Comparative study of different approaches to solve batch process scheduling and optimisation problems

Effective approaches are important to batch process scheduling problems, especially those with complex constraints. However, most research focus on improving optimisation techniques, and those concentrate on comparing their difference are inadequate. This study develops an optimisation model of batch process scheduling problems with complex constraints and investigates the performance of different optimisation techniques, such as Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Constraint Programming (CP). It finds that CP has a better capacity to handle batch process problems with complex constraints but it costs longer time

Does Over-Provisioning Become More or Less Efficient as Networks Grow Larger?

IP networks have seen tremendous growth in not only their size and speed, but also in the volume of traffic they carry. Over-provisioning is commonly used to protect network performance against traffic variations, be they caused by failures or transient surges. This paper investigates the influence that increasing network size has on the efficacy of over-provisioning in absorbing a certain range of traffic variations and preserving performance guarantees. For that purpose, we develop a general model that accounts for network topology, base offered traffic, and traffic variations, and allows us to explore how their combination behaves as the network and the traffic it carries grow. The model\u27s generality enables us to investigate several representative scenarios and to identify critical thresholds in the relation between network and traffic growth, which delineate regions where a given amount of over-provisioning provides increasingly better protection against traffic variations. The results offer insight into how to grow IP networks in order to enhance their robustness

A Simple FIFO-Based Scheme for Differentiated Loss Guarantees

Today’s Internet carries traffic from a broad range of applications with different requirements. This has stressed its original, one-class, best-effort model, and has been a major driver of the many efforts aimed at introducing QoS. These efforts have, however, been met with only limited success, in part because the complexity they add is often at odds with the scalability requirements of the Internet. This has motivated many investigations for solutions that offer a better trade-off between service differentiation and complexity. This paper shares similar goals and proposes a simple scheme, Bounded Random Drop (BRD), that supports multiple service classes and is implemented using a single FIFO queue and a basic random dropping mechanism. BRD focuses on loss differentiation, as although losses and delay are both important, the steady rise of Internet link speeds is progressively limiting the impact of delay differentiation. It offers strong loss differentiation capabilities, and does not require traffic profiles or admission controls. BRD guarantees each class losses that, when feasible, are no worse than a specified bound, while enforcing differentiation only when required to meet those bounds. The performance of BRD is investigated for a broad range of traffic mixes and shown to consistently achieve its design goals

Supporting Excess Real-Time Traffic With Active Drop Queue

Real-time applications often stand to benefit from service guarantees, and in particular delay guarantees. However, most mechanisms that provide delay guarantees also hard-limit the amount of traffic the application can generate, i.e., to enforce to a traffic contract. This can be a significant constraint and interfere with the operation of many real-time applications. Our purpose in this paper is to propose and investigate solutions that overcome this limitation. We have four major goals: 1) guarantee a delay bound to a contracted amount of real-time traffic; 2)transmit with the same delay bound as many excess real-time packets as possible; 3) enforce a given link sharing ratio between excess real-time traffic and other service classes, e.g., best-effort; and 4) preserve the ordering of real-time packets, if required. Our approach is based on a combination of buffer management and scheduling mechanisms for both guaranteeing delay bounds, while allowing the transmission of excess traffic. We evaluate the cost of our scheme by measuring the processing overhead of an actual implementation, and we investigate its performance by means of simulations using video traffic traces

Supporting Excess Real-time Traffic with Active Drop Queue

this paper. First, we target explicit service guarantees and assume the existence of traffic contracts for realtime traffic. Second, we distinguish between "conformant" and "excess" real-time traffic, and focus on buffer management to remove expired excess packets. Third, we explicitly control the level of link-sharing between excess real-time traffic and other service classe

Efficacy and Safety of Clearing Heat and Detoxifying Injection in the Treatment of Influenza: A Randomized, Double-Blinded, Placebo-Controlled Trial

Objective. To evaluate the efficacy and safety of CHDI in the treatment of influenza infection. Method. A randomized double-blind, double dummy trial was conducted. Influenza patients with a positive influenza A rapid test diagnosis were randomized to receive CHDI or oseltamivir. Primary outcome was assessed by the median fever alleviation time and clearance time, and secondary outcome was total scores of influenza symptoms. Results. One hundred thirty-nine participants were screened and 34 had a RT-PCR laboratory confirmation of influenza virus infection. Fever alleviation time was 2.5 and 5 hours in CHDI and oseltamivir, respectively, and fever clearance time was 32.5 and 49 hours. The HR of fever alleviation and clearance time shows no significant difference between two groups. Total scores of influenza symptoms descended significantly in both groups after treatment and descended more in CHDI than oseltamivir on day 2. Similar to total symptoms severity score, fever severity score descend more significantly in CHDI than oseltamivir on day 2, and there were no differences on other symptoms. Conclusions. CHDI have a similar effect to oseltamivir in reducing the duration of influenza illness. CHDI was well tolerated, with no serious adverse events noted during the study period

