bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Sugar
Authors: Yao Zhihao , Ma Zongheng , Liu Yingtong , Amiri Sani Ardalan , Chandramowlishwaran Aparna
Published: December 2018

Modern personal computers have embraced increasingly powerful Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Recently, GPU-based graphics acceleration in web apps (i.e., applications running inside a web browser) has become popular. WebGL is the main effort to provide OpenGL-like graphics for web apps and it is currently used in 53% of the top-100 websites. Unfortunately, WebGL has posed serious security concerns as several attack vectors have been demonstrated through WebGL. Web browsers» solutions to these attacks have been reactive: discovered vulnerabilities have been patched and new runtime security checks have been added. Unfortunately, this approach leaves the system vulnerable to zero-day vulnerability exploits, especially given the large size of the Trusted Computing Base of the graphics plane. We present Sugar, a novel operating system solution that enhances the security of GPU acceleration for web apps by design. The key idea behind Sugar is using a dedicated virtual graphics plane for a web app by leveraging modern GPU virtualization solutions. A virtual graphics plane consists of a dedicated virtual GPU (or vGPU) as well as all the software graphics stack (including the device driver). Sugar enhances the system security since a virtual graphics plane is fully isolated from the rest of the system. Despite GPU virtualization overhead, we show that Sugar achieves high performance. Moreover, unlike current systems, Sugar is able to use two underlying physical GPUs, when available, to co-render the User Interface (UI): one GPU is used to provide virtual graphics planes for web apps and the other to provide the primary graphics plane for the rest of the system. Such a design not only provides strong security guarantees, it also provides enhanced performance isolation.
Datasize-Aware High Dimensional Configurations Auto-Tuning of In-Memory Cluster Computing
Authors: Yu Zhibin , Bei Zhendong , Qian Xuehai
Published: December 2018

In-Memory cluster Computing (IMC) frameworks (e.g., Spark) have become increasingly important because they typically achieve more than 10× speedups over the traditional On-Disk cluster Computing (ODC) frameworks for iterative and interactive applications. Like ODC, IMC frameworks typically run the same given programs repeatedly on a given cluster with similar input dataset size each time. It is challenging to build performance model for IMC program because:
1)
the performance of IMC programs is more sensitive to the size of input dataset, which is known to be difficult to be incorporated into a performance model due to its complex effects on performance;
2)
the number of performance-critical configuration parameters in IMC is much larger than ODC (more than 40 vs. around 10), the high dimensionality requires more sophisticated models to achieve high accuracy. To address this challenge, we propose DAC, a datasize-aware auto-tuning approach to efficiently identify the high dimensional configuration for a given IMC program to achieve optimal performance on a given cluster. DAC is a significant advance over the state-of-the-art because it can take the size of input dataset and 41 configuration parameters as the parameters of the performance model for a given IMC program, --- unprecedented in previous work. It is made possible by two key techniques:
1)
Hierarchical Modeling (HM), which combines a number of individual sub-models in a hierarchical manner;
2)
Genetic Algorithm (GA) is employed to search the optimal configuration. To evaluate DAC, we use six typical Spark programs, each with five different input dataset sizes. The evaluation results show that DAC improves the performance of six typical Spark programs, each with five different input dataset sizes compared to default configurations by a factor of 30.4x on average and up to 89x. We also report that the geometric mean speedups of DAC over configurations by default, expert, and RFHOC are 15.4x, 2.3x, and 1.5x, respectively.
An Event-Triggered Programmable Prefetcher for Irregular Workloads
Authors: Ainsworth Sam , Jones Timothy M.
Published: December 2018

Many modern workloads compute on large amounts of data, often with irregular memory accesses. Current architectures perform poorly for these workloads, as existing prefetching techniques cannot capture the memory access patterns; these applications end up heavily memory-bound as a result. Although a number of techniques exist to explicitly configure a prefetcher with traversal patterns, gaining significant speedups, they do not generalise beyond their target data structures. Instead, we propose an event-triggered programmable prefetcher combining the flexibility of a general-purpose computational unit with an event-based programming model, along with compiler techniques to automatically generate events from the original source code with annotations. This allows more complex fetching decisions to be made, without needing to stall when intermediate results are required. Using our programmable prefetching system, combined with small prefetch kernels extracted from applications, we achieve an average 3.0x speedup in simulation for a variety of graph, database and HPC workloads.
Statistical Reconstruction of Class Hierarchies in Binaries
Authors: Katz Omer , Rinetzky Noam , Yahav Eran
Published: December 2018

We address a fundamental problem in reverse engineering of object-oriented code: the reconstruction of a program's class hierarchy from its
stripped
binary. Existing approaches rely heavily on
structural
information that is not always available, e.g., calls to parent constructors. As a result, these approaches often leave gaps in the hierarchies they construct, or fail to construct them altogether. Our main insight is that
behavioral
information can be used to infer subclass/superclass relations, supplementing any missing structural information. Thus, we propose the
first statistical approach
for static reconstruction of class hierarchies based on
behavioral similarity.
We capture the behavior of each type using a statistical language model (SLM), define a metric for
pairwise similarity
between types based on the
Kullback-Leibler divergence
between their SLMs, and lift it to determine the most likely class hierarchy. We implemented our approach in a tool called ROCK and used it to automatically reconstruct the class hierarchies of several real-world stripped C++ binaries. Our results demonstrate that ROCK obtained
significantly
more accurate class hierarchies than those obtained using structural analysis alone.
DLibOS
Authors: Mallon Stephen , Gramoli Vincent , Jourjon Guillaume
Published: December 2018

