Social-aware Opportunistic Routing Protocol based on User's Interactions and Interests

Nowadays, routing proposals must deal with a panoply of heterogeneous devices, intermittent connectivity, and the users' constant need for communication, even in rather challenging networking scenarios. Thus, we propose a Social-aware Content-based Opportunistic Routing Protocol, SCORP, that considers the users' social interaction and their interests to improve data delivery in urban, dense scenarios. Through simulations, using synthetic mobility and human traces scenarios, we compare the performance of our solution against other two social-aware solutions, dLife and Bubble Rap, and the social-oblivious Spray and Wait, in order to show that the combination of social awareness and content knowledge can be beneficial when disseminating data in challenging networks

Mass, angular-momentum, and charge inequalities for axisymmetric initial data

We present the key elements of the proof of an upper bound for angular-momentum and charge in terms of the mass for electro-vacuum asymptotically flat axisymmetric initial data sets with simply connected orbit space

How the Polyakov loop and the regularization affect strangeness and restoration of symmetries at finite T

The effects of the Polyakov loop and of a regularization procedure that allows the presence of high momentum quark states at finite temperature is investigated within the Polyakov-loop extended Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model. The characteristic temperatures, as well as the behavior of observables that signal deconfinement and restoration of chiral and axial symmetries, are analyzed, paying special attention to the behavior of strangeness degrees of freedom. We observe that the cumulative effects of the Polyakov loop and of the regularization procedure contribute to a better description of the thermodynamics, as compared with lattice estimations. We find a faster partial restoration of chiral symmetry and the restoration of the axial symmetry appears as a natural consequence of the full recovering of the chiral symmetry that was dynamically broken. These results show the relevance of the effects of the interplay among the Polyakov loop dynamics, the high momentum quark sates and the restoration of the chiral and axial symmetries at finite temperature.Comment: Talk given at XIII International Conference on Hadron Spectroscopy (Hadron 2009), Tallahassee, Florida, USA, 29 Nov - 4 Dec, 200

The Portuguese Severe Asthma Registry: Development, Features, and Data Sharing Policies

The Portuguese Severe Asthma Registry (Registo de Asma Grave Portugal, RAG) was developed by an open collaborative network of asthma specialists. RAG collects data from adults and pediatric severe asthma patients that despite treatment optimization and adequate management of comorbidities require step 4/5 treatment according to GINA recommendations. In this paper, we describe the development and implementation of RAG, its features, and data sharing policies. The contents and structure of RAG were defined in a multistep consensus process. A pilot version was pretested and iteratively improved. The selection of data elements for RAG considered other severe asthma registries, aiming at characterizing the patient's clinical status whilst avoiding overloading the standard workflow of the clinical appointment. Features of RAG include automatic assessment of eligibility, easy data input, and exportable data in natural language that can be pasted directly in patients' electronic health record and security features to enable data sharing (among researchers and with other international databases) without compromising patients' confidentiality. RAG is a national web-based disease registry of severe asthma patients, available at asmagrave.pt. It allows prospective clinical data collection, promotes standardized care and collaborative clinical research, and may contribute to inform evidence-based healthcare policies for severe asthma.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Gauge fields in a string-cigar braneworld

In this work we investigate the properties of an Abelian gauge vector field in a thin and in a smoothed string-like braneworld, the so-called string-cigar model. This thick brane scenario satisfies the regularity conditions and it can be regarded as an interior and exterior string-like solution. The source undergoes a geometric Ricci flow which is connected to a variation of the bulk cosmological constant. The Ricci flow changes the width and amplitude of the massless mode at the brane core and recover the usual thin string-like behavior at large distances. By numerical means we obtain the Kaluza-Klein (KK) spectrum for both the thin brane and the string-cigar. It turns out that both models exhibit a mass gap between the massless and the massive modes and between the high and the low mass regimes. The KK modes are smooth near the brane and their amplitude are enhanced by the string-cigar core. The analogue Schr\"odinger potential is also tuned by the geometric flow.Comment: The discussion about the Kaluza-Klein spectrum of the gauge field was improved. Numerical analysis was adapted to the conventional notation on Kaluza-Klein number. Some graphics were modified for considering other notation. Results unchanged. References added. Corrected typos. 17 pages. 6 figures. To match version to appears in Physics Letters