Unveiling the underlying relationships over a network for monitoring purposes

Nowadays traffic monitoring and analysis tools provide poor information about traffic volume without giving any clear view of what the hidden rules and relationships that govern these flows are. Since the majority of flows is generated by services (web browsing, email, p2p) and most of these applications are dependent on many network assets (servers and databases) we should discover the underlying relationships of every application. We present a technique that discovers the hidden relationships among components of a network that consist of parts of specific applications. From time information and flow attributes, such as IP addresses and service ports, our method using a novel hybrid genetic algorithm produces a small set of fuzzy rules that can reveal the underlying relationships over a network without any guidance. These dependencies build a service graph which can become a useful tool for fault localization, monitoring service performance, designing changes and anomaly detection. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Green Catalysis with Alternative Feedstocks

The use of renewable feedstocks, derived from biomass, for the chemical industry is discussed. The modern chemical industry is based around platform chemicals, e.g. ethene, propene, benzene and xylenes, which are readily derived from oil, and using these intermediates a broad range of finished products can be derived. While it is feasible that biomass can be converted to syngas and hence to existing key platform chemicals, this loses all of the chemical complexity that is inherent in bio-derived molecules. In this paper some of the options are considered and, in particular, the oxidation of glucose and glycerol using gold nanoparticles supported on carbon is described. We also contrast the oxidation of glycerol using supported gold and gold–palladium alloys prepared using an impregnation technique, since the gold–palladium alloys have been shown to be highly effective for the oxidation of alcohols and the synthesis of hydrogen peroxide.     

Anodic stripping voltametric cell for determination of copper and lead in atmospheric dust

Studies of air pollution by metals contained in dust particules usually require mineralization of a dust-collecting filter. This treatment introduces impurities into the sample. To avoid such contamination, an anodic stripping cell was constructed requiring no preliminary treatment of the sample filter. The cell uses a three-electrode amperometric system in differential pulse anodic stripping mode (DPAS). Solubilization of the metals from dust by a complexing agent, instead of the strong acid normally encountered in other methods, allows selective determination of metals according to their chemical form. With this cell, minimal handling of the collection filter and a large area mercury-coated vitreous carbon electrode located close to the sample filter (2 mm) lead to limits of detection as low as 0.15 μg of lead and 10 ng of copper. Precision is 2% for lead determination and 4% for copper determination (RSD).     

Effect of the degree of crosslinking on penetrant transport in polystyrene

The effect of the degree of crosslinking of glassy polymers on the transport mechanism of penetrants was investigated using a series of divinyl benzene (DVB)-crosslinked polystyrenes of nominal crosslinking ratio X from 0.001 38 to 0.060 mol DVB/mol styrene. The number average molecular weight between crosslinks, $\text{M}\text{?}{}_{\mathrm{<mtext>c</mtext>}}$, was determined from equilibrium swelling experiments in cyclohexane. Dynamic swelling experiments with cyclohexane at 30°C showed that the mechanism of penetrant transport was anomalous. An overshoot in the penetrant uptake was observed, characteristic of macromolecular relaxations and of changing solubility of the cyclohexane in the continuously swelling polystyrene. Photographs of various samples during the swelling process showed that solvent crazing occurred predominantly in loosely crosslinked samples.     

Dynamic and equilibrium swelling of DVB-crosslinked polystyrene particles

The dynamic and equilibrium swelling behavior of polystyrene microparticles crosslinked with divinyl benzene was investigated in methyl ethyl ketone and cyclohexane. The dynamic studies gave new information about the mechanism of penetrant transport in this polymer. The equilibrium studies were used to determine important parameters of the crosslinked structure of these systems, including the average molecular weight between crosslinks, M?_c     

Light scattering by arbitrarily oriented rotationally symmetric particles

We use the T-matrix approach and the analytical orientation-averaging technique to formulate the problem of light scattering by an ensemble of rotationally symmetric particles in arbitrary orientation. The mathematical formulation yields analytical expressions for the elements of the ensemble-averaged scattering matrix that involve no more than four nested summations. An expansion into generalized spherical functions is used in the particular case where the scatterers are partially aligned along the direction of incidence. A computer code that implements the analytical expressions derived is publicly available on the World Wide Web at http://irctr.et.tudelft.nl/ -Skaropoulos/T-matrix.htm.     