High throughput detection of M6P/IGF2R intronic hypermethylation and LOH in ovarian cancer

Cell surface mannose 6-phosphate/insulin-like growth factor II receptors (M6P/IGF2R) bind and target exogenous insulin-like growth factor II (IGF2) to the prelysosomes where it is degraded. Loss of heterozygosity (LOH) for M6P/IGF2R is found in cancers, with mutational inactivation of the remaining allele. We exploited the normal allele-specific differential methylation of the M6P/IGF2R intron 2 CpG island to rapidly evaluate potential LOH in ovarian cancers, since every normal individual is informative. To this end, we developed a method for bisulfite modification of genomic DNA in 96-well format that allows for rapid methylation profiling. We identified ovarian cancers with M6P/IGF2R LOH, but unexpectedly also found frequent abnormal acquisition of methylation on the paternally inherited allele at intron 2. These results demonstrate the utility of our high-throughput method of bisulfite modification for analysis of large sample numbers. They further show that the methylation status of the intron 2 CpG island may be a useful indicator of LOH and biomarker of disease

Quantifying the contribution of 31 risk factors to the increasing prevalence of diabetes among US adults, 2005–2018

IntroductionNo study has comprehensively quantified the individual and collective contributions of various risk factors to the growing burden of diabetes in the United States.MethodsThis study aimed to determine the extent to which an increase in the prevalence of diabetes was related to concurrent changes in the distribution of diabetes-related risk factors among US adults (aged 20 years or above and not pregnant). Seven cycles of series of cross-sectional National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data between 2005–2006 and 2017–2018 were included. The exposures were survey cycles and seven domains of risk factors, including genetic, demographic, social determinants of health, lifestyle, obesity, biological, and psychosocial domains. Using Poisson regressions, percent reduction in the β coefficient (the logarithm used to calculate the prevalence ratio for prevalence of diabetes in 2017–2018 vs. 2005–2006) was computed to assess the individual and collective contribution of the 31 prespecified risk factors and seven domains to the growing burden of diabetes.ResultsOf the 16,091 participants included, the unadjusted prevalence of diabetes increased from 12.2% in 2005–2006 to 17.1% in 2017–2018 [prevalence ratio: 1.40 (95% CI, 1.14–1.72)]. Individually, genetic domain [17.3% (95% CI, 5.4%−40.8%)], demographic domain [41.5% (95% CI, 24.4%−76.8%)], obesity domain [35.3% (95% CI, 15.8%−70.2%)], biological domain [46.2% (95% CI, 21.6%−79.1%)], and psychosocial domain [21.3% (95% CI, 9.5%−40.1%)] were significantly associated with a different percent reduction in β. After adjusting for all seven domains, the percent reduction in β was 97.3% (95% CI, 62.7%−164.8%).ConclusionThe concurrently changing risk factors accounted for the increasing diabetes prevalence. However, the contribution of each risk factor domain varied. Findings may inform planning cost-effective and targeted public health programs for diabetes prevention

Immunization of Mice with Recombinant Protein CobB or AsnC Confers Protection against Brucella abortus Infection

Due to drawbacks of live attenuated vaccines, much more attention has been focused on screening of Brucella protective antigens as subunit vaccine candidates. Brucella is a facultative intracellular bacterium and cell mediated immunity plays essential roles for protection against Brucella infection. Identification of Brucella antigens that present T-cell epitopes to the host could enable development of such vaccines. In this study, 45 proven or putative pathogenesis-associated factors of Brucella were selected according to currently available data. After expressed and purified, 35 proteins were qualified for analysis of their abilities to stimulate T-cell responses in vitro. Then, an in vitro gamma interferon (IFN-γ) assay was used to identify potential T-cell antigens from B. abortus. In total, 7 individual proteins that stimulated strong IFN-γ responses in splenocytes from mice immunized with B. abortus live vaccine S19 were identified. The protective efficiencies of these 7 recombinant proteins were further evaluated. Mice given BAB1_1316 (CobB) or BAB1_1688 (AsnC) plus adjuvant could provide protection against virulent B. abortus infection, similarly with the known protective antigen Cu-Zn SOD and the license vaccine S19. In addition, CobB and AsnC could induce strong antibodies responses in BALB/c mice. Altogether, the present study showed that CobB or AsnC protein could be useful antigen candidates for the development of subunit vaccines against brucellosis with adequate immunogenicity and protection efficacy