Pirates and Samaritans: A Decade of Measurements on Peer Production and their Implications for Net Neutrality and Copyright

This study traces the evolution of commons-based peer production by a measurementbased analysis of case studies and disusses the impact of peer production on net neutrality and copyright law. The measurements include websites such asSuprnova. org, Youtube.com, and Facebook.com, and the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems Kazaa, Bittorrent, and Tribler. The measurements show the two sides of peer production, the pirate side with free availability of Hollywood movies on these P2P systems and the samaritan side exhibited by the quick joining of 400,000+ people in a community to organize protests against events in Burma. The telecommunications and content industry are disrupted by this way of peer production. As a consequence, revenues of both industries are likely to suffer in the coming years. On the other hand, innovative P2P systems could win the battle on merit over classical distribution technologies. As a result, a continuation is expected of both legal actions against P2P and possible blocking actions of P2P traffic, violating net neutrality. It is argued that this hinders innovation and causes a large discrepancy between legal and user perspectives. A reform of copyright laws are clearly needed, otherwise they will be unenforceable around 2010. Key words: P2P, collaboration, commons-based peer production, copyright

Kemijski sastav endemske biljke Centaurea austro-anatolica i ispitivanje antimikrobnog djelovanja protiv multi-rezistentnih bakterija

Hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate and ethanolic extracts of the aerial parts of C. austro-anatolica Hub.-Mor. (Asteraceae) were evaluated against microorganisms, including multi-resistant bacteria, using a paper disc diffusion method. The chloroform extract exhibited significant antibacterial activity toward all bacteria tested. The chemical composition of the chloroform extract was determined by gas chromatography (GC) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The major compounds of the extract were caryophyllene oxide (21.32 %), spathulenol (10.86 %), n-tricosanol (9.58 %) and geranyl isovalerate (8.71 %).Heksanski, kloroformski, etil-acetatni i etanolni ekstrakti vršnih dijelova biljke C. austro-anatolica Hub.-Mor. (Asteraceae) ispitivani su na antimikrobno djelovanje protiv multi-rezistentnih bakterija, koristeći difuzijsku metodu na papirnom disku. Kloroformski ekstrakt pokazao je značajno antibakterijsko djelovanje protiv svih testiranih bakterija. Kemijski sastav tog ekstrakta određivan je plinskom kromatografijom (GC) i plinskom kromatografijom-spektrometrijom masa (GC-MS). Najvažniji sastojci ekstrakta bili su kariofilen oksid (21,32 %), spatulenol (10,86 %), n-trikozanol (9,58 %) i geranil izovalerat (8,71 %)

Radiation Sterilization of Anthracycline Antibiotics in Solid State

The impact of ionizing radiation generated by a beam of electrons of 25–400 kGy on the stability of such analogs of anthracycline antibiotics as daunorubicin (DAU), doxorubicin (DOX), and epidoxorubicin (EPI) was studied. Based on EPR results, it was established that unstable free radicals decay exponentially with the half-time of 4 days in DAU and DOX and 7 days in EPI after irradiation. Radiation-induced structural changes were analyzed with the use of spectrophotometric methods (UV-Vis and IR) and electron microscope imaging (SEM). A chromatographic method (HPLC-DAD) was applied to assess changes in the contents of the analogs in the presence of their impurities. The study showed that the structures of the analogs did not demonstrate any significant alterations at the end of the period necessary for the elimination of unstable free radicals. The separation of main substances and related substances (impurities and potential degradation products) allowed determining that no statistically significant changes in the content of particular active substances occurred and that their conversion due to the presence of free radicals resulting from exposure to an irradiation of 25 kGy (prescribed to ensure sterility) was not observed

A Hybrid Linear Programming and Evolutionary Algorithm based Approach for On-line Resource Matching in Grid Environments

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc

Efficient Resource Virtualization and Sharing Strategies for Heterogeneous Grid Environments

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc

The kallikrein-kinin system, angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors and insulin sensitivity

The therapeutic use of angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, at a large scale, in arterial hypertension has showed that these molecules can exert, beneficial effects on insulin sensitivity and may reduce the occurrence of type 2 diabetes mellitus. One hypothesis explaining these effects of ACE inhibitors may relate to their capacity to interfere with bradykinin (BK) metabolism and action. BK may participate in the regulation of substrate utilization by, several tissues by improving blood flow and substrate delivery to the tissues and also by promoting translocation of glucose transporters. Moreover, BK has been shown to increase phosphorylation of insulin receptor and its cell substrates. BK also appears to improve the release of insulin. Furthermore, insulin may activate the kallikrein-kinin system, which consequently may increase its metabolic effects. However, in experimental diabetes mellitus, BK can participate to the inflammatory reaction leading to Langerhans islets destruction. In diabetes, whereas tissue kallikrein mRNA levels were reduced in several organs, an overexpression of kinin receptors, an increase in plasma levels of kininogens and kallikrein and an activation of the kinin system have all been reported. Lastly, kinins may be involved in the development of diabetic nephropathy. Reduction of kinin metabolism by ACE inhibitors might be involved in the beneficial effects exerted by these compounds in diabetic kidney functions. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd

Broker Placement in Latency-aware Peer-to-Peer Networks

In large peer-to-peer (P2P) overlay networks, nodes usually share resources to support all kinds of applications. In such networks, a subset of the nodes may assume the role of broker in order to act as intermediaries for finding the shared resources. When some notion of distance between nodes such as the internode latency is defined, a brokers may be responsible for maintaining information about resources shared by a group of nodes that are close to each other, with the set of nodes assigned to a broker being determined by the broker's location. In this paper, we present a broker-placement algorithm that finds a suitable location for a new broker when some broker is overloaded in such a way that some of the nodes are reassigned from the overloaded to the new broker. With latency as a metric, an overlay network can be embedded in an Euclidean space

Does insulin release kinins in rats?

peer reviewedRat uterus maintained in situ was used as a bioassay of kinins possibly released in vivo by hyperglycaemia or insulin. Intravenous injections of bradykinin induced contractions of rat uterus which were suppressed by HOE 140, a bradykinin B-2 receptor antagonist. Des-Arg(9)-bradykinin, a kinin B-1 receptor agonist, did not elicit any response. After propranolol, the effects of bradykinin were enhanced and dose-dependent. This potentiation did not appear in adrenalectomized rats. Captopril, an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor, largely increased the effects of bradykinin. In animals pretreated with propranolol, captopril and atosiban, an oxytocin antagonist, intravenous infusion of glucose induced hyperglycaemia and after a delay increased the uterine contractile activity. This contractile effect of glucose was abolished by HOE 140. Infusion of insulin with glucose induced contractions of the uterus. These responses did not appear or were suppressed by HOE 140 or by soya bean trypsin inhibitor (SBTI), a plasma kallikrein inhibitor. These results are direct evidence that insulin induces a release of kinins. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Provisioning and scheduling resources for world-wide data-sharing services

Grid computing is becoming the natural way to aggregate and share large and heterogeneous sets of resources. However, grid development and acceptance hinge on proving that grids reliably support large communities of users, and their real applications. In this paper we assess the ability of existing grid infrastructures to provision resources for a class of applications with numerous potential users, namely the class of world-wide data-sharing services. For this purpose, we first analyze the requirements of this class of applications, and match them against the existing spare capacity in three existing large-scale grid environments, namely OSG/Grid3, NorduGrid, and CERN LCG. Having shown that the existing capacity is insufficient, we devise and assess through trace-based simulation five domainspecific scheduling policies. Our findings give evidence that grid technology could be successfully leveraged for worldwide data-sharing services, without impacting the level of service for the currently existing load