bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Systems Applications of Social Networks
Authors: Zhong Changtao , Sastry Nishanth
Published: September 2017

The aim of this article is to provide an understanding of social networks as a useful addition to the standard toolbox of techniques used by system designers. To this end, we give examples of how data about social links have been collected and used in different application contexts. We develop a broad taxonomy-based overview of common properties of social networks, review how they might be used in different applications, and point out potential pitfalls where appropriate. We propose a framework, distinguishing between two main types of social network-based user selection—
personalised
user selection, which identifies target users who may be relevant for a given source node, using the social network around the source as a context, and
generic
user selection or group delimitation, which filters for a set of users who satisfy a set of application requirements based on their social properties. Using this framework, we survey applications of social networks in three typical kinds of application scenarios: recommender systems, content-sharing systems (e.g., P2P or video streaming), and systems that defend against users who abuse the system (e.g., spam or sybil attacks). In each case, we discuss potential directions for future research that involve using social network properties.
Four ways to make CS and IT more immersive
Authors: Limoncelli Thomas A.
Published: September 2017

Why the Bell curve hasn't transformed into a hockey stick.
A Survey of Naturalistic Programming Technologies
Authors: Pulido-Prieto Oscar , Juárez-Martínez Ulises
Published: September 2017

Mainly focused on solving abstraction problems, programming paradigms limit language expressiveness, thus leaving unexplored natural language descriptions that are implicitly expressive. Several authors have developed tools for programming with a natural language subset limited to specific domains to deal with the ambiguity occurring with artificial intelligence technique use. This article presents a review of tools and languages with naturalistic features and highlights the problems that authors have resolved and those they have not addressed, going on to discuss the fact that a “naturalistic” language based on a well-defined model is not reported.
Secure Smart Homes
Authors: Batalla Jordi Mongay , Vasilakos Athanasios , Gajewski Mariusz
Published: September 2017

The Smart Home concept integrates smart applications in the daily human life. In recent years, Smart Homes have increased security and management challenges due to the low capacity of small sensors, multiple connectivity to the Internet for efficient applications (use of big data and cloud computing), and heterogeneity of home systems, which require inexpert users to configure devices and micro-systems. This article presents current security and management approaches in Smart Homes and shows the good practices imposed on the market for developing secure systems in houses. At last, we propose future solutions for efficiently and securely managing the Smart Homes.
Automatic Sarcasm Detection
Authors: Joshi Aditya , Bhattacharyya Pushpak , Carman Mark J.
Published: September 2017

Automatic sarcasm detection is the task of predicting sarcasm in text. This is a crucial step to sentiment analysis, considering prevalence and challenges of sarcasm in sentiment-bearing text. Beginning with an approach that used speech-based features, automatic sarcasm detection has witnessed great interest from the sentiment analysis community. This article is a compilation of past work in automatic sarcasm detection. We observe three milestones in the research so far: semi-supervised pattern extraction to identify implicit sentiment, use of hashtag-based supervision, and incorporation of context beyond target text. In this article, we describe datasets, approaches, trends, and issues in sarcasm detection. We also discuss representative performance values, describe shared tasks, and provide pointers to future work, as given in prior works. In terms of resources to understand the state-of-the-art, the survey presents several useful illustrations—most prominently, a table that summarizes past papers along different dimensions such as the types of features, annotation techniques, and datasets used.
Probabilistic Safety Verification of Stochastic Hybrid Systems Using Barrier Certificates
Authors: Huang Chao , Chen Xin , Lin Wang , Yang Zhengfeng , Li Xuandong
Published: September 2017

The problem of probabilistic safety verification of stochastic hybrid systems is to check whether the probability that a given system will reach an unsafe region from certain initial states can be bounded by some given probability threshold. The paper considers stochastic hybrid systems where the behavior is governed by polynomial equalities and inequalities, as for usual hybrid systems, but the initial states follow some stochastic distributions. It proposes a new barrier certificate based method for probabilistic safety verification which guarantees the absolute safety in a infinite time horizon that is beyond the reach of existing techniques using either statistical model checking or probabilistic reachable set computation. It also gives a novel computational approach, by building and solving a constrained optimization problem coming from verification conditions of barrier certificates, to compute the lower bound on safety probabilities which can be compared with the given threshold. Experimental evidence is provided demonstrating the applicability of our approach on several benchmarks.
Application-Aware Swapping for Mobile Systems
Authors: Kim Sang-Hoon , Jeong Jinkyu , Kim Jin-Soo
Published: September 2017

There has been a constant demand for memory in modern mobile systems to provide users with better experience. Swapping is one of the cost-effective software solutions to provide extra usable memory by reclaiming inactive pages and improving memory utilization. However, swapping has not been actively adopted to mobile systems since it incurs a significant amount of I/O, which in fact impairs system performance as well as user experience.

