bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Dietary advanced glycation end products modify gut microbial composition and partially increase colon permeability in rats
Authors: Qu Wanting , Yuan Xiaojin , Zhao Jinsong , Zhang Yingxiao , Hu Jing , Wang Jiawei , Li Juxiu 
Published: June 2017

ScopeThe adverse impacts of dietary advanced glycation end products (AGEs) on health are currently of interest. These compounds are inevitably formed during thermal food processing and make foods less digestible because of protein cross‐linking. This study examined not only whether dietary AGEs alter cecal microbiota and their metabolites but also their effects on colon permeability.Methods and resultsSprague–Dawley rats were exposed to a high‐AGEs diet (AGEs content was increased by heating food at 125°C/3 h) for 6, 12, or 18 weeks. Cecal microbiota was analyzed by 16S rDNA gene sequencing. Colon permeability was assessed through histopathology, immunohistochemistry and endotoxin testing. Microbial metabolites (e.g. ammonia and short‐chain fatty acids (SCFAs)) were also measured. AGEs treatment reduced the diversity and richness of the microbiota, especially saccharolytic bacteria such as Ruminococcaceae and Alloprevotella, which can produce SCFAs, whereas some putatively harmful bacteria (Desulfovibrio and Bacteroides) were increased. Protein fermentation was enhanced, supported by elevated ammonia and branched‐chain fatty acid levels (p < 0.05). Additionally, the colonocytes structure changed and the expression of tight junction proteins in colon were decreased.ConclusionDietary AGEs detrimentally modulate gut microbial ecology and may partially increase colon permeability, which can adversely impact host health.
Yoga for the management of pain and sleep in rheumatoid arthritis: a pilot randomized controlled trial
Authors: Ward Lesley , Stebbings Simon , Athens Josie , Cherkin Daniel , David Baxter G. 
Published: June 2017

AbstractObjectiveThe aim of the present study was to determine the feasibility of a relaxation‐based yoga intervention for rheumatoid arthritis, designed and reported in accordance with Delphi recommendations for yoga interventions for musculoskeletal conditions.MethodsParticipants were recruited from a hospital database, and randomized to either eight weekly 75‐min yoga classes or a usual care control. Feasibility was determined by recruitment rates, retention, protocol adherence, participant satisfaction and adverse events. Secondary physical and psychosocial outcomes were assessed using self‐reported questionnaires at baseline (week 0), week 9 (primary time point) and week 12 (follow‐up).ResultsOver a 3‐month period, 26 participants with mild pain, mild to moderate functional disability and moderate disease activity were recruited into the study (25% recruitment rate). Retention rates were 100% for yoga participants and 92% for usual care participants at both weeks 9 and 12. Protocol adherence and participant satisfaction were high. Yoga participants attended a median of seven classes; additionally, seven of the yoga participants (54%) reported continuing yoga at home during the follow‐up period. No serious adverse events were related to the study. Secondary outcomes showed no group effects of yoga compared with usual care.ConclusionsA relaxation‐based yoga programme was found to be feasible and safe for participants with rheumatoid arthritis‐related pain and functional disability. Adverse events were minor, and not unexpected from an intervention including physical components. This pilot provides a framework for larger intervention studies, and supports further exploration of yoga as a complex intervention to assist with the management of rheumatoid arthritis.
How serious is bias in effect estimation in randomised trials with survival data given risk heterogeneity and informative censoring?
Authors: McNamee Roseanne 
Published: June 2017