A long body of research work has led to the conjecture that highly efficient IO processing at user-level would necessarily violate protection. In this paper, we debunk this myth by introducing
DLibOS
a new paradigm that consists of distributing a library OS on specialized cores to achieve performance and protection at the user-level. Its main novelty consists of leveraging network-on-chip to allow hardware message passing, rather than context switches, for communication between different address spaces. To demonstrate the feasibility of our approach, we implement a driver and a network stack at user-level on a Tilera many-core machine. We define a novel asynchronous socket interface and partition the memory such that the reception, the transmission and the application modify isolated regions. Our high performance results of 4.2 and 3.1 million requests per second obtained on a webserver and the Memcached applications, respectively, confirms the relevance of our design decisions. Finally, we compare DLibOS against a non-protected user-level network stack and show that protection comes at a negligible cost.
NEOFog
Authors: Ma Kaisheng , Li Xueqing , Kandemir Mahmut Taylan , Sampson Jack , Narayanan Vijaykrishnan , Li Jinyang , Wu Tongda , Wang Zhibo , Liu Yongpan , Xie Yuan
Published: December 2018

Nonvolatile processors have emerged as one of the promising solutions for energy harvesting scenarios, among which Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) provide some of the most important applications. In a typical distributed sensing system, due to difference in location, energy harvester angles, power sources, etc. different nodes may have different amount of energy ready for use. While prior approaches have examined these challenges, they have not done so in the context of the features offered by nonvolatile computing approaches, which disrupt certain foundational assumptions. We propose a new set of nonvolatility-exploiting optimizations and embody them in the NEOFog system architecture. We discuss shifts in the tradeoffs in data and program distribution for nonvolatile processing-based WSNs, showing how non-volatile processing and non-volatile RF support alter the benefits of computation and communication-centric approaches. We also propose a new algorithm specific to nonvolatile sensing systems for load balancing both computation and communication demands. Collectively, the NV-aware optimizations in NEOFog increase the ability to perform in-fog processing by 4.2X and can increase this to 8X if virtualized nodes are 3X multiplexed.
VAULT
Authors: Taassori Meysam , Shafiee Ali , Balasubramonian Rajeev
Published: December 2018

Intel's SGX offers state-of-the-art security features, including confidentiality, integrity, and authentication (CIA) when accessing sensitive pages in memory. Sensitive pages are placed in an Enclave Page Cache (EPC) within the physical memory before they can be accessed by the processor. To control the overheads imposed by CIA guarantees, the EPC operates with a limited capacity (currently 128 MB). Because of this limited EPC size, sensitive pages must be frequently swapped between EPC and non-EPC regions in memory. A page swap is expensive (about 40K cycles) because it requires an OS system call, page copying, updates to integrity trees and metadata, etc. Our analysis shows that the paging overhead can slow the system on average by 5×, and other studies have reported even higher slowdowns for memory-intensive workloads. The paging overhead can be reduced by growing the size of the EPC to match the size of physical memory, while allowing the EPC to also accommodate non-sensitive pages. However, at least two important problems must be addressed to enable this growth in EPC: (i) the depth of the integrity tree and its cacheability must be improved to keep memory bandwidth overheads in check, (ii) the space overheads of integrity verification (tree and MACs) must be reduced. We achieve both goals by introducing a variable arity unified tree (VAULT) organization that is more compact and has lower depth. We further reduce the space overheads with techniques that combine MAC sharing and compression. With simulations, we show that the combination of our techniques can address most inefficiencies in SGX memory access and improve overall performance by 3.7×, relative to an SGX baseline, while incurring a memory capacity over-head of only 4.7%.
Slim NoC
Authors: Besta Maciej , Hassan Syed Minhaj , Yalamanchili Sudhakar , Ausavarungnirun Rachata , Mutlu Onur , Hoefler Torsten
Published: December 2018

Emerging chips with hundreds and thousands of cores require networks with unprecedented energy/area efficiency and scalability. To address this, we propose Slim NoC (SN): a new on-chip network design that delivers significant improvements in efficiency and scalability compared to the state-of-the-art. The key idea is to use two concepts from graph and number theory, degree-diameter graphs combined with non-prime finite fields, to enable the smallest number of ports for a given core count. SN is inspired by state-of-the-art off-chip topologies; it identifies and distills their advantages for NoC settings while solving several key issues that lead to significant overheads on-chip. SN provides NoC-specific layouts, which further enhance area/energy efficiency. We show how to augment SN with state-of-the-art router microarchitecture schemes such as Elastic Links, to make the network even more scalable and efficient. Our extensive experimental evaluations show that SN outperforms both traditional low-radix topologies (e.g., meshes and tori) and modern high-radix networks (e.g., various Flattened Butterflies) in area, latency, throughput, and static/dynamic power consumption for both synthetic and real workloads. SN provides a promising direction in scalable and energy-efficient NoC topologies.
An Analysis of x86-64 Inline Assembly in C Programs
Authors: Rigger Manuel , Marr Stefan , Kell Stephen , Leopoldseder David , Mössenböck Hanspeter
Published: December 2018

