bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Multimodal prehabilitation improves functional capacity in patients with advanced ovarian cancer undergoing cytoreductive surgery
Authors: Sebio-Garcia Raquel , Celada-Castro Cristina , Arguis Maria J , Sisó Marina , Torné Aureli , Tena Beatriz , Díaz-Feijoo Berta , Martinez-Palli Graciela
Published: October 2024

Objective

Prehabilitation, defined as the preparatory intervention to increase patient preparedness in the lead-up to surgery, has shown a decrease in post-operative complications in various types of surgery. However, there is limited evidence in advanced ovarian cancer surgery. This study aimed to evaluate the benefits of multimodal prehabilitation in advanced ovarian cancer patients in terms of improving physical functioning, body composition, and psychological well-being during the pre-operative period.

Methods

This single-center, ambispective study included patients with advanced ovarian cancer eligible for primary or interval cytoreductive surgery. Participants attended a multimodal prehabilitation program comprising medical optimization, supervised exercise training, nutritional counseling and supplementation, and psychological support. Functional capacity, nutritional status, and psychological well-being were assessed before the start of the program and before surgery.

Results

62 patients were referred for the multimodal prehabilitation program from July 2019 to May 2023. Median adherence to the training program reached 75% (IQR 58–87%). 35 patients (59%) were evaluated pre-operatively. Patients attended a median of 8 (IQR 6–12) supervised exercise training sessions with no differences between those who underwent primary or interval cytoreductive surgery (p=0.80). A significant improvement was observed in functional capacity according to the 6 min walk test (mean 33.1 m, 95% CI 10.5 to 55.5) as well as in the 30 s sit-to-stand test (+3.3 repetitions, 95% CI 1.8 to 4.8), with both being above the minimal clinically important difference of 14 m and two repetitions, respectively. Patients also reported a significant decrease in depression, anxiety, and total scores of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale.

Conclusions

Multimodal prehabilitation in patients with advanced ovarian cancer undergoing cytoreductive surgery improves pre-operative physical functioning and decreases emotional distress. Further controlled studies with a larger sample size are warranted to corroborate improvement in functional capacity, body composition, and psychological well-being through prehabilitation programs.
A Low-Level Look at A-Normal Form
Authors: Bowman William J.
Published: October 2024

A-normal form (ANF) is a widely studied intermediate form in which local control and data flow is made explicit in syntax, and a normal form in which many programs with equivalent control-flow graphs have a single normal syntactic representation. However, ANF is difficult to implement effectively and, as we formalize, difficult to extend with new lexically scoped constructs such as scoped region-based allocation. The problem, as has often been observed, is that normalization of commuting conversions is hard.

This traditional view of ANF that normalizing commuting conversions is hard, found in formal models and informed by high-level calculi, is wrong. By studying the low-level intensional aspects of ANF, we can derive a normal form in which normalizing commuting conversion is easy, does not require join points, or code duplication, or renormalization after inlining, and is easily extended with new lexically scoped effects. We formalize the connection between ANF and monadic form and their intensional properties, derive an imperative ANF, and design a compiler pipeline from an untyped -calculus with scoped regions, to monadic form, to a low-level imperative monadic form in which A-normalization is trivial and safe for regions. We prove that any such compiler preserves, or optimizes, stack and memory behaviour compared to ANF. Our formalization reconstructs and systematizes pragmatic choices found in practice, including current production-ready compilers.

The main take-away from this work is that, in general, monadic form should be preferred over ANF, and A-normalization should only be done in a low-level imperative intermediate form. This maximizes the advantages of each form, and avoids all the standard problems with ANF.
Mix Testing: Specifying and Testing ABI Compatibility of C/C++ Atomics Implementations
Authors: Geeson Luke , Brotherston James , Dijkstra Wilco , Donaldson Alastair F. , Smith Lee , Sorensen Tyler , Wickerson John
Published: October 2024

The correctness of complex software depends on the correctness of both the source code and the compilers that generate corresponding binary code. Compilers must do more than preserve the semantics of a single source file: they must ensure that generated binaries can be composed with other binaries to form a final executable. The compatibility of composition is ensured using an Application Binary Interface (ABI), which specifies details of calling conventions, exception handling, and so on. Unfortunately, there are no official ABIs for concurrent programs, so different atomics mappings, although correct in isolation, may induce bugs when composed. Indeed, today, mixing binaries generated by different compilers can lead to an erroneous resulting binary. We present
mix testing
: a new technique designed to find compiler bugs when the instructions of a C/C++ test are separately compiled for multiple compatible architectures and then mixed together. We define a class of compiler bugs, coined
mixing bugs
, that arise when parts of a program are compiled separately using different mappings from C/C++ atomic operations to assembly sequences. To demonstrate the generality of mix testing, we have designed and implemented a tool, atomic-mixer, which we have used: (a) to reproduce one existing non-mixing bug that state-of-the-art concurrency testing tools are limited to being able to find (showing that atomic-mixer at least meets the capabilities of these tools), and (b) to find four previously-unknown mixing bugs in LLVM and GCC, and one prospective mixing bug in mappings proposed for the Java Virtual Machine. Lastly, we have worked with engineers at Arm to specify, for the first time, an atomics ABI for Armv8, and have used atomic-mixer to validate the LLVM and GCC compilers against it.
Refinement Type Refutations
Authors: Webbers Robin , von Gleissenthall Klaus , Jhala Ranjit
Published: October 2024