In this paper, we propose a novel scheme to properly harness the swapping to mobile systems. We identify that a vast amount of I/O for swapping comes from the conflict of the traditional page-level approach of the swapping and the process-level memory management scheme tailored to mobile systems. Moreover, we find out that the current victim page selection policy is not effective due to the process-level policy. To address these problems, we revise the victim selection policy to resolve the conflict and to selectively perform swapping according to the efficacy of swapping. Evaluation using a running prototype with realistic workloads indicates that the propose scheme effectively reduces the paging traffic, thereby improving user experience as well as energy consumption.
Lightweight Data Compression for Mobile Flash Storage
Authors: Ji Cheng , Chang Li-Pin , Shi Liang , Gao Congming , Wu Chao , Wang Yuangang , Xue Chun Jason
Published: September 2017

Data compression is beneficial to flash storage lifespan. However, because the design of mobile flash storage is highly cost-sensitive, hardware compression becomes a less attractive option. This study investigates the feasibility of data compression on mobile flash storage. It first characterizes data compressibility based on mobile apps, and the analysis shows that write traffic bound for mobile storage volumes is highly compressible. Based on this finding, a lightweight approach is introduced for firmware-based data compression in mobile flash storage. The controller and flash module work in a pipelined fashion to hide the data compression overhead. Together with this pipelined design, the proposed approach selectively compresses incoming data of high compressibility, while leaving data of low compressibility to a compression-aware garbage collector. Experimental results show that our approach greatly reduced the frequency of block erase by 50.5% compared to uncompressed flash storage. Compared to unconditional data compression, our approach improved the write latency by 10.4% at a marginal cost of 4% more block erase operations.
A Synchronous Look at the Simulink Standard Library
Authors: Bourke Timothy , Carcenac Francois , Colaço Jean-Louis , Pagano Bruno , Pasteur Cédric , Pouzet Marc
Published: September 2017

Hybrid systems modelers like Simulink come with a rich collection of discrete-time and continuous-time blocks. Most blocks are not defined in terms of more elementary ones—and some cannot be—but are instead written in imperative code and explained informally in a reference manual. This raises the question of defining a minimal set of orthogonal programming constructs such that most blocks can be
programmed
directly and thereby given a specification that is mathematically precise, and whose compiled version performs comparably to handwritten code.

In this paper, we show that a fairly large set of blocks of a standard library like the one provided by Simulink can be programmed in a precise, purely functional language using stream equations, hierarchical automata, Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs), and deterministic synchronous parallel composition. Some blocks cannot be expressed in our setting as they mix discrete-time and continuous-time signals in unprincipled ways that are statically forbidden by the type checker.

The experiment is conducted in Zélus, a synchronous language that conservatively extends L
ustre
with ODEs to program systems that mix discrete-time and continuous-time signals.
Formal Verification of a Timing Enforcer Implementation
Authors: Chaki Sagar , Niz Dionisio De
Published: September 2017

A timing enforcer is a scheduler that not only allocates CPU cycles to threads, but also uses timers to enforce time budgets. An approach for verifying safety properties of timing enforcers at the source code level is presented. We assume that the enforcer is implemented as a set of “enforcer” functions that are executed atomically on critical system-level events, such as the arrival and departure of jobs, and triggering of timers. The key idea is to express the safety property as an invariant, and prove that it is inductive across all the enforcer functions. A formal semantics of timing enforcers is presented, including the semantics of functions used to read the system clock and set timers. Using this semantics, the verification approach is presented, and its soundness proved. Further, the approach also takes into consideration the periodicity of tasks. It is validated by proving the correctness of the enforcement of CPU cycle budgets for tasks by the Zero-Slack Rate Monotonic (
zsrm
) scheduler, which is implemented in C as a Linux kernel module. The inductiveness of the necessary
zsrm
invariants is proved by expressing them as function contracts using the
acsl
specification language, and verifying the contracts using the
frama-c
tool.
Diagonal Component Expansion for Flow-Layer Placement of Flow-Based Microfluidic Biochips
Authors: Crites Brian , Kong Karen , Brisk Philip
Published: September 2017

Continuous flow-based microfluidic devices have seen a huge increase in interest because of their ability to automate and miniaturize biochemistry and biological processes, as well as their promise of creating a programmable platform for chemical and biological experimentation. The major hurdle in the adoption of these types of devices is in the design, which is largely done by hand using tools such as AutoCAD or SolidWorks, which require immense domain knowledge and are hard to scale. This paper investigates the problem of automated physical design for continuous flow-based microfluidic very large scale integration (mVLSI) biochips, starting from a netlist specification of the flow layer. After an initial planar graph embedding, vertices in the netlist are expanded into two-dimensional components, followed by fluid channel routing. A new heuristic, DIagonal Component Expansion (DICE) is introduced for the component expansion step. Compared to a baseline expansion method, DICE improves area utilization by a factor of 8.90x and reduces average fluid routing channel length by 47.4%.
Reinforcement Learning-Assisted Garbage Collection to Mitigate Long-Tail Latency in SSD
Authors: Kang Wonkyung , Shin Dongkun , Yoo Sungjoo
Published: September 2017

