Future generation cellular networks are expected to provide ubiquitous broadband access to a continuously growing number of mobile users. In this context, LTE systems represent an important milestone ...towards the so called 4G cellular networks. A key feature of LTE is the adoption of advanced Radio Resource Management procedures in order to increase the system performance up to the Shannon limit. Packet scheduling mechanisms, in particular, play a fundamental role, because they are responsible for choosing, with fine time and frequency resolutions, how to distribute radio resources among different stations, taking into account channel condition and QoS requirements. This goal should be accomplished by providing, at the same time, an optimal trade-off between spectral efficiency and fairness. In this context, this paper provides an overview on the key issues that arise in the design of a resource allocation algorithm for LTE networks. It is intended for a wide range of readers as it covers the topic from basics to advanced aspects. The downlink channel under frequency division duplex configuration is considered as object of our study, but most of the considerations are valid for other configurations as well. Moreover, a survey on the most recent techniques is reported, including a classification of the different approaches presented in literature. Performance comparisons of the most well-known schemes, with particular focus on QoS provisioning capabilities, are also provided for complementing the described concepts. Thus, this survey would be useful for readers interested in learning the basic concepts before going into the details of a particular scheduling strategy, as well as for researchers aiming at deepening more specific aspects.
•We propose a service platform for Smart City based on the emerging ICN paradigm.•The platform offers an efficient interface between service and technology layers.•We designed the service execution ...by means of three consecutive phases.•A hierarchical and flexible name space is conceived to map a wide range of services.•The value of our idea is demonstrated through the description of real use cases.
A “Smart City” is intended as an urban environment which, supported by pervasive ICT systems, is able to offer advanced and innovative services to citizens in order to improve the overall quality of their life. In this context, the present contribution formulates a pioneering proposal, by drawing an advanced information centric platform for supporting the typical ICT services of a Smart City. It can easily embrace all available and upcoming wireless technologies, while enforcing, at the same time, ubiquitous and secure applications in many domains, such as, e-government and public administration, intelligent transportation systems, public safety, social, health-care, educational, building and urban planning, environmental, and energy and water management applications. All the details of the proposed approach have been carefully described by means of pragmatical use-cases, such as the management of administrative procedures, the starting of a new business in a given country, the navigation assistance, the signaling of an urban accident aimed at improving the public safety, the reservation of a medical examination, the remote assistance of patients, and the management of waste in a city. This description makes evident the real effectiveness of the present proposal in future urban environments.
•RSM was effective to optimize SC-CO2 oil extraction from patè olive cake (POC).•Under the optimized operative conditions, 65% of the total POC oil was extracted.•SC-CO2 extracted POC oil had higher ...concentrations of lipophilic bioactives than EVOO.•POC oil oral administration (0–40 µL·die−1) had no effects on mice liver redox status.•POC oil molecules may be useful to improve/restore mitochondrial defective functions.
The two-phase technology for olive oil extraction generates large amounts of patè olive cake (POC), a by-product that is rich in bioactive health-promoting compounds. Here, response surface methodology (RSM) was used to maximize supercritical-CO2 oil extraction from POC, while minimizing operative temperature, pressure and time. Under the optimal parameters (40.2 °C, 43.8 MPa and time 30 min), the oil yield was 14.5 g·100 g−1 dw (~65% of the total oil content of the freeze-dried POC matrix), as predicted by RSM. Compared with freeze-dried POC, the oil contained more phytosterols (13-fold), tocopherols (6-fold) and squalene (8-fold) and was a good source of pentacyclic triterpenes. When the biological effects of POC oil intake (20–40 µL·die−1) were evaluated in the livers of BALB/c mice, no significant influence on redox homeostasis was observed. Notably, a decline in liver triglycerides alongside increased activities of NAD(P)H:Quinone Oxidoreductase 1, Carnitine Palmitoyl-CoA Transferase and mitochondrial respiratory complexes suggested a potential beneficial effect on liver fatty acid oxidation.
The ongoing revolution of Internet of Things (IoT), together with the growing diffusion of robots in many activities of every day life, makes IoT-aided robotics applications a tangible reality of our ...upcoming future. Accordingly, new advanced services, based on the interplay between robots and “things”, are being conceived in assisting humans. Nevertheless, the path to a mature development of IoT-aided robotics applications requires several pivotal issues to be solved, design methodologies to be consolidated, and strong architectural choices to be discussed. This paper discusses technological implications, open issues, and target applications in the IoT-aided robotics domain. In particular, the present contribution is four-folded. First, it provides a solid state of the art on the main topics related to IoT-aided robotics services: communication networks, robotics applications in distributed and pervasive environments, semantic-oriented approaches to consensus, and network security. Second, it highlights the most important research challenges to be faced. Third, it describes the technological tools available nowadays. Fourth, it summarizes lessons learned to foster a joint scientific investigation among research teams with complementary skills.
