bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Is there a role for humidified heated high-flow nasal cannula therapy in paediatric emergency departments?
Authors: Long Elliot , Babl Franz E , Duke Trevor
Published: January 2016

Background

Humidified heated high-flow nasal cannula (HFNC) therapy is a potentially useful form of non-invasive respiratory support for children with moderate respiratory distress and/or hypoxaemia. No prospective data support its use in the paediatric emergency department (ED). We introduced HFNC therapy into a paediatric ED and evaluated its use and failure rates.

Methods

Prospective observational study of all patients presenting to the Royal Children's Hospital, Australia, who received HFNC therapy between April 2013 and September 2013 (one southern hemisphere winter season). We assessed demographics, indications, failure rate, predictors of failure and adverse events.

Results

71 patients commenced HFNC therapy in ED over the study period. The median age was 9 months. The most common indication was bronchiolitis (49/71; 69%). Five (7%) of the patients failed HFNC and were escalated to other forms of respiratory support in ED, four to nasal continuous positive airway pressure and one required intubation. A further 21 (32%) failed HFNC therapy after intensive care unit (ICU) admission, giving a total failure of 28 (39%). There were no serious adverse events in ED, and one child with asthma developed air leak syndrome after transfer to the ICU.

Conclusions

HFNC therapy may have a role in the paediatric ED as an easily administered and well tolerated form of non-invasive respiratory support, but about one-third of patients required escalation to a higher level of respiratory support. Further studies should assess the safety profile of HFNC in larger series, and define the role of HFNC in key respiratory conditions compared with other possible interventions.
Crohn's disease and sarcoidosis in siblings: follow-up of a published report with a new case and brief review of the literature
Authors: Willoughby J M T
Published: January 2016

Reported in 1971 were the cases of three brothers, two of whom had developed sarcoidosis and the third Crohn's disease. That now presented concerns one brother who, 50 years after the diagnosis and successful treatment of his sarcoidosis, was found incidentally, at colonoscopy performed to exclude malignancy, to have Crohn's colitis in the absence of any symptoms attributable to this. The report concludes with a brief review of the literature.
Practical applications of injury surveillance: a brief 25-year history of the Connecticut Injury Prevention Center
Authors: Lapidus Garry , Borrup Kevin , DiVietro Susan , Campbell Brendan T , Beebe Rebecca , Grasso Damion , Rogers Steven , Joseph D'Andrea , Banco Leonard
Published: January 2016

Background:

The mission of the Connecticut Injury Prevention Center (CIPC), jointly housed in Connecticut Children's Medical Center and Hartford Hospital, is to reduce unintentional injury and violence among Connecticut residents, with a special focus on translating research into injury prevention programmes and policy. The CIPC engages in four core activities: research, education and training, community outreach programmes and public policy. As surveillance is an essential element of injury prevention, the CIPC has developed a robust statewide fatal and non-fatal injury surveillance system that has guided our prior work and continues to inform our current projects.

Objective:

The purpose of this article is to review the projects, programmes, and collaborative relationships that have made the CIPC successful in reducing unintentional injury and violence in Connecticut throughout the course of its 25 years history.

Design, setting, participants:

Retrospective review of the application of injury surveillance.

Results/Conclusions:

We believe that the application of our surveillance system can serve as a model for others who wish to engage in collaborative, community-based, data-driven injury prevention programmes in their own communities.
Defining acute kidney injury in dengue viral infection by conventional and novel classification systems (AKIN and RIFLE): a comparative analysis
Authors: Mallhi Tauqeer Hussain , Khan Amer Hayat , Sarriff Azmi , Adnan Azreen Syazril , Khan Yusra Habib , Jummaat Fauziah
Published: January 2016

Background

Several criteria have been used to stratify acute kidney injury (AKI) in dengue infection and have resulted in variations in its incidence as well as clinic-laboratory characteristics. The current study was aimed to compare three commonly used criteria of AKI among patients with dengue.

Methods

667 patients with dengue were defined and staged according to the conventional definition (CD), the Acute Kidney Injury Network (AKIN) and the Risk, Injury, Failure, Loss of function, End stage renal disease (RIFLE) criteria. Appropriate statistical methods were used to compare these three criteria.

Results

The incidence of AKI during dengue infection was 14.2% by AKIN criteria, 12.6% by RIFLE criteria and 4.2% by CD. AKIN and RIFLE criteria were comparable while AKIN-I identified 11 more patients with AKI than RIFLE-R (76.8% vs 73.8%, p=0.023). CD was found to be less sensitive than AKIN and RIFLE due to stratification of only severe AKI cases with serum creatinine ≥176.8 µmol/L. Overall mortality was 1.2% and severe stages of AKI were associated with increased mortality (p<0.001). AKIN criteria identified seven risk factors, RIFLE identified six and CD identified three risk factors. Old age, severe dengue and the use of nephrotoxic drugs were found to be independent predictors identified by all criteria while hypertension was only identified by AKIN.

