A Partitioning Methodology for Accelerating Applications in Hybrid Reconfigurable Platforms *

Abstrac

A rapid and systematic review of the effectiveness of temozolomide for the treatment of recurrent malignant glioma

A rapid and systematic review of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of temozolomide in the treatment of recurrent malignant glioma was commissioned by the NHS HTA Programme on behalf of NICE. The full report has been published elsewhere. This paper summarizes the results for the effectiveness of temozolomide in people with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme and anaplastic astrocytoma. The review was conducted using standard systematic review methodology involving a systematic literature search, quality assessment of included studies with systematic data extraction and data synthesis. One randomized controlled trial and four uncontrolled studies were identified for inclusion. The key results were that temozolomide may increase progression-free survival but has no significant impact on overall length of survival. The main effect from temozolomide may have been in those patients who had not received any prior chemotherapy regimens, however further randomized controlled trials are required to confirm this suggestion. Temozolomide appears to produce few serious adverse effects and may also have a positive impact on health-related quality of life. Overall the evidence-base is weak and few strong conclusions can be drawn regarding the effectiveness of temozolomide. Large, well-designed randomized controlled trails conducted in a wider patient population are needed

Developing win-win solutions for virtual placements in informatics: The VALS case

The placements and internships are one of the main paths to get professional background and some skills for students, especially in areas like informatics and computer sciences. The European-funded VALS project tries to promote the virtual placements and establish a new initiative in virtual placements called Semester of Code. This initiative binds higher education institutions, students, companies, foundations and Open Source projects in order to create virtual placements and solve needs that they have in relation with those placements. This paper introduces some projects about virtual placements that other institutions and companies perform, also the paper describes the needs, opinions and considerations about the virtual placements for each stakeholder involved in the placements, to finally explain the design decisions and actions behind the Semester of Code, and how they are intended to get better virtual placements and successful results

Approximation via Correlation Decay when Strong Spatial Mixing Fails

Approximate counting via correlation decay is the core algorithmic technique used in the sharp delineation of the computational phase transition that arises in the approximation of the partition function of antiferromagnetic 2-spin models. Previous analyses of correlation-decay algorithms implicitly depended on the occurrence of strong spatial mixing. This, roughly, means that one uses worst-case analysis of the recursive procedure that creates the subinstances. In this paper, we develop a new analysis method that is more refined than the worst-case analysis. We take the shape of instances in the computation tree into consideration and we amortize against certain “bad” instances that are created as the recursion proceeds. This enables us to show correlation decay and to obtain a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme (FPTAS) even when strong spatial mixing fails. We apply our technique to the problem of approximately counting independent sets in hypergraphs with degree upper bound $\Delta$ and with a lower bound $k$ on the arity of hyperedges. Liu and Lin gave an FPTAS for $k\geq2$ and $\Delta\leq5$ (lack of strong spatial mixing was the obstacle preventing this algorithm from being generalized to $\Delta=6$). Our technique gives a tight result for $\Delta=6$, showing that there is an FPTAS for $k\geq3$ and $\Delta\leq6$. The best previously known approximation scheme for $\Delta=6$ is the Markov-chain simulation based fully polynomial-time randomized approximation scheme (FPRAS) of Bordewich, Dyer, and Karpinski, which only works for $k\geq8$. Our technique also applies for larger values of $k$, giving an FPTAS for $k\geq\Delta$. This bound is not substantially stronger than existing randomized results in the literature. Nevertheless, it gives the first deterministic approximation scheme in this regime. Moreover, unlike existing results, it leads to an FPTAS for counting dominating sets in regular graphs with sufficiently large degree. We further demonstrate that in the hypergraph independent set model, approximating the partition function is NP-hard even within the uniqueness regime. Also, approximately counting dominating sets of bounded-degree graphs (without the regularity restriction) is NP-hard

Contributing to the European Language Grid as a provider

The ELG platform enables producers of language resources and language technology tools and services to upload, describe, share, and distribute their services and products as well as to describe their companies, academic organisations and projects. This chapter presents the functionalities offered through web-based user interfaces for describing LT resources or related entities with metadata and for managing their publication. It gives a detailed description of the options that providers of LT tools can exploit to integrate them into ELG as ready-to-deploy services and the tools that ELG offers in their support during the preparation, upload and integration phases. The tools and packaging recommendations for resources to be uploaded in ELG are also presented. The chapter concludes with a discussion of functionalities offered to providers by ELG and other related platforms

Language technology tools and services

At the time of writing, the European Language Grid includes more than 800 LT services of varied types, including machine translation (MT), automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech synthesis (TTS), and text analysis ranging from simple tokenisers and part-of-speech taggers through to complete named entity recognition and sentiment analysis systems. This chapter gives a high-level summary of the development of the ELG service catalogue over time and digs deeper to discuss the process of service integration by looking at a few example services

Surgical Pulmonary Embolectomy Outcomes for Acute Pulmonary Embolism

Introduction: Acute pulmonary embolism (PE) is associated with significant mortality. Surgical embolectomy is a viable treatment option; however, it remains controversial due to variable outcomes. This review investigates patient outcomes following surgical embolectomy for acute PE. Methods: Electronic search was performed to identify articles reporting surgical embolectomy for treatment of PE. 32 studies were included comprising 936 patients. Demographic, perioperative, and outcome data were extracted and pooled for systematic review. Results: Mean patient age was 56.3 [95% CI 52.5; 60.1] years and 50% [46; 55] were male. 82% had right ventricular dysfunction [62; 93], 80% [67; 89] had unstable hemodynamics, and 9% [5; 16] experienced cardiac arrest. Massive PE and submassive PE were present in 83% of patients [43; 97] and 13% [2; 56], respectively. Before embolectomy, 33% of patients [14; 60] underwent systemic thrombolysis and 14% [8; 24] catheter embolectomy. Preoperatively, 47% of patients were ventilated [26; 70] and 36% had percutaneous cardiopulmonary support [11; 71]. Mean operative time and mean cardiopulmonary bypass time were 170 [101; 239] and 56 [42; 70] minutes, respectively. Intraoperative mortality was 4% [2; 8]. Mean hospital and ICU stay were 10 [6; 14] and 2 [1; 3] days, respectively. Mean postoperative systolic pulmonary artery pressure (sPAP) was significantly decreased from preoperative (sPAP 57.8 mmHg [53; 62.7]) to postoperative period (sPAP 31.3 mmHg [24.9; 37.8]), p \u3c0.01). In-hospital mortality was 16% [12; 21]. Overall survival at five years was 73% [64; 81]. Discussion: Surgical embolectomy is an acceptable treatment option with favorable outcomes