bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
jMarkov package
Authors: Cote Marco , Riano German , Akhavan-Tabatabaei Raha , Perez Juan Fernando , Sarmiento Andres , Goez Julio
Published: April 2012

When analyzing real life stochastic systems in most cases is easier, cheaper and more effective to use analytical models rather than studying the physical system or a simulation model of it. The stochastic modeling is a powerful tool that helps the analysis and optimization of stochastic systems.

However the use of stochastic modeling is not widely spread in today's industries and among practitioners. This lack of acceptance is caused by two main reasons the first being the curse of dimensionality, which is defined by the number of states required to describe a system. This number grows exponentially as the size of the system increases. The second reason is the lack of user-friendly and efficient software packages that allow the modeling of the problem without involving the user with the implementation of the solution algorithms to solve it.

The curse of dimensionality is a constant problem that has been addressed by different approaches through time, but it is not intended within the scope of our work; our focus is on the latter issue. We propose a generic solver that enables the user to focus on modeling without getting involved in the complexity required by the solution methods.

We design an object oriented framework for stochastic modeling with four components namely, jMarkov which models Markov Chains, jQBD which models Quasi Birth and Death Processes, jPhase which models Phase Types Distributions and jMDP which models Markov Decision Processes. We concentrate all our effort on creating a software that allows the user to model any kind of system like a Markov Chain, QBD or MDP with fairly basic knowledge of programming. To this end we separate the modeling part from the solution algorithms; therefore the user only needs to mathematically model the problem and the software will do the rest. However, we leave the package with the possibility that experienced users can code their own solution algorithms; this is done since the package only contains the most common algorithms found in the literature.

The software does not use external plain files like '.txt' or '.dat' written with specific commands, but rather it is based on OOP (Object Oriented Programming). The main advantages of it include implementation in Java framework, which allows the computational representation of the model to be very similar to its mathematical representation such that it would become natural to pass from one to another. Also the program possesses the usual characteristics of Java such as the use of inheritance and abstraction. Finally, Java is a high level computational language so the user doesn't need to be concerned about technical problems.
Service-oriented dynamic data driven application systems to urban traffic management in resource-bounded environment
Authors: Lin Szu-Yin , Chao Kuo-Ming , Lo Chi-Chun
Published: April 2012

With advance in distributed system technology, data has become ubiquitous and its dynamics has increased. Therefore, in this paper we proposed a new framework to integrate dynamic data driven application systems (DDDAS) with service-oriented architecture (SOA) and web services technology to tackle dynamic data issue in a real-time and resource-bounded environment. Nowadays, traffic management in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) has been widely developed in major cities' urban areas around the world to provide more efficient way for solving traffic congestion problem. However, the problems in dynamic traffic management systems such as system flexibility, data standard common interface, transmission of required information, prediction performance, and real-time measurement data are all important issues but not totally supported. An efficient and effective service-oriented dynamic data-driven framework algorithm is designed in this paper to support prediction strategies for traffic management. The simulation results of vehicle navigation show that our algorithm outperforms the Dijkstra algorithm by improving 24.43% in average vehicle travelling time. On the other hand, the results of traffic signal control also show that our algorithm improves the performance in vehicles average number of stops by 43.7%, and 70.62% in average delay time that is compared with the fixed time control method.
Activities of ACM SIGSPATIAL Australia Chapter in 2011
Authors: Tanin Egemen , Sharaf Mohamed A.
Published: April 2012

During 2011, ACM SIGSPATIAL Australia Chapter, standing at 14 members, has continued its role to support and enrich the spatial database research in Australia. Throughout the year, the chapter officers and members were engaged in several activities within the chapter's overarching goals.
Reflex
Authors: Lin Felix Xiaozhu , Wang Zhen , LiKamWa Robert , Zhong Lin
Published: April 2012

To accomplish frequent, simple tasks with high efficiency, it is necessary to leverage low-power, microcontroller-like processors that are increasingly available on mobile systems. However, existing solutions require developers to directly program the low-power processors and carefully manage inter-processor communication. We present Reflex, a suite of compiler and runtime techniques that significantly lower the barrier for developers to leverage such low-power processors. The heart of Reflex is a software Distributed Shared Memory (DSM) that enables shared memory objects with release consistency among code running on loosely coupled processors. In order to achieve high energy efficiency without sacrificing performance much, the Reflex DSM leverages (i) extreme architectural asymmetry between low-power processors and powerful central processors, (ii) aggressive compile-time optimization, and (iii) a minimalist runtime that supports efficient message passing and event-driven execution. We report a complete realization of Reflex that runs on a TI OMAP4430-based development platform as well as on a custom tri-processor mobile platform. Using smartphone sensing applications reported in recent literature, we show that Reflex supports a programming style very close to contemporary smartphone programming. Compared to message passing, the Reflex DSM greatly reduces efforts in programming heterogeneous smartphones, eliminating up to 38% of the source lines of application code. Compared to running the same applications on existing smartphones, Reflex reduces the average system power consumption by up to 81%.
Clearing the clouds
Authors: Ferdman Michael , Adileh Almutaz , Kocberber Onur , Volos Stavros , Alisafaee Mohammad , Jevdjic Djordje , Kaynak Cansu , Popescu Adrian Daniel , Ailamaki Anastasia , Falsafi Babak
Published: April 2012

