Thesis--University of Oklahoma. / Bibliography: leaves 90-93.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-139).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--North Carolina State University. / Vita. Originally issued in electronic format. UMI number: 3098991. Includes bibliographical references (p. 204-217). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Η παχυσαρκία, είναι μια σύγχρονη νόσος της ανθρωπότητας που χαρακτηρίζεται από περίσσεια σωματικού λίπους και συνδέεται άμεσα με πολλές ασθένειες με αυξημένο ιατρικό και κοινωνικό κόστος. Στην μάχη για την αντιμετώπιση της, πέραν της πληθώρας διαιτών, των προγραμμάτων εκγύμνασης και των χειρουργικών επεμβάσεων, έρχονται να προστεθούν και τα αδυνατιστικά σκευάσματα. Η αγορά των αδυνατιστικών σκευασμάτων, μια αγορά με έντονο ανταγωνισμό που απευθύνεται σε ένα μεγάλο μερίδιο της αγοράς, παρέχει σήμερα μία τεράστια γκάμα προϊόντων που τις περισσότερες φορές υπόσχονται απώλεια κιλών με ελάχιστη προσπάθεια. Η αποτελεσματικότητα τους όμως, καθώς και η ασφάλεια τους δεν υπόκεινται σε αυστηρούς ελέγχους όμοιους με των φαρμάκων με αποτέλεσμα να υπάρχει σύγχυση, φόβος και ανασφάλεια για την χρήση των προϊόντων αυτών. Η συγκεκριμένη έρευνα έγινε με σκοπό να αποκαλύψει την αποτελεσματικότητα και την ικανοποίηση που προσφέρουν στους χρήστες τους τα αδυνατιστικά σκευάσματα που κυκλοφορούν στην ελληνική αγορά, καθώς και τους τρόπους πληροφόρησης αυτών για τα σκευάσματα. Από την έρευνα προκύπτουν επιπλέον πληροφορίες όσον αφορά στο καταναλωτικό προφίλ των χρηστών και τις αξίες τους και προτεραιότητες στην ζωή τους. Τα σκευάσματα στα οποία αφορά η έρευνα είναι τα μη συνταγογραφούμενα αδυνατιστικά χάπια, εκχυλίσματα, καθώς και υποκατάστατα γευμάτων. Η έρευνα πραγματοποιήθηκε κατά τους θερινούς μήνες του έτους 2011 με τυχαία δειγματοληψία 100 ερωτηθέντων. / Obesity, a disease of modern humanity, is characterized by excess body fat and is directly linked to many diseases with increased medical and social costs. At the battle to tackle obesity, in addition to the many diets, fitness programs and surgical procedures, slimming products are added such as pills, herbs and.meal substitutes. The market of slimming products, a market with intense competition addressed to a large market share, currently provides a huge range of products promising weight loss with minimal effort. Their effectiveness, however, and their safety are not subject to strict controls similar to those of drug leading in that way to confusion, fear and insecurity for the use of these products. This research was designed to reveal the effectiveness and satisfaction that slimming products offer to their users in the Greek market, as also to reveal how consumers get informed about this products. The investigation, also provides additional information regarding the general profile and their values and priorities in life. The products examined in this research, is non-prescription herbal slimming pills, herbal extracts and meal substitutes. The survey was conducted during the summer months of 2011 on a random sampling of 100 respondents.

