On participatory service provision at the network edge with community home gateways

Edge computing is considered as a technology to enable new types of services which operate at the network edge. There are important use cases in ambient intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT) for edge computing driven by huge business potentials. Most of today's edge computing platforms, however, consist of proprietary gateways, which are either closed or fairly restricted to deploy any third-party services. In this paper we discuss a participatory edge computing system running on home gateways to serve as an open environment to deploy local services. We present first motivating use cases and review existing approaches and design considerations for the proposed system. Then we show our platform which materializes the principles of an open and participatory edge environment, to lower the entry barriers for service deployment at the network edge. By using containers, our platform can flexibly enable third-party services, and may serve as an infrastructure to support several application domains of ambient intelligence.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Prototyping Incentive-based Resource Assignment for Clouds in Community Networks

Wireless community networks are a successful example of a collective where communities operate ICT infrastructure and provide IP connectivity based on the principle of reciprocal resource sharing of network bandwidth. This sharing, however, has not extended to computing and storage resources, resulting in very few applications and services which are currently deployed within community networks. Cloud computing, as in today's Internet, has made it common to consume resources provided by public clouds providers, but such cloud infrastructures have not materialized within community networks. We analyse in this paper socio-technical characteristics of community networks in order to derive scenarios for community clouds. Based on an architecture for such a community cloud, we implement a prototype for the incentive-driven resource assignment component, deploy it in a testbed of community network nodes, and evaluate its behaviour experimentally. Our evaluation gives insight into how the deployed prototype components regulate the consumption of cloud resources taking into account the users' contributions, and how this regulation affects the system usage. Our results suggest a further integration of this regulation component into current cloud management platforms in order to open them up for the operation of an ecosystem of community cloud

Support Service for Reciprocal Computational Resource Sharing in Wireless Community Networks

In community networks, individuals and local organizations from a geographic area team up to create and run a community-owned IP network to satisfy the community's demand for ICT, such as facilitating Internet access and providing services of local interest. Most current community networks use wireless links for the node interconnection, applying off-the-shelf wireless equipment. While IP connectivity over the shared network infrastructure is successfully achieved, the deployment of applications in community networks is surprisingly low. To address the solution of this problem, we propose in this paper a service to incentivize the contribution of computing and storage as cloud resources to community networks, in order to stimulate the deployment of services and applications. Our final goal is the vision that in the long term, the users of community networks will not need to consume applications from the Internet, but find them within the wireless community network

Clouds of Small Things: Provisioning Infrastructure-as-a-Service from within Community Networks

Community networks offer a shared communication infrastructure where communities of citizens build and own open networks. While the IP connectivity of the networking devices is successfully achieved, the number of services and applications available from within the community network is typically small and the usage of the community network is often limited to providing Internet access to remote areas through wireless links. In this paper we propose to apply the principle of resource sharing of community networks, currently limited to the network bandwidth, to other computing resources, which leads to cloud computing in community networks. Towards this vision, we review some characteristics of community networks and identify potential scenarios for community clouds. We simulate a cloud computing infrastructure service and discuss different aspects of its performance in comparison to a commercial centralized cloud system. We note that in community clouds the computing resources are heterogeneous and less powerful, which affects the time needed to assign resources. Response time of the infrastructure service is high in community clouds even for a small number of resources since resources are distributed, but tends to get closer to that of a centralized cloud when the number of resources requested increases. Our initial results suggest that the performance of the community clouds highly depends on the community network conditions, but has some potential for improvement with network-aware cloud services. The main strength compared to commercial cloud services, however, is that community cloud services hosted on community-owned resources will follow the principles of community network and will be neutral and open

HeTM: Transactional Memory for Heterogeneous Systems

Modern heterogeneous computing architectures, which couple multi-core CPUs with discrete many-core GPUs (or other specialized hardware accelerators), enable unprecedented peak performance and energy efficiency levels. Unfortunately, though, developing applications that can take full advantage of the potential of heterogeneous systems is a notoriously hard task. This work takes a step towards reducing the complexity of programming heterogeneous systems by introducing the abstraction of Heterogeneous Transactional Memory (HeTM). HeTM provides programmers with the illusion of a single memory region, shared among the CPUs and the (discrete) GPU(s) of a heterogeneous system, with support for atomic transactions. Besides introducing the abstract semantics and programming model of HeTM, we present the design and evaluation of a concrete implementation of the proposed abstraction, which we named Speculative HeTM (SHeTM). SHeTM makes use of a novel design that leverages on speculative techniques and aims at hiding the inherently large communication latency between CPUs and discrete GPUs and at minimizing inter-device synchronization overhead. SHeTM is based on a modular and extensible design that allows for easily integrating alternative TM implementations on the CPU's and GPU's sides, which allows the flexibility to adopt, on either side, the TM implementation (e.g., in hardware or software) that best fits the applications' workload and the architectural characteristics of the processing unit. We demonstrate the efficiency of the SHeTM via an extensive quantitative study based both on synthetic benchmarks and on a porting of a popular object caching system.Comment: The current work was accepted in the 28th International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques (PACT'19

