Probabilistic Road-Aware Geocast In VANETs

Geocast is a communication technique to disseminate information in specific geographic regions instead of node addresses. Traffic congestion, accidents, local hazards and digital content sharing are potential use cases of information sharing in VANETs. Recently, several approaches for geocast routing have been proposed to achieve high delivery ratios. These approaches consider a center point and radius to define the destination region also called geocast region. They focus only on routing scheme to enhance the delivery ratio and delays. However, these approaches do not consider the target region selection problem in the geocast routing. In this paper, we propose a novel application-level mechanism for sharing road conditions, such as accidents, detours and congestion in VANETs through probabilistic road-aware geocast routing. We assign probabilities to the roads around each intersection in the neighborhood road network of the source vehicle. We then build a spanning tree of roads (from graph representation of the road network) with information source as the root node. Nodes below the root represent junctions and edges represent inter-connecting road segments. Messages propagate along the branches of the spanning tree. The spanning tree represents the geocast region. As the information propagates down the branches, probability of road as geocast region decreases. Information is propagated until a threshold probability is reached. Our method also ensures that messages are not delivered to irrelevant vehicles irrespective of their proximity to the source. We evaluate our application through extensive and realistic simulations in ns-3 simulator using IDM car following and MOBIL lane change models for realistic modeling of vehicle mobility

A Framework for Classification and Visualization of Elephant Flows in SDN-Based Networks

AbstractLong-lived flows termed as elephant flows normally transport large volumes of data in enterprise networks, particularly data center networks. These flows tend to consume a lot of bandwidth and fill up network buffers end-to-end. This causes non-trivial delays for short-lived flows referred to as mice flows which are usually delay-sensitive. Therefore, identifying and handling elephant flows is important for QoS provisioning. In this paper, we present a framework for real-time detection and visualization of elephant flows in SDN-based networks using sFlow. Using our proposed framework, network operators can examine elephant flows through each switch by double-clicking the switch node in the topology visualization UI. Although not in the scope of this paper, but in order to meet traffic engineering requirements, the elephant flows detected and visualized by our proposed framework can be reprioritized, re-scheduled, or routed via dedicated high speed links. We evaluate the proposed framework by using a physical SDN testbed as well as a Mininet-based testbed

Improving Geo-casting by Combining Any-cast and Hovering Information

Geocasting is a variation on the notion of multicasting in which messages are deliver to the nodes residing in a specific area. This paper proposed a novel geocast protocol based on any-cast and hovering information in order to improve the performance by balancing load between server and local nodes. Thus proposed technique has two phases for geocasting, 1) any-cast from source to geocast region and 2) distribution of messages using hovering information. Our results has shown that using hovering information and creating replicas for geocasting messages we can reduce the overhead of broadcasting messages several time that helps in reducing the bandwidth

Antigenic diversity of Theileria major piroplasm surface protein gene in Jeju black cattle

Piroplasms are tick-transmitted, intracellular, hemoprotozoan parasites that cause anorexia, fever, anemia, and icterus. Theileriosis is caused by Theileria sergenti and causes major economic losses in grazing cattle in Japan and Korea. In May 2003, we examined the antigenic diversity of the major piroplasm surface protein (MPSP) gene in 35 healthy Jeju black cattle that were born and raised at the National Institute of Subtropical Agriculture. On microscopic examination of Giemsa-stained blood smears, 9 of 35 cattle had intra-erythrocytic piroplasms. Hematological data were within normal range for all 35 cattle. Amplification of DNA from all blood samples using universal MPSP gene primers showed mixed infections with C, I, and B type Theileria spp. Type C was identified in 20 of 35 blood samples, and type B was identified in 17 samples. Allelic variation was seen in type B

OF@TEIN: An OpenFlow-enabled SDN Testbed over International SmartX Rack Sites

In this paper, we will discuss our on-going effort for OF@TEIN SDN(Software-Defined Networking) testbed, which currently spans over Korea and fiveSouth-East Asian (SEA) collaborators with internationally deployed OpenFlowenabledSmartX Racks

Exendin-4 Improves Steatohepatitis by Increasing Sirt1 Expression in High-Fat Diet-Induced Obese C57BL/6J Mice

The effects of exendin-4 on Sirt1 expression as a mechanism of reducing fatty liver have not been previously reported. Therefore, we investigated whether the beneficial effects of exendin-4 treatment on fatty liver are mediated via Sirt1 in high-fat (HF) diet-induced obese C57BL/6J mice and related cell culture models. Exendin-4 treatment decreased body weight, serum free fatty acid (FA), and triglyceride levels in HF-induced obese C57BL/6J mice. Histological analysis showed that exendin-4 reversed HF-induced hepatic accumulation of lipids and inflammation. Exendin-4 treatment increased mRNA and protein expression of Sirt1 and its downstream factor, AMPK, in vivo and also induced genes associated with FA oxidation and glucose metabolism. In addition, a significant increase in the hepatic expression of Lkb1 and Nampt mRNA was observed in exendin-4-treated groups. We also observed increased expression of phospho-Foxo1 and GLUT2, which are involved in hepatic glucose metabolism. In HepG2 and Huh7 cells, mRNA and protein expressions of GLP-1R were increased by exendin-4 treatment in a dose-dependent manner. Exendin-4 enhanced protein expression of Sirt1 and phospho-AMPKα in HepG2 cells treated with 0.4 mM palmitic acid. We also found that Sirt1 was an upstream regulator of AMPK in hepatocytes. A novel finding of this study was the observation that expression of GLP-1R is proportional to exendin-4 concentration and exendin-4 could attenuate fatty liver through activation of Sirt1

Sublingual Immunization with M2-Based Vaccine Induces Broad Protective Immunity against Influenza

The ectodomain of matrix protein 2 (M2e) of influenza A virus is a rationale target antigen candidate for the development of a universal vaccine against influenza as M2e undergoes little sequence variation amongst human influenza A strains. Vaccine-induced M2e-specific antibodies (Abs) have been shown to display significant cross-protective activity in animal models. M2e-based vaccine constructs have been shown to be more protective when administered by the intranasal (i.n.) route than after parenteral injection. However, i.n. administration of vaccines poses rare but serious safety issues associated with retrograde passage of inhaled antigens and adjuvants through the olfactory epithelium. In this study, we examined whether the sublingual (s.l.) route could serve as a safe and effective alternative mucosal delivery route for administering a prototype M2e-based vaccine. The mechanism whereby s.l. immunization with M2e vaccine candidate induces broad protection against infection with different influenza virus subtypes was explored.A recombinant M2 protein with three tandem copies of the M2e (3M2eC) was expressed in Escherichia coli. Parenteral immunizations of mice with 3M2eC induced high levels of M2e-specific serum Abs but failed to provide complete protection against lethal challenge with influenza virus. In contrast, s.l. immunization with 3M2eC was superior for inducing protection in mice. In the latter animals, protection was associated with specific Ab responses in the lungs.The results demonstrate that s.l. immunization with 3M2eC vaccine induced airway mucosal immune responses along with broad cross-protective immunity to influenza. These findings may contribute to the understanding of the M2-based vaccine approach to control epidemic and pandemic influenza infections