Social-Aware Forwarding Improves Routing Performance in Pocket Switched Networks

Several social-aware forwarding strategies have been recently introduced in opportunistic networks, and proved effective in considerably in- creasing routing performance through extensive simulation studies based on real-world data. However, this performance improvement comes at the expense of storing a considerable amount of state information (e.g, history of past encounters) at the nodes. Hence, whether the benefits on routing performance comes directly from the social-aware forwarding mechanism, or indirectly by the fact state information is exploited is not clear. Thus, the question of whether social-aware forwarding by itself is effective in improving opportunistic network routing performance remained unaddressed so far. In this paper, we give a first, positive answer to the above question, by investigating the expected message delivery time as the size of the net- work grows larger

Stacking classifiers for anti-spam filtering of e-mail

We evaluate empirically a scheme for combining classifiers, known as stacked generalization, in the context of anti-spam filtering, a novel cost-sensitive application of text categorization. Unsolicited commercial e-mail, or "spam", floods mailboxes, causing frustration, wasting bandwidth, and exposing minors to unsuitable content. Using a public corpus, we show that stacking can improve the efficiency of automatically induced anti-spam filters, and that such filters can be used in real-life applications

Spontaneous regression of a true splenic cyst: a case report and review of the literature

Splenic cysts are rare clinical findings, detected due to derivative symptoms or as a random discovery in abdominal imaging. Although there still remains controversy as to their optimal treatment, bigger secondary cysts should be treated surgically. However, spontaneous regression may be observed in cysts with a diameter smaller than 4 cm. In these cases, expectant treatment is preferable. We report, herein, a single case of a splenic cyst in an adult woman, who reported minor symptoms despite the size of the lesion and who demonstrated a possible almost total regression of the cyst within a ten-year period, accompanying with review of the most recent literature

Diffuse anorectal melanoma; review of the current diagnostic and treatment aspects based on a case report

Primary anorectal melanoma is a rare and aggressive disease. Patients commonly complain for changes in bowel habits and rectal bleeding, and proctoscopically they mostly appear as non pigmented or lightly pigmented polypoid lesions. Such a lesion should always raise a high index of suspicion in any gastroenterologist or surgeon to prompt surgery, since early radical excision is the only treatment option

The normal field instability under side-wall effects: comparison of experiments and computations

We consider a single spike of ferrofluid, arising in a small cylindrical container, when a vertically oriented magnetic field is applied. The height of the spike as well as the surface topography is measured experimentally by two different technologies and calculated numerically using the finite element method. As a consequence of the finite size of the container, the numerics uncovers an imperfect bifurcation to a single spike solution, which is forward. This is in contrast to the standard transcritical bifurcation to hexagons, common for rotational symmetric systems with broken up-down symmetry. The numerical findings are corroborated in the experiments. The small hysteresis observed is explained in terms of a hysteretic wetting of the side wall.Comment: accepted to New Journal of Physic

Fabrication, characterisation and stability of oil-in-water emulsions stabilised by solid lipid particles: the role of particle characteristics and emulsion microstructure upon Pickering functionality

Emulsifier-mediated wettability of solid lipid particles promotes the Pickering functionality in oil-in-water emulsions.</p

Management and 1-year outcomes of patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation and chronic kidney disease: Results from the prospective garfield-af registry

