Title of Dissertation: Supporting Distributed Multimedia Applications on ATM Networks

ATM offers a number of features, such as high-bandwidth, and provision for per-connection quality of service guarantees, making it particularly attractive to multimedia applications. Unfortunately, the bandwidth available at ATM's data-link layer is not visible to the applications due to operating system (OS) bottlenecks at the host-network interface. Similarly, the promise of per-connection service guarantees is still elusive due to the lack of appropriate traffic control mechanisms. In this dissertation, we investigate both of these problems, taking multimedia applications as examples. The OS bottlenecks are not limited to the network interfaces, but affect the performance of the entire I/O subsystem. We propose to alleviate OS's I/O bottleneck by according more autonomy to I/O devices and by using a connection oriented framework for I/O transfers. We present experimental results on a video conferencing testbed demonstrating the tremendous performance impact of the proposed I/O architecture on networked multimedia applications. To address the problem of quality of service support in ATM networks, we propose a simple cell scheduling mechanism, named carry-over round robin (CORR). Using analytical techniques, we analyze the delay performance of CORR scheduling. Besides providing guarantees on delay, CORR is also fair in distributing the excess bandwidth. We show that albeit its simplicity, CORR is very competitive with other more complex schemes both in terms of delay performance and fairness. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-95-88

Duplicate Question Retrieval and Confirmation Time Prediction in Software Communities

Community Question Answering (CQA) in different domains is growing at a large scale because of the availability of several platforms and huge shareable information among users. With the rapid growth of such online platforms, a massive amount of archived data makes it difficult for moderators to retrieve possible duplicates for a new question and identify and confirm existing question pairs as duplicates at the right time. This problem is even more critical in CQAs corresponding to large software systems like askubuntu where moderators need to be experts to comprehend something as a duplicate. Note that the prime challenge in such CQA platforms is that the moderators are themselves experts and are therefore usually extremely busy with their time being extraordinarily expensive. To facilitate the task of the moderators, in this work, we have tackled two significant issues for the askubuntu CQA platform: (1) retrieval of duplicate questions given a new question and (2) duplicate question confirmation time prediction. In the first task, we focus on retrieving duplicate questions from a question pool for a particular newly posted question. In the second task, we solve a regression problem to rank a pair of questions that could potentially take a long time to get confirmed as duplicates. For duplicate question retrieval, we propose a Siamese neural network based approach by exploiting both text and network-based features, which outperforms several state-of-the-art baseline techniques. Our method outperforms DupPredictor and DUPE by 5% and 7% respectively. For duplicate confirmation time prediction, we have used both the standard machine learning models and neural network along with the text and graph-based features. We obtain Spearman's rank correlation of 0.20 and 0.213 (statistically significant) for text and graph based features respectively.Comment: Full paper accepted at ASONAM 2023: The 2023 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Minin

Carry-Over Round Robin: A Simple Cell Scheduling Mechaniasm for ATM Networks

We propose a simple cell scheduling mechanism for ATM networks. The proposed mechanism, named Carry-Over Round Robin (CORR), is an extension of weighted round robin scheduling. We show that albeit its simplicity, CORR achieves tight bounds on end-to-end delay and near perfect fairness. Using a variety of video traffic traces we show that CORR often outperforms some of the more complex scheduling disciplines such as Packet-by-Packet Generalized Processor Sharing (PGPS). (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-96-45

Single cell-transcriptomic analysis informs the lncRNA landscape in metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer

Metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) is a lethal form of prostate cancer. Although long-noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been implicated in mCRPC, past studies have relied on bulk sequencing methods with low depth and lack of single-cell resolution. Hence, we performed a lncRNA-focused analysis of single-cell RNA-sequencing data (n = 14) from mCRPC biopsies followed by integration with bulk multi-omic datasets. This yielded 389 cell-enriched lncRNAs in prostate cancer cells and the tumor microenvironment (TME). These lncRNAs demonstrated enrichment with regulatory elements and exhibited alterations during prostate cancer progression. Prostate-lncRNAs were correlated with AR mutational status and response to treatment with enzalutamide, while TME-lncRNAs were associated with RB1 deletions and poor prognosis. Finally, lncRNAs identified between prostate adenocarcinomas and neuroendocrine tumors exhibited distinct expression and methylation profiles. Our findings demonstrate the ability of single-cell analysis to refine our understanding of lncRNAs in mCRPC and serve as a resource for future mechanistic studies

Malabaricone-A Induces A Redox Imbalance That Mediates Apoptosis in U937 Cell Line