Conclusions

The incidence of AKI in dengue infection, the risk factors for its development and clinico-laboratory characteristics vary significantly according to the diagnostic criteria used. In our analysis, AKIN and RIFLE were comparable to each other and superior to CD with regard to early diagnosis and sensitivity.
Regulation of peripheral classical and non-classical monocytes on infliximab treatment in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis
Authors: Aeberli Daniel , Kamgang Richard , Balani Deepak , Hofstetter Willy , Villiger Peter M , Seitz Michael
Published: January 2016

Objective

To investigate the regulatory effect of tumour necrosis factor (TNF) blockade with infliximab on the distribution of peripheral blood monocyte subpopulations in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and ankylosing spondylitis (AS).

Methods

Purified CD11b+CD14+ monocytes from 5 patients with RA and 5 AS were analysed ex vivo before and after infliximab treatment by flow cytometry for CD16, CD163, CD11b, C-C chemokine receptor type 2 (CCR2) and CXC chemokine receptor 4 (CXCR4) at baseline and at days 2, 14, 84 and 168 after the first infliximab administration. Serum levels of the stromal cell-derived factor (SDF)-1 and monocyte chemotactic peptide (MCP)-1 at different time points were measured in either patient group before and on infliximab treatment.

Results

Anti-TNF treatment with infliximab led to a significant increase of circulating CD11b+ non-classical and a concomitantly decrease of CD11b+ classical monocytes, to a decline in SDF-1 levels and reduced expression of CCR2 and CXCR4 on non-classical monocyte subpopulation.

Conclusions

Our study shows, that TNFα blockade by infliximab resulted in a dichotomy of the regulation of classical and non-classical monocytes that might have substantial impact on inhibition of osteoclastogenesis and of subsequent juxta-articular bone destruction and systemic bone loss in RA and AS.
Recovery brachiopod associations from the lower Silurian of South China and their paleoecological implications
Authors: Huang Bing , Zhan Ren-Bin , Wang Guang-Xu
Published: January 2016

A recovery brachiopod fauna occurs in the lower Niuchang Formation (upper Rhuddanian – lower Aeronian, Llandovery) of the Xinglongchang section, Meitan County, northern Guizhou Province, South China. Nine collections were made at the section, all of which are dominated by brachiopods, and three associations are recognized here and their paleoecology is discussed. Paleoenvironmental analysis shows a shallowing upward trend for the lower Niuchang Formation, although a global transgression was happening at that time. The balance between the global transgression and the regional Qianzhong Uplift guaranteed a stable environment for the formation of the Niuchang Formation and the recovery of brachiopods in South China after the end-Ordovician mass extinction. In addition to the traditional methods of principal component analysis and cluster analysis, a relatively new technique to paleontology, “network analysis”, is applied successfully in this study. It is suggested that network analysis could be used as one of the supporting methods in investigating brachiopod paleoecology.
Space use of a reintroduced population of Iberian ibex (Capra pyrenaica) in a protected natural area
Authors: Refoyo P. , Olmedo C. , Muñoz B.
Published: January 2016

In Europe, wild ungulates have undergone major expansion and population growth during recent decades. In certain cases, the high density achieved by these populations has led to excessive pressure on the environment, which eventually becomes a limiting factor for the population itself. One of these reintroductions was performed with the Iberian ibex (Capra pyrenaica Schinz, 1838) in the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park (Spain). This reintroduced population was monitored during six field seasons (2000, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2010, and 2014) by direct observation of the animals along transects using the distance sampling method to determine the degree of expansion over the years and the use of different habitats according to different seasons. The abundances obtained for each field season showed a significant increase from 4.16 to 8.65 individuals/km, showing a linear relationship between abundance and extent of the area occupied by the species. We observed that differences between habitat availability and use were significant for all seasons. Our data can be used as an example of the colonization process of a population of wild ungulates and their impact on vegetation to better manage future reintroductions.
Pulsatilla Saponin D Inhibits Autophagic Flux and Synergistically Enhances the Anticancer Activity of Chemotherapeutic Agents Against HeLa Cells
Authors: Zhang Yulin , Bao Jiaolin , Wang Kai , Jia Xuejing , Zhang Chao , Huang Borong , Chen Meiwan , Wan Jian-Bo , Su Huanxing , Wang Yitao , He Chengwei
Published: January 2016

Pulsatilla saponin D (SB365), a saponin isolated from rhizoma of Pulsatilla chinensis (Bunge) Regel, exhibited anticancer activities in various cancer types. In the present study, we identified that SB365 was a potent inhibitor of autophagic flux in several cancer cell lines. SB365 induced a robust accumulation of autophagosomes as evidenced by monodansylaervarine (MDC) staining and increased protein levels of LC3-II. However, SB365 caused the accumulation of p62, a substrate that should be degraded through the autophagy–lysosomal pathway. These results indicated that SB365 was an inducer of autophagosome formation, but an inhibitor of autophagic flux. Interestingly, we found that SB365 synergistically enhanced the anticancer activity of chemotherapeutic agents against cervical cancer HeLa cells. Furthermore, our study demonstrated that SB365 increased the phosphorylation of ERK and inhibited the phosphorylation of mTOR and p70S6K, suggesting that their roles in the effects of SB365 on autophagy. These results suggest that SB365 could be a promising adjuvant anticancer agent.
The first principle study of electronic and optical properties in rhombohedral BiAlO3
Authors: Tse Geoffrey , Yu Dapeng
Published: January 2016