Στο πεδίο των ασύρματων επικοινωνιών της τάξης των 60 GHz που αντιστοιχούν σε ρυθμούς μετάδοσης multi-gigabits ανά δευτερόλεπτο, οι σύγχρονες υλοποιήσεις βασίζονται στα ιδιαίτερα προσαρμοζόμενα ASICs, ανάλογα με τις ανάγκες της εφαρμογής. Απαιτούνται γενικώς υψηλές ταχύτητες επεξεργασίας σε συνδυασμό με χαμηλή κατανάλωση ενέργειας. Ωστόσο, για να υποστηριχθούν διαφορετικά πρότυπα με μεγάλη διαφοροποίηση τρόπων χρήσης, είναι ιδιαίτερα επιθυμητές λύσεις αρχιτεκτονικής που μπορούν να προγραμματιστούν και να ρυθμιστούν έτσι ώστε αυξάνοντας το δυνατό αγοραστικό κοινό, να μειωθεί το κόστος επεξεργασίας ανά chip. Στις μέρες μας, τα ASIPs (Application-Specific Instruction-set Processors) δεν είναι εφικτά λόγων των υψηλότατων απαιτήσεων απόδοσης/ενέργειας. Ωστόσο, το κενό που υπάρχει με τα ASICs μπορεί κατά μεγάλο μέρος να γεφυρωθεί ή και να εξαλειφθεί, εισάγοντας και χρησιμοποιώντας ποιο δυναμική συμπεριφορά στην ψηφιακή front-end λειτουργικότητα. Για να επιτευχθεί αυτό, απαιτούνται καινοτομίες στην πλευρά της αρχιτεκτονικής του επεξεργαστή και ειδικότερα στον τρόπο που οι αλγόριθμοι αντιστοιχίζονται σε αυτές τις απαιτήσεις. Ξεκινώντας από παλαιότερα πειράματα που έδειξαν ότι η ιδέα αυτή είναι εφικτή, τα αντιπροσωπευτικά αλγοριθμικά τμήματα (με βάση κυρίως τον FFT) θα αντιστοιχηθούν στην επιλεγμένη αρχιτεκτονική ASIP για εφαρμογές στα 60 GHz. Σε αυτά τα πλαίσια, θα εφαρμοστεί η μεθοδολογία του διαγράμματος ροής εκτιμήσεων υψηλής κλίμακας (high level estimations flowchart). Πιο συγκεκριμένα, αρχικά θα αποκτηθεί μια πιο ακριβής καταγραφή του λειτουργικού κόστους της αλυσίδας φορτίου δεδομένων του ψηφιακού μέρους του δέκτη που υλοποιεί το πρότυπο επικοινωνιών στα 60 GHz. Στη συνέχεια θα κβαντιστούν οι πιο πολύπλοκοι, λειτουργικά, πυρήνες της αλυσίδας, όπως θα προκύψει από το προηγούμενο βήμα και τελικά οι πυρήνες αυτοί θα αντιστοιχηθούν σε αναδιαμορφώσιμα αρχιτεκτονικά μοντέλα. Η εργασία θα επικεντρωθεί στον FFT, που αναμένεται να έχει τη μέγιστη λειτουργική πολυπλοκότητα και θα προταθεί μια διαφορετική προσέγγιση για τον τρόπο προσπέλασης των δεδομένων και των συντελεστών στην SRAM και το register file, με στόχο την ελάττωση της κατανάλωσης ενέργειας του πυρήνα αυτού. Τέλος, θα παρατεθεί μια συγκριτική μελέτη των σχημάτων πρόσβασης που θα ερευνηθούν. Με αυτόν τον τρόπο μπορούν να ποσοτικοποιηθούν τα συνολικά κέρδη της έρευνάς μας. / In the domain of multi-gigabits per second wireless 60 GHz communication transceivers and beyond, today's implementations are all based on heavily customized application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). The basic motivation for this customization is the extremely high processing speeds that are required, in combination with the need for low energy consumption. However, to support different standards and highly varying usage modes, more programmable or configurable architecture solutions are strongly desirable to increase the potential market volume and in this way to reduce the per-chip processing costs. Today these application-specific instruction set processors or ASIPs are not feasible due to the too high performance/energy requirements. Nevertheless, we believe that by introducing and exploiting more dynamic behavior in the digital front-end functionality, the performance/energy gap with the ASICs can be largely bridged and potentially even fully overcome. In order to achieve this, innovations are required on the processor architecture side and especially on the way algorithms are mapped to those architectures. In this thesis, we will start from earlier experiments which have shown the viability of the above concept. Τhe representative algorithmic blocks (mainly FFT oriented) will be mapped onto reconfigurable hardware based on ASIP architectures for 60 GHz applications. In this way we can quantify the overall gains and check how far the approach can be extended to exploit all the available dynamism using the concept of scenario clustering. In this context, we will follow the steps of the high level estimations flowchart methodology. In particular, we will obtain a more accurate account of the operational complexity of the digital base-band payload chain kernels, quantize the most complex of them and then map them in reconfigurable architectures. Especially for the FFT kernel, that is expected to show the highest complexity, we will implement a different approach in the accessing of the data and coefficients that intends to limit the energy usage of the kernel. For this purpose, we will end this work with a comparative study of different schemes explored.