NAND flash memory is widely used in various systems, ranging from real-time embedded systems to enterprise server systems. Because the flash memory has erase-before-write characteristics, we need flash-memory management methods, i.e., address translation and garbage collection. In particular, garbage collection (GC) incurs long-tail latency, e.g., 100 times higher latency than the average latency at the 99
th
percentile. Thus, real-time and quality-critical systems fail to meet the given requirements such as deadline and QoS constraints. In this study, we propose a novel method of GC based on reinforcement learning. The objective is to reduce the long-tail latency by exploiting the idle time in the storage system. To improve the efficiency of the reinforcement learning-assisted GC scheme, we present new optimization methods that exploit fine-grained GC to further reduce the long-tail latency. The experimental results with real workloads show that our technique significantly reduces the long-tail latency by 29--36% at the 99.99
th
percentile compared to state-of-the-art schemes.
Using Criticality of GPU Accesses in Memory Management for CPU-GPU Heterogeneous Multi-Core Processors
Authors: Rai Siddharth , Chaudhuri Mainak
Published: September 2017

Heterogeneous chip-multiprocessors with CPU and GPU integrated on the same die allow sharing of critical memory system resources among the CPU and GPU applications. Such architectures give rise to challenging resource scheduling problems. In this paper, we explore memory access scheduling algorithms driven by criticality of GPU accesses in such systems. Different GPU access streams originate from different parts of the GPU rendering pipeline, which behaves very differently from the typical CPU pipeline requiring new techniques for GPU access criticality estimation. We propose a novel queuing network model to estimate the performance-criticality of the GPU access streams. If a GPU application performs below the quality of service requirement (e.g., frame rate in 3D scene rendering), the memory access scheduler uses the estimated criticality information to accelerate the critical GPU accesses. Detailed simulations done on a heterogeneous chip-multiprocessor model with one GPU and four CPU cores running heterogeneous mixes of DirectX, OpenGL, and CPU applications show that our proposal improves the GPU performance by 15% on average without degrading the CPU performance much. Extensions proposed for the mixes containing GPGPU applications, which do not have any quality of service requirement, improve the performance by 7% on average for these mixes.
CGPredict
Authors: Wang Siqi , Zhong Guanwen , Mitra Tulika
Published: September 2017

Heterogeneous multiprocessor system-on-chip architectures are endowed with accelerators such as embedded GPUs and FPGAs capable of general-purpose computation. The application developers for such platforms need to carefully choose the accelerator with the maximum performance benefit. For a given application, usually, the reference code is specified in a high-level single-threaded programming language such as C. The performance of an application kernel on an accelerator is a complex interplay among the exposed parallelism, the compiler, and the accelerator architecture. Thus, determining the performance of a kernel requires its redevelopment into each accelerator-specific language, causing substantial wastage of time and effort. To aid the developer in this early design decision, we present an analytical framework
CGPredict
to predict the performance of a computational kernel on an embedded GPU architecture from un-optimized, single-threaded C code. The analytical approach provides insights on application characteristics which suggest further application-specific optimizations. The estimation error is as low as 2.66% (average 9%) compared to the performance of the same kernel written in native CUDA code running on NVIDIA Kepler embedded GPU. This low performance estimation error enables CGPredict to provide an early design recommendation of the accelerator starting from C code.
P-BMS
Authors: Kim Hong Seok , Nam Eyee Hyun , Yun Ji Hyuck , Lee Sheayun , Min Sang Lyul
Published: September 2017

Flash memory is used as a main data storage medium in increasingly large areas of applications, rapidly replacing hard disk drives because of its low power consumption, fast random access, and high shock resistance. Such flash-based storage devices generally incorporate multiple flash memory chips to meet the ever growing capacity demands. Using multiple chips in a single storage device, at the same time, opens an opportunity to boost the performance based on multi-unit parallelism. However, parallel execution of multiple flash operations introduces complications when bad blocks occur, which is unavoidable due to flash memory’s physical characteristics. The situation gets even worse when bad block occurrences are accompanied by sudden power failures. We propose a bad block management scheme called P-BMS that can fully utilize flash-level parallelism, while guaranteeing provably correct block replacement. Experiments show that our P-BMS achieves a throughput that is more than 95% of the maximum bandwidth of the flash controller, even with bad block occurrences far heavier than in real flash memory.
P-Alloc
Authors: Wang Yi , Dong Lisha , Mao Rui
Published: September 2017

Three-dimensional (3D) flash memory is an emerging memory technology that enables a number of improvements to conventional planar NAND flash memory, including larger capacity, less program disturbance, and lower access latency. In contrast to conventional planar flash memory, 3D flash memory adopts charge-trapping mechanism. NAND strings punch through multiple stacked layers to form the three-dimensional infrastructure. However, the etching processes for NAND strings are unable to produce perfectly vertical features, especially on the scale of 20 nanometers or less. The process variation will cause uneven distribution of electrons, which poses a threat to the integrity of data stored in flash.

