Single Server Research Articles

Pubertal, Auxological, and Adult Height Outcomes in Children Treated for Adrenocortical Tumors: Half a Century Experience.

Most children with adrenocortical tumors (ACTs) present with accelerated growth and skeletal maturation at diagnosis, which potentially compromises their adult heights (AHs). Knowledge about growth and pubertal patterns after ACT resection is scarce. This study presents the pubertal and auxological development of patients treated for ACT and followed up at a single pediatric endocrinology service in Brazil. Retrospective cohort study including 63 patients (47 girls) followed up between 1966 and 2021. Pubertal and auxological data from ACT diagnosis to AH were analyzed. At diagnosis, the patients had median values of bone age (BA) more advanced than chronological age (CA), height standard deviation score greater than target height (TH-SDS), and predicted adult height (PAH-SDS) lower than TH-SDS. The difference between BA and CA decreased gradually during follow-up and the PAH-SDS moved closer to the TH-SDS 7 years after tumor resection. Puberty started at a median CA of 9.3 (8.3-11.3) years in girls and 9.9 (9.2-13.6) years in boys. Nine patients (6 girls) developed central precocious puberty (CPP), which was influenced by a CA >4 years at diagnosis. The difference between AH-SDS and TH-SDS was not significant (p = 0.3). The factors independently associated with AH below TH were CA >4 years at diagnosis, time between clinical manifestation and diagnosis >1 year, and development of CPP. Most patients treated for ACT during childhood attained AH within the TH despite presenting with advanced skeletal maturation at diagnosis. Development of CPP was not infrequent.

Profit Comparison of Computer System with Hardware Redundancy Subject to Different Repair Activities

In this research paper, main concentrate of the authors on the profit comparison of computer system with hardware redundancy by introducing the concept of priority to software up-gradation, hardware preventive maintenance (PM) and hardware maximum repair time (MRT). The system fails independently from normal mode. All the repair activities such as hardware repair, software up-gradation, hardware preventive maintenance before failure and hardware replacement after maximum repair time are carried out by a single server immediately on need basis. All random variables are statistically independent. The negative exponential distribution is taken for the failure time of the component while the distributions of repair time, up-gradation time, preventive maintenance and replacement time are assumed arbitrary with different probability density functions. Semi-Markov process and regenerative point technique are used. The behaviour of profits of the system models have been examined for different parameters and costs.

New ways for carsharing – Can mobility as a service boost carsharing?

Mobility as a Service is a potential game changer in the transition from individual motorized to sustainable and multimodal mobility in urban areas. These innovative concepts are an opportunity for existing forms of sustainable mobility to reach a broader user base and extend their service offerings. Although there are some practical examples of carsharing applications in such concepts, there is a lack of data-driven research about Mobility as a Service in practice and, above all, findings about the influence on usage behavior within such systems. We analyze usage data of the “Mobil-Flat”, a subscription-based mobility offer that integrates carsharing, public transportation, and bike sharing into a single service in a medium-sized German city, to determine the impact of Mobility as a Service on carsharing use. This results in a structured overview of the business model and the implications of such concepts on user behavior and acceptance in the context of carsharing, based on a real-world dataset.

An Infinite Capacity Single Server Markovian Queueing System With Discouraged Arrivals Retention Of Reneged Customers and Controllable Arrival Rates With Feedback

An Infinite Capacity Single Server Markovian Queueing System With Discouraged Arrivals Retention Of Reneged Customers and Controllable Arrival Rates With Feedback

An Examination of CXL Memory Use Cases for In-Memory Database Management Systems Using SAP HANA

CXL-based disaggregated memory systems offer options to expand the memory beyond the limits of a single server via cache-coherent memory expansion cards or memory pools. Especially, In-Memory Database Management Systems (IMDBMSs) can benefit from alleviating two critical constraints: (1) limited memory capacity in a server and (2) long restart time during failover to reload data to memory. However, the usage and effectiveness of CXL memory in enterprise-scale IMDBMSs has yet to be validated. In this work---for the first time---we investigate dynamic memory expansion employing commercial CXL memory devices for IMDBMSs. Our detailed performance analysis reveals that the performance impact of higher latency and lower memory bandwidth impact depends on the memory access patterns of data structures (cf. (1)). Additionally, we present the feasibility of CXL shared memory between servers to improve restart times during failover (cf. (2)). Our evaluation shows the effectiveness of CXL memory integrated into the SAP HANA Cloud IMDBMS. OLTP workloads have a negligible performance degradation while OLAP workloads have a wide range of performance degradation. CXL shared memory shows a 40% reduction of the restart time for TPC-H SF10 and 84% potential reduction for TPC-H SF100.