Les nouvelles technologies introduisent de nouveaux problèmes et risques. Par exemple, les internautes sont constamment tracés et profilés sur l'Internet. Ce profilage permet aux divers sites de personaliser et ainsi d'améliorer le service qu'ils fournissent à chaque internaute. Cependant ce profilage introduit aussi des problèmes d'intimité et de protection de la vie privée. Il est d'ailleurs reconnu que ces données personnelles sont souvent échangées, voire vendues, et qu'il existe une vraie economie des données personnelles. Cet thèse étudie comment ces données personnelles, et en particulier les historique Web - c'est à dire la liste des sites Internet visités par un internaute-, sont collectées, échangées et vendues. Elle propose une analyse de la vie privée des systèmes de vente aux enchères des publicités ciblés. Elle montre comment les différents acteurs de la publicité en ligne collectent et s'echangent les données personnelles, et étudie les risques pour les Internautes. Elle propose également une analyse économique et montre, notamment, que les données sont bradées pour quelques millièmes de dollars. / New medias introduce new problems and risks. There are important security and privacy considerations related to online interactions. Users browsing the Web leave a constant trail of traces referring to their Web actions. A large number of entities take advantage of this data to constantly improve how the Web services function, often offering rich personalization capabilities -- to achieve this, user data is needed. To obtain user data, Web users are being tracked and profiled. Having user data may help enhancing functionality and usability, but it also has the potential of introducing complex privacy problems, related to data collection, storing and processing. The incentives to gather user data are of economical nature: user data is monetized. We start with a description of privacy problems and risks, highlighting their roots in technology changes; users must constantly struggle to adapt to changes. The legal frameworks relating to privacy are about to change: Web companies will have to adopt to new realities. First part of this thesis is devoted to measuring the consequences of private data leaks and tracking. We show how Web browsing history convey insight relating to user interests. We study the risks of Web browsing history leaks. We point out that browsing history is to large extent unique; we perform this basing on a dataset of more than 350k partial history fingerprints. The consequence here is that if browsing histories are personally identifiable information (PII), the upcoming European privacy legal frameworks could potentially result in strict guidelines for their collection, storing and processing. The tracking measurement of third-party resources confirms the popular notion that most of the tracking is carried by US-based companies. This creates interesting information asymmetries, which are of great importance, especially if user data could be simply equated to financial and economical benefits. Second part discusses value of privacy. We study the emerging technology of Real-Time Bidding (RTB), online real-time auctions of ad spaces. We highlight that during the auction phase, bidders in RTB obtain user information such as the visited Web site or user location and they pay for serving ads. In other words, user data flows are strictly related to financial flows. User data is thus monetized. We expose an interesting design characteristic of RTB which allows us to monitor a channel with winning bids -- dynamically established fees bidders pay for displaying their ads. We perform a detailed measurement of RTB and study how this price for user information varies according to such aspects like time of day, user location and type of visited Web site. Using data obtained from real users, we also study the effect of user profiles. Users are indeed treated differently, based on their previously visited Web sites (browsing history). We observed variability in prices of RTB ads, based on those traits. The price for user information in RTB is volatile and typically is in the range of $0.0001-$0.001. This study also had a decidedly important transparency part. We introduced a Web browser extension allowing to discover the price that bidders in RTB pay. This demonstrates how the user awareness could be improved. In part three, we continue the transparency trail. We point out that Web browsers allow every Web site (or third-party resources they include) to record the mouse movements of their visitors. We point out that recent advances in mouse movement analysis points to the notion that mouse movements can potentially be used to recognize and track Web users across the Web; mouse movement analysis can also be used to infer users' demographics data such as age. We highlight the existence of mouse movement analytics -- third-party scripts specializing in mouse movement collections. We also suggest that Web browser vendors should consider including permissions for accessing the API enabling these kind of recordings.

