bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Hunter‐gatherers as models in public health
Authors: Pontzer H. , Wood B. M. , Raichlen D. A.
Published: December 2018

Hunter‐gatherer populations are remarkable for their excellent metabolic and cardiovascular health and thus are often used as models in public health, in an effort to understand the root, evolutionary causes of non‐communicable diseases. Here, we review recent work on health, activity, energetics and diet among hunter‐gatherers and other small‐scale societies (e.g. subsistence farmers, horticulturalists and pastoralists), as well as recent fossil and archaeological discoveries, to provide a more comprehensive perspective on lifestyle and health in these populations. We supplement these analyses with new data from the Hadza, a hunter‐gatherer population in northern Tanzania. Longevity among small‐scale populations approaches that of industrialized populations, and metabolic and cardiovascular disease are rare. Obesity prevalence is very low (<5%), and mean body fat percentage is modest (women: 24–28%, men: 9–18%). Activity levels are high, exceeding 100 min d−1 of moderate and vigorous physical activity, but daily energy expenditures are similar to industrialized populations. Diets in hunter‐gatherer and other small‐scale societies tend to be less energy dense and richer in fibre and micronutrients than modern diets but are not invariably low carbohydrate as sometimes argued. A more integrative understanding of hunter‐gatherer health and lifestyle, including elements beyond diet and activity, will improve public health efforts in industrialized populations.
How much exercise should be promoted to raise total daily energy expenditure and improve health?
Authors: Byrne N. M. , Hills A. P.
Published: December 2018

Despite longstanding recognition of the benefits of a physically active lifestyle, there remains ambiguity regarding exactly how much exercise should be promoted to raise total energy expenditure (TEE) and improve health. This review provides a brief summary of the dose–response relationship between physical activity and relative risk of morbidity and mortality; mechanisms through which exercise drives an increase in TEE; the highest reported levels of TEE measured via doubly labelled water; and the potential impact of non‐compliance and confounders in moderating the contribution of exercise to increase TEE. Cohort studies provide a compelling argument that ‘more is better’ regarding the exercise dose for increasing TEE, that increasing TEE is protective for health, and that this is mediated through increased cardiorespiratory fitness. However, growing evidence shows that ever increasing volumes of weekly physical activity may reverse the cost–benefit seen with more modest doses. Animal and human studies show that the elevation in TEE associated with increasing exercise volume is commonly less than expected, due to physiological confounders. Further, there is considerable evidence of behavioural non‐compliance to planned exercise in all but the most highly motivated athletes. Therefore, inbuilt defence mechanisms may safeguard against TEE being elevated to maximum levels.
Modulation of thermogenesis and metabolic health: a built environment perspective
Authors: van Marken Lichtenbelt W. D. , Pallubinsky H. , te Kulve M.
Published: December 2018

Lifestyle interventions, obviating the increasing prevalence of the metabolic syndrome, generally focus on nutrition and physical activity. Environmental factors are hardly covered. Because we spend on average more that 90% of our time indoors, it is, however, relevant to address these factors. In the built environment, the attention has been limited to the (assessment and optimization of) building performance and occupant thermal comfort for a long time. Only recently well‐being and health of building occupants are also considered to some extent, but actual metabolic health aspects are not generally covered. In this review, we draw attention to the potential of the commonly neglected lifestyle factor ‘indoor environment’. More specifically, we review current knowledge and the developments of new insights into the effects of ambient temperature, light and the interaction of the two on metabolic health. The literature shows that the effects of indoor environmental factors are important additional factors for a healthy lifestyle and have an impact on metabolic health.
Fatal septic cavernous sinus thrombosis following dental extraction: a case report
Authors: Almansoori Akram Abdo , Choung Han‐Wool , Kim Jo‐Eun , Kim Bongju , Kim Soung‐Min , Lee Jong‐Ho
Published: December 2018

Cavernous sinus thrombosis is a rare complication of odontogenic infection. A coexistence of compromised medical condition would reduce the patient survivability. In this context, we reported a 66‐year‐old female who developed an odontogenic infection and cavernous sinus thrombosis within 1 day after an upper tooth extraction. Considered as a life‐threatening complication status of odontogenic infection, the patient was referred to the emergency medicine department for intensive care with differential diagnosis of cavernous sinus thrombosis and masticator space infection. It was revealed that the patient had an uncontrolled diabetes mellitus and acute kidney injury. Later the patient developed a septic shock and died in almost 2 days since the tooth extraction. This makes it very important for the dentists to raise suspicion of uncontrolled status in those patients with history of diabetes mellitus and manage them carefully with proper antibiotic cover when undergoing dental procedures.
Gauging the Impact of Transparency Policies
Authors: Michener Gregory
Published: December 2018