Emerging scale-out workloads require extensive amounts of computational resources. However, data centers using modern server hardware face physical constraints in space and power, limiting further expansion and calling for improvements in the computational density per server and in the per-operation energy. Continuing to improve the computational resources of the cloud while staying within physical constraints mandates optimizing server efficiency to ensure that server hardware closely matches the needs of scale-out workloads.

In this work, we introduce CloudSuite, a benchmark suite of emerging scale-out workloads. We use performance counters on modern servers to study scale-out workloads, finding that today's predominant processor micro-architecture is inefficient for running these workloads. We find that inefficiency comes from the mismatch between the workload needs and modern processors, particularly in the organization of instruction and data memory systems and the processor core micro-architecture. Moreover, while today's predominant micro-architecture is inefficient when executing scale-out workloads, we find that continuing the current trends will further exacerbate the inefficiency in the future. In this work, we identify the key micro-architectural needs of scale-out workloads, calling for a change in the trajectory of server processors that would lead to improved computational density and power efficiency in data centers.
Iterative optimization for the data center
Authors: Chen Yang , Fang Shuangde , Eeckhout Lieven , Temam Olivier , Wu Chengyong
Published: April 2012

Iterative optimization is a simple but powerful approach that searches for the best possible combination of compiler optimizations for a given workload. However, each program, if not each data set, potentially favors a different combination. As a result, iterative optimization is plagued by several practical issues that prevent it from being widely used in practice: a large number of runs are required for finding the best combination; the process can be data set dependent; and the exploration process incurs significant overhead that needs to be compensated for by performance benefits.Therefore, while iterative optimization has been shown to have significant performance potential, it is seldomly used in production compilers.

In this paper, we propose Iterative Optimization for the Data Center (IODC): we show that servers and data centers offer a context in which all of the above hurdles can be overcome. The basic idea is to spawn different combinations across workers and recollect performance statistics at the master, which then evolves to the optimum combination of compiler optimizations. IODC carefully manages costs and benefits, and is transparent to the end user. We evaluate IODC using both MapReduce and throughput compute-intensive server applications. In order to reflect the large number of users interacting with the system, we gather a very large collection of data sets (at least 1000 and up to several million unique data sets per program), for a total storage of 10.7TB, and 568 days of CPU time. We report an average performance improvement of 1.48×, and up to 2.08×, for the MapReduce applications, and 1.14×, and up to 1.39×, for the throughput compute-intensive server applications.
Understanding modern device drivers
Authors: Kadav Asim , Swift Michael M.
Published: April 2012

Device drivers are the single largest contributor to operating-system kernel code with over 5 million lines of code in the Linux kernel, and cause significant complexity, bugs and development costs. Recent years have seen a flurry of research aimed at improving the reliability and simplifying the development of drivers. However, little is known about what constitutes this huge body of code beyond the small set of drivers used for research.

In this paper, we study the source code of Linux drivers to understand what drivers actually do, how current research applies to them and what opportunities exist for future research. We determine whether assumptions made by most driver research, such as that all drivers belong to a class, are indeed true. We also analyze driver code and abstractions to determine whether drivers can benefit from code re-organization or hardware trends. We develop a set of static-analysis tools to analyze driver code across various axes. Broadly, our study looks at three aspects of driver code (i) what are the characteristics of driver code functionality and how applicable is driver research to
all
drivers, (ii) how do drivers interact with the kernel, devices, and buses, and (iii) are there similarities that can be abstracted into libraries to reduce driver size and complexity?

We find that many assumptions made by driver research do not apply to all drivers. At least 44% of drivers have code that is not captured by a class definition, 28% of drivers support more than one device per driver, and 15% of drivers do significant computation over data. From the driver interactions study, we find USB bus offers an efficient bus interface with significant standardized code and coarse-grained access, ideal for executing drivers in isolation. We also find that drivers for different buses and classes have widely varying levels of device interaction, which indicates that the cost of isolation will vary by class. Finally, from our driver similarity study, we find 8% of all driver code is substantially similar to code elsewhere and may be removed with new abstractions or libraries.
Continuous object access profiling and optimizations to overcome the memory wall and bloat
Authors: Odaira Rei , Nakatani Toshio
Published: April 2012