BACKGROUND: The 'two-faced' character of reactive oxygen species (ROS) plays an important role in cancer biology by acting both as secondary messengers in intracellular signaling cascades and sustaining the oncogenic phenotype of cancer cells, while on the other hand, it triggers an oxidative assault that causes a redox imbalance translating into an apoptotic cell death. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Using a tetrazolium [{3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-5-(3-carboxymethoxyphenyl)-2-(4-sulfophenyl}-2H-tetrazolium] based cell viability assay, we evaluated the cytotoxicity of a plant derived diarylnonanoid, malabaricone-A on leukemic cell lines U937 and MOLT-3. This cytotoxicity hinged on its ability to cause a redox imbalance via its ability to increase ROS, measured by flow cytometry using 5-(and-6)-chloromethyl-2',7'-dichlorodihydrofluorescein diacetate and by decreasing glutathione peroxidase activity. This redox imbalance mediated apoptosis was evident by an increase in cytosolic [Ca(2+)], externalization of phosphatidyl serine as also depolarization of the mitochondrial membrane potential as measured by flow cytometry. There was concomitant peroxidation of cardiolipin, release of free cytochrome c to cytosol along with activation of caspases 9, 8 and 3. This led to cleavage of the DNA repair enzyme, poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase that caused DNA damage as proved by labeling with 4',6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI); furthermore, terminal deoxy ribonucleotide transferase catalysed incorporation of deoxy uridine triphosphate confirmed DNA nicking and was accompanied by arrest of cell cycle progression. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, compounds like MAL-A having pro-oxidant activity mediate their cytotoxicity in leukemic cells via induction of oxidative stress triggering a caspase dependent apoptosis

Supporting Distributed Multimedia Applications on ATM Networks

ATM offers a number of features, such as high-bandwidth, and provision for per-connection quality of service guarantees, making it particularly attractive to multimedia applications. Unfortunately, the bandwidth available at ATM's data-link layer is not visible to the applications due to operating system (OS) bottlenecks at the host-network interface. Similarly, the promise of per-connection service guarantees is still elusive due to the lack of appropriate traffic control mechanisms. In this dissertation, we investigate both of these problems, taking multimedia applications as examples. The OS bottlenecks are not limited to the network interfaces, but affect the performance of the entire I/O subsystem. We propose to alleviate OS's I/O bottleneck by according more autonomy to I/O devices and by using a connection oriented framework for I/O transfers. We present experimental results on a video conferencing testbed demonstrating the tremendous performance impact of the proposed I/O architecture on networked multimedia applications. To address the problem of quality of service support in ATM networks, we propose a simple cell scheduling mechanism, named carry-over round robin (CORR). Using analytical techniques, we analyze the delay performance of CORR scheduling. Besides providing guarantees on delay, CORR is also fair in distributing the excess bandwidth. We show that albeit its simplicity, CORR is very competitive with other more complex schemes both in terms of delay performance and fairness

Design and Implementation of a QoS Capable Switch-Router

Rapid expansion has strained the capabilities of the Internet infrastructure. Emerging audio and video applications place further demands on already overloaded network elements, especially the routers. An important challenge for the future growth of the Internet is to design routers that can forward the exponentially increasing volume of traffic, and at the same time provide the service differentiation needed by new applications. In this paper, we describe the architecture, implementation, and initial experiences with a system designed to meet this challenge. This system, which we call a QoS capable Switch-Router (QSR), combines the salient features of switching and routing technologies to provide high throughput and support the different classes of service being defined by the IETF. It consists of a core (ATM) switch fabric connecting intelligent adapters, each capable of both routing and switching packets. A control engine is responsible for routing, RSVP signalling, and resource man..

Multi-rate Traffic Shaping and End-to-End Performance Guarantees in ATM

This paper proposes a traffic control scheme for integrated services ATM networks. The control strategy comprises of two components: a shaping mechanism at the network entry point and a frame based service discipline at the switches. The shaper enforces short term peak rate and a mean rate over a longer interval. A dual rate shaper handles bursty traffic better than a shaper that enforces a single rate constraint. The multiplexing scheme guarantees a minimum bandwidth to all connections, negotiated at the time of connection set up. A connection may use more than the allocated minimum, up to a connection specific maximum, if slack bandwidth is available. By imposing an upper bound on the allocated bandwidth we secure a better handle on the delay jitter. Unlike most frame based schemes, our scheme allows allocation of bandwidth at any arbitrary granularity. This added flexibility is particularly useful in supporting diverse throughput requirements of a wide mix of applications. We derive..

Transport Layer Security: How much does it really cost?

The last couple of years has seen a growing momentum towards using the Internet for conducting business. One of the key enablers for business applications is the ability to setup secure channels across the internet. The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol provides this capability and it is the most widely used transport layer security protocol. In this paper we investigate the performance of SSL both from a latency as well as a throughput point of view. Since SSL is primarily used to secure web transactions, we use the SPECWeb96 benchmark suitably modified for use with the SSL protocol. We benchmark two of the more more popular webservers that are in use today and find that they are a couple of orders of magnitude slower when it comes to serving secure web pages. We investigate the reason for this deficiency by instrumenting the SSL protocol stack with a detailed profiling of the protocol processing components. Based on our findings we suggest two modifications to the protocol that red..