SEARS: Space Efficient And Reliable Storage System in the Cloud

Today's cloud storage services must offer storage reliability and fast data retrieval for large amount of data without sacrificing storage cost. We present SEARS, a cloud-based storage system which integrates erasure coding and data deduplication to support efficient and reliable data storage with fast user response time. With proper association of data to storage server clusters, SEARS provides flexible mixing of different configurations, suitable for real-time and archival applications. Our prototype implementation of SEARS over Amazon EC2 shows that it outperforms existing storage systems in storage efficiency and file retrieval time. For 3 MB files, SEARS delivers retrieval time of $2.5$ s compared to $7$ s with existing systems.Comment: 4 pages, IEEE LCN 201

Dual Enrollment Policies and Practices

The James Irvine Foundation joins educators and policymakers across the country who share a growing interest in the potential of dual enrollment. In particular, when high school students take college courses to earn transferable college credits, how are they positioned to succeed in college and career? How can we expand this opportunity to a broader range of students? Irvine's Youth program seeks to help increase the number of low-income youth in California who complete high school on time and attain a postsecondary credential by age 25. To ensure access to better educational and economic opportunities for a diverse group of students, our funding supports multiple pathways to the same destination: success in high school, college and careers. The multiple pathways approach integrates rigorous academics with demanding career and technical education, comprehensive student support services and relevant work-based learning opportunities, so that all high school students are prepared for both college and career. Research suggests that career-focused dual enrollment programs can improve secondary and postsecondary academic outcomes for a variety of students. In this context, the Concurrent Courses initiative was created to demonstrate the feasibility of using dual enrollment to enhance career and technical education pathways -- particularly for low-income youth who are struggling academically or who are within populations historically underrepresented in higher education. The Concurrent Courses initiative is being managed by the Community College Research Center (CCRC) housed at Teachers College, Columbia University. We would like to thank and recognize the authors of this brief: Joanne Wang Golann, who is a Senior Research Assistant and Katherine L. Hughes, who is the Assistant Director for Work and Education Reform Research at CCRC. The authors conducted extensive research on the dual enrollment environment in California in preparation for Concurrent Courses. This brief shares their analysis with the field to clarify the opportunities and challenges for supporting promising pathways to college

Future Type Ia Supernova Data as Tests of Dark Energy from Modified Friedmann Equations

In the Cardassian model, dark energy density arises from modifications to the Friedmann equation, which becomes H^2 = g(\rhom), where g(\rhom) is a new function of the energy density. The universe is flat, matter dominated, and accelerating. The distance redshift relation predictions of generalized Cardassian models can be very different from generic quintessence models, and can be differentiated with data from upcoming pencil beam surveys of Type Ia Supernovae such as SNAP. We have found the interesting result that, once $\Omega_m$ is known to 10% accuracy, SNAP will be able to determine the sign of the time dependence of the dark energy density. Knowledge of this sign (which is related to the weak energy condition) will provide a first discrimination between various cosmological models that fit the current observational data (cosmological constant, quintessence, Cardassian expansion). Further, we have performed Monte Carlo simulations to illustrate how well one can reproduce the form of the dark energy density with SNAP. To be concrete we study a class of two parameter ($n$,$q$) generalized Cardassian models that includes the original Cardassian model (parametrized by $n$ only) as a special case. Examples are given of MP Cardassian models that fit current supernovae and CMB data, and prospects for differentiating between MP Cardassian and other models in future data are discussed. We also note that some Cardassian models can satisfy the weak energy condition $w>-1$ even with a dark energy component that has an effective equation of state $w_X < -1$.Comment: revised version accepted by Ap

Silicon-based nanochannel glucose sensor

Silicon nanochannel biological field effect transistors have been developed for glucose detection. The device is nanofabricated from a silicon-on-insulator wafer with a top-down approach and surface functionalized with glucose oxidase. The differential conductance of silicon nanowires, tuned with source-drain bias voltage, is demonstrated to be sensitive to the biocatalyzed oxidation of glucose. The glucose biosensor response is linear in the 0.5-8 mM concentration range with 3-5 min response time. This silicon nanochannel-based glucose biosensor technology offers the possibility of high density, high quality glucose biosensor integration with silicon-based circuitry.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, two-column format. Related papers can be found at http://nano.bu.ed

Application of One Key Question at Hinesburg Family Practice

About one half of pregnancies in the United States are unintended (mistimed or unwanted). Only 54% of pregnancies in Vermont are planned and only 29% of women in Vermont have talked to a health care worker about healthy pregnancies prior to conception. Physicians are equipped to provide the necessary information to women about preconception care and contraception, but do not regularly have these conversations with the majority of their patients. One Key Question is an initiative developed by the Oregon Foundation for Reproductive Health that allows providers to screen women patients for their pregnancy intention in the next year and appropriately respond with preconception or contraceptive counseling.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/1102/thumbnail.jp

Enhanced cancer therapy with cold-controlled drug release and photothermal warming enabled by one nanoplatform

Stimuli-responsive nanoparticles hold great promise for drug delivery to improve the safety and efficacy of cancer therapy. One of the most investigated stimuli-responsive strategies is to induce drug release by heating with laser, ultrasound, or electromagnetic field. More recently, cryosurgery (also called cryotherapy and cryoablation), destruction of diseased tissues by first cooling/freezing and then warming back, has been used to treat various diseases including cancer in the clinic. Here we developed a cold-responsive nanoparticle for controlled drug release as a result of the irreversible disassembly of the nanoparticle when cooled to below ∼10 °C. Furthermore, this nanoparticle can be used to generate localized heating under near infrared (NIR) laser irradiation, which can facilitate the warming process after cooling/freezing during cryosurgery. Indeed, the combination of this cold-responsive nanoparticle with ice cooling and NIR laser irradiation can greatly augment cancer destruction both in vitro and in vivo with no evident systemic toxicity

Metabolic Impacts of Using Nitrogen and Copper-Regulated Promoters to Regulate Gene Expression in Neurospora crassa.

The filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa is a long-studied eukaryotic microbial system amenable to heterologous expression of native and foreign proteins. However, relatively few highly tunable promoters have been developed for this species. In this study, we compare the tcu-1 and nit-6 promoters for controlled expression of a GFP reporter gene in N. crassa. Although the copper-regulated tcu-1 has been previously characterized, this is the first investigation exploring nitrogen-controlled nit-6 for expression of heterologous genes in N. crassa. We determined that fragments corresponding to 1.5-kb fragments upstream of the tcu-1 and nit-6 open reading frames are needed for optimal repression and expression of GFP mRNA and protein. nit-6 was repressed using concentrations of glutamine from 2 to 20 mM and induced in medium containing 0.5-20 mM nitrate as the nitrogen source. Highest levels of expression were achieved within 3 hr of induction for each promoter and GFP mRNA could not be detected within 1 hr after transfer to repressing conditions using the nit-6 promoter. We also performed metabolic profiling experiments using proton NMR to identify changes in metabolite levels under inducing and repressing conditions for each promoter. The results demonstrate that conditions used to regulate tcu-1 do not significantly change the primary metabolome and that the differences between inducing and repressing conditions for nit-6 can be accounted for by growth under nitrate or glutamine as a nitrogen source. Our findings demonstrate that nit-6 is a tunable promoter that joins tcu-1 as a choice for regulation of gene expression in N. crassa