Performance Analysis of an E-commerce Website Using Distributed Servers (Case Study: Ecommerce Bumdes Sarining Kukuh Winangun)

Digital transformation has significantly altered our interactions by leveraging the internet for fast global information exchange and collaboration. This shift impacts businesses, individuals, organizations, and governments by increasing the demand for fast, reliable web services. To meet these demands, many organizations are turning to distributed server infrastructures, which help handle large storage needs and avoid performance issues. This research focuses on creating a distributed web server system that uses Round-Robin load balancing to evenly distribute traffic and enhance performance. The Round-Robin algorithm’s simplicity and effectiveness in balancing loads, combined with the advantages of virtualization, such as cost efficiency, improved performance, and better resource management are central to this approach. Virtualization also offers improved scalability, accuracy, and security, further enhancing overall system efficiency and effectiveness in data centers. This research evaluates and contrasts the performance of websites utilizing distributed servers against those using single servers. The findings indicate that websites with distributed servers significantly outperform those with single servers. Specifically, distributed servers offer response times that are 5.8 times faster, achieve 2.2 times more successful responses, and transfer 2.1 times more data than single servers. Additionally, single servers experience a much higher rate of timeouts, with 14.2 times more occurrences compared to distributed servers.

A rule-based decision model to support technical debt decisions: A multiple case study of web and mobile app startups

ContextSoftware startups are immature software organizations that focus on the development of a single software product or service. This organizational context accumulates a lot of technical debt to cope with constraints such as limited resources and product-market fit uncertainty. While some research has explored technical debt in startups, there is no study that investigates how software startups should make technical debt decisions throughout the startup evolution stages. ObjectiveThe objective of this study is to understand how technical debt decisions are made, and how such decisions should have been made in hindsight. MethodWe conducted a multiple embedded case study to investigate technical debt decisions in five web/mobile app startups. For each case, we interviewed the case founder and developer (a total of 17 participants across cases). In addition, we collected some public documents about the five startups. The data were analyzed using qualitative data analysis techniques. ResultsWe developed a rule-based decision model that summarizes the logic to effectively make technical debt decisions throughout the startup evolution stages. In addition, we evaluated the model by conducting follow-up interviews with three participants. ConclusionThe study provides a decision model that reflects actual practice, and is designed to help software teams in startups when making technical debt decisions throughout the startup evolution stages.

Tribalism in the workplace: Anesthesia providers and others differing perceptions on causes of scheduling delay

PurposeOperating an interventional radiology (IR) service takes the cooperation of a team of physicians, advanced practice providers, nurses, technologists, and anesthesia providers. Addressing delays in patient flow through IR takes the cooperation of all these groups. To measure the varying perceptions of the causes of these delays, IR team members were surveyed regarding the frequency and duration of potential sources of delay. MethodsA 13-question survey regarding perceived causes of potential delays was sent to all staff employed at a single academic center interventional radiology service. The survey responses were grouped by their role on the team: IR practitioners, technologists, nurses, and anesthesia providers. Intergroup rankings were compared using a Tau test. ResultsThere were 47 respondents out of a potential pool of 73 (64%). Significant differences were found between anesthesia providers and all three other groups regarding the most frequent and lengthy causes of pre-procedure and intra-procedure delays—the three other groups all perceived anesthesia delays as more common and severe (P values of 0.001, 0.001, and 0.009 for LIPs, nurses, and techs, respectively). Similarly, LIPs reported significantly different perceptions of the causes of most frequent delays against all 3 other groups (P values of 0.009, 0.009, and 0.001 for nurses, techs, and CRNAs respectively). Each group tended to rank their contributions to delays as less frequent and lengthy than all other groups, as evidenced by the fact that 8/12 pre-procedure rankings attributable to one group showed evidence of this pattern. ConclusionThis survey, at a single institution, revealed significant differences in opinion about the causes of procedure delays with individual groups tending to blame themselves much less for errors than others. Although not generalizable, these results suggest a source of inter-group stress that may be mitigated with improved communication, changes in education, and training in perspective-taking.