This paper present
P-Alloc
, a process-variation tolerant reliability management strategy for 3D charge-trapping flash memory. P-Alloc offers both hardware and software support to allocate data to the 3D flash in the presence of process variation. P-Alloc predicts the state of a physical page, i.e., the basic unit for each write or read operation in flash memory, and tries to assign critical data to more reliable pages. A hardware-based voltage threshold compensation scheme is also proposed to further reduce the faults. We demonstrate the viability of the proposed scheme using a variety of realistic workloads. Our extensive evaluations show that, P-Alloc significantly enhances the reliability and reduces the access latency compared to the baseline scheme.
Machine Intelligence on Resource-Constrained IoT Devices
Authors: Motamedi Mohammad , Fong Daniel , Ghiasi Soheil
Published: September 2017

Despite their remarkable performance in various machine intelligence tasks, the computational intensity of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) has hindered their widespread utilization in resource-constrained embedded and IoT systems. To address this problem, we present a framework for synthesis of efficient CNN inference software targeting mobile SoC platforms. We argue that thread granularity can substantially impact the performance and energy dissipation of the synthesized inference software, and demonstrate that launching the maximum number of logical threads, often promoted as a guiding principle by GPGPU practitioners, does not result in an efficient implementation for mobile SoCs. We hypothesize that the runtime of a CNN layer on a particular SoC platform can be accurately estimated as a linear function of its computational complexity, which may seem counter-intuitive, as modern mobile SoCs utilize a plethora of heterogeneous architectural features and dynamic resource management policies. Consequently, we develop a principled approach and a data-driven analytical model to optimize granularity of threads during CNN software synthesis. Experimental results with several modern CNNs mapped to a commodity Android smartphone with a Snapdragon SoC show up to 2.37X speedup in application runtime, and up to 1.9X improvement in its energy dissipation compared to existing approaches.
Efficient Virtual Memory Sharing via On-Accelerator Page Table Walking in Heterogeneous Embedded SoCs
Authors: Vogel Pirmin , Kurth Andreas , Weinbuch Johannes , Marongiu Andrea , Benini Luca
Published: September 2017

Shared virtual memory is key in heterogeneous systems on chip (SoCs) that combine a general-purpose host processor with a many-core accelerator, both for programmability and performance. In contrast to the full-blown, hardware-only solutions predominant in modern high-end systems, lightweight hardware-software co-designs are better suited in the context of more power- and area-constrained embedded systems and provide additional benefits in terms of flexibility and predictability. As a downside, the latter solutions require the host to handle in software synchronization in case of page misses as well as miss handling. This may incur considerable run-time overheads.

In this work, we present a novel hardware-software virtual memory management approach for many-core accelerators in heterogeneous embedded SoCs. It exploits an
accelerator-side
helper thread concept that enables the accelerator to manage its virtual memory hardware autonomously while operating cache-coherently on the page tables of the user-space processes of the host. This greatly reduces overhead with respect to host-side solutions while retaining flexibility. We have validated the design with a set of parameterizable benchmarks and real-world applications covering various application domains. For purely memory-bound kernels, the accelerator performance improves by a factor of 3.8 compared with host-based management and lies within 50% of a lower-bound ideal memory management unit.
Round-trip DRAM Access Fairness in 3D NoC-based Many-core Systems
Authors: Chen Xiaowen , Lu Zhonghai , Liu Sheng , Chen Shuming
Published: September 2017

In 3D NoC-based many-core systems, DRAM accesses behave differently due to their different communication distances and the latency gap of different DRAM accesses becomes bigger as the network size increases, which leads to unfair DRAM access performance among different nodes. This phenomenon may lead to high latencies for some DRAM accesses that become the performance bottleneck of the system. The paper addresses the DRAM access fairness problem in 3D NoC-based many-core systems by narrowing the latency difference of DRAM accesses as well as reducing the maximum latency. Firstly, the latency of a round-trip DRAM access is modeled and the factors causing DRAM access latency difference are discussed in detail. Secondly, the DRAM access fairness is further quantitatively analyzed through experiments. Thirdly, we propose to predict the network latency of round-trip DRAM accesses and use the predicted round-trip DRAM access time as the basis to prioritize the DRAM accesses in DRAM interfaces so that the DRAM accesses with potential high latencies can be transferred as early and fast as possible, thus achieving fair DRAM access. Experiments with synthetic and application workloads validate that our approach can achieve fair DRAM access and outperform the traditional First-Come-First-Serve (FCFS) scheduling policy and the scheduling policies proposed by reference [7] and [24] in terms of maximum latency, Latency Standard Deviation (LSD)1 and speedup. In the experiments, the maximum improvement of the maximum latency, LSD, and speedup are 12.8%, 6.57%, and 8.3% respectively. Besides, our proposal brings very small extra hardware overhead (<0.6%) in comparison to the three counterparts.
SoftRM
Authors: Tsoutsouras Vasileios , Masouros Dimosthenis , Xydis Sotirios , Soudris Dimitrios
Published: September 2017