We studied the crystal structure of perovskite BiAlO3using ab initio density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Using the atomic positions given by the previous literature, we were able to create a lattice structure using visualization software Material Studio. Such sophisticated structure is found in rhombohedral perovskite system with space group with R3c (#161) and lattice parameter of [Formula: see text], bond angle of [Formula: see text], while treating the exchange–correlation potential with the local density approximations (LDA) method. The calculations were performed to investigate the electronic, optical, elastic and phonon properties.
Kendall’s Tau Based Correlation Analysis of Chaotic Sequences Generated by Piecewise Linear Maps
Authors: Ben Jemaa Zouhair , Fournier-Prunaret Daniele , Belghith Safya
Published: January 2016

In many applications, sequences generated by chaotic maps have been considered as pseudo-random sequences. This paper deals with the correlation between chaotic sequences generated by a given piecewise linear map; we have based the measure of the correlation on the statistics of the Kendall tau, which is usually used in the field of statistics. We considered three piecewise linear maps to generate chaotic sequences and computed the statistics of the Kendall tau of couples of sequences obtained from randomly chosen couples of initial conditions. We essentially found that the results depend on the considered chaotic map and that it is possible to approach the uncorrelated case.
Bifurcation Trees of Period-1 Motions to Chaos in a Two-Degree-of-Freedom, Nonlinear Oscillator
Authors: Luo Albert C. J. , Yu Bo
Published: January 2016

In this paper, analytical solutions for period-[Formula: see text] motions in a two-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) nonlinear oscillator are developed through the finite Fourier series. From the finite Fourier series transformation, the dynamical system of coefficients of the finite Fourier series is developed. From such a dynamical system, the solutions of period-[Formula: see text] motions are obtained and the corresponding stability and bifurcation analyses of period-[Formula: see text] motions are carried out. Analytical bifurcation trees of period-1 motions to chaos are presented. Displacements, velocities and trajectories of periodic motions in the 2-DOF nonlinear oscillator are used to illustrate motion complexity, and harmonic amplitude spectrums give harmonic effects on periodic motions of the 2-DOF nonlinear oscillator.
Eigenvalue, Unilateral Global Bifurcation and Constant Sign Solution for a Fractional Laplace Problem
Authors: Yang Bian-Xia , Sun Hong-Rui , Feng Zhaosheng
Published: January 2016

In this paper, we apply the Ljusternik–Schnirelmann theory to deal with the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the fractional Laplace operator. It shows that there exists a simple and isolated principal eigenvalue [Formula: see text] such that under certain conditions on the perturbation function [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text] is a bifurcation point of the problem [Formula: see text] where [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text] is a smooth and bounded domain, [Formula: see text] [Formula: see text] with [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] satisfies the Carathéodory condition in the first two variables. There are two distinct unbounded subcontinua [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], consisting of the continuum [Formula: see text] emanating from [Formula: see text]. As an application of the unilateral global bifurcation result, we extend our investigation to the existence of constant sign solutions for a class of related nonlinear fractional Laplace problems. Some known results on the fractional Laplace problem in the literature are generalized.
A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Sustainable Development in Regional SMEs
Authors: Salimzadeh Parisa , Courvisanos Jerry
Published: January 2016

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are significant regional development agents. Therefore, if SMEs adopt sustainability and regional economic strategies at the same time, it enables local communities to benefit from sustainable development, innovation and economic development in their regions. In the SME literature, there is a lack of appreciation of the sustainability issue and its connection with its local community. Bringing together the relevant literature, this paper develops a sustainability assessment framework for SMEs by providing the internal and external drivers and inhibitors affecting the adoption of social and environmental friendly practices in SMEs within the regional context. This framework can be used as a basis for application in regional development. It will also be a valuable tool for evaluation and monitoring of strategies for sustainability adoption.
FaultHound
Authors: Nitin  , Pomeranz Irith , Vijaykumar T. N.
Published: January 2016

Soft error susceptibility is a growing concern with continued CMOS scaling. Previous work explores full- and partial-redundancy schemes in hardware and software for soft-fault tolerance. However, full-redundancy schemes incur high performance and energy overheads whereas partial-redundancy schemes achieve low coverage. An initial study, called Perturbation Based Fault Screening (PBFS), explores exploiting value locality to provide hints of soft faults whenever a value falls outside its neighborhood. PBFS employs bit-mask filters to capture value neighborhoods. However, PBFS achieves low coverage; straightforwardly improving the coverage results in high false-positive rates, and performance and energy overheads. We propose
FaultHound
, a value-locality-based soft-fault tolerance scheme, which employs five mechanisms to address PBFS's limitations: (1) a scheme to cluster the filters via an inverted organization of the filter tables to reinforce learning and reduce the false-positive rates; (2) a learning scheme for ignoring the delinquent bit positions that raise repeated false alarms, to reduce further the false-positive rate; (3) a light-weight predecessor replay scheme instead of a full rollback to reduce the performance and energy penalty of the remaining false positives; (4) a simple scheme to distinguish rename faults, which require rollback instead of replay for recovery, from false positives to avoid unnecessary rollback penalty; and (5) a detection scheme, which avoids rollback, for the load-store queue which is not covered by our replay. Using simulations, we show that while PBFS achieves either low coverage (30%), or high false-positive rates (8%) with high performance overheads (97%), FaultHound achieves higher coverage (75%) and lower false-positive rates (3%) with lower performance and energy overheads (10% and 25%).
Accelerating asynchronous programs through event sneak peek
Authors: Chadha Gaurav , Mahlke Scott , Narayanasamy Satish
Published: January 2016

Asynchronous or event-driven programming is now being used to develop a wide range of systems, including mobile and Web 2.0 applications, Internet-of-Things, and even distributed servers. We observe that these programs perform poorly on conventional processor architectures that are heavily optimized for the characteristics of synchronous programs. Execution characteristics of asynchronous programs significantly differ from synchronous programs as they interleave short events from varied tasks in a fine-grained manner.