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PERFORMANCE OF 3G NETWORKS VOICE SERVICE IN IBADAN METROPOLIS

This paper aims to offer a comparative analysis of the main Nigerian mobile network service provider with reference to 3G voice service. Drive tests were engaged in Ibadan metropolis to acquire some KPI parameters used for the analysis. The findings show that not a single service provider was in good standing across all the KPIs. Thus, the performance of a particular operator is purely a function of the desired KPI parameter.

Two-types of service facilities in interconnected stochastic queueing and queueing-inventory system with marked Markovian arrival process

This article explores the performance of interconnected queueing systems and queueing-inventory systems (IQSQIS) in stochastic modeling. IQSQIS features two types of service facilities with dual service stations: one providing non-commodity service with a multi-server, and another handling commodity sales with a single server. As directed, a customer type i,i=1,2 can approach the station i,i=1,2 whose arrival pattern follows the marked Markovian arrival process (MMAP) since we assume that both service stations have an equal arrival phase. The IQSQIS gives an offer to the type-2 customer to choose type-1 service at the end of their service completion. Numerical results suggest that this option reduces customer wait times, orbit size, and overall system costs. The comparative analysis of heterogeneous and homogeneous servers in station-1 and queue-dependent and non-queue-dependent service facilities in station-2 is presented and investigated using the numerical outputs.

Mapping Web Service Characteristics to Queueing Theory Models for Performance Analysis

The article presents a comprehensive analysis of mapping the characteristics of Web services to queueing theory models, specifically the M/M/1 queueing model. The authors aim to establish a theoretical foundation for modeling the performance of Web services and deriving response time formulae. The key points covered in the article are as follows: 1. Analyzing the characteristics of Web services: The article examines the six fundamental characteristics of queueing systems, including arrival patterns, service patterns, queue discipline, system capacity, and the number of servers, and maps them to the Web service environment. 2. Representation using Kendall's notation: The Web service characteristics are represented using Kendall's notation, resulting in the M/M/1/∞/FCFS model, where M denotes exponential distributions for arrival and service patterns, 1 represents a single server, ∞ represents infinite system capacity, and FCFS represents the first-come, first-served queue discipline. 3. Derivation of response time formulae: The article provides a detailed derivation of the response time formulae for the M/M/1 model using stochastic processes, Markov chains, and the birth-death process. The derivation incorporates steady-state conditions and results in a formula that calculates the probability of completing a request within a user-specified response time. 4. Practical applications: The derived response time formula can be used by service providers to determine the probability of completing user requests within specified Service Level Agreements (SLAs). By setting a threshold value (filter value), the service provider can select requests with a higher probability of completion for further processing. Overall, the article contributes to the understanding of Web service performance modeling by establishing a theoretical foundation based on queueing theory. The mapping of Web service characteristics to the M/M/1 model and the derivation of response time formulae provide valuable insights for service providers to analyze and optimize the performance of their Web services while adhering to SLAs

Pilot study of implementing Managing and Adapting Practice in a German psychotherapy master’s program

Despite a significant accumulation of research, there has been little systemic implementation of evidence-based practices (EBP) in youth mental health care. The fragmentation of the evidence base complicates implementation efforts. In light of this challenge, we sought to pilot a system that consolidates and coordinates the entire evidence base in a single direct service model (i.e., Managing and Adapting Practice; MAP) in the context of a legal reform of psychotherapy training in Germany. This pilot study aimed to evaluate the feasibility of the implementation of MAP into the curriculum of the reformed German master's program. Eligible participants were students in the master’s program at Philipps-University Marburg during the winter-term 2022/2023. Students first learned about MAP through introductions and role plays (seminar 1), followed by actively planning and conducting interventions using MAP resources for patients in a case seminar under supervision (seminar 2). A repeated-measures survey was conducted to investigate students’ knowledge gains, perception of MAP and changes in their self-rated confidence to use EBP. Results indicated that students perceive MAP to be manageable to learn. Positive progress was achieved with regard to their knowledge and self-reported confidence to use EBP, although interpretation and generalization of the results are limited by small and homogeneous samples, lack of statistical power and missing comparison groups. The feasibility of the implementation and suitability of measures are discussed. Important implications could be drawn with regard to future investigations.