C codebases frequently embed nonportable and unstandardized elements such as inline assembly code. Such elements are not well understood, which poses a problem to tool developers who aspire to support C code. This paper investigates the use of x86-64 inline assembly in 1264 C projects from GitHub and combines qualitative and quantitative analyses to answer questions that tool authors may have. We found that 28.1% of the most popular projects contain inline assembly code, although the majority contain only a few fragments with just one or two instructions. The most popular instructions constitute a small subset concerned largely with multicore semantics, performance optimization, and hardware control. Our findings are intended to help developers of C-focused tools, those testing compilers, and language designers seeking to reduce the reliance on inline assembly. They may also aid the design of tools focused on inline assembly itself.
Search, align, and repair: data-driven feedback generation for introductory programming exercises
Authors: Wang Ke , Singh Rishabh , Su Zhendong
Published: December 2018

This paper introduces the “Search, Align, and Repair” data-driven program repair framework to automate feedback generation for introductory programming exercises. Distinct from existing techniques, our goal is to develop an efficient, fully automated, and problem-agnostic technique for large or MOOC-scale introductory programming courses. We leverage the large amount of available student submissions in such settings and develop new algorithms for identifying similar programs, aligning correct and incorrect programs, and repairing incorrect programs by finding minimal fixes. We have implemented our technique in the Sarfgen system and evaluated it on thousands of real student attempts from the Microsoft-DEV204.1x edX course and the Microsoft CodeHunt platform. Our results show that Sarfgen can, within two seconds on average, generate concise, useful feedback for 89.7% of the incorrect student submissions. It has been integrated with the Microsoft-DEV204.1X edX class and deployed for production use.
Heartbeat scheduling: provable efficiency for nested parallelism
Authors: Acar Umut A. , Charguéraud Arthur , Guatto Adrien , Rainey Mike , Sieczkowski Filip
Published: December 2018

A classic problem in parallel computing is to take a high-level parallel program written, for example, in nested-parallel style with fork-join constructs and run it efficiently on a real machine. The problem could be considered solved in theory, but not in practice, because the overheads of creating and managing parallel threads can overwhelm their benefits. Developing efficient parallel codes therefore usually requires extensive tuning and optimizations to reduce parallelism just to a point where the overheads become acceptable.

In this paper, we present a scheduling technique that delivers provably efficient results for arbitrary nested-parallel programs, without the tuning needed for controlling parallelism overheads. The basic idea behind our technique is to create threads only at a beat (which we refer to as the "heartbeat") and make sure to do useful work in between. We specify our heartbeat scheduler using an abstract-machine semantics and provide mechanized proofs that the scheduler guarantees low overheads for all nested parallel programs. We present a prototype C++ implementation and an evaluation that shows that Heartbeat competes well with manually optimized Cilk Plus codes, without requiring manual tuning.
Inferring crypto API rules from code changes
Authors: Paletov Rumen , Tsankov Petar , Raychev Veselin , Vechev Martin
Published: December 2018

Creating and maintaining an up-to-date set of security rules that match misuses of crypto APIs is challenging, as crypto APIs constantly evolve over time with new cryptographic primitives and settings, making existing ones obsolete.

To address this challenge, we present a new approach to extract security fixes from thousands of code changes. Our approach consists of: (i) identifying code changes, which often capture security fixes, (ii) an abstraction that filters irrelevant code changes (such as refactorings), and (iii) a clustering analysis that reveals commonalities between semantic code changes and helps in eliciting security rules.

We applied our approach to the Java Crypto API and showed that it is effective: (i) our abstraction effectively filters non-semantic code changes (over 99% of all changes) without removing security fixes, and (ii) over 80% of the code changes are security fixes identifying security rules. Based on our results, we identified 13 rules, including new ones not supported by existing security checkers.
Gluon: a communication-optimizing substrate for distributed heterogeneous graph analytics
Authors: Dathathri Roshan , Gill Gurbinder , Hoang Loc , Dang Hoang-Vu , Brooks Alex , Dryden Nikoli , Snir Marc , Pingali Keshav
Published: December 2018

This paper introduces a new approach to building distributed-memory graph analytics systems that exploits heterogeneity in processor types (CPU and GPU), partitioning policies, and programming models. The key to this approach is Gluon, a communication-optimizing substrate.

Programmers write applications in a shared-memory programming system of their choice and interface these applications with Gluon using a lightweight API. Gluon enables these programs to run on heterogeneous clusters and optimizes communication in a novel way by exploiting structural and temporal invariants of graph partitioning policies.

To demonstrate Gluon’s ability to support different programming models, we interfaced Gluon with the Galois and Ligra shared-memory graph analytics systems to produce distributed-memory versions of these systems named D-Galois and D-Ligra, respectively. To demonstrate Gluon’s ability to support heterogeneous processors, we interfaced Gluon with IrGL, a state-of-the-art single-GPU system for graph analytics, to produce D-IrGL, the first multi-GPU distributed-memory graph analytics system.

