Advances on Network Protocols and Algorithms for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) is an emerging area of wireless ad hoc networks that facilitates ubiquitous connectivity between smart vehicles through Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) or Vehicle-to-Roadside (V2R) and Roadside-to- Vehicle (R2V) communications. This emerging field of technology aims to improve safety of passengers and traffic flow, reduces pollution to the environment and enables in-vehicle entertainment applications. The safety-related applications could reduce accidents by providing drivers with traffic information such as collision avoidances, traffic flow alarms and road surface conditions. Moreover, the passengers could exploit an available infrastructure in order to connect to the internet for infomobility and entertainment applications.Lloret, J.; Ghafoor, KZ.; Rawat, DB.; Xia, F. (2013). Advances on Network Protocols and Algorithms for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks. Mobile Networks and Applications. 18(6):749-754. doi:10.1007/s11036-013-0490-7S749754186Lloret J, Canovas A, Catalá A, Garcia M (2013) Group-based protocol and mobility model for VANETs to offer internet access. J Netw Comput Appl 36(3):1027–1038. doi: 10.1016/j.jnca.2012.02.009Khokhar RH, Zia T, Ghafoor KZ, Lloret J, Shiraz M (2013) Realistic and efficient radio propagation model for V2X communications. KSII Trans Internet Inform Syst 7(8):1933–1953. doi: 10.3837/tiis.2013.08.011Ghafoor KZ (2013) Routing protocols in vehicular ad hoc networks: survey and research challenges, Netw Protocol Algorithm 5(4). doi: 10.5296/npa.v5i4.4134Ghafoor KZ, Bakar KA, Lloret J, Ke C-H, Lee KC (2013) Intelligent beaconless geographical routing for urban vehicular environments. Wirel Netw 19(3):345–362. doi: 10.1007/s11276-012-0470-zGhafoor KZ, Bakar KA, Lee K, AL-Hashimi H (2010) A novel delay- and reliability- aware inter-vehicle routing protocol. Netw Protocol Algorithms 2(2):66–88. doi: 10.5296/npa.v2i2.427Dias JAFF, Rodrigues JJPC, Isento JN, Pereira PRBA, Lloret J (2011) Performance assessment of fragmentation mechanisms for vehicular delay-tolerant networks. EURASIP J Wirel Commun Netw 2011(195):1–14. doi: 10.1186/1687-1499-2011-195Zhang D, Yang Z, Raychoudhury V, Chen Z, Lloret J (2013) An energy-efficient routing protocol using movement trend in vehicular Ad-hoc networks. Comput J 58(8):938–946. doi: 10.1093/comjnl/bxt028Ghafoor KZ, Lloret J, Bakar KA, Sadiq AS, Mussa SAB (2013) Beaconing approaches in vehicular Ad Hoc networks: a survey. Wirel Pers Commun. doi: 10.1007/s11277-013-1222-9Sadiq AS, Bakar KA, Ghafoor KZ, Lloret J (2013) An intelligent vertical handover scheme for audio and video streaming in heterogeneous vehicular networks. Mobile Netw Appl. doi: 10.1007/s11036-013-0465-8Khamayseh YM (2013) Network size estimation in VANETs. Netw Protocol Algorithm 5(3):136–152. doi: 10.5296/npa.v5i6.3838Rawat DB, Popescu DC, Yan G, Olariu S (2011) Enhancing VANET performance by joint adaptation of transmission power and contention window size. IEEE Trans Parallel Distrib Syst 22(9):1528–1535Yan G, Rawat DB, Bista BB. Provisioning vehicular ad hoc networks with quality of services. Int J Space-Based Situated Comput 2(2):104–111Rawat DB, Bista BB, Yan G, Weigle MC (2011) Securing