Many-core systems are envisioned to leverage the ever-increasing demand for more powerful computing systems. To provide the necessary computing power, the number of Processing Elements integrated on-chip increases and NoC based infrastructures are adopted to address the interconnection scalability. The advent of these new architectures surfaces the need for more sophisticated, distributed resource management paradigms, which in addition to the extreme integration scaling, make the new systems more prone to errors manifested both at hardware and software. In this work, we highlight the need for Run-Time Resource management to be enhanced with fault tolerance features and propose SoftRM, a resource management framework which can dynamically adapt to permanent failures in a self-organized, workload-aware manner. Self-organization allows the resource management agents to recover from a failure in a coordinated way by electing a new agent to replace the failed one, while workload awareness optimizes this choice according to the status of each core. We evaluate the proposed framework on Intel Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC), a NoC based many-core system and customize it to achieve minimum interference on the resource allocation process. We showcase that its workload-aware features manage to utilize free resources in more that 90% of the conducted experiments. Comparison with relevant state-of-the-art fault tolerant frameworks shows decrease of up to 67% in the imposed overhead on application execution.
A Distance-Based Data Aggregation Technique for Periodic Sensor Networks
Authors: Harb Hassan , Makhoul Abdallah , Laiymani David , Jaber Ali
Published: September 2017

Monitoring phenomena and environments is an emergent and required field in our today systems and applications. Hence, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have attracted considerable attention from the research community as an efficient way to explore various kinds of environments. Sensor networks applications can be useful in different domains (terrestrial, underwater, space exploration, etc.). However, one of the major constraints in such networks is the energy consumption that increases when data transmission increases. Consequently, optimizing data transmission is one of the most significant criteria in WSNs that can conserve energy of sensors and extend network lifetime. In this article, we propose an efficient data transmission protocol that consists in two phases of data aggregation. Our proposed protocol searches, in the first phase, similarities between measures collected by each sensor. In the second phase, it uses distance-based functions to find similarity between sets of collected data. The main goal of these phases is to reduce the data transmitted from both sensors and cluster-heads (CHs) in a clustering-based scheme network. To evaluate the performance of the proposed protocol, experiments on real sensor data from both terrestrial and underwater networks have been conducted. Compared to other existing techniques, simulation and real experimentations show that our protocol can be effectively used to reduce data transmission and increase network lifetime, while still keeping data integrity of the collected data.
IoT
Authors: Neville-Neil George V.
Published: September 2017

If it seems like the sky is falling, that's because it is.
Millennials' attitudes toward IT consumerization in the workplace
Authors: Gewald Heiko , Wang Xuequn , Weeger Andy , Raisinghani Mahesh S. , Grant Gerald , Sanchez Otavio , Pittayachawan Siddhi
Published: September 2017

Millennials entering the workforce ignore the risks of using privately owned devices on the job.
Editors opine
Authors: Weikle Dee A. B.
Published: September 2017

The first article in this issue is an introduction to Karla Carter, the new Chair of SIGCAS in her own words. Welcome Karla! She welcomes two new members to the executive committee, Sam Rebelsky and Bob Beck, as well as expressing her appreciation for the work of the past chair, Michael Goldweber. I would also like to welcome Randy Connolly as Deputy Editor. It will be great to have his experience and help with the newsletter going forward.
Dynamic technology challenges static codes of ethics
Authors: Brinkman Bo , Flick Catherine , Gotterbarn Don , Miller Keith , Vazansky Kate , Wolf Marty J.
Published: September 2017

We describe the process of changing and the changes being suggested for the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. In addition to addressing the technical and ethical basis for the proposed changes, we identify suggestions that commenters made in response to the first draft. We invite feedback on the proposed changes and on the suggestions that commenters made.
Is professional practice at risk following the Volkswagen and Tesla revelations?
Authors: Rogerson Simon
Published: September 2017

With the world in economic crisis the headlong drive for efficiency and effectiveness together with resulting profit is the watchword. Such pressure might have resulted in real gains but has also led to unscrupulous or reckless actions. The tempering of such drive with ethical consideration is often neglected until there is a detrimental event causing public outcry which in turn places pressure on the actors to account for the reasons the event had occurred. This cause and effect map is commonplace. The Volkswagen emissions scandal and Tesla Motors public beta testing of the Autopilot software in their cars illustrate the drive for efficiency and effectiveness without proper ethical consideration. This paper focuses on the role of software engineers in such situations. An ethical analysis of the two cases is presented using the
Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice.
The findings, together with previously published analyses, are used to draw general conclusions and recommendations about the efficacy of the software engineering profession.
Why we should have seen that coming
Authors: Wolf M. J. , Miller K. , Grodzinsky F. S.
Published: September 2017