Future microprocessors will have more serious memory wall problems since they will include more cores and threads in each chip. Similarly, future applications will have more serious memory bloat problems since they are more often written using object-oriented languages and reusable frameworks. To overcome such problems, the language runtime environments must accurately and efficiently profile how programs access objects. We propose Barrier Profiler, a low-overhead object access profiler using a memory-protection-based approach called pointer barrierization and adaptive overhead reduction techniques. Unlike previous memory-protection-based techniques, pointer barrierization offers per-object protection by converting all of the pointers to a given object to corresponding barrier pointers that point to protected pages. Barrier Profiler achieves low overhead by not causing signals at object accesses that are unrelated to the needed profiles, based on profile feedback and a compiler analysis. Our experimental results showed Barrier Profiler provided sufficiently accurate profiles with 1.3% on average and at most 3.4% performance overhead for allocation-intensive benchmarks, while previous code-instrumentation-based techniques suffered from 9.2% on average and at most 12.6% overhead. The low overhead allows Barrier Profiler to be run continuously on production systems. Using Barrier Profiler, we implemented two new online optimizations to compress write-only character arrays and to adjust the initial sizes of mostly non-accessed arrays. They resulted in speed-ups of up to 8.6% and 36%, respectively.
Data races vs. data race bugs
Authors: Kasikci Baris , Zamfir Cristian , Candea George
Published: April 2012

Even though most data races are harmless, the harmful ones are at the heart of some of the worst concurrency bugs. Alas, spotting just the harmful data races in programs is like finding a needle in a haystack: 76%-90% of the true data races reported by state-of-the-art race detectors turn out to be harmless [45]. We present Portend, a tool that not only detects races but also automatically classifies them based on their potential consequences: Could they lead to crashes or hangs? Could their effects be visible outside the program? Are they harmless? Our proposed technique achieves high accuracy by efficiently analyzing multiple paths and multiple thread schedules in combination, and by performing symbolic comparison between program outputs.

We ran Portend on 7 real-world applications: it detected 93 true data races and correctly classified 92 of them, with no human effort. 6 of them are harmful races. Portend's classification accuracy is up to 88% higher than that of existing tools, and it produces easy-to-understand evidence of the consequences of harmful races, thus both proving their harmfulness and making debugging easier. We envision Portend being used for testing and debugging, as well as for automatically triaging bug reports.
Scalable address spaces using RCU balanced trees
Authors: Clements Austin T. , Kaashoek M. Frans , Zeldovich Nickolai
Published: April 2012

Software developers commonly exploit multicore processors by building multithreaded software in which all threads of an application share a single address space. This shared address space has a cost: kernel virtual memory operations such as handling soft page faults, growing the address space, mapping files, etc. can limit the scalability of these applications. In widely-used operating systems, all of these operations are synchronized by a single per-process lock. This paper contributes a new design for increasing the concurrency of kernel operations on a shared address space by exploiting read-copy-update (RCU) so that soft page faults can both run in parallel with operations that mutate the same address space and avoid contending with other page faults on shared cache lines. To enable such parallelism, this paper also introduces an RCU-based binary balanced tree for storing memory mappings. An experimental evaluation using three multithreaded applications shows performance improvements on 80 cores ranging from 1.7x to 3.4x for an implementation of this design in the Linux 2.6.37 kernel. The RCU-based binary tree enables soft page faults to run at a constant cost with an increasing number of cores,suggesting that the design will scale well beyond 80 cores.
Applying transactional memory to concurrency bugs
Authors: Volos Haris , Tack Andres Jaan , Swift Michael M. , Lu Shan
Published: April 2012

Multithreaded programs often suffer from synchronization bugs such as atomicity violations and deadlocks. These bugs arise from complicated locking strategies and ad hoc synchronization methods to avoid the use of locks. A survey of the bug databases of major open-source applications shows that concurrency bugs often take multiple fix attempts, and that fixes often introduce yet more concurrency bugs. Transactional memory (TM) enables programmers to declare regions of code atomic without specifying a lock and has the potential to avoid these bugs. Where most previous studies have focused on using TM to write new programs from scratch, we consider its utility in fixing existing programs with concurrency bugs. We therefore investigate four methods of using TM on three concurrent programs. Overall, we find that 29% of the bugs are not fixable by transactional memory, showing that TM does not address many important types of concurrency bugs. In particular, TM works poorly with extremely long critical sections and with deadlocks involving both condition variables and I/O. Conversely, we find that for 56% of the bugs, transactional memory offers demonstrable value by simplifying the reasoning behind a fix or the effort to implement a fix, and using transactions in the first place would have avoided 71% of the bugs examined. We also find that ad hoc synchronization put in place to avoid the overhead of locking can be greatly simplified with TM, but requires hardware support to perform well.
SIMD defragmenter
Authors: Park Yongjun , Seo Sangwon , Park Hyunchul , Cho Hyoun Kyu , Mahlke Scott
Published: April 2012

