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Load balancing is vital for the efficient and long-term operation of cloud data centers. With virtualization, post (reactive) migration of virtual machines after allocation is the traditional way for load balancing and consolidation. However, reactive migration is not easy to obtain predefined load balance objectives and may interrupt services and bring instability. Therefore, we provide a new approach, called Prepartition, for load balancing. It partitions a VM request into a few sub-requests sequentially with start time, end time and capacity demands, and treats each sub-request as a regular VM request. In this way, it can proactively set a bound for each VM request on each physical machine and makes the scheduler get ready before VM migration to obtain the predefined load balancing goal, which supports the resource allocation in a fine-grained manner. Simulations with real-world trace and synthetic data show that Prepartition for offline (PrepartitionOff) scheduling has 10%-20% better performance than the existing load balancing algorithms under several metrics, including average utilization, imbalance degree, makespan and Capacity_makespan. We also extend Prepartition to online load balancing. Evaluation results show that our proposed approach also outperforms existing online algorithms., 10 figures, 5 tables, 21 pages, accepted with minor in Journal of Computer Science and Technology

Can advanced deep learning technologies be applied to analyze some ancient humanistic arts? Can deep learning technologies be directly applied to special scenes such as facial expression analysis of Terracotta Warriors? The big challenging is that the facial features of the Terracotta Warriors are very different from today's people. We found that it is very poor to directly use the models that have been trained on other classic facial expression datasets to analyze the facial expressions of the Terracotta Warriors. At the same time, the lack of public high-quality facial expression data of the Terracotta Warriors also limits the use of deep learning technologies. Therefore, we firstly use Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to generate enough high-quality facial expression data for subsequent training and recognition. We also verify the effectiveness of this approach. For the first time, this paper uses deep learning technologies to find common facial expressions of general and postured Terracotta Warriors. These results will provide an updated technical means for the research of art of the Terracotta Warriors and shine lights on the research of other ancient arts.

Cloud computing has rapidly emerged as model for delivering Internet-based utility computing services. In cloud computing, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is one of the most important and rapidly growing fields. Cloud providers provide users/machines resources such as virtual machines, raw (block) storage, firewalls, load balancers, and network devices in this service model. One of the most important aspects of cloud computing for IaaS is resource management. Scalability, quality of service, optimum utility, reduced overheads, increased throughput, reduced latency, specialised environment, cost effectiveness, and a streamlined interface are some of the advantages of resource management for IaaS in cloud computing. Traditionally, resource management has been done through static policies, which impose certain limitations in various dynamic scenarios, prompting cloud service providers to adopt data-driven, machine-learning-based approaches. Machine learning is being used to handle a variety of resource management tasks, including workload estimation, task scheduling, VM consolidation, resource optimization, and energy optimization, among others. This paper provides a detailed review of challenges in ML-based resource management in current research, as well as current approaches to resolve these challenges, as well as their advantages and limitations. Finally, we propose potential future research directions based on identified challenges and limitations in current research.

As the quantity and complexity of information processed by software systems increase, large-scale software systems have an increasing requirement for high-performance distributed computing systems. With the acceleration of the Internet in Web 2.0, Cloud computing as a paradigm to provide dynamic, uncertain and elastic services has shown superiorities to meet the computing needs dynamically. Without an appropriate scheduling approach, extensive Cloud computing may cause high energy consumptions and high cost, in addition that high energy consumption will cause massive carbon dioxide emissions. Moreover, inappropriate scheduling will reduce the service life of physical devices as well as increase response time to users' request. Hence, efficient scheduling of resource or optimal allocation of request, that usually a NP-hard problem, is one of the prominent issues in emerging trends of Cloud computing. Focusing on improving quality of service (QoS), reducing cost and abating contamination, researchers have conducted extensive work on resource scheduling problems of Cloud computing over years. Nevertheless, growing complexity of Cloud computing, that the super-massive distributed system, is limiting the application of scheduling approaches. Machine learning, a utility method to tackle problems in complex scenes, is used to resolve the resource scheduling of Cloud computing as an innovative idea in recent years. Deep reinforcement learning (DRL), a combination of deep learning (DL) and reinforcement learning (RL), is one branch of the machine learning and has a considerable prospect in resource scheduling of Cloud computing. This paper surveys the methods of resource scheduling with focus on DRL-based scheduling approaches in Cloud computing, also reviews the application of DRL as well as discusses challenges and future directions of DRL in scheduling of Cloud computing., 18 pages,9 figures

With the rapid development of deep learning, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) began to appear in the field of resource scheduling in recent years. Based on the previous research on DRL in the literature, we introduce online resource scheduling algorithm DeepRM2 and the offline resource scheduling algorithm DeepRM_Off. Compared with the state-of-the-art DRL algorithm DeepRM and heuristic algorithms, our proposed algorithms have faster convergence speed and better scheduling efficiency with regarding to average slowdown time, job completion time and rewards.

