Traffic Steering in B5G Sliced Radio Access Networks.

In 5G and beyond wireless systems, Network Slicing (NS) feature will enable the coexistence of extremely different services by splitting the physical infrastructure into several logical slices tailored for a specific tenant or application. In sliced Radio Access Networks (RANs), an optimal traffic sharing among cells is key to guarantee Service Level Agreement (SLA) compliance while minimizing operation costs. The configuration of network functions leading to that optimal point may depend on the slice, claiming for slice-aware traffic steering strategies. This work presents the first data-driven algorithm for sliceaware traffic steering by tuning handover margins (a.k.a. mobility load balancing). The tuning process is driven by a novel indicator, derived from connection traces, showing the imbalance of SLA compliance among neighbor cells per slice. Performance assessment is carried out with a system-level simulator implementing a realistic sliced RAN offering services with different throughput, latency and reliability requirements. Results show that the proposed algorithm improves the overall SLA compliance by 9% in only 15 minutes of network activity compared to the case of not steering traffic, outperforming two legacy mobility load balancing approaches not driven by SLA

Coffee silverskin extract protects against accelerated aging caused by oxidative agents

Nowadays, coffee beans are almost exclusively used for the preparation of the beverage. The sustainability of coffee production can be achieved introducing new applications for the valorization of coffee by-products. Coffee silverskin is the by-product generated during roasting, and because of its powerful antioxidant capacity, coffee silverskin aqueous extract (CSE) may be used for other applications, such as antiaging cosmetics and dermaceutics. This study aims to contribute to the coffee sector’s sustainability through the application of CSE to preserve skin health. Preclinical data regarding the antiaging properties of CSE employing human keratinocytes and Caenorhabditis elegans are collected during the present study. Accelerated aging was induced by tert-butyl hydroperoxide (t-BOOH) in HaCaT cells and by ultraviolet radiation C (UVC) in C. elegans. Results suggest that the tested concentrations of coffee extracts were not cytotoxic, and CSE 1 mg/mL gave resistance to skin cells when oxidative damage was induced by t-BOOH. On the other hand, nematodes treated with CSE (1 mg/mL) showed a significant increased longevity compared to those cultured on a standard diet. In conclusion, our results support the antiaging properties of the CSE and its great potential for improving skin health due to its antioxidant character associated with phenols among other bioactive compounds present in the botanical materialThe authors are grateful for the financial support from the SUSCOFFEE Project (AGL2014-57239-R) and the NATURAGE Project (AGL2010-17779). This work was partially funded by a Santander Small and Medium Enterprises Work Placement Grant in Beacon Biomedicine. Amaia Iriondo is a fellow of the FPI predoctoral program of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (BES-2015-072191). Konstantinos Stamatakis is a recipient of an Asociación Española Contra el Cancer fellowship.We acknowledge support by the CSIC Open Access Publication Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI)

Improving lifespan automation for Caenorhabditis elegans by using image processing and a post-processing adaptive data filter