It is often assumed that randomisation will prevent bias in estimation of treatment effects from clinical trials, but this is not true of the semiparametric Proportional Hazards model for survival data when there is underlying risk heterogeneity. Here, a new formula is proposed for estimation of this bias, improving on a previous formula through ease of use and clarity regarding the role of the mid‐study cumulative hazard rate, shown to be an important factor for the bias magnitude.Informative censoring (IC) is recognised as a source of bias. Here, work on selection effects among survivors due to risk heterogeneity is extended to include IC. A new formula shows that bias in causal effect estimation under IC has two sources: one consequent on heterogeneity and one from the additional impact of IC. The formula provides new insights not previously shown: there may less bias under IC than when there is no IC and even, in principle, zero bias.When tested against simulated data, the new formulae are shown to be very accurate for prediction of bias in Proportional Hazards and accelerated failure time analyses which ignore heterogeneity. These data are also used to investigate the performance of accelerated failure time models which explicitly model risk heterogeneity (‘frailty models’) and G estimation. These methods remove bias when there is simple censoring but not with informative censoring when they may lead to overestimation of treatment effects. The new formulae may be used to help researchers judge the possible extent of bias in past studies. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Experimental and analytical study of bond behavior between recycled aggregate concrete and steel bars using a pullout test
Authors: Wardeh George , Ghorbel Elhem , Gomart Hector , Fiorio Bruno 
Published: June 2017

The paper presents the results of an experimental program carried out on 96 concrete pullout specimens prepared with natural and recycled aggregates using 10 and 12 mm diameter deformed steel bars. Steel rebars were concentrically embedded in pullout specimens with two embedded length of 5 and 10 times the rebar diameter. The present work includes six recycled concrete aggregate mixtures and two conventional concrete mixtures with C25/30 and C35/45 target class of compressive strength and S4 class of workability. For both series, specimens were fabricated with different incorporation ratios of fine and coarse recycled aggregates and only coarse recycled aggregates.Tensile load was applied gradually until the pullout failure occurred and the slip between the rebar and concrete was measured at the free and loaded ends for each loading level. Furthermore, systematic observations of failure surface have been made at both macroscopic and microscopic scales. Test results showed that for the same class of compressive strength the bond strength and related failure mechanisms remain very close and the obtained values are, at least, four times higher than the predicted values by Eurocode 2.The experimental results of this study, together with an extensive number of results reported in the literature, were used to describe the variation of bond strength with concrete compressive strength, embedded length, and concrete cover. In addition, an analytical bond‐slip relationship is proposed and the parameters of bond‐slip law were calibrated by an optimization algorithm.
Inside Cover Image, Volume 9, Issue 4
Authors: Opacic Tatjana , Paefgen Vera , Lammers Twan , Kiessling Fabian 
Published: June 2017

image
The inside cover image, by Tatjana Opacic et al., is based on the Advanced Review Status and trends in the development of clinical diagnostic agents, DOI: 10.1002/wnan.1441.
MoDeNA: Enhancing User Security for Devices in Wireless Personal and Local Area Networks
Authors: Müller Robert , Waldvogel Marcel , Schmitt Corinna 
Published: June 2017

AbstractToday most used devices are connected with each other building the Internet of Things (IoT). A variety of protocols are used depending on the underlying network infrastructure, application (e.g., Smart City, eHealth), and device capability. The judgment of the security feeling of the data sharing depends on personal settings (e.g., easy to use, encrypted transmission, anonymization support). MoDeNA – a Mobile Device Network Assistant – was developed offering an opportunity for understanding the judgment of security by bringing the user’s concerns and their technology understanding of used devices and protocols into relation. MoDeNA provides a transparent overview over the used wireless security of the user’s device giving concrete advices for improving the connection security and usability of mobile device security.
Flow-Based Detection of IPv6-specific Network Layer Attacks
Authors: Hendriks Luuk , Velan Petr , de O. Schmidt Ricardo , de Boer Pieter-Tjerk , Pras Aiko 
Published: June 2017

AbstractWith a vastly different header format, IPv6 introduces new vulnerabilities not possible in IPv4, potentially requiring new detection algorithms. While many attacks specific to IPv6 have proven to be possible and are described in the literature, no detection solutions for these attacks have been proposed. In this study we identify and characterise IPv6-specific attacks that can be detected using flow monitoring. By constructing flow-based signatures, detection can be performed using available technologies such as NetFlow and IPFIX. To validate our approach, we implemented these signatures in a prototype, monitoring two production networks and injecting attacks into the production traffic.
Towards a Hybrid Cloud Platform Using Apache Mesos
Authors: Xue Noha , Haugerud Hårek , Yazidi Anis 
Published: June 2017

