Evolution Oriented Monitoring oriented to Security Properties for Cloud Applications

Internet is changing from an information space to a dynamic computing space. Data distribution and remotely accessible software services, dynamism, and autonomy are prime attributes. Cloud technology offers a powerful and fast growing approach to the provision of infrastructure (platform and software services) avoiding the high costs of owning, operating, and maintaining the computational infrastructures required for this purpose. Nevertheless, cloud technology still raises concerns regarding security, privacy, governance, and compliance of data and software services offered through it. Concerns are due to the difficulty to verify security properties of the different types of applications and services available through cloud technology, the uncertainty of their owners and users about the security of their services, and the applications based on them, once they are deployed and offered through a cloud. This work presents an innovative and novel evolution-oriented, cloud-specific monitoring model (including an architecture and a language) that aim at helping cloud application developers to design and monitor the behavior and functionality of their applications in a cloud environment.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

A Study in function optimization with the breeder genetic algorithm

Optimization is concerned with the finding of global optima (hence the name) of problems that can be cast in the form of a function of several variables and constraints thereof. Among the searching methods, {em Evolutionary Algorithms} have been shown to be adaptable and general tools that have often outperformed traditional {em ad hoc} methods. The {em Breeder Genetic Algorithm} (BGA) combines a direct representation with a nice conceptual simplicity. This work contains a general description of the algorithm and a detailed study on a collection of function optimization tasks. The results show that the BGA is a powerful and reliable searching algorithm. The main discussion concerns the choice of genetic operators and their parameters, among which the family of Extended Intermediate Recombination (EIR) is shown to stand out. In addition, a simple method to dynamically adjust the operator is outlined and found to greatly improve on the already excellent overall performance of the algorithm.Postprint (published version

Communication and comparative rephotography. Architectural evolution, the case of Fez and Grenade

Poder contar con la fotografía como medio de investigación y posteriormente para poder establecer la comunicación de los aspectos desarrollados en temas de arquitectura, patrimonio y urbanismo es un potencial importante en la preservación de la memoria e identidad de un pueblo. En este caso de temáticas sobre arquitectura y urbanismo, con mayor importancia porque ayuda a comprender en un primer nivel la evolución de la arquitectura en un contexto geográfico e histórico concreto, que en el caso que nos ocupa de la ciudad marroquí de Fez evidencia en un segundo nivel de análisis la reconstrucción ideológica que constituye una gran parte de imaginarios, reales o inventados, con el atrezzo que los recargos estéticos producen, de carácter acusadamente orientalistas. El caso de la ciudad marroquí de Fez no es el único, pasa en otras ciudades de todo el mundo, como es el caso de la ciudad española de Granada, en parte hermanada históricamente por su pasado, también por las personas que la habitaron, descendientes de esos granadinos expulsados a finales del siglo XV que en su mayoría viajaron a la ciudad de Fez. El análisis del medio fotográfico es el utilizado para la realización de este trabajo, fundamentado en la primera mitad del siglo XX que coincide con el protectorado franco- español, época de primera modernización del país, por medio de las fotografías contenidas en las tarjetas postales que ayudaran a comprender parte de esa reconstrucción mítica, donde la mirada externa tiende a crear realidades imaginadas, o imaginarias, sobre la identidad de un pueblo.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Bayesian semi non-negative matrix factorisation

Non-negative Matrix Factorisation (NMF) has become a standard method for source identification when data, sources and mixing coefficients are constrained to be positive-valued. The method has recently been extended to allow for negative-valued data and sources in the form of Semi-and Convex-NMF. In this paper, we re-elaborate Semi-NMF within a full Bayesian framework. This provides solid foundations for parameter estimation and, importantly, a principled method to address the problem of choosing the most adequate number of sources to describe the observed data. The proposed Bayesian Semi-NMF is preliminarily evaluated here in a real neuro-oncology problem.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Instance and feature weighted k-nearest-neighbors algorithm

We present a novel method that aims at providing a more stable selection of feature subsets when variations in the training process occur. This is accomplished by using an instance-weighting process -assigning different importances to instances as a preprocessing step to a feature weighting method that is independent of the learner, and then making good use of both sets of computed weigths in a standard Nearest-Neighbours classifier. We report extensive experimentation in well-known benchmarking datasets as well as some challenging microarray gene expression problems. Our results show increases in stability for most subset sizes and most problems, without compromising prediction accuracy.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

A Security Pattern for Cloud service certification

Cloud computing is interesting from the economic, operational and even energy consumption perspectives but it still raises concerns regarding the security, privacy, governance and compliance of the data and software services offered through it. However, the task of verifying security properties in services running on cloud is not trivial. We notice the provision and security of a cloud service is sensitive. Because of the potential interference between the features and behavior of all the inter-dependent services in all layers of the cloud stack (as well as dynamic changes in them). Besides current cloud models do not include support for trust-focused communication between layers. We present a mechanism to implement cloud service certification process based on the usage of Trusted Computing technology, by means of its Trusted Computing Platform (TPM) implementation of its architecture. Among many security security features it is a tamper proof resistance built in device and provides a root of trust to affix our certification mechanism. We present as a security pattern the approach for service certification based on the use TPM.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Puzzle of Complete Fusion Suppression in Weakly Bound Nuclei: A Trojan Horse Effect?

Experimental studies of nuclear collisions involving light weakly bound nuclei show a systematic suppression of the complete fusion cross section by ∼30% with respect to the expectation for tightly bound nuclei, at energies above the Coulomb barrier. Although it is widely accepted that the phenomenon is related to the weak binding of these nuclei, the origin of this suppression is not fully understood. Here, we present a novel approach that provides the complete fusion for weakly bound nuclei and relates its suppression to the competition between the different mechanisms contributing to the reaction cross section. The method is applied to the 6,7Li+209Bi reactions, where we find that the suppression of complete fusion is mostly caused by the flux associated with nonelastic breakup modes, such as the partial capture of the projectile (incomplete fusion), whereas the elastic breakup mode is found to play a minor role. Finally, we demonstrate that the large α yields observed in these reactions can be naturally explained as a consequence of a Trojan Horse mechanism.National Science Foundation under Contract No. NSF-PHY-1520972 with Ohio UniversityMinisterio de Ciencia,Innovación y Universidades (Projects No. FIS2014-53448-C2-1-P and No. FIS2017-88410-P)European Union’s Horizon 2020 (Grant Agreement No. 654002

Anolis liogaster

Number of Pages: 2Integrative BiologyGeological Science