Replication vs erasure coding in data centric storage for wireless sensor networks

In-network storage of data in wireless sensor networks contributes to reduce the communications inside the network and to favor data aggregation. In this paper, we consider the use of n out of m codes and data dispersal in combination to in-network storage. In particular, we provide an abstract model of in-network storage to show how n out of m codes can be used, and we discuss how this can be achieved in five cases of study. We also define a model aimed at evaluating the probability of correct data encoding and decoding, we exploit this model and simulations to show how, in the cases of study, the parameters of the n out of m codes and the network should be configured in order to achieve correct data coding and decoding with high probability.

A module for Data Centric Storage in ns-3

Demo in Workshop on ns-3 (WNS3 2015). 13 to 14, May, 2015. Castelldefels, Spain.

Transparent and secure remote network storage system using an untrusted server

Työssä kehitettin läpinäkyvä Internet Small Computer Systems Interface-verkkolevyä (iSCSI) käyttävä varmistusjärjestelmä. Verkkolevyn sisältö suojattiin asiakaspään salauskerroksella (dm-crypt). Järjestely mahdollisti sen, että verkkolevylle tallennetut varmuuskopiot pysyivät luottamuksellisina, vaikka levypalvelinta tarjoava taho oli joko epäluotettava tai suorastaan vihamielinen. Järjestelmän hyötykäyttöä varten kehitettiin helppokäyttöinen prototyyppisovellus. Järjestelmän riskit ja haavoittuvuudet käytiin läpi ja analysoitiin. Järjestelmälle tehtiin myös karkea kryptoanalyysi sen teknistenominaisuuksien pohjalta. Suorituskykymittaukset tehtiin sekä salatulle että salaamattomalle iSCSI-liikenteelle. Näistä todettiin, että salauksen vaikutus suorituskykyyn oli häviävän pieni jopa 100 megabittiä sekunnissa siirtävillä verkkonopeuksilla. Lisäksi pohdittiin teknologian muita sovelluskohteita ja tulevia tutkimusalueita.

Sampling study in milk storage tanks by INAA

This study investigated the representativeness of samples for assessing chemical elements in milk bulk tanks. Milk samples were collected from a closed tank in a dairy plant and from an open top tank in a dairy farm. Samples were analyzed for chemical elements by instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA). For both experiments, Br, Ca, Cs, K, Na, Rb and Zn did not present significant differences between samples thereby indicating the appropriateness of the sampling procedure adopted to evaluate the analytes of interest.

Assessment of energy efficiency in electric storage water heaters

Nowadays there are several ways of supplying hot water for showers in residential buildings. One of them is the use of electric storage water heaters (boilers). This equipment raises the water temperature in a reservoir (tank) using the heat generated by an electric resistance. The behavior of this equipment in Brazil is still a research object and there is not a standard in the country to regulate its efficiency. In this context, an experimental program was conducted aiming to collect power consumption data to evaluate its performance. The boilers underwent an operation cycle to simulate a usage condition aiming to collect parameters for calculating the efficiency. This 1-day cycle was composed of the following phases: hot water withdrawal, reheating and standby heat loss. The methods allowed the identification of different parameters concerning the boilers work, such as: standby heat loss in 24 h, hot water withdrawal rate, reheating time and energy efficiency. The average energy efficiency obtained was of 75%. The lowest efficiency was of 62% for boiler 2 and the highest was of 85% for boiler 9. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Re-evaluation of the basic procedures involved in the storage of measles vaccine in public health units of the municipality of Niterói, state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Four years after the first visit seventeen public health units were visited again and evaluated as to standards of storage recommended by the Brazilian Immunization Programme. In 100% of the units, refrigerators and proper inside location of vaccines in the refrigerator were adequatety or regularfy maintained and checked, respectively. However, when control of temperature was checked, onfy 64.7% presented adequate storage conditions. In 94.1 % of the units, health workers complained of lack of immediate technical support in emergency situations. In 55.2 % the titers vaccine samples of were under the minimal recommended potency. It is necessary that the factors concerning the cold chain be continualfy evaluated so that the quality of the vaccines that will be used is not affected.