Our experiments were done on CPU clusters with up to 256 hosts and roughly 70,000 threads and on multi-GPU clusters with up to 64 GPUs. The communication optimizations in Gluon improve end-to-end application execution time by ∼2.6× on the average. D-Galois and D-IrGL scale well and are faster than Gemini, the state-of-the-art distributed CPU graph analytics system, by factors of ∼3.9× and ∼4.9×, respectively, on the average.
PMAF: an algebraic framework for static analysis of probabilistic programs
Authors: Wang Di , Hoffmann Jan , Reps Thomas
Published: December 2018

Automatically establishing that a probabilistic program satisfies some property ϕ is a challenging problem. While a sampling-based approach—which involves running the program repeatedly—cansuggestthat ϕ holds, to establish that the programsatisfiesϕ, analysis techniques must be used. Despite recent successes, probabilistic static analyses are still more difficult to design and implement than their deterministic counterparts. This paper presents a framework, calledPMAF, for designing, implementing, and proving the correctness of static analyses of probabilistic programs with challenging features such as recursion, unstructured control-flow, divergence, nondeterminism, and continuous distributions. PMAF introducespre-Markov algebrasto factor out common parts of different analyses. To performinterprocedural analysisand to createprocedure summaries, PMAF extends ideas from non-probabilistic interprocedural dataflow analysis to the probabilistic setting. One novelty is that PMAF is based on a semantics formulated in terms of a control-flowhyper-graphfor each procedure, rather than a standard control-flow graph. To evaluate its effectiveness, PMAF has been used to reformulate and implement existingintraprocedural analyses for Bayesian-inference and the Markov decision problem, by creating correspondinginterprocedural analyses. Additionally, PMAF has been used to implement a new interprocedurallinear expectation-invariant analysis. Experiments with benchmark programs for the three analyses demonstrate that the approach is practical.
The Fanconi Anemia Pathway in Cancer
Authors: Niraj Joshi , Färkkilä Anniina , D'Andrea Alan D.
Published: December 2018

Fanconi anemia (FA) is a complex genetic disorder characterized by bone marrow failure (BMF), congenital defects, inability to repair DNA interstrand cross-links (ICLs), and cancer predisposition. FA presents two seemingly opposite characteristics: ( a) massive cell death of the hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell (HSPC) compartment due to extensive genomic instability, leading to BMF, and ( b) uncontrolled cell proliferation leading to FA-associated malignancies. The canonical function of the FA proteins is to collaborate with several other DNA repair proteins to eliminate clastogenic (chromosome-breaking) effects of DNA ICLs. Recent discoveries reveal that the FA pathway functions in a critical tumor-suppressor network to preserve genomic integrity by stabilizing replication forks, mitigating replication stress, and regulating cytokinesis. Homozygous germline mutations (biallelic) in 22 FANC genes cause FA, whereas heterozygous germline mutations in some of the FANC genes (monoallelic), such as BRCA1 and BRCA2, do not cause FA but significantly increase cancer susceptibility sporadically in the general population. In this review, we discuss our current understanding of the functions of the FA pathway in the maintenance of genomic stability, and we present an overview of the prevalence and clinical relevance of somatic mutations in FA genes.
Noninvasive evaluation of fat-carbohydrate metabolic switching in heart and contracting skeletal muscle
Authors: DeGrado Timothy R. , Pandey Mukesh K. , Belanger Anthony P. , Basuli Falguni , Bansal Aditya , Wang Shuyan
Published: December 2018

The ability of heart and skeletal muscle (SM) to switch between fat and carbohydrate oxidation is of high interest in the study of metabolic diseases and exercise physiology. Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging with the glucose analog 2-[18F]fluoro-2-deoxy-glucose (18F-FDG) provides a noninvasive means to quantitate glucose metabolic rates. However, evaluation of fatty acid oxidation (FAO) rates by PET has been limited by the lack of a suitable FAO probe. We have developed a metabolically trapped oleate analog, ( Z)-18-[18F]fluoro-4-thia-octadec-9-enoate (18F-FTO), and investigated the feasibility of using 18F-FTO and 18F-FDG to measure FAO and glucose uptake, respectively, in heart and SM of rats in vivo. To enhance the metabolic rates in SM, the vastus lateralis (VL) muscle was electrically stimulated in fasted rats for 30 min before and 30 min following radiotracer injection. The responses of radiotracer uptake patterns to pharmacological inhibition of FAO were assessed by pretreatment of the rats with the carnitine palmitoyl-transferase-1 (CPT-1) inhibitor sodium 2-[5-(4-chlorophenyl)-pentyl]oxirane-2-carboxylate (POCA). Small-animal PET images and biodistribution data with 18F-FTO and 18F-FDG demonstrated profound metabolic switching for energy provision in the myocardium from exogenous fatty acids to glucose in control and CPT-1-inhibited rats, respectively. Uptake of both radiotracers was low in unstimulated SM. In stimulated VL muscle, 18F-FTO and 18F-FDG uptakes were increased 4.4- and 28-fold, respectively, and CPT-1 inhibition only affected 18F-FTO uptake (66% decrease). 18F-FTO is a FAO-dependent PET probe that may allow assessment of energy substrate metabolic switching in conjunction with 18F-FDG and other metabolic probes.
Polysaccharides with Antioxidative and Antiaging Activities from Enzymatic‐Extractable Mycelium by Agrocybe aegerita (Brig.) Sing
Authors: Jing Huijuan , Zhang Qing , Liu Min , Zhang Jianjun , Zhang Chen , Li Shangshang , Ren Zhenzhen , Gao Zheng , Liu Xingtian , Jia Le
Published: December 2018