To what extent do transparency policies generate positive impacts? This seemingly rhetorical question has become the subject of increasing contention, partly because of two research‐based biases. First, researchers have been blinded by metrics and method. Using tools that are often ill suited to gauging the gradual, diffuse, and indirect effects of most transparency policies, research has found—unsurprisingly—spotty evidence of impact. Transparency studies would benefit from greater use of complementary approaches, such as careful tracing of impact processes and indicators, combined with sensible counterfactual reasoning. Second, researchers have been looking for impact with blinkered vision. In particular, a thematic fixation on accountability and participation has monopolized attention. Key preconditions—such as compliance with and implementation of transparency policies—remain relatively neglected, as do other areas of potential impact, including capacity building, how actors are leveraging previously restricted streams of information, and transparency's role in improving policy coordination and communication.
Risk Evaluation and Control of Supply Chain Finance
Authors: Du Ying Yu , Zhong Jun Bin , Su Zi Yue , Yang Xin Peng , Yao Yi Lan
Published: December 2018

As an effective way of enterprises financing, supply chain finance has attracted much attention in recent years. However, since supply chain finance has some problems like long financing period, numerous stakeholders and complex effects, banks are at a higher risk carrying out this kind of service. The purpose of this paper is to explore the key factors in supply chain finance risk assessment and study the effective mode of risk elevation. Based on the existing literature and research, this paper uses Z-score to standardize the financial index of 344 medium-sized enterprises in automotive industry chain from October, 2016 to October, 2017 and build a model of supply chain risk assessment and control basing on analytic hierarchy process, principal components analysis and logistic regression analysis. Finally, we summarize how each index affects risk assessment and then analyze the reasons.
Lipin1 is required for skeletal muscle development by regulating MEF2c and MyoD expression
Authors: Jama Abdulrahman , Huang Dengtong , Alshudukhi Abdullah A. , Chrast Roman , Ren Hongmei
Published: December 2018

Key points

Lipin1 is critical for skeletal muscle development.

Lipin1 regulates MyoD and myocyte‐specific enhancer factor 2C (MEF2c) expression via the protein kinase C (PKC)/histone deacetylase 5‐mediated pathway.

Inhibition of PKCμ activity suppresses myoblast differentiation by inhibiting MyoD and MEF2c expression.

Our previous characterization of global lipin1‐deficient (fld) mice demonstrated that lipin1 played a novel role in skeletal muscle (SM) regeneration. The present study using cell type‐specific Myf5‐cre;Lipin1fl/fl conditional knockout mice (Lipin1Myf5cKO) shows that lipin1 is a major determinant of SM development. Lipin1 deficiency induced reduced muscle mass and myopathy. Our results from lipin1‐deficient myoblasts suggested that lipin1 regulates myoblast differentiation via the protein kinase Cμ (PKCμ)/histone deacetylase 5 (HDAC5)/myocyte‐specific enhancer factor 2C (MEF2c):MyoD‐mediated pathway. Lipin1 deficiency leads to the suppression of PKC isoform activities, as well as inhibition of the downstream target of PKCμ, class II deacetylase HDAC5 nuclear export, and, consequently, inhibition of MEF2c and MyoD expression in the SM of lipin1Myf5cKO mice. Restoration of diacylglycerol‐mediated signalling in lipin1 deficient myoblasts by phorbol 12‐myristate 13‐acetate transiently activated PKC and HDAC5, and upregulated MEF2c expression. Our findings provide insights into the signalling circuitry that regulates SM development, and have important implications for developing intervention aimed at treating muscular dystrophy.
Short-term implicit voice-learning leads to a Familiar Talker Advantage: The role of encoding specificity
Authors: Case Julie , Seyfarth Scott , Levi Susannah V.
Published: December 2018

Whereas previous research has found that a Familiar Talker Advantage—better spoken language perception for familiar voices—occurs following explicit voice-learning, Case, Seyfarth, and Levi [(2018). J. Speech, Lang., Hear. Res. 61(5), 1251–1260] failed to find this effect after implicit voice-learning. To test whether the advantage is limited to explicit voice-learning, a follow-up experiment evaluated implicit voice-learning under more similar encoding (training) and retrieval (test) conditions. Sentence recognition in noise improved significantly more for familiar than unfamiliar talkers, suggesting that short-term implicit voice-learning can lead to a Familiar Talker Advantage. This paper explores how similarity in encoding and retrieval conditions might affect the acquired processing advantage.
Neutralization Synergy between HIV-1 Attachment Inhibitor Fostemsavir and Anti-CD4 Binding Site Broadly Neutralizing Antibodies against HIV
Authors: Zhang Yijun , Chapman James H. , Ulcay Asim , Sutton Richard E.
Published: December 2018

As the worldwide HIV pandemic continues, there is a continued need for novel drugs and therapies. A new class of drug, the attachment inhibitors, will soon be approved for the treatment of HIV. Broadly neutralizing antibodies are also promising candidates for HIV prevention and therapy. We investigated how this drug might work with these exciting antibodies that are very potent in blocking HIV infection of cells. These antibodies worked against virus known to be resistant to the new drug. In addition, a specific type of antibody worked really well with the new drug in blocking virus infection of cells. This work has implications for both the new drug and the antibodies that are poised to be used against HIV.
Intrahost Dynamics of Human Cytomegalovirus Variants Acquired by Seronegative Glycoprotein B Vaccinees
Authors: Nelson Cody S. , Vera Cruz Diana , Su Melody , Xie Guanhua , Vandergrift Nathan , Pass Robert F. , Forman Michael , Diener-West Marie , Koelle Katia , Arav-Boger Ravit , Permar Sallie R.
Published: December 2018

