A review of routing protocols in wireless body area networks

Recent technological advancements in wireless communication, integrated circuits and Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMs) has enabled miniaturized, low-power, intelligent, invasive/ non-invasive micro and nano-technology sensor nodes placed in or on the human body for use in monitoring body function and its immediate environment referred to as Body Area Networks (BANs). BANs face many stringent requirements in terms of delay, power, temperature and network lifetime which need to be taken into serious consideration in the design of different protocols. Since routing protocols play an important role in the overall system performance in terms of delay, power consumption, temperature and so on, a thorough study on existing routing protocols in BANs is necessary. Also, the specific challenges of BANs necessitates the design of new routing protocols specifically designed for BANs. This paper provides a survey of existing routing protocols mainly proposed for BANs. These protocols are further classified into five main categories namely, temperature based, cross-layer, cluster based, cost-effective and QoS-based routing, where each protocol is described under its specified category. Also, comparison among routing protocols in each category is given. © 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER

HIV and respiratory illness in the antiretroviral therapy era

Respiratory illness is a common manifestation of HIV infection. The availability of effective antiretroviral therapy (ART) has changed the pattern of respiratory ill-health experienced by people living with HIV (PLWH). Among populations with good access to ART, opportunistic respiratory infections such as Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia (PCP) are becoming less frequent. However, there is evidence to suggest that these populations may be at greater risk of serious non-AIDS illness including chronic respiratory disease. Although there is remaining uncertainty about the extent to which HIV represents an independent risk-factor for respiratory illness in individuals with a suppressed HIV viral load and immune reconstitution, in many settings PLWH have greater exposure to risk factors for respiratory illness (in particular tobacco smoking), which contribute to this burden of disease. As HIV-positive populations age, management of these conditions will therefore become increasingly important. Healthcare services need to manage this growing burden of chronic respiratory illness and provide access to preventative measures including smoking cessation and immunisation against vaccine-preventable respiratory infections in a way that is appropriate to the populations served

Local syzygies of multiplier ideals

In recent years, multiplier ideals have found many applications in local and global algebraic geometry. Because of their importance, there has been some interest in the question of which ideals on a smooth complex variety can be realized as multiplier ideals. Other than integral closure no local obstructions have been known up to now, and in dimension two it was established by Favre-Jonsson and Lipman-Watanabe that any integrally closed ideal is locally a multiplier ideal. We prove the somewhat unexpected result that multiplier ideals in fact satisfy some rather strong algebraic properties involving higher syzygies. It follows that in dimensions three and higher, multiplier ideals are very special among all integrally closed ideals.Comment: 8 page

The Invisible Thin Red Line

The aim of this paper is to argue that the adoption of an unrestricted principle of bivalence is compatible with a metaphysics that (i) denies that the future is real, (ii) adopts nomological indeterminism, and (iii) exploits a branching structure to provide a semantics for future contingent claims. To this end, we elaborate what we call Flow Fragmentalism, a view inspired by Kit Fine (2005)’s non-standard tense realism, according to which reality is divided up into maximally coherent collections of tensed facts. In this way, we show how to reconcile a genuinely A-theoretic branching-time model with the idea that there is a branch corresponding to the thin red line, that is, the branch that will turn out to be the actual future history of the world

Extention of Finite Solvable Torsors over a Curve

Let $R$ be a discrete valuation ring with fraction field $K$ and with algebraically closed residue field of positive characteristic $p$. Let $X$ be a smooth fibered surface over $R$ with geometrically connected fibers endowed with a section $x\in X(R)$. Let $G$ be a finite solvable $K$-group scheme and assume that either $|G|=p^n$ or $G$ has a normal series of length 2. We prove that every quotient pointed $G$-torsor over the generic fiber $X_{\eta}$ of $X$ can be extended to a torsor over $X$ after eventually extending scalars and after eventually blowing up $X$ at a closed subscheme of its special fiber $X_s$.Comment: 16 page

Introduction to derived categories of coherent sheaves

In these notes, an introduction to derived categories and derived functors is given. The main focus is the bounded derived category of coherent sheaves on a smooth projective variety.Comment: 24 pages, minor changes, same content as published versio

The Blood Neutrophil Count After 1 Month of Treatment Predicts the Radiologic Severity of Lung Disease at Treatment End

BACKGROUND: Post-tuberculous lung disease confers significant morbidity. However, the determinants of persistent lung damage in tuberculosis are not well established. We investigated associations between tuberculosis-associated radiological changes and socio-demographic factors, surrogates of bacillary burden and blood inflammatory markers at initiation of therapy and after 1 month. RESEARCH QUESTION: What are the predictors of radiological severity at the end of tuberculosis treatment for tuberculosis? STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: We collected data from patients treated for drug sensitive pulmonary tuberculosis at our centre over a 5.5-year period. We recorded age, sex, ethnicity, smoking status, symptom duration, sputum smear grade, time to culture positivity and blood results (C-reactive protein and neutrophil count) at baseline and after 1 month of treatment. Chest x-rays performed at baseline, 2 months and end of treatment were assessed independently by two radiologists and scored using a validated system. Relationships between predictor variables and radiological outcomes were assessed using linear or binary logistic regression. RESULTS: We assessed 154 individuals, mean age 37 years, 63% male. In multivariate analysis, baseline radiological severity correlated with sputum smear grade (p=0.003) and neutrophil count (p<0.001). At end of treatment, only the 1-month neutrophil count was significantly associated with overall radiological severity in multivariate analysis (r=0.34, p=0.003), and remained significant after controlling for baseline radiological scores. The 1-month neutrophil count was also the only independent correlate of volume loss and pleural thickening at end of treatment and was significantly higher in patients with persistent cavitation or effusion versus those without. INTERPRETATION: Persistent neutrophilic inflammation after 1 month of tuberculosis therapy is associated with poor radiological outcome, suggesting a target for interventions to minimise post-tuberculous lung disease