple clinical parameters like increased abdominal adiposity and low birth weight could be useful tools to identify European obese adolescents at risk for metabolic complications

Examining Abnormal Non-stenotic Renal Arteries in Children With Hypertension

Secondary hypertension is more common in children than adults, and renal disease is themost common cause. Several studies have shown a relationship between abnormalitiesin renal arterial vascularity and the onset of hypertension. We reported a case ofhypertension in a 10-year-old girl with elevated plasma renin and normal aldosteronelevels. Antihypertensive therapy was necessary to achieve blood pressure control, andthe final diagnosis of hypertension was obtained from Computed Tomography (CT)angiography demonstrating unusual renal vascular abnormalities

The role of SUMOylation during development

During the development of multicellular organisms, transcriptional regulation plays an important role in the control of cell growth, differentiation and morphogenesis. SUMOylation is a reversible post-translational process involved in transcriptional regulation through the modification of transcription factors and through chromatin remodelling (either modifying chromatin remodelers or acting as a `molecular glue' by promoting recruitment of chromatin regulators). SUMO modification results in changes in the activity, stability, interactions or localization of its substrates, which affects cellular processes such as cell cycle progression, DNA maintenance and repair or nucleocytoplasmic transport. This review focuses on the role of SUMO machinery and the modification of target proteins during embryonic development and organogenesis of animals, from invertebrates to mammals.We apologize to those whose related publication could not be cited due to space limitations. We are grateful to all members of Barrio's Lab for comments and suggestions. R.B. acknowledges grants BFU2017-84653-P (MINECO/AEI/FEDER/EU), SEV-2016-0644 (Severo Ochoa Excellence Program, MINECO/AEI), 765445-EU (UbiCODE Program, EU), SAF2017-90900-REDT (UBIRed Program, MINECO/AEI)