Though not a household name like Zika virus, human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) causes permanent neurologic disability in one newborn child every hour in the United States, which is more than that for Down syndrome, fetal alcohol syndrome, and neural tube defects combined. There are currently no established effective measures to prevent viral transmission to the infant following HCMV infection of a pregnant mother. However, the glycoprotein B (gB)/MF59 vaccine, which aims to prevent pregnant women from acquiring HCMV, is the most successful HCMV vaccine tested clinically to date. Here, we used viral DNA isolated from patients enrolled in a gB vaccine trial who acquired HCMV and identified several impacts that this vaccine had on the size, distribution, and composition of thein vivoviral population. These results have increased our understanding of why the gB/MF59 vaccine was partially efficacious, and such investigations will inform future rational design of a vaccine to prevent congenital HCMV.
CRISPR/Cas9-Mediated Knockout of DNAJC14 Verifies This Chaperone as a Pivotal Host Factor for RNA Replication of Pestiviruses
Authors: Isken O. , Postel A. , Bruhn B. , Lattwein E. , Becher P. , Tautz N.
Published: December 2018

Only noncp pestivirus strains are capable of establishing life-long persistent infections to generate the virus reservoir in the field. The molecular basis for this biotype is only partially understood and only investigated in depth for BVDV-1 strains. Temporal control of viral RNA replication correlates with the noncp biotype and is mediated by limiting amounts of cellular DNAJC14 that activate the viral NS2 protease to catalyze the release of the essential replicase component NS3. Here, we demonstrate that several species of noncp pestiviruses depend on DNAJC14 for their RNA replication. Moreover, all cp pestiviruses, in sharp contrast to their noncp counterparts, replicate independently of DNAJC14. The generation of a cp BVDV in the persistently infected animal is causative for onset of mucosal disease. Therefore, the observed strict biotype-specific difference in DNAJC14 dependency should be further examined for its role in cell type/tissue tropism and the pathogenesis of this lethal disease.
Histidine-Rich Glycoprotein Inhibits HIV-1 Infection in a pH-Dependent Manner
Authors: Dantas Ezequiel , Erra Díaz Fernando , Pereyra Gerber Pehuén , Varese Augusto , Jerusalinsky Diana Alicia , Epstein Alberto L. , García Rivello Hernán J. , del Valle Jaén Ana , Pandolfi Julieta B. , Ceballos Ana , Ostrowski Matias , Sabatté Juan , Geffner Jorge
Published: December 2018

Vaginal intercourse represents a high-risk route for HIV-1 transmission. The efficiency of male-to-female HIV-1 transmission has been estimated to be 1 in every 1,000 episodes of sexual intercourse, reflecting the high degree of protection conferred by the genital mucosa. However, the contribution of different host factors to the protection against HIV-1 at mucosal surfaces remains poorly defined. Here, we report for the first time that acidic values of pH enable the plasma protein histidine-rich glycoprotein (HRG) to strongly inhibit HIV-1 infection. Because cervicovaginal secretions usually show low pH values, our observations suggest that HRG might represent a constitutive antiviral mechanism in the vaginal mucosa. Interestingly, infection by other viruses, such as respiratory syncytial virus and herpes simplex virus 2, was also markedly inhibited by HRG at low pH values, suggesting that extracellular acidosis enables HRG to display broad antiviral activity.
TheHerpesviridaeConserved Multifunctional Infected-Cell Protein 27 (ICP27) Is Important but Not Required for Replication and Oncogenicity of Marek’s Disease Alphaherpesvirus
Authors: Ponnuraj Nagendraprabhu , Tien Yung-Tien , Vega-Rodriguez Widaliz , Krieter Andrea , Jarosinski Keith W.
Published: December 2018

Marek’s disease (MD) is a devastating oncogenic disease that affects the poultry industry and is caused by MD alphaherpesvirus (MDV). Current vaccines block induction of disease but do not block chicken-to-chicken transmission. There is a knowledge gap in our understanding of how MDV spreads from chicken to chicken. We studied theHerpesviridaeconserved ICP27 regulatory protein in cell culture and during MDV infection in chickens. We determined that MDV ICP27 is important but not required for replication in both cell culture and chickens. In addition, MDV ICP27 was not required for disease induction or oncogenicity but was required for chicken-to-chicken transmission. This study is important because it addresses the role of ICP27 during infection in the natural host and provides important information for the development of therapies to protect chickens against MD.
Antibodies to myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein in chronic relapsing inflammatory optic neuropathy
Authors: Liu Hongjuan , Zhou Huanfen , Wang Junqing , Xu Quangang , Wei Shihui
Published: December 2018

Background/aims

To evaluate the status of myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein antibodies (MOG-IgG) in chronic relapsing inflammatory optic neuropathy (CRION) and investigate its different clinical characteristics and prognosis.

