Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Karol. inst., 2003. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

Thesis (D.P.H.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2010. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on July 1, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D.P.H.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2010. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on July 7, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

abstract: This dissertation builds a clear understanding of the role of information in wireless networks, and devises adaptive strategies to optimize the overall performance. The meaning of information ranges from channel/network states to the structure of the signal itself. Under the common thread of characterizing the role of information, this dissertation investigates opportunistic scheduling, relaying and multicast in wireless networks. To assess the role of channel state information, the problem of opportunistic distributed opportunistic scheduling (DOS) with incomplete information is considered for ad-hoc networks in which many links contend for the same channel using random access. The objective is to maximize the system throughput. In practice, link state information is noisy, and may result in throughput degradation. Therefore, refining the state information by additional probing can improve the throughput, but at the cost of further probing. Capitalizing on optimal stopping theory, the optimal scheduling policy is shown to be threshold-based and is characterized by either one or two thresholds, depending on network settings. To understand the benefits of side information in cooperative relaying scenarios, a basic model is explored for two-hop transmissions of two information flows which interfere with each other. While the first hop is a classical interference channel, the second hop can be treated as an interference channel with transmitter side information. Various cooperative relaying strategies are developed to enhance the achievable rate. In another context, a simple sensor network is considered, where a sensor node acts as a relay, and aids fusion center in detecting an event. Two relaying schemes are considered: analog relaying and digital relaying. Sufficient conditions are provided for the optimality of analog relaying over digital relaying in this network. To illustrate the role of information about the signal structure in joint source-channel coding, multicast of compressible signals over lossy channels is studied. The focus is on the network outage from the perspective of signal distortion across all receivers. Based on extreme value theory, the network outage is characterized in terms of key parameters. A new method using subblock network coding is devised, which prioritizes resource allocation based on the signal information structure. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Electrical Engineering 2011

Fungal infections are ignored by social and political communities. However, they are estimated to affect more than a billion people, resulting in approximately 11.5 million life-threatening infections in the 'at risk' population and more than 1.5 million deaths annually. Though there have been huge advances in diagnostics and antifungal drug development over the past two decades, however, resource limited settings have not benefited from these advances. The aim of this research was to determine the burden of serious fungal infections in Nigerians with the appropriate underlying diseases. This epidemiological research was conducted across four study populations. Study 1; HIV-infected patients with CD4+ counts < 250 cells/mm³, irrespective of their ART status, a CrAg lateral flow assay was used for detecting cryptococcal antigenaemia (n=214). Study 2; a cross-sectional multicentre survey of TB patients being managed for smear negative or treatment failure TB irrespective of their HIV status (n=208). Study 3; a multicentre histoplasmin skin sensitivity survey amongst healthy HIV-infected and non-HIV infected participants; intradermally; induration ≥ 5 mm was considered to be histoplasmin positive (n=750). Study 4; a prospective cohort study of critically ill patients in a Nigerian ICU (n=71). Two retrospective studies to analyse the clinical picture of serious fungal infections in two at risk populations (HIV/AIDS and neonatal intensive care babies) in Nigerians was also conducted (n=7034; n=2712 respectively). Results revealed an overall seroprevalence of cryptococcal antigenemia of 8.9% with 6 (9.8%) in those with CD4+ cell counts < 100cells/mm³, 4 (5.0%) in the 100-200 group and 9 (12.3%) in 200-250 cells/mm³ group; a CPA prevalence of 8.7% (6.5% had HIV infection and 14.5% were HIV-negative) and a prior subclinical histoplasmosis of 4.4%. The ICU study revealed a 45% healthcare associated infection rate representing an incidence rate of 79/1000 patient-days in the ICU. The retrospective studies revealed a 2.3% rate of neonatal ICI with a case fatality rate of 18.5%. In the 12 years retrospective study 18% had a fungal OI with 88% of patients having initiated ART. In conclusion, serious fungal infections do occur in the at risk population in Nigeria and they constitute a significant public health challenge. Our findings demonstrate that there has been an underestimation of the burden of the problem in Nigerians. There is a dire need to design guidelines for the management of fungal infections in at risk population.