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a highly prevalent opportunistic infection and a major pathogen in immune-compromised patients. The virus exhibits a wide cell tropism and is able to lytically infect virtually any cell type, with detectable gene expression and release of new virions, but not the neutrophil. This cell is the first immune cell to engage most pathogens, engulfing and killing them before undergoing apoptosis and clearance by macrophages. However certain viruses and bacteria are able to evade host defences and use the neutrophil as a “Trojan horse” for replication and dissemination. In this context, enhanced neutrophil survival may promote infection. This work describes a profound neutrophil survival phenotype elicited by contact with live or UV-inactivated HCMV, in the absence of lytic viral gene expression. The effect does not involve signalling through candidate Toll-like receptors, but is dependent on activation of the ERK MAPK and NFκB signalling pathways, and is viral strain-dependent, restricted to clinical strains of the virus. Furthermore, HCMV triggers the secretion of a bioactive secretome that induces a similar paracrine anti-apoptotic effect in fresh neutrophils, and stimulates monocyte chemotaxis and differentiation to a phenotype that is permissive for HCMV infection. This “transferrable” effect is not due to residual virus or the presence of well-known neutrophil survival factors such as IL-6 or IL-8, but is mediated by a heat-stable protein or lipid, secreted late in culture. These results are supported by data in neutrophils isolated from patients with CMV viraemia and pneumonitis which show increased survival ex vivo, and will be further investigated using plasma membrane profiling by amino-oxybiotinylation and tandem mass tag mass spectrometry. This technique, used for the first time here in a primary cell type, allows quantitative proteomics to be performed for the first time in the neutrophil. This work demonstrates that the technique provides a comprehensive readout of all neutrophil plasma membrane proteins in a sample, with high plasma membrane purity and minimal neutrophil activation and necrosis, validated by flow cytometry. Furthermore, this has been applied to generate plasma membrane profiles for the resting, inflammatory and apoptotic neutrophil, revealing a number of neutrophil cell surface molecules not found by previous membrane proteomic methods. This technique has the potential to analyse the effect of HCMV and other pathogens on the expression profile of the neutrophil surface membrane and to examine how neutrophil signalling and function is modulated. These data shed light on the role of neutrophil apoptosis as a potential promoter of HCMV infection, and have the potential to increase our understanding of both the neutrophil’s response to pathogen invasion and to generate future approaches to combating HCMV dissemination and pathogenesis.

Introduction Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic gastrointestinal disorder that encompasses two major subtypes; Crohn’s Disease (CD) and Ulcerative Colitis (UC). Our knowledge regarding disease pathogesis is rapidly increasing. However, these disease entities provide challenges in diagnosis, monitoring of disease activity and assessing individual response to treatment, because there is a lack of validated clinical biomarkers. Metabolomics involves the study of numerous analytes that have very diverse physical and chemical properties and occur in a wide concentration range. Early evidence suggests there is potential for metabolomic profiling to be used in the differentiation of CD and UC. However, knowledge is limited regarding the metabolic changes seen in relation to disease activity or to medical or surgical treatments. Aims A metabolomics approach was taken to determine whether metabolomic profiles could distinguish between patients with CD or UC and healthy controls. We also aimed to define the relationship between metabolomic profile and disease activity, and to determine the effect of medical (anti-TNFa agents) and surgical treatment on the metabolome. Methods A metabolomics approach was undertaken. Serum and urine sample sets were collected from a total of 41 patients with ulcerative colitis, 43 patients with Crohn’s disease, and 62 healthy controls (HC). In order to allow a comparison of metablomic profile and disease activity, 4 sample sets were taken from the same patient at 3 monthly intervals over the period of one year. Those patients undergoing either surgical or biological treatment had sample sets taken pre and post intervention. Metabolomic analysis using gas chromatography time of flight mass spectrometry (GC-ToF-MS) and ultra-high performance liquid chromatography Fourier Transform mass spectrometry (UHPLC-FTMS) was carried out on both serum and urine. Results Serum and urine GC-ToF-MS and UHPLC-FTMS metabolomic analyses show differentiation between UC, CD and healthy controls, most significantly in urine analyses. No significant differentiation was seen in pre- and post-surgical patients, or pre- and post-biological therapy patients. It was possible to differentiate surgical patients from healthy controls, especially in the urine analyses. Metabolite identification revealed consistently more dietary variation in the healthy controls than in the IBD patients. Significant differences (p < 0.05) were seen between healthy controls and IBD patients in classes of metabolites relating to the citric acid cycle and the uronic acid pathway, as well as amino acids, fatty acids and cholesterols. The behaviour or location of disease, or the disease activity score did not appear to influence the metabolome in either serum or urine analyses using GC-ToF-MS and UHPLC-FTMS. Conclusion Metabolomic profiling of urine and serum in IBD may provide a novel methodology aiding both clinical diagnosis through biomarker development, and advancing knowledge of disease pathogenesis.

