Cross-check of Analysis Modules and Reasoner Interactions

This deliverable presents an extended set of Analysis Modules, including both the improvements done to those presented in deliverable D4.1 as well as the new analysis algorithms designed and developed to address use-cases. The deliverable also describes a complete workflow description for the different use-cases, including both stream processing for real-time monitoring applications as well as batch processing for “off-line” analysis. This workflow description specifies the iterative interaction loop between WP2, WP3, T4.1, and T4.2, thereby allowing for a cross-checking of the analysis modules and the reasoner interactions.mPlane – an Intelligent Measurement Plane for Future Network and Application Managemen

Prostate Cancer: Transrectal High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound for the Treatment of Local Recurrence after Radical Prostatectomy or Radiotherapy

Objectives To evaluate the efficacy and safety of transrectal high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) as salvage therapy for locally recurrent prostate cancer after external beam radiotherapy or recurrences located in the region of vesicourethral anastomosis after radical prostatectomy. Methods Transrectal biopsy of the prostate (recurrence after radiotherapy) or in the region of vesicourethral anastomosis (recurrence after prostatectomy) was performed in all cases at the time of biochemical relapse. Only patients with positive biopsy were treated. Systemic disease was excluded by PET-CT and bone scan. All treatments were carried out under spinal anesthesia. The device used was Ablatherm (EDAP, Lion, France). The patients were followed with PSA measurement every 3 months and clinical examination every 6 months. In case of biochemical relapse we performed re-biopsy. Results From 2002 to 2008 we treated 19 patients with local recurrence after radiotherapy. The mean follow-up was 30 months for each patient (range 6–72 months). 9 patients (47%) are disease-free at last follow-up, with PSA &lt; 1 ng/mL. 9 patients experienced biochemical failure: 8 were treated with androgen deprivation, 1 with salvage prostatectomy. 2 patients died of the disease. Adverse events related to HIFU included 1 rectourethral fistula (observed before the use of specific parameters dedicated to this patient population) and mild incontinence (2–3 pads/die) in 4 patients. From 2002 to 2008 we treated 27 patients with a local recurrence after radical prostatectomy. Mean pre-HIFU PSA was 2.17 ng/mL (range 0.5–8 ng/ml); the Gleason score ranged from 5 to 8. All patients reached a minimum follow-up of 20 months (range 20–80 months). Median PSA nadir was 0.2 ng/ml. The disease-free rate was 51% (14/27); these patients have a median PSA of 0.2 ng/ml at last follow-up. 81% (22/27) of control biopsies were negative. There were no intra-operative or post-operative complications. Conclusions The small number of patients in our series limits our ability to draw any definitive conclusions. We believe that HIFU may be a potentially useful treatment option for patients who develop prostate cancer recurrence after external beam radiotherapy or in the region of vesicourethral anastomosis after radical prostatectomy. The procedure is safe, side effects are acceptable and do not add significant morbidity to the previous radical treatment. HIFU lesions are targeted only to the area of recurrence. It is important to remember that, in case of failure, the patient can undertake any other therapies. </jats:sec

Web Performance Pitfalls

Web performance is widely studied in terms of load times, numbers of objects, object sizes, and total page sizes. However, for all these metrics, there are various definitions, data sources, and measurement tools. These often lead to different results and almost all studies do not provide sufficient details about the definition of metrics and the data sources they use. This hinders reproducibility as well as comparability of the results. This paper revisits the various definitions and quantifies their impact on performance results. To do so we assess Web metrics across a large variety of Web pages. Amazingly, even for such “obvious” metrics as load times, differences can be huge. For example, for more than 50% of the pages, the load times vary by more than 19.1% and for 10% by more than 47% depending on the exact definition of load time. Among the main culprits for such difference are the in-/exclusion of initial redirects and the choice of data source, e.g., Resource Timings API or HTTP Archive (HAR) files. Even “simpler” metrics such as the number of objects per page have a huge variance. For the Alexa 1000, we observed a difference of more than 67 objects for 10% of the pages with a median of 7 objects. This highlights the importance of precisely specifying all metrics including how and from which data source they are computed

On the design of content-centric MANETs

Content-centric networking focuses on data delivery rather than end-to-end reachability by decoupling resources from the hosts they reside on. We consider content-centric networking as a fundamental driver for mobile ad hoc network (MANET) protocol design. We systematically evaluate the suitability and effectiveness of existing approaches toward designing a content-centric MANET. We leverage the extensive prior work on both resource discovery and routing. To examine and compare the various existing designs, we identify a set of representative design alternatives. We develop analytical models for these designs that evaluate their efficiency for a content-centric MANET. Our models provide insights into the strengths and weaknesses of candidate design choices. Our analysis explores the performance boundaries of MANET designs and yields surprising results comparing unstructured flooding to more complex structured solutions. Based on our results, we derive a set of recommendations that are key to the successful design of a content-centric MANET