America is in the heart, a personal history,

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Remote operation of pumping station with metrics for trash and flood monitoring

Flooding has always been a major problem in our country and many factors can affect this situation. One of these factors is that the water from esteros are so high and stagnant that water from our drainage systems cannot flow properly out of the city. This study aims to emulate an actual pumping station which is modeled based on the Libertad Pumping Station that covers the Pasay and Makati areas. However, in this study, the pumping station prototype can be manually, remotely, and automatically operated as opposed to the current setup of manual operation. Heavy rains and calamities prohibit MMDA personnel to report for duty because of safety and security measures of their family and belongings are also affected. Thus, by remotely operating the pumping station, through an Android application, the pump\u27s full capacity is still maintained even when heavy rains are experienced and no personnel has reported for duty. In addition, the trash rakes can also be operated manually and remotely. The speed of the trash rakes can be varied depending on the amount of garbage present in the pumping station. The amount of garbage is also video-streamed to the android phone. With the pump rate at its full working capacity, flood and water levels of certain areas can be forecasted through the rainfall amount, land area and the number of pumps operating. The website, babahaba.com, shows the flood forecast for certain places in Makati and Pasay. It can also show the forecast the time which the flood will subside

All-Pairs: An Abstraction for Data-Intensive Cloud Computing

Although modern parallel and distributed computing systems provide easy access to large amounts of computing power, it is not always easy for non-expert users to harness these large systems effectively. A large workload composed in what seems to be the obvious way by a naive user may accidentally abuse shared resources and achieve very poor performance. To address this problem, we propose that production systems should provide end users with high-level abstractions that allow for the easy expression and efficient execution of data intensive workloads. We present one example of an abstraction – All-Pairs – that fits the needs of several data-intensive scientific applications. We demonstrate that an optimized All-Pairs abstraction is both easier to use than the underlying system, and achieves performance orders of magnitude better than the obvious but naive approach, and twice as fast as a hand-optimized conventional approach.

All-Pairs: An Abstraction for Data-Intensive Computing in Shared Distributed Systems

Although modern parallel and distributed computing systems provide easy access to large amounts of computing power, it is not always easy for non-expert users to harness these large systems effectively. A large workload composed in what seems to be the obvious way by a naive user may accidentally abuse shared resources and achieve very poor performance. To address this problem, we propose that production systems should provide end users with highlevel abstractions that allow for the easy expression and efficient execution of data intensive workloads. We present one example of an abstraction – All-Pairs – that fits the needs of several data-intensive scientific applications. We demonstrate that an optimized All-Pairs abstraction is both easier to use than the underlying system, and achieves performance orders of magnitude better than the obvious but naive approach, and twice as fast as a hand-optimized conventional approach.

RAGE expression and NF-kappaB activation attenuated by extracellular domain of RAGE in human salivary gland cell line

The receptor for advanced-glycation-end-products (RAGE) has been implicated as a pro-inflammatory factor in chronic inflammatory conditions such as diabetes mellitus and rheumatoid arthritis. The aim of this study was to investigate the inhibitory effect of the soluble-RAGE (sRAGE), the extracellular domain of RAGE, on RAGE expression and NF-kappaB translocation in human-salivary gland-cell-lines (HSG). Cells were stimulated with agonist S100A4, fusion protein of RAGE encompassing the extracellular domain of RAGE (ex-RAGE), ex-RAGE followed by S100A4, or S100A4 followed by ex-RAGE. Our study indicates that RAGE expression was highest at 150 microg/microl of S100A4 and efficiently down-regulated by 1.8-fold (P \u3c 0.05) when ex-RAGE was incubated prior to agonist S100A4. RAGE protein was also consistently down-regulated by 20-40% with pre-incubation of ex-RAGE. More importantly, nuclear translocation of p65 and p52 of NF-kappaB by S100A4 was inhibited in the presence of ex-RAGE, confirming anti-inflammatory function of ex-RAGE. In conclusion, ex-RAGE down-regulates RAGE expression and inhibits p65 and p52 activation in HSG, providing evidence that ex-RAGE functions as a decoy to RAGE-ligand interaction and thus potentially dampening inflammatory conditions