Literature Survey of Performance Benchmarking Approaches of BPEL Engines

Despite the popularity of BPEL engines to orchestrate complex and executable processes, there are still only few approaches available to help find the most appropriate engine for individual requirements. One of the more crucial factors for such a middleware product in industry are the performance characteristics of a BPEL engine. There exist multiple studies in industry and academia testing the performance of BPEL engines, which differ in focus and method. We aim to compare the methods used in these approaches and provide guidance for further research in this area. Based on the related work in the field of performance testing, we created a process engine specific comparison framework, which we used to evaluate and classify nine different approaches that were found using the method of a systematical literature survey. With the results of the status quo analysis in mind, we derived directions for further research in this area

Betsy - A BPEL Engine Test System

More than five years have passed since the final release of the long-desired OASIS standard of a process language for web service orchestration, the Web Services Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). The aim of this standard is to establish a universally accepted orchestration language that forms a core part of current service-oriented architectures and, because of standardisation, avoids vendor lock-in. High expectations, in academia and practice alike, have been set on it. By now, several fully conformant and highly scalable engines should have arrived in the market. The perception of many however, is that standard conformance in current engines is far from given. It is our aim to shed light on this situation. In this study, we present the tool betsy, a BPEL Engine Test System that allows for a fully-automatic assessment of the standard conformance of a given BPEL engine. We use it to examine the five most important open source BPEL engines available today. Betsy comes with a large set of engineindependent conformance test cases for assessing BPEL standard conformance. This enables us to give a view of the state of the art in BPEL support

Static Analysis Rules of the BPEL Specification: Tagging, Formalization and Tests

In 2007, OASIS finalized their Business Process Execution Language 2.0 (BPEL) specification which defines an XML-based language for orchestrations of Web Services. As the validation of BPEL processes against the official BPEL XML schema leaves room for a plethora of static errors, the specification contains 94 static analysis rules to cover all static errors. According to the specification, any violations of these rules are to be checked by a standard conformant engine at deployment time. When a violation is not detected in BPEL processes during deployment, such errors are only detectable at runtime, making them expensive to find and fix. Due to the large amount of rules, we have created a tag system to categorize them, allowing easier reasoning about these rules. Next, we formalized the static rules and derived test cases based on these formalizations with the aim to evaluate the degree of support for static analysis of BPEL engines. Hence, this work is the foundation of the static analysis capabilities of BPEL engines

Redefining SME Productivity Measurement and Assessment for a Low Carbon Economy

YesThe UK faces the joint economic policy challenges of raising productivity and tackling climate change. This report challenges prevailing narrow market-based views of productivity, by examining the £4bn UK early stage Cleantech innovation finance market. We find that Cleantech innovation is frequently capital intensive and long horizon (5-10+ years), measured by shorterterm technology readiness level (TRL) and intellectual property (IP) progression. Longer-term sustainable productivity impacts remain little understood and, where applied, narrowly relate to customer adoption. This leads to Cleantech environmental impact investor logics that primarily relate to end user financial value (customer sales). There is little consideration for non-market values from, for example, circular economy (CE) and wider environmental spillover impacts (e.g. supply chains). Whilst few Cleantechs currently successfully commercialise, a small proportion exhibit high employment and sales growth and global environmental impact. Improved understanding of the broader environmental impacts of Cleantechs, through the adoption of environmental impact metrics (EIMs) can (i) add to a more holistic notion of productivity and (ii) improve the efficiency of the finance escalator, enabling more Cleantechs to contribute significantly to establishing the UK as a globally leading low carbon economy.ESR

HIV Activates the Tyrosine Kinase Hck to Secrete ADAM Protease-Containing Extracellular Vesicles

HIV-Nef activates the myeloid cell-typical tyrosine kinase Hck, but its molecular role in the viral life cycle is not entirely understood. We found that HIV plasma extracellular vesicles (HIV pEV) containing/10 proteases and Nef also harbor Hck, and analyzed its role in the context of HIV pEV secretion. Myeloid cells required Hck for the vesicle-associated release of ADAM17. This could be induced by the introduction of Nef and implied that HIV targeted Hck for vesicle-associated ADAM17 secretion from a myeloid compartment. The other contents of HIV-pEV, however, including miRNA and effector protein profiles, as well as the presence of haptoglobin suggested hepatocytes as a possible cellular source. HIV liver tissue analysis supported this assumption, revealing induction of Hck translation, evidence for ADAMprotease activation and HIV infection. Our findings suggest that HIV targets Hck to induce pro-inflammatory vesicles release and identifies hepatocytes as a possible host cell compartment. (c) 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.Peer reviewe

QoS-Enabled B2B Integration

Business-To-Business Integration (B2Bi) is a key mechanism for enterprises to gain competitive advantage. However, developing B2Bi applications is far from trivial. Inter alia, agreement among integration partners about the business documents and the control flow of business document exchanges as well as applying suitable communication technologies for overcoming heterogeneous IT landscapes are major challenges. At the same time, choreography languages such as ebXML BPSS (ebBP), orchestration languages such as WS-BPEL and Web Services are promising to provide the foundations for seamless interactions among business partners. Automatically translating choreography agreements of integration partners into partner-specific orchestrations is an obvious idea for ensuring conformance of orchestration models to choreography models. Moreover, the application of such model-driven development methods facilitates productivity and cost-effectiveness whereas applying a service oriented architecture (SOA) based on WS-BPEL and Web Services leverages standardization and decoupling. By now, the realization of QoS attributes has not yet received the necessary attention that makes such approaches suitable for B2Bi. In this report, we describe a proof-of-concept implementation of the translation of ebBP choreographies into WS-BPEL orchestrations that respects B2Bi-relevant QoS attributes

