Transferable knowledge for Low-cost Decision Making in Cloud Environments

Users of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) are increasingly overwhelmed with the wide range of providers and services offered by each provider. As such, many users select services based on description alone. An emerging alternative is to use a decision support system (DSS), which typically relies on gaining insights from observational data in order to assist a customer in making decisions regarding optimal deployment of cloud applications. The primary activity of such systems is the generation of a prediction model (e.g. using machine learning), which requires a significantly large amount of training data. However, considering the varying architectures of applications, cloud providers, and cloud offerings, this activity is not sustainable as it incurs additional time and cost to collect data to train the models. We overcome this through developing a Transfer Learning (TL) approach where knowledge (in the form of a prediction model and associated data set) gained from running an application on a particular IaaS is transferred in order to substantially reduce the overhead of building new models for the performance of new applications and/or cloud infrastructures. In this paper, we present our approach and evaluate it through extensive experimentation involving three real world applications over two major public cloud providers, namely Amazon and Google. Our evaluation shows that our novel two-mode TL scheme increases overall efficiency with a factor of 60% reduction in the time and cost of generating a new prediction model. We test this under a number of cross-application and cross-cloud scenario

The Effect of Network and Infrastructural Variables on SPDY's Performance

HTTP is a successful Internet technology on top of which a lot of the web resides. However, limitations with its current specification, i.e. HTTP/1.1, have encouraged some to look for the next generation of HTTP. In SPDY, Google has come up with such a proposal that has growing community acceptance, especially after being adopted by the IETF HTTPbis-WG as the basis for HTTP/2.0. SPDY has the potential to greatly improve web experience with little deployment overhead. However, we still lack an understanding of its true potential in different environments. This paper seeks to resolve these issues, offering a comprehensive evaluation of SPDY's performance using extensive experiments. We identify the impact of network characteristics and website infrastructure on SPDY's potential page loading benefits, finding that these factors are decisive for SPDY and its optimal deployment strategy. Through this, we feed into the wider debate regarding HTTP/2.0, exploring the key aspects that impact the performance of this future protocol

Regulation of EVI5, VEGF and P53bp2 during Amphibian Limb Regeneration

poster abstractUnderstanding limb regeneration on a molecular level could lead to new methods of healing for humans, therefore revolutionizing current medical treatments. The axolotl salamander possesses capabilities of limb regeneration that are lost in the Xenopus laevis froglet. The hypothesized reason is that elevated levels of EVI5 (ecotropic viral integration site 5) binding protein allow the axolotl to regenerate by delaying the mitosis of dedifferentiated cells until they have established a blastema. VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor) and P53bp2 (tumor protein 53 binding protein 2) genes also take part in this process by stimulating blood vessel formation and regulating apoptosis and cell growth in regenerated tissue. The objective of this study is to clone EVI5, VEGF, and P53BP2 cDNA that can be used to detect their mRNA transcripts during limb regeneration in the axolotl and Xenopus laevis. To accomplish this, RNA is extracted from axolotl and Xenopus laevis limb tissue using an RNeasy kit. Total RNA concentration is then measured spectrophotometrically. RT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) is used to clone the cDNAs, which are identified by Agarose gel electrophoresis and later sequenced for verification. It took half a year to get high enough RNA concentrations from both species’ tissues and then clone the three genes. The EVI5 band size was determined to be about 200bps, VEGF about 370bps, and P53bp2 about 500bps using the Agarose gel electrophoresis, signifying successful gene cloning. The long-term goal is to determine the role these genes play in limb regeneration with the aim of applying that knowledge to new medical treatments

A Preliminary Look into Unsolicited Mobile App Traffic

The number of smart devices keeps on growing every year, and with that the potential market for mobile apps. As of May 2016, Google Play hosted 2.6 million apps and had an accumulative total of 65 billion app downloads. Any developer can publish apps through Play, and it is quite prevalent to granting apps permission use the phone's network network interfaces at will and under very limited supervision (beyond overall traffic volume and bitwise access to an interface). This raises the following questions: can certain apps be harmful to users? Should we trust mobile developers to 'do no evil' in terms of the volume and type of traffic their apps generate? We are motivated to identify whether there is a need for more scrutiny on the connections apps make, especially when not in use

Terahertz Response of Field-Effect Transistors in Saturation Regime

We report on the broadband THz response of InGaAs/GaAs HEMTs operating at 1.63 THz and room temperature deep in the saturation regime. We demonstrate that responses show linear increase with drain-to-source voltage (or drain bias current) and reach very high values up to 170V/W. We also develop a phenomenological theory valid both in the ohmic and in the saturation regimes.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

Passive network awareness as a means for improved grid scheduling

Grids enable sharing resources of heterogeneous nature and administration. In such distributed systems, the network is usually taken for granted which is potentially problematic due to the complexity and unpredictability of public networks that typically underlie grids. This article introduces GridMAP, a mechanism for considering the network state for enhancing grid scheduling. Network measurements are collected in a passive manner from a user-centric vantage point. This mechanism has been evaluated on a production e-science grid infrastructure, with results showing the ability of GridMAP to improve grid scheduling with minimal network, computational and deployment overheads

In Vitro Antibiofilm Efficacies of Different Antibiotic Combinations with Zinc Sulfate against \u3cem\u3ePseudomonas aeruginosa\u3c/em\u3e Recovered from Hospitalized Patients with Urinary Tract Infection

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are a serious healthcare dilemma influencing millions of patients every year and represent the second most frequent type of body infection. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a multidrug-resistant pathogen causing numerous chronic biofilm-associated infections including urinary tract, nosocomial, and medical devices-related infections. In the present study, the biofilm of P. aeruginosa CCIN34519, recovered from inpatients with UTIs, was established on polystyrene substratum and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and was utilized for visualization of the biofilm. A previously described in vitro system for real-time monitoring of biofilm growth/inhibition was utilized to assess the antimicrobial effects of ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, moxifloxacin, norfloxacin, ertapenem, ceftriaxone, gentamicin, and tobramycin as single antibiotics as well as in combinations with zinc sulfate (2.5 mM) against P. aeruginosa CCIN34519 biofilm. Meanwhile, minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) at 24 h and mutant prevention concentrations (MPCs) at 96 h were determined for the aforementioned antibiotics. The real-time monitoring data revealed diverse responses of P. aeruginosa CCIN34519 biofilm to the tested antibiotic-zinc sulfate combinations with potential synergisms in cases of fluoroquinolones (ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, moxifloxacin, and norfloxacin) and carbapenem (ertapenem) as demonstrated by reduced MIC and MPC values. Conversely, considerable antagonisms were observed with cephalosporin (ceftriaxone) and aminoglycosides (gentamicin, and tobramycin) as shown by substantially increased MICs and MPCs values. Further deliberate in vivo investigations for the promising synergisms are required to evaluate their therapeutic potentials for treatment of UTIs caused by P. aeruginosa biofilms as well as for developing preventive strategies