Gossip Codes for Fingerprinting: Construction, Erasure Analysis and Pirate Tracing

This work presents two new construction techniques for q-ary Gossip codes from tdesigns and Traceability schemes. These Gossip codes achieve the shortest code length specified in terms of code parameters and can withstand erasures in digital fingerprinting applications. This work presents the construction of embedded Gossip codes for extending an existing Gossip code into a bigger code. It discusses the construction of concatenated codes and realisation of erasure model through concatenated codes.Comment: 28 page

Diarrhea, CD4 counts and enteric infections in a hospital - based cohort of HIV-infected patients around Varanasi, India

Background: As most of the studies in HIV patients with diarrhea were cross sectional, focusing on the etiological agents, we are reporting data on the rate of diarrhea, associations between diarrhea and CD4 counts and variation in frequency of identifying a pathogen with consistency of diarrhea and duration in a prospective hospital based study. Methods: Stool specimens were obtained between Jan 2001 and April 2003 from HIV infected adults with diarrhea presenting to Infectious Disease clinic, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. In all patients with diarrhea, specimens were examined by microscopy and cultures to identify pathogens. Results: During the study, 630 person years of observations with diarrhea were analyzed. 140 stool samples were collected representing 43% of episodes of reported diarrhea. Positivity of finding a pathogen from watery stools and formed stools were 40%&24% respectively (p < 0.01) probably due to associated inflammation is more in watery diarrhea. Patients having chronic diarrhea are 2.25 (95%CI 1.52-2.81) times at more risk of developing other opportunistic infections compared to those who don't have. However this is not true with the acute diarrhea where risk of harboring the opportunistic infections remain same. Conclusion: Diarrhea was most strongly associated with low CD4 counts. Over two-thirds of diarrheal episodes were undiagnosed, suggesting that unidentified agents or primary HIV enteropathy are important causes of diarrhea in this population. There is a strong negative association between duration of diarrhea and CD4 levels

Isolated Ocular Manifestation of Relapsed Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia Presenting as Myeloid Blast Crisis in a Patient on Imatinib Therapy: A Case Report and Review of the Literature

Blast phase in chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) has rarely been reported to involve extramedullary sites like skin, lymph nodes, and central nervous system. Clinical history, characteristic hematologic findings (elevated leukocyte counts, myelocytic predominance, and basophilia), and Philadelphia chromosome are of high diagnostic significance especially in isolated extramedullary presentations. We describe a unique case of CML relapse with blast phase involving the eye. A 66-year-old man with a known diagnosis of CML on imatinib and in molecular remission for 3 years presented with a painful blind eye. Histologic examination revealed diffuse involvement of choroid, iris, vitreous humor, and the optic nerve by blast cells. The blasts expressed CD34, aberrant TdT, and a myeloid phenotype (CD13, CD33, and CD117). Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) of vitreous fluid detected BCR-ABL1 gene rearrangement. Additionally, trisomy 8 and gains of 9 and 22 were seen which were not present in the initial diagnostic marrow study 3 years ago. At relapse, the bone marrow, peripheral blood, and the cerebrospinal fluid were not involved by CML. Patient received induction chemotherapy and single dose prophylactic intrathecal methotrexate and was maintained on antityrosine kinase therapy and eventually underwent allogenic stem cell transplantation

Magnetically Targeted Endothelial Cell Localization in Stented Vessels

ObjectivesA novel method to magnetically localize endothelial cells at the site of a stented vessel wall was developed. The application of this strategy in a large animal model is described.BackgroundLocal delivery of blood-derived endothelial cells has been shown to facilitate vascular healing in animal models. Therapeutic utilization has been limited by an inability to retain cells in the presence of blood flow. We hypothesized that a magnetized stent would facilitate local retention of superparamagnetically labeled cells.MethodsCultured porcine endothelial cells were labeled with endocytosed superparamagnetic iron oxide microspheres. A 500:1 microsphere-to-cell ratio was selected for in vivo experiments based on bromo-deoxyuridine incorporation and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase mediated dUTP nick end labeling assays. Stents were magnetized and implanted in porcine coronary and femoral arteries using standard interventional equipment. Labeled endothelial cells were delivered locally during transient occlusion of blood flow.ResultsThe delivered cells were found attached to the stent struts and were also distributed within the adjacent denuded vessel wall at 24 h.ConclusionsMagnetic forces can be used to rapidly place endothelial cells at the site of a magnetized intravascular stent. The delivered cells are retained in the presence of blood flow and also spread to the adjacent injured vessel wall. Potential applications include delivering a cell-based therapeutic effect to the local vessel wall as well as downstream tissue

