Cardiac disease in chronic uremia: management

Heart disease is a common cause of morbidity in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients. The management of heart disease in these patients requires a multidimensional approach to the management of heart failure, coronary disease, and arrhythmias, and to risk factors such as hypertension, anemia, secondary hyperparathyroidism, and electrolyte/acid-base disturbances. Coronary artery disease management includes use of antianginal drugs and revascularization of coronary arteries with angioplasty +/- stent placement or coronary artery bypass grafting. The long-term outcomes of these procedures need to be assessed and improved. Hypertension occupies a major role in the pathogenesis of heart disease in ESRD, and early and adequate control of hypertension is likely to have a major impact on the progression of cardiac disease. This entails the achievement of optimal volume status, combined with the appropriate use of antihypertensive agents such as calcium channel blockers, beta-blockers, angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, vasodilators, alpha-blockers, and central sympatholytic drugs. In ESRD patients, specific dialysis-related complications such as intradialytic hypotension and pericardial effusion may have additional effects on cardiac function and require attention. The choice of dialysate composition and membrane may influence clinical outcomes with specific effects on cardiac performance.     

CP2EH: a comprehensive privacy-preserving e-health scheme over cloud

The Journal of Supercomputing - In the Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) scheme, patients encrypt their electronic health record (EHR), attach the appropriate attributes with it, and outsource them...     

Arthur and Merlin as Oracles

We study some problems solvable in deterministic polynomial time given oracle access to the (promise version of) Arthur–Merlin class. Our main results are the following:

A genetic algorithm-based artificial neural network model for the optimization of machining processes

Artificial intelligent tools like genetic algorithm, artificial neural network (ANN) and fuzzy logic are found to be extremely useful in modeling reliable processes in the field of computer integrated manufacturing (for example, selecting optimal parameters during process planning, design and implementing the adaptive control systems). When knowledge about the relationship among the various parameters of manufacturing are found to be lacking, ANNs are used as process models, because they can handle strong nonlinearities, a large number of parameters and missing information. When the dependencies between parameters become noninvertible, the input and output configurations used in ANN strongly influence the accuracy. However, running of a neural network is found to be time consuming. If genetic algorithm-based ANNs are used to construct models, it can provide more accurate results in less time. This article proposes a genetic algorithm-based ANN model for the turning process in manufacturing Industry. This model is found to be a time-saving model that satisfies all the accuracy requirements.     

Techniques to tackle state explosion in global predicate detection

Global predicate detection, which is an important problem in testing and debugging distributed programs, is very hard due to the combinatorial explosion of the global state space. The paper presents several techniques to tackle the state explosion problem in detecting whether an arbitrary predicate Φ is true at some consistent global state of a distributed system. We present space efficient online algorithms for detecting Φ. We then improve the performance of our algorithms, both in space and time, by increasing the granularity of the execution step from an event to a sequence of events in each process     

Vulnerabilities in Anonymous Credential Systems

We show the following:

(i) In existing anonymous credential revocation systems, the revocation authority can link the transactions of any user in a subset T of users in O(log|T|) fake failed sessions.

(ii) A concern about the DLREP-I anonymous credentials system described in [Stefan Brands: Rethinking public key infrastructure and Digital Certificates; The MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, London England. ISBN 0-262-02491-8] and [Stefan Brands: A Technical Overview of Digital Credentials; February 2002 (was a white paper in credentica.com)].

Advances in Human Mitochondria-Based Therapies

Mitochondria are the key biological generators of eukaryotic cells, controlling the energy supply while providing many important biosynthetic intermediates. Mitochondria act as a dynamic, functionally and structurally interconnected network hub closely integrated with other cellular compartments via biomembrane systems, transmitting biological information by shuttling between cells and tissues. Defects and dysregulation of mitochondrial functions are critically involved in pathological mechanisms contributing to aging, cancer, inflammation, neurodegenerative diseases, and other severe human diseases. Mediating and rejuvenating the mitochondria may therefore be of significant benefit to prevent, reverse, and even treat such pathological conditions in patients. The goal of this review is to present the most advanced strategies using mitochondria to manage such disorders and to further explore innovative approaches in the field of human mitochondria-based therapies.