Methods

Patients diagnosed with CRION were recruited by the Neuro-ophthalmology Department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army General Hospital from December 2015 to April 2017. Based on antibody status, they were assigned to either the MOG-CRION or seronegative-CRION groups.

Results

A total of 33 patients (38 eyes) were assessed and divided into the following groups: 22 (66.7%) MOG-CRION and 11 (33.3%) seronegative-CRION. The ratio of female to male was 1:1, and 81.8% of total CRION patients were adults (≥18 years). A total of 29 eyes (76.3%) showed severe visual loss (<20/200) during the first optic neuritis episode, and 37 eyes (72.5%) demonstrated good visual recovery (>20/40) during the final follow-up. The mean onset age of MOG-CRION patients was 28 ± 16 years (range 6–62), which was significantly younger than that of seronegative-CRION (45 ± 12 years, range 22–59) (p=0.029). The intraorbital and canalicular segments were highly involved in the orbital MRI of CRION patients. During the final follow-up, MOG-CRION patients had more bilateral involvement (p=0.008) and higher annualised relapse rates compared with the seronegative-CRION patients (p=0.019).

Conclusion

CRION was predominantly found in adults with unilateral ON and exhibited a higher rate of seropositive MOG-IgG. MOG-CRION, which may be a disparate subtype of MOG-IgG-induced demyelinating disease that needs further investigation, was found in younger patients at onset, with more bilateral involvement and more relapse tendency.
Intestinal failure after necrotising enterocolitis: incidence and risk factors in a Swedish population-based longitudinal study
Authors: Sjoberg Bexelius Tomas , Ahle Margareta , Elfvin Anders , Björling Oscar , Ludvigsson Jonas F , Andersson Roland E
Published: December 2018

Background and objective

Paediatric intestinal failure (IF) is a disease entity characterised by gut insufficiency often related to short bowel syndrome. It is commonly caused by surgical removal of a large section of the small intestine in association with necrotising enterocolitis (NEC), which usually affects premature infants. This study investigated the incidence and risk of IF in preterm infants with or without NEC.

Design

A matched cohort study to investigate the incidence and risk factors for IF in a population-based setting in Sweden from 1987 to 2009 using the Swedish Patient Register.

Participants

Infants with a diagnosis of NEC (n=720) were matched for gestational age and year of birth with reference individuals without NEC (n=3656). The study cohort was censored at death, IF or at end of follow-up (2 years of age). We calculated HRs with 95%CIs for IF using Cox regression, adjusting for pertinent perinatal factors.

Results

IF was 15 times more common in the infants with NEC compared with the reference infants (HR=7.2, with 95% CI 3.7 to 14.0). Other risk factors for IF were small for gestational age, extreme preterm birth and abdominal surgery. Neonatal mortality in infants with NEC decreased from 20.6% in 1987–1993 to 10.4% in 2007–2009.

Conclusion

IF was more common in the infants with NEC but was also linked to extreme preterm birth, a history of abdominal surgery and small for gestational age. IF was more common at the end of the study period, indicating that it increases when more preterm infants with NEC survive the neonatal period.
The Kidney Supportive Care programme: characteristics of patients referred to a new model of care
Authors: Purtell Louise , Sowa P Marcin , Berquier Ilse , Scuderi Carla , Douglas Carol , Taylor Bernadette , Kramer Katrina , Hoy Wendy , Healy Helen , Bonner Ann
Published: December 2018

Objectives

For many people with advanced kidney disease, their physical, psychological and emotional needs remain unmet. Kidney supportive care, fully integrating specialist kidney and palliative care teams, responds to the emotional and symptom distress in this cohort who may be on a non-dialysis care pathway or on dialysis and approaching end of life. We aimed to analyse and describe the operation and patient characteristics of a new kidney supportive care programme (KSCp).

Methods

A multidisciplinary KSCp was introduced through a tertiary hospital in Brisbane, Australia. Operational information and characteristics of referred patients were collected from internal databases and electronic medical records and analysed descriptively. Patient data were collected using validated instruments to assess symptom burden, health-related quality of life, health state, functional status and performance at clinic entry and analysed descriptively.

Results

129 people with advanced kidney disease were referred to the KSCp within the first year (median age 74 (range 27.7–90.5), 48.1% female, median Charlson Comorbidity Index score 7 (IQR 6–8) and mean Integrated Palliative care Outcome Scale Renal score 19.6±9.8). 59% were currently receiving dialysis. The leading reason for referral was symptom management (37%). While quality of life and health state varied considerably among the cohort, in general, these parameters were well below population norms.