Single-instruction multiple-data (SIMD) accelerators provide an energy-efficient platform to scale the performance of mobile systems while still retaining post-programmability. The central challenge is translating the parallel resources of the SIMD hardware into real application performance. In scientific applications, automatic vectorization techniques have proven quite effective at extracting large levels of data-level parallelism (DLP). However, vectorization is often much less effective for media applications due to low trip count loops, complex control flow, and non-uniform execution behavior. As a result, SIMD lanes remain idle due to insufficient DLP. To attack this problem, this paper proposes a new vectorization pass called
SIMD Defragmenter
to uncover hidden DLP that lurks below the surface in the form of instruction-level parallelism (ILP). The difficulty is managing the data packing/unpacking overhead that can easily exceed the benefits gained through SIMD execution. The SIMD degragmenter overcomes this problem by identifying groups of compatible instructions (subgraphs) that can be executed in parallel across the SIMD lanes. By SIMDizing in bulk at the subgraph level, packing/unpacking overhead is minimized. On a 16-lane SIMD processor, experimental results show that SIMD defragmentation achieves a mean 1.6x speedup over traditional loop vectorization and a 31% gain over prior research approaches for converting ILP to DLP.
An update-aware storage system for low-locality update-intensive workloads
Authors: Simha Dilip Nijagal , Lu Maohua , Chiueh Tzi-cker
Published: April 2012

Traditional storage systems provide a simple read/write interface, which is inadequate for
low-locality update-intensive
workloads because it limits the disk scheduling flexibility and results in inefficient use of buffer memory and raw disk bandwidth. This paper describes an
update-aware
disk access interface that allows applications to explicitly specify disk update requests and associate with such requests call-back functions that will be invoked when the requested disk blocks are brought into memory. Because call-back functions offer a
continuation
mechanism after retrieval of requested blocks, storage systems supporting this interface are given more flexibility in scheduling pending disk update requests. In particular, this interface enables a simple but effective technique called
Batching mOdifications with Sequential Commit
(BOSC), which greatly improves the sustained throughput of a storage system under low-locality update-intensive workloads. In addition, together with a space-efficient low-latency disk logging technique, BOSC is able to deliver the same durability guarantee as synchronous disk updates. Empirical measurements show that the random update throughput of a BOSC-based B+ tree is more than an order of magnitude higher than that of the same B+ tree implementation on a traditional storage system.
Providing safe, user space access to fast, solid state disks
Authors: Caulfield Adrian M. , Mollov Todor I. , Eisner Louis Alex , De Arup , Coburn Joel , Swanson Steven
Published: April 2012

Emerging fast, non-volatile memories (e.g., phase change memories, spin-torque MRAMs, and the memristor) reduce storage access latencies by an order of magnitude compared to state-of-the-art flash-based SSDs. This improved performance means that software overheads that had little impact on the performance of flash-based systems can present serious bottlenecks in systems that incorporate these new technologies. We describe a novel storage hardware and software architecture that nearly eliminates two sources of this overhead: Entering the kernel and performing file system permission checks. The new architecture provides a private, virtualized interface for each process and moves file system protection checks into hardware. As a result, applications can access file data without operating system intervention, eliminating OS and file system costs entirely for most accesses. We describe the support the system provides for fast permission checks in hardware, our approach to notifying applications when requests complete, and the small, easily portable changes required in the file system to support the new access model. Existing applications require no modification to use the new interface. We evaluate the performance of the system using a suite of microbenchmarks and database workloads and show that the new interface improves latency and bandwidth for 4 KB writes by 60% and 7.2x, respectively, OLTP database transaction throughput by up to 2.0x, and Berkeley-DB throughput by up to 5.7x. A streamlined asynchronous file IO interface built to fully utilize the new interface enables an additional 5.5x increase in throughput with 1 thread and 2.8x increase in efficiency for 512 B transfers.
DejaVu
Authors: Vasić Nedeljko , Novaković Dejan , Miučin Svetozar , Kostić Dejan , Bianchini Ricardo
Published: April 2012

Effective resource management of virtualized environments is a challenging task. State-of-the-art management systems either rely on analytical models or evaluate resource allocations by running actual experiments. However, both approaches incur a significant overhead once the workload changes. The former needs to re-calibrate and re-validate models, whereas the latter has to run a new set of experiments to select a new resource allocation. During the adaptation period, the system may run with an inefficient configuration. In this paper, we propose DejaVu - a framework that (1) minimizes the resource management overhead by identifying a small set of workload classes for which it needs to evaluate resource allocation decisions, (2) quickly adapts to workload changes by classifying workloads using signatures and caching their preferred resource allocations at runtime, and (3) deals with interference by estimating an "interference index". We evaluate DejaVu by running representative network services on Amazon EC2. DejaVu achieves more than 10x speedup in adaptation time for each workload change relative to the state-of-the-art. By enabling quick adaptation, DejaVu saves up to 60% of the service provisioning cost. Finally, DejaVu is easily deployable as it does not require any extensive instrumentation or human intervention.
Architectural support for hypervisor-secure virtualization
Authors: Szefer Jakub , Lee Ruby B.
Published: April 2012

