Migrating on -premises application to windows azure platform (microsoft cloud)

Legacy systems are usually attached with outdated technologies which over time become a bottleneck for organizations to manage and maintain. Old and poorly utilized architecture make systems run slow and far from expected, however sometimes organization cannot live without those. Renewing application architecture can be considered as an option but it is time consuming and very costly. Cloud computing as an ultimate solution can be proposed to migrate on-premises application to a utilized environment in terms of infrastructure, computing power and virtualization. In addition, it provides a highly available and elastic computing environment which makes organizations to only pay for what they use. In this research, after a brief introduction to main concepts of cloud computing particularly Windows Azure platform (Microsoft Cloud), it is tried to analyze and assess OnePortfolio system developed by Riskk Sdn Bhd, to see whether it is feasible to be moved to Windows Azure. OnePortfolio operates on a SOA architecture comprised of three main components: services, client application and database. Throughout this research, Windows Azure migration lifecycle in compliance with ISO/IEC 14764 international standard is used as the methodology to perform the migration. Once the application is analyzed and migrated to cloud, it is compared to on-premises environment to evaluate its performance and security mechanism

Reviving Mesopotamia: Genocide and the Preservation of Cultural Heritage in the Nationalist Music of William Daniel (1903-1988)

Once an illiterate Christian community suppressed by its Muslim neighbors, the Mesopotamian population in Persia benefitted from the American missionaries establishing schools and hospitals that helped their culture and language flourish in the late 1800s. Their survival as a people and a culture was threatened, however, when the Muslim Ottoman Empire began the Christian Genocide in Eastern Anatolia during World War I. As a survivor of these horrific events, composer William Daniel (1903-1988) felt the need to preserve and promote Mesopotamian culture through music, and as a Western trained musician, he successfully developed a nationalist style of music based on a combination of Mesopotamian folk music elements, which he called the “Mesopotamian timbre,” and Western European art music techniques. To better understand Daniel’s compositions, this study first situates Daniel within the history of the Mesopotamian people and of the Middle East and provides an explanation of Mesopotamian musical characteristics in contrast to their Muslim neighbors. This study concludes with the analyses of five of Daniel’s songs for voice and piano, “Shahrah” [Festival], “Dkhari d’Vaadaan” [Memories of Fatherland], “Shooshane d’Raghoole” [Lilly of the Valley], “Marganeeta” [Pearl], and “Ninveh” [Nineveh], showing how Daniel expressed and represented the social and political situation of the Mesopotamian people in his compositions

Occult Follicular Thyroid Carcinoma Presenting as a Frontal Bone Metastasis: A Case Report

This is a rare case of metastatic follicular carcinoma of thyroid in a patient with no history of thyroid problem. A frontal bone mass was examined microscopically and showed the pattern of metastatic follicular carcinoma. Thyroid ultrasonography then revealed a nodule in left lobe. Total thyroidectomy was done for the patient and microscopic examination confirmed the diagnosis

Testicular papillary serous cystadenocarcinoma: a rare case report and review of the literature

Papillary serous cystadenocarcinoma of the ovary is a common tumor but occurrence of ovarian type papillary serous cystadenocarcinoma in the testis is very rare. Herein we report such a case in a 49-year-old man presenting with testicular swelling. In this tumor, mesothelioma of tunica vaginalis should be excluded by immunohistochemistry. The best treatment is radial orchiectomy and it is very resistant to chemoradiation. Our case was well after orchiectomy and now after a year he is doing well and completely symptom free

Experimental Study of Axially Loaded Pile Group Near a Sloping Ground

Understanding the axial loading response of pile group located near the crest of the slope is of practical value to structural design. In this paper, a large-scale test setup (1.8 m × 0.90 m × 0.90 m) has been developed to investigate the response of pile group (2 × 2) located near the crest of the slope under axial loading. This paper presents a series of physical modelling tests performed to investigate the effects of slope angles, distance of the pile group from the slope crest, embedment length of the pile group and pile diameter on the axial loading response of pile groups. The results show that the response of pile group located near the crest of the slope approaches to the level ground condition with increasing edge distance from slope crest. In addition, the horizontal displacement of pile group towards the slope face increases with decreasing distance of pile group from the slope crest or embedded length of piles or with increasing slope angle. Furthermore, increasing pile diameter results in a low increase in the horizontal displacement for edge distances less than 3 dp (dp = pile diameter). However, the horizontal displacement is almost independent of pile diameter at edge distances greater than 3 dp. Higher embedded length results in the response of pile group approaches to the response of pile group located on the level ground at a shorter edge distance from the slope crest