Distributed Transactions in Microservice Architecture: Informed Decision-making Strategies

The emergence of microservice architecture has revolutionized software development practices by decentralizing components, facilitating scalability, and enabling agility in system design and deployment. There are some benefits of incorporating microservices instead of a single server, however, distributed components introduce extra constraints and complexities in maintaining data consistency as well. As microservices interact independently, coordinating data updates across multiple services becomes challenging, particularly in scenarios where transactional integrity is required. Distributed transactions are one of the solutions for ensuring data consistency across services. Regardless of effectiveness distributed transactions entail different trade-offs and performance implications. Those trade-offs are not always justified. This study highlights the need for a nuanced understanding of distributed transactions in microservices by revisiting challenges in managing distributed transactions within data storage systems. It also represents existing solutions to the different distributed transaction methods. In this paper, through experiments comparing microservices and monolithic systems, the impact of distributed transactions on system performance is evaluated, giving intuition about consequences when a single data source transaction is migrated to the distributed environment. This research also contributes to enhancing understanding and decision-making regarding the utilization of distributed transactions in a microservices architecture. Ultimately, this paper presents an optimized decision-framework for the application of distributed transactions in microservices architecture, aiming to simplify and expedite processes of software architecture for software engineers, solution architects, and developers.

What supports the emotional well-being of peer workers in an NHS mental health service?

Purpose This study aims to explore the experiences of peers working in a range of roles within a single NHS mental health service. This study also aims to provide evidence of the impact of existing support, organisational structure and culture around peer working and provide recommendations for a Good Practice Guide for Peer Working. Peer roles require lived experience of mental health conditions and/or services. While the impact on them of using their own lived experience is not fully understood, anecdotal evidence suggests that peer workers may experience a greater emotional impact than other mental health workers. Burnout and retention are particular concerns. Design/methodology/approach This was a two-stage study using focus groups and reflexive thematic analysis in Stage 1. The key themes formed the basis of the Stage 2 workshop, which provided recommendations for a Good Practice Guide. The study team consisted of peer researchers with lived experience, supported by a Lived Experience Advisory Panel. Findings There is a perceived lack of support and an increased peer burden for peer workers. Recommendations included relevant ongoing training and development; support and supervision; and organisational cultural change. Originality/value Working within a peer-led co-production framework, this study contributes to the development of the evidence base for peer emotional labour. Based on the findings, a Good Practice Guide for Peer Working is being developed to promote good practice for the development of future peer worker roles.

Gossamer: Scaling Image Processing and Reconstruction to Whole Brains.

Neuronal reconstruction-a process that transforms image volumes into 3D geometries and skeletons of cells- bottlenecks the study of brain function, connectomics and pathology. Domain scientists need exact and complete segmentations to study subtle topological differences. Existing methods are diskbound, dense-access, coupled, single-threaded, algorithmically unscalable and require manual cropping of small windows and proofreading of skeletons due to low topological accuracy. Designing a data-intensive parallel solution suited to a neurons' shape, topology and far-ranging connectivity is particularly challenging due to I/O and load-balance, yet by abstracting these vision tasks into strategically ordered specializations of search, we progressively lower memory by 4 orders of magnitude. This enables 1 mouse brain to be fully processed in-memory on a single server, at 67× the scale with 870× less memory while having 78% higher automated yield than APP2, the previous state of the art in performant reconstruction.

Vertical Switching Algorithm for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in Power Grid Heterogeneous Communication Networks

The rapid development of wireless network technology has led to the coexistence of various heterogeneous wireless networks (HWNs). To ensure that users enjoy normal and diversified services, research on vertical switching technology has become an inevitable trend. However, most current vertical switching algorithms only consider static situations or single services, which are not suitable for power grid scenarios. This paper studies the vertical switching problem of wireless heterogeneous networks for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) performing inspection tasks in power grid scenarios. In this model, a UAV for power grid inspection needs to plan its flight trajectory, avoid obstacles, and find the optimal trajectory to reach each inspection point. Throughout the UAV inspection process, we must ensure the quality of communication services for the UAV. The UAV dynamically selects different networks for access at different locations, presenting a dynamic network selection and vertical switching problem. This paper proposes a method that combines trajectory planning and network selection, which first utilizes the A-star algorithm to obtain suitable trajectories, and then evaluates and judges networks based on the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) to determine the most appropriate network. It is worth noting that this paper considers three service requirements and seven network attributes under three types of heterogeneous wireless networks. Numerical results show that this method can better meet the requirements of UAV inspection tasks and reduce the number of switches, thus addressing the issue of terminal vertical switches in power grid scenarios.