Virtualization has become a standard part of many computer systems. A key part of virtualization is the all-powerful hypervisor which manages the physical platform and can access all of its resources, including memory assigned to the guest virtual machines (VMs). Continuing releases of bug reports and exploits in the virtualization software show that defending the hypervisor against attacks is very difficult. In this work, we present hypervisor-secure virtualization - a new research direction with the goal of protecting the guest VMs from an untrusted hypervisor. We also present the HyperWall architecture which achieves hypervisor-secure virtualization, using hardware to provide the protections. HyperWall allows a hypervisor to freely manage the memory, processor cores and other resources of a platform. Yet once VMs are created, our new Confidentiality and Integrity Protection (CIP) tables protect the memory of the guest VMs from accesses by the hypervisor or by DMA, depending on the customer's specification. If a hypervisor does become compromised, e.g. by an attack from a malicious VM, it cannot be used in turn to attack other VMs. The protections are enabled through minimal modifications to the microprocessor and memory management units. Whereas much of the previous work concentrates on protecting the hypervisor from attacks by guest VMs, we tackle the problem of protecting the guest VMs from the hypervisor.
Region scheduling
Authors: Lee Min , Schwan Karsten
Published: April 2012

The performance of modern many-core platforms strongly depends on the effectiveness of using their complex cache and memory structures. This indicates the need for a memory-centric approach to platform scheduling, in which it is the locations of memory blocks in caches rather than CPU idleness that determines where application processes are run. Using the term 'memory region' to denote the current set of physical memory pages actively used by an application, this paper presents and evaluates region-based scheduling methods for multicore platforms. This involves (i) continuously and at runtime identifying the memory regions used by executable entities, and their sizes, (ii) mapping these regions to caches to match performance goals, and (iii) maintaining region to cache mappings by ensuring that entities run on processors with direct access to the caches containing their regions. Region scheduling can implement policies that (i) offer improved performance to applications by 'unifying' the multiple caches present on the underlying physical machine and/or by 'balancing' cache usage to take maximum advantage of available cache space, (ii) better isolate applications from each other, particularly when their performance is strongly affected by cache availability, and also (iii) take advantage of standard scheduling and CPU-based load balancing when regioning is ineffective. The paper describes region scheduling and its system-level implementation and evaluates its performance with micro-benchmarks and representative multi-core applications. Single applications see performance improvements of up to 15% with region scheduling, and we observe 40% latency improvements when a platform is shared by multiple applications. Superior isolation is shown to be particularly important for cache-sensitive or real-time codes.
A Seamless Broadcasting Scheme with Live Video Support
Authors: Yang Zeng-Yuan , Chen Yi-Ming , Tseng Li-Ming
Published: April 2012

Broadcasting schemes, such as the fast broadcasting and harmonic broadcasting schemes, significantly reduce the bandwidth requirement of video-on-demand services. In the real world, some history events are very hot. For example, every year in March, thousands of people connect to Internet to watch the live show of Oscar Night. Such actions easily cause the networks contested. However, the schemes mentioned previously cannot alleviate the problem because they do not support live broadcasting. In this paper, we analyze the requirements for transferring live videos. Based on the requirements, a time skewing approach is proposed to enable the broadcasting schemes to support live broadcasting. However, the improved schemes require extra bandwidth for live broadcasting once the length of live shows exceeds the default. Accordingly, we proposed a scalable binomial broadcasting scheme to transfer live videos using constant bandwidth by increasing clients’ waiting time. When the scheme finds that the length of a video exceeds the default, it doubles the length of to-be-played segments and then its required bandwidth is constant.
Trait-Mediated Indirect Effects of Phorid Flies on Ants
Authors: Hsieh Hsun-Yi , Perfecto Ivette
Published: April 2012

This paper provides a synthesis of the ecological impact of phorid fly parasitoids on ants. We find the most important impact of phorids on ants to be trait-mediated effects. Phorids diminish the foraging activity of ants, frequently reducing the number and average size of foragers and reducing the amount of food retrieved by a colony. However, ants' coping mechanisms include changing foraging site and time. Phorids can also affect competition, especially through changes in the ability of the host to win in exploitative competition. Factors such as microclimate, resource size, and habitat complexity interact with phorids to change their effect on competition. By being highly specific and attacking ants high in the competitive hierarchy, phorids can alter the linear nature of the competitive transitivity, and by reducing the number of foragers, they can change the discovery-dominance tradeoff that is observed in some ant communities. Trait-mediated effects of phorids also cascade to other trophic levels. As an example, we discuss the trait-mediated cascade of phorids on theAzteca instabilissystem in coffee. In this system, by reducing the foraging activity ofA. instabilis, phorids reduce the direct and indirect biological control impact of the ant in the coffee agroecosystem.
Landing Gear Aerodynamic Noise Prediction Using Building-Cube Method
Authors: Sasaki Daisuke , Akihito Deguchi , Onda Hiroshi , Nakahashi Kazuhiro
Published: April 2012