This paper proposes the Event Sneak Peek (ESP) architecture to mitigate microarchitectural bottlenecks in asynchronous programs. ESP exploits the fact that events are posted to an event queue before they get executed. By exposing this event queue to the processor, ESP gains knowledge of the future events. Instead of stalling on long latency cache misses, ESP jumps ahead to pre-execute future events and gathers useful information that later help initiate accurate instruction and data prefetches and correct branch mispredictions. We demonstrate that ESP improves the performance of popular asynchronous Web 2.0 applications including Amazon, Google maps, and Facebook, by an average of 16%.
Stash
Authors: Komuravelli Rakesh , Sinclair Matthew D. , Alsop Johnathan , Huzaifa Muhammad , Kotsifakou Maria , Srivastava Prakalp , Adve Sarita V. , Adve Vikram S.
Published: January 2016

Heterogeneous systems employ specialization for energy efficiency. Since data movement is expected to be a dominant consumer of energy, these systems employ specialized memories (e.g., scratchpads and FIFOs) for better efficiency for targeted data. These memory structures, however, tend to exist in local address spaces, incurring significant performance and energy penalties due to inefficient data movement between the global and private spaces. We propose an efficient heterogeneous memory system where specialized memory components are tightly coupled in a unified and coherent address space. This paper applies these ideas to a system with CPUs and GPUs with scratchpads and caches.

We introduce a new memory organization, stash, that combines the benefits of caches and scratchpads without incurring their downsides. Like a scratchpad, the stash is directly addressed (without tags and TLB accesses) and provides compact storage. Like a cache, the stash is globally addressable and visible, providing implicit data movement and increased data reuse. We show that the stash provides better performance and energy than a cache and a scratchpad, while enabling new use cases for heterogeneous systems. For 4 microbenchmarks, which exploit new use cases (e.g., reuse across GPU compute kernels), compared to scratchpads and caches, the stash reduces execution cycles by an average of 27% and 13% respectively and energy by an average of 53% and 35%. For 7 current GPU applications, which are not designed to exploit the new features of the stash, compared to scratchpads and caches, the stash reduces cycles by 10% and 12% on average (max 22% and 31%) respectively, and energy by 16% and 32% on average (max 30% and 51%).
COP
Authors: Palframan David J. , Kim Nam Sung , Lipasti Mikko H.
Published: January 2016

Protecting main memories from soft errors typically requires special dual-inline memory modules (DIMMs) which incorporate at least one extra chip per rank to store error-correcting codes (ECC). This increases the cost of the DIMM as well as its power consumption. To avoid these costs, some proposals have suggested protecting non-ECC DIMMs by allocating a portion of memory space to store ECC metadata. However, such proposals can significantly shrink the available memory space while degrading performance due to extra memory accesses. In this work, we propose a technique called COP which uses block-level compression to make room for ECC check bits in DRAM. Because a compressed block with check bits is the same size as an uncompressed block, no extra memory accesses are required and the memory space is not reduced. Unlike other approaches that require explicit compression-tracking metadata, COP employs a novel mechanism that relies on ECC to detect compressed data. Our results show that COP can reduce the DRAM soft error rate by 93% with no storage overhead and negligible impact on performance. We also propose a technique using COP to protect both compressible and incompressible data with minimal storage and performance overheads.
HEB
Authors: Liu Longjun , Li Chao , Sun Hongbin , Hu Yang , Gu Juncheng , Li Tao , Xin Jingmin , Zheng Nanning
Published: January 2016

Today, an increasing number of applications and services are being hosted by large-scale data centers. The massive and irregular load surges challenge data center power infrastructures. As a result, power mismatching between supply and demand has emerged as a crucial issue in modern data centers which are either under-provisioned or powered by intermittent power sources. Recent proposals have employed energy storage devices such as the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems to address this issue. However, current approaches lack the capacity of efficiently handling the irregular and unpredictable power mismatches.

In this paper, we propose Hybrid Energy Buffering (HEB), the first heterogeneous and adaptive strategy that incorporates super-capacitors (SCs) into existing data centers to dynamically deal with power mismatches. Our techniques exploit diverse energy absorbing characteristics and intelligent load assignment policies to provide efficiency- and scenario- aware power mismatch management. More attractively, our management schemes make the costly energy storage devices more affordable and economical for datacenter-scale usage. We evaluate the HEB design with a real system prototype. Compared with a homogenous battery energy buffering system, HEB could improve energy efficiency by 39.7%, extend UPS lifetime by 4.7X, reduce system downtime by 41% and improve renewable energy utilization by 81.2%. Our TCO analysis shows that HEB manifests high ROI and is able to gain more than 1.9X peak shaving benefit during an 8-years period. It allows datacenters to adapt to various power supply anomalies, thereby improving operational efficiency, resiliency and economy.
C
lean
Authors: Segulja Cedomir , Abdelrahman Tarek S.
Published: January 2016

Data races make parallel programs hard to understand. Precise race detection that stops an execution on first occurrence of a race addresses this problem, but it comes with significant overhead. In this work, we exploit the insight that precisely detecting only write-after-write (WAW) and read-after-write (RAW) races suffices to provide cleaner semantics for racy programs. We demonstrate that stopping an execution only when these races occur ensures that synchronization-free-regions appear to be executed in isolation and that their writes appear atomic. Additionally, the undetected racy executions can be given certain deterministic guarantees with efficient mechanisms.