This study aimed to investigate the antioxidant, antiaging, and organ protective effects of the water‐extractable mycelium polysaccharides (MPS) and enzymic‐extractable mycelium polysaccharides (En‐MPS) by Agrocybe aegerita (Brig.) Sing in D‐galactose‐induced (D‐gal‐induced) aging mice. In in vitro assays, the En‐MPS demonstrated stronger antioxidant activities in dose‐dependent manners. The mice experiments revealed that both En‐MPS and MPS had potential effects on antioxidation, antiaging, and organ protection mainly by improving the antioxidant enzyme activities, decreasing the lipid peroxidation, and remitting the lipid metabolism. Furthermore, chemical composition and monosaccharide composition of polysaccharides were also measured, and the results indicated that differences in biological activity of MPS and En‐MPS samples showed a significant correlation to their purity. The findings demonstrated that the polysaccharides by A. aegerita (Brig.) Sing could be exploited as natural and functional foods for the prevention and alleviation of aging and its complications.
A Review and Prospect for the Complexity and Resilience of Urban Public Transit Network Based on Complex Network Theory
Authors: Zhang Lin , Lu Jian , Fu Bai-bai , Li Shu-bin
Published: December 2018

The complexity and resilience of urban public transit network (PTN) are the interdisciplinary study area between transportation engineering and system science, which is a good demonstration of applying complex network theory to promote the development of engineering science. The deep understanding of this study helps to provide a new perspective for analyzing the reliability of urban PTN. Following study process of the complexity and resilience of complex network, this paper reviews the complexity and resilience of PTN from four topics, i.e., the PTN complexity, the static resilience of PTN, the dynamic resilience (cascading failures based resilience) of single layered PTN, and the dynamic resilience of interdependent PTN. In the literature review, multiple key items are, respectively, extracted for each topic, and the engineering applicability of each topic is also analyzed, which are both for obtaining the key features of this study area. Finally, in order to realize the development trend of cyclic and forward—complex network theory, network resilience theory, transforming into a realistic model and method that is close to actual public transit operation, engineering application and practice, and contributing to complex network theory, the study status is summarized and the future development trend is prospected.
Variability in Treatment for Carbon Monoxide Poisoning in Japan: A Multicenter Retrospective Survey
Authors: Fujita Motoki , Oda Yasutaka , Kaneda Kotaro , Kawamura Yoshikatsu , Nakahara Takashi , Todani Masaki , Yagi Takeshi , Koga Yasutaka , Tsuruta Ryosuke
Published: December 2018

Background. The aim of this study was to identify practice differences in the treatment of carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning with or without hyperbaric oxygen (HBO2) therapy in Japan. Materials and Methods. Using an online survey website (Google form), we created a questionnaire and invited interested institutions to join the COP-J Study, a prospective observational study of CO poisoning in Japan. Results. Forty-eight (63%) of 76 institutions replied to the questionnaire. Thirty-three institutions (69%) administered HBO2 therapy to patients with CO poisoning, and 15 institutions (31%) did not. Consciousness disturbance on arrival, exposure to CO for a long time, and elevation of arterial carboxyhemoglobin (CO-Hb) were the major indications for HBO2 therapy. The maximum therapeutic pressures were 2.0, 2.5, and 2.8 atmospheres absolute (ATA) at 19 (58%), 6 (18%), and 8 (24%) institutions, respectively. The number of HBO2 sessions on the first day was 1–3, and 1–7 sessions were administered on days 2–7. Seventeen (35%) institutions treated patients with delayed neurological sequelae (DNS) and 15 of them used HBO2 therapy for DNS. Conclusions. This survey indicates that HBO2 therapy for CO poisoning was varied in both the indications and practice regimens used in Japan.
Epidural Labor Analgesia for a Patient with Neuromyelitis Optica: A Case Report and Review of the Literature
Authors: Chang Alexandra , Chung Brian , Vandse Rashmi
Published: December 2018

Neuromyelitis optica (NMO) is a rare demyelinating disorder affecting the spinal cord and optic nerves. Like multiple sclerosis (MS), it predominantly affects women during childbearing years. The impact of neuraxial anesthesia on the course of NMO is uncertain. There are no large studies available to draw definitive conclusions regarding the safety of neuraxial anesthesia in this population. A review of the current literature suggests that neuraxial anesthesia is unlikely to exacerbate neurologic symptoms in pregnant patients with NMO. However, given the rarity of this disease entity among patients requesting epidural labor analgesia, we recommend taking a cautious approach.
Classical and Quantum Exact Solutions for a FRW Multiscalar Field Cosmology with an Exponential Potential Driven Inflation
Authors: Socorro J. , Núñez Omar E. , Hernández-Jiménez Rafael
Published: December 2018

A flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) multiscalar field cosmology is studied with a particular potential of the form V(ϕ,σ)=V0e-λ1ϕ-λ2σ, which emerges as a relation between the time derivatives of the scalars field momenta. Classically, by employing the Hamiltonian formalism of two scalar fields (ϕ,σ) with standard kinetic energy, exact solutions are found for the Einstein-Klein-Gordon (EKG) system for different scenarios specified by the parameter λ2=λ12+λ22, as well as the e-folding function Ne which is also computed. For the quantum scheme of this model, the corresponding Wheeler-DeWitt (WDW) equation is solved by applying an appropriate change of variables.
Report of Three Cases of AKI Following Weight-Based Gentamicin Prophylaxis for IPP Implantation: Potential Concerns for Patients with Preexisting Conditions
Authors: Moore Robert H. , Anele Uzoma A. , Krzastek Sarah C. , Klausner Adam P. , Roseman J. Tyler
Published: December 2018

Despite the known nephrotoxicity of gentamicin, in 2008 the American Urological Association published guidelines recommending single high-dose weight-based gentamicin prophylaxis of 5 mg/kg for procedures involving urologic prostheses. These guidelines are based on the theoretical renal safety and improved antimicrobial activity of a single large dose of gentamicin. However, the risk of nephrotoxicity after weight-based gentamicin prophylaxis specifically in penile prosthetic surgery has never been established with evidence-based studies. This is of special concern in light of the known high rates of preexisting conditions in this specific population. Therefore, in order to expose potential safety issues, we present three cases of postoperative acute kidney injury following weight-based gentamicin prophylaxis after implantation of inflatable penile prostheses.
On a Real-Time Blind Signal Separation Noise Reduction System
Authors: Yiu Ka Fai Cedric , Low Siow Yong
Published: December 2018

Blind signal separation has been studied extensively in order to tackle the cocktail party problem. It explores spatial diversity of the received mixtures of sources by different sensors. By using the kurtosis measure, it is possible to select the source of interest out of a number of separated BSS outputs. Further noise cancellation can be achieved by adding an adaptive noise canceller (ANC) as postprocessing. However, the computation is rather intensive and an online implementation of the overall system is not straightforward. This paper intends to fill the gap by developing an FPGA hardware architecture to implement the system. Subband processing is explored and detailed functional operations are profiled carefully. The final proposed FPGA system is able to handle signals with sample rate over 20000 samples per second.
The Protective Effects of Levo-Tetrahydropalmatine on ConA-Induced Liver Injury Are via TRAF6/JNK Signaling
Authors: Yu Qiang , Liu Tong , Li Sainan , Feng Jiao , Wu Liwei , Wang Wenwen , Chen Kan , Xia Yujing , Niu Peiqin , Xu Ling , Wang Fan , Dai Weiqi , Zhou Yingqun , Guo Chuanyong
Published: December 2018

Aims. Levo-tetrahydropalmatine (L-THP) is an active ingredient of Corydalis yanhusuo W. T. Wang, which has many bioactive properties. Herein, we investigated the protective effects of L-THP on concanavalin A- (ConA-) induced hepatitis in mice and explored its possible mechanisms of these effects. Main Methods. Balb/c mice were intravenously injected with 25 mg/kg ConA to generate a model of acute autoimmune hepatitis, and L-THP (20 or 40 mg/kg) was administered orally once daily for 5 d before the ConA injection. The liver enzyme levels, proinflammatory cytokine levels, and other marker protein levels were determined 2, 8, and 24 h after ConA injection. Results. L-THP could decrease serum liver enzymes and pathological damage by reducing the release of inflammatory factors like IL-6 and TNF-α. The results of Western Blot and PCR indicated that L-THP could ameliorate liver cell apoptosis and autophagy. L-THP could suppress T lymphocyte proliferation and the production of TNF-α and IL-6 induced by ConA in a dose-dependent manner in vitro. Additionally, the protective functions of L-THP depended on downregulating TRAF6/JNK signaling. Conclusion. The present study indicated that L-THP attenuated acute liver injury in ConA-induced autoimmune hepatitis by inhibiting apoptosis and autophagy via the TRAF6/JNK pathway.
A Novel Multi-Input AlexNet Prediction Model for Oil and Gas Production
Authors: Wang Yang , Lv Yin , Guo Dali , Zhang Shu , Jiao Shixiang
Published: December 2018

In the process of oilfield development, it is important to predict the oil and gas production. The predicted value of oil production is the amount of oil that may be obtained within a certain area over a certain period. Because of the current demand for oil and gas production prediction, a prediction model using a multi-input convolutional neural network based on AlexNet is proposed in this paper. The model predicts real oilfield data and achieves good results: increasing prediction accuracy by 17.5%, 20.8%, 11.6%, 8.9%, 6.9%, and 14.9% with respect to the backpropagation neural network, support vector machine, artificial neural network, radial basis function neural network, K-nearest neighbor, and decision tree methods, respectively. It addresses the uncertainty of oil and gas production caused by the change in parameter values during the process of petroleum exploitation and has far-reaching application significance.
Efficacy of Wenxin Keli Plus Amiodarone versus Amiodarone Monotherapy in Treating Recent-Onset Atrial Fibrillation
Authors: Zhang Nixiao , Tse Gary , Dahal Shristi , Yang Yajuan , Gong Mengqi , Chan Calista Zhuo Yi , Liu Enzhao , Xu Gang , Letsas Konstantinos P. , Korantzopoulos Panagiotis , Li Guangping , Liu Tong
Published: December 2018