[EN] Automated lifespan determination for C. elegans cultured in standard Petri dishes is challenging. Problems include occlusions of Petri dish edges, aggregation of worms, and accumulation of dirt (dust spots on lids) during assays, etc. This work presents a protocol for a lifespan assay, with two image-processing pipelines applied to different plate zones, and a new data post-processing method to solve the aforementioned problems. Specifically, certain steps in the culture protocol were taken to alleviate aggregation, occlusions, contamination, and condensation problems. This method is based on an active illumination system and facilitates automated image sequence analysis, does not need human threshold adjustments, and simplifies the techniques required to extract lifespan curves. In addition, two image-processing pipelines, applied to different plate zones, were employed for automated lifespan determination. The first image-processing pipeline was applied to a wall zone and used only pixel level information because worm size or shape features were unavailable in this zone. However, the second image-processing pipeline, applied to the plate centre, fused information at worm and pixel levels. Simple death event detection was used to automatically obtain lifespan curves from the image sequences that were captured once daily throughout the assay. Finally, a new post-processing method was applied to the extracted lifespan curves to filter errors. The experimental results showed that the errors in automated counting of live worms followed the Gaussian distribution with a mean of 2.91% and a standard deviation of +/- 12.73% per Petri plate. Post-processing reduced this error to 0.54 +/- 8.18% per plate. The automated survival curve incurred an error of 4.62 +/- 2.01%, while the post-process method reduced the lifespan curve error to approximately 2.24 +/- 0.55%.This study was also supported by the CDTI agency of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness with CIEN project SMARTFOODS, Universitat PolitAcnica de Valencia with Project 20170020-UPV, Plan Nacional de I + D with Project RTI2018-094312-B-I00 and by European FEDER funds. ADM Nutrition, Biopolis SL and Archer Daniels Midland provided support in the form of salaries for authors P. M. Guerola and S. G. Martinez.Puchalt-Rodríguez, JC.; Sánchez Salmerón, AJ.; Ivorra Martínez, E.; Genovés Martínez, S.; Martínez, R.; Martorell Guerola, P. (2020). Improving lifespan automation for Caenorhabditis elegans by using image processing and a post-processing adaptive data filter. Scientific Reports. 10(1):1-14. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-65619-4114101Brenner, S. The Genetics Of Caenorhabditis Elegans. 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Aging in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans: Major biological and environmental factors influencing life span. Mech. Ageing Dev. 6, 413–429, https://doi.org/10.1016/0047-6374(77)90043-4 (1977).Walker, D. W., McColl, G., Jenkins, N. L., Harris, J. & Lithgow, G. J. Evolution of lifespan in C. elegans. Nature 405, 296–297, https://doi.org/10.1038/35012693 (2000).Hertweck, M. & Baumeister, R. Automated assays to study longevity in C. elegans. In Mechanisms of Ageing and Development 126, 139–145, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mad.2004.09.010 (2005).Puckering, T. et al. Automated Wormscan. F1000Research 6, 192, https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.10767.2 (2017).Stroustrup, N. et al. The Caenorhabditis elegans Lifespan Machine. Nat. methods 10, 665–70, https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2475 NIHMS150003 (2013).Swierczek, N. A., Giles, A. C., Rankin, C. H. & Kerr, R. A. High-throughput behavioral analysis in C. elegans. Nat. Methods 8, 592–U112, https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.1625 (2011).Puchalt, J. C., Sánchez-Salmerón, A.-J., Martorell Guerola, P. & Genovés Martínez, S. Active backlight for automating visual monitoring: An analysis of a lighting control technique for Caenorhabditis elegans cultured on standard Petri plates. Plos One 14, e0215548 (2019).Chen, W. et al. Segmenting Microscopy Images of Multi-Well Plates Based on Image Contrast. Microsc. Microanal. 23, 932–937, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1431927617012375 (2017).Cronin, C. J. et al. An automated system for measuring parameters of nematode sinusoidal movement. BMC GENETICS 6, https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2156-6-5 (2005).Fontaine, E., Burdick, J. & Barr, A. Automated Tracking of Multiple C. Elegans. In 2006 International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, 3716–3719, https://doi.org/10.1109/IEMBS.2006.260657 (2006).Geng, W., Cosman, P., Baek, J.-H., Berry, C. C. & Schafer, W. R. Quantitative Classification and Natural Clustering of Caenorhabditis elegans Behavioral Phenotypes. Genetics 165, 1117 LP–1126 (2003).Geng, W., Cosman, P., Berry, C. C., Feng, Z. & Schafer, W. R. Automatic tracking, feature extraction and classification of C. elegans phenotypes. IEEE Transactions on Biomed. Eng. 51, 1811–1820, https://doi.org/10.1109/TBME.2004.831532 (2004).Jung, S. K., Aleman-Meza, B., Riepe, C. & Zhong,W. QuantWorm: A comprehensive software package for Caenorhabditis elegans phenotypic assays. Plos One 9, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0084830 (2014).Kainmueller, D., Jug, F., Rother, C. & Myers, G. Active Graph Matching for Automatic Joint Segmentation and Annotation of C. elegans BT - Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention – MICCAI 2014. 81–88 (Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2014).Mathew, M. D., Mathew, N. D. & Ebert, P. R. WormScan: A Technique for High-Throughput Phenotypic Analysis of Caenorhabditis elegans. Plos One 7, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0033483 (2012).Raviv, T. R. et al. Morphology-Guided Graph Search for Untangling Objects: C. elegans Analysis BT - Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention – MICCAI 2010. 634–641 (Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2010).Restif, C. et al. CeleST: Computer Vision Software for Quantitative Analysis of C. elegans Swim Behavior Reveals Novel Features of Locomotion. Plos Comput. Biol. 10, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003702 (2014).Roussel, N., Morton, C. A., Finger, F. P. & Roysam, B. A Computational Model for C. elegans Locomotory Behavior: Application to Multiworm Tracking. IEEE Transactions on Biomed. Eng. 54, 1786–1797, https://doi.org/10.1109/TBME.2007. 894981 (2007).Tsechpenakis, G., Bianchi, L., Metaxas, D. N. & Driscoll, M. A novel computational approach for simultaneous tracking and feature extraction of C. elegans populations in fluid environments. IEEE Transactions on Biomed. 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Gut microbial composition in patients with psoriasis

Since the last 5–10 years the relevance of the gut microbiome on different intestinal illnesses has been revealed. Recent findings indicate the effect of gut microbiome on certain dermatological diseases such as atopic dermatitis. However, data on other skin diseases such as psoriasis are limited. This is the first time attempting to reveal the gut microbiome composition of psoriatic patients with a prospective study including a group of patients with plaque psoriasis, analyzing their gut microbiome and the relationship between the microbiome composition and bacterial translocation. The microbiome of a cohort of 52 psoriatic patients (PASI score ≥6) was obtained by 16s rRNA massive sequencing with MiSeq platform (Illumina inc, San Diego) with an average of 85,000 sequences per sample. The study of the gut microbiome and enterotype shows from the first time a specific “psoriatic core intestinal microbiome” that clearly differs from the one present in healthy population. In addition, those psoriatic patients classified as belonging to enterotype 2 tended to experience more frequent bacterial translocation and higher inflammatory status (71%) than patients with other enterotypes (16% for enterotype 1; and 21% for enterotype 3).Medicin

Clasificador de celdas de interior en redes celulares.