During the last years, the interest in nano-technologies and nanoscale communications significantly growth in several application domains, such as healthcare, bio-medicine, agro-food, industry, and ...military/defense. Nano-scale devices are able to interact with each others, with existing communication networks and, ultimately, with the Internet. As a result, the well-known Internet of Things paradigm is extending its functionalities at the nano-scale, thus paving the way for the revolutionary Internet of Nano-Things concept, which goes beyond the already diffused “smart things” towards real application of ‘smart nano-things‘”. In this context, many research initiatives are addressing the definition of efficient, secure, scalable, and reliable network architectures at the nano-scale. In order to provide a valuable step ahead of the current state of the art, the work presented herein investigates a novel methodology through which securing an Internet of Nano-Things architecture, by jointly offering the reliability of connected devices and the protection of transmitted data. From the communication perspective, the proposed approach leverages both molecular diffusion and electromagnetic-based communication schema. In such a hybrid approach, parameter settings and message exchange is properly devised to effectively achieve the aforementioned security services. Finally, the impact that security functionalities have on the performance of a reference Internet of Nano-Things scenario (i.e., expressed in terms of packet loss ratio, communication latencies, and message processing overhead) is evaluated through Nano-Sim and N3Sim tools.
About 20% of resectable oesophageal carcinoma is resistant to preoperative chemoradiotherapy. Here we hypothesised that the expression of the antiapoptotic gene Baculoviral inhibitor of apoptosis ...repeat containing (BIRC)3 induced by the transforming growth factor β activated kinase 1 (TAK1) might be responsible for the resistance to the proapoptotic effect of chemoradiotherapy in oesophageal carcinoma.
TAK1 kinase activity was inhibited in FLO-1 and KYAE-1 oesophageal adenocarcinoma cells using (5Z)-7-oxozeaenol. The BIRC3 mRNA expression was measured by qRT-PCR in 65 pretreatment frozen biopsies from patients receiving preoperatively docetaxel, cisplatin, 5-fluorouracil, and concurrent radiotherapy. Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analyses were performed to determine the performance of BIRC3 expression levels in distinguishing patients with sensitive or resistant carcinoma.
In vitro, (5Z)-7-oxozeaenol significantly reduced BIRC3 expression in FLO-1 and KYAE-1 cells. Exposure to chemotherapeutic agents or radiotherapy plus (5Z)-7-oxozeaenol resulted in a strong synergistic antiapoptotic effect. In patients, median expression of BIRC3 was significantly (P<0.0001) higher in adenocarcinoma than in the more sensitive squamous cell carcinoma subtype. The BIRC3 expression significantly discriminated patients with sensitive or resistant adenocarcinoma (AUC-ROC=0.7773 and 0.8074 by size-based pathological response or Mandard's tumour regression grade classifications, respectively).
The BIRC3 expression might be a valid biomarker for predicting patients with oesophageal adenocarcinoma that could most likely benefit from preoperative chemoradiotherapy.
Dupilumab, blocking IL-4 and IL-13 signals, improves atopic dermatitis and Quality of Life but might be also associated with the occurrence of ocular adverse events (OAEs). The main objective of our ...prospective study was to characterize the cytokine and chemokine profile in the tear fluid of dupilumab-treated patients with moderate-to- severe atopic dermatitis and to identify biomarkers predicting the occurrence of ocular adverse events. Patients with moderate-to-severe AD underwent dermatological and ophthalmological evaluation at the baseline (T0) and week 16 or at the time of an eventual ocular adverse events (T1). A multiplex immunoassay measuring multiple cytokines and chemokines in the tear fluid extracted during ocular examination at both T0 and T1 was performed. Thirty-nine patients with moderate-to-severe AD and treated with dupilumab were included in the study. Baseline tear fluid levels revealed a significantly higher concentration of type 2 cytokines and chemokines in AD patients than healthy controls. The occurrence of ocular adverse events during dupilumab therapy was associated with a significant increase of IL-33 tear fluid levels and a significantly lower tear break-up time, this latter also identified as predictive factor. Our findings suggest that the ophthalmological examination should be considered a valid support to identify patients at risk of developing OAEs and to provide their appropriate management.
Solid epidemiological evidences connect obesity with incidence, stage and survival in pancreatic cancer. However, the underlying mechanistic basis linking adipocytes to pancreatic cancer progression ...remain largely elusive. We hypothesized that factors secreted by adipocytes could be responsible for epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) induction and, in turn, a more aggressive phenotype in models of pancreatic preneoplastic lesions.
