LC-PCN: The Load Control PCN Solution

There is an increased interest of simple and scalable resource provisioning solution for Diffserv network. The Load Control PCN (LC-PCN) addresses the following issues:\ud o Admission Control for real time data flows in stateless Diffserv Domains\ud o Flow Termination: Termination of flows in case of exceptional events, such as severe congestion after re-routing.\ud Admission control in a Diffserv stateless domain is a combination of:\ud o Probing, whereby a probe packet is sent along the forwarding path in a network to determine whether a flow can be admitted based upon the current congestion state of the network\ud o Admission Control based on data marking, whereby in congestion situations the data packets are marked to notify the PCN-egress-node that a congestion occurred on a particular PCN-ingress-node to PCN-egress-node path.\ud \ud The scheme provides the capability of controlling the traffic load in the network without requiring signaling or any per-flow processing in the PCN-interior-nodes. The complexity of Load Control is kept to a minimum to make implementation simple.\u

Relationship between genetic diversity of Chenopodium quinoa and the dynamics of its seed exchanges in Chile

Quinoa cultivation in Chile presents an ancient and active complex of geographic, climatic, social and cultural interactions that has determined its current biodiversity in the three main growing zones (north, centre and south). These interactions consider a central issue viz. the participation of farmers, whose activities are at the base of seed exchanges networks due to their knowledge and in situ conservation of genetic diversity. In this study we report antecedents that contribute to a better understanding of seed exchanges through the analysis of field works assessing the key roles of farmers involved in the biodiversity dynamics and characterization of 20 microsatellites genetic markers in a multi-origin set of 34 representative quinoa accessions of Chile and South American region. The phenetic analysis of germplasm (UPGMA) was consistent with the current classification of quinoa ecotypes present in Chile and Andean zone. This allowed the identification of five population, which were represented by quinoa of Salares (northern Chile), Coastal/Lowlands (central and southern Chile), Highlands (Peru, Bolivia and Argentina) and Inter-Andean Valleys (Ecuador and Colombia). The good informative quality of the markers used revealed a wide genetic diversity among main growing areas in Chile, which correlates well with natural geographical-edaphic-climatic and social-linguistic context to the expansion of quinoa biodiversity. Additionally, the ancient seed exchanges reveals this process is still governed by an array of diverse agricultural practices of Andean farmers. Genetic erosion is considered a imminent risk due to small scale farming, where the increased migration of people to urban systems and exportation-driven influence can further reduce the cultivated diversity. (Résumé d'auteur

Arithmetical Congruence Preservation: from Finite to Infinite

Various problems on integers lead to the class of congruence preserving functions on rings, i.e. functions verifying $a-b$ divides $f(a)-f(b)$ for all $a,b$. We characterized these classes of functions in terms of sums of rational polynomials (taking only integral values) and the function giving the least common multiple of $1,2,\ldots,k$. The tool used to obtain these characterizations is "lifting": if $\pi\colon X\to Y$ is a surjective morphism, and $f$ a function on $Y$ a lifting of $f$ is a function $F$ on $X$ such that $\pi\circ F=f\circ\pi$. In this paper we relate the finite and infinite notions by proving that the finite case can be lifted to the infinite one. For $p$-adic and profinite integers we get similar characterizations via lifting. We also prove that lattices of recognizable subsets of $Z$ are stable under inverse image by congruence preserving functions

Pelagic sharks by-catch in the tuna longline fishery of the Indian EEZ

Several species of pelagic and oceanic sharks are caught by the tuna longliners of FSI while surveying the oceanic tuna resources in the Indian EEZ. Though the sharks are not targeted species in tuna longlining, they constitute a major share of the catches. The sharks hooked could be, therefore, treated as by- catches or incidental catches of the tuna longline fisher

Ordered monolayer gold nano-urchin structures and their size induced control for high gas sensing performance

The synthesis of ordered monolayers of gold nano-urchin (Au-NU) nanostructures with controlled size, directly on thin films using a simple electrochemical method is reported in this study. In order to demonstrate one of the vast potential applications, the developed Au-NUs were formed on the electrodes of transducers (QCM) to selectively detect low concentrations of elemental mercury (Hg0) vapor. It was found that the sensitivity and selectivity of the sensor device is enhanced by increasing the size of the nanospikes on the Au-NUs. The Au-NU-12 min QCM (Au-NUs with nanospikes grown on it for a period of 12 min) had the best performance in terms of transducer based Hg0 vapor detection. The sensor had 98% accuracy, 92% recovery, 96% precision (repeatability) and significantly, showed the highest sensitivity reported to date, resulting in a limit of detection (LoD) of only 32 μg/m3 at 75 °C. When compared to the control counterpart, the accuracy and sensitivity of the Au-NU-12 min was enhanced by ~2 and ~5 times, respectively. The results demonstrate the excellent activity of the developed materials which can be applied to a range of applications due to their long range order, tunable size and ability to form directly on thin-films

