2,098 research outputs found
Recent finding and new technologies in nephrolithiasis: a review of the recent literature
This review summarizes recent literature on advances regarding renal and ureteral
calculi, with particular focus in areas of recent advances in the overall field
of urolithiasis. Clinical management in everyday practice requires a complete
understanding of the issues regarding metabolic evaluation and subgrouping of
stone-forming patients, diagnostic procedures, effective treatment regime in
acute stone colic, medical expulsive therapy, and active stone removal. In this
review we focus on new perspectives in managing nephrolitihiasis and discuss
recentadvances, including medical expulsive therapy, new technologies, and
refinements of classical therapy such as shock wave lithotripsy, give a
fundamental modification of nephrolithiasis management. Overall, this field
appears to be the most promising, capable of new developments in ureterorenoscopy
and percutaneous approaches. Further improvements are expected from
robotic-assisted procedures, such as flexible robotics in ureterorenoscopy
A proof-of-concept 5G mobile gateway with eBPF
In this poster we propose the first proof-of-concept open-source implementation of a 5G Mobile Gateway based on eBPF/XDP and present benchmarks that compare its performance with alternative technologies.
We show how it outperforms other in-kernel solutions (e.g., OvS) and is comparable with DPDK-based platforms
Providing Telco-oriented Network Services with eBPF: The Case for a 5G Mobile Gateway
Although several technologies exist for high-speed data plane processing, such as DPDK, the above technologies require a rigid partitioning of the resources of the system, such as dedicated CPU cores and network interfaces. Unfortunately, this is not always possible when running at the edge of the network, in which a few servers are available in each cluster and a mixture of data and control plane services must coexist on the same hardware. In this respect, eBPF can become a better alternative thanks to its integration in the vanilla Linux kernel, which enables contemporary support for data and control plane services, hence enabling a more efficient usage of the (scarce) computing resources. This paper proposes the first proof-of-concept open-source implementation of a 5G Mobile Gateway based on eBPF/XDP, highlighting the possible challenges (e.g., to create traffic policers, as buffering is not available in eBPF) and the resulting architecture. The result is characterized in terms of performance and scalability and compared with alternative technologies, showing that it outperforms other in-kernel solutions (e.g., Open vSwitch) and is comparable with DPDK-based platforms
Comorbid depressive disorders in ADHD. the role of ADHD severity, subtypes and familial psychiatric disorders
ObjectiveaaTo evaluate the presence of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and Dysthymic Disorder (DD) in a sample of Italian children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and to explore specific features of comorbid depressive disorders in ADHD. MethodsaaThree hundred and sixty-six consecutive, drug-naĂŻve Caucasian Italian outpatients with ADHD were recruited and comorbid disorders were evaluated using DSM-IV-TR criteria. To evaluate ADHD severity, parents of all children filled out the ADHD Rating Scale. Thirty-seven children with comorbid MDD or DD were compared with 118 children with comorbid conduct disorder and 122 without comorbidity for age, sex, IQ level, family psychiatric history, and ADHD subtypes and severity. Resultsaa42 of the ADHD children displayed comorbid depressive disorders: 16 exhibited MDD, 21 DD, and 5 both MDD and DD. The frequency of hyperactive-impulsive subtypes was significantly lower in ADHD children with depressive disorders, than in those without any comorbidity. ADHD children with depressive disorders showed a higher number of familial psychiatric disorders and higher score in the Inattentive scale of the ADHD Rating Scale, than children without any comorbidity. No differences were found for age, sex and IQ level between the three groups. Conclusions: Consistent with previous studies in other countries, depressive disorders affect a significant proportion of ADHD children in Italy. Patient assessment and subsequent treatment should take into consideration the possible presence of this comorbidity, which could specifically increase the severity of ADHD attention problems
Government and private sector joint venturing in natural resource development: The Queensland plantation forestry joint venture scheme
This paper examines the role of joint ventures between government and resource owners to develop natural resources, with particular reference for forestry plantations. Findings of a survey of landholders participating or expressing interest in the Queensland Plantation Joint Venture Scheme are presented. Joint venture arrangements are found to overcome investment constraints, particularly with respect to capital, technical knowledge and resource security. Complementarities between resource supplies of joint venture partners lead to increased output relative to wholly owned investments. Participants expressed a high degree of satisfaction with this program, although making some suggestions for changes in arrangements. Plantation joint ventures can contribute towards timber self-sufficiency and to ecologically sustainable land-use. Opportunities exist for joint ventures between government and private firms with respect to other natural-resource-based enterprises where market failure is apparent
Improved Livelihoods from Grasslands; the Case of Napier Grass in Smallholder Dairy Farms in Kenya
In Kenya, smallholder farmers produce about 80% of the marketed milk. The farming systems vary from mixed farms with up to 10 ha of land and \u3c 10 dairy cows (Gitau et al., 1994; Anon., 1985), to intensive smallholder dairy producers in the high human population central Kenya region with 0.9 to 2 ha of land and 3-4 dairy cows (Staal et al., 2001a). Milk production depends heavily on the cultivation of forages, with Pennisetum purpureum (Napier grass) by far the most important. An estimated 350,000 of the 600,000 smallholder farms in Kenya grow and utilize P. purpureum on their farms.
There are various published data indicating the level of dependence on sown forages. In a survey of 21 smallholder dairy farmers in the highlands of Kenya, Romney et al. (2004) found that P. purpureum supplied approximately 40 and 60% of the feed offered to dairy cows in the dry and wet months respectively, with the remaining feed provided by concentrates, crop residues (mainly Zea mays (maize) stover) and other cut and carry fodder such as roadside grass. In the more intensive cut and carry systems of production practiced in central Kenya, McLeod et al. (2003) found that P. purpureum was grown by over 70% of the smallholder farmers in their study area. In farm level characterisation surveys of over 3300 households conducted between 1996 and 2000 in central Kenya, 62% kept livestock and more than 50% were growing P. purpureum. Farmers were also growing fodder legumes such as Sesbania grandiflora (Sesbania), Leucaena leucocephala (Leucaena), Calliandra calothyrsus (Callindra), Desmodium intortum/uncinatum, (Desmodium) and Medicago sativa (Lucerne), but the frequency did not exceed 7.5% (Staal et al., 2001b)
Performance Comparison of Technological Solutions for Spark Applications in AWS
Cloud computing is providing a pay-as-you-go in-frastructure for the deployment of complex applications, with auto-scaling support and the ability to manage and process huge amount of data. However, due to the underlying complexity of the cloud infrastructure, it is not trivial to evaluate the setup providing the best performance of such scenario. To this aim the present paper proposes a thorough performance evaluation of a real application in a Cloud platform, measuring the impact of several design choices and technological solution. The experimental results, based on a real application and on realistic data can provide a significant insight that can integrate the traditional approach of cloud performance evaluation based on synthetic benchmarks
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