© 2019 The Authors. Background-—Using data from the GARFIELD-AF (Global Anticoagulant Registry in the FIELD–Atrial Fibrillation), we evaluated the impact of chronic kidney disease (CKD) stage on clinical outcomes in patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation (AF). Methods and Results-—GARFIELD-AF is a prospective registry of patients from 35 countries, including patients from Asia (China, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Thailand). Consecutive patients enrolled (2013–2016) were classified with no, mild, or moderate-to-severe CKD, based on the National Kidney Foundation’s Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative guidelines. Data on CKD status and outcomes were available for 33 024 of 34 854 patients (including 9491 patients from Asia); 10.9% (n=3613) had moderate-to-severe CKD, 16.9% (n=5595) mild CKD, and 72.1% (n=23 816) no CKD. The use of oral anticoagulants was influenced by stroke risk (ie, post hoc assessment of CHA2DS2-VASc score), but not by CKD stage. The quality of anticoagulant control with vitamin K antagonists did not differ with CKD stage. After adjusting for baseline characteristics and antithrombotic use, both mild and moderate-to-severe CKD were independent risk factors for all-cause mortality. Moderate-to-severe CKD was independently associated with a higher risk of stroke/systemic embolism, major bleeding, new-onset acute coronary syndrome, and new or worsening heart failure. The impact of moderate-to-severe CKD on mortality was significantly greater in patients from Asia than the rest of the world (P=0.001). Conclusions-—In GARFIELD-AF, moderate-to-severe CKD was independently associated with stroke/systemic embolism, major bleeding, and mortality. The effect of moderate-to-severe CKD on mortality was even greater in patients from Asia than the rest of the world

Effect of Direct Oral Anticoagulant, Patient, and Surgery Characteristics on Clinical Outcomes in the Perioperative Anticoagulation Use for Surgery Evaluation Study.

Introduction  The Perioperative Anticoagulation Use for Surgery Evaluation (PAUSE) Study assessed a standardized perioperative management strategy in patients with atrial fibrillation who were taking a direct oral anticoagulant (DOAC) and required an elective surgery or procedure. The aim of this substudy is to analyze the safety of this management strategy across different patient subgroups, according to four presurgical variables: (1) DOAC type and dose, (2) surgery/procedure bleed risk, (3) patient renal function, and (4) age. Methods  Clinical outcomes analyzed included major bleeding (MB), arterial thromboembolism, any bleeding, and any thromboembolism. We used descriptive statistics to summarize clinical outcomes, where the frequency, proportion, and 95% confidence interval were reported. Fisher\u27s exact tests were used for testing the hypothesis of independence between the clinical outcome and patient characteristic, where the test p -values were reported. Results  There were 3,007 patients with atrial fibrillation requiring perioperative DOAC management. There was no significant difference in bleeding or thromboembolic outcomes according to DOAC type/dose regimen, renal function, or patient age. The rate of MB was significantly higher with high bleed risk procedures than low bleed risk procedures in apixaban-treated patients (2.9 vs. 0.59%; p  \u3c 0.01), but not in dabigatran-treated patients (0.88 vs. 0.91%; p  = 1.0) or rivaroxaban-treated patients (2.9 vs. 1.3%; p  = 0.06). The risk for thromboembolism did not differ according to surgery/procedure-related bleed risk. Conclusion  Our results suggest that in DOAC-treated patients who received standardized perioperative management, surgical bleed risk is an important determinant of bleeding but not thromboembolic outcomes, although this finding was not consistent across all DOACs. There were no differences in bleeding and thromboembolism according to DOAC type and dose, renal function, or age

Transportation and air quality perspectives and projections in a Mediterranean country, the case of Greece

This study provides a thorough review and analysis of the evolution of the Greek vehicle fleet over the last ~30 years, which is next used for the generation of high granularity fleet projections, the assessment of associated air pollution and the estimation of relevant environmental benefits by 2030. The integrated methodology developed takes also into account vehicle clustering and the Brown’s Double Simple Exponential Smoothing technique that, together with the adoption of COPERT-based emission factors, allow for the estimation of the anticipated emissions in 2030. Expected 2030 emissions levels suggest a reduction across all pollutants compared to 2018, ranging from 3.7% for PM10 to 54.5% for NMVOC (and 46% for CO, 14% for SO2, 28% for NOX and 21% for CO2). We find that Greece is on track with national goals concerning the reduction of air pollution from the transportation sector, which designates the positive contribution anticipated by EVs and new, “greener” vehicles, and sets new challenges for the further improvement of the sector beyond the 2030 outlook