Refinement types combine SMT decidable constraints with a compositional, syntax-directed type system to provide a convenient way to statically and automatically check properties of programs. However, when type checking fails, programmers must use cryptic error messages that, at best, point out the code location where a subtyping constraint failed to determine the root cause of the failure. In this paper, we introduce refinement type refutations, a new approach to explaining why refinement type checking fails, which mirrors the compositional way in which refinement type checking is carried out. First, we show how to systematically transform standard bidirectional type checking rules to obtain refutations. Second, we extend the approach to account for global constraint-based refinement inference via the notion of a must-instantiation: a set of concrete inhabitants of the types of subterms that suffice to demonstrate why typing fails. Third, we implement our method in HayStack—an extension to LiqidHaskell which automatically finds type-refutations when refinement type checking fails, and helps users understand refutations via an interactive user-interface. Finally, we present an empirical evaluation of HayStack using the regression benchmark-set of LiqidHaskell, and the benchmark set of G2, a previous method that searches for (non-compositional) counterexample traces by symbolically executing Haskell source. We show that HayStack can find refutations for 99.7% of benchmarks, including those with complex typing constructs (e.g., abstract and bounded refinements, and reflection), and does so, an order of magnitude faster than G2.
Extending the C/C++ Memory Model with Inline Assembly
Authors: de Vilhena Paulo Emílio , Lahav Ori , Vafeiadis Viktor , Raad Azalea
Published: October 2024

Programs written in C/C++ often include inline assembly: a snippet of architecture-specific assembly code used to access low-level functionalities that are impossible or expensive to simulate in the source language. Although inline assembly is widely used, its semantics has not yet been formally studied.

In this paper, we overcome this deficiency by investigating the effect of inline assembly on the consistency semantics of C/C++ programs. We propose the first memory model of the C++ Programming Language with support for inline assembly for Intel's x86 including non-temporal stores and store fences. We argue that previous provably correct compiler optimizations and correct compiler mappings should remain correct under such an extended model and we prove that this requirement is met by our proposed model.
Realistic Realizability: Specifying ABIs You Can Count On
Authors: Wagner Andrew , Eisbach Zachary , Ahmed Amal
Published: October 2024

The Application Binary Interface (ABI) for a language defines the interoperability rules for its target platforms, including data layout and calling conventions, such that compliance with the rules ensures “safe” execution and perhaps certain resource usage guarantees. These rules are relied upon by compilers, libraries, and foreign-function interfaces. Unfortunately, ABIs are typically specified in prose, and while type systems for source languages have evolved, ABIs have comparatively stalled, lacking advancements in expressivity and safety.

We propose a vision for richer, semantic ABIs to improve interoperability and library integration, supported by a methodology for formally specifying ABIs using realizability models. These semantic ABIs connect abstract, high-level types to unwieldy, but well-behaved, low-level code. We illustrate our approach with a case study formalizing the ABI of a functional source language in terms of a reference-counting implementation in a C-like target language. A key contribution supporting this case study is a graph-based model of separation logic that captures the ownership and accessibility of reference-counted resources using modalities inspired by hybrid logic. To highlight the flexibility of our methodology, we show how various design decisions can be interpreted into the semantic ABI. Finally, we provide the first formalization of library evolution, a distinguishing feature of Swift’s ABI.
Semantics Lifting for Syntactic Sugar
Authors: Guan Zhichao , Cao Yiyuan , Yu Tailai , Wang Ziheng , Wang Di , Hu Zhenjiang
Published: October 2024

Syntactic sugar plays a crucial role in engineering programming languages. It offers convenient syntax and higher-level of abstractions, as witnessed by its pervasive use in both general-purpose and domain-specific contexts. Unfortunately, the traditional approach of translating programs containing syntactic sugars into the host language can lead to abstraction leakage, breaking the promise of convenience and hindering program comprehension. To address this challenge, we introduce the idea of semantics lifting that aims to statically derive self-contained evaluation rules for syntactic sugars. More specifically, we propose a semantics-lifting framework that consists of (i) a general algorithm for deriving host-independent semantics of syntactic sugars from the semantics of the host language and the desugaring rules, (ii) a formulation of the correctness and abstraction properties for a lifted semantics, and (iii) a systematic investigation of sufficient conditions that ensure a lifted semantics is provably correct and abstract. To evaluate our semantics-lifting framework, we have implemented a system named Osazone and conducted several case studies, demonstrating that our approach is flexible, effective, and practical for implementing domain-specific languages.
Finding ∀∃ Hyperbugs using Symbolic Execution
Authors: Correnson Arthur , Nießen Tobias , Finkbeiner Bernd , Weissenbacher Georg
Published: October 2024

