The Social Determinants of Health Screening Tool (SDoHST) underwent qualitative validation at Lyell McEwin Hospital in Adelaide, South Australia, involving patient and stakeholder focus groups. The study, funded by SA Health and the University of Adelaide, led to the SDoHST being the first validated tool in Australia for measuring health-related social needs (HRSNs). The validation process resulted in the addition and removal of items, with the final version comprising 12 items. The tool aims to help healthcare systems identify and address unmet social needs through community service referrals.

Apache Spark 2.0 is set to enhance real-time data analysis with a new feature called structured streaming, allowing interactive queries against live data. This advancement, introduced by Spark founder Matei Zaharia at the Spark Summit East in New York, aims to simplify the processing of streaming data by eliminating the need for a separate database or data warehouse. Structured streaming integrates streaming with batch jobs and interactive querying, and is accessible through a declarative API. It builds on the Spark SQL Engine and Spark Streaming functionality, and benefits from Project Tungsten's performance optimizations. The 2.0 version, expected around April or May, will introduce structured streaming, with more features to be added in future updates. Project manager Reynold Xin will provide further details at the Summit.

Pivotal has announced that its Cloud Foundry platform now supports Docker container images, emphasizing that while Docker is popular, it is one of the least sophisticated container management systems. Pivotal's James Watters highlighted the integration of Docker with Pivotal's advanced container management system, aiming at large enterprises. The article also discusses the importance of Spring Cloud Services over Docker for deploying microservices and mentions Pivotal's partnership with CloudBees for continuous integration and delivery tooling. Pivotal positions itself as providing a sophisticated enterprise solution for managing container formats, likening Docker to a 'PDF' and itself to 'Adobe Photoshop' in the container world.

Google has officially launched Google Container Engine, a commercial product version of Kubernetes, marking its transition from beta. The service, which is integrated into the Google Developers Console, allows developers to create clusters for container deployment. Starting November 1, pricing will be implemented, with the first five clusters free and subsequent clusters charged at 15 cents per hour. Google Container Engine is designed to simplify container orchestration, building on Docker's container concept but focusing on the orchestration aspect for business. Craig McLuckie, co-creator of Kubernetes, envisions a future where underlying infrastructure like conventional VMs will be obsolete, replaced by dynamic scheduling and cloud-native computing. Google's role as the steward of the Cloud-Native Computing Foundation positions it to potentially lead the orchestration landscape, competing with Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Docker has released its orchestration toolkit, which includes Docker Machine, Docker Swarm, and Docker Compose, to demonstrate its commitment to 100% portability and flexibility for developers. The toolkit allows for the orchestration of multi-container, multi-host applications across various data server hosting infrastructures, supporting hybrid cloud architectures. Docker Machine automates host infrastructure provisioning and Docker Engine installation, while Docker Swarm optimizes infrastructure based on application needs. Docker Compose uses a YAML file for application container management. Mesosphere has integrated with Docker Swarm using the Swarm API, offering an alternative optimization product for large-scale container orchestration. Docker emphasizes its open collaboration with ecosystem partners and the freedom for developers to choose how to build, ship, and run their applications.

Microservices, a technology trend for creating modular and independently deployable services, is discussed with a focus on its adoption challenges and benefits. The article outlines four checklists to guide organizations considering microservices: identifying monolithic application issues, essential components for microservices, strategies for starting with microservices, and potential pitfalls to watch out for. Companies like Nike, Netflix, and Twitter are cited as pioneers in adopting microservices. The author, Vivek Juneja, shares insights based on his experience with cloud platforms and microservices since 2008.

Steve Wilmott, Co-Founder and CEO of 3Scale, demonstrates APIcast, a cloud-based proxy for managing and securing APIs. The tutorial shows how APIcast can be used to gain visibility, analytics, and protection against brute force attacks for APIs. Wilmott configures APIcast with APIs.io, demonstrating key generation and authentication failure upon key change. APIcast offers rate limiting and a developer portal with a Swagger specification for documentation, free for up to 50,000 transactions per day.

Docker, Inc. announced a new suite of open platform and orchestration services for application development and deployment at DockerCon Europe. The services include Docker Machine, Swarm, and Compose, designed to manage environments for Docker applications. The company also released an open API for Docker Machine, with Swarm and Compose APIs expected in the first half of 2015. Ecosystem partners are awaiting these APIs to integrate their products with Docker Engine. Red Hat's Lars Herrmann acknowledged the need for container orchestration services but questioned whether Docker should be the provider.

The 2014 Data Science Survey by O'Reilly Media, released at Strata and Hadoop World, highlights the higher wages for data scientists using open source tools, particularly in the Hadoop ecosystem. The survey of 816 professionals across 53 countries found that open source data tools are crucial, with each tool used in the Hadoop ecosystem adding $1,645 to a data scientist's salary. However, it also revealed a gender pay gap, with women in data science earning $13,000 less than their male counterparts, a disparity not explained by tool use or other factors. The survey also noted the value of data scientists skilled in cloud environments and the popularity of tools like Storm and Spark. Upcoming events like Hack.Summit() aim to address gender and diversity inequality in IT.