A stochastic reward net-based assessment of reliability,availability and operational cost for a software-defined network infrastructure

The Journal of Supercomputing - The networking infrastructure of a software-defined network (SDN) requires further study to achieve continuity and high availability of data transactions for cloud...     

Face-Specific Data Augmentation for Unconstrained Face Recognition

International Journal of Computer Vision - We identify two issues as key to developing effective face recognition systems: maximizing the appearance variations of training images and minimizing...     

Correction to: A comprehensive evaluation of availability and operational cost for a virtualized server system using stochastic reward nets

The Journal of Supercomputing - The section “Acknowledgement” was incorrect in the original article. The correct section “Acknowledgement” is given below.     

An overview of recommender systems in the healthy food domain

Recently, food recommender systems have received increasing attention due to their relevance for healthy living. Most existing studies on the food domain focus on recommendations that suggest proper food items for individual users on the basis of considering their preferences or health problems. These systems also provide functionalities to keep track of nutritional consumption as well as to persuade users to change their eating behavior in positive ways. Also, group recommendation functionalities are very useful in the food domain, especially when a group of users wants to have a dinner together at home or have a birthday party in a restaurant. Such scenarios create many challenges for food recommender systems since the preferences of all group members have to be taken into account in an adequate fashion. In this paper, we present an overview of recommendation techniques for individuals and groups in the healthy food domain. In addition, we analyze the existing state-of-the-art in food recommender systems and discuss research challenges related to the development of future food recommendation technologies.     

Expanding the Spectrum of Antibiotics Capable of Killing Multidrug-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Infections from antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa are a serious threat because reduced antibiotic efficacy complicates treatment decisions and prolongs the disease state in many patients. To expand the arsenal of treatments against antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) pathogens, 600-Da branched polyethylenimine (BPEI) can overcome antibiotic resistance mechanisms and potentiate β-lactam antibiotics against Gram-positive bacteria. BPEI binds cell-wall teichoic acids and disables resistance factors from penicillin binding proteins PBP2a and PBP4. This study describes a new mechanism of action for BPEI potentiation of antibiotics generally regarded as agents effective against Gram-positive pathogens but not Gram-negative bacteria. 600-Da BPEI is able to reduce the barriers to drug influx and facilitate the uptake of a non-β-lactam co-drug, erythromycin, which targets the intracellular machinery. Also, BPEI can suppress production of the cytokine interleukin IL-8 by human epithelial keratinocytes. This enables BPEI to function as a broad-spectrum antibiotic potentiator, and expands the opportunities to improve drug design, antibiotic development, and therapeutic approaches against pathogenic bacteria, especially for wound care.     

Cache-aided full-duplex: delivery time analysis and optimization

Edge caching has received much attention as a promising technique to overcome the stringent latency and data-hungry challenges in the future generation wireless networks. Meanwhile, full-duplex (FD) transmission can potentially double the spectral efficiency by allowing a node to receive and transmit at the same frequency band simultaneously. In this paper, we investigate the delivery time performance of a cache-aided FD system, in which an edge node, operates in FD mode, serves users via wireless channels and is equipped with a cache memory. Firstly, we derive a closed-form expression for the average delivery time by taking into account the uncertainties of both backhaul and access wireless channels. The derived analysis allows the examination of the impact of key parameters, e.g., cache size and transmit power. Secondly, a power optimization problem is formulated to minimize the average delivery time. To deal with the non-convexity of the formulated problem, we propose an iterative optimization algorithm based on the bisection method. Finally, numerical results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. A significant delivery time reduction is achieved by the proposed optimization compared to the FD reference and half-duplex counterpart.

     

Performance Analysis of Full-Duplex Vehicle-to-Vehicle Relay System over Double-Rayleigh Fading Channels

Mobile Networks and Applications - In this paper, we study the performance of a full-duplex (FD) relay system in vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication. In this relay communication system, the...     

Universities through the eyes of bibliographic databases: a retroactive growth comparison of Google Scholar,Scopus and Web of Science

Scientometrics - The purpose of this study is to ascertain the suitability of GS’s url-based method as a valid approximation of universities’ academic output measures, taking into...     

pH-independent dissolution enhancement for multiple poorly water-soluble drugs by nano-sized solid dispersions based on hydrophobic–hydrophilic conjugates

The objective of this study was to achieve an optimal formulation of hydrophilic–hydrophobic conjugates for nano-sized solid dispersions (SDs) with enhanced dissolution of multiple drugs in different gastrointestinal (GI) tract environments. A new conjugate powder with an optimized process was used to fabricate SDs that contained three poorly water-soluble drugs that were also poorly soluble in different dissolution media. The self-assembled nanoparticle formation, drug crystallinity and SD molecular interactions were investigated by measuring the particle size during dissolution testing and physicochemical property analysis (powder X-ray diffraction and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy). Drug release studies indicated that SD containing conjugated powder significantly improved the dissolution rates of these poorly water-soluble drugs in the GI tract. In addition, particle size analysis showed nano-sized particles in the dissolution media in the early stage with a tendency to reduce smaller particles over time. Physicochemical characterizations demonstrated almost amorphous drug states and hydrogen bonding interactions between the drugs and conjugates in the SD. This study optimized a promising material for SD, and the material was shown to have a promising performance under various pH medium conditions with poorly water-soluble drugs.