Conclusions

Results indicate that patients referred to the KSCp were those with a strong need for a patient-centred, integrated model of care. Shifting focus to co-ordinated, multidisciplinary care rather than discrete specialty silos appears key to addressing the challenging clinical problems in end-of-life care.
Estimating drowning mortality in Tanzania: a systematic review and meta-analysis of existing data sources
Authors: Sarrassat Sophie , Mrema Sigilbert , Tani Kassimu , Mecrow Thomas , Ryan Dan , Cousens Simon
Published: December 2018

Background

The WHO advocates a 7-step process to enable countries to develop and implement drowning prevention strategies. We sought to assess, using existing data sources, the drowning situation in Tanzania as a first step in this process.

Methods

We searched for data on causes of death in Tanzania by reviewing existing literature and global datasets and by in-country networking. Authors and institutions were then contacted to request aggregate data on drowning mortality. Site-specific drowning estimates were combined using a random effects meta-analytic approach. We also tested for evidence of variations in drowning estimates by sex and by age group.

Results

We acquired partial or complete information on drowning deaths for 13 data sources. We found strong evidence for substantial variations between study sites (p<0.001). Combining population-based data, we estimated an average of 5.1 drowning deaths per 100 000 persons per year (95% CI 3.8 to 6.3). The proportions of deaths due to drowning were 0.72% (95% CI 0.55 to 0.88) and 0.94% (95% CI 0.09 to 1.78) combining population-based data and hospital-based data, respectively. Males were at greater risk than females, while both under-five children and adults aged 45 years or more were at greater risk than those aged 5–44 years.

Conclusion

Our estimates of drowning burden are broadly in line with the 2016 Global Burden of Disease and the 2015 WHO Global Health Estimates. While this exercise was useful in raising the burden of drowning in Tanzania with policy makers, planning drowning prevention strategies in this country will require a better understanding of which subpopulations are at high risk.
Kabuki syndrome: international consensus diagnostic criteria
Authors: Adam Margaret P , Banka Siddharth , Bjornsson Hans T , Bodamer Olaf , Chudley Albert E , Harris Jaqueline , Kawame Hiroshi , Lanpher Brendan C , Lindsley Andrew W , Merla Giuseppe , Miyake Noriko , Okamoto Nobuhiko , Stumpel Constanze T , Niikawa Norio
Published: December 2018

Background

Kabuki syndrome (KS) is a clinically recognisable syndrome in which 70% of patients have a pathogenic variant in KMT2D or KDM6A. Understanding the function of these genes opens the door to targeted therapies. The purpose of this report is to propose diagnostic criteria for KS, particularly when molecular genetic testing is equivocal.

Methods

An international group of experts created consensus diagnostic criteria for KS. Systematic PubMed searches returned 70 peer-reviewed publications in which at least one individual with molecularly confirmed KS was reported. The clinical features of individuals with known mutations were reviewed.

Results

The authors propose that a definitive diagnosis can be made in an individual of any age with a history of infantile hypotonia, developmental delay and/or intellectual disability, and one or both of the following major criteria: (1) a pathogenic or likely pathogenic variant in KMT2D or KDM6A; and (2) typical dysmorphic features (defined below) at some point of life. Typical dysmorphic features include long palpebral fissures with eversion of the lateral third of the lower eyelid and two or more of the following: (1) arched and broad eyebrows with the lateral third displaying notching or sparseness; (2) short columella with depressed nasal tip; (3) large, prominent or cupped ears; and (4) persistent fingertip pads. Further criteria for a probable and possible diagnosis, including a table of suggestive clinical features, are presented.

Conclusion

As targeted therapies for KS are being developed, it is important to be able to make the correct diagnosis, either with or without molecular genetic confirmation.
Current appeal system for those detained in England and Wales under the Mental Health Act needs reform
Authors: Gosney Paul , Lomax Paul , Hooper Carwyn , O’Brien Aileen
Published: December 2018

The approach to managing the involuntary detention of people suffering from psychiatric conditions can be divided into those with clinicians at the forefront of decision-making and those who rely heavily on the judiciary. The system in England and Wales takes a clinical approach where doctors have widespread powers to detain and treat patients involuntarily. A protection in this system is the right of the individual to challenge a decision to deprive them of their liberty or treat them against their will. This protection is provided by the First-tier Tribunal; however, the number of successful appeals is low. In this paper, the system of appeal in England and Wales is outlined. This is followed by a discussion of why so few patients successfully appeal their detention with the conclusion that the current system is flawed. A number of recommendations about how the system might be reformed are offered.
Delayed parent artery occlusions following use of SILK flow diverters for treatment of intracranial aneurysms
Authors: Macdonald Ian R , Shankar Jai J S
Published: December 2018

Background

The efficacy of SILK flow diverters (SFD) in the management of cerebral aneurysms has been established. However, the risk of complications with parent artery occlusion (PAO) remains to be fully elucidated. The purpose of our study was to analyze intracranial aneurysms treated with SFDs and assess for occurrences and potential risk factors for PAO.

Materials and methods

Between September 2010 and September 2017, 34 patients were treated for intracranial aneurysms using SFDs at a Canadian institution. This database was retrospectively analyzed for frequency of PAOs and statistical analysis performed for potential contributing factors.