Many important hyperproperties, such as refinement and generalized non-interference, fall into the class of ∀∃ hyperproperties and require, for each execution trace of a system, the existence of another trace relating to the first one in a certain way. The alternation of quantifiers renders ∀∃ hyperproperties extremely difficult to verify, or even just to test. Indeed, contrary to trace properties, where it suffices to find a single counterexample trace, refuting a ∀∃ hyperproperty requires not only to find a trace, but also a proof that no second trace satisfies the specified relation with the first trace. As a consequence, automated testing of ∀∃ hyperproperties falls out of the scope of existing automated testing tools. In this paper, we present a fully automated approach to detect violations of ∀∃ hyperproperties in software systems. Our approach extends bug-finding techniques based on symbolic execution with support for trace quantification. We provide a prototype implementation of our approach, and demonstrate its effectiveness on a set of challenging examples.
Jmvx: Fast Multi-threaded Multi-version Execution and Record-Replay for Managed Languages
Authors: Schwartz David , Kowshik Ankith , Pina Luís
Published: October 2024

Multi-Version eXecution (MVX) is a technique that deploys many equivalent versions of the same program — variants — as a single program, with direct applications in important fields such as: security, reliability, analysis, and availability. MVX can be seen as “online Record/Replay (RR)”, as RR captures a program’s execution as a log stored on disk that can later be replayed to observe the same execution. Unfortunately, current MVX techniques target programs written in C/C++ and do not support programs written in managed languages, which are the vast majority of code written nowadays.

This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of Jmvx— a novel system for performing MVX and RR on programs written in managed languages. Jmvx supports programs written in Java by intercepting automatically identified non-deterministic methods, via a novel dynamic analysis technique, and ensuring that all variants execute the same methods and obtain the same data.

Jmvx supports multi-threaded programs, by capturing synchronization operations in one variant, and ensuring all other variants follow the same ordering. We validated that Jmvx supports MVX and RR by applying it to a suite of benchmarks representative of programs written in Java. Internally, Jmvx uses a circular buffer located in shared memory between JVMs to enable fast communication between all variants, averaging 5% |47% performance overhead when performing MVX with multithreading support disabled|enabled, 8% |25% when recording, and 13% |73% when replaying.
Semantics of Remote Direct Memory Access: Operational and Declarative Models of RDMA on TSO Architectures
Authors: Ambal Guillaume , Dongol Brijesh , Eran Haggai , Klimis Vasileios , Lahav Ori , Raad Azalea
Published: October 2024

Remote direct memory access (RDMA) is a modern technology enabling networked machines to exchange information without involving the operating system of either side, and thus significantly speeding up data transfer in computer clusters. While RDMA is extensively used in practice and studied in various research papers, a formal underlying model specifying the allowed behaviours of concurrent RDMA programs running in modern multicore architectures is still missing. This paper aims to close this gap and provide semantic foundations of RDMA on x86-TSO machines. We propose three equivalent formal models, two operational models in different levels of abstraction and one declarative model, and prove that the three characterisations are equivalent. To gain confidence in the proposed semantics, the more concrete operational model has been reviewed by NVIDIA experts, a major vendor of RDMA systems, and we have empirically validated the declarative formalisation on various subtle litmus tests by extensive testing. We believe that this work is a necessary initial step for formally addressing RDMA-based systems by proposing language-level models, verifying their mapping to hardware, and developing reasoning techniques for concurrent RDMA programs.
Sound and Partially-Complete Static Analysis of Data-Races in GPU Programs
Authors: Liew Dennis , Cogumbreiro Tiago , Lange Julien
Published: October 2024

GPUs are progressively being integrated into modern society, playing a pivotal role in Artificial Intelligence

and High-Performance Computing. Programmers need a deep understanding of the GPU programming model

to avoid subtle data-races in their codes. Static verification that is sound and incomplete can guarantee

data-race freedom, but the alarms it raises may be spurious and need to be validated.

In this paper, we establish a True Positive Theorem for a static data-race detector for GPU programs, i.e., a

result that identifies a class of programs for which our technique only raises true alarms. Our work builds on

the formalism of memory access protocols, that models the concurrency operations of CUDA programs. The

crux of our approach is an approximation analysis that can correctly identify true alarms, and pinpoint the

conditions that make an alarm imprecise. Our approximation analysis detects when the reported locations are

reachable (control independence, or CI), and when the reported locations are precise (data independence, or

DI), as well identify inexact values in an alarm. In addition to a True Positive result for programs that are CI

and DI, we establish the root causes of spurious alarms depending on whether CI or DI are present.

We apply our theory to introduce FaialAA, the first sound and partially complete data-race detector. We

evaluate FaialAA in three experiments. First, in a comparative study with the state-of-the-art tools, we show that

FaialAA confirms more DRF programs than others while emitting 1.9× fewer potential alarms. Importantly, the

approximation analysis of FaialAA detects 10 undocumented data-races. Second, in an experiment studying 6

commits of data-race fixes in open source projects OpenMM and Nvidia’s MegaTron, FaialAA confirmed the

buggy and fixed versions of 5 commits, while others were only able to confirm 2. Third, we show that 59.5% of

2,770 programs are CI and DI, quantifying when the approximation analysis of FaialAA is complete.