In computational complexity theory, a decision problem is NP-complete when it is both in NP and NP-hard. Although a solution to a NP-complete can be verified quickly, there is no known algorithm to solve it in polynomial time. There exists a method to reduce a SAT (Satifiability) problem to Subset Sum Problem (SSP) in the literature, however, it can only be applied to small or medium size problems. Our study is to find an efficient method to transform a SAT problem to a mixed integer linear programming problem in larger size. Observing the feature of variable-clauses constraints in SAT, we apply linear inequality model (LIM) to the problem and propose a method called LIMSAT. The new method can work efficiently for very large size problem with thousands of variables and clauses in SAT tested using up-to-date benchmarks.

The question of whether all problems in NP class are also in P class is generally considered one of the most important open questions in mathematics and theoretical computer science as it has far-reaching consequences to other problems in mathematics, computer science, biology, philosophy and cryptography. There are intensive research on proving `NP not equal to P' and `NP equals to P'. However, none of the `proved' results is commonly accepted by the research community up to date. In this paper, motived by approximability of traveling salesman problem (TSP) in polynomial time, we aim to provide a new perspective: showing that NP=P from polynomial time approximation-bounded solutions of TSP in Euclidean space., 9. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1502.00447

In this paper, we apply an equivalent color transform (ECT) for a minimal $k$-coloring of any graph $G$. It contracts each color class of the graph to a single vertex and produces a complete graph $K_k$ for $G$ by removing redundant edges between any two vertices. Based on ECT, a simple proof for four color theorem for planar graph is then proposed., Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure

MapReduce is a popular parallel computing paradigm for Big Data processing in clusters and data centers. It is observed that different job execution orders and MapReduce slot configurations for a MapReduce workload have significantly different performance with regarding to the makespan, total completion time, system utilization and other performance metrics. There are quite a few algorithms on minimizing makespan of multiple MapReduce jobs. However, these algorithms are heuristic or suboptimal. The best known algorithm for minimizing the makespan is 3-approximation by applying Johnson rule. In this paper, we propose an approach called UAAS algorithm to meet the conditions of classical Johnson model. Then we can still use Johnson model for an optimal solution. We explain how to adapt to Johnson model and provide a few key features of our proposed method., Comment: Under Review of IEEE Trans. on Service Computing

In virtualized data centers, consolidation of Virtual Machines (VMs) on minimizing the number of total physical machines (PMs) has been recognized as a very efficient approach. This paper considers the energy-efficient consolidation of VMs in a Cloud Data center. Concentrating on CPU-intensive applications, the objective is to schedule all requests non-preemptively, subjecting to constraints of PM capacities and running time interval spans, such that the total energy consumption of all PMs is minimized (called MinTE for abbreviation). The MinTE problem is NP-complete in general. We propose a self-adaptive approached called SAVE. The approach makes decisions of the assignment and migration of VMs by probabilistic processes and is based exclusively on local information, therefore it is very simple to implement. Both simulation and real environment test show that our proposed method SAVE can reduce energy consumption about 30% against VMWare DRS and 10-20% against EcoCloud on average., Comment: Under Review of GlobalCom

The emergence of cloud computing based on virtualization technologies brings huge opportunities to host virtual resource at low cost without the need of owning any infrastructure. Virtualization technologies enable users to acquire, configure and be charged on pay-per-use basis. However, Cloud data centers mostly comprise heterogeneous commodity servers hosting multiple virtual machines (VMs) with potential various specifications and fluctuating resource usages, which may cause imbalanced resource utilization within servers that may lead to performance degradation and service level agreements (SLAs) violations. To achieve efficient scheduling, these challenges should be addressed and solved by using load balancing strategies, which have been proved to be NP-hard problem. From multiple perspectives, this work identifies the challenges and analyzes existing algorithms for allocating VMs to PMs in infrastructure Clouds, especially focuses on load balancing. A detailed classification targeting load balancing algorithms for VM placement in cloud data centers is investigated and the surveyed algorithms are classified according to the classification. The goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive and comparative understanding of existing literature and aid researchers by providing an insight for potential future enhancements., Comment: 22 Pages, 4 Figures, 4 Tables, in press

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) takes advantage of hardware virtualization to undertake software processing for various functions, and complements the drawbacks of traditional network technology. To speed up NFV related research, we need a user friendly and easy to use research tool, which could support data center simulation, scheduling algorithms implementation and extension, and provide energy consumption simulation. As a cloud simulation toolkit, CloudSim has strong extendibility that could be extended to simulate NFV environment. This paper introduces a NFV cloud framework based on CloudSim and an energy consumption model based on multi-dimensional extension, implementing a toolkit named ClousimNFV to simulate the NFV scenario, proposing several scheduling algorithm based on for NFV applications. The toolkit validation and algorithm performance comparison are also given., Cloud Computing, Network Function Virtualization, Simulation Toolkit, Energy Consumption Model, Scheduling Algorithm