Background. As a result of the AIDS pandemic, many people areimmuno compromised andopportunistic fungal infections (OFIs) such as candidiasis are common. Despite the widespread use of medicinal plants in South Africa, there is a dearth of knowledge regarding the use of such plants in the management of these infections. This study evaluates three South African medicinal plants (Arctotis arctotoides, Pittosporum viridiflorum, and Gasteria bicolor) traditionally used in the treatment of OFIs in HIV/AIDS patients, in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Materials and methods. A six-stage process of documentation, evaluation and analysis of results was conducted: (1) Selection of medicinal plants most frequently used in the treatment of OFIs through ethnomedical studies and the survey of specialised literature; (2) Collection and preparation of the extract of each plant; (3) Antifungal evaluation of the crude plant extracts. (4) Phytochemical and antioxidant evaluation of the active crude plant extracts; (5) Cytotoxicity evaluation of the bioactive extracts using the Chang liver cell line, and (6) Statistical analysis of the results. Ethnobotanical information was obtained through interviews with traditional healers and AIDS patients with the aid of semi-structured questionnaires, direct observations and by reviewing studies reported in the literature. Following the approval from the University of Fort Hare‘s Ethics Committee, 101 HIV/AIDS patients were recruited through convenience sampling into an anonymous cross-sectional questionnaire study. The agar diffusion and micro-dilution methods were used to determine the antifungal activities of the hexane, acetone and aqueous extracts of A. arctotoides, G. bicolor and P. viridiflorum against 10 opportunistic fungi.

Les réseaux tolérants aux délais sont aujourd’hui une alternative prometteuse aux réseaux traditionnels basés sur une infrastructure, encore peu déployée. Il existe plusieurs manières d’évaluer les performances d’un tel réseau : expériences de déploiement grandeur nature, modèles théoriques, simulation, émulation, jeu de traces. Chacune a ses avantages et inconvénients, tant en termes de coûts matériels, de réalisme, de temps nécessaire ou de capacité à gérer des noeuds réels. Cependant, aucune ne répond réellement aux besoins des développeurs d’applications. Dans cette thèse, nous nous focaliserons sur l’émulation. Dans une première partie, nous nous intéresserons aux entrées possibles pour un tel système. Nous proposons tout d’abord un modèle analytique pour prévoir le taux de pertes dans un réseau où les noeuds possèdent une mémoire limitée à un seul paquet. Ensuite, inspirés par les approches de mise à l’échelle de traces de la littérature, nous étudions les hypothèses prises pour l’analyse statistique de traces réelles, et montrons leur influence sur les lois de probabilité obtenues ainsi que les performances réseau observées. Nous étendons ensuite cette étude à la totalité du cycle de vie des traces réelles, en considérant la collecte de données, le filtrage et la mise à l’échelle de celles-ci. Dans une seconde partie, nous proposons une architecture possible d’un émulateur DTN hybride, c’est-à-dire comportant à la fois des noeuds réels sous forme d’intelliphones, et des noeuds virtuels. Le principal avantage ici est de pouvoir évaluer des applications réelles, éventuellement déjà existantes, dans un contexte DTN, et ce de manière aussi transparente que possible. Nous identifions les limites des approches existantes, ce qui nous permet d’établir une liste de spécifications pour notre système. Nous proposons ensuite un système, nommé HINT, permettant de remplir ces spécifications. L’ensemble est ensuite validé, puis appliqué à l’étude de quelques exemples. / Delay Tolerant Networks are currently a promising alternative to infrastructure-based networks, but they have not seen a wide deployment so far. There are several ways to evaluate the performance of such networks: field trials, theoretical models, simulation, emulation or replaying contact datasets. Each one has its advantages and drawbacks in terms of material cost, realism, required time or ability to manage real nodes. However, none of them effectively addresses the needs of application developers. In this thesis, we will focus on emulation. In a first part, we will deal with possible inputs for such a system. We first propose an analytical model to predict the drop ratio in a network where nodes have a one-packet buffer. Then, taking inspiration from trace scaling approaches from the literature, we study the hypotheses and assumptions taken for real traces statistical analyses, showing their impact on the obtained probability distributions and observed network performance metrics. We then extend this study to the whole life cycle of real traces, by considering data collection, filtering and scaling. In a second part, we propose a possible architecture for a hybrid DTN emulator, using both real nodes as smartphones and virtual nodes. The main advantage here is to be able to evaluate real applications, including preexisting ones, in a DTN context, doing so as transparently as possible. We identify the limitations of existing approaches, which helps us build a list of specifications for our system. Then, we propose a system called HINT which matches these specifications. HINT is validated, and applied to the study of some examples.