vehicular ad-hoc networks against malicious drivers: a probabilistic approach, International Conference on Complex, Intelligent, and Software Intensive Systems Pp. 146–151. June 30, 2011Sun W, Xia F, Ma J, Fu T, Sun Y. An optimal ODAM-based broadcast algorithm for vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks. KSII Trans Internet Inform Syst 6(12): 3257–3274Vinel AV, Dudin AN, Andreev SD, Xia F (2010) Performance modeling methodology of emergency dissemination algorithms for vehicular ad-hoc networks, 6th Communication Systems, Networks & Digital Signal Processing (CSNDSP 2010), Pp. 397–400AL-Hashimi HN, Bakar KA, Ghafoor KZ (2010) Inter-domain proxy mobile IPv6 based vehicular network. Netw Protocol Algorithm 2(4):1–15. doi: 10.5296/npa.v2i4.488Ghafoor KZ, Bakar KA, Mohammed MA, Lloret J (2013) Vehicular cloud computing: trends and challenges, in the book “mobile computing over cloud: technologies, services, and applications”. IGI GlobalYan G, Rawat DB, Bista BB (2012) Towards secure vehicular clouds, Sixth International Conference on Complex, Intelligent and Software Intensive Systems (CISIS 2012), Pp. 370–375Fernández H, Rubio L, Reig J, Rodrigo-Peñarrocha VM, Valero A (2013) Path loss modeling for vehicular system performance and communication protocols evaluation. Mobile Netw Appl. doi: 10.1007/s11036-013-0463-xAllouche Y, Segal M (2013) A cluster-based beaconing approach in VANETs: near optimal topology via proximity information. Mobile Netw Appl. doi: 10.1007/s11036-013-0468-5Merah AF, Samarah S, Boukerche A, Mammeri A (2013) A sequential patterns data mining approach towards vehicular route prediction in VANETs. Mobile Netw Appl. doi: 10.1007/s11036-013-0459-6Zhang D, Huang H, Zhou J, Xia F, Chen Z (2013) Detecting hot road mobility of vehicular Ad Hoc Networks. Mobile Netw Appl. doi: 10.1007/s11036-013-0467-6El Ajaltouni H, Boukerche A, Mammeri A (2013) A multichannel QoS MAC with dynamic transmit opportunity for. Mobile Netw Appl. doi: 10.1007/s11036-013-0475-6Reñé S, Esparza O, Alins J, Mata-Díaz J, Muñoz JL (2013) VSPLIT: a cross-layer architecture for V2I TCP services over. Mobile Netw Appl. doi: 10.1007/s11036-013-0473-8Blanco B, Liberal F (2013) Amaia Aguirregoitia, application of cognitive techniques to adaptive routing for VANETs in city environments. Mobile Netw Appl. doi: 10.1007/s11036-013-0466-7Kim J, Krunz M (2013) Spectrum-aware beaconless geographical routing protocol for cognitive radio enabled vehicular networks. Mobile Netw Appl. doi: 10.1007/s11036-013-0476-5Dias JAFF, Rodrigues JJPC, Isento JNG, Niu J (2013) The impact of cooperative nodes on the performance of vehicular delay-tolerant networks. Mobile Netw Appl. doi: 10.1007/s11036-013-0464-9Sadiq AS, Bakar KA, Ghafoor KZ, Lloret J, Khokhar R (2013) An intelligent vertical handover scheme for audio and video streaming in heterogeneous vehicular networks. Mobile Netw Appl. doi: 10.1007/s11036-013-0465-8Machado S, Ozón J, González AJ, Ghafoor KZ (2013) Structured peer-to-peer real time video transmission over vehicular Ad Hoc networks. Mobile Netw Appl. doi: 10.1007/s11036-013-0461-zLin C, Wu G, Xia F, Yao L (2013) Enhance the attacking efficiency of the node compromise attack in vehicular Ad-hoc network using connected dominating set. Mobile Netw Appl. doi: 10.1007/s11036-013-0469-

