SECURE AND FULLY TRANSPARENT ROAMING FOR LONG RANGE

Roaming with Long Range wide-area network (LoRaWAN) requires connections to home Network Servers (hNS), serving Network Servers (sNS) and forwarding Network Servers (fNS) across LoRa domains. Today, this entails a tedious manual process for generating the keys, certificates and configuration files to connect these servers on a peer-to-peer basis. This means that manual configurations grow quadratically with the number of LoRa networks involved. In addition, today there is no way to enable roaming across LoRa networks dynamically (i.e., not if these pre-configurations among the visited and the home/serving LoRa networks aren\u27t in place). Accordingly, presented herein are techniques to scale LoRaWAN roaming linearly, while not only automating the entire roaming process, but also allowing the acceptance of dynamic roaming requests. Opposite to conventional arrangements, such as roaming hubs, where roaming partners need to adhere to the hub\u27s rules for packet routing, service levels and trust, the techniques presented herein act transparently to the servers, keeping routing and data exchanges under the control of each peer

COLLECTING POWER CONSUMPTION METRICS FROM OPERATIONALLY INACCESSIBLE NETWORKS

Operational traffic, such as management plane traffic carrying power consumption metrics from a device in the field, is often inaccessible to a device’s vendor. Techniques are presented herein that support a novel mechanism for encoding power consumption metrics in standard communication protocols such as, for example, domain name system (DNS) requests. Aspects of the presented techniques ensure the atomicity of self-contained messages, as well as the confidentiality and integrity of the metrics that are sent to the corresponding vendors. Further aspects of the presented techniques support selectable levels of anonymity during the exporting of the above-described metrics. For example, selectable Terms and Conditions may not only allow administrators to choose among different levels of anonymity, but also facilitate frictionless operations and automatic configuration during the activation of a license

In-air hearing of a diving duck: A comparison of psychoacoustic and auditory brainstem response thresholds

Auditory sensitivity was measured in a species of diving duck that is not often kept in captivity, the lesser scaup. Behavioral (psychoacoustics) and electrophysiological [the auditory brainstem response (ABR)] methods were used to measure in-air auditory sensitivity, and the resulting audiograms were compared. Both approaches yielded audiograms with similar U-shapes and regions of greatest sensitivity (2000-3000 Hz). However, ABR thresholds were higher than psychoacoustic thresholds at all frequencies. This difference was least at the highest frequency tested using both methods (5700 Hz) and greatest at 1000 Hz, where the ABR threshold was 26.8 dB higher than the behavioral measure of threshold. This difference is commonly reported in studies involving many different species. These results highlight the usefulness of each method, depending on the testing conditions and availability of the animals

Angiopoietins as Targets for Diabetic Retinopathy Treatment

Diabetic eye diseases, such as diabetic retinopathy (DR) and diabetic macular edema (DME) are among the leading causes of blindness in developed countries. Anti-VEGF therapies such as, ranibizumab, aflibercept and off-label bevacizumab have become first-line treatment for DME. While randomized controlled trials show significant improvement in vision, these anti-VEGF agents have limited durability leading to a significant treatment burden, as reflected in real-world studies, which generally demonstrate under-treatment and less favorable visual acuity outcomes than observed in prospective trials. Alternative pathways, such as the Tie-2 angiopoietin pathway may address unmet needs, with potential for greater efficacy or durability when compared to anti-VEGF monotherapy. While some Tie-2 angiopoietin therapeutic agents, such as nesvacumab, ARP-1536 or AKB-9778, did not meet primary endpoints in clinical trials, other agents have shown promise. One such agent is faricimab, a bispecific antibody inhibiting both VEGF-A and Ang-2. The phase 3 DME trials (YOSEMITE and RHINE) demonstrated favorable safety, visual, and durability outcomes; patients receiving faricimab injection every 4 months achieved similar visual gains as those receiving aflibercept injection every 2 months. Another agent, AXT107 is a peptide that inhibits VEGFR2 and modifies Ang-2 to behave more similarly to Ang-1, promoting vascular stability. This drug is currently undergoing phase 1/2a trials for safety and bioactivity to be completed in May 2022