This paper is accompanied by the mechanized proofs of the theoretical results presented therein and a tool

(FaialAA) implementing of our theory.
Effect Handlers for C via Coroutines
Authors: Alvarez-Picallo Mario , Freund Teodoro , Ghica Dan R. , Lindley Sam
Published: October 2024

Effect handlers provide a structured means for implementing user-defined, composable, and customisable computational effects, ranging from exceptions to generators to lightweight threads. We introduce libseff, a novel effect handlers library for C, based on coroutines. Whereas prior effect handler libraries for C are intended primarily as compilation targets, libseff is intended to be used directly from C programs. As such, the design of libseff parts ways from traditional effect handler implementations, both by using mutable coroutines as the main representation of pending computations, and by avoiding closures as handlers by way of reified effects. We show that the performance of libseff is competitive across a range of platforms and benchmarks.
Boosting the Performance of Alias-Aware IFDS Analysis with CFL-Based Environment Transformers
Authors: Li Haofeng , Shi Chenghang , Lu Jie , Li Lian , Xue Jingling
Published: October 2024

The IFDS algorithm is pivotal in solving field-sensitive data-flow problems. However, its conventional use of access paths for field sensitivity leads to the generation of a large number of data-flow facts. This causes scalability challenges in larger programs, limiting its practical application in extensive codebases. In response, we propose a new field-sensitive technique that reinterprets the generation of access paths as a Context-Free Language (CFL) for field-sensitivity and formulates it as an IDE problem. This approach significantly reduces the number of data-flow facts generated and handled during the analysis, which is a major factor in performance degradation. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach, we developed a taint analysis tool, IDEDroid, in the IFDS/IDE framework. IDEDroid outperforms FlowDroid, an established IFDS-based taint analysis tool, in the analysis of 24 major Android apps while improving its precision (guaranteed theoretically). The speed improvement ranges from 2.1× to 2,368.4×, averaging at 222.0×, with precision gains reaching up to 20.0% (in terms of false positives reduced). This performance indicates that IDEDroid is substantially more effective in detecting information-flow leaks, making it a potentially superior tool for mobile app vetting in the market.
Higher-Order Model Checking of Effect-Handling Programs with Answer-Type Modification
Authors: Sekiyama Taro , Unno Hiroshi
Published: October 2024

Model checking is one of the successful program verification methodologies. Since the seminal work by Ong, the model checking of higher-order programs―called higher-order model checking, or HOMC for short―has gained attention. It is also crucial for making HOMC applicable to real-world software to address programs involving computational effects. Recently, Dal Lago and Ghyselen considered an extension of HOMC to algebraic effect handlers, which enable programming the semantics of effects. They showed a negative result for HOMC with algebraic effect handlers―it is undecidable. In this work, we explore a restriction on programs with algebraic effect handlers which ensures the decidability of HOMC while allowing implementations of various effects. We identify the crux of the undecidability as the use of an unbounded number of algebraic effect handlers being active at the same time. To prevent it, we introduce answer-type modification (ATM), which can bound the number of algebraic effect handlers that can be active at the same time. We prove that ATM can ensure the decidability of HOMC and show that it accommodates a wide range of effects. To evaluate our approach, we implemented an automated verifier EffCaml based on the presented techniques and confirmed that the program examples discussed in this paper can be automatically verified.
REMaQE: Reverse Engineering Math Equations from Executables
Authors: Udeshi Meet , Krishnamurthy Prashanth , Pearce Hammond , Karri Ramesh , Khorrami Farshad
Published: October 2024

Cybersecurity attacks on embedded devices for industrial control systems and cyber-physical systems may cause catastrophic physical damage as well as economic loss. This could be achieved by infecting device binaries with malware that modifies the physical characteristics of the system operation. Mitigating such attacks benefits from reverse engineering tools that recover sufficient semantic knowledge in terms of mathematical equations of the implemented algorithm. Conventional reverse engineering tools can decompile binaries to low-level code, but offer little semantic insight. This article proposes the REMaQE automated framework for reverse engineering of math equations from binary executables. Improving over state-of-the-art, REMaQE handles equation parameters accessed via registers, the stack, global memory, or pointers, and can reverse engineer equations from object-oriented implementations such as C++ classes. Using REMaQE, we discovered a bug in the Linux kernel thermal monitoring tool “tmon.” To evaluate REMaQE, we generate a dataset of 25,096 binaries with math equations implemented in C and Simulink. REMaQE successfully recovers a semantically matching equation for all 25,096 binaries. REMaQE executes in 0.48 seconds on average and in up to 2 seconds for complex equations. Real-time execution enables integration in an interactive math-oriented reverse engineering workflow.
Market Design Job Market Candidate Profiles 2023
Authors: Gonczarowski Yannai A. , Romm Assaf , Shorrer Ran
Published: October 2024

Inspired by the SIGecom Exchanges' annual survey of job market candidates,
1
this is the third annual collection of profiles of the junior faculty job market candidates of the market design community. The twelve candidates are listed alphabetically. Along with information regarding the candidate's bio, job market paper, other representative papers, and short research summary, each profile also contains links to the candidate's homepage and CV.
Towards Efficiency in Bilateral Trade: An Annotated Reading List
Authors: Wang Kangning
Published: October 2024

This is an annotated reading list on research towards designing socially efficient mechanisms for bilateral trade and its generalizations.
Solution to Exchanges 20.1 Puzzle: Communicating to Plan Noam Nisan's 60th Birthday Workshop
Authors: Sun Alec
Published: October 2024

This is a solution to Vincent Conitzer's puzzle "Communicating to Plan Noam Nisan's 60th Birthday Workshop", which appeared as below in the July 2022 issue of SIGecom Exchanges.