We present

C
lean

, a system that precisely detects WAW and RAW races and deterministically orders synchronization. We demonstrate that the combination of these two relatively inexpensive mechanisms provides cleaner semantics for racy programs. We evaluate both software-only and hardware-supported

C
lean

. The software-only

C
lean

runs all Pthread benchmarks from the SPLASH-2 and PARSEC suites with an average 7.8x slowdown. The overhead of precise WAW and RAW detection (5.8x) constitutes the majority of this slowdown. Simple hardware extensions reduce the slowdown of

C
lean
's

race detection to on average 10.4% and never more than 46.7%.
MiSAR
Authors: Liang Ching-Kai , Prvulovic Milos
Published: January 2016

While numerous hardware synchronization mechanisms have been proposed, they either no longer function or suffer great performance loss when their hardware resources are exceeded, or they add significant complexity and cost to handle such resource overflows. Additionally, prior hardware synchronization proposals focus on one type (barrier or lock) of synchronization, so several mechanisms are likely to be needed to support real applications, many of which use locks, barriers, and/or condition variables.

This paper proposes MiSAR, a minimalistic synchronization accelerator (MSA) that supports all three commonly used types of synchronization (locks, barriers, and condition variables), and a novel overflow management unit (OMU) that dynamically manages its (very) limited hardware synchronization resources. The OMU allows safe and efficient dynamic transitions between using hardware (MSA) and software synchronization implementations. This allows the MSA's resources to be used only for currently-active synchronization operations, providing significant performance benefits even when the number of synchronization variables used in the program is much larger than the MSA's resources. Because it allows a safe transition between hardware and software synchronization, the OMU also facilitates thread suspend/resume, migration, and other thread-management activities. Finally, the MSA/OMU combination decouples the instruction set support (how the program invokes hardware-supported synchronization) from the actual implementation of the accelerator, allowing different accelerators (or even wholesale removal of the accelerator) in the future without changes to OMU-compatible application or system code. We show that, even with only 2 MSA entries in each tile, the MSA/OMU combination on average performs within 3% of ideal (zero-latency) synchronization, and achieves a speedup of 1.43X over the software (pthreads) implementation.
SLIP
Authors: Das Subhasis , Aamodt Tor M. , Dally William J.
Published: January 2016

Wire energy has become the major contributor to energy in large lower level caches. While wire energy is related to wire latency its costs are exposed differently in the memory hierarchy. We propose Sub-Level Insertion Policy (SLIP), a cache management policy which improves cache energy consumption by increasing the number of accesses from energy efficient locations while simultaneously decreasing intra-level data movement. In SLIP, each cache level is partitioned into several cache sublevels of differing sizes. Then, the recent reuse distance distribution of a line is used to choose an energy-optimized insertion and movement policy for the line. The policy choice is made by a hardware unit that predicts the number of accesses and inter-level movements.

Using a full-system simulation including OS interactions and hardware overheads, we show that SLIP saves 35% energy at the L2 and 22% energy at the L3 level and performs 0.75% better than a regular cache hierarchy in a single core system. When configured to include a bypassing policy, SLIP reduces traffic to DRAM by 2.2%. This is achieved at the cost of storing 12b metadata per cache line (2.3% overhead), a 6b policy in the PTE, and 32b distribution metadata for each page in the DRAM (a overhead of 0.1%). Using SLIP in a multiprogrammed system saves 47% LLC energy, and reduces traffic to DRAM by 5.5%.
Callback
Authors: Ros Alberto , Kaxiras Stefanos
Published: January 2016

Cache coherence protocols based on self-invalidation allow a simpler design compared to traditional invalidation-based protocols, by relying on data-race-free (DRF) semantics and applying self-invalidation on racy synchronization points exposed to the hardware. Their simplicity lies in the absence of invalidation traffic, which eliminates the need to track readers in a directory, and reduces the number of transient protocol states. With the addition of self-downgrade these protocols can become effectively directory-free. While this works well for race-free data, unfortunately, lack of explicit invalidations compromises the effectiveness of any synchronization that relies on races. This includes any form of spin waiting, which is employed for signaling, locking, and barrier primitives.