Background. Use of amiodarone (AMIO) in atrial fibrillation (AF) has significant side effects over prolonged periods. Wenxin Keli (WXKL), a Chinese herb extract, has been shown to be effective in atrial-selective inhibiting peak INa and hence beneficial in treating atrial arrhythmias, including atrial fibrillation. The aim of this randomized controlled trial was to evaluate potential effects of AMIO plus WXKL on conversion rate and time in patients with recent-onset AF. Methods. A total of 41 patients (71 ± 12 years, 44% male) with recent-onset (<48 h) AF eligible for conversion were randomized to receive either intravenous amiodarone (loading dose 5 mg/kg in 1 hour followed by 50 mg/h; n=21) or amiodarone with same dosage plus oral WXKL 18 g thrice daily (n=20) for 24 hours. Results. Conversion rate at 24 hours was of no difference between the two groups (75.0% vs. 81.0%, P=0.72); however, conversion time was markedly shorter in the AMIO + WXKL group compared to the AMIO group (291 ± 235 minutes vs. 725 ± 475 minutes, P=0.003). There were no serious adverse events during the study. Conclusion. Administration of amiodarone plus WXKL for recent-onset AF conversion was safe and effective, with faster sinus rhythm restoration compared with amiodarone alone.
Automatic Modulation Classification Exploiting Hybrid Machine Learning Network
Authors: Wang Feng , Huang Shanshan , Wang Hao , Yang Chenlu
Published: December 2018

It is a research hot spot in cognitive electronic warfare systems to classify the electromagnetic signals of a radar or communication system according to their modulation characteristics. We construct a multilayer hybrid machine learning network for the classification of seven types of signals in different modulation. We extract the signal modulation features exploiting a set of algorithms such as time-frequency analysis, discrete Fourier transform, and instantaneous autocorrelation and accomplish automatic modulation classification using naive Bayesian and support vector machine in a hybrid manner. The parameters in the network for classification are determined automatically in the training process. The numerical simulation results indicate that the proposed network accomplishes the classification accurately.
Polyvinylidene Difluoride Piezoelectric Electrospun Nanofibers: Review in Synthesis, Fabrication, Characterizations, and Applications
Authors: Alhasssan Zainab Abu , Burezq Yasmeen S. , Nair Remya , Shehata Nader
Published: December 2018

This review article highlights the methods and principles used for PVDF nanofiber creation and the use of these nanofibers in different fields by utilizing its piezoelectric performance, etc. The studies include different techniques to improve the alignment and piezoelectric behavior of nanofibers. The pressure versus sensitivity behavior of PVDF substrate is thoroughly analyzed. The optimum conditions (of experimental parameters) of the electrospinning technique are carefully studied to improve the structure, alignment, and performance of the generated nanofiber mats. In addition to experimental methods, the preparation of nanocomposites with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) also can improve the structure, alignment, and piezoelectric performance. The characterization tools used for the analyses of fabricated nanofibers are also discussed, in addition, to analyze the piezoelectric results of the targeted nanocomposite.
Machine Learning Models for Spring Discharge Forecasting
Authors: Granata Francesco , Saroli Michele , de Marinis Giovanni , Gargano Rudy
Published: December 2018

Nowadays, drought phenomena increasingly affect large areas of the globe; therefore, the need for a careful and rational management of water resources is becoming more pressing. Considering that most of the world’s unfrozen freshwater reserves are stored in aquifers, the capability of prediction of spring discharges is a crucial issue. An approach based on water balance is often extremely complicated or ineffective. A promising alternative is represented by data-driven approaches. Recently, many hydraulic engineering problems have been addressed by means of advanced models derived from artificial intelligence studies. Three different machine learning algorithms were used for spring discharge forecasting in this comparative study: M5P regression tree, random forest, and support vector regression. The spring of Rasiglia Alzabove, Umbria, Central Italy, was selected as a case study. The machine learning models have proven to be able to provide very encouraging results. M5P provides good short-term predictions of monthly average flow rates (e.g., in predicting average discharge of the spring after 1 month, R2=0.991, RAE=14.97%, if a 4-month input is considered), while RF is able to provide accurate medium-term forecasts (e.g., in forecasting average discharge of the spring after 3 months, R2=0.964, RAE=43.12%, if a 4-month input is considered). As the time of forecasting advances, the models generally provide less accurate predictions. Moreover, the effectiveness of the models significantly depends on the duration of the period considered for input data. This duration should be close to the aquifer response time, approximately estimated by cross-correlation analysis.
Barriers and Advances in Kidney Preservation
Authors: Steichen C. , Giraud S. , Bon D. , Barrou B. , Badet L. , Salamé E. , Kerforne T. , Allain G. , Roumy J. , Jayle C. , Hannaert P. , Hauet T. , Thuillier R.
Published: December 2018