Results

Following treatment with SFDs, average clinical and imaging follow-ups were 31 and 22 months, respectively. PAOs were identified in 21% (7/34) of patients and occurred between 8 days and 1.5 years from intervention but only in 11.8% in those compliant to anti-platelet medications. These were all associated with anterior circulation aneurysms (P=0.131) and had no associated neurological deficits. Of these, 57% (4/7) had a fusiform morphology compared with only 19% (5/27) in non-occluded patients (P=0.039). The presence of clinical symptoms at the time of initial SFD intervention was significantly associated with PAO (P=0.021).

Conclusion

Delayed PAO is not an uncommon outcome of flow diverter deployment and could be seen up to 1.5 years after treatment with no associated neurological deficits. Anti-platelet non-adherence remains a risk factor for PAO. Fusiform morphology of the aneurysm and symptoms at the time of intervention were associated with subsequent occlusion.
Runout evaluation of Oso landslide with the material point method
Authors: Yerro Alba , Soga Kenichi , Bray Jonathan
Published: December 2018

Long runout landslides can cause significant damage and represent one of the most important problems in geotechnical engineering. Understanding the mechanics of the landslide runout process is important for risk assessment and is challenging due to its complexities. This work examines the runout of the 22 March 2014 Oso, Washington, landslide. The Oso landslide is one of the worst landslide disasters in USA history with 43 fatalities. It occurred in multiple failure stages, involving several failure surfaces and significant soil softening, and travelled over 1 km across the valley. It initiated after a period of wet weather in an area prone to landslide movements. The triggering causes of the landslide movement are still under investigation. In this paper, the material point method is used to simulate the runout of the Oso landslide. This numerical tool is capable of modeling large deformation problems. It is used to investigate several hypothetical scenarios to identify key factors that contributed to the Oso landslide long runout distance.
A novel zonotopes set membership estimation-based fault diagnosis algorithm
Authors: Xu Guixiang , Wang Ziyun , Ji Zhicheng
Published: December 2018

For solving the advanced manufacturing fault diagnosis issue, a novel zonotopes estimation-based fault diagnosis algorithm is proposed in this paper. By using the intersection of the convex polytope and the tight strip, the fault diagnosis problem is changed into the analysis of the set membership outer bound computation. If the feasible set is detected empty, the set membership filters are designed. The minimal volume is also calculated and the selected zonotopes can be viewed as the approximate boundary. The simulation results show the effectiveness and practicability of the presented fault diagnosis algorithm.
Context-Driven and Real-Time Provisioning of Data-Centric IoT Services in the Cloud
Authors: Taherkordi Amir , Eliassen Frank , Mcdonald Michael , Horn Geir
Published: December 2018

The convergence of Internet of Things (IoT) and the Cloud has significantly facilitated the provision and management of services in large-scale applications, such as smart cities. With a huge number of IoT services accessible through clouds, it is very important to model and expose cloud-based IoT services in an efficient manner, promising easy and real-time delivery of cloud-based, data-centric IoT services. The existing work in this area has adopted a uniform and flat view to IoT services and their data, making it difficult to achieve the above goal. In this article, we propose a software framework, Context-driven And Real-time IoT (CARIoT) for
real-time
provisioning of cloud-based IoT services and their data, driven by their contextual properties. The main idea behind the proposed framework is to structure the description of data-centric IoT services and their real-time and historical data in a
hierarchical
form in accordance with the end-user application’s context model. CARIoT features design choices and software services to realize this service provisioning model and the supporting data structures for hierarchical IoT data access. Using this approach, end-user applications can access IoT services and subscribe to their real-time and historical data in an efficient manner at different contextual levels, e.g., from a municipal district to a street in smart city use cases. We leverage a popular cloud-based data storage platform, called Firebase, to implement the CARIoT framework and evaluate its efficiency. The evaluation results show that CARIoT’s hierarchical structure imposes no additional overhead with less data notification delay as compared to existing flat structures.
Latency-Aware Application Module Management for Fog Computing Environments
Authors: Mahmud Redowan , Ramamohanarao Kotagiri , Buyya Rajkumar
Published: December 2018

The fog computing paradigm has drawn significant research interest as it focuses on bringing cloud-based services closer to Internet of Things (IoT) users in an efficient and timely manner. Most of the physical devices in the fog computing environment, commonly named fog nodes, are geographically distributed, resource constrained, and heterogeneous. To fully leverage the capabilities of the fog nodes, large-scale applications that are decomposed into interdependent Application Modules can be deployed in an orderly way over the nodes based on their latency sensitivity. In this article, we propose a latency-aware Application Module management policy for the fog environment that meets the diverse service delivery latency and amount of data signals to be processed in per unit of time for different applications. The policy aims to ensure applications’ Quality of Service (QoS) in satisfying service delivery deadlines and to optimize resource usage in the fog environment. We model and evaluate our proposed policy in an iFogSim-simulated fog environment. Results of the simulation studies demonstrate significant improvement in performance over alternative latency-aware strategies.
An Automatic Proving Approach to Parameterized Verification
Authors: Li Yongjian , Duan Kaiqiang , Jansen David N. , Pang Jun , Zhang Lijun , Lv Yi , Cai Shaowei
Published: December 2018