AbstractHybrid cloud technology is becoming increasingly popular as it merges private and public clouds to bring the best of two worlds together. However, due to the heterogeneous cloud installation, facilitating a hybrid cloud setup is not simple. Despite the availability of some commercial solutions to build a hybrid cloud, an open source implementation is still unavailable. In this paper, we try to bridge the gap by providing an open source implementation by leveraging the power of Apache Mesos. We build a hybrid cloud on the top of multiple cloud platforms, private and public.
Optimizing the Integration of Agent-Based Cloud Orchestrators and Higher-Level Workloads
Authors: Sebrechts Merlijn , Van Seghbroeck Gregory , De Turck Filip 
Published: June 2017

AbstractThe flexibility of cloud computing has put significant strain on operations teams. Manually installing and configuring applications in the cloud simply isn’t an option anymore. Configuration management automation solves the issue of getting a single application into a certain state automatically and reliably. However, the issue of automatic dependency management between multiple applications is still an “open, hard problem” according to researchers at Google. Agent-based modeling and orchestration tools like Juju solve the issue of getting from zero to a working set of correctly clustered and connected frameworks. The shortcomings of these state-of-the-art tools are that they don’t provide efficient ways to model and orchestrate workloads running on top of these frameworks. This paper presents a number of ways to deploy and orchestrate workloads with Juju, compares their performance and overhead, and suggests how this overhead can be minimized.
Multi-domain DDoS Mitigation Based on Blockchains
Authors: Rodrigues Bruno , Bocek Thomas , Stiller Burkhard 
Published: June 2017

AbstractThe exponential increase of the traffic volume makes Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks a top security threat to service providers. Existing DDoS defense mechanisms lack resources and flexibility to cope with attacks by themselves, and by utilizing other’s companies resources, the burden of the mitigation can be shared. Technologies as blockchain and smart contracts allow distributing attack information across multiple domains, while SDN (Software-Defined Networking) and NFV (Network Function Virtualization) enables to scale defense capabilities on demand for a single network domain. This proposal presents the design of a novel architecture combining these elements and introducing novel opportunities for flexible and efficient DDoS mitigation solutions across multiple domains.
A Blockchain-Based Architecture for Collaborative DDoS Mitigation with Smart Contracts
Authors: Rodrigues Bruno , Bocek Thomas , Lareida Andri , Hausheer David , Rafati Sina , Stiller Burkhard 
Published: June 2017

AbstractThe rapid growth in the number of insecure portable and stationary devices and the exponential increase of traffic volume makes Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks a top security threat to services provisioning. Existing defense mechanisms lack resources and flexibility to cope with attacks by themselves, and by utilizing other’s companies resources, the burden of the mitigation can be shared. Emerging technologies such as blockchain and smart contracts allows for the sharing of attack information in a fully distributed and automated fashion. In this paper, the design of a novel architecture is proposed by combining these technologies introducing new opportunities for flexible and efficient DDoS mitigation solutions across multiple domains. Main advantages are the deployment of an already existing public and distributed infrastructure to advertise white or blacklisted IP addresses, and the usage of such infrastructure as an additional security mechanism to existing DDoS defense systems, without the need to build specialized registries or other distribution mechanisms, which enables the enforcement of rules across multiple domains.
Towards a Software-Defined Security Framework for Supporting Distributed Cloud
Authors: Compastié Maxime , Badonnel Rémi , Festor Olivier , He Ruan , Kassi-Lahlou Mohamed 
Published: June 2017