Landing gear noise prediction method is developed using Building-Cube Method (BCM). The BCM is a multiblock-structured Cartesian mesh flow solver, which aims to enable practical large-scale computation. The computational domain is composed of assemblage of various sizes of building blocks where small blocks are used to capture flow features in detail. Because of Cartesian-based mesh, easy and fast mesh generation for complicated geometries is achieved. The airframe noise is predicted through the coupling of incompressible Navier-Stokes flow solver and the aeroacoustic analogy-based Curle’s equation. In this paper, Curle’s equation in noncompact form is introduced to predict the acoustic sound from an object in flow. This approach is applied to JAXA Landing gear Evaluation Geometry model to investigate the influence of the detail components to flows and aerodynamic noises. The position of torque link and the wheel cap geometry are changed to discuss the influence. The present method showed good agreement with the preceding experimental result and proved that difference of the complicated components to far field noise was estimated. The result also shows that the torque link position highly affects the flow acceleration at the axle region between two wheels, which causes the change in SPL at observation point.
The European Research on Severe Accidents in Generation-II and -III Nuclear Power Plants
Authors: Van Dorsselaere Jean-Pierre , Auvinen Ari , Beraha David , Chatelard Patrick , Journeau Christophe , Kljenak Ivo , Miassoedov Alexei , Paci Sandro , Tromm Th. Walter , Zeyen Roland
Published: April 2012

Forty-three organisations from 22 countries network their capacities of research in SARNET (Severe Accident Research NETwork of excellence) to resolve the most important remaining uncertainties and safety issues on severe accidents in existing and future water-cooled nuclear power plants (NPP). After a first project in the 6th Framework Programme (FP6) of the European Commission, the SARNET2 project, coordinated by IRSN, started in April 2009 for 4 years in the FP7 frame. After 2,5 years, some main outcomes of joint research (modelling and experiments) by the network members on the highest priority issues are presented: in-vessel degraded core coolability, molten-corium-concrete-interaction, containment phenomena (water spray, hydrogen combustion…), source term issues (mainly iodine behaviour). The ASTEC integral computer code, jointly developed by IRSN and GRS to predict the NPP SA behaviour, capitalizes in terms of models the knowledge produced in the network: a few validation results are presented. For dissemination of knowledge, an educational 1-week course was organized for young researchers or students in January 2011, and a two-day course is planned mid-2012 for senior staff. Mobility of young researchers or students between the European partners is being promoted. The ERMSAR conference is becoming the major worldwide conference on SA research.
CMB Map Restoration
Authors: Bobin J. , Starck J.-L. , Sureau F. , Fadili J.
Published: April 2012

Estimating the cosmological microwave background is of utmost importance for cosmology. However, its estimation from full-sky surveys such as WMAP or more recently Planck is challenging: CMB maps are generally estimated via the application of some source separation techniques which never prevent the final map from being contaminated with noise and foreground residuals. These spurious contaminations whether noise or foreground residuals are well known to be a plague for most cosmologically relevant tests or evaluations; this includes CMB lensing reconstruction or non-Gaussian signatures search. Noise reduction is generally performed by applying a simple Wiener filter in spherical harmonics; however, this does not account for the non-stationarity of the noise. Foreground contamination is usually tackled by masking the most intense residuals detected in the map, which makes CMB evaluation harder to perform. In this paper, we introduce a novel noise reduction framework coined LIW-Filtering for Linear Iterative Wavelet Filtering which is able to account for the noise spatial variability thanks to a wavelet-based modeling while keeping the highly desired linearity of the Wiener filter. We further show that the same filtering technique can effectively perform foreground contamination reduction thus providing a globally cleaner CMB map. Numerical results on simulated Planck data are provided.
Relationship between Particle Size Distribution of Low-Rank Pulverized Coal and Power Plant Performance
Authors: Ganguli Rajive , Bandopadhyay Sukumar
Published: April 2012

The impact of particle size distribution (PSD) of pulverized, low rank high volatile content Alaska coal on combustion related power plant performance was studied in a series of field scale tests. Performance was gauged through efficiency (ratio of megawatt generated to energy consumed as coal), emissions (SO2,NOx, CO), and carbon content of ash (fly ash and bottom ash). The study revealed that the tested coal could be burned at a grind as coarse as 50% passing 76 microns, with no deleterious impact on power generation and emissions. The PSD’s tested in this study were in the range of 41 to 81 percent passing 76 microns. There was negligible correlation between PSD and the followings factors: efficiency, SO2,NOx, and CO. Additionally, two tests where stack mercury (Hg) data was collected, did not demonstrate any real difference in Hg emissions with PSD. The results from the field tests positively impacts pulverized coal power plants that burn low rank high volatile content coals (such as Powder River Basin coal). These plants can potentially reduce in-plant load by grinding the coal less (without impacting plant performance on emissions and efficiency) and thereby, increasing their marketability.
Forced Mitotic Entry of S-Phase Cells as a Therapeutic Strategy Induced by Inhibition of WEE1
Authors: Aarts Marieke , Sharpe Rachel , Garcia-Murillas Isaac , Gevensleben Heidrun , Hurd Melissa S. , Shumway Stuart D. , Toniatti Carlo , Ashworth Alan , Turner Nicholas C.
Published: April 2012