Michael, Moshe, and Shahar---i.e., a constant number of organizers---are planning the workshop for Noam's 60th birthday, and are trying to predict who, out of
n
people, will attend. Whether a person wants to attend is a function of who else attends. "The more the merrier," so for each person
i
, if
i
would attend when
S
is the set of other attendees, and
S
⊆
S
′, then
i
would attend when
S
′ is the set of other attendees. Let

S
i

be the set of sets
S
of other people for which
i
would attend (so,

S
i

is upward closed).

To split the work, the organizers partition the set of
n
people among themselves. Subsequently, each of them figures out, for every player
i
in his own part, what

S
i

is. (Note that each organizer thus still needs to think about how much "his" people like the people in the other parts. But each organizer knows

S
i

only for people
i
in his own part.) At this point, the organizers, who of course want the workshop to be successful, must communicate with each other to find the
largest
possible set of people
S*
that can consistently attend (i.e., the largest set with the property such that every person in it will attend given that everyone else in the set attends: i.e., for each
i
∈
S*
, we have
S* \
{
i
} ∈

S
i

, and
S*
is the largest set with that property).

Up to a constant factor, how many bits of communication do the organizers need to figure this out?
Inequality and Market Design
Authors: Dworczak Piotr
Published: October 2024

Policymakers are often concerned about inequalities in the markets they control. In this letter, I argue that mechanism design has not responded sufficiently to the need for a comprehensive theory of inequality-aware market design. I review some of my recent work trying to fill this gap and identify research directions where input from computer scientists would be particularly useful.
Causal Inference under Incentives: An Annotated Reading List
Authors: Harris Keegan , Syrgkanis Vasilis
Published: October 2024

We provide an overview of research on causal inference in the presence of strategic agents. Work in this area uses tools from econometrics, statistics, machine learning, and game theory to infer causal relationships between treatments and outcomes of interest when the treated individuals have an incentive to behave strategically.
MPEG Column: 140th MPEG Meeting in Mainz, Germany
Authors: Timmerer Christian
Published: October 2024

After several years of online meetings, the 140th MPEG meeting was held as a face-to-face meeting in Mainz, Germany.
RESPECT 2024: Conference Recap
Authors: Pearson Tamara , Strickland Carla
Published: October 2024

The Conference on Research in Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology is the premier venue for research on equity, inclusion, and justice in computing and computing education. RESPECT 2024, the ninth edition of this conference, was held on May 16-17, 2024 at the Georgia Tech Conference Center and Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia.
Member Spotlight: Monica M. McGill
Authors: Smith Julie M. , Wallace Charles
Published: October 2024

Dr. McGill is the founder, president, and CEO of the Institute for Advancing Computing Education.
Equity Spotlight: Emma Hogan
Authors: Smith Julie M. , Wallace Charles
Published: October 2024

Emma Hogan is a Computer Science and Engineering PhD student at UC San Diego and a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow.
Inorganic-Organic Hybrid Sulfide Solid Electrolytes Based on the Tetraalkylammonium Iodide-LiI-Li2S-P2S5 System
Authors: Fang Tong , Hikima Kazuhiro , Muto Hiroyuki , Matsuda Atsunori , Fujii Yuta , Miura Akira , Tadanaga Kiyoharu
Published: October 2024

In this study, a series of novel inorganic-organic hybrid sulfide solid electrolytes was synthesized by doping Li7P2S8I with a selection of tetraalkylammonium iodides, including tetramethylammonium iodide (TMAI), tetraethylammonium iodide (TEAI), tetrapropylammonium iodide (TPAI), and tetrabutylammonium iodide (TBAI). The electrolytes were prepared in varying compositions, represented as (1−x) Li7P2S8I · x (TMAI, TEAI, TPAI, TBAI), where x values were adjusted to 0, 0.05, 0.1, and 0.2 (molar ratio) to assess their influence on the electrolyte properties. The hybrids exhibited predominantly amorphous structures. Tetraalkylammonium iodides with longer alkyl chains exhibited lower ionic conductivities. Mechanical characterization via indentation tests indicated that the incorporation of tetraalkylammonium iodides with longer alkyl chains reduced the elastic moduli of the composites. This study presents a methodological approach for modulating the structural and mechanical properties of sulfide solid electrolytes through strategic organic doping.
Fast Assessment Method for Transient Voltage Stability of Photovoltaic Receiving‐End Grid
Authors: Qu Ying , Han Xiaoqing , Meng Tao , Liu Xinyuan , Chen Danyang , Niu Zhewen
Published: October 2024