In this work we propose a new solution for spin-waiting in these protocols, the
callback
mechanism, that is simpler and more efficient than explicit invalidation. Callbacks are set by reads involved in spin waiting, and are satisfied by writes (that can even precede these reads). To implement callbacks we use a small (just a few entries) directory-cache structure that is intended to service only these "spin-waiting" races. This directory structure is self-contained and is not backed up in any way. Entries are created on demand and can be evicted without the need to preserve their information. Our evaluation shows a significant improvement both over explicit invalidation and over exponential back-off, the state-of-the-art mechanism for self-invalidation protocols to avoid spinning in the shared cache.
BlueDBM
Authors: Jun Sang-Woo , Liu Ming , Lee Sungjin , Hicks Jamey , Ankcorn John , King Myron , Xu Shuotao , Arvind
Published: January 2016

Complex data queries, because of their need for random accesses, have proven to be slow unless all the data can be accommodated in DRAM. There are many domains, such as genomics, geological data and daily twitter feeds where the datasets of interest are 5TB to 20 TB. For such a dataset, one would need a cluster with 100 servers, each with 128GB to 256GBs of DRAM, to accommodate all the data in DRAM. On the other hand, such datasets could be stored easily in the flash memory of a rack-sized cluster. Flash storage has much better random access performance than hard disks, which makes it desirable for analytics workloads. In this paper we present BlueDBM, a new system architecture which has flash-based storage with in-store processing capability and a low-latency high-throughput inter-controller network. We show that BlueDBM outperforms a flash-based system without these features by a factor of 10 for some important applications. While the performance of a ram-cloud system falls sharply even if only 5%~10% of the references are to the secondary storage, this sharp performance degradation is not an issue in BlueDBM. BlueDBM presents an attractive point in the cost-performance trade-off for Big Data analytics.
Propofol Suppressed Hypoxia/Reoxygenation‐Induced Apoptosis in HBVSMC by Regulation of the Expression of Bcl‐2, Bax, Caspase3, Kir6.1, and p‐JNK
Authors: Zhang Jianhai , Xia Yunfei , Xu Zifeng , Deng Xiaoming
Published: January 2016

Recent studies have found that propofol may protect brain from cerebral ischemic‐reperfusion injury. However, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. The effects of propofol were evaluated in HBVSMC after hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R). Cell viability and levels of SOD, LDH, and MDA were measured. Apoptosis was detected by flow cytometry. The levels of Bax, Bcl‐2, Caspase3, Sur2b, Kir6.1, JNK, p‐JNK, mTOR, and p‐mTOR proteins were measured by western blotting. H/R decreased cell viability and SOD activity and increased LDH leakage and MDA content in HBVSMC, all of which were significantly reversed by propofol. Propofol suppressed the levels of H/R‐induced apoptosis. The expression of Bcl‐2 and p‐mTOR was significantly downregulated and the expression levels of Bax, Caspase3, Kir6.1, and p‐JNK were upregulated following H/R injury. The ratio of p‐JNK/JNK was increased; however, that of p‐mTOR/mTOR decreased correspondingly. The effects on the expression of these proteins were reversed by propofol treatment. SP600125 enhanced and Everolimus attenuated the effect of propofol. These findings suggested that the protective effect of propofol against H/R injury in the HBVSMC was through the inhibition of apoptosis by inducing the expression of Bcl‐2 and p‐mTOR as well as inhibiting the expression levels of Bax, Caspase3, Kir6.1, and p‐JNK.
New Method for Removal of Organic Dyes Using Supported Iron Oxide as a Catalyst
Authors: Kosa Samia A. , Al-sebaii Naha M. , Abd El Maksod Islam H. , Hegazy Eman Z.
Published: January 2016

In this study, we perform a catalytic decomposition of organic dye over Fe2O3-CeO2-TiO2-γ-Al2O3catalyst in the presence of molecular oxygen and chlorate ions. The results showed that organic dye acts as a sensitizer during this process. The mechanism of the allover process is hypothesized. Several techniques were employed for the characterization of the catalyst, including XRD, SEM, EDAX, and thermal analysis and catalytic activity. The analysis showed that iron is the main active centers, and we have two types of active centers in this process: surface iron and dissolved iron in titanium dioxide. The dissolved iron was found to be the most active center; however, after Fe/Ti = 2.76, a synergism was observed to be occurring between the two active centers.
Advanced Glycation End Products Evolution after Pancreas‐Kidney Transplantation: Plasmatic and Cutaneous Assessments
Authors: Martins La Salete , Oliveira José C. , Vizcaíno José Ramón , Fonseca Isabel , Gouveia Carlos , Silva Donzília , Henriques António C. , Noronha Irene L. , Rodrigues Anabela
Published: January 2016

Diabetes mellitus leads to increased Advanced Glycation End Products (AGE) production, which has been associated with secondary diabetic complications. Type 1 diabetic patients undergoing pancreas‐kidney transplantation (SPKT) can restore normoglycemia and renal function, eventually decreasing AGE accumulation. We aimed to prospectively study AGE evolution after SPKT. Circulating AGE were assessed in 20 patients, at time 0 (T0), 3 months (T3), 6 months (T6), and 12 months (T12) after successful SPKT. Global AGE and carboxymethyllysine (CML) were analyzed, as well as advanced oxidation protein products (AOPP). Skin biopsies were obtained at T0 and T12. Immunohistochemistry with anti‐AGE antibody evaluated skin AGE deposition. AGE mean values were 16.8 ± 6.4 μg/mL at T0; 17.1 ± 3.8 μg/mL at T3; 17.5 ± 5.6 μg/mL at T6; and 16.0 ± 5.2 μg/mL at T12. CML mean values were 0.94 ± 0.36 ng/mL at T0; 1.11 ± 0.48 ng/mL at T3; 0.99 ± 0.42 ng/mL at T6; and 0.78 ± 0.38 ng/mL at T12. AOPP mean values were 130.1 ± 76.8 μMol/L at T0; 137.3 ± 110.6 μMol/L at T3; 116.4 ± 51.2 μMol/L at T6; and 106.4 ± 57.9 μMol/L at T12. CML variation was significant (P = 0.022); AOPP variation was nearly significant (P = 0.076). Skin biopsies evolved mostly from a cytoplasmic diffuse to a peripheral interkeratinocytic immunoreaction pattern; in 7 cases, a reduction in AGE immunoreaction intensity was evident at T12. In conclusion, glycoxidation markers decrease, plasmatic and on tissues, may start early after SPKT. Studies with prolonged follow‐up may confirm these data.
Heat Transfer Characteristics of Calcined Petroleum Coke in Waste Heat Recovery Process
Authors: Zheng Bin , Liu Yongqi , Zou Lichen , Li Ruiyang
Published: January 2016

