Academic Cloud Computing Research: Five Pitfalls and Five Opportunities

This discussion paper argues that there are five fundamental pitfalls, which can restrict academics from conducting cloud computing research at the infrastructure level, which is currently where the vast majority of academic research lies. Instead academics should be conducting higher risk research, in order to gain understanding and open up entirely new areas. We call for a renewed mindset and argue that academic research should focus less upon physical infrastructure and embrace the abstractions provided by clouds through five opportunities: user driven research, new programming models, PaaS environments, and improved tools to support elasticity and large-scale debugging. The objective of this paper is to foster discussion, and to define a roadmap forward, which will allow academia to make longer-term impacts to the cloud computing community.Comment: Accepted and presented at the 6th USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Cloud Computing (HotCloud'14

Reviews

Technology‐based Learning Environments: Psychological and Educational Foundations edited by S. Vosniadou, E. De Corte and H. Mandl, volume 137 in NATO ASI Series F (Computer and Systems Sciences), Berlin, Springer‐Verlag, ISBN: 0–387–58253–3, 1994

Cloud Benchmarking for Performance

How can applications be deployed on the cloud to achieve maximum performance? This question has become significant and challenging with the availability of a wide variety of Virtual Machines (VMs) with different performance capabilities in the cloud. The above question is addressed by proposing a six step benchmarking methodology in which a user provides a set of four weights that indicate how important each of the following groups: memory, processor, computation and storage are to the application that needs to be executed on the cloud. The weights along with cloud benchmarking data are used to generate a ranking of VMs that can maximise performance of the application. The rankings are validated through an empirical analysis using two case study applications; the first is a financial risk application and the second is a molecular dynamics simulation, which are both representative of workloads that can benefit from execution on the cloud. Both case studies validate the feasibility of the methodology and highlight that maximum performance can be achieved on the cloud by selecting the top ranked VMs produced by the methodology.Comment: 6 pages, 6th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (IEEE CloudCom) 2014, Singapor

Genetic diversity and connectivity in fragmented populations of Rhinanthus minor in two regions with contrasting land-use

Knowledge of genetic diversity and connectivity within and between populations of specialist meadow plants is crucial to developing effective conservation strategies at the landscape-scale. This study investigated levels of genetic diversity within, and gene flow between populations of a key annual species, Rhinanthus minor in protected meadows and landscape matrix sites in two contrasting regions. Possible barriers to gene flow were also analysed. Leaf material from 714 individuals in an extensively managed upland region and an intensively managed lowland region of the UK was genotyped using microsatellite markers. Genetic diversity was similar in the two regions (He = 0.48 and 0.44). FST values indicated population differentiation in both regions but the estimate was higher in the lowland (FST = 0.28) than in the upland region (FST = 0.19); evidence of global structure was revealed in a spatial principal components analysis but a maximum likelihood population effects model did not identify significant predictors of population differentiation after testing the effects of Euclidean geographic distance, land cover and elevation. Conservation strategies should aim to maintain large populations in meadows to enhance genetic diversity. At the same time the focus should be on existing and additional species-rich grassland fragments, particularly in areas of intensive land-use, if genetic connectivity is to be retained.</p

Seasonal variation and impact of waste-water lagoons as larval habitat on the population dynamics of Culicoides sonorensis (Diptera:Ceratpogonidae) at two dairy farms in northern California.

The Sacramento (northern Central) Valley of California (CA) has a hot Mediterranean climate and a diverse ecological landscape that is impacted extensively by human activities, which include the intensive farming of crops and livestock. Waste-water ponds, marshes, and irrigated fields associated with these agricultural activities provide abundant larval habitats for C. sonorensis midges, in addition to those sites that exist in the natural environment. Within this region, C. sonorensis is an important vector of bluetongue (BTV) and related viruses that adversely affect the international trade and movement of livestock, the economics of livestock production, and animal welfare. To characterize the seasonal dynamics of immature and adult C. sonorensis populations, abundance was monitored intensively on two dairy farms in the Sacramento Valley from August 2012- to July 2013. Adults were sampled every two weeks for 52 weeks by trapping (CDC style traps without light and baited with dry-ice) along N-S and E-W transects on each farm. One farm had large operational waste-water lagoons, whereas the lagoon on the other farm was drained and remained dry during the study. Spring emergence and seasonal abundance of adult C. sonorensis on both farms coincided with rising vernal temperature. Paradoxically, the abundance of midges on the farm without a functioning waste-water lagoon was increased as compared to abundance on the farm with a waste-water lagoon system, indicating that this infrastructure may not serve as the sole, or even the primary larval habitat. Adult midges disappeared from both farms from late November until May; however, low numbers of parous female midges were detected in traps set during daylight in the inter-seasonal winter period. This latter finding is especially critical as it provides a potential mechanism for the "overwintering" of BTV in temperate regions such as northern CA. Precise documentation of temporal changes in the annual abundance and dispersal of Culicoides midges is essential for the creation of models to predict BTV infection of livestock and to develop sound abatement strategies

Measuring change

A change in the reporting of HbA1c is being adopted globally, including in Australia. It's anticipated that this change will, among other things, make it easier for doctors to educate their patients about the importance of glycaemic control. However, to understand how this change will help in practice, it's useful to firstly understand what HbA1c is and to know something of the history of how laboratories have measured the HbA1c assay

Protease signaling regulates apical cell extrusion, cell contacts, and proliferation in epithelia.

Mechanisms that sense and regulate epithelial morphogenesis, integrity, and homeostasis are incompletely understood. Protease-activated receptor 2 (Par2), the Par2-activating membrane-tethered protease matriptase, and its inhibitor, hepatocyte activator inhibitor 1 (Hai1), are coexpressed in most epithelia and may make up a local signaling system that regulates epithelial behavior. We explored the role of Par2b in matriptase-dependent skin abnormalities in Hai1a-deficient zebrafish embryos. We show an unexpected role for Par2b in regulation of epithelial apical cell extrusion, roles in regulating proliferation that were opposite in distinct but adjacent epithelial monolayers, and roles in regulating cell-cell junctions, mobility, survival, and expression of genes involved in tissue remodeling and inflammation. The epidermal growth factor receptor Erbb2 and matrix metalloproteinases, the latter induced by Par2b, may contribute to some matriptase- and Par2b-dependent phenotypes and be permissive for others. Our results suggest that local protease-activated receptor signaling can coordinate cell behaviors known to contribute to epithelial morphogenesis and homeostasis