The incorporation of renewable energy on a broad scale into power grids increases the complexity to the issue of transient voltage stability in power systems. This research presents a rapid evaluation technique for assessing the stability of voltage fluctuations in power grids that receive electricity from photovoltaic sources. At first, a receiving‐end system model was developed, which includes photovoltaics, and an alternative circuit of the virtual induction motor (IM) is obtained by utilizing the Thevenin equivalent. Second, the torque balance equation and the Kirchhoff voltage equation are interconnected to determine the unstable slip of the IM following a malfunction. Finally, by merging the unstable slip with the conventional transient stability discriminant index, the effects of different photovoltaic outputs, IM ratios, and system contact impedances on transient voltage stability are investigated. The proposed method avoids the computational burden of solving the differential‐algebraic equations describing the complex transient processes of the IM. It also obviates the necessity of iteratively modifying the receiving load or fault clearance time in the simulation platform to achieve the constrained stability condition of the system’s transient voltage. The transient stabilization of voltage results is efficiently obtained by directly solving algebraic equations.
Multi‐Index Assessment of Hydrometeorological Droughts in the Tekeze River Basin, Northwestern Ethiopia
Authors: Yisfa Teame , Tekleyohannes Mulugeta , Grum Berhane , Yemane Shishay , Berhe Gebremeskel Teklay , Goitom Haddush , Abebe Bizuneh Asfaw
Published: October 2024

Drought is a recurring natural hazard impacting agriculture, water resources, and various socioeconomic sectors. This study evaluated the performances of multiple meteorological and hydrological drought index estimation methods in the Tekeze River basin, northwestern Ethiopia. Monthly rainfall and temperature data from 15 meteorological stations with varying record lengths (28–59 years) and streamflow data from nine functional stations (1991–2018) were used to compute hydrometeorological drought indices. Standardized precipitation index (SPI), standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI), reconnaissance drought index (RDI), rainfall anomaly index (RAI), decile index (DI), and streamflow drought index (SDI) were calculated using DrinC software, R programming, and empirical formulas at 1, 3, 6, and 12‐month timescales. Results from the analysis revealed a basin‐wide prevalence of mild drought, with SPI indicating severity and negative values over longer timescales. The RDI analyses showed lower drought severity but also decreased its frequency over longer timescales. The DI calculation using basin station averages indicated 48.4%, 10.7%, and 8.0% incidence rates for severe, moderate, and mild droughts, respectively. RAI had generally lower positive and negative values compared to SPI. SPEI‐1 analysis classified almost all stations as experiencing mild drought. Conversely, SDI6 analysis at a 6‐month timescale revealed diverse impacts, with the Tekeze River basin experiencing sustained severe drought (SDI6 < −2.0) for three consecutive years (2004–2006). Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients of the indices were positive, with RAI showing particularly strong and statistically significant positive correlations with other indices. This study provides valuable insights for policymakers, researchers, and water resource managers in the Tekeze River basin, aiding in the development of effective drought mitigation and preparedness strategies.
The Evolutionary Forest of Pancreatic Cancer
Authors: Mullen Katelyn M. , Hong Jungeui , Attiyeh Marc A. , Hayashi Akimasa , Sakamoto Hitomi , Kohutek Zachary A. , McIntyre Caitlin A. , Zhang Haochen , Makohon-Moore Alvin P. , Zucker Amanda , Wood Laura D. , Myers Matthew A. , Arnold Brian J. , Zaccaria Simone , Chou Joanne F. , Capanu Marinela , Socci Nicholas D. , Raphael Benjamin J. , Iacobuzio-Donahue Christine A.
Published: October 2024

The genomic features of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) have been well described, yet the evolutionary contexts within which these features occur remain unexplored. We studied genome landscapes, phylogenies, and clonal compositions of 91 PDACs in relation to clinicopathologic features. There was no difference in the number of driver mutations or evolutionary timing when each mutation occurred. High truncal density, a metric of the accumulation of somatic mutations in the lineage that gave rise to each PDAC, was significantly associated with worse overall survival. Polyclonal, monoclonal, or mixed polyclonal/monoclonal metastases were identified across the cohort, highlighting multiple forms of intertumoral heterogeneity. Advanced stage and treated PDACs had higher odds of being polyclonal, whereas oligometastatic PDACs had fewer driver alterations, a lower fractional allelic loss, and increased likelihood of being monoclonal. In sum, our findings reveal novel insights into the dynamic nature of the PDAC genome beyond established genetic paradigms.

Significance:

Although the pancreatic cancer genome has been described, it has not been explored with respect to stages of diagnosis or treatment bottlenecks. We now describe and quantify the genomic features of PDAC in the context of evolutionary metrics and in doing so have identified a novel prognostic biomarker.
Figure S1 from Antiangiogenic Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors have Differential Efficacy in Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma in Bone
Authors: Maksimovic Stefan , Boscolo Nina C. , La Posta Ludovica , Barrios Sergio , Moussa Mohammad Jad , Gentile Emanuela , Pesquera Pedro I. , Li Wenjiao , Chen Jianfeng , Gomez Javier A. , Basi Akshay , Burks Jared K. , Alvarez-Breckenridge Christopher , Gao Jianjun , Campbell Matthew T. , Dondossola Eleonora
Published: October 2024