This paper reports the results of heat transfer characteristics of calcined petroleum coke in waste heat recovery process. The model of heat exchanger was set up. The model has been used to investigate the effects of porosity (0.58 to 0.79), equivalent heat conductivity coefficient (0.9 to 1.1), and equivalent specific heat (0.9 to 1.1). The calculated values of calcined petroleum coke temperature showed good agreement with the corresponding available experimental data. The temperature distribution of calcined petroleum coke, the calcined petroleum coke temperature at heat exchanger outlet, the average heat transfer coefficient, and the heat recovery efficiency were studied. It can also be used in deriving much needed data for heat exchanger designs when employed in industry.
Numerical Study of Damage Modes and Damage Assessment of CFST Columns under Blast Loading
Authors: Zhang Junhao , Jiang Shiyong , Chen Bin , Li Chunhai , Qin Hao
Published: January 2016

Columns of frame structures are the key load-bearing components and the exterior columns are susceptible to attack in terrorist blasts. When subjected to blast loads, the columns would suffer a loss of bearing capacity to a certain extent due to the damage imparted, which may induce the collapse of them and even cause the progressive collapse of the whole structure. In this paper, the high-fidelity physics-based finite element program LS-DYNA was utilized to investigate the dynamic behavior and damage characteristics of the widely used concrete-filled steel tube (CFST) columns subjected to blast loads. The established numerical model was calibrated with test data in open literatures. Possible damage modes of CFST columns under blast loading were analyzed, and the damage criterion based on the residual axial load capacity of the columns was adopted to assess the damage degree. A parametric study was conducted to investigate the effects of critical parameters such as blast conditions and column details on the damage degree of CFST columns. Based on the numerical simulation data, an empirical equation was proposed to estimate the variation of columns damage degree with the various parameters.
Redox Control of Multidrug Resistance and Its Possible Modulation by Antioxidants
Authors: Cort Aysegul , Ozben Tomris , Saso Luciano , De Luca Chiara , Korkina Liudmila
Published: January 2016

Clinical efficacy of anticancer chemotherapies is dramatically hampered by multidrug resistance (MDR) dependent on inherited traits, acquired defence against toxins, and adaptive mechanisms mounting in tumours. There is overwhelming evidence that molecular events leading to MDR are regulated by redox mechanisms. For example, chemotherapeutics which overrun the first obstacle of redox‐regulated cellular uptake channels (MDR1, MDR2, and MDR3) induce a concerted action of phase I/II metabolic enzymes with a temporal redox‐regulated axis. This results in rapid metabolic transformation and elimination of a toxin. This metabolic axis is tightly interconnected with the inducible Nrf2‐linked pathway, a key switch‐on mechanism for upregulation of endogenous antioxidant enzymes and detoxifying systems. As a result, chemotherapeutics and cytotoxic by‐products of their metabolism (ROS, hydroperoxides, and aldehydes) are inactivated and MDR occurs. On the other hand, tumour cells are capable of mounting an adaptive antioxidant response against ROS produced by chemotherapeutics and host immune cells. The multiple redox‐dependent mechanisms involved in MDR prompted suggesting redox‐active drugs (antioxidants and prooxidants) or inhibitors of inducible antioxidant defence as a novel approach to diminish MDR. Pitfalls and progress in this direction are discussed.
Protective Role of Dietary Curcumin in the Prevention of the Oxidative Stress Induced by Chronic Alcohol with respect to Hepatic Injury and Antiatherogenic Markers
Authors: Varatharajalu Ravi , Garige Mamatha , Leckey Leslie C. , Reyes-Gordillo Karina , Shah Ruchi , Lakshman M. Raj
Published: January 2016

