From Component-Based Architectures to Microservices: A 25-years-long Journey in Designing and Realizing Service-Based Systems

Distributed information systems and applications are generally described in terms of components and interfaces among them. How these component-based architectures have been designed and implemented evolved over the years, giving rise to the so-called paradigm of Service-Oriented Computing (SOC). In this chapter, we will follow a 25-years-long journey on how design methodologies and supporting technologies influenced one each other, and we discuss how already back in the late 90s the ancestors of the SOC paradigm were there, already paving the way for the technological evolution recently leading to microservice architectures and serverless computing

On the Deployment of IoT Systems: An Industrial Survey

Internet of Things (IoT) systems are complex and multifaceted, and the design of their architectures needs to consider many aspects at a time. Design decisions concern, for instance, the modeling of software components and their interconnections, as well as where to deploy the components within the available hardware infrastructure in the Edge-Cloud continuum. A relevant and challenging task, in this context, is to identify optimal deployment models due to all the different aspects involved, such as extra-functional requirements of the system, heterogeneity of the hardware resources concerning their processing and storage capabilities, and constraints like legal issues and operational cost limits. To gain insights about the deployment decisions concerning IoT systems in practice, and the factors that influence those decisions, we report about an industrial survey we conducted with 66 IoT architects from 18 countries across the world. Each participant filled in a questionnaire that comprises 15 questions. By analyzing the collected data, we have two main findings: (i) architects rely on the Cloud more than the Edge for deploying the software components of IoT systems, in the majority of the IoT application domains; and (ii) the main factors driving deployment decisions are four: reliability, performance, security, and cost

Characteristics of the patients referred to a Hypertension Unit between 1989 and 2003

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Relationship between QT interval and cardiovascular risk factors in healthy young subjects

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A Survey on the Application of Process Mining to Smart Spaces Data

During the last years, a number of studies have experimented with applying process mining (PM) techniques to smart spaces data. The general goal has been to automatically model human routines as if they were business processes. However, applying process-oriented techniques to smart spaces data comes with its own set of challenges. This paper surveys existing approaches that apply PM to smart spaces and analyses how they deal with the following challenges identified in the literature: choosing a modelling formalism for human behaviour; bridging the abstraction gap between sensor and event logs; and segmenting logs in traces. The added value of this article lies in providing the research community with a common ground for some important challenges that exist in this field and their respective solutions, and to assist further research efforts by outlining opportunities for future work

Workload measurement in a communication application operated through a P300-based brain-computer interface

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Nuclear repositioning of the non-translocated HLXB9 allele in the leukaemia cell line GDM-1 harbouring a t(6;7)(q23;q36)

Background/Aims. Transcriptionally active and inactive topologically associated domains (TADs) occupy different areas in the cell nucleus, and chromosomal rearrangements relocating TADs could determine ectopic expression of the repositioned genes. In this study, we investigated the HLXB9 gene in a myeloid leukaemia cell line, GDM-1, known to harbour a rearrangement involving the chromosome 7 with breakpoint distal to HLXB9, highly expressed in these cells. Methods. We used fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) to target the regions involved in the translocation and to distinguish the translocated chromosome from the non-translocated one in interphase nuclei. Results. Two-dimensional (2D) analysis of the interphase FISH data indicated that the two HLXB9 alleles had a different localisation in the cell nuclei, with the translocated allele consistently positioned in the nuclear periphery and the normal one in the more internal portion of the nucleus, known as the transcriptionally active compartment. Conclusion. Our data may indicate that HLXB9 transcripts in GDM-1 cell line do not arise from the allele located in the rearranged chromosome 7, suggesting that regulation of gene expression in cancer cells harbouring chromosomal translocations might be more complex than previously thought, paving the path to further investigations on mechanisms of gene expression

Big Data Pipelines on the Computing Continuum: Ecosystem and Use Cases Overview

Organisations possess and continuously generate huge amounts of static and stream data, especially with the proliferation of Internet of Things technologies. Collected but unused data, i.e., Dark Data, mean loss in value creation potential. In this respect, the concept of Computing Continuum extends the traditional more centralised Cloud Computing paradigm with Fog and Edge Computing in order to ensure low latency pre-processing and filtering close to the data sources. However, there are still major challenges to be addressed, in particular related to management of various phases of Big Data processing on the Computing Continuum. In this paper, we set forth an ecosystem for Big Data pipelines in the Computing Continuum and introduce five relevant real-life example use cases in the context of the proposed ecosystem

Measurable therapeutic antibody in serum as potential predictive factor of response to anti-CD38 therapy in non-IgG-k myeloma patients

Multiple myeloma (MM) is a hematologic malignancy characterized by abnormal plasma cell proliferation in the bone marrow. Recent advancements in anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody therapies, such as daratumumab and isatuximab, have significantly improved MM patient survival. However, the lack of predictive factors of response to these therapies remains a challenge. Notably, anti-CD38 antibodies can interfere with laboratory tests, complicating response assessment. We conducted a retrospective study to evaluate the association between the appearance of positive IgGk (therapeutic antibody) on immunofixation/immunosubtraction (IF) and clinical parameters in 87 non-IgGk MM patients treated with anti-CD38 therapy. Positive IgGk IF was observed in 42 patients after a median of three treatment courses. Patients with positive IgGk IF had higher rates of complete/very good partial responses (p = 0.03) and improved progression-free survival (median not reached vs. 21.83 months, p < 0.01). High BMI (p = 0.03), higher hemoglobin (p = 0.02), lower CRP (p = 0.04), and lower monoclonal protein levels (p = 0.03) were associated with positive IgGk IF. Our findings suggest that monitoring therapeutic antibody appearance on IF may predict and optimize anti-CD38 therapy in MM. Potential explanations include the impact of patient factors (e.g. BMI) on drug pharmacokinetics, the relationship between antibody levels and immune response, and the influence of tumor biology. Further research is needed to elucidate the underlying mechanisms and clinical utility of this biomarker. Nonetheless, our results highlight the importance of considering therapeutic antibody detection when interpreting laboratory tests and managing MM patients receiving anti-CD38 therapies