HyperProv: Decentralized Resilient Data Provenance at the Edge with Blockchains

Data provenance and lineage are critical for ensuring integrity and reproducibility of information in research and application. This is particularly challenging for distributed scenarios, where data may be originating from decentralized sources without any central control by a single trusted entity. We present HyperProv, a general framework for data provenance based on the permissioned blockchain Hyperledger Fabric (HLF), and to the best of our knowledge, the first system that is ported to ARM based devices such as Raspberry Pi (RPi). HyperProv tracks the metadata, operation history and data lineage through a set of built-in queries using smart contracts, enabling lightweight retrieval of provenance data. HyperProv provides convenient integration through a NodeJS client library, and also includes off-chain storage through the SSH file system. We evaluate HyperProv's performance, throughput, resource consumption, and energy efficiency on x86-64 machines, as well as on RPi devices for IoT use cases at the edge

Considering Respiratory Tract Infections and Antimicrobial Sensitivity: An Exploratory Analysis

This study was conducted to observe the sensitivity and resistance of status of antibiotics for respiratory tract infection (RTI). Throat swab culture and sensitivity report of 383 patients revealed sensitivity profiles were observed with amoxycillin (7.9%), penicillin (33.7%), ampicillin (36.6%), co-trimoxazole (46.5%), azithromycin (53.5%), erythromycin (57.4%), cephalexin (69.3%), gentamycin (78.2%), ciprofloxacin (80.2%), cephradine (81.2%), ceftazidime (93.1%), ceftriaxone (93.1%). Sensitivity to cefuroxime was reported 93.1% cases. Resistance was found with amoxycillin (90.1%), ampicillin (64.1%), penicillin (61.4%), co-trimoxazole (43.6%), erythromycin (39.6%), and azithromycin (34.7%). Cefuroxime demonstrates high level of sensitivity than other antibiotics and supports its consideration with patients with upper RTI

A study on digital transformation in the healthcare sector of Bangladesh: Current scenario and the future roadmap

Purpose: This study investigates the essential characteristics of digitalization and transformation in the healthcare sector in Bangladesh. It also examines the correlation between digital technology and developing factors in the current healthcare system and recommendations to overcome the crises still dwelling within the healthcare framework. Research methodology: To gain a more vital understanding of the underlying insights of Digital Transformations of the healthcare sector of Bangladesh, the authors decided to conduct explorative research in qualitative format. Results: As a developing country with increased economic solvency, Bangladesh is enduring a metamorphosis in medicine & healthcare. Despite inequity in digital-initiated “equality,” developing healthcare systems worldwide are getting in touch with digital technology. Limitations: There are shortcomings in theoretical research as the previous practice of pedagogues and learners is challenged by new-age communication and the healthcare system based on digital technology. Contribution: This study looks at the impressions of current Digital Transformation in pre-existing structures by the people of Bangladesh, and the study proposes a new national health server-centric approach for future solicitation

Demo abstract: Towards IoT service deployments on edge community network microclouds

Internet of Things (IoT) services for personal devices and smart homes provided by commercial solutions are typically proprietary and closed. These services provide little control to the end users, for instance to take ownership of their data and enabling services, which hinders these solutions' wider acceptance. In this demo paper, we argue for an approach to deploy professional IoT services on user-controlled infrastructure at the network edge. The users would benefit from the ability to choose the most suitable service from different IoT service offerings, like the one which satisfies their privacy requirements, and third-party service providers could offer more tailored IoT services at customer premises. We conduct the demonstration on microclouds, which have been built with the Cloudy platform in the Guifi.net community network. The demonstration is conducted from the perspective of end users, who wish to deploy professional IoT data management and analytics services in volunteer microclouds.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Cellular diamine levels in cancer chemoprevention: modulation by ibuprofen and membrane plasmalogens

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>To develop effective strategies in cancer chemoprevention, an increased understanding of endogenous biochemical mediators that block metastatic processes is critically needed. Dietary lipids and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have a published track record of providing protection against gastrointestinal malignancies. In this regard, we examined the effects of membrane plasmalogens and ibuprofen on regulation of cellular levels of diamines, polyamine mediators that are augmented in cancer cells. For these studies we utilized Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells and NRel-4 cells, a CHO cell line with defective plasmalogen synthesis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>NRel-4 cells, which possess cellular plasmalogen levels that are 10% of control CHO cells, demonstrated 2- to 3-fold increases in cellular diamine levels. These diamine levels were normalized by plasmalogen replacement and significantly reduced by ibuprofen. In both cases the mechanism of action appears to mainly involve increased diamine efflux via the diamine exporter. The actions of ibuprofen were not stereospecific, supporting previous studies that cyclooxygenase (COX) inhibition is unlikely to be involved in the ability of NSAIDs to reduce intracellular diamine levels.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our data demonstrate that ibuprofen, a drug known to reduce the risk of colorectal cancer, reduces cellular diamine levels via augmentation of diamine efflux. Similarly, augmentation of membrane plasmalogens can increase diamine export from control and plasmalogen-deficient cells. These data support the concept that membrane transporter function may be a therapeutic point of intervention for dietary and pharmacological approaches to cancer chemoprevention.</p