Curcumin, an antioxidant compound found in Asian spices, was evaluated for its protective effects against ethanol‐induced hepatosteatosis, liver injury, antiatherogenic markers, and antioxidant status in rats fed with Lieber‐deCarli low menhaden (2.7% of total calories from ω‐3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA)) and Lieber‐deCarli high menhaden (13.8% of total calories from ω‐3 PUFA) alcohol‐liquid (5%) diets supplemented with or without curcumin (150 mg/kg/day) for 8 weeks. Treatment with curcumin protected against high ω‐3 PUFA and ethanol‐induced hepatosteatosis and increase in liver injury markers, alanine aminotransferase, and aspartate aminotransferase. Curcumin upregulated paraoxonase 1 (PON1) mRNA and caused significant increase in serum PON1 and homocysteine thiolactonase activities as compared to high ω‐3 PUFA and ethanol group. Moreover, treatment with curcumin protected against ethanol‐induced oxidative stress by increasing the antioxidant glutathione and decreasing the lipid peroxidation adduct 4‐hydroxynonenal. These results strongly suggest that chronic ethanol in combination with high ω‐3 PUFA exacerbated hepatosteatosis and liver injury and adversely decreases antiatherogenic markers due to increased oxidative stress and depletion of glutathione. Curcumin supplementation significantly prevented these deleterious actions of chronic ethanol and high ω‐3 PUFA. Therefore, we conclude that curcumin may have therapeutic potential to protect against chronic alcohol‐induced liver injury and atherosclerosis.
Does the Interdependence between Oxidative Stress and Inflammation Explain the Antioxidant Paradox?
Authors: Biswas Subrata Kumar
Published: January 2016

Oxidative stress has been implicated in many chronic diseases. However, antioxidant trials are so far largely unsuccessful as a preventive or curative measure. Chronic low‐grade inflammatory process, on the other hand, plays a central role in the pathogenesis of a number of chronic diseases. Oxidative stress and inflammation are closely related pathophysiological processes, one of which can be easily induced by another. Thus, both processes are simultaneously found in many pathological conditions. Therefore, the failure of antioxidant trials might result from failure to select appropriate agents that specifically target both inflammation and oxidative stress or failure to use both antioxidants and anti‐inflammatory agents simultaneously or use of nonselective agents that block some of the oxidative and/or inflammatory pathways but exaggerate the others. To examine whether the interdependence between oxidative stress and inflammation can explain the antioxidant paradox we discussed in the present review the basic aspects of oxidative stress and inflammation and their relationship and dependence.
An Explosive Range Model Based on the Gas Composition, Temperature, and Pressure during Air Drilling
Authors: Fan Xiangyu , Zhang Ping , Zhang Qiangui , Yang Bozhong , Wang Bo , Nie Wen
Published: January 2016

Air drilling is low cost and effectively improves the penetration rate and causes minimal damage to liquid-sensitive pay zones. However, there is a potential downhole explosion when combustible gas mixed with drilling fluid reaches the combustible condition. In this paper, based on the underground combustion mechanism, an explosive range calculation model is established. This model couples the state equation and the empirical formula method, which considers the inert gas content, pressure, mixed gas component, and temperature. The result shows that increase of the inert gas content narrows the explosive range, while increase of the gas temperature and pressure improves the explosive range. A case in Chongqing, China, is used to validate the explosive range calculation model.
Correlation of Oxidative and Antioxidative Processes in the Blood of Patients with Cervical Spinal Cord Injury
Authors: Woźniak Bartosz , Woźniak Alina , Mila-Kierzenkowska Celestyna , Kasprzak Heliodor Adam
Published: January 2016

The effect of cervical spinal cord injury (CSCI) on oxidative stress parameters was assessed. The study was conducted in 42 patients with CSCI (studied group), 15 patients with cerebral concussion, without CSCI (Control II), and 30 healthy volunteers (Control I). Blood was taken from the basilic vein: before and seven days after the spinal cord decompression surgery (mean time from CSCI to surgery: 8 hours) in the studied group and once in the controls. Thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) and conjugated dienes (CD) concentrations, and glutathione peroxidase (GPx), catalase (CAT), and creatine kinase (CK) activities before the surgery were higher in the studied group than in the controls. Reduced glutathione concentration was similar in all groups. Superoxide dismutase (SOD) in the studied group was 16% lower (P ≤ 0.001) than in Control I. Lipid peroxidation products, and GPx and CAT activities in erythrocytes seven days after the surgery were lower (P ≤ 0.001), while SOD was 25% higher (P ≤ 0.001) than before the surgery. CK in blood plasma after the surgery was 34% lower (P ≤ 0.001) than before it. CSCI is accompanied by oxidative stress. Surgical and pharmacological treatment helps to restore the oxidant‐antioxidant balance.
Decrease in (Major) Amputations in Diabetics: A Secondary Data Analysis by AOK Rheinland/Hamburg
Authors: May Melanie , Hahn Sebastian , Tonn Claudia , Engels Gerald , Hochlenert Dirk
Published: January 2016

Aim. In two German regions with 11.1 million inhabitants, 6 networks for specialized treatment of DFS were implemented until 2008. Data provided for accounting purposes was analysed in order to determine changes in the rate of diabetics requiring amputations in the years before and after the implementation.Method. Data covering 2.9 million people insured by the largest insurance company between 2007 and 2013 was analysed by the use of log-linear Poisson regression adjusted for age, gender and region.Results. The rate of diabetics needing major amputations fell significantly by 9.5% per year (p<0.0001) from 217 to 126 of 100,000 patients per year. The rate of diabetics needing amputations of any kind fell from 504 to 419 of 100,000 patients per year (p=0.0038).Discussion. The networks integrate health care providers in an organised system of shared care. They educate members of the medical community and the general public. At the same time, a more general disease management program for people with diabetes was implemented, which may also have contributed to this decrease. At the end of the observation period, the rate of diabetics requiring amputations was still high. For this reason, further expansion of organised specialized care is urgently needed.