BODY, MIND, AND ELMER

Letter

AIOps for a Cloud Object Storage Service

With the growing reliance on the ubiquitous availability of IT systems and services, these systems become more global, scaled, and complex to operate. To maintain business viability, IT service providers must put in place reliable and cost efficient operations support. Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) is a promising technology for alleviating operational complexity of IT systems and services. AIOps platforms utilize big data, machine learning and other advanced analytics technologies to enhance IT operations with proactive actionable dynamic insight. In this paper we share our experience applying the AIOps approach to a production cloud object storage service to get actionable insights into system's behavior and health. We describe a real-life production cloud scale service and its operational data, present the AIOps platform we have created, and show how it has helped us resolving operational pain points.Comment: 5 page

The role of the A C395 IFNGR1 mutation in determining susceptibility to intracellular infection in Malta

Background: The first human mycobacterial susceptibility gene was identified amongst four children on the island of Malta in 1995. All affected children were homozygous for a nonsense mutation at position 395 of the interferon gamma receptor 1 (IFNGR1) gene, and all but one died of overwhelming mycobacterial infection. The population of Malta has high rates of infection with intracellular pathogens; leishmania, brucellosis and tuberculosis are all endemic, while leprosy, which was previously endemic, has only recently been eradicated. We hypothesised that heterozygous carriers of the IFNGR1 gene mutation, while resistant to infection with poorly pathogenic organisms, may have increased susceptibility to infection with more virulent pathogens. Methodology and Result: Screening patients with a past history of intracellular infection and healthy newborns for the presence of the IFNGR1 A->C395 mutation, using sequence specific primer PCR, did not identify any carriers of the mutation. Conclusion: These results suggest that the IFNGR1 mutation is unlikely to be of public health significance on Malta.peer-reviewe

Ariel - Volume 12(13) Number 4

Co-Editors Gary Fishbein Lynn Solomon Business Manager Rich Davis Assistant Business Manager Jeff Lavanier Layout Editors Paul J. Berlin Tracy A. Glauser Photography Editor Ben Alma

The Phenology of Ticks and the Effects of Long-Term Prescribed Burning on Tick Population Dynamics in Southwestern Georgia and Northwestern Florida

Some tick populations have increased dramatically in the past several decades leading to an increase in the incidence and emergence of tick-borne diseases. Management strategies that can effectively reduce tick populations while better understanding regional tick phenology is needed. One promising management strategy is prescribed burning. However, the efficacy of prescribed burning as a mechanism for tick control is unclear because past studies have provided conflicting data, likely due to a failure of some studies to simulate operational management scenarios and/or account for other predictors of tick abundance. Therefore, our study was conducted to increase knowledge of tick population dynamics relative to long-term prescribed fire management. Furthermore, we targeted a region, southwestern Georgia and northwestern Florida (USA), in which little is known regarding tick dynamics so that basic phenology could be determined. Twenty-one plots with varying burn regimes (burned surrounded by burned [BB], burned surrounded by unburned [BUB], unburned surrounded by burned [UBB], and unburned surrounded by unburned [UBUB]) were sampled monthly for two years while simultaneously collecting data on variables that can affect tick abundance (e.g., host abundance, vegetation structure, and micro- and macro-climatic conditions). In total, 47,185 ticks were collected, of which, 99% were Amblyomma americanum, 0.7% were Ixodes scapularis, and fewer numbers of Amblyomma maculatum, Ixodes brunneus, and Dermacentor variabilis. Monthly seasonality trends were similar between 2010 and 2011. Long-term prescribed burning consistently and significantly reduced tick counts (overall and specifically for A. americanum and I. scapularis) regardless of the burn regimes and variables evaluated. Tick species composition varied according to burn regime with A. americanum dominating at UBUB, A. maculatum at BB, I. scapularis at UBB, and a more even composition at BUB. These data indicate that regular prescribed burning is an effective tool for reducing tick populations and ultimately may reduce risk of tick-borne disease

A summary of the 2012 JHU CLSP Workshop on Zero Resource Speech Technologies and Models of Early Language Acquisition

We summarize the accomplishments of a multi-disciplinary workshop exploring the computational and scientific issues surrounding zero resource (unsupervised) speech technologies and related models of early language acquisition. Centered around the tasks of phonetic and lexical discovery, we consider unified evaluation metrics, present two new approaches for improving speaker independence in the absence of supervision, and evaluate the application of Bayesian word segmentation algorithms to automatic subword unit tokenizations. Finally, we present two strategies for integrating zero resource techniques into supervised settings, demonstrating the potential of unsupervised methods to improve mainstream technologies.5 page(s

Influence of atmospheric circulation on regional 14CO2 differences

Detailed analyses of published 14C data from tree rings and atmospheric CO2 samples for the northern tropics in Asia (India, Thailand, and Vietnam) and Africa (Ethiopia) have been performed for the heavily bomb-influenced period 1963-1967 A.D. The results show that the Asian summer monsoon and Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) position influenced atmospheric 14CO2 over the study area. Similar analyses of atmospheric records for northern and western Europe, northwestern Africa, and the northeastern United States and tree ring data for east Asia show that the Northern Hemisphere distribution of bomb 14C for 1963-1967 depended on atmospheric circulation controlled by the seasonal positions of Hadley cell boundaries and the ITCZ. The distribution of 14C did not have a simple latitudinal dependence. This work shows that the seasonal atmospheric circulation patterns are crucial for the description of atmospheric 14C gradients during the bomb peak period. These principles can be applied to the interpretation of the small intrahemispheric 14C offsets of the remote past. Copyright 2007 by the American Geophysical Union

Kawasaki Disease Patient Stratification and Pathway Analysis Based on Host Transcriptomic and Proteomic Profiles

The aetiology of Kawasaki disease (KD), an acute inflammatory disorder of childhood, remains unknown despite various triggers of KD having been proposed. Host ‘omic profiles offer insights into the host response to infection and inflammation, with the interrogation of multiple ‘omic levels in parallel providing a more comprehensive picture. We used differential abundance analysis, pathway analysis, clustering, and classification techniques to explore whether the host response in KD is more similar to the response to bacterial or viral infections at the transcriptomic and proteomic levels through comparison of ‘omic profiles from children with KD to those with bacterial and viral infections. Pathways activated in patients with KD included those involved in anti-viral and anti-bacterial responses. Unsupervised clustering showed that the majority of KD patients clustered with bacterial patients on both ‘omic levels, whilst application of diagnostic signatures specific for bacterial and viral infections revealed that many transcriptomic KD samples had low probabilities of having bacterial or viral infections, suggesting that KD may be triggered by a different process not typical of either common bacterial or viral infections. Clustering based on the transcriptomic and proteomic responses during KD revealed three clusters of KD patients on both ‘omic levels, suggesting heterogeneity within the inflammatory response during KD. The observed heterogeneity may reflect differences in the host response to a common trigger, or variation dependent on different triggers of the condition

The Ocean is Losing its Breath: Declining Oxygen in the Worlds Ocean and Coastal Waters

'The Ocean is Losing its Breath' presents a summary of scientific experiments, observations and numerical models addressing the following questions: How has the oxygen content in the open ocean and coastal waters changed over the past century and through geological time? What are the mechanisms behind this oxygen decline? How is ocean oxygen content predicted to change over the rest of the twenty-first century? What are the consequences of low and declining oxygen concentrations in the marine environment? This document was prepared by a group of concerned scientists from across the world, the IOC expert group, the Global Ocean Oxygen Network GO2 NE, established in 2016, which is committed to providing a global and multidisciplinary view on deoxygenation, with a focus on understanding its various aspects and impacts