First Year Infrastructure Operations Report

This document summarizes the achievements of the infrastructure operations activity during the first year of the project. It describes the technical specifications of the infrastructure that has been put into operation, the process that was followed to establish it, the problems encountered and the various solutions that were applied. It also provides statistics about the usage of cloud resources and an assessment of their utilization

Infrastructure Specifications

This document presents the computing infrastructure deployed in the context of StratusLab project, details the configuration of the computing resources used and the commitments made from the project partners to contribute with computing resources in the project. During the first months of operation this infrastructure has already been significantly exploited to deliver the first results towards the project's goals. The OpenNebula virtual management software has been used to install private clouds on different OS platforms. Two pre-production grid sites have been deployed in the private cloud and are used to test the implications of providing grid services in cloud environments. Experience from the deployment and operation of the above sites will help us identify the required tools and procedures for offering grid production sites over computing clouds. Finally the document presents related work, relevant to infrastructure operations, taking place in other projects and initiatives

Trajectory-based worker task productivity monitoring

Over the past decades labour productivity in construction has been declining. The prevalent approach to estimating labour productivity is through an analysis of the trajectories of the construction entities. This analysis typically exploits four types of trajectory data: a) walking path trajectories, b) dense trajectories (posture), c) physiological rates such as heart rate (beats/minute) and respiratory rate (breaths/minute), and d) sound signals. The output of this analysis is the number of work cycles performed by construction workers. The total duration of these cycles is equal to the labour input of a task. However, all such methods do not meet the requirements for proactive monitoring of labour productivity in an accurate, non-obtrusive, time and cost efficient way for multiple workers. This paper proposes a method to address this shortcoming. It features a promising accuracy in terms of calculating the labour input.ICASE studentship award, supported by EPSRC and LAING O'ROURKE PLC under Grant No. 13440016

Activation of sodium persulfate by magnetic carbon xerogels (CX/CoFe) for the oxidation of bisphenol A: Process variables effects, matrix effects and reaction pathways

An advanced oxidation process comprising sodium persulfate (SPS) and a novel magnetic carbon xerogel was tested for the degradation of bisphenol A (BPA), a model endocrine-disrupting compound. The catalyst, consisting of interconnected carbon microspheres with embedded iron and cobalt microparticles, was capable of activating persulfate to form sulfate and hydroxyl radicals at ambient conditions. The pseudo-first order degradation rate of BPA in ultrapure water (UPW) was found to increase with (i) increasing catalyst (25–75 mg/L) and SPS (31–250 mg/L) concentrations, (ii) decreasing BPA concentration (285–14,200 μg/L), and (iii) changing pH from alkaline to acidic values (9–3). Besides UPW, tests were conducted in drinking water, treated wastewater, groundwater and surface water; interestingly, the rate in UPW was always lower than in any other matrix containing several organic and inorganic constituents. The effect of natural organic matter (in the form of humic acids) and alcohols was detrimental to BPA degradation owing to the scavenging of radicals. Conversely, chlorides at concentrations greater than 50 mg/L had a positive effect due to the formation and subsequent participation of chlorine-containing radicals. Liquid chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry was employed to identify major transformation by-products (TBPs) of BPA degradation in the absence and presence of chlorides; in the latter case, several chlorinated TBPs were detected confirming the role of Cl-related radicals. Based on TBPs, main reaction pathways are proposed.Z. Frontistis would like to thank the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY) for the financial support of this research through the “IKY Fellowships of Excellence for Postgraduate Studies in Greece e Siemens Programme” in the framework of the Hellenic Republic e Siemens Settlement Agreement. Part of this work was financially supported by: Project POCI-01- 0145-FEDER-006984 - Associate Laboratory LSRE-LCM funded by FEDER through COMPETE2020 e Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalizaç~ao (POCI) - and by national funds through FCT - Fundaçaeo para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia. R.S. Ribeiro acknowledges the FCT individual Ph.D. grant SFRH/BD/94177/2013, with financing from FCT and the European Social Fund (through POPH and QREN). A.M.T. Silva acknowledges the FCT Investigator 2013 Programme (IF/01501/2013), with financing from the European Social Fund and the Human Potential Operational Programme.Z. Frontistis would like to thank the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY) for the financial support of this research through the “IKY Fellowships of Excellence for Postgraduate Studies in Greece e Siemens Programme” in the framework of the Hellenic Republic e Siemens Settlement Agreement. Part of this work was financially supported by: Project POCI-01- 0145-FEDER-006984 - Associate Laboratory LSRE-LCM funded by FEDER through COMPETE2020 e Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalizaç~ao (POCI) - and by national funds through FCT - Fundaçaeo para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia. R.S. Ribeiro acknowledges the FCT individual Ph.D. grant SFRH/BD/94177/2013, with financing from FCT and the European Social Fund (through POPH and QREN). A.M.T. Silva acknowledges the FCT Investigator 2013 Programme (IF/01501/2013), with financing from the European Social Fund and the Human Potential Operational Programme.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Event-Triggered Islanding in Inverter-Based Grids

The decentralization of modern power systems challenges the hierarchical structure of the electric grid and requires the implementation of automated schemes that can overcome adverse conditions. This work proposes an adaptive isolation methodology that can segregate a grid topology in autonomous islands that maintain stable and economic operation in the presence of deliberate (e.g., cyberattacks) or unintentional abnormal events. The adaptive isolation logic is event-triggered to avoid false positives, improve detection accuracy, and reduce computational overheads. A measurement-based stable kernel representation (SKR) triggering mechanism inspects distributed generation controllers for abnormal behavior. The SKR notifies a machine learning (ML) ensemble classifier that detects whether the system behavior is within acceptable operational conditions. The event-triggered adaptive isolation framework is evaluated using IEEE RTS-24 bus system. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed framework detects anomalous behavior in real-time and identifies stable partitions minimizing operating costs faster than traditional islanding detection techniques

An unusual case of Multiple Inflammatory Myofibroblastic Tumors of the lung

Inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor (IMT) of the lung is a rare, usually solitary lesion that is considered nowadays as a true neoplasm with unpredictable clinical course. Herein we describe a case of multiple, bilateral IMTs of the lung in a 70 year-old asymptomatic woman, where diagnosis was established by CT guided core biopsy. To our knowledge only 10 cases of bilateral IMTs have been reported in a few case series and in only 2 cases of pulmonary IMTs, CT guided biopsy could establish the correct diagnosis