A Mathematical Model and a Firefly Algorithm for an Extended Flexible Job Shop Problem with Availability Constraints

Manufacturing scheduling strategies have historically ignored the availability of the machines. The more realistic the schedule, more accurate the calculations and predictions. Availability of machines will play a crucial role in the Industry 4.0 smart factories. In this paper, a mixed integer linear programming model (MILP) and a discrete firefly algorithm (DFA) are proposed for an extended multi-objective FJSP with availability constraints (FJSP-FCR). Several standard instances of FJSP have been used to evaluate the performance of the model and the algorithm. New FJSP-FCR instances are provided. Comparisons among the proposed methods and other state-of-the-art reported algorithms are also presented. Alongside the proposed MILP model, a Genetic Algorithm is implemented for the experiments with the DFA. Extensive investigations are conducted to test the performance of the proposed model and the DFA. The comparisons between DFA and other recently published algorithms shows that it is a feasible approach for the stated problem

Targets of drugs are generally, and targets of drugs having side effects are specifically good spreaders of human interactome perturbations

Network-based methods are playing an increasingly important role in drug design. Our main question in this paper was whether the efficiency of drug target proteins to spread perturbations in the human interactome is larger if the binding drugs have side effects, as compared to those which have no reported side effects. Our results showed that in general, drug targets were better spreaders of perturbations than non-target proteins, and in particular, targets of drugs with side effects were also better spreaders of perturbations than targets of drugs having no reported side effects in human protein-protein interaction networks. Colorectal cancer-related proteins were good spreaders and had a high centrality, while type 2 diabetes-related proteins showed an average spreading efficiency and had an average centrality in the human interactome. Moreover, the interactome-distance between drug targets and disease-related proteins was higher in diabetes than in colorectal cancer. Our results may help a better understanding of the network position and dynamics of drug targets and disease-related proteins, and may contribute to develop additional, network-based tests to increase the potential safety of drug candidates.Comment: 49 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables, 10 supplementary figures, 13 supplementary table

Modulation of Hydrogen Peroxide Production in Cellular Systems by Low Level Magnetic Fields

Increased generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and an altered redox status have long been observed in cancer cells, suggesting that ROS might be involved in the development of these cells. However, recent studies suggest that inducing an excess of ROS in cancer cells can be exploited for therapeutic benefits. Cancer cells in advanced stage tumors frequently exhibit multiple genetic alterations and high oxidative stress, suggesting that it might be possible to preferentially modulate the development of these cells by controlling their ROS production. Low levels of ROS are also important for the development and survival of normal cells. In this manuscript, we present data on the influence of the suppression of the Earth's magnetic field (low level magnetic fields or LLF) which magnitudes range from 0.2 µT to 2 µT on the modulation of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in human fibrosarcoma cancer cell line HT1080, pancreatic AsPC-1 cancer cell line, and bovine pulmonary artery endothelial cells (PAEC) exposed to geomagnetic field (control; 45 µT–60 µT). Reduction of the Earth's magnetic field suppressed H2O2 production in cancer cells and PAEC. The addition of catalase and superoxide dismutase (SOD) mimetic MnTBAP inhibited the magnetic field effect. Modulating ROS production by magnetic fields may open new venues of biomedical research and therapeutic strategies

Mycobacterial dihydrofolate reductase inhibitors identified using chemogenomic methods and in vitro validation.

The lack of success in target-based screening approaches to the discovery of antibacterial agents has led to reemergence of phenotypic screening as a successful approach of identifying bioactive, antibacterial compounds. A challenge though with this route is then to identify the molecular target(s) and mechanism of action of the hits. This target identification, or deorphanization step, is often essential in further optimization and validation studies. Direct experimental identification of the molecular target of a screening hit is often complex, precisely because the properties and specificity of the hit are not yet optimized against that target, and so many false positives are often obtained. An alternative is to use computational, predictive, approaches to hypothesize a mechanism of action, which can then be validated in a more directed and efficient manner. Specifically here we present experimental validation of an in silico prediction from a large-scale screen performed against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the causative agent of tuberculosis. The two potent anti-tubercular compounds studied in this case, belonging to the tetrahydro-1,3,5-triazin-2-amine (THT) family, were predicted and confirmed to be an inhibitor of dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR), a known essential Mtb gene, and already clinically validated as a drug target. Given the large number of similar screening data sets shared amongst the community, this in vitro validation of these target predictions gives weight to computational approaches to establish the mechanism of action (MoA) of novel screening hit