In this paper we examine the case of Tay, the Microsoft AI chatbot that was launched in March, 2016. After less than 24 hours, Microsoft shut down the experiment because the chatbot was generating tweets that were judged to be inappropriate since they included racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic language. We contend that the case of Tay illustrates a problem with the very nature of learning software (LS is a term that describes any software that changes its program in response to its interactions) that interacts directly with the public, and the developer's role and responsibility associated with it. We make the case that when LS interacts directly with people or indirectly via social media, the developer has additional ethical responsibilities beyond those of standard software. There is an additional burden of care.
Offline, but on track
Authors: Connolly Randy , Miller Janet
Published: September 2017

Over the past two decades, a wide variety of researchers have documented the dramatic decline in traditional political participation activities among young people and a corresponding increase in a more expressive form of citizenship focused around social media. This paper will briefly outline the sociological and political debate about the changing nature of citizenship and then reflect on this debate in light of our own multi-year qualitative citizenship research project. Our findings indicate that many of the transformative claims made about young people's Digital Citizenship orientations are overstated.
An economic view of prophet inequalities
Authors: Lucier Brendan
Published: September 2017

Over the past decade, an exciting connection has developed between the theory of posted-price mechanisms and the prophet inequality, a result from the theory of optimal stopping. This survey provides an overview of this literature, covering extensions and applications of the prophet inequality through the lens of an economic proof of this classic result. We focus on highlighting ways in which the economic perspective drives new advances in the theory of online stochastic optimization, and vice versa.
Memory-guided saccades show effect of a perceptual illusion whereas visually guided saccades do not
Authors: Massendari Delphine , Lisi Matteo , Collins Thérèse , Cavanagh Patrick
Published: September 2017

The double-drift stimulus (a drifting Gabor with orthogonal internal motion) generates a large discrepancy between its physical and perceived path. Surprisingly, saccades directed to the double-drift stimulus land along the physical, and not perceived, path (Lisi M, Cavanagh P. Curr Biol 25: 2535−2540, 2015). We asked whether memory-guided saccades exhibited the same dissociation from perception. Participants were asked to keep their gaze centered on a fixation dot while the double-drift stimulus moved back and forth on a linear path in the periphery. The offset of the fixation was the go signal to make a saccade to the target. In the visually guided saccade condition, the Gabor kept moving on its trajectory after the go signal but was removed once the saccade began. In the memory conditions, the Gabor disappeared before or at the same time as the go-signal (0- to 1,000-ms delay) and participants made a saccade to its remembered location. The results showed that visually guided saccades again targeted the physical rather than the perceived location. However, memory saccades, even with 0-ms delay, had landing positions shifted toward the perceived location. Our result shows that memory- and visually guided saccades are based on different spatial information.

NEW & NOTEWORTHY We compared the effect of a perceptual illusion on two types of saccades, visually guided vs. memory-guided saccades, and found that whereas visually guided saccades were almost unaffected by the perceptual illusion, memory-guided saccades exhibited a strong effect of the illusion. Our result is the first evidence in the literature to show that visually and memory-guided saccades use different spatial representations.
In Search of Alignment: A Review of Impact Studies in Entrepreneurship Education
Authors: Kamovich Uladzimir , Foss Lene
Published: September 2017

This study uses the concept of alignment as a framework to examine empirical research on the impact of entrepreneurship education interventions on students. Alignment assumes that effective instruction requires congruence between three instructional components: intended outcomes, instructional processes, and assessment criteria. Given the extant diversity and complexity of entrepreneurship education impact, scholars have not been able to explain how teaching approaches and methods are being adjusted to the variety of expected outcomes. In order to address this gap, we critically reviewed the published empirical studies on entrepreneurship education impact in 20 journals over a 15‐year period (2000–2015). We found 16 empirical studies that met our inclusion criteria. Our findings revealed that teaching objectives, teaching methods, and teaching content receive scant attention from researchers. This study will be of value to scholars researching the impact of heterogeneous entrepreneurship education practices and approaches on individuals. Our analytical framework could contribute to less contradictory findings of entrepreneurship education impact studies. We also identify research limitations and suggest avenues for future research.
The Outcomes of Total Hip Replacement in Patients with Parkinson’s Disease: Comparison of the Elective and Hip Fracture Groups
Authors: Šponer Pavel , Kučera Tomáš , Grinac Michal , Bezrouk Aleš , Waciakowski Daniel
Published: September 2017