The new economy: Essays in network economics and two-sided markets

Following the Introduction, which surveys existing literature on the technology advances and regulation in telecommunications and on two-sided markets, we address specific issues on the industries of the New Economy, featured by the existence of network effects. We seek to explore how each one of these industries work, identify potential market failures and find new solutions at the economic regulation level promoting social welfare. In Chapter 1 we analyze a regulatory issue on access prices and investments in the telecommunications market. The existing literature on access prices and investment has pointed out that networks underinvest under a regime of mandatory access provision with a fixed access price per end-user. We propose a new access pricing rule, the indexation approach, i.e., the access price, per end-user, that network i pays to network j is function of the investment levels set by both networks. We show that the indexation can enhance economic efficiency beyond what is achieved with a fixed access price. In particular, access price indexation can simultaneously induce lower retail prices and higher investment and social welfare as compared to a fixed access pricing or a regulatory holidays regime. Furthermore, we provide sufficient conditions under which the indexation can implement the socially optimal investment or the Ramsey solution, which would be impossible to obtain under fixed access pricing. Our results contradict the notion that investment efficiency must be sacrificed for gains in pricing efficiency. In Chapter 2 we investigate the effect of regulations that limit advertising airtime on advertising quality and on social welfare. We show, first, that advertising time regulation may reduce the average quality of advertising broadcast on TV networks. Second, an advertising cap may reduce media platforms and firms' profits, while the net effect on viewers (subscribers) welfare is ambiguous because the ad quality reduction resulting from a regulatory cap o¤sets the subscribers direct gain from watching fewer ads. We find that if subscribers are sufficiently sensitive to ad quality, i.e., the ad quality reduction outweighs the direct effect of the cap, a cap may reduce social welfare. The welfare results suggest that a regulatory authority that is trying to increase welfare via regulation of the volume of advertising on TV might necessitate to also regulate advertising quality or, if regulating quality proves impractical, take the effect of advertising quality into consideration. 3 In Chapter 3 we investigate the rules that govern Electronic Payment Networks (EPNs). In EPNs the No-Surcharge Rule (NSR) requires that merchants charge at most the same amount for a payment card transaction as for cash. In this chapter, we analyze a three- party model (consumers, merchants, and a proprietary EPN) with endogenous transaction volumes and heterogenous merchants' transactional benefits of accepting cards to assess the welfare impacts of the NSR. We show that, if merchants are local monopolists and the network externalities from merchants to cardholders are sufficiently strong, with the exception of the EPN, all agents will be worse o¤ with the NSR, and therefore the NSR is socially undesirable. The positive role of the NSR in terms of improvement of retail price efficiency for cardholders is also highlighted.

Towards effective control of P2P traffic aggregates in network infrastructures

Nowadays, many P2P applications proliferate in the Internet. The attractiveness of many of these systems relies on the collaborative approach used to exchange large resources without the dependence and associated constraints of centralized approaches where a single server is responsible to handle all the requests from the clients. As consequence, some P2P systems are also interesting and cost-effective approaches to be adopted by content-providers and other Internet players. However, there are several coexistence problems between P2P applications and In- ternet Service Providers (ISPs) due to the unforeseeable behavior of P2P traffic aggregates in ISP infrastructures. In this context, this work proposes a collaborative P2P/ISP system able to underpin the development of novel Traffic Engi- neering (TE) mechanisms contributing for a better coexistence between P2P applications and ISPs. Using the devised system, two TE methods are described being able to estimate and control the impact of P2P traffic aggregates on the ISP network links. One of the TE methods allows that ISP administrators are able to foresee the expected impact that a given P2P swarm will have in the underlying network infrastructure. The other TE method enables the definition of ISP friendly P2P topologies, where specific network links are protected from P2P traffic. As result, the proposed system and associated mechanisms will contribute for improved ISP resource management tasks and to foster the deployment of innovative ISP-friendly systems.

Terapéutica farmacológica y de pequeñas moléculas en patologías de atesoramiento lisosomal: focalización en las Lipofuscinosis Ceroideas Neuronales. Farmaceutical and small molecules therapy in lysosomal storage diseases: focus on the Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinoses.