Home country supportiveness/unfavorableness and outward foreign direct investment from China

What drives the outward foreign direct investments (OFDIs) by emerging market firms (EMFs)? Drawing on a strategy tripod framework, this article proposes a theoretical model to predict OFDI by EMFs from China. Specifically, we use institution- and industry-based views to examine two facets of home country environment, namely the supportiveness from home government and unfavorableness from home industry, as important determinants of OFDI, and compare the relative strength of these effects. Further, we use resource-based view to argue that the effect of the home country environment is contingent on the international experience portfolios of EMFs

Global patient outcomes after elective surgery: prospective cohort study in 27 low-, middle- and high-income countries.

BACKGROUND: As global initiatives increase patient access to surgical treatments, there remains a need to understand the adverse effects of surgery and define appropriate levels of perioperative care. METHODS: We designed a prospective international 7-day cohort study of outcomes following elective adult inpatient surgery in 27 countries. The primary outcome was in-hospital complications. Secondary outcomes were death following a complication (failure to rescue) and death in hospital. Process measures were admission to critical care immediately after surgery or to treat a complication and duration of hospital stay. A single definition of critical care was used for all countries. RESULTS: A total of 474 hospitals in 19 high-, 7 middle- and 1 low-income country were included in the primary analysis. Data included 44 814 patients with a median hospital stay of 4 (range 2-7) days. A total of 7508 patients (16.8%) developed one or more postoperative complication and 207 died (0.5%). The overall mortality among patients who developed complications was 2.8%. Mortality following complications ranged from 2.4% for pulmonary embolism to 43.9% for cardiac arrest. A total of 4360 (9.7%) patients were admitted to a critical care unit as routine immediately after surgery, of whom 2198 (50.4%) developed a complication, with 105 (2.4%) deaths. A total of 1233 patients (16.4%) were admitted to a critical care unit to treat complications, with 119 (9.7%) deaths. Despite lower baseline risk, outcomes were similar in low- and middle-income compared with high-income countries. CONCLUSIONS: Poor patient outcomes are common after inpatient surgery. Global initiatives to increase access to surgical treatments should also address the need for safe perioperative care. STUDY REGISTRATION: ISRCTN5181700

Pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes

Cancer is driven by genetic change, and the advent of massively parallel sequencing has enabled systematic documentation of this variation at the whole-genome scale(1-3). Here we report the integrative analysis of 2,658 whole-cancer genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types from the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We describe the generation of the PCAWG resource, facilitated by international data sharing using compute clouds. On average, cancer genomes contained 4-5 driver mutations when combining coding and non-coding genomic elements; however, in around 5% of cases no drivers were identified, suggesting that cancer driver discovery is not yet complete. Chromothripsis, in which many clustered structural variants arise in a single catastrophic event, is frequently an early event in tumour evolution; in acral melanoma, for example, these events precede most somatic point mutations and affect several cancer-associated genes simultaneously. Cancers with abnormal telomere maintenance often originate from tissues with low replicative activity and show several mechanisms of preventing telomere attrition to critical levels. Common and rare germline variants affect patterns of somatic mutation, including point mutations, structural variants and somatic retrotransposition. A collection of papers from the PCAWG Consortium describes non-coding mutations that drive cancer beyond those in the TERT promoter(4); identifies new signatures of mutational processes that cause base substitutions, small insertions and deletions and structural variation(5,6); analyses timings and patterns of tumour evolution(7); describes the diverse transcriptional consequences of somatic mutation on splicing, expression levels, fusion genes and promoter activity(8,9); and evaluates a range of more-specialized features of cancer genomes(8,10-18).Peer reviewe