Introduction. The aim of the study was to compare the clinical outcomes following elective and traumatic total hip arthroplasty in Parkinson’s disease patients. Materials and Methods. Ten patients with osteoarthritis comprise the elective group (mean age at operation 74 years; mean follow-up 82 months). Thirteen patients with femoral fracture comprise the hip fracture group (mean age 76 years; mean follow-up 54 months). All patients were followed up at 6 and 36 months postoperatively and at the time of the latest follow-up. Results. Despite the significant improvement in Merle d’Aubigné-Postel and pain scores, disability related to Parkinson’s disease increased during the follow-up. Whereas more than 1/3 of hip fracture patients and all elective patients walked independently at 36 months after total hip arthroplasty, 43% of living patients from both groups were able to walk independently at the time of the latest follow-up. The medical complications were seen mainly in patients with hip fracture. Conclusions. Excellent pain relief with preserved walking ability without support of another person and acceptable complication profile was observed in Parkinson’s disease patients at 36 months after elective total hip arthroplasty. This procedure may be indicated in Parkinson’s disease patients after careful and individualized planning.
Accurate and Efficient Evaluation of Chebyshev Tensor Product Surface
Authors: He Keshan , Du Peibing , Jiang Hao , Duan Chongwen , Wang Hongxia , Cheng Lizhi
Published: September 2017

A Chebyshev tensor product surface is widely used in image analysis and numerical approximation. This article illustrates an accurate evaluation for the surface in form of Chebyshev tensor product. This algorithm is based on the application of error‐free transformations to improve the traditional Clenshaw Chebyshev tensor product algorithm. Our error analysis shows that the error bound is in contrast to classic scheme , where u is working precision and is a condition number of bivariate polynomial P(x, y), which means that the accuracy of the computed result is similar to that produced by classical approach with twice working precision. Numerical experiments verify that the proposed algorithm is stable and efficient.
Differential Effects of Angelicin Analogues on NF-κB Activity and IL-8 Gene Expression in Cystic Fibrosis IB3-1 Cells
Authors: Lampronti Ilaria , Manzione Maria Giulia , Sacchetti Gianni , Ferrari Davide , Spisani Susanna , Bezzerri Valentino , Finotti Alessia , Borgatti Monica , Dechecchi Maria Cristina , Miolo Giorgia , Marzaro Giovanni , Cabrini Giulio , Gambari Roberto , Chilin Adriana
Published: September 2017

The angelicin analogue 4,6,4′-trimethylangelicin (TMA) was recently reported as a strong inhibitor of nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) activity and of the expression of the interleukin-8 (IL-8) gene in bronchial epithelial cells in which the inflammatory response has been challenged withP. aeruginosa, the most common bacterium found in the airways of patients affected by cystic fibrosis (CF). These findings encouraged us to analyze new synthetic analogues of TMA in order to evaluate their biological activities on human bronchial epithelial CF IB3-1 cells and to find more potent anti-NF-κB agents exhibiting only minor antiproliferative effects. Analogues able to inhibit NF-κB/DNA interaction at lower concentration than TMA were found and selected to investigate their biological activity on IB3-1 cells induced with TNF-α. In this biological system, NF-κB-mediated IL-8 gene expression was investigated. Some analogues showed similar activity to the lead compound TMA. Other analogues displayed higher activities; in particular, the most interesting compounds showing relevant anti-inflammatory effects were found to cause 56–83% reduction of IL-8 mRNA expression at low concentrations (1–10 μM), without changes in cell proliferation pattern, demonstrating their potential interest for a possible development of anti-inflammatory therapy of cystic fibrosis.
An Experimental Investigation for Seepage-Induced Instability of Confined Broken Mudstones with Consideration of Mass Loss
Authors: Wang Luzhen , Chen Zhanqing , Kong Hailing
Published: September 2017

To study and prevent water-mud-outburst disasters of tectonic fracture zones in geotechnical engineering, we tested seepage stability of confined broken mudstones with consideration of mass loss using syringe seepage method and a self-designed seepage testing system, obtained the variation laws of seepage instable duration, total mass loss, and mass loss rate of broken mudstones under different pressure gradients and Talbol power exponents (simplified as Talbol hereafter), and explained their instable seepage behaviors. The results showed that the mass loss is the internal cause of seepage-induced instability of broken rocks and pressure gradient is the external cause, and the persistent migration and loss of particles result in progressive failure process, while the large enough pressure gradient causes sudden overall instability. The seepage instable duration shortens with pressure gradient increasing, with the longest and shortest duration at Talbol of 0.5 and 0.1, respectively. In general, mass loss increases with pressure gradient increasing and with Talbol decreasing. Mass loss rate increases with pressure gradient increasing but shows no monotonic changes with Talbol. Their expressions can be used to establish dynamic model in the further seepage stability researches.
Real-Time Pore Pressure Detection: Indicators and Improved Methods
Authors: Zhang Jincai , Yin Shangxian
Published: September 2017

High uncertainties may exist in the predrill pore pressure prediction in new prospects and deepwater subsalt wells; therefore, real-time pore pressure detection is highly needed to reduce drilling risks. The methods for pore pressure detection (the resistivity, sonic, and corrected d-exponent methods) are improved using the depth-dependent normal compaction equations to adapt to the requirements of the real-time monitoring. A new method is proposed to calculate pore pressure from the connection gas or elevated background gas, which can be used for real-time pore pressure detection. The pore pressure detection using the logging-while-drilling, measurement-while-drilling, and mud logging data is also implemented and evaluated. Abnormal pore pressure indicators from the well logs, mud logs, and wellbore instability events are identified and analyzed to interpret abnormal pore pressures for guiding real-time drilling decisions. The principles for identifying abnormal pressure indicators are proposed to improve real-time pore pressure monitoring.
Polycythaemia Secondary to Hormone Replacement Therapy with Tibolone
Authors: Staples Laura , Milder Tamara , Choi Philip Young-Ill
Published: September 2017