Blood vessel marker expression in bone marrow and tumors. A, B) Detection of bone marrow (A) and tumor (B) blood vessels by confocal acquisition; blue, DAPI; yellow, endomucin; red, laminin; green, tumor GFP; white boxes, magnifications reported on right panels; arrowhead, lack of physical overlap between markers; C) Immunofluorescence detection of blood vessels in VHL- RENCA bone tumors by confocal microscopy; blue, DAPI; yellow, endomucin; red, laminin; green, tumor GFP; D) Quantification of blood vessel area inside and outside tumor area based on laminin (red) and endomucin (yellow) signal, mean + SEM, n=3-4/group; blue, DAPI; green, GFP; arrowhead, blood vessels with only one marker expressed. Bar, 10 µm. Endo-endomucin; Lam-laminin; IN T-inside tumor; OUT T-outside tumor.
Figure 7 from Antiangiogenic Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors have Differential Efficacy in Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma in Bone
Authors: Maksimovic Stefan , Boscolo Nina C. , La Posta Ludovica , Barrios Sergio , Moussa Mohammad Jad , Gentile Emanuela , Pesquera Pedro I. , Li Wenjiao , Chen Jianfeng , Gomez Javier A. , Basi Akshay , Burks Jared K. , Alvarez-Breckenridge Christopher , Gao Jianjun , Campbell Matthew T. , Dondossola Eleonora
Published: October 2024

TKIs as a second-line treatment. A, Schematic representation of experimental design. B, D, and F, Representative images of bioluminescence signal in tibiae/lungs of mice and bioluminescence signal of tumors quantified over time; single tumors are shown. C, E, and G, Estimation of survival over time after TKI treatment based on bone and lung tumors. Absolute numbers are reported in the table. P value (one-way ANOVA with Tukey honestly significant difference post hoc test) with median OS and 95% CI of ratio after the log-rank (Mantel–Cox) test. Axi, axitinib; Cabo, cabozantinib; Lenv, lenvatinib; MBP, median bone progression; Rx, second-line treatment; WD, withdrawal.
Figure 6 from Antiangiogenic Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors have Differential Efficacy in Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma in Bone
Authors: Maksimovic Stefan , Boscolo Nina C. , La Posta Ludovica , Barrios Sergio , Moussa Mohammad Jad , Gentile Emanuela , Pesquera Pedro I. , Li Wenjiao , Chen Jianfeng , Gomez Javier A. , Basi Akshay , Burks Jared K. , Alvarez-Breckenridge Christopher , Gao Jianjun , Campbell Matthew T. , Dondossola Eleonora
Published: October 2024

Prolonged treatment with TKIs followed by withdrawal and survival analysis. A, Schematic representation of experimental design. B, Representative images of bioluminescence signal in tibiae and lungs. C, Bioluminescence signal of tumors in bone quantified over time; single tumors are shown. D, Analysis of survival over time after TKI treatment based on bone tumors (photon flux values of 3 × 106 were considered as the end point). Absolute numbers are reported in the table. P value (one-way ANOVA with Tukey honestly significant difference post hoc test) and median OS are shown. E, Bioluminescence signal of tumors in lungs quantified over time; F, Estimation of survival over time after TKI treatment based on lung tumors. Absolute numbers are reported in the table. P value (one-way ANOVA with Tukey honestly significant difference post hoc test), median OS and 95% CI of ratio after the log-rank (Mantel–Cox) test are shown. Axi, axitinib; Cabo, cabozantinib; ; Lenv, lenvatinib; MBP, median bone progression; WD, withdrawal; Veh, vehicle.
Figure 1 from Antiangiogenic Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors have Differential Efficacy in Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma in Bone
Authors: Maksimovic Stefan , Boscolo Nina C. , La Posta Ludovica , Barrios Sergio , Moussa Mohammad Jad , Gentile Emanuela , Pesquera Pedro I. , Li Wenjiao , Chen Jianfeng , Gomez Javier A. , Basi Akshay , Burks Jared K. , Alvarez-Breckenridge Christopher , Gao Jianjun , Campbell Matthew T. , Dondossola Eleonora
Published: October 2024

Development of ccRCC models in bone. A, WT and KO sequence of the vhl gene of RENCA cells and Western blot analysis of VHL protein expression compared with the housekeeping protein, GAPDH. B, Schematic representation of the experimental models. Tumor cells were implanted into the tibia, and tissues were collected 7, 14, and 21 days after implantation. C and D, Tumor progression [UM-RC-3 (C) and RENCA VHL− (D) monitored in vivo by bioluminescence, mean ± SEM, n = 8–10 tibiae/group]. E and F, Confocal microscopy analysis of tumors in tibiae (RENCA VHL−, E; UM-RC-3, F). A quantification of tumor (green, GFP) and blood vessel (endomucin, yellow; laminin, red) areas over time is shown. Nuclei (blue, DAPI). Bar, 100 µm, mean ± SEM, n = 8–10 tibiae/group. G, Stereomicroscope images of lungs (brightfield and GFP); bar, 0.5 cm. H, Confocal microscopy analysis of tumors in lungs (RENCA VHL−); a quantification of tumor (green, GFP area) and blood vessel (CD31, red) areas over time is shown. Nuclei (blue, DAPI). Bar, 100 µm. Mean ± SEM, n = 8–10 tibiae/group. BV, blood vessel; Endo, endomucin; Lam, laminin; WT, wild-type.
Genetic Analyses in a Cohort of Pediatric Patients with Congenital Hypothyroidism Based on Congenital Hypothyroidism Consensus Guideline
Authors: Kurnaz Erdal , Türkyılmaz Ayberk , Yaralı Oğuzhan , Dönmez Ayşe Sena , Çayır Atilla
Published: October 2024