Introducción: Las Lipofuscinosis Ceroideas Neuronales (LCNs) son un grupo de patologías neurodegenerativas hereditarias de atesoramiento lisosomal (PALs) caracterizadas por el almacenamiento en los lisosomas de materiales complejos pobremente reconocidos. Su curso es muy severo con desenlace fatal, habiendo sido definidos diversos tipos sobre la base del estudio de los fenotipos clínicos, enzimáticos, morfológicos y las mutaciones. Su incidencia es de 1:12.500 nacimientos vivos a nivel mundial. Las intervenciones farmacológicas con moléculas pequeñas han sido exitosas para algunas PALs; sin embargo, debido a que para cada una de las moléculas ha sido asumido un mecanismo de acción, la efectividad puede estar limitada a uno o a pocos desórdenes y no beneficiar a otros. Se han comprobado efectos diversos de una serie de moléculas tales como Miglustat, Chaperonas moleculares diseñadas, Clenbuterol, N-acetilcisteina (Mucomyst), Cisteamina, Gentamicina y PTC124. Los tratamientos farmacológicos/ con moléculas pequeñas podrían resultar exitosos para las LCNs, mereciendo consideración desarrollar terapias para estos desórdenesObjetivo generalo Investigar en un tipo de patologías del sistema nervioso central, las Lipofuscinosis Ceroideas Neuronales, el enfoque terapéutico-farmacológico con pequeñas moléculas aplicado a otras patologías hereditarias.Objetivos específicoso Desarrollar un prototipo de cultivo de fibroblastos de pacientes a nivel hospitalario en Córdoba y mantener cultivos de fibroblastos de pacientes afectados de una LCN de genotipo CLN2, con mutaciones conocidas. o Enriquecer los cultivos con fármacos/ moléculas pequeñas probadas en otras PALs.o Averiguar si se produce incremento de actividad enzimática de la Tripeptidil Peptidasa-I (TPP-I) lisosomal.Materiales y Métodos: cultivo de fibroblastos de pacientes con el agregado de fármacos/pequeñas moléculas. Los donantes serán diagnosticados en CEMECO a través de una estrategia sistematizada para el reconocimiento de las LCNs y se identificarán las mutaciones en el gen CLN2 causales de enfermedad. Se averiguará la actividad enzimática de TPP-I y se marcará la enzima con anticuerpos específicos en corridas electroforéticas por western blot. Resultados esperados: incrementos en la actividad enzimática de TPP-I en los cultivos celulares con agregado de fármacos/ pequeñas moléculas con respecto a los controles. Importancia del proyecto: se trata de una investigación traduccional (traslational research) en la cual la clínica y los servicios a pacientes se vinculan con la investigación científica, desde una perspectiva de integración. Se desarrolla en un Hospital Público, el Hospital de Niños de la Provincia de Córdoba, asiento del Centro de Estudio de las Metabolopatías Congénitas-CEMECO. Se beneficiarán los pacientes, dado que impactará sobre la calidad de los servicios hospitalarios al suministrar diagnósticos bajo los estándares internacionales, en estrecha vinculación con centros referenciales del exterior. Se obtendrán para los genes de las LCNs los datos del espectro de mutaciones y polimorfismos presentes en la región y se aportarán datos sobre posibilidades de las terapias farmacológicas en relación a cada una de las mutaciones.

Regulatory federalism in network industries

Report for the scientific sojourn at the UC Berkeley, USA, from march until july 2008. This document starts by surveying the literature on economic federalism and relating it to network industries. The insights and some new developments (which focus on the role of interjurisdictional externalities, multiple objectives and investment incentives) are used to analyze regulatory arrangements in telecommunications and energy in the EU and the US. In the long history of vertically integrated monopolies in telecommunications and energy, there was a historical trend to move regulation up in the vertical structure of government, at least form the local level to the state or nation-state level. This move alleviated the pressure on regulators to renege on the commitment not to expropriate sunk investments, although it did not eliminate the practice of taxation by regulation that was the result of multiple interest group action. Although central or federal policy making is more focused and especialized and makes it difficult for more interest groups to organize, it is not clear that under all conditions central powers will not be associated with underinvestment. When technology makes the introduction of competition in some segments possible, the possibilities for organizing the institutional architechture of regulation expand. The central level may focus on structural regulation and the location of behavioral regulation of the remaining monopolists may be resolved in a cooperative way or concentrated at the level where the relevant spillovers are internalized.

