Performance Bottlenecks in Digital Movie Systems

Digital movie systems offer great perspectives for multimedia applications. But the large amounts of data involved and the demand for isochronous transmission and playback are also great challenges for the designers of a new generation of file systems, database systems, operating systems, window systems, video encoder/decoder and networks. Today's research prototypes of digital movie systems suffer from severe performance bottlenecks, resulting in small movie windows, low frame rates or bad image quality (or all of these!). We consider the performance problem to be the most important problem with digital movie systems, preventing their widespread use today. In this paper we address performance issues of digital movie systems from a practical perspective. We report on performance experience gained with the XMovie system and new algorithms and protocols to overcome some of these bottlenecks

Cellular, Molecular, and Immunological Characteristics of Langhans Multinucleated Giant Cells Programmed by IL-15

Langhans multinucleated giant cells (LGCs) are a specific type of multinucleated giant cell (MGC) containing a characteristic horseshoe-shaped ring of nuclei that are present within granulomas of infectious etiology. Although cytokines that trigger macrophage activation such as IFN-γ induce LGC formation, it is not clear whether cytokines that trigger macrophage differentiation contribute to LGC formation. Here, we found that IL-15, a cytokine that induces M1 macrophage differentiation, programs human peripheral blood adherent cells to form LGCs. Analysis of the IL-15 treated adherent cell transcriptome identified gene networks for “T cells”, “DNA damage and replication” as well as “interferon (IFN)-inducible genes” that correlated with IL-15 treatment and LGC-type MGC formation. Gene networks enriched for myeloid cells were anti-correlated with IL-15 treatment and LGC formation. Functional studies revealed that T cells were required for IL-15 induced LGC formation, involving direct contact with myeloid cells via CD40L-CD40 interaction as well as IFN-γ release. These data indicate that IL-15 induces LGC formation via the direct interaction of activated T cells and myeloid cells