Introduction: Pathogenic variants in the genes involved in the formation of thyroid tissue and thyroid hormone secretion have been reported to cause congenital hypothyroidism (CH) in some cases. This study aimed to evaluate the clinical and genetic findings of CH cases thought to be due to genetic variants. Methods: The study included cases whose genetic analysis was performed in accordance with the Congenital Hypothyroidism: A 2020–2021 Consensus Guidelines Update Guidelines recommendations criteria and analyzed them using the next-generation sequencing panel. Results: Sixty one Turkish patients from 45 families were included in the study. The overall frequency of variant detection was 37.7% (out of 45 families, 17 had a positive mutation). Segregation was carried out for all families with positive variants. Variants in the TPO gene are the most frequently encountered, and this situation was identified in 10 families. Variants followed this in the TSHR gene in 7 families, variants in the DUOX2 gene in 5 families, and two variants in the TG and NKX2-1 genes in 2 families each, which are six novel variants. Furthermore, among the NKX2-1 cases, one had thyroid involvement only, while the other had chorea only. We did not find differences between cases with detected mutations and mutation-negative cases regarding gender, neonatal/perinatal parameters, initial thyroid function values, and thyroid morphology. Conclusion: In the current investigation, rare new variations in genes known to be related to CH were discovered, adding to the molecular genetic spectrum. When we compare the overall variant detection frequency, the selection criterion for genetic analysis based on the current guidelines is quite rational, considering the benefits and costs, on the other hand, present in new genes awaiting discovery. Also, TSHR mutations are likely to be common and may account for more than 5% of thyroid dysgenesis cases if we include nonfamilial thyroid dysgenesis.
Optimisation of semantic segmentation algorithm for autonomous driving using U-NET architecture
Authors: Subhedar Javed , R. Bachute Mrinal , Kotecha Ketan
Published: October 2024

In autonomous driving systems, the semantic segmentation task involves scene partition into numerous expressive portions by classifying and labelling every image pixel for semantics. The algorithm used for semantic segmentation has a vital role in autonomous driving architecture. This paper's main contribution is optimising the semantic segmentation algorithm for autonomous driving by modifying the U-NET architecture. The optimisation techniques involve five different methods, which include; no batch normalisation network, with batch normalisation network, network with reduction in filters, average ensemble network, and weighted average ensemble network. The validation accuracy observed for the five methods were 90.28%, 91.68%, 89.80%, 92.04%, and 92.21% respectively. By reducing the filters in the network, the computation time reduces (Epoch time: 1 s 64 ms/step) as opposed to the typical (Epoch time: 4 s 260 ms/step), but the accuracy reduces. The optimisation techniques were evaluated for metrics like mean intersection over union (IoU), IoU for class, dice-metric, dice_coefficient_loss, validation loss, and accuracy. The dataset of 300 images used for this paper's study was generated using the open-source car learning to act (CARLA) simulator platform.
A novel pairwise based convolutional neural network for image preprocessing enhancement
Authors: Ravi Chaitra , Gaddadevara Matt Siddesh
Published: October 2024

Wildfires are untamable and devastating forces that impact both urban and rural regions. While predicting wildfires is challenging, efforts are made to mitigate the damage they inflict. The previous researches have limitations such as not being able to find a small region of fire in the dataset. In this research, pairwise region-based convolutional neural network (PR-CNN) is proposed for wildfire detection. The dataset used for wildfire detection is the fire luminosity airborne-based machine learning evaluation (FLAME) dataset that is pre-processed through normalization and hue, saturation, and lightness (HSV) color space to improve the image quality. Pre-processed images are taken as input to region-based convolutional neural network (R-CNN) for detection, the R-CNN has a region proposal layer that is enhanced by pairwise region and named PR-CNN. These wrapped images are fed into CNN architecture to extract and features to detect wildfire. Additionally, post processing technique like soft-non-maximum suppression (NMS) is utilized to eliminate the duplicate detection from PR-CNN for enhancing the detection accuracy. The proposed method achieves a higher accuracy of 97.44%, a precision of 97.32%, recall of 97.31%, and f1-score of 96.67%, which is comparatively superior to the existing algorithms like recurrent neural network (RNN), and R-CNN.
A relation network for plant disease detection based on fewshot learning
Authors: Hemalatha S
Published: October 2024

Accurate and timely disease detection remains a critical challenge in plant health management. Conventional methods often struggle to effectively differentiate between healthy and diseased plants, leading to compromised agricultural productivity and food security. In response to this pressing issue, this paper presents an innovative solution in the form of a novel Few-Shot Learning (FSL) classifier, based on Relation Network (RN) specifically designed for precise plant disease detection from limited image samples. Leveraging inherent relationships between samples, the proposed Relation Network for Plant Disease Classification (RN-PDC) enhances the detection performance by capturing intricate patterns within the data. Through comprehensive evaluation on a public image data subset, RN-PDC achieves exceptional detection accuracies of 0.9984 and 0.9967 in binary and multiclass classifications, respectively. This advancement holds great promise for revolutionizing disease diagnosis in the field of plant health, ultimately fostering more productive and sustainable agricultural practices.