The Effects of Meditation, Yoga, and Mindfulness on Depression, Anxiety, and Stress in Tertiary Education Students: A Meta-Analysis

Background: Meditation, yoga, and mindfulness are popular interventions at universities and tertiary education institutes to improve mental health. However, the effects on depression, anxiety, and stress are unclear. This study assessed the effectiveness of meditation, yoga, and mindfulness on symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress in tertiary education students.Methods: We searched Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), PubMed, PsycINFO and identified 11,936 articles. After retrieving 181 papers for full-text screening, 24 randomized controlled trials were included in the qualitative analysis. We conducted a random-effects meta-analysis amongst 23 studies with 1,373 participants.Results: At post-test, after exclusion of outliers, effect sizes for depression, g = 0.42 (95% CI: 0.16–0.69), anxiety g = 0.46 (95% CI: 0.34–0.59), stress g = 0.42 (95% CI: 0.27–0.57) were moderate. Heterogeneity was low (I2 = 6%). When compared to active control, the effect decreased to g = 0.13 (95% CI: −0.18–0.43). No RCT reported on safety, only two studies reported on academic achievement, most studies had a high risk of bias.Conclusions: Most studies were of poor quality and results should be interpreted with caution. Overall moderate effects were found which decreased substantially when interventions were compared to active control. It is unclear whether meditation, yoga or mindfulness affect academic achievement or affect have any negative side effects

Altering an Artificial Gagpolnef Polyprotein and Mode of ENV Co-Administration Affects the Immunogenicity of a Clade C HIV DNA Vaccine

HIV-1 candidate vaccines expressing an artificial polyprotein comprising Gag, Pol and Nef (GPN) and a secreted envelope protein (Env) were shown in recent Phase I/II clinical trials to induce high levels of polyfunctional T cell responses; however, Env-specific responses clearly exceeded those against Gag. Here, we assess the impact of the GPN immunogen design and variations in the formulation and vaccination regimen of a combined GPN/Env DNA vaccine on the T cell responses against the various HIV proteins. Subtle modifications were introduced into the GPN gene to increase Gag expression, modify the expression ratio of Gag to PolNef and support budding of virus-like particles. I.m. administration of the various DNA constructs into BALB/c mice resulted in an up to 10-fold increase in Gag- and Pol-specific IFNγ+ CD8+ T cells compared to GPN. Co-administering Env with Gag or GPN derivatives largely abrogated Gag-specific responses. Alterations in the molar ratio of the DNA vaccines and spatially or temporally separated administration induced more balanced T cell responses. Whereas forced co-expression of Gag and Env from one plasmid induced predominantly Env-specific T cells responses, deletion of the only H-2d T cell epitope in Env allowed increased levels of Gag-specific T cells, suggesting competition at an epitope level. Our data demonstrate that the biochemical properties of an artificial polyprotein clearly influence the levels of antigen-specific T cells, and variations in formulation and schedule can overcome competition for the induction of these responses. These results are guiding the design of ongoing pre-clinical and clinical trials

Unusual Polymorphisms in Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Associated with Nonprogressive Infection

Factors accounting for long-term nonprogression may include infection with an attenuated strain of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), genetic polymorphisms in the host, and virus-specific immune responses. In this study, we examined eight individuals with nonprogressing or slowly progressing HIV-1 infection, none of whom were homozygous for host-specific polymorphisms (CCR5-Δ32, CCR2-64I, and SDF-1-3\u27A) which have been associated with slower disease progression. HIV-1 was recovered from seven of the eight, and recovered virus was used for sequencing the full-length HIV-1 genome; full-length HIV-1 genome sequences from the eighth were determined following amplification of viral sequences directly from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC). Longitudinal studies of one individual with HIV-1 that consistently exhibited a slow/low growth phenotype revealed a single amino acid deletion in a conserved region of the gp41 transmembrane protein that was not seen in any of 131 envelope sequences in the Los Alamos HIV-1 sequence database. Genetic analysis also revealed that five of the eight individuals harbored HIV-1 with unusual 1- or 2-amino-acid deletions in the Gag sequence compared to subgroup B Gag consensus sequences. These deletions in Gag have either never been observed previously or are extremely rare in the database. Three individuals had deletions in Nef, and one had a 4-amino-acid insertion in Vpu. The unusual polymorphisms in Gag, Env, and Nef described here were also found in stored PBMC samples taken 3 to 11 years prior to, or in one case 4 years subsequent to, the time of sampling for the original sequencing. In all, seven of the eight individuals exhibited one or more unusual polymorphisms; a total of 13 unusual polymorphisms were documented in these seven individuals. These polymorphisms may have been present from the time of initial infection or may have appeared in response to immune surveillance or other selective pressures. Our results indicate that unusual, difficult-to-revert polymorphisms in HIV-1 can be found associated with slow progression or nonprogression in a majority of such cases