We present the case report of a patient with severe polycythaemia associated with tibolone. In our 65-year-old postmenopausal patient who initially presented with haemoglobin 203 g/L [115–160] and haematocrit 0.63 [0.32–0.47], the cessation of tibolone, a synthetic hormone replacement therapy, led to a dramatic and sustained resolution of this patient’s polycythaemia to normal haematological values. Tibolone possesses oestrogenic, androgenic, and progestogenic properties. Tibolone therapy may be an infrequently recognized contributor towards polycythaemia in postmenopausal patients presenting to haematology clinics.
Complete Remission after Sequential Therapy of Drug Eluting Beads Transarterial Chemoembolization and Liver Resection in Large Solitary Nodule Hepatocellular Carcinoma
Authors: Kurniawan Juferdy , Sulaiman Andri Sanityoso , Matondang Sahat Basana Romanti Ezer , Lalisang Toar Jean Maurice , Krisnuhoni Ening , Zulkifly Steven
Published: September 2017

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fifth most prevalent and the second highest cause of death among cancer. The treatment of large solitary nodule HCC is still challenging. Transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) and liver resection are two modalities of therapy in HCC management. However, recurrence rate from each therapy is relatively high. We report a case of 46-year-old man diagnosed with large solitary nodule HCC, who was treated with drug eluting bead TACE (DEB-TACE) prior to liver resection. Studies about this combination are still limited and showed various results.
Mycobacterium intracellulare Infection Mimicking Progression of Scleroderma
Authors: Krabbe Simon , Engelhart Merete , Thybo Sören , Jacobsen Søren
Published: September 2017

This case report describes a patient with scleroderma who developed Mycobacterium intracellulare infection, which for more than a year mimicked worsening of her connective tissue disorder. The patient was diagnosed with scleroderma based on puffy fingers that developed into sclerodactyly, abnormal nail fold capillaries, interstitial lung disease, Raynaud’s phenomenon, esophageal dysmotility, and positivity for rheumatoid factor and anti-SSA antibodies. She developed massive inflammatory changes of the cutis, the subcutis, and the muscle fasciae of the right leg, that after several failed attempts of immunosuppressive treatments were found to be caused by Mycobacterium intracellulare. While she was receiving high-dose prednisolone, as worsening of her connective tissue disease was suspected to be the cause of the inflammatory changes, she had Listeria monocytogenes meningitis and was hospitalized for several weeks, but she recovered from this without sequelae. After Mycobacterium intracellulare infection was diagnosed, she was treated with clarithromycin and rifampicin. Her skin manifestations, arthralgias, and fatigue improved considerably, and the wounds of the right leg healed, unfortunately with significant scarring. Immunodeficiency testing was unremarkable. In summary, an infection with Mycobacterium intracellulare was mistaken for an unusually severe progression of scleroderma.
Design, Development, and Optimization of Dexibuprofen Microemulsion Based Transdermal Reservoir Patches for Controlled Drug Delivery
Authors: Ali Fatima Ramzan , Shoaib Muhammad Harris , Yousuf Rabia Ismail , Ali Syed Abid , Imtiaz Muhammad Suleman , Bashir Lubna , Naz Shazia
Published: September 2017

The aim of the study was to develop a reservoir-type transdermal patch for a controlled delivery of dexibuprofen and to evaluate its in vivo anti-inflammatory activity in Albino Wistar rats. In order to develop these patches, six formulations of dexibuprofen microemulsion comprising ethyl oleate, Tween 80: PG (2 : 1), and water were prepared by simplex lattice design and characterized. The reservoir compartment was filled with these microemulsions and in vitro release and skin permeation were assessed. The optimized patch was obtained on the basis of the responses:Q24and flux. The impact of drug loading, surface area, membrane thickness, adhesive, and agitation speed on drug release and permeation was also studied. The skin sensitivity reaction and in vivo anti-inflammatory activity of optimized patch were evaluated. Stability study at three different temperatures for three months was carried out. The result suggests that a membrane based patch with zero-order release rate,Q24of 79.13 ± 3.08%, and maximum flux of 331.17 µg/cm2h can be obtained exhibiting suitable anti-inflammatory activity with no visible skin sensitivity reaction. The outcomes of stability study recommend storage of patches at 4°C having shelf-life of 6.14 months. The study demonstrates that the reservoir-type transdermal patch of dexibuprofen microemulsion has a potential of delivering drug across skin in controlled manner with required anti-inflammatory activity.