Iranian EFL Learners' Processing of English Derived Words

An interesting area of psycholinguistic inquiry is to discover the way morphological structures are stored in the human mind and how they are retrieved during comprehension or production of language. The current study probed into what goes on in the mind of EFL learners when processing derivational morphology and how English and Persian derivational suffixes are processed. 60 Iranian EFL learners at intermediate and advanced levels of proficiency whose proficiency level were determined through Oxford Quick Placement Test, participated in masked priming experiments using E-prime software.  Two separate priming tasks in Persian and English were conducted during the course of this study. The target words were primed in three ways: identity (careful"careful), related (care"careful) and control primes (desire"careful). Participants’ reaction times were measured by E-prime software and were fed into SPSS software for further analysis. The results indicated that Proficiency plays a role in the way derivational morphology is processed, because at lower proficiency levels more decomposition was detected while more proficient participants utilized more whole-word representation. Furthermore, Persian learners of English processing of the derived words could not be assigned strictly to decomposition or whole-word representations in the mind. What seems more plausible to assume is that highly frequent words (whether base or suffix frequency) as well as derived words with more productive suffixes are stored as whole words but lower base and morpheme frequency ones and those with suffixes having less productivity are decomposed. These findings lend further support to dual route model

Effect of rice husk ash on the swelling pressure of bentonite soil stabilized with lime in the presence or lack of sulfate

Lime is an effective substance to decrease the swelling of expansive soils. The effective use of lime as a stabilizing agent in the presence of sulfate under some circumstances has been questioned due to the formation of ettringite. In this research, the effect of the addition of rice husk ash (RHA) on the swelling pressure of a bentonite soil (B) modified with lime (L) and calcium sulfate or gypsum (G) was investigated. Nine groups of twin compacted samples, namely, bentonite soil (B), B + L (3% by dry weight), B+3%L+ 5%G, B+3%L+RHA (5, 10 and 15% by dry weight, respectively) and B+3%L+5%G+RHA (5,10 and 15%, respectively), were prepared and tested immediately for 1-D constant volume swelling pressure measurements. Similar groups of samples were prepared and tested after 7 and 28 days of curing. The results indicated the effect of RHA in decreasing the magnitude of swelling pressure in comparison with untreated and treated soil without RH

Investigating Effective Factors in Improving Plant Growth by Native Phosphate-dissolving Bacteria Isolated from Wheat

Wheat is one of the most important strategic products in providing food security for the growing world population. The purpose of this research is to isolate and identify plant growth-promoting bacteria from the wheat rhizosphere and their inhibitory effect on the growth of the pathogenic fungus Fusarium sp. isolated from wheat. The initial screening of 100 bacterial strains isolated from wheat roots was done based on their ability to dissolve phosphate. The effective factors in plant growth and inhibition of fungal pathogens, such as the ability to produce IAA, siderophores, protease, biofilm, bacterial swarming motility, tolerance to salt, seed germination, and seed vigor tests, were investigated. In the initial screening, four bacterial isolates with the highest amount of phosphate dissolution were identified based on morphological and biochemical characteristics as well as the sequence of 16S rRNA region belonging to Curtobacterium sp., Arthrobacter sp., Acinetobacter calcoaceticus, and Cellulosimicrobium sp.; Curtobacterium sp. had the highest amount of IAA (6.14μg/ml), siderophore (2.25cm), protease (1.4cm), and the highest tolerance to salinity (20%) and phosphate dissolution (375.3mg/ml). In the swarming motility test, the highest values were related to Arthrobacter sp. and Curtobacterium sp. at 2.7 and 2.2cm, respectively. The highest amount of biofilm formation was associated with Acinetobacter calcoaceticus and Curtobacterium sp. with an average absorption coefficient of 0.153 and 0.139, respectively. The highest and lowest average values of percentage inhibition of pathogenic fungus colony growth were evaluated in Curtobacterium sp. isolate with a value of 57.3%, and Cellulosimicrobium sp. isolate with 33%, respectively