A Dynamic Resource Manager with Effective Resource Isolation Based on Workload Types in Virtualized Cloud Computing Environments

To use computing resources for processing parallel algorithms on demand, cloud computing has been widely used since it is able to scale in response to load increases and decreases. Typically, cloud computing providers offer virtual machines to cloud users with static configurations, and these configurations are not changed until virtual machines are shutting down. To accelerate parallel processing computations in cloud computing environments, we design and implement a dynamic resource manager by isolating resources based on workload types. To avoid unnecessary context switching and increase CPUs affinity, our dynamic resource manager determines whether vCPU to physical CPU core pinning is required. If so, the VM’s vCPUs are pinned by our dynamic resource manager, which can guarantee the resource and performance isolation. With our proposed resource manager for virtual machines, we can achieve a performance boost and load balancing at the same time. Performance results show that our proposed method outperforms the default scheduler of Xen about 36.2% by reducing the number of context switching for VMs

Traumatic Brain Injury and the Neuronal Microenvironment: A Potential Role for Neuropathological Mechanotransduction

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is linked to several pathologies for which there is a lack of understanding of disease mechanisms and therapeutic strategies. To elucidate injury mechanisms, it is important to consider how physical forces are transmitted and transduced across all spatial scales of the brain. Although the mechanical response of the brain is typically characterized by its material properties and biological structure, cellular mechanotransduction mechanisms also exist. Such mechanisms can affect physiological processes by responding to exogenous mechanical forces directed through sub-cellular components, such as extracellular matrix and cell adhesion molecules, to mechanosensitive intracellular structures that regulate mechanochemical signaling pathways. We suggest that cellular mechanotransduction may be an important mechanism underlying the initiation of cell and sub-cellular injuries ultimately responsible for the diffuse pathological damage and clinical symptoms observed in TBI, thereby providing potential therapeutic opportunities not previously explored in TBI

Primary ovary transitional cell carcinoma after renal transplantation

AbstractTransitional cell carcinoma (TCC) of the urinary tract is the most frequent malignancy following renal transplantation reported in Taiwan. A 67-year-old female underwent bilateral nephrouretectomy and bladder cuff excision because of bilateral hydronephrosis 5 years after cadaveric renal transplantation. The pathologic report was only atrophied kidney. Pelvic sonography and abdominal computed tomography showed a pelvic mass 8 years after transplantation. After gynecological surgery, the pathologic report of the left ovarian tumor was TCC, high grade, stage IIA. The patient then underwent four cycles of postoperative chemotherapy with carboplatin and gemcitabine. TCC of the ovary is a rare, recently recognized subtype of ovarian surface epithelial cancer. We present the first case of primary ovarian TCC following renal transplant

Uncovering the Role of Bicarbonate in Calcium Carbonate Formation at Near-Neutral pH

Mechanistic pathways relevant to mineralization are not well-understood fundamentally, let alone in the context of their biological and geological environments. Through quantitative analysis of ion association at near-neutral pH, we identify the involvement of HCO3− ions in CaCO3 nucleation. Incorporation of HCO3− ions into the structure of amorphous intermediates is corroborated by solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, complemented by quantum mechanical calculations and molecular dynamics simulations. We identify the roles of HCO3− ions as being through (i) competition for ion association during the formation of ion pairs and ion clusters prior to nucleation and (ii) incorporation as a significant structural component of amorphous mineral particles. The roles of HCO3− ions as active soluble species and structural constituents in CaCO3 formation are of fundamental importance and provide a basis for a better understanding of physiological and geological mineralization. © 2021 The Authors. Angewandte Chemie International Edition published by Wiley-VCH Gmb

Clinicopathological Risk Factors and Biochemical Predictors of Safe Discharge after Total Thyroidectomy and Central Compartment Node Dissection for Thyroid Cancer: A Prospective Study

To determine the clinicopathological risk factors and reliable biochemical predictors of the development of hypocalcemic symptoms after total thyroidectomy on the basis of serum calcium and intact parathyroid hormone (PTH) levels measured 1 hour after surgery, a prospective study was performed on 817 patients who underwent a total thyroidectomy with central compartment node dissection (CCND) due to well-differentiated thyroid cancer. We evaluated the correlations between hypocalcemic symptom development and clinicopathological factors. And the predictability for hypocalcemic symptom development of intact PTH cut-offs (<10 pg/mL and <20 pg/mL, resp.) according to serum calcium level subgroup was analyzed. Female gender (P<0.001) was the only independent risk factor for hypocalcemic symptom development in multivariate regression analysis. The negative predictive value (NPV) of intact PTH, signifying nondevelopment of hypocalcemic symptoms, was higher than the positive predictive value (PPV) which signified development of hypocalcemic symptoms. In addition, when we applied the different adoption of the intact PTH cut-off according to serum calcium level, we could obtain more increased NPVs. A female gender and the application of more specific cut-offs for intact PTH according to the serum calcium levels measured 1 hour after surgery may help the patients to be more safely discharged

Weighted Module Linear Regression Classifications for Partially-Occluded Face Recognition