AbstractCloud computing provides new facilities for building elaborated services hosted through various infrastructures over the Internet. In the meantime, these ones pose new important challenges in terms of security due to their intrinsic nature. We propose in this paper to detail a software-defined security framework supporting the protection of these services, in the context of distributed cloud. These ones require security mechanisms able to cope with their multi-tenancy and multi-cloud properties. The foundations of this framework rely on the software-defined logic to express and propagate security policies to the considered cloud resources, and on the autonomic paradigm to dynamically configure and adjust these mechanisms to distributed cloud constraints. In particular, we describe the main components and protocols of this software-defined security framework, evaluate this one and discuss implementation considerations, through the analysis of different realistic scenarios.
Hunting SIP Authentication Attacks Efficiently
Authors: Jansky Tomáš , Čejka Tomáš , Bartoš Václav 
Published: June 2017

AbstractExtended flow records with application layer (L7) information allow for detection of various types of malicious traffic. Voice over IP (VoIP) is an example of technology that works on L7 and many attacks against it cannot be reliably detected using just basic flow information. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), which is commonly used for VoIP signalling, is a frequent target of many types of attacks. This paper proposes and evaluates a novel algorithm for near real time detection of username scanning and password guessing attacks on SIP servers. The detection is based on analysis of L7 extended flow records.
Extraction of partonic transverse momentum distributions from semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering, Drell-Yan and Z-boson production
Authors: Bacchetta Alessandro , Delcarro Filippo , Pisano Cristian , Radici Marco , Signori Andrea 
Published: June 2017

AbstractWe present an extraction of unpolarized partonic transverse momentum distributions (TMDs) from a simultaneous fit of available data measured in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering, Drell-Yan andZboson production. To connect data at different scales, we use TMD evolution at next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. The analysis is restricted to the low-transverse-momentum region, with no matching to fixed-order calculations at high transverse momentum. We introduce specific choices to deal with TMD evolution at low scales, of the order of 1 GeV2. This could be considered as a first attempt at a global fit of TMDs.
Recombinant 20.8-kDa protein of Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis-based sero-diagnosis of paratuberculosis
Authors: Goswami P. P. , Chand Gokul , Prasad N. S. , Deb R. , Basagoudanavar S. H. 
Published: June 2017

Abstract
Johne’s disease or paratuberculosis is a chronic infectious enteric disease of ruminants caused by the intracellular pathogen. The control of the Johne’s disease is hampered by lack of specific diagnostic tests. In this study, we have cloned and expressed the N-terminal region of the locus tag Map 1637c encoding 20.8-kDa (r20.8) protein of Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis. The recombinant protein r20.8 was expressed in high levels in Escherichia coli. The protein r20.8 was purified by single-step chromatography using Ni–NTA agarose. The protein r20.8 was reacted with anti-r20.8 antibodies as well as cattle sera infected with Map on Western blot. ELISA using well-characterized sera (both positive and negative; n = 60 each) Map-infected and non-infected cattle, respectively, yielded a sensitivity of 73.3% and a specificity of 98.3%. The 20.8 kDa protein expressed in the present study will prove useful as reagent in diagnostic test.
Bioremediation of palm industry wastes using vermicomposting technology: its environmental application as green fertilizer
Authors: Rupani Parveen Fatemeh , Embrandiri Asha , Ibrahim Mahamd Hakimi , Shahadat Mohammad , Hansen Sune Balle , Mansor Nur Naha Abu 
Published: June 2017

Abstract
Several technologies are being applied for treatment of palm oil mill wastes. Among them, the biological treatments (vermicomposting) have widely been recognized as one of the most efficient and eco-friendly methods for converting organic waste materials into valuable products. The present study focuses on vermicomposting of acidic palm oil mill effluent (POME) mixed with the palm pressed fibre (PPF) which are found difficult to decompose in the environment. The industrial waste (POME) was vermicomposted using Lumbricus rubellus under laboratory conditions for a period of 45 days. A significant improvement in nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium content was monitored during vermicomposting process. In addition, the decline in C:N ratio of vermicompost (up to 17.20 ± 0.60) reflects the degree of stabilization of POME–PPF mixture. Different percentages of the vermicompost extract obtained from POME–PPF mixture were also examined for the germination of mung bean (Vigna radiata) seed. The results showed that 75% vermicompost extract demonstrated better performance for the seed germination. On the basis of significant findings, POME–PPF mixture can be successfully used as a feeding material for the earthworms, while on the other hand, it can also be used as a cost-effective fertilizer for the germination and the proper growth of mung bean.
Cognitive deficits in the first 24 hours after the onset of first unprovoked generalized Tonic and clonic seizure
Authors: Charmchi Zeinab , Sayadnasiri Mohammad 
Published: June 2017