We studied the role of factors secreted by two adipogenic model systems from primary human bone marrow stromal cells (hBMSCs) in an in vitro experimental cell transformation model system of human pancreatic ductal epithelial (HPDE) cell stably expressing activated KRAS (HPDE/KRAS),Results:We measured a significant induction of EMT and aggressiveness in HPDE and HPDE/KRAS cell lines when cultured with medium conditioned by fully differentiated adipocytes (ADIPO
) if compared with the same cells cultured with medium conditioned by hBMSC (hBMSC
) from two different healthy donors. Several genes coding for soluble modulators of the non-canonical WNT signaling pathway, including FRZB, SFRP2, RSPO1, WNT5A and 5B were significantly overexpressed in fully differentiated adipocytes than in their respective in hBMSC. ADIPO
induced the overexpression and the nuclear translocation of the Frizzled family member receptor tyrosine kinase-like orphan receptor (Ror) 2 in HPDE and HPDE/KRAS cells. Vantictumab, an anti-Frizzled monoclonal antibody, reduced ROR2 nuclear translocation and in turn the EMT and aggressiveness in HPDE and HPDE/KRAS cells.
We demonstrated that adipocytes could induce EMT and aggressiveness in models of pancreatic preneoplastic lesions by orchestrating a complex paracrine signaling of soluble modulators of the non-canonical WNT signaling pathway that determine, in turn, the activation and nuclear translocation of ROR2. This signaling pathway could represent a novel target for pancreatic cancer chemoprevention. Most importantly, these factors could serve as novel biomarkers to select a risk population among obese subjects for screening and, thus, early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
Upcoming 5G systems are called to face a huge growth of mobile traffic compared to the current 4G technology. To meet this challenge, the Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (mMIMO) emerged as an ...essential and capable transmission technique, able to concurrently serve a large number of users, while guaranteeing a very high spectral efficiency. Moreover, some other additional approaches, like the Joint Spatial Division and Multiplexing precoding scheme and the multi-cell coordinated beamforming technique for interference reduction, could be used to further improve the overall system performance and reduce the mMIMO implementation complexity. Unfortunately, the current scientific literature does not provide a clear overview on how and in which conditions these mechanisms can be successfully harmonized, configured, and adopted in real 5G deployments. To bridge this gap, this paper deeply investigates the configuration and the integration of these promising transmission techniques. Moreover, it also evaluates, from the system level perspective, their behavior in different operating conditions. From one side, obtained results clearly show the performance gain that these new techniques offer with respect to the existing 4G technology. From another side, however, they also identify the scenarios where the proper combination of these emerging techniques is really fruitful for meeting the expected quality requirements defined for the 5G.
The nitrogen-containing bisphosphonates (N-BP) zoledronic acid (ZOL) inhibits osteoclast-mediated bone resorption, and it is used to prevent skeletal complications from bone metastases. ZOL has also ...demonstrated anticancer activities in preclinical models and, recently, in cancer patients, highlighting the interest in determining eventual mechanisms of resistance against this agent. In our study, we selected and characterised a resistant subline of prostate cancer (PCa) cells to better understand the mechanisms, by which tumour cells can escape the antitumour effect of ZOL. DU145R80-resistant cells were selected in about 5 months using stepwise increasing concentrations of ZOL from DU145 parental cells. DU145R80 cells showed a resistance index value of 5.5 and cross-resistance to another N-BP, pamidronate, but not to the non-nitrogen containing BP clodronate. Notably, compared with DU145 parental cells, DU145R80 developed resistance to apoptosis and anoikis, as well as overexpressed the anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2 and oncoprotein c-Myc. Moreover, DU145R80 cells underwent epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) and showed increased expression of the metalloproteases MMP-2/9, as well as increased invading capability. Interestingly, compared with DU145, DU145R80 cells also increased the gene expression and protein secretion of VEGF and the cytokines Eotaxin-1 and IL-12. At the molecular level, DU145R80 cells showed strong activation of the p38-MAPK-dependent survival pathway compared with parental sensitive cells. Moreover, using the p38-inhibitor SB203580, we completely reversed the resistance to ZOL, as well as EMT marker expression and invasion. Furthermore, SB203580 treatment reduced the expression of VEGF, Eotaxin-1, IL-12, MMP-9, Bcl-2 and c-Myc. Thus, for the first time, we demonstrate that the p38-MAPK pathway can be activated under continuous extensive exposure to ZOL in PCa cells and that the p38-MAPK pathway has a critical role in the induction of resistance, as well as in the acquisition of a more aggressive and invasive phenotype.
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