APOE status modulates the changes in network connectivity induced by brain stimulation in non-demented elders.

Behavioral consequences of a brain insult represent an interaction between the injury and the capacity of the rest of the brain to adapt to it. We provide experimental support for the notion that genetic factors play a critical role in such adaptation. We induced a controlled brain disruption using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) and show that APOE status determines its impact on distributed brain networks as assessed by functional MRI (fMRI).Twenty non-demented elders exhibiting mild memory dysfunction underwent two fMRI studies during face-name encoding tasks (before and after rTMS). Baseline task performance was associated with activation of a network of brain regions in prefrontal, parietal, medial temporal and visual associative areas. APOE ε4 bearers exhibited this pattern in two separate independent components, whereas ε4-non carriers presented a single partially overlapping network. Following rTMS all subjects showed slight ameliorations in memory performance, regardless of APOE status. However, after rTMS APOE ε4-carriers showed significant changes in brain network activation, expressing strikingly similar spatial configuration as the one observed in the non-carrier group prior to stimulation. Similarly, activity in areas of the default-mode network (DMN) was found in a single component among the ε4-non bearers, whereas among carriers it appeared disaggregated in three distinct spatiotemporal components that changed to an integrated single component after rTMS. Our findings demonstrate that genetic background play a fundamental role in the brain responses to focal insults, conditioning expression of distinct brain networks to sustain similar cognitive performance.

A decision support system for cost determination in grain storage facility operations

Many research works have being carried out on analyzing grain storage facility costs; however a few of them had taken into account the analysis of factors associated to all pre-processing and storage steps. The objective of this work was to develop a decision support system for determining the grain storage facility costs and utilization fees in grain storage facilities. The data of a CONAB storage facility located in Ponta Grossa - PR, Brazil, was used as input of the system developed to analyze its specific characteristics, such as amount of product received and stored throughout the year, hourly capacity of drying, cleaning, and receiving, and dispatch. By applying the decision support system, it was observed that the reception and expedition costs were exponentially reduced as the turnover rate of the storage increased. The cleaning and drying costs increased linearly with grain initial moisture. The storage cost increased exponentially as the occupancy rate of the storage facility decreased.

Occurrence of xyloglucan containing protuberances in the storage cell walls of cotyledons of Hymenaea courbaril L.

Despite the suggestions of its pectic composition, no clear evidence for this has been presented. Here we show the occurrence of such a structure in walls of cells from cotyledons of Hymenaea courbariI L. These cells are known to accumulate large amounts of storage xyloglucan in the wall and, in this case, the protuberances seem to contain this storage polysaccharide rather than pectin. A hypothetical sequence of events leading from wall strands to protuberances was assembled based on scanning electron microscopy observations. On this basis, a tentative model for how polysaccharides are distributed into the wall, near the regions where protuberances are found, is proposed to explain the presence of storage xyloglucan in their composition.

Quality indicators and shelf life of red octopus (Octopus maya) in chilling storage

Abstract There are no precedents concerning the quality of Octopus maya during chilled storage. This study evaluated the shelf life of the red octopus in chilling storage (4oC) and the correlation of the sensory quality index with microbiological counting and the biochemical indicators (hypoxanthine, histamine and volatile amines). A total of 112 whole raw octopi (average weight of 896 g) were randomly selected from seven batches and exposed to 4°C for 18, 24, 48, 72, 84, 96, and 100 h. The histamine concentration (91.7%), followed by the counts of psychrotrophic bacteria (5.5%) and hypoxanthine (2.2%), were the predictors from the redundancy analysis that better explained the changes taking place during the chilling hours. After 72 h of chilling, the microbial count was determined to be log 4.7 CFU/g, and the octopus samples were classified as B quality (minor sensory quality defects) based on the sensory quality scale. Although the samples were not classified as unacceptable at 100 h of refrigeration by the sensory index, the level of histamine reached the defect action level (5 mg/100 g) as ruled by the International Food Safety Authorities. The shelf life of the red octopus in chilling storage was predicted to be 119 h.