Atualmente, os computadores pessoais são equipados com processadores de vários núcleos possuem alto poder de processamento. Algumas pesquisas realizadas indicam que estes mesmos computadores permanecem em média 80% do tempo ociosos. A união destas duas informações fomenta à pesquisa de um tipo de computação distribuída, conhecida como grades oportunistas. A utilização de um ambiente de grade oportunista permite a implementação de um computador paralelo capaz de processar grandes volumes de tarefas, com baixo custo financeiro. Apesar do baixo custo financeiro proporcionado por este ambiente, tem-se um alto custo computacional devido a utilização de recursos não dedicados. Estes ambientes sofrem de um problema que tem servido de objeto de diversas pesquisas, a indisponibilidade de recursos. O problema da indisponibilidade de recursos deve-se a volatilidade deste recursos. A volatilidade deve-se a liberdade de tornarem-se ociosos ou ocupados a qualquer instante, sem a necessidade de aviso prévio ao servidor. A volatilidade é a responsável por gerar uma série de interrupções de execução de tarefas e a consequente necessidade de novos escalonamentos desta mesma tarefa. Para reduzir o impacto deste problema, o escalonador de tarefas poderia considerar informações sobre o comportamento futuro dos recursos, ou seja, poderia considerar informações provenientes de um preditor de disponibilidade. Este trabalho propõe o modelo AvSchedP, modelo este capaz de realizar a previsão de disponibilidade baseando-se em dados binários e de forma dinâmica. O modelo AvSchedP foi projetado para ser integrado a escalonadores de grades oportunistas. O AvSchedP foi implementado e diversos experimentos foram realizados. Os experimentos foram realizados para avaliar a qualidade de previsão e a adequação do modelo a um sistema de grade oportunista, o XtremWeb. Os resultados obtidos demonstram que o AvSchedP apresenta bons resultados ao realizar previsões de duração de disponibilidade em ambientes formados por recursos voláteis. / Nowadays, personal computers have multi-core processors with high processing power. Some researches show that these computers remain 80 % of the time idle. The union of these two information instigates a kind of distributed computing, known as opportunistic grids. The opportunistic grid environment usage allows the implementation of a parallel computer like, capable of processing large volumes of tasks, with a low cost. Despite the low financial cost, it has a high computational cost due to use of nondedicated resources. Opportunistic grid environments have a problem that has been the subject of several researches: the resource availability. The resource availability problem is caused by the volatility of resources. The resource is free to become idle or busy at any time without notice the server. The volatility is responsible for generating a lot of task execution interruptions and consequently, task rescheduling. To alleviate this problem, the task scheduler could consider information about the future behavior of resources provided by an avalibility predictor. This paper proposes a new model, called AvSchedP , to perform dynamic resource availability prediction based on binary data. The model was designed to be integrated into opportunistic grid schedulers. The AvSchedP was implemented and several experiments were performed. These experiments were conducted to evaluate the prediction quality and the model integrability to the XtremWeb opportunistic grid system. The results show that the AvSchedP has good results when making availability duration predictions for environments composed by volatile resources.