Las redes móviles desempeñan un papel vital en el mundo actual, basado en la información, en el que las personas dependen cada vez más de ellas en su vida cotidiana. La llegada de las redes 5G ha reforzado esta tendencia, generando nuevos y atractivos servicios, que han provocado un aumento del tráfico celular. Para satisfacer las crecientes demandas de los usuarios, las redes móviles se han vuelto demasiado complejas, lo que hace ineficiente su gestión manual. En este contexto surgen las redes Zero-Touch, que automatizan las tareas de gestión de la red sin intervención humana y con ayuda de la Inteligencia Artificial (IA). Un factor importante para varias decisiones de gestión es el contexto interior/exterior de la celda, aunque este elemento no se registra habitualmente. Este artículo presenta un modelo para la clasificación precisa de celdas interiores utilizando un conjunto de datos reales de Long Term Evolution (LTE). Los resultados obtenidos señalan que los parámetros básicos de configuración son claramente suficientes para determinar el contexto interior de una celda, alcanzando una precisión perfecta en el conjunto de datos de prueba.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Reparto de tráfico en redes 5G con segmentación.

In 5G and beyond wireless systems, Network Slicing (NS) feature will enable the coexistence of extremely different services. In sliced Radio Access Networks (RANs), an optimal traffic sharing among cells is key to guarantee Service Level Agreement (SLA) compliance while minimizing operation costs. The configuration of network functions leading to that optimal point may depend on the slice, claiming for slice-aware traffic steering strategies. This work presents the first data-driven algorithm for slice-aware traffic steering by tuning handover margins. The tuning process is driven by a novel indicator showing the imbalance of SLA compliance among neighbor cells per slice. Performance assessment is carried out with a system-level simulator implementing a realistic sliced RAN offering services with different throughput, latency and reliability requirements. Results show that the proposed algorithm improves the overall SLA compliance by 9% in only 15 minutes of network activity compared to the case of not steering traffic, outperforming a legacy mobility load balancing approachUniversidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Predicción del rendimiento en redes celulares con segmentación.

In 5G and beyond systems, Network Slicing (NS) enables the deployment of multiple logical networks customized for specific verticals over a common physical infrastructure. In the radio access network, mobile operators need models to forecast slice performance for an efficient and proactive slice redimensioning. This task has not been addressed yet due to the absence of public datasets from live 5G networks with NS comprising historical measurements of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) collected on a slice basis to test on. This work presents, a slice-level KPI dataset created with a dynamic system-level simulator that emulates the activity of a realistic 5G network with NS. The dataset comprises historical measurements for several KPIs collected per cell and slice for 15 minutes of network activity. Then, a thorough analysis of the dataset is presented considering correlation- and seasonality-related features, aiming to characterize slice-level KPI time series for different slices and data aggregation resolutions. Results have shown that some key aspects for designing slice-level forecasting models (e.g., seasonal KPI behavior or relationship among KPIs) strongly depend on slice and data time resolution. Slice-specific multi-KPI forecasting models with automatic seasonality detection are expected to achieve the best performanceUniversidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Antiaging effect of coffee silver-skin extract

Resumen del póster presentado al 11th International Symposium on the Maillard Reaction celebrado en Nancy (Francia) del 16 al 20 de septiembre de 2012.Peer Reviewe

Impact of a multifaceted intervention to improve the clinical management of osteoporosis. The ESOSVAL-F study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A study to evaluate the impact of a combined intervention (in-class and on-line training courses, a practicum and economic incentives) to improve anti-osteoporosis treatment and to improve recordkeeping for specific information about osteoporosis.</p> <p>Methods/design</p> <p>A before/after study with a non-equivalent control group to evaluate the impact of the interventions associated with participation in the ESOSVAL-R cohort study (intervention group) compared to a group receiving no intervention (control group). The units of analysis are medical practices identified by a Healthcare Position Code (HPC) referring to a specific medical position in primary care general medicine in a Healthcare Department of the Region of Valencia, Spain. The subjects of the study are the 400 participating "practices" (population assigned to health care professionals, doctors and/or nurses) selected by the Healthcare Departments of the Valencia Healthcare Agency for participation as associate researchers in the ESOSVAL-R study (intervention group), compared to 400 participating "practices" assigned to primary care professionals NOT selected for participation as associate researchers in the ESOSVAL-R study, who are selected on the basis of their working in the same Healthcare Centers as the practices receiving the interventions (control group). The study's primary endpoint is the appropriateness of treatment according by the Spanish National Health System guide (2010) and the National Osteoporosis Foundation (NOF, 2008) and International Osteoporosis Foundation guidance (IOF, 2008).</p> <p>The study will also evaluate a series of secondary and tertiary endpoints. The former are the suitability of treatment and evaluation of the risk of fracture; and the latter are the volume of information registered in the electronic clinical records, and the evaluation of risks and the suitability of treatment.</p