Despite the fact that a significant fraction of kidney graft dysfunctions observed after transplantation is due to ischemia-reperfusion injuries, there is still no clear consensus regarding optimal kidney preservation strategy. This stems directly from the fact that as of yet, the mechanisms underlying ischemia-reperfusion injury are poorly defined, and the role of each preservation parameter is not clearly outlined. In the meantime, as donor demography changes, organ quality is decreasing which directly increases the rate of poor outcome. This situation has an impact on clinical guidelines and impedes their possible harmonization in the transplant community, which has to move towards changing organ preservation paradigms: new concepts must emerge and the definition of a new range of adapted preservation method is of paramount importance. This review presents existing barriers in transplantation (e.g., temperature adjustment and adequate protocol, interest for oxygen addition during preservation, and clear procedure for organ perfusion during machine preservation), discusses the development of novel strategies to overcome them, and exposes the importance of identifying reliable biomarkers to monitor graft quality and predict short and long-term outcomes. Finally, perspectives in therapeutic strategies will also be presented, such as those based on stem cells and their derivatives and innovative models on which they would need to be properly tested.
Synchronous Stability of Four Homodromy Vibrators in a Vibrating System with Double Resonant Types
Authors: Zhang Xueliang , Li Chao , Wang Zhihui , Cui Shiju
Published: December 2018

This paper aims at studying the synchronous stability of four homodromy vibrators in subresonant and superresonant states. The motion differential equations are established firstly. The simplified form of analytical expressions is yielded, and the stability criterion of synchronous states satisfies Routh–Hurwitz criterion. The coupling dynamic characteristics of the system are analyzed in detail numerically, such as the maximum of coupling torque, coefficients of ability of synchronization and stability, and phase differences. Based on the ratio of operating frequencies to natural frequencies of the system, the resonant regions are divided into two areas: subresonant and superresonant. It is shown that the phase differences among four vibrators in the subresonant state are stabilized about zero, and exciting forces of four vibrators are positively superposed, while in the superresonant one, the phenomenon of the diversity of the nonlinear system occurs, i.e., two groups of synchronous and stable solutions of the phase differences (pi and pi/2) are found, and in this case, the exciting forces of four vibrators are counteracted, the rigid frame embodies no vibration, and the minimum of dynamic load transferring to foundation is realized. The correctness of theoretical results is verified by numerical characteristic analysis and simulations. This paper can provide a theoretical reference for designing a type of new high‐frequency vibrating mill.
Prognostic Significance of Fluorine-18 Fluorodeoxyglucose Positron Emission Tomography in Anal Squamous Cell Carcinoma: A Systematic Review and a Meta-Analysis
Authors: Sadeghi Ramin , Harsini Sara , Qodsi Rad Mohammad Ali , Dabbagh Vahid Reza , Treglia Giorgio
Published: December 2018

Purpose. Prognostic significance of fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (18F-FDG-PET) in anal squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) has been evaluated in several studies; however, the results seem to be controversial and no consensus exists about its predictive capability. The current meta-analysis was carried out to comprehensively investigate the prognostic significance of 18F-FDG-PET parameters in patients with anal SCC. Methods. A comprehensive literature search of PubMed/MEDLINE and Scopus databases was performed to retrieve pertinent articles published until August 5th 2018, concerning the prognostic significance of 18F-FDG-PET in patients with anal SCC. No language restriction was used. Several prognostic factors were reported for progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) including pretreatment maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax), metabolic tumor volume (MTV), inguinal nodal uptake, and metabolic response to therapy. Results. Eleven studies (741 patients) were included. The pooled hazard ratio (HR) for the probability of PFS was 5.36 (95% confidence interval (95% CI): 3.12–9.21, p<0.001) for metabolic response to therapy and 1.98 (95% CI: 1.26–3.12, p=0.003) for SUVmax. The pooled HR for the probability of OS was 5.87 (3.02–11.39, p<0.0001) for metabolic response to therapy. On the other hand, the study revealed that the pooled HRs of MTV and inguinal nodal uptake for PFS were 1.56 (95% CI: 0.96–2.53, p=0.072) and 1.79 (95% CI: 1–3.21, p=0.051), respectively. Conclusions. Our findings propose that some 18F-FDG-PET parameters could serve as prognostic indicators in anal SCC, but further larger studies are needed in this setting.
Lineability within Peano Curves, Martingales, and Integral Theory
Authors: Bartoszewicz Artur , Bienias Marek , Głąb Szymon
Published: December 2018

This paper is devoted to give several improvements of some known facts in lineability approach. In particular, we prove that (i) the set of continuous mappings from the unit interval onto the unit square contains a closed,c-semigroupable convex subset, (ii) the set of pointwise convergent martingales(Xn)n∈NwithEXn→∞isc-lineable, (iii) the set of martingales converging in measure but not almost surely isc-lineable, (iv) the set of sequences(Xn)n∈Nof independent random variables, withEXn=0,∑n=1∞var Xn=∞, and the property that(X1+⋯+Xn)n∈Nis almost surely convergent, isc-lineable, (v) the set of bounded functionsf:[0,1]×[0,1]→Rfor which the assertion of Fubini’s Theorem does not hold is consistent withZFC  1-lineable (it is not 2-lineable), (vi) the set of unbounded functionsf:[0,1]×[0,1]→Rfor which the assertion of Fubini’s Theorem does not hold (with infinite integral allowed) isc-lineable but notc+-lineable.