Exploiting Fine-Grained Spatial Optimization for Hybrid File System Space

Over decades, I/O optimizations implemented in legacy file systems have been concentrated on reducing HDD disk overhead, such as seek time. As SSD (Solid-State Device) is becoming the main storage medium in I/O storage subsystems, file systems integrated with SSD should take a different approach in designing I/O optimizations. This is because SSD deploys the peculiar device characteristics that do not take place in HDD, such as erasure overhead on flash blocks and absence of seek time to positioning data. In this paper, we present HP-hybrid (High Performance-hybrid) file system that provides a single hybrid file system space, by combining HDD and SSD partitions. HP-hybrid targets for optimizing I/O while considering the strength and weakness of two different partitions, to store large-scale amounts of data in a cost-effective way. Especially, HP-hybrid proposes spatial optimizations that are executed in a hierarchical, fine-grained I/O unit, to address the limited SSD storage resources. We conducted several performance experiments to verify the effectiveness of HP-hybrid while comparing to ext2, ext4 and xfs mounted on both SSD and HDD

Bucillamine prevents cisplatin-induced ototoxicity through induction of glutathione and antioxidant genes.

Bucillamine is used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. This study investigated the protective effects of bucillamine against cisplatin-induced damage in auditory cells, the organ of Corti from postnatal rats (P2) and adult Balb/C mice. Cisplatin increases the catalytic activity of caspase-3 and caspase-8 proteases and the production of free radicals, which were significantly suppressed by pretreatment with bucillamine. Bucillamine induces the intranuclear translocation of Nrf2 and thereby increases the expression of γ-glutamylcysteine synthetase (γ-GCS) and glutathione synthetase (GSS), which further induces intracellular antioxidant glutathione (GSH), heme oxygenase 1 (HO-1) and superoxide dismutase 2 (SOD2). However, knockdown studies of HO-1 and SOD2 suggest that the protective effect of bucillamine against cisplatin is independent of the enzymatic activity of HO-1 and SOD. Furthermore, pretreatment with bucillamine protects sensory hair cells on organ of Corti explants from cisplatin-induced cytotoxicity concomitantly with inhibition of caspase-3 activation. The auditory-brainstem-evoked response of cisplatin-injected mice shows marked increases in hearing threshold shifts, which was markedly suppressed by pretreatment with bucillamine in vivo. Taken together, bucillamine protects sensory hair cells from cisplatin through a scavenging effect on itself, as well as the induction of intracellular GSH

Inhibition of Hypoxic Pulmonary Vasoconstriction of Rats by Carbon Monoxide

Hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction (HPV), a unique response of pulmonary circulation, is critical to prevent hypoxemia under local hypoventilation. Hypoxic inhibition of K+ channel is known as an important O2-sensing mechanism in HPV. Carbon monoxide (CO) is suggested as a positive regulator of Ca2+-activated K+ channel (BKCa), a stimulator of guanylate cyclase, and an O2-mimetic agent in heme moiety-dependent O2 sensing mechanisms. Here we compared the effects of CO on the HPV (Po2, 3%) in isolated pulmonary artery (HPVPA) and in blood-perfused/ventilated lungs (HPVlung) of rats. A pretreatment with CO (3%) abolished the HPVPA in a reversible manner. The inhibition of HPVPA was completely reversed by 1H-[1,2,4]oxadiazolo-[4,3-a]quinoxalin-1-one (ODQ), a guanylate cyclase inhibitor. In contrast, the HPVlung was only partly decreased by CO. Moreover, the partial inhibition of HPVlung by CO was affected neither by the pretreatment with ODQ nor by NO synthase inhibitor (L-NAME). The CO-induced inhibitions of HPVPA and HPVlung were commonly unaffected by tetraethylammonium (TEA, 2 mM), a blocker of BKCa. As a whole, CO inhibits HPVPA via activating guanylate cyclase. The inconsistent effects of ODQ on HPVPA and HPVlung suggest that ODQ may lose its sGC inhibitory action when applied to the blood-containing perfusate

Reentrant phase transition in a predator-prey model

We numerically investigate the six-species predator-prey game in complex networks as well as in $d$-dimensional hypercubic lattices with $d=1,2,..., 6$. The interaction topology of the six species contains two loops, each of which is composed of cyclically predating three species. As the mutation rate $P$ is lowered below the well-defined phase transition point, the $Z_2$ symmetry related with the interchange of the two loops is spontaneously broken, and it has been known that the system develops the defensive alliance in which three cyclically predating species defend each other against the invasion of other species. In the small-world network structure characterized by the rewiring probability $\alpha$, the phase diagram shows the reentrant behavior as $\alpha$ is varied, indicating a twofold role of the shortcuts. In $d$-dimensional regular hypercubic lattices, the system also exhibits the reentrant phase transition as $d$ is increased. We identify universality class of the phase transition and discuss the proper mean-field limit of the system.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, Phys. Rev. E (in press

The Occurrence and Speed of CMEs Related to Two Characteristic Evolution Patterns of Helicity Injection in Their Solar Source Regions

Long-term (a few days) variation of magnetic helicity injection was calculated for 28 solar active regions which produced 47 CMEs to find its relationships with the CME occurrence and speed using SOHO/MDI line-of-sight magnetograms. As a result, we found that the 47 CMEs can be categorized into two different groups by two characteristic evolution patterns of helicity injection in their source active regions which appeared for about 0.5-4.5 days before their occurrence: (1) a monotonically increasing pattern with one sign of helicity (Group A; 30 CMEs in 23 active regions) and (2) a pattern of significant helicity injection followed by its sign reversal (Group B; 17 CMEs in 5 active regions). We also found that CME speed has a correlation with average helicity injection rate with linear correlation coefficients of 0.85 and 0.63 for Group A and Group B, respectively. In addition, these two CME groups show different characteristics as follows: (1) the average CME speed of Group B (1330km/s) is much faster than that of Group A (870km/s), (2) the CMEs in Group A tend to be single events, whereas those in Group B mainly consist of successive events, and (3) flares related to the CMEs in Group B are relatively more energetic and impulsive than those in Group A. Our findings therefore suggest that the two CME groups have different pre-CME conditions in their source active regions and different CME characteristics.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Ap