The need for Helicobacter pylori eradiction therapy in patients with peptic ulcer bleeding

Peptic ulcer bleeding is an important complication of peptic ulceration. The condition carries significant morbidity and mortality despite advances in both endoscopic intervention techniques and pharmacological treatment. About one third of patients have a recurrence of bleeding within a few years of discharge. Before Helicobacter pylori was discovered, most of these patients were given maintenance therapy with antisecretory drugs or surgery to prevent a recurrence of the bleeding. Since the eradication of Helicobacter pylori reduces the recurrence of uncomplicated peptic ulcers, its eradication should also reduce peptic ulcer complications. The aim of this review is to discuss the value of eradicating Helicobacter pylori as part of the long-term management of bleeding peptic ulcers.published_or_final_versio

Does it hurt when others prosper?: Exploring the impact of heterogeneous reordering robustness of TCP

The congestion control mechanisms in the standardized Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) may misinterpret packet reordering as congestive loss, leading to spurious congestion response and under-utilization of network capacity. Therefore, many TCP enhancements have been proposed to better differentiate between packet reordering and congestive loss, in order to enhance the reordering robustness (RR) of TCP. Since such enhancements are incrementally deployed, it is important to study the interactions of TCP flows with heterogeneous RR. This paper presents the first systematic study of such interactions by exploring how changing RR of TCP flows influences the bandwidth sharing among these flows. We define the quantified RR (QRR) of a TCP flow as the probability that packet reordering causes congestion response. We analyze the variation of bandwidth sharing as QRR changes. This leads to the discovery of several interesting properties. Most notably, we discover the counter-intuitive result that changing one flow's QRR does not affect its competing flows in certain network topologies. We further characterize the deviation, from the ideal case of bandwidth sharing, as RR changes. We find that enhancing RR of a flow may increase, rather than decrease, the deviation in some typical network scenarios. © 2013 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Vehicle-type identification through automated virtual loop assignment and block-based direction biased motion estimation

This paper presents the concept of automated virtual loop assignment and loop-based motion estimation in vehicle-type identification. A major departure of our method from previous approaches is that the loops are automatically assigned to each lane; the size of virtual loops is much smaller for estimation accuracy; and the number of virtual loops per lane is large. Comparing this with traditional ILD, there are a number of advantages. First, the size and number of virtual loops may be varied to fine-tune detection accuracy and fully utilize computing resources. Second, there is no failure rate associated with the virtual loops and installation and maintenance cost can be kept to a minimum. Third, virtual loops may be re-allocated anywhere on the frame, giving flexibility in detecting different parameters.published_or_final_versio

Enhancing wireless TCP a serialized-timer approach

IEEE INFOCOM Proceedings, 2010, p. 1-5In wireless networks, TCP performs unsatisfactorily since packet reordering and random losses may be falsely interpreted as congestive losses. This causes TCP to trigger fast retransmission and fast recovery spuriously, leading to under-utilization of available network resources. In this paper, we propose a novel TCP variant, known as TCP for noncongestive loss (TCP-NCL), to adapt TCP to wireless networks by using more reliable signals of packet loss and network overload for activating packet retransmission and congestion response, separately. TCP-NCL can thus serve as a unified solution for effective congestion control, sequencing control, and loss recovery. Different from the existing unified solutions, the modifications involved in the proposed variant are limited to sender-side TCP only, thereby facilitating possible future wide deployment. The two signals employed are the expirations of two serialized timers. A smart TCP sender model has been developed for optimizing the timer expiration periods. Our simulation studies reveal that TCP-NCL is robust against packet reordering as well as random packet loss while maintaining responsiveness against situations with purely congestive loss. ©2010 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Demo abstract: A testbed for TCP in heterogeneous wired/wireless networks

Title in PDF: 'Demo Abstract: A Testbed for TCP in Heterogeneous Wired/Wireless Networks' (Accepted to IEEE INFOCOM 2010 Demo Session). Author's updates on 15 February 2010: "We will demonstrate our testbed in IEEE INFOCOM'10 demo session".Demo abstractTransmission Control Protocol (TCP) design in heterogeneous wired/wireless networks is challenging due to packet reordering and error-prone channels. We have implemented a testbed for evaluating the performance of TCP variants under packet reordering, congestive loss, and non-congestive loss. Our demonstration shows the flexibility of our testbed to accommodate channels of different characteristics. This facilitates the experimental study of TCP over heterogeneous networks. It also demonstrates the feature of TCP-NCL as a unified solution for effective congestion control, sequencing control, and loss recovery in heterogeneous networks.postprintThe 29th IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (IEEE INFOCOM 2010), San Diego, CA., 14-19 March 2010

Design and analysis of TCP AIMD in wireless networks

The class of additive-increase/multiplicative-decrease (AIMD) algorithms constitutes a key mechanism for congestion control in modern communication networks, like the current Internet. The algorithmic behaviour may, however, be distorted when wireless links are present. Specifically, spurious window reductions may be triggered due to packet reordering and non-congestive loss. In this paper, we develop a framework for AIMD in TCP to analyze the aforementioned problem. The framework enables a systematic analysis of the existing AIMD-based TCP variants and assists in the design of new TCP variants. It classifies the existing AIMD-based TCP variants into two main streams, known as compensators and differentiators, and develops a generic expression that covers the rate adaptation processes of both approaches. It further identifies a new approach in enhancing the performance of TCP, known as the compensation scheme. A tax-rebate approach is proposed as an approximation of the compensation scheme, and used to enhance the AIMD-based TCP variants to offer unified solutions for effective congestion control, sequencing control, and error control. In traditional wired networks, the new family of TCP variants with the proposed enhancements automatically preserves the same inter-flow fairness and TCP friendliness. We have conducted a series of simulations to examine their performance under various network scenarios. In most scenarios, significant performance gains are attained. © 2013 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Enhancing AQM to combat wireless losses

In order to maintain a small, stable backlog at the router buffer, active queue management (AQM) algorithms drop packets probabilistically at the onset of congestion, leading to backoffs by Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) flows. However, wireless losses may be misinterpreted as congestive losses and induce spurious backoffs. In this paper, we raise the basic question: Can AQM maintain a stable, small backlog under wireless losses? We find that the representative AQM, random early detection (RED), fails to maintain a stable backlog under time-varying wireless losses. We find that the key to resolving the problem is to robustly track the backlog to a preset reference level, and apply the control-theoretic vehicle, internal model principle, to realize such tracking. We further devise the integral controller (IC) as an embodiment of the principle. Our simulation results show that IC is robust against time-varying wireless losses under various network scenarios. © 2012 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Myocardial rupture associated with bolus injection of contrast medium during computed tomographic study in a patient with acute myocardial infarction: A rare but lethal complication

Well-documented potential cardiovascular complications associated with the use of contrast media include bradycardia, hypotension, arrhythmia, and conduction disturbances. Rupture of the myocardium after acute myocardial infarction is a known cause of death, but has yet to be recognised as a potential complication of the use of a bolus injection of contrast medium. On the contrary, contrast-enhanced computed tomographic studies have been performed widely for the diagnosis and evaluation of myocardial infarction. We report a case of complicated myocardial rupture after a single bolus injection of contrast medium during a computed tomographic study in an elderly woman with acute myocardial infarction, which led to cardiac tamponade and rapid death. Although rare, this should alert us to the need for cautious use of contrast medium in patients with acute myocardial infarction.published_or_final_versio

A simplified but equally accurate C-13 urea breath test for Helicobacter pylori

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Comparison of the acute ocular manifestations of Stevens-Johnson syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis in Chinese eyes: a 15-year retrospective study

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