Inhibition of the protein kinase WEE1 synergizes with chemotherapy in preclinical models and WEE1 inhibitors are being explored as potential cancer therapies. Here, we investigate the mechanism that underlies this synergy. We show that WEE1 inhibition forces S-phase–arrested cells directly into mitosis without completing DNA synthesis, resulting in highly abnormal mitoses characterized by dispersed chromosomes and disorganized bipolar spindles, ultimately resulting in mitotic exit with gross micronuclei formation and apoptosis. This mechanism of cell death is shared by CHK1 inhibitors, and combined WEE1 and CHK1 inhibition forces mitotic entry from S-phase in the absence of chemotherapy. We show that p53/p21 inactivation combined with high expression of mitotic cyclins and EZH2 predispose to mitotic entry during S-phase with cells reliant on WEE1 to prevent premature cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK)1 activation. These features are characteristic of aggressive breast, and other, cancers for which WEE1 inhibitor combinations represent a promising targeted therapy.

Significance: Here, we describe a novel mechanism of inducing cancer cell death by WEE1 inhibition, forcing mitotic entry directly from S-phase. This mechanism represents a potential therapeutic approach for aggressive breast cancers, and in particular triple-negative and basal-like breast cancers, as WEE1 inhibition specifically targets the features inherent in these cancers: frequent TP53 mutation and high expression of mitotic cyclins and the polycomb protein EZH2. Cancer Discov; 2(6); 524–39. © 2012 AACR.

This article is highlighted in the In This Issue feature, p. 473
FOXO1 Expression and Regulation in Endometrial Tissue during the Menstrual Cycle and in Early Pregnancy Decidua
Authors: Fan Wei , Li Shang-wei , Li Wei-hong , Wang Yan , Gong Yan , Ma Qian-hong , Luo San
Published: April 2012

Aims: To determine FOXO1 (forkhead box O1) expression in the human endometrium during the menstrual cycle and decidua of early pregnancy, as well as FOXO1 regulation in endometrial stromal cells (ESC). Methods: Immunohistochemistry, RT-qPCR, and Western blot analyses evaluated cellular localization and altered FOXO1 expression in the endometrium during the menstrual cycle and decidua of early pregnancy (proliferative phase, n = 12; early-secretory phase, n = 7; mid-secretory phase, n = 10; late-secretory phase, n = 10; early pregnancy, n = 12). Using RT-qPCR and Western blot, we studied the regulation of FOXO1 by 8-bromo-cAMP, 4-pregnene-3,20-dione, 17β-estradiol, and human chorionic gonadotrophin in ESC (n = 5). Results: The expression level of FOXO1 in human endometrial tissue fluctuated with the menstrual cycle. If pregnancy occurred, the expression of FOXO1 was further increased (p < 0.05) and cAMP regulated FOXO1 expression in ESC. In addition, 4-pregnene-3,20-dione cooperatively stimulated FOXO1 expression with cAMP. We also observed FOXO1 expression during in vitro cAMP-induced decidualization. Conclusions: The pattern of FOXO1 expression suggests a potential role for FOXO1 in implantation and decidualization.
Neural Progestin Receptors and Female Sexual Behavior
Authors: Mani Shaila K. , Blaustein Jeffrey D.
Published: April 2012

The steroid hormone, progesterone (P), modulates neuroendocrine functions in the central nervous system resulting in integration of reproduction and reproductive behaviors in female mammals. Although it is widely recognized that P’s effects on female sex behavior are mediated by the classical neural progestin receptors (PRs) functioning as ‘ligand-dependent’ transcription factors to regulate genes and genomic networks, additional mechanisms of PR activation also contribute to the behavioral response. Cellular and molecular evidence indicates that PRs can be activated in a ligand-independent manner by neurotransmitters, growth factors, cyclic nucleotides, progestin metabolites and mating stimuli. The rapid responses of P may be mediated by a variety of PR types, including membrane-associated PRs or extranuclear PRs. Furthermore, these rapid nonclassical P actions involving cytoplasmic kinase signaling and/or extranuclear PRs also converge with classical PR-mediated transcription-dependent pathways to regulate reproductive behaviors. In this review, we summarize some of the history of the study of the role of PRs in reproductive behaviors and update the status of PR-mediated mechanisms involved in the facilitation of female sex behavior. We present an integrative model of PR activation via crosstalk and convergence of multiple signaling pathways.
The Role of Cell Lines in the Study of Neuroendocrine Tumors
Authors: Grozinsky-Glasberg Simona , Shimon Ilan , Rubinfeld Hadara
Published: April 2012