Demographic, forensic and service involvement characteristics related to adults referred to a community-based learning disability forensic team pre- and post-COVID-19

Purpose To ensure health, social and criminal justice services are suited to the complex and dynamic needs of people with learning/intellectual disabilities (LD) at risk of offending, it is important to systematically analyse the needs and characteristics of this population. This study aimed to analyse the patterns of referrals to a single community forensic LD service before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach A structured audit was conducted on all referrals to the service (n = 37) across a three-year period (May 2019 – end of July 2022). Findings The majority of the overall sample were male (36, 97%) and Caucasian (24, 65%) with a mean age of 32.9 years and mild LD. The most prevalent current offending type was sexual offending (17, 44%), whereas the most prevalent historical offending type was violence (17, 35%). The most common service/function offered by the service was advice and consultation to other professionals and agencies (10, 19%). The service user and forensic/legal characteristics measured did not differ significantly before and during COVID-19. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the project is the first to systematically analyse and compare community forensic LD service referral patterns before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study also provides an example of how a structured audit tool can be used to benefit individual services and the wider literature on assessing the needs and characteristics of adults with LD who live in the community and are at risk of [re]offending.

Analysis of the Rate and Reasons for Discard Blood and Its Components from 2019 to 2022 in a Single Blood Service in China

Analysis of the Rate and Reasons for Discard Blood and Its Components from 2019 to 2022 in a Single Blood Service in China

TSAPP: Threshold Single-Sign-On Authentication Preserving Privacy

Single-sign-on (SSO) authentication enables a user to gain a token from the identity server, with which the user accesses multiple services. To address single-point-of-failure of SSO, threshold SSO, where a group of identity servers issue a user with a token in the threshold manner, is introduced. SSO including threshold schemes suffers from privacy disclosure. One can learn a user's identity and access pattern from her/his token. Recent works focus on privacy preservation of SSO. However, these works merely consider scenarios of one single identity server SSO. No works that address privacy preservation of threshold SSO have emerged. In this work, we propose TSAPP, a threshold SSO authentication scheme preserving privacy. Each identity server issues a user with a partial token which is a signature on the user's pseudonym. With a threshold number of partial tokens, the user constructs a token, blinds the token with random numbers and accesses services with blinded tokens. Such mechanism preserves the user's identity, simultaneously protects the user's access pattern since adversaries cannot link the user's accesses, even if identity servers are corrupted. Security analysis demonstrates that TSAPP satisfies properties of anonymity, unlinkability, unforgeability and password-safety. The performance evaluation demonstrates that TSAPP is efficient in practice.

Early intervention for children and young people with neurodevelopmental conditions and intellectual disability: “The Getting Help” offer for Northwest England

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to outline what early support should be offered to children and young people with neurodevelopmental conditions including those who are autistic or have intellectual disability. A review of all child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) services in the Northwest completed by NHS England and Improvement (Doyle and Ryan, 2021) found that there was no clear Tier 2 offer (for mild to moderate mental health issues) for autistic children and young people or for those with intellectual disability. Following this review, a project group that had developed a model for mental health services for autistic children and young people and for those with intellectual disability (Wee et al., 2021) was tasked with articulating the “Getting Help” offer for children and young people with neurodevelopmental conditions, including intellectual disability. Design/methodology/approach A working group was created consisting of professionals from mental health, education and local authority and lived experience representatives of coproduction partners. A brief review of the background literature was also conducted. Six meetings were held to create a framework for the “Getting Help” offer and to discuss what the offer should be based on professional expertise and lived experience. Findings Recommendations for the Getting Help multi-agency offer included pre- and post-assessment support as part of a single attention deficit hyperactivity disorder/autism/neurodevelopmental pathway, community support for children with intellectual disability, access to adapted mental health support and the need for early recognition and support for avoidant and restrictive food intake disorder. Key themes from working group discussions included the reduction in the quality of services experienced by children and families due to silo working, which increased the risk of falling between multi-agency services and led to early signs of neurodevelopmental needs, or mental health issues being missed. Another theme was aiming for equity of access and outcomes. Originality/value This work is a response to a coproduced review of CAMHS in the Northwest and incorporates the lived experience of young people and families. It also adopts a holistic multi-agency neurodevelopmental approach rather than focusing on a single diagnosis or service.