It is significant to apply load-balancing strategy to improve the performance and reliability of resource in data centers. One of the challenging scheduling problems in Cloud data centers is to take the allocation and migration of reconfigurable virtual machines (VMs) as well as the integrated features of hosting physical machines (PMs) into consideration. In the reservation model, the workload of data centers has fixed process interval characteristics. In general, load-balance scheduling is NP-hard problem as proved in many open literatures. Traditionally, for offline load balance without migration, one of the best approaches is LPT (Longest Process Time first), which is well known to have approximation ratio 4/3. With virtualization, reactive (post) migration of VMs after allocation is one popular way for load balance and traffic consolidation. However, reactive migration has difficulty to reach predefined load balance objectives, and may cause interruption and instability of service and other associated costs. In view of this, we propose a new paradigm, called Prepartition, it proactively sets process-time bound for each request on each PM and prepares in advance to migrate VMs to achieve the predefined balance goal. Prepartition can reduce process time by preparing VM migration in advance and therefore reduce instability and achieve better load balance as desired. We also apply the Prepartition to online (PrepartitionOn) load balance and compare it with existing online scheduling algorithms. Both theoretical and experimental results are provided., 12 pages, 11 figures

NP complete problem is one of the most challenging issues. The question of whether all problems in NP are also in P is generally considered one of the most important open questions in mathematics and theoretical computer science as it has far-reaching consequences to other problems in mathematics, computer science, biology, philosophy and cryptography. There are intensive research on proving `NP not equal to P' and `NP equals to P'. However, none of the `proved' results is commonly accepted by the research community up to now. In this paper, instead of proving either one, we aim to provide new perspective: transforming two typical NP complete problems to exactly solvable P problems in polynomial time. This approach helps to solve originally NP complete problems with practical applications. It may shine light on solving other NP complete problems in similar way., 10 pages

The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is one of the most challenging NP-hard problems. It has widely applications in various disciplines such as physics, biology, computer science and so forth. The best known approximation algorithm for Symmetric TSP (STSP) whose cost matrix satisfies the triangle inequality (called $\triangle$STSP) is Christofides algorithm which was proposed in 1976 and is a $\frac{3}{2}$-approximation. Since then no proved improvement is made and improving upon this bound is a fundamental open question in combinatorial optimization. In this paper, for the first time, we propose Truncated Generalized Beta distribution (TGB) for the probability distribution of optimal tour lengths in a TSP. We then introduce an iterative TGB approach to obtain quality-proved near optimal approximation, i.e., (1+$\frac{1}{2}(\frac{\alpha+1}{\alpha+2})^{K-1}$)-approximation where $K$ is the number of iterations in TGB and $\alpha (>>1)$ is the shape parameters of TGB. The result can approach the true optimum as $K$ increases., Comment: 10 pages

Cloud Data centers aim to provide reliable, sustainable and scalable services for all kinds of applications. Resource scheduling is one of keys to cloud services. To model and evaluate different scheduling policies and algorithms, we propose FlexCloud, a flexible and scalable simulator that enables users to simulate the process of initializing cloud data centers, allocating virtual machine requests and providing performance evaluation for various scheduling algorithms. FlexCloud can be run on a single computer with JVM to simulate large scale cloud environments with focus on infrastructure as a service; adopts agile design patterns to assure the flexibility and extensibility; models virtual machine migrations which is lack in the existing tools; provides user-friendly interfaces for customized configurations and replaying. Comparing to existing simulators, FlexCloud has combining features for supporting public cloud providers, load-balance and energy-efficiency scheduling. FlexCloud has advantage in computing time and memory consumption to support large-scale simulations. The detailed design of FlexCloud is introduced and performance evaluation is provided.

Intratumoral administration of adenoviral vector encoding herpes simplex virus (HSV) thymidine kinase (TK) gene (Ad-TK) followed by systemic ganciclovir (GCV) is an effective approach in treating experimental hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, hepatotoxicity due to unwanted vector spread and suicide gene expression limited the application of this therapy. miR-122 is an abundant, liver-specific microRNA whose expression is decreased in human primary HCC and HCC-derived cell lines. These different expression profiles provide an opportunity to induce tumor-specific gene expression by miR-122 regulation.By inserting miR-122 target sequences (miR-122T) in the 3' untranslated region (UTR) of TK gene, we constructed adenovirus (Ad) vectors expressing miR-122-regulated TK (Ad-TK-122T) and report genes. After intratumoral administration of Ad vectors into an orthotopic miR-122-deficient HCC mouse model, we observed the miR-122-regulated transgene expression and assessed the antitumor activity and safety of Ad-TK-122T.Insertion of miR-122T specifically down-regulated transgene expression in vitro and selectively protected the miR-122-positive cells from killing by TK/GCV treatment. Insertion of miR-122T led to significant reduction of tansgene expression in the liver without inhibition of its expression in tumors in vivo, resulting in an 11-fold improvement of tumor-specific transgene expression. Intratumoral injection of Ad vectors mediated TK/GCV system led to a vector dosage-dependent regression of tumor. The insertion of miR-122T does not influence the antitumor effects of suicide gene therapy. Whereas mice administrated with Ad-TK showed severe lethal hepatotoxicity at the effective therapeutic dose, no liver damage was found in Ad-TK-122T group.miR-122-regulated TK expression achieved effective anti-tumor effects and increased the safety of intratumoral delivery of adenovirus-mediated TK/GCV gene therapy for miR-122-deficient HCC.