Cell lines originating from neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) represent useful experimental models to assess the control of synthesis and release of different hormones and hormone-like peptides, to evaluate the mechanisms of action of these agents in target tissues at the cellular and subcellular levels, and to study cell proliferation and tumor development, as well as the effect of different drugs on these complex processes. To date, the understanding of NET biology (with regard to their mechanisms of hormone secretion, cell proliferation and metastatic spread) has been hampered by the lack of appropriate animal models or cell lines for their study. In the present review, we aim to summarize the recent in vitro/in vivo data regarding cell lines derived from NETs which are most frequently employed in experimental neuroendocrinology.
Noncoding RNA Expression in Myocardium From Infants With Tetralogy of Fallot
Authors: O'Brien James E. , Kibiryeva Nataliya , Zhou Xin-Gang , Marshall Jennifer A. , Lofland Gary K. , Artman Michael , Chen Jie , Bittel Douglas C.
Published: April 2012

Background—

The importance of noncoding RNAs (ncRNA), especially microRNAs (miRNAs), for maintaining stability in the developing vertebrate heart has recently become apparent; however, there is little known about the expression pattern of ncRNA in the human heart with developmental anomalies.

Methods and Results—

We examined the expression of miRNAs and small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) in right ventricular myocardium from 16 infants with nonsyndromic tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) without a 22q11.2 deletion, 3 fetal heart samples, and 8 normally developing infants. We found 61 miRNAs and 135 snoRNAs to be significantly changed in expression in myocardium from children with TOF compared with normally developing comparison subjects. The pattern of ncRNA expression in TOF myocardium had a surprising resemblance to expression patterns in fetal myocardium, especially for the snoRNAs. Potential targets of miRNAs with altered expression were enriched for gene networks of importance to cardiac development. We derived a list of 229 genes known to be critical to heart development and found 44 had significantly changed expression in TOF myocardium relative to normally developing myocardium. These 44 genes had significant negative correlation with 33 miRNAs, each of which also had significantly changed expression. The primary function of snoRNAs is targeting specific nucleotides of ribosomal RNAs and spliceosomal RNAs for biochemical modification. The targeted nucleotides of the differentially expressed snoRNAs were concentrated in the 28S and 18S ribosomal RNAs and 2 spliceosomal RNAs, U2 and U6. In addition, in myocardium from children with TOF, we observed splicing variants in 51% of genes that are critical for cardiac development. Taken together, these observations suggest a link between levels of snoRNA that target spliceosomal RNAs, spliceosomal function, and heart development.

Conclusions—

This is the first report characterizing ncRNA expression in a congenital heart defect. The striking shift in expression of ncRNAs reflects a fundamental change in cell biology, likely impacting expression, transcript splicing, and translation of developmentally important genes and possibly contributing to the cardiac defect.
Brain-Targeted (Pro)renin Receptor Knockdown Attenuates Angiotensin II–Dependent Hypertension
Authors: Li Wencheng , Peng Hua , Cao Theresa , Sato Ryosuke , McDaniels Sarah J. , Kobori Hiroyuki , Navar L. Gabriel , Feng Yumei
Published: April 2012

The (pro)renin receptor is a newly discovered member of the brain renin-angiotensin system. To investigate the role of brain (pro)renin receptor in hypertension, adeno-associated virus-mediated (pro)renin receptor short hairpin RNA was used to knockdown (pro)renin receptor expression in the brain of nontransgenic normotensive and human renin-angiotensinogen double-transgenic hypertensive mice. Blood pressure was monitored using implanted telemetric probes in conscious animals. Real-time PCR and immunostaining were performed to determine (pro)renin receptor, angiotensin II type 1 receptor, and vasopressin mRNA levels. Plasma vasopressin levels were determined by ELISA. Double-transgenic mice exhibited higher blood pressure, elevated cardiac and vascular sympathetic tone, and impaired spontaneous baroreflex sensitivity. Intracerebroventricular delivery of (pro)renin receptor short-hairpin RNA significantly reduced blood pressure, cardiac and vasomotor sympathetic tone, and improved baroreflex sensitivity compared with the control virus treatment in double-transgenic mice. (Pro)renin receptor knockdown significantly reduced angiotensin II type 1 receptor and vasopressin levels in double-transgenic mice. These data indicate that (pro)renin receptor knockdown in the brain attenuates angiotensin II–dependent hypertension and is associated with a decrease in sympathetic tone and an improvement of the baroreflex sensitivity. In addition, brain-targeted (pro)renin receptor knockdown is associated with downregulation of angiotensin II type 1 receptor and vasopressin levels. We conclude that central (pro)renin receptor contributes to the pathogenesis of hypertension in human renin-angiotensinogen transgenic mice.