Behavioral-Level Performance and Power Exploration of Data-Intensive Applications Mapped on Programmable Processors

The continuous increase of the computational power of programmable processors has established them as an attractive design alternative, for implementation of the most computationally intensive applications, like video compression. To enforce this trend, designers implementing applications on programmable platforms have to be provided with reliable and in-depth data and instruction analysis that will allow for the early selection of the most appropriate application for a given set of specifications. To address this need, we introduce a new methodology for early and accurate estimation of the number of instructions required for the execution of an application, together with the number of data memory transfers on a programmable processor. The high-level estimation is achieved by a series of mathematical formulas; these describe not only the arithmetic operations of an application, but also its control and addressing operations, if it is executed on a programmable core. The comparative study, which is done using three popular processors (ARM, MIPS, and Pentium), shows the high efficiency and accuracy of the methodology proposed, in terms of the number of executed (micro-)instructions (i.e. performance) and the number of data memory transfers (i.e. memory power consumption). Using the proposed methodology we estimated an average deviation of 23% in our estimated figures compared with the measurements taken from the real execution on the CPUs. This work was supported by the project PENED ’99 ED501 funded by GSRT of the Greek Ministry of Development, and the project PRENED ’99 KE 874 funded by the Research Committee of the Democritus University of Thrace. This work was partially sponsored by a scholarship from the Public Benefit Foundation of Alexander S. Onassis (Minas Dasygenis). Nikolaos Kroupis was born in Trikala in 1976. He receiver the engineering degree and Ms.C. degree in Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from Democritous University of Thrace, Greece, in 2000 and 2002, respectively. Since 2002 he has been a Ph.D. student at the Laboratory of Electrical and Electronic Materials Technology. His research interests are in software/hardware co-design of embedded system for signal processing applications. Nikos D. Zervas received a Diploma in Electrical & Computer Engineering from University of Patras, Greece in 1997. He received the Ph.D. degree in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the same University in 2004. His research interests are in the area of high-level, power optimization techniques and methodologies for multimedia and telecommunication applications. He has received an award from IEEE Computer Society in the context of Low-Power Design Contest of 2000 IEEE Computer Elements Mesa Workshop. Mr. Zervas is a member of the IEEE, ACM and of the Technical Chamber of Greece. Minas Dasygenis was born in Thessaloniki in 1976. He received his Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1999, from the Democritus University of Thrace, Greece, and for his diploma Thesis he was honored by The Technical Chamber of Greece and Ericsson Hellas. In 2005, he received his PhD Degree from the Democritus University of Thrace. His research interests include low-power VLSI design of arithmetic circuits, residue number system, embedded architectures, DSPs, hardware/ software codesign and IT security. He has published more than 20 papers in international journals and conferences and he has been a principal researcher in three European research projects. Konstantinos Tatas received his degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Democritus University of Thrace, Greece in 1999. He received his Ph.D. in the VLSI Design and Testing Center in the same University by June 2005. He has been employed as an RTL designer in INTRACOM SA, Greece between 2000 and 2003. His research interests include low-power VLSI design of DSP and multimedia systems, computer arithmetic, IP core design and design for reuse. Antonios Argyriou received the degree in Electrical and Computer engineering from the Democritous University of Thrace, Greece, in 2001, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, in 2003 and 2005, respectively. His primary research interests include wireless networks, mobile computing and multimedia communications. He is a member of the IEEE and ACM. Dimitrios Soudris received his Diploma in Electrical Engineering from the University of Patras, Greece, in 1987. He received the Ph.D. Degree in Electrical Engineering, from the University of Patras in 1992. He is currently working as Ass. Professor in Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece. His research interests include low power design, parallel architectures, embedded systems design, and VLSI signal processing. He has published more than 140 papers in international journals and conferences. He was leader and principal investigator in numerous research projects funded from the Greek Government and Industry as well as the European Commission (ESPRIT II-III-IV and 5th and 6th IST). He has served as General Chair and Program Chair for the International Workshop on Power and Timing Modelling, Optimisation, and Simulation (PATMOS). He received an award from INTEL and IBM for the project results of LPGD #25256 (ESPRIT IV). He is a member of the IEEE, the VLSI Systems and Applications Technical Committee of IEEE CAS and the ACM. Antonios Thanailakis was born in Greece on August 5, 1940. He received B.Sc. degrees in physics and electrical engineering from the University of Thessaloniki, Greece, 1964 and 1968, respectively, and the Msc. and Ph.D. Degrees in electrical engineering and electronics from UMIST, Manchester, U.K. in 1968 and 1971, respectively. He has been a Professor of Microelectronics in Dept. of Electrical and Computer Eng., Democritus Univ. of Thrace, Xanthi, Greece, since 1977. He has been active in electronic device and VLSI system design research since 1968. His current research activities include microelectronic devices and VLSI systems design. He has published a great number of scientific and technical papers, as well as five textbooks. He was leader for carrying out research and development projects funded by Greece, EU, or other organizations on various topics of Microlectronics and VLSI Systems Design (e.g. NATO, ESPRIT, ACTS, STRIDE).     

