An interesting case of metastatic brain abscess

Klebsiella pneumoniae is a Gram-negative, non-motile, lactose fermenting, aerobic rod-shaped bacterium with three different subspecies, K. pneumoniae, Klebsiella ozaenae, and Klebsiella rhinoscleromatis. Here, we report the case of a 32-year-old male, chronic alcoholic presented with fever, hemoptysis, and headache of 20 days duration. Over a period of 4 days, the patient worsened with the development of altered sensorium and respiratory distress, connected to a mechanical ventilator. Computed tomography and chest X-ray showed consolidation involving the left lower lobe with an air-fluid level. Magnetic resonance imaging brain showed multiple metastatic brain abscess involving cerebrum and cerebellum and culture reports of sputum and blood showed K. pneumoniae. The patient was started on antibiotics along with anti-tubercular drugs. In spite of effective management, the patient developed recurrent episodes of hemoptysis and died of respiratory failure. For the concomitant involvement of both cerebrum and cerebellum for the first time

Vanishing headache in a young female: An interesting case report

Headache is one of the most common neurological symptom occurring worldwide. Here, we present a unique case of secondary headache in a young female which got reversed with appropriate treatment. A young female who presented with a severe subacute unilateral left-sided intractable headache with papilledema and obstructive hydrocephalus was found to have 4th ventricular neurocysticercosis causing obstruction of the foramen of Magendi and Luschka, relieved on timely surgical excision and with medical management. This case is reported to highlight the rare causes of secondary headache and various presentations of neurocysticercosis, in endemic areas like India as it causes neurological morbidity which can be alleviated on appropriate treatment, thereby preventing economic hardship and improving the quality of life

Case-Based Reasoning for Data Warehouse Schema Design

There have been several efforts made in the area of semi-automated techniques and tools for schema design. Most have focused on database schema design, and little work has been done on data warehouse schema design. This paper presents a new approach to data warehouse schema design based on case-based reasoning theory. Case-based reasoning is a problem solving paradigm that involves the development of a solution space to provide a basis for efficient reuse of proven pre-existing solutions. A detailed system design for the application of case-based reasoning to data warehouse schema design is examined in this paper. Two novel contributions of the paper include the matching of cases by data warehouse schema meta-data, and the use of a business context aware ontology to make intelligent suggestions on entities and attributes. These two approaches assist in improving the case matching and adaptation capability in the case-based reasoning system

Some theoretical considerations for a suite of metrics for the integration of software components

This paper defines two suites of metrics, which address static and dynamic aspects of component assembly. The static metrics measure complexity and criticality of component assembly, wherein complexity is measured using Component Packing Density and Component Interaction Density metrics. Further, four criticality conditions namely, Link, Bridge, Inheritance and Size criticalities have been identified and quantified. The complexity and criticality metrics are combined to form a Triangular Metric, which can be used to classify the type and nature of applications. Dynamic metrics are collected during the runtime of a complete application. Dynamic metrics are useful to identify super-component and to evaluate the degree of utilization of various components. In this paper both static and dynamic metrics are evaluated using Weyuker’s set of properties. The result shows that the metrics provide a valid means to measure issues in component assembly. We relate our metrics suite with McCall’s Quality Model and illustrate their impact on product quality and to the management of component-based product development

A novel data distribution technique for host-client type parallel applications

This paper considers an analytic data distribution for improving the performance of host-client type parallel applications which exhibit serialized communication patterns. The technique involves assuming the serialized communications is enforced, which simplifies data analysis and can provide the basis for real-time dynamic load balancing. This distribution has been tested using a parallel matrix multiplication implementation and a parallel MPEG compression implementation. The key results of this paper are that analytic distribution can reduce execution time and increase scalability of certain parallel applications over typical equal data distributions

Design and application of Parsim - A message-passing computer simulator

Currently many interconnection networks and parallel algorithms exist for message-passing computers. Users of these machines wish to determine which message-passing computer is best for a given job, and how it will scale with the number of processors and algorithm size. The paper describes a general purpose simulator for message-passing multiprocessors (Parsim), which facilitates system modelling. A structured method for simulator design has been used which gives Parsim the ability to simulate different topologies and algorithm combinations easily. This is illustrated by applying Parsim to a number of algorithms on a variety of topologies. Parsim is then used to predict the performance of the new IBM SP2 parallel computer, with topologies ranging up to 1024 processors