Carbon nanotubes for stabilization of nanostructured lipid particles

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are increasingly studied for innovative biotechnological applications particularly where they are combined with essential biological materials like lipids. Lipids have been used earlier for enhancing the dispersibility of CNTs in aqueous solutions. Here we report a novel application of CNTs for stabilization of internally self-assembled nanostructured lipid particles of 2–5 μm size. Single-walled (pristine) as well as –OH and –COOH functionalized multi-walled CNTs were employed to produce nanostructured emulsions which stayed stable for months and could be re-dispersed after complete dehydration. Concentrations of CNTs employed for stabilization were very low; moreover CNTs were well-decorated with lipid molecules. These features contribute towards reducing their toxicity and improving biocompatibility for biomedical and pharmaceutical applications. Our approach paves the way for future development of combination therapies employing both CNTs and nanostructured lipid self-assembly together as carriers of different drugs

Cloud-scale VM Deflation for Running Interactive Applications On Transient Servers

Transient computing has become popular in public cloud environments for running delay-insensitive batch and data processing applications at low cost. Since transient cloud servers can be revoked at any time by the cloud provider, they are considered unsuitable for running interactive application such as web services. In this paper, we present VM deflation as an alternative mechanism to server preemption for reclaiming resources from transient cloud servers under resource pressure. Using real traces from top-tier cloud providers, we show the feasibility of using VM deflation as a resource reclamation mechanism for interactive applications in public clouds. We show how current hypervisor mechanisms can be used to implement VM deflation and present cluster deflation policies for resource management of transient and on-demand cloud VMs. Experimental evaluation of our deflation system on a Linux cluster shows that microservice-based applications can be deflated by up to 50\% with negligible performance overhead. Our cluster-level deflation policies allow overcommitment levels as high as 50\%, with less than a 1\% decrease in application throughput, and can enable cloud platforms to increase revenue by 30\%.Comment: To appear at ACM HPDC 202

Quantifying measures to limit wind driven resuspension of sediments for improvement of the ecological quality in some shallow Dutch lakes

Although phosphorus loadings are considered the main pressure for most shallow lakes, wind-driven resuspension can cause additional problems for these aquatic ecosystems. We quantified the potential effectiveness of measures to reduce the contribution of resuspended sediments, resulting from wind action, to the overall light attenuation for three comparable shallow peat lakes with poor ecological status in the Netherlands: Loosdrecht, Nieuwkoop, and Reeuwijk (1.8–2.7 m depth, 1.6–2.5 km fetch). These measures are: 1. wave reducing barriers, 2. water level fluctuations, 3. capping of the sediment with sand, and 4. combinations of above. Critical shear stress of the sediments for resuspension (Vcrit), size distribution, and optical properties of the suspended material were quantified in the field (June 2009) and laboratory. Water quality monitoring data (2002–2009) showed that light attenuation by organic suspended matter in all lakes is high. Spatial modeling of the impact of these measures showed that in Lake Loosdrecht limiting wave action can have significant effects (reductions from 6% exceedance to 2% exceedance of Vcrit), whereas in Lake Nieuwkoop and Lake Reeuwijk this is less effective. The depth distribution and shape of Lake Nieuwkoop and Lake Reeuwijk limit the role of wind-driven resuspension in the total suspended matter concentration. Although the lakes are similar in general appearance (origin, size, and depth range) measures suitable to improve their ecological status differ. This calls for care when defining the programme of measures to improve the ecological status of a specific lake based on experience from other lakes.