Cidades Inteligentes são sistemas urbanos que usam as Tecnologias da Informação e Comunicação (TICs) para tornar a infraestrutura e os serviços públicos de uma cidade mais interativos, acessíveis e eficientes aos seus habitantes. Com isso, surge a necessidade de proporcionar novos tipos de serviços que busquem auxiliar na organização da cidade, no bem-estar das pessoas e auxiliem a melhorar a governança da cidade. Nesse contexto, o Sensoriamento Urbano é um paradigma emergente, situado no escopo de Cidades Inteligentes, que combina a ubiquidade de smartphones e de diferentes tipos de sensores para coletar dados que retratam diferentes aspectos da cidade. Um aspecto importante nesse processo de sensoriamento é a transmissão dos dados coletados para serem processados por um sistema centralizado remoto. Isso demanda uma ampla e constante cobertura de infraestrutura de rede de comunicação, fato que nem sempre é possível. As Redes Oportunistas surgem como uma alternativa complementar e inovadora para situações como essa, onde as aplicações precisam transmitir dados porém a infraestrutura de rede é intermitente ou mesmo inexistente. Entretanto, com o uso de Redes Oportunistas, as aplicações além de herdarem os seus benefícios também herdam os desafios existentes na área relacionados à tomada de decisão de encaminhamento das mensagens. Dessa forma, a presente tese busca responder ao questionamento de como intensificar a disseminação de conteúdo e o encaminhamento de mensagens em aplicações de Sensoriamento Urbano que fazem uso de Redes Oportunistas como paradigma complementar de comunicação. Para isso é proposto o Situs, um componente de software baseado em Redes Oportunistas que utiliza Sensibilidade à Situação com vistas à proatividade nas tomadas de decisões de roteamento para com isso intensificar a entrega de mensagens. Ele emprega Lógica Fuzzy para a compreensão da situação e uma rede neural chamada Echo State Network (ESN) para efetuar a projeção de situações. Os resultados experimentais demonstraram que a sua performance supera algumas das principais iniciativas existentes na literatura. Por fim, pode-se concluir que ele é capaz de preencher as lacunas do estado da arte apresentadas durante o desenvolvimento da tese sendo capaz de proporcionar um comportamento proativo com o uso de Sensibilidade à Situação. / Smart cities are urban systems that uses Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to make infrastructure and public services in a more interactive, accessible and efficient city to its inhabitants. With this comes the need to provide new types of services that seeks to assist in the organization of the city, the well-being of people and assist to improve the governance of the city. In this context, urban sensing is an emerging paradigm, sited in the Smart Cities scope, combining the ubiquity of smartphones with the capability of measuring o sensors to collect data that depict different aspects of the city. This ecosystem consists of different types of mobile and fixed devices orchestrated by a computational architecture that encompass the full sensing process. An important aspect of this process is the transmission of data collected for processing by a remote central system. This requires a broad and constant coverage of communication network infrastructure, a fact that is not always possible. The Opportunistic Networks emerge as an innovative and complementary alternative for situations like this where the applications needs to transmit data but the network infrastructure is intermittent or unavailable. However, using Opportunistic Networks, applications as well as inherit its benefits also inherit the existing challenges in the area related to decision-making of messages forwarding. Thus, this thesis seeks to answer the question of how to improve the dissemination of content and message routing of urban sensing applications that makes use of Opportunistic networks as complementary communication paradigm. Therefore, it proposes Situs, a software component based on Opportunistic Networks that uses Situation Awareness towards a proactivity in making routing decisions. For such task, it applies fuzzy logic for situation comprehension and a king of neural network called Echo State Network (ESN) for situation projection. The results of the experiments showed that their performance outperforms some existent initiatives in literature. Finally, we argue it fullfills the gaps of state of art presented in this thesis and could provide a proactive behaviour with usage of situation awareness.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-02-05T18:30:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2015-07-27. Added 1 bitstream(s) on 2016-02-05T18:34:15Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 000857768.pdf: 1204540 bytes, checksum: 89db662b79a3371070dc58369f2917f9 (MD5) / Introdução: A relação entre a microbiota bucal e infecções graves em pacientes mantidos internados em unidades de terapia intensiva (UTI) vem sendo estabelecida, principalmente para os portadores de próteses totais ou parciais, visto que o biofilme bucal pode se converter em reservatório de microrganismos que não fazem parte dessa microbiota. Objetivo: Esse estudo objetivou avaliar a presença dos principais patógenos periodontais e oportunistas na boca de pacientes mantidos em unidades de terapia intensiva. Material e Método: Foram obtidos dados referentes às condições de saúde de 156 pacientes mantidos por mais de 72 horas em ambiente de UTI. Realizou-se exames clínicos intrabucais e coleta de amostras de saliva e mucosas bucais, de secreções respiratórias, sangue e urina. A presença dos principais microrganismos bucais e oportunistas associados às infecções hospitalares foi avaliada por meio da reação em cadeia da polimerase (PCR). A análise estatística foi realizada pelos testes de Mann-Whitney e Test T, enquanto a correlação entre as variáveis foi obtida pelo Teste de Spearman, todos ao nível de significância de 5%. Resultados: Houve correlação negativa entre a presença de leucócitos e alguns patógenos oportunistas bucais e exógenos. Os microrganismos estudados foram mais prevalentes no gênero masculino e os anaeróbios obrigatórios e microrganismos capnofílicos oriundos do ambiente bucal se mostraram mais relevantes nas infecções sistêmicas do que os patógenos oportunistas exógenos, como as enterobactérias e os pseudomonados. Conclusão: Concluiu-se que a fragilidade da saúde bucal de pacientes internados em UTI, por vezes com imunossupressão, associada a colonização e/ou infecção de microrganismos oportunistas, pode ser um fator agravante na deterioração e piora do quadro sistêmico do paciente / Introduction: The relationship between the oral microbiota and serious infections in patients kept in intensive care units (ICU) has been established, mainly for patients with dentures or partials, since oral biofilm can become reservoir of micro-organisms that are not part of this microbiota. Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the presence of the main periodontal pathogens and infections in the mouth of patients kept in intensive care units. Material and method: Data were obtained on the health conditions of 156 patients held for more than 72 hours in the ICU environment. Intraoral clinical examination was carried out and collection of samples of saliva and oral mucosa, respiratory secretions, blood and urine. The presence of the main oral and opportunistic micro-organisms associated with hospital-acquired infections were evaluated by means of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Statistical analysis was performed by Mann-Whitney tests and Test T, while the correlation between the variables was obtained by Spearman test, all at a significance level of 5%. Results: There was a negative correlation between the presence of leukocytes and some oral opportunistic pathogens and exogenous. The microorganisms studied were more prevalent in male gender and obligate anaerobes and capnofilicos microorganisms from oral cavity were more relevant in systemic infections than the exogenous opportunistic pathogens, such as Enterobacteriaceae and Pseudomonas. Conclusion: It was concluded that the fragility of the oral health of patients admitted to ICU, sometimes with immune suppression associated with the colonization and/or infection from opportunistic micro-organisms can be an aggravating factor in the deterioration and worsening of the patient's systemic framework