Formal verification of parameterized protocols such as cache coherence protocols is a significant challenge. In this article, we propose an automatic proving approach and its prototype paraVerifier to handle this challenge within a unified framework as follows: (1) To prove the correctness of a parameterized protocol, our approach automatically discovers auxiliary invariants and the corresponding dependency relations among the discovered invariants and protocol rules from a small instance of the to-be-verified protocol, and (2) the discovered invariants and dependency graph are then automatically generalized into a parameterized form and sent to the theorem prover, Isabelle. As a side product, the final verification result of a protocol is provided by a formal and human-readable proof. Our approach has been successfully applied to a number of benchmarks, including snoopying-based and directory-based cache coherence protocols.
Efficient Hardware Implementation of Cellular Neural Networks with Incremental Quantization and Early Exit
Authors: Xu Xiaowei , Lu Qing , Wang Tianchen , Hu Yu , Zhuo Chen , Liu Jinglan , Shi Yiyu
Published: December 2018

Cellular neural networks (CeNNs) have been widely adopted in image processing tasks. Recently, various hardware implementations of CeNNs have emerged in the literature, with Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) being one of the most popular choices due to its high flexibility and low time-to-market. However, CeNNs typically involve extensive computations in a recursive manner. As an example, to simply process an image of 1,920 × 1,080 pixels requires 4--8 Giga floating point multiplications (for 3 × 3 templates and 50–100 iterations), which needs to be done in a timely manner for real-time applications. To address this issue, in this article, we propose a compressed CeNN framework for efficient FPGA implementations. It involves various techniques, such as incremental quantization and early exit, which significantly reduces computation demands while maintaining an acceptable performance. Particularly, incremental quantization quantizes the numbers in CeNN templates to powers of two, so that complex and expensive multiplications can be converted to simple and cheap shift operations, which only require a minimum number of registers and logical elements (LEs). While a similar concept has been explored in hardware implementations of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), CeNNs have completely different computation patterns, which require different quantization and implementation strategies. Experimental results on FPGAs show that incremental quantization and early exit can achieve a speedup of up to 7.8× and 8.3×, respectively, compared with the state-of-the-art implementations, while with almost no performance loss with four widely adopted applications. We also discover that different from CNNs, the optimal quantization strategies of CeNNs depend heavily on the applications. We hope that our work can serve as a pioneer in the hardware optimization of CeNNs.
Mining Abstract XML Data-Types
Authors: Athanasopoulos Dionysis , Zarras Apostolos
Published: December 2018

Schema integration has been a long-standing challenge for the data-engineering community that has received steady attention over the past three decades. General-purpose integration approaches construct unified schemas that encompass all schema elements. Schema integration has been revisited in the past decade in service-oriented computing since the input/output data-types of service interfaces are heterogeneous XML schemas. However, service integration differs from the traditional integration problem, since it should generalize schemas (mining abstract data-types) instead of unifying all schema elements. To mine well-formed abstract data-types, the fundamental Liskov Substitution Principle (LSP), which generally holds between abstract data-types and their subtypes, should be followed. However, due to the heterogeneity of service data-types, the strict employment of LSP is not usually feasible. On top of that, XML offers a rich type system, based on which data-types are defined via combining type patterns (e.g., composition, aggregation). The existing integration approaches have not dealt with the challenges of a defining subtyping relation between XML type patterns. To address these challenges, we propose a relaxed version of LSP between XML type patterns and an automated generalization process for mining abstract XML data-types. We evaluate the effectiveness and the efficiency of the process on the schemas of two datasets against two representative state-of-the-art approaches.
An FPGA Implementation of a Time Delay Reservoir Using Stochastic Logic
Authors: Loomis Lisa , McDonald Nathan , Merkel Cory
Published: December 2018

This article presents and demonstrates a stochastic logic time delay reservoir design in FPGA hardware. The reservoir network approach is analyzed using a number of metrics, such as kernel quality, generalization rank, and performance on simple benchmarks and is also compared to a deterministic design. A novel re-seeding method is introduced to reduce the adverse effects of stochastic noise, which may also be implemented in other stochastic logic reservoir computing designs, such as echo state networks. Benchmark results indicate that the proposed design performs well on noise-tolerant classification problems, but more work needs to be done to improve the stochastic logic time delay reservoir's robustness for regression problems. In addition, we show that the stochastic design can significantly reduce area cost if the conversion between binary and stochastic representations is implemented efficiently.
L
ib
PM
Authors: Marmol Leonardo , Chowdhury Mohammad , Rangaswami Raju
Published: December 2018