Prevalence of Gram-negative Pathogens and their antimicrobial susceptibility in bacterial meningitis in pediatric cases

The present study was conducted to find out the prevalence and spectrum of Gram negative pathogens causing bacterial meningitis and their antimicrobial susceptibility pattern in a tertiary care hospital. The cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) (3-5 ml) was collected from 638 admitted children clinically suspected of septic meningitis. Bacterial isolates were identified and antimicrobial susceptibility was assessed by the Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion method. Of the 638 samples tested 102 (15.99%) were culture positive. Male to female (M:F) ratio was 1.62:1. The maximum incidence of 45 (44.12%) cases was found in children (1-12 yrs); in institutional deliveries the incidence was 58 (56.86%) cases. Further, the incidence of 51 cases was found from May to August. Escherichia coli (E. coli) were commonest, seen in 9 (25%) cases followed by Acinetobacter spp., Citrobacter spp. and Klebsiella spp. with 6 (16.67%) cases each. Enterobacter spp., Neisseria spp. and Pseudomonas aeruginosa were isolated in 3 (8.33%) cases each. E. coli, Acinetobacter spp, Citrobacter spp and Klebsiella spp isolates were 100% susceptible to meropenem, piperacillin-tazobactam and cefoperazone-sulbactam and 100% resistant to cotrimoxazole and tetracycline. All strains of Neisseria spp, Enterobacter spp and Pseudomonas spp. were 100% susceptible to meropenem followed by gatifloxacin. These were 100% resistant to tetracycline and cotrimoxazole. Neisseria spp. were also 100% susceptible to pristinamycin. In septic meningitis Gram negative organisms are less common (35.29%). Of the isolates, more common Gram negative isolates included E. coli, Acinetobacter Spp., Citrobacter Spp., and Klebsiella spp. and these isolates were 100% susceptible to meropenem, piperacillin-tazobacatam and cefoperazone-sulbactam. Hence, empirical therapy should be formulated according to antimicrobial susceptibility patterns

Cryptanalysis of an MPEG-Video Encryption Scheme Based on Secret Huffman Tables

This paper studies the security of a recently-proposed MPEG-video encryption scheme based on secret Huffman tables. Our cryptanalysis shows that: 1) the key space of the encryption scheme is not sufficiently large against divide-and-conquer (DAC) attack and known-plaintext attack; 2) it is possible to decrypt a cipher-video with a partially-known key, thus dramatically reducing the complexity of the DAC brute-force attack in some cases; 3) its security against the chosen-plaintext attack is very weak. Some experimental results are included to support the cryptanalytic results with a brief discuss on how to improve this MPEG-video encryption scheme.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Implications of farmers' seed exchanges for on-farm conservation of quinoa, as revealed by its genetic diversity in Chile

Quinoa cultivation in Chile presents an ancient and active complex of geographic, climatic, social and cultural interactions that has determined its current biodiversity in the three main growing zones (north, central and south). Importantly, these interactions involve the participation of farmers, whose activities are at the base of seed exchange networks due to their knowledge and in situ conservation of genetic diversity. The present study reports how a better understanding of farmers' seed exchanges and local production practices could impact the genetic structure and diversity of quinoa at national scale in Chile. Using field interviews and characterization of 20 microsatellite genetic markers in a multi-origin set of 34 quinoa accessions representative of Chile and the South American region, the phenetic analysis of germplasm was consistent with the current classification of quinoa ecotypes present in Chile and Andean zone. This allowed the identification of five populations, which were represented by quinoa of Salares (northern Chile), Coastal/Lowlands (central and southern Chile), Highlands (Peru, Bolivia and Argentina) and Inter-Andean Valleys (Ecuador and Colombia). The highly informative quality of the markers used revealed a wide genetic diversity among main growing areas in Chile, which correlated well with natural geographical-edaphic-climatic and social-linguistic context to the expansion of quinoa biodiversity. Additionally, in addition to ancient seed exchanges, this process is still governed by the diverse agricultural practices of Andean farmers. Genetic erosion is considered an imminent risk due to small-scale farming, where the influence of increased migration of people to urban systems and export-driven changes to the agro-ecosystems may further reduce the diversity of quinoa plants in cultivation. (Résumé d'auteur