Face images with partially-occluded areas create huge deteriorated problems for face recognition systems. Linear regression classification (LRC) is a simple and powerful approach for face recognition, of course, it cannot perform well under occlusion situations as well. By segmenting the face image into small subfaces, called modules, the LRC system could achieve some improvements by selecting the best non-occluded module for face classification. However, the recognition performance will be deteriorated due to the usage of the module, a small portion of the face image. We could further enhance the performance if we can properly identify the occluded modules and utilize all the non-occluded modules as many as possible. In this chapter, we first analyze the texture histogram (TH) of the module and then use the HT difference to measure its occlusion tendency. Thus, based on TH difference, we suggest a general concept of the weighted module face recognition to solve the occlusion problem. Thus, the weighted module linear regression classification method, called WMLRC-TH, is proposed for partially-occluded fact recognition. To evaluate the performances, the proposed WMLRC-TH method, which is tested on AR and FRGC2.0 face databases with several synthesized occlusions, is compared to the well-known face recognition methods and other robust face recognition methods. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves the best performance for recognize occluded faces. Due to its simplicity in both training and testing phases, a face recognition system based on the WMLRC-TH method is realized on Android phones for fast recognition of occluded faces

Down-regulation of IFN-gamma-producing CD56+ T cells after combined low-dose cyclosporine/prednisone treatment in patients with Behcet's uveitis

PURPOSE: To investigate the effects of combined low-dose cyclosporine and prednisone (Cs/Pd) treatment on circulating CD56+ T cells in patients with Behcet's uveitis. METHODS: Ten patients with Behcet's uveitis and 10 healthy control subjects were prospectively recruited. The patients were treated with Cs/Pd for 2 months. Phenotypic and functional changes in circulating CD56+ T cells were assayed before and after treatment. CD56+ T-cell subsets were determined by flow cytometric analysis with monoclonal antibodies for CD3, CD4, CD8, CD56, pan gammadelta TCR, and Valpha24. The absolute numbers of cells in the lymphocyte subsets were calculated. Cytokine (IFN-gamma, IL-4, and IL-10) expressions were measured by ELISA and by intracellular cytokine staining. RESULTS: The proportions of CD56+ T cells, specifically CD8highCD56+ and CD56+gammadelta T-cell subsets, were significantly higher in active Behcet's uveitis but normalized after treatment, whereas the total T-lymphocyte count and the absolute numbers of CD56- T cells were unaffected by treatment. The levels of IFN-gamma and IL-4 were elevated in aqueous humor and serum in Behcet's uveitis (P < 0.001), whereas IL-10 was not detected. After treatment, serum IL-4 levels markedly increased (P < 0.001), and IFN-gamma production by circulating CD56+ T cells was then suppressed. IL-4 and -10 production by CD56+ T cells was increased by treatment, but in contrast, minimal changes were found in CD56- T cells. CONCLUSIONS: The results imply that Cs/Pd treatment for Behcet's uveitis selectively affects the population of and the cytokine expression in CD56+ T cells, but without significant changes in CD56- T cells, and that IFN-gamma-producing CD56+ T cells are the central pathogenic immune cells in Behcet's uveitis

Protein Profiling of Human Nonpigmented Ciliary Epithelium Cell Secretome: The Differentiation Factors Characterization for Retinal Ganglion Cell line

The purpose of this paper was to characterize proteins secreted from the human nonpigmented ciliary epithelial (HNPE) cells, which have differentiated a rat retinal ganglion cell line, RGC-5. Undifferentiated RGC-5 cells have been shown to express several marker proteins characteristic of retinal ganglion cells. However, RGC-5 cells do not respond to N-methyl-D aspartate (NMDA), or glutamate. HNPE cells have been shown to secrete numbers of neuropeptides or neuroproteins also found in the aqueous humor, many of which have the ability to influence the activity of neuronal cells. This paper details the profile of HNPE cell-secreted proteins by proteomic approaches. The experimental results revealed the identification of 132 unique proteins from the HNPE cell-conditioned SF-medium. The biological functions of a portion of these identified proteins are involved in cell differentiation. We hypothesized that a differentiation system of HNPE cell-conditioned SF-medium with RGC-5 cells can induce a differentiated phenotype in RGC-5 cells, with functional characteristics that more closely resemble primary cultures of rat retinal ganglion cells. These proteins may replace harsh chemicals, which are currently used to induce cell differentiation

Association study of polymorphisms in synaptic vesicle-associated genes, SYN2 and CPLX2, with schizophrenia

BACKGROUND: The occurrence of aberrant functional connectivity in the neuronal circuit is one of the integrative theories of the etiology of schizophrenia. Previous studies have reported that the protein and mRNA levels of the synapsin 2 (SYN2) and complexin 2 (CPLX2) genes were decreased in patients with schizophrenia. Synapsin 2 and complexin 2 are involved in synaptogenesis and the modulation of neurotransmitter release. This report presents a study of the association of polymorphisms of SYN2 and CPLX2 with schizophrenia in the Korean population. METHODS: Six single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and one 5-bp insertion/deletion in SYN2 and five SNPs in CPLX2 were genotyped in 154 Korean patients with schizophrenia and 133 control patients using direct sequencing or restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis. An intermarker linkage disequilibrium map was constructed for each gene. RESULTS: Although there was no significant difference in the genotypic distributions and allelic frequencies of either SYN2 or CPLX2 polymorphisms between the schizophrenia and control groups, the two-way haplotype analyses revealed significant associations with the disease (P < 0.05 after Bonferroni correction). The three-way haplotype analyses also revealed a significant association of SYN2 with schizophrenia (P < 0.001 after Bonferroni correction). CONCLUSION: These results suggest that both SYN2 and CPLX2 may confer susceptibility to schizophrenia in the Korean population