Orientador: Erika Veruska Paiva Ortolan / Resumo: Introdução: Por volta de oitenta por cento dos acidentes envolvendo ingestão de cáusticos ocorrem em crianças. A estenose cáustica do esôfago é a sua principal complicação com grande morbidade. Lesões neoplásicas esofágicas podem desenvolver-se como uma complicação tardia desta estenose com um tempo médio de aparecimento entre o acidente e o desenvolvimento neoplásico de 15 a 30 anos. Considerando este risco, biopsias seriadas do esôfago são recomendadas com o objetivo de detecção precoce de displasias. Assim, um conhecimento abrangente da relação biológica entre cáusticos e neoplasia esofágica é de grande importância na identificação de novos biomarcadores que possibilitariam tratamento precoce. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) são RNAs pequenos, não codificadores de proteínas que regulam importantes processos celulares e têm se mostrado como robustos biomarcadores. O perfil global de expressão de miRNAs nesta população, seguida da identificação dos miRNA-alvo, pode levar à identificação da presença e magnitude do dano ao material genético em amostra de tecido esofágico obtido de pacientes portadores de estenose cáustica. Objetivos: Determinar o perfil global da expressão de miRNAs em células da mucosa esofágica de crianças portadoras de lesões por ingestão de cáusticos, com o objetivo de identificar miRNAs como biomarcadores associados a tumorigênese esofágica nesta população específica. Materiais e Métodos: Vinte e sete amostras esofágicas fixadas em formalina e embebidas em parafina (F... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Background: 80% of the caustic ingestions occur in children. Esophageal stricture is a major chronic complication with great morbidity. Esophageal neoplasms may develop as a late complication of caustic injury with a mean time between caustic ingestion and cancer development of 15-30 years. Serial biopsies are recommended aiming early detection of premalignant changes. Thus a comprehensive knowledge of biological relation between caustic and esophageal cancer is of major importance to identify the biomarkers that could enable an early treatment. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNA molecules and regulate key cellular processes during tumorigenesis and have been demonstrated as an useful diagnostic, prognostic and predictive biomarkers. Global miRNA expression profiling analysis in this population, followed by the identification of miRNA target genes, may lead to the identification of the presence and magnitude of damage to genetic material in a sample of esophageal tissue obtained from patients with caustic stenosis. Objectives: We aimed to identify global microRNA (miRNA) expression changes in cells of the esophageal mucosa from children with caustic lesions compared to paired macroscopic and microscopically normal esophageal tissue. Patient and Methods: 27 formalin fixed, paraffin embedded (FFPE) esophageal samples from 15 patients were divided into two groups according to the time elapsed after the injury (Group A: less than 5 years, Group B: more than 5 years). Tho... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Doutor

MAGALHÃES, Deborah Maria Vieira. Workload modeling and prediction for resources provisioning in cloud. 2017. 100 f. Tese (Doutorado em Engenharia de Teleinformática)–Centro de Tecnologia, Universidade Federal do Ceará, Fortaleza, 2017. / Submitted by Hohana Sanders (hohanasanders@hotmail.com) on 2017-06-02T16:11:24Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2017_tese_dmvmagalhães.pdf: 5119492 bytes, checksum: 581c09b1ba042cf8c653ca69d0aa0d57 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marlene Sousa (mmarlene@ufc.br) on 2017-06-02T16:18:39Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2017_tese_dmvmagalhães.pdf: 5119492 bytes, checksum: 581c09b1ba042cf8c653ca69d0aa0d57 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-02T16:18:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2017_tese_dmvmagalhães.pdf: 5119492 bytes, checksum: 581c09b1ba042cf8c653ca69d0aa0d57 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-02-23 / The evaluation of resource management policies in cloud environments is challenging since clouds are subject to varying demand coming from users with different profiles and Quality de Service (QoS) requirements. Factors as the virtualization layer overhead, insufficient trace logs available for analysis, and mixed workloads composed of a wide variety of applications in a heterogeneous environment frustrate the modeling and characterization of applications hosted in the cloud. In this context, workload modeling and characterization is a fundamental step on systematizing the analysis and simulation of the performance of computational resources management policies and a particularly useful strategy for the physical implementation of the clouds. In this doctoral thesis, we propose a methodology for workload modeling and characterization to create resource utilization profiles in Cloud. The workload behavior patterns are identified and modeled in the form of statistical distributions which are used by a predictive controller to establish the complex relationship between resource utilization and response time metric. To this end, the controller makes adjustments in the resource utilization to maintain the response time experienced by the user within an acceptable threshold. Hence, our proposal directly supports QoS-aware resource provisioning policies. The proposed methodology was validated through two different applications with distinct characteristics: a scientific application to pulmonary diseases diagnosis, and a web application that emulates an auction site. The performance models were compared with monitoring data through graphical and analytical methods to evaluate their accuracy, and all the models presented a percentage error of less than 10 %. The predictive controller was able to dynamically maintain the response time close to the expected trajectory without Service Level Agreement (SLA) violation with an Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) = 4.36%. / A avaliação de políticas de gerenciamento de recursos em nuvens computacionais é uma tarefa desafiadora, uma vez que tais ambientes estão sujeitos a demandas variáveis de usuários com diferentes perfis de comportamento e expectativas de Qualidade de Serviço (QoS). Fatores como overhead da camada de virtualização, indisponibilidade de dados e complexidade de cargas de trabalho altamente heterogêneas dificultam a modelagem e caracterização de aplicações hospedadas em nuvens. Neste contexto, caracterizar e modelar a carga de trabalho (ou simples- mente carga) é um passo importante na sistematização da análise e simulação do desempenho de políticas de gerenciamento dos recursos computacionais e uma estratégia particularmente útil antes da implantação física das nuvens. Nesta tese de doutorado, é proposta uma metodologia para modelagem e caracterização de carga visando criar perfis de utilização de recursos em Nuvem. Os padrões de comportamento das cargas são identificados e modelados sob a forma de distribuições estatísticas as quais são utilizadas por um controlador preditivo a fim de estabelecer a complexa relação entre a utilização dos recursos e a métrica de tempo de resposta. Desse modo, o controlador realiza ajustes no percentual de utilização do recursos a fim de manter o tempo de resposta observado pelo o usuário dentro de um limiar aceitável. Assim, nossa proposta apoia diretamente políticas de provisionamento de recursos cientes da Qualidade de Serviço (QoS). A metodologia proposta foi validada através de aplicações com características distintas: uma aplicação científica para o auxílio do diagnóstico de doenças pulmonares e uma aplicação Web que emula um site de leilões. Os modelos de desempenho computacional gerados foram confrontados com os dados reais através de métodos estatísticos gráficos e analíticos a fim de avaliar sua acurácia e todos os modelos apresentaram um percentual de erro inferior a 10%. A modelagem proposta para o controlador preditivo mostrou-se efetiva pois foi capaz de dinamicamente manter o tempo de resposta próximo ao valor esperado, com erro percentual absoluto médio (MAPE ) = 4.36% sem violação de SLA.