ATM Gene Variants in Patients with Idiopathic Perifoveal Telangiectasia

PURPOSE. To investigate the prevalence of sequence variants in the ATM gene and to determine the frequency of major agerelated macular degeneration (AMD)-associated variants in CFH, CFB, and 10q26 loci in patients with idiopathic perifoveal telangiectasia (IPT). METHODS. Thirty patients with diagnoses of IPT underwent standard ophthalmologic evaluation that included visual acuity testing, fundus photography, and fluorescein angiography. DNA was screened for variations in the ATM gene by a combination of denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography and direct sequencing. Major AMD-associated alleles in CFH, CFB, and 10q loci were screened by PCR-restriction fragment-length polymorphism. RESULTS. Nineteen female and 11 male patients (average age, 59 years) with a median visual acuity of 20/50 were evaluated. Six patients were of Asian-Indian origin, one was Hispanic, and 23 were of European-American ancestry. Nine of 30 (30%) patients had diabetes mellitus, 18 of 30 (60%) patients had hypertension, and 12 of 30 (40%) patients had a history of smoking. Screening of the ATM gene revealed a null allele in 2 of 23 (8.7%) patients of European ancestry, previously disease-associated missense alleles in 4 of 23 (17.4%) patients, and common missense alleles in 7 of 23 (30.4%) patients. No variants were identified in the ATM gene in patients of Asian or Hispanic origin. Frequencies of major AMD-associated alleles in CFH, CFB, and 10q loci in the IPT cohort were similar to those in the ethnically matched general population. CONCLUSIONS. At least 26%, and maybe up to 57%, of IPT patients of European-American descent carried possibly diseaseassociated ATM alleles. Vascular risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, and smoking may be associated with the pathogenesis of the disease. (Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2008; 49:3806 -3811

Anaphylactic response to topical fluorescein 2% eye drops: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>The intravenous use of fluorescein 10% during retinal angiography can cause severe systemic reactions including, on rare occasions, anaphylaxis. Fluorescein 2% eye drops are used extensively for clinical examination and diagnosis, but to the best of our knowledge, they have only been reported as being responsible for a systemic anaphylactic response on two previous occasions.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>We report the case of a 51-year-old woman who developed an anaphylactic reaction when she was administered fluorescein sodium 2% eye drops after cataract surgery. This was the second time she had been exposed to fluorescein. She had brittle asthma and a history of anaphylaxis following exposure to a variety of drug and food allergens. She was successfully resuscitated and recovered completely over a period of two days.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Fluorescein 2% drops are universally used in general practice, ophthalmology, optometry, and casualty departments. Our case report reveals the potential for this benign eye drop to cause a life-threatening systemic reaction and emphasises the importance of considering this consequence when administering topical fluorescein 2% to a patient with a history of anaphylaxis to other allergens.</p

Reducing the effects of routing inaccuracy by means of prediction and an innovative linkstate cost

Abstract-The routing inaccuracy problem is one of the major issues impeding the evolution and deployment of ConstraintBased Routing (CBR) techniques. This paper proposes a promising CBR strategy that combines the strengths of prediction with an innovative link-state cost. The latter explicitly integrates a two-bit counter predictor, with a novel metric that stands for the degree of inaccuracy (seen by the source node) of the state information associated with the links along a path. In our routing model, Link-State Advertisements (LSAs) are only distributed upon topological changes in the network, i.e., the state and availability of network resources along a path are predicted from the source rather than updated through conventional LSAs. As a proof-of-concept, we apply our routing strategy in the context of circuit-switched networks. We show that our approach considerably reduces the impact of routing inaccuracy on the blocking probability, while eliminating the typical LSAs caused by the traffic dynamics in CBR protocols

Cost analysis of childhood glaucoma surgeries using the US Medicaire allowable costs

AIM: To analyze and calculate the relative cost of various childhood glaucoma surgical interventions per mm Hg intraocular pressure (IOP) reduction ($/mm Hg). METHODS: Representative index studies were reviewed to quantitate the reduction of mean IOP and glaucoma medications for each surgical intervention in childhood glaucoma. A US perspective was adopted, using Medicare allowable costs to calculate cost/mm Hg IOP reduction ($/mm Hg) at 1y postoperatively. RESULTS: At 1y postoperatively, the cost/mm Hg IOP reduction was $226/mm Hg for microcatheter-assisted circumferential trabeculotomy,$284/mm Hg for cyclophotocoagulation, $288/mm Hg for conventional ab-externo trabeculotomy,$338/mm Hg for Ahmed glaucoma valve, $350/mm Hg for Baerveldt glaucoma implant,$351/mm Hg for goniotomy, and $400/mm Hg for trabeculectomy. CONCLUSION: Microcatheter-assisted circumferential trabeculotomy is the most cost-efficient surgical method to lower IOP in childhood glaucoma, while trabeculectomy is the least cost-efficient surgical method

Encaminamiento interdominio con calidad de servicio basado en Overlay Entities distribuidas y QBGP

Este documento propone un nuevo enfoque al tema de encaminamiento inter-domino con Calidad de Servicio(QoS). Nuestro enfoque consiste en proporcionar una arquitectura overlay completamente distribuida así como una nueva capa de encaminamiento para el aprovisionamiento dinámico de QoS, pero haciendo uso de las extensiones de QoS y las capacidades de Ingeniería de Tráfico (TE) de la subyacente capa BGP para el aprovisionamiento estático de QoS. Nuestro objetivo radica principalmente en influenciar como se intercambia el tráfico entre Sistemas Autónomos(Ases) remotos y con múltiples conexiones a Internet, basados en parámetros específicos y preestablecidos de QoS. Proporcionamos un conjunto de resultados obtenidos mediante simulación los cuales avalan la factibilidad de nuestra propuesta.Postprint (published version