Persistent Memory devices present properties that are uniquely different from prior technologies for which applications have been built. Unfortunately, the conventional approach to building applications fail to either efficiently utilize these new devices or provide programmers a seamless development experience. We have built L
ib
PM, a Persistent Memory Library that implements an easy-to-use container abstraction for consuming PM. LibPM’s
containers
are data hosting units that can store arbitrarily complex data types while preserving their integrity and consistency. Consequently, L
ib
PM’s containers provide a generic interface to applications, allowing applications to store and manipulate arbitrarily structured data with strong durability and consistency properties, all without having to navigate all the myriad pitfalls of programming PM directly. By providing a simple and high-performing transactional update mechanism, L
ib
PM allows applications to manipulate persistent data at the speed of memory. The container abstraction and automatic persistent data discovery mechanisms within L
ib
PM also simplify porting legacy applications to PM. From a performance perspective, L
ib
PM closely matches and often exceeds the performance of state-of-the-art application libraries for PM. For instance, L
ib
PM ’s performance is 195× better for write intensive workloads and 2.6× better for read intensive workloads when compared with the state-of-the-art P
mem
.IO persistent memory library.
MASK
Authors: Ausavarungnirun Rachata , Miller Vance , Landgraf Joshua , Ghose Saugata , Gandhi Jayneel , Jog Adwait , Rossbach Christopher J. , Mutlu Onur
Published: December 2018

Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) exploit large amounts of threadlevel parallelism to provide high instruction throughput and to efficiently hide long-latency stalls. The resulting high throughput, along with continued programmability improvements, have made GPUs an essential computational resource in many domains. Applications from different domains can have vastly different compute and memory demands on the GPU. In a large-scale computing environment, to efficiently accommodate such wide-ranging demands without leaving GPU resources underutilized, multiple applications can share a single GPU, akin to how multiple applications execute concurrently on a CPU. Multi-application concurrency requires several support mechanisms in both hardware and software. One such key mechanism is virtual memory, which manages and protects the address space of each application. However, modern GPUs lack the extensive support for multi-application concurrency available in CPUs, and as a result suffer from high performance overheads when shared by multiple applications, as we demonstrate. We perform a detailed analysis of which multi-application concurrency support limitations hurt GPU performance the most. We find that the poor performance is largely a result of the virtual memory mechanisms employed in modern GPUs. In particular, poor address translation performance is a key obstacle to efficient GPU sharing. State-of-the-art address translation mechanisms, which were designed for single-application execution, experience significant inter-application interference when multiple applications spatially share the GPU. This contention leads to frequent misses in the shared translation lookaside buffer (TLB), where a single miss can induce long-latency stalls for hundreds of threads. As a result, the GPU often cannot schedule enough threads to successfully hide the stalls, which diminishes system throughput and becomes a first-order performance concern. Based on our analysis, we propose MASK, a new GPU framework that provides low-overhead virtual memory support for the concurrent execution of multiple applications. MASK consists of three novel address-translation-aware cache and memory management mechanisms that work together to largely reduce the overhead of address translation: (1) a token-based technique to reduce TLB contention, (2) a bypassing mechanism to improve the effectiveness of cached address translations, and (3) an application-aware memory scheduling scheme to reduce the interference between address translation and data requests. Our evaluations show that MASK restores much of the throughput lost to TLB contention. Relative to a state-of-the-art GPU TLB, MASK improves system throughput by 57.8%, improves IPC throughput by 43.4%, and reduces applicationlevel unfairness by 22.4%. MASK's system throughput is within 23.2% of an ideal GPU system with no address translation overhead.
Tigr
Authors: Nodehi Sabet Amir Hossein , Qiu Junqiao , Zhao Zhijia
Published: December 2018

Graph analytics delivers deep knowledge by processing large volumes of highly connected data. In real-world graphs, the degree distribution tends to follow the power law -- a small portion of nodes own a large number of neighbors. The high irregularity of degree distribution acts as a major barrier to their efficient processing on GPU architectures, which are primarily designed for accelerating computations on regular data with SIMD executions. Existing solutions to the inefficiency of GPU-based graph analytics either modify the graph programming abstraction or rely on changes to the low-level thread execution models. The former requires more programming efforts for designing and maintaining graph analytics; while the latter couples with the underlying architectures, making it difficult to adapt as architectures quickly evolve. Unlike prior efforts, this work proposes to address the above fundamental problem at its origin -- the irregular graph data itself. It raises a critical question in irregular graph processing: Is it possible to transform irregular graphs into more regular ones such that the graphs can be processed more efficiently on GPU-like architectures, yet still producing the same results? Inspired by the question, this work introduces Tigr -- a graph transformation framework that can effectively reduce the irregularity of real-world graphs with correctness guarantees for a wide range of graph analytics. To make the transformations practical, Tigr features a lightweight virtual transformation scheme, which can substantially reduce the costs of graph transformations, while preserving the benefits of reduced irregularity. Evaluation on Tigr-based GPU graph processing shows significant and consistent speedup over the state-of-the-art GPU graph processing frameworks for a spectrum of irregular graphs.