AbstractBackground Many people with epilepsy suffer from cognitive deficits as a consequence of their seizure episodes. Relatively few researches have been undertaken to assess the short term impacts of seizure on cognitive function. This study aimed to evaluate changes in cognitive performance in adults with a new onset generalized seizure in the first 24 h after the onset of their attack.Methods After having given informed consent, 40 patients with first episode of unprovoked generalized tonic-clonic seizure were investigated with a neuropsychological test battery (Wechsler Memory Scale III). Their performance was compared with 40 healthy individuals from the patients' companions.Results Newly diagnosed patients had significantly worse performance in paired association recall which is a parameter of verbal memory; other memory parameters showed no significant changes after seizure attack.Conclusion Our data suggested that even with a one-time seizure episode, patients are susceptible to verbal memory impairment.
Brain function and structure and risk for incident diabetes: The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study
Authors: Bancks Michael P. , Alonso Alvaro , Gottesman Rebecca F. , Mosley Thomas H. , Selvin Elizabeth , Pankow James S. 
Published: June 2017

AbstractIntroductionDiabetes is prospectively associated with cognitive decline. Whether lower cognitive function and worse brain structure are prospectively associated with incident diabetes is unclear.MethodsWe analyzed data for 10,133 individuals with cognitive function testing (1990–1992) and 1212 individuals with brain magnetic resonance imaging (1993–1994) from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities cohort. We estimated hazard ratios for incident diabetes through 2014 after adjustment for traditional diabetes risk factors and cohort attrition.ResultsHigher level of baseline cognitive function was associated with lower risk for diabetes (per 1 standard deviation, hazard ratio = 0.94; 95% confidence interval = 0.90, 0.98). This association did not persist after accounting for baseline glucose level, case ascertainment methods, and cohort attrition. No association was observed between any brain magnetic resonance imaging measure and incident diabetes.DiscussionThis is one of the first studies to prospectively evaluate the association between both cognitive function and brain structure and the incidence of diabetes.
Incidence of cognitively defined late‐onset Alzheimer's dementia subgroups from a prospective cohort study
Authors: Crane Paul K. , Trittschuh Emily , Mukherjee Shubhabrata , Saykin Andrew J. , Sanders R. Elizabeth , Larson Eric B. , McCurry Susan M. , McCormick Wayne , Bowen James D. , Grabowski Thomas , Moore Mackenzie , Bauman Julianna , Gross Alden L. , Keene C. Dirk , Bird Thomas D. , Gibbons Laura E. , Mez Jesse ,   Executive Prominent Alzheimer's Disease: Genetics and Risk Factors (EPAD:GRF) Investigators
Published: June 2017

AbstractIntroductionThere may be biologically relevant heterogeneity within typical late‐onset Alzheimer's dementia.MethodsWe analyzed cognitive data from people with incident late‐onset Alzheimer's dementia from a prospective cohort study. We determined individual averages across memory, visuospatial functioning, language, and executive functioning. We identified domains with substantial impairments relative to that average. We compared demographic, neuropathology, and genetic findings across groups defined by relative impairments.ResultsDuring 32,286 person‐years of follow‐up, 869 people developed Alzheimer's dementia. There were 393 (48%) with no domain with substantial relative impairments. Some participants had isolated relative impairments in memory (148, 18%), visuospatial functioning (117, 14%), language (71, 9%), and executive functioning (66, 8%). The group with isolated relative memory impairments had higher proportions with ≥ APOE ε4 allele, more extensive Alzheimer's‐related neuropathology, and higher proportions with other Alzheimer's dementia genetic risk variants.DiscussionA cognitive subgrouping strategy may identify biologically distinct subsets of people with Alzheimer's dementia.