Motion-based segmentation of objects using overlapping temporal windows

Motion segmentation refers to the problem of separating the objects in a video sequence according to their motion. It is a fundamental problem of computer vision, since various systems focusing on the analysis of dynamic scenes include motion segmentation algorithms. In this paper we present a novel approach, where a video shot is temporally divided in successive and overlapping windows and motion segmentation is performed on each window respectively. This attribute renders the algorithm suitable even for long video sequences. In the last stage of the algorithm the segmentation results for every window are aggregated into a final segmentation. The presented algorithm can handle effectively asynchronous trajectories on each window even when they have no temporal intersection. The evaluation of the proposed algorithm on the Berkeley motion segmentation benchmark demonstrates its scalability and accuracy compared to the state of the art.     

Immunotherapy as a Therapeutic Strategy for Gastrointestinal Cancer—Current Treatment Options and Future Perspectives

Gastrointestinal (GI) cancer constitutes a highly lethal entity among malignancies in the last decades and is still a major challenge for cancer therapeutic options. Despite the current combinational treatment strategies, including chemotherapy, surgery, radiotherapy, and targeted therapies, the survival rates remain notably low for patients with advanced disease. A better knowledge of the molecular mechanisms that influence tumor progression and the development of optimal therapeutic strategies for GI malignancies are urgently needed. Currently, the development and the assessment of the efficacy of immunotherapeutic agents in GI cancer are in the spotlight of several clinical trials. Thus, several new modalities and combinational treatments with other anti-neoplastic agents have been identified and evaluated for their efficiency in cancer management, including immune checkpoint inhibitors, adoptive cell transfer, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy, cancer vaccines, and/or combinations thereof. Understanding the interrelation among the tumor microenvironment, cancer progression, and immune resistance is pivotal for the optimal therapeutic management of all gastrointestinal solid tumors. This review will shed light on the recent advances and future directions of immunotherapy for malignant tumors of the GI system.     

Strong buffering characteristics and swelling behavior of cationic copolymers

The swelling behavior of crosslinked cationic copolymers of 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate with (3-methacryloylamino propyl) trimethylammonium chloride was investigated in various buffered solutions as a function of ionic strength and pH. The equilibrium degree of swelling increased as the pH decreased or as the cationic group-containing comonomer in the polymer increased. The water transport in such copolymers was controlled by a non-Fickian mechanism. These results can be used in the development of physiologically sensitive controlled drug delivery systems. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.