Dynamic replication factor model for Linux containers-based cloud systems

The Journal of Supercomputing - Infrastructure-as-a-service container-based virtualization is gaining interest as a platform for running distributed applications. With increasing scale of cloud...     

Defining Dry Eye from a Clinical Perspective

Over the past decades, the number of patients with dry eye disease (DED) has increased dramatically. The incidence of DED is higher in Asia than in Europe and North America, suggesting the involvement of cultural or racial factors in DED etiology. Although many definitions of DED have been used, discrepancies exist between the various definitions of dry eye disease (DED) used across the globe. This article presents a clinical consensus on the definition of DED, as formulated in four meetings with global DED experts. The proposed new definition is as follows: “Dry eye is a multifactorial disease characterized by a persistently unstable and/or deficient tear film (TF) causing discomfort and/or visual impairment, accompanied by variable degrees of ocular surface epitheliopathy, inflammation and neurosensory abnormalities.” The key criteria for the diagnosis of DED are unstable TF, inflammation, ocular discomfort and visual impairment. This definition also recommends the assessment of ocular surface epitheliopathy and neurosensory abnormalities in each patient with suspected DED. It is easily applicable in clinical practice and should help practitioners diagnose DED consistently. This consensus definition of DED should also help to guide research and clinical trials that, to date, have been hampered by the lack of an established surrogate endpoint.     

A Tool Support for Reusing ELAN Rule-Based Components

The adaptation of software components developed for a specific application in order to generate reusable components often includes some kind of generalization. This generalization may be carried out, for instance, by the renaming of some identifiers or by its parameterization. In our work, we are specially interested in the generalization by parameterization of algebraic specification components. Generalization and some other transformations on algebraic specifications are being integrated in the FERUS tool. This tool was initially developed for the Common Algebraic Specification Language, called CASL, and we show in the paper its adaptation to the new version of the rule-based programming language ELAN.     

5-Fluorouracil (5-FU) continuous intravenous infusion compared with bolus administration. Final results of a randomised trial in metastatic colorectal cancer

The aim of this Phase III, balanced randomised trial was to compare continuous intravenous infusion (CVI) of 5-FU with bolus (B) administration for metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC). One hundred and fifty-five non-pretreated patients were randomised to receive CVI 5-FU at a dose of 750 mg/m2/day (d), 7 d every 21 d (n = 77), or bolus 5-FU 500 mg/m2/d x 5 d every 28 d (n = 78). Incremental dose escalation at 50 mg per step was recommended in the absence of toxicity. All the patients had measurable metastatic disease (M), particularly, liver and a good performance status (WHO grade 0-1). Dose intensity was significantly higher in CVI than in the bolus group: 1369 mg/m2/week versus 558 mg/m2/week (P = 0.0001). Grade II-IV stomatitis was more frequent in the CVI group (31% versus 9%; P < 0.0001) as was hand and foot syndrome (14% versus 3%; P < 0.001). Diarrhoea (22% versus 12%) and grade III granulocytopenia (2% versus 6%) were comparable. Responses were more frequent in the CVI (26%) than in the bolus group (13%) (P < 0.04); progression-free survival was higher for the CVI group (P = 0.04), but there was no statistical difference in overall survival (median: 10 months (m) compared to 9 m), and 1 year survival (SD) 42% (6%) versus 40% (6%). In the multivariate analysis, survival was better for patients with a good PS, well-differentiated adenocarcinomas and a primary tumour without serosal extension. In conclusion, with a higher dose intensity, CVI 5-FU improved tumour control, but not overall survival.     

Effects of mechanical interactions on the hydrostatic stress in randomly distributed rubber particles in an amorphous polymer matrix

The equivalent inclusion method (EIM) assuming linear elasticity is used to calculate the mechanical interactions between spherical rubber particles in an amorphous matrix, as in a rubber toughened polymer. The influences of the various calculation parameters are examined and it is shown that the method can provide reliable results with regard to the level of hydrostatic stress in the particles. Damage of the material is simulated by replacing the most stressed particles by voids. Numerical simulations for several hundreds of interacting particles give information on the kinetics and spatial organisation of the damage. It appears that, as the volume fraction of particles increases from 10 to 20%, the spatial configuration of the damage evolves from a localised to a diffuse mode. These results are discussed in relation to the efficiency of rubber toughening.     

Combining Points and Tangents into Parabolic Polygons

Image and geometry processing applications estimate the local geometry of objects using information localized at points. They usually consider information about the tangents as a side product of the points coordinates. This work proposes parabolic polygons as a model for discrete curves, which intrinsically combines points and tangents. This model is naturally affine invariant, which makes it particularly adapted to computer vision applications. As a direct application of this affine invariance, this paper introduces an affine curvature estimator that has a great potential to improve computer vision tasks such as matching and registering. As a proof-of-concept, this work also proposes an affine invariant curve reconstruction from point and tangent data.     

In situ regeneration of the Ni-based catalytic reformer of a 5 kW PEMFC system

The paper reports the results of on-site regeneration catalytic bed of the natural gas reformer in a 5 kW PEM fuel cell system. The Ni catalyst previously poisoned by sulphur from the available natural gas, could be re-activated by injection of pure water steam, following the method developed for industrial reformers using the same metal catalyst: this method was shown to be perfectly efficient, provided no natural gas was fed during the operation. Results of the tests conducted are presented and discussed in relation to published data on S-sorption on Ni surfaces.     

High accuracy path tracking for vehicles in presence of sliding: Application to farm vehicle automatic guidance for agricultural tasks

When designing an accurate automated guidance system for vehicles, a major problem is sliding and pseudo-sliding effects. This is especially the case in agricultural applications, where five-centimetre accuracy with respect to the desired trajectory is required, although the vehicles are moving on slippery ground. It has been established that RTK GPS was a very suitable sensor to achieve automated guidance with such high precision: several control laws have been designed for vehicles equipped with this sensor, and provide the expected guidance accuracy as long as the vehicles do not slide. In previous work, further control developments have been proposed to take sliding into account: guidance accuracy in slippery environments has been shown to be preserved, except transiently at the beginning/end of curves. In this paper, the design of this control law is first recalled and discussed. A Model Predictive Control method is then applied in order to preserve accuracy of guidance even during these curvature transitions. Finally, the overall control scheme is implemented, and improvements with respect to previous guidance laws are demonstrated through full-scale experiments.     

Agent-oriented techniques for network supervision

This paper presents the results of the Réseau futé (smart net) project, the goal of which is to use distributed AI and multi-agent techniques for network management and supervision. More precisely, these techniques have been applied to the partial automation of the dynamic processing (what is known about a network is always incomplete and can change at any time) of alarms and of various event notifications received by network management platforms. The system that we propose is able for example to automatically handle some alarms or to filter events of no-interest for a given operator. To achieve this goal, an assistant, or interface agent according to the model proposed by Patti Maes [MK93], has been realized. The goal of the assistant is first to learn, by observation, the behavior of the network supervision operator and second to reproduce such a behavior when the conditions in which the behavior has been learned are detected again. The learned information are stored using chronicles [Gha94]. A chronicle is a data-structure allowing programmers to represent sequences of events while taking temporal knowledge into account. Our assistant has been implemented and tested within Magenta which is a program, written in Smalltalk, that simulates (in a simplified way) a network management platform. This program respects roughly the gdmo and cmis standards.