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The Domain Name System (DNS), one of the foundations of the modern-day Internet, primarily translates domain names into IP addresses, enabling easy access to online services. DNS name resolution appears simple at a high level but has evolved into a complex and intricate protocol over time. Errors in either DNS configurations or DNS implementations have far-reaching disruptive consequences. This is evident from past DNS issues that have rendered popular services such as GitHub, Twitter, HBO, LinkedIn, Yelp, and Azure inaccessible for extended periods. In this dissertation, I describe my work toward making the DNS as robust as possible by combining formal methods with DNS-specific insights to provide strong guarantees.This dissertation presents the first formalization of DNS semantics, which I developed from multiple RFCs; this serves as the foundation for the rest of my work. Second, I detail a new technique, SCALE, for finding RFC compliance errors in DNS nameserver implementations via automatic test generation. SCALE symbolically executes the developed DNS formal model to jointly generate both the test queries and configurations (zone files). Using SCALE, I identified 30 new bugs in 8 popular open-source DNS implementations such as Bind, PowerDNS, Knot, and NSD, including 3 previously unknown critical security vulnerabilities. Third, I describe GRoot, the first verification tool for DNS configurations. Given the DNS zone files of an organization and a property of interest, GRoot automatically verifies that the property holds for all possible DNS queries or provides all counterexamples. GRoot performs exhaustive and proactive static analysis of DNS configuration files using an efficient algorithm for finding the equivalence classes of all possible queries to guarantee key correctness properties. I conclude with a theoretical analysis of the DNS to categorize its complexity and expressive power.

This paper presents the use of a recently developed algorithm inspired by the hunting mechanism of ant-lions in nature, called ant lion optimizer (ALO). The ALO algorithm is used for solving the voltage instability problem in radial distribution networks. The proposed method ensures system operation within voltage standard limits and with minimum power losses. The proposed method implies the following main tasks; load flow analysis with forwarding/backward sweep method, voltage stability index calculation and optimizing the distributed generators (size, location, and power factor) by applying the ALO. The brilliant performance of hybridizing these tasks will be able to give an overall view of voltage stability for radial distribution system; calculate the voltage stability index; detect the most sensitive node to collapse and presents a solution (to mitigate voltage instability problem and reduce system power losses). The performance and feasibility of the proposed method are demonstrated through simulation case on IEEE 69-bus. The obtained results provide the optimal solution.

The gold standard for assessing liver fibrosis is a liver biopsy. However, the procedure is invasive and is associated with pain and sometimes fatal consequences. The accuracy of liver biopsy results is further harmed by intra- and inter-observer variability. Small samples only. This muddles the two types of observer variability discussed above. Due to these limitations, non-invasive approaches for fibrosis testing have been developed. Various biochemical serum indicators or imaging techniques that provide a physical measure of hepatic stiffness are non-invasive approaches for assessing liver fibrosis.

Intracranial rhabdomyosarcomas represent a rare condition, posing a diagnostic challenge to physicians. Brain intraparenchymal rhabdomyosarcomas are exceptionally rare with poorly understood pathogenesis.Here we report the first adult case of intraparenchymal rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) with brainstem and cranial nerve involvement. We conducted a literature search using Embase, MEDLINE, and PubMed for published cases of patients with rhabdomyosarcoma of the brain. The keywords used were 'rhabdomyosarcoma' combined with 'intraparenchymal', 'parenchymal', 'cerebral' or 'brain' for title/abstract. Included cases were adult patients (18 years of age).A 59-year-old man presents with multiple cranial nerve palsies. MRI revealed a solitary pontine lesion that was not responsive to steroids. No systemic lesions were identified with an extensive imaging workup. A wide range of serum and cerebrospinal fluid tests were non-diagnostic during a ten-month workup until, ultimately, the patient died as a result of aspiration pneumonia. At autopsy, pathological examination on whole-brain autopsy revealed RMS, centred in the left side of pons with extension to the left side of the midbrain and the right side of pons with multiple cranial nerve involvement. There are only 20 adult cases of primary intraparenchymal RMS reported in the literature. Our present case is the first reported adult RMS in this location, with novel molecular information, providing some insight into the pathogenesis of this rare diagnosis.Intraparenchymal rhabdomyosarcoma without evidence of systemic primary disease is extremely rare, resulting in delayed diagnosis in some cases, particularly those not amenable to biopsy. The diagnostic challenge posed by this complementary case highlights the importance of maintaining a differential of neoplasm in the face of non-diagnostic investigations to the contrary.

Introduction: Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is characterized by large histopathologic heterogeneity and classified with multiple histological subtypes. Radiation therapy has long played a key role in the management of both local and metastatic RCC. An out-of-field tumor regression (abscopal response) effect of radiation therapy has gained significant importance in the treatment of different tumor types including RCC. In this study, we provide a detailed overview of the current state of knowledge and clinical experience of radiation therapy-induced abscopal effects in patients with advanced RCC. Methods: The PRISMA guidelines were followed to identify the published articles for the study. Using electronic databases such as MEDLINE via PubMed and Google Scholar, a systematic literature review was performed to find published clinical evidence for radiation therapy-induced abscopal effects in patients with advanced RCC. The clinical data of radiation therapy-induced abscopal effects were reviewed, and the outcomes have been summarized. Results: In this study, we evaluated peer-reviewed published reports to find clinical evidence for the abscopal effect following radiation therapy in patients with advanced RCC. The clinical data on the systemic abscopal effects of radiation therapy were reviewed, and the outcomes were summarized. Our literature search indicated that the evidence for abscopal effects of radiation therapy in advanced RCC yielded over 20 case reports. The evidence indicates that abscopal effects of local radiation therapy may occur in RCC through tumor cell destruction with the subsequent release of tumor antigens that systemically stimulate the immune system of the host to activate the body’s immune effector cells and produce distant nontarget antitumor effects. The activation of the immune system by local radiation therapy forms the basis to combine immunotherapy to boost its abscopal effects. Conclusions: Collectively, these findings suggest that radiation therapy can induce systemic abscopal effects through immune system activation, and thus, the addition of immunotherapeutic agents increases the potential to boost the systemic abscopal responses in patients with advanced cancers including RCC.

Objective: Intracerebral abscess is a life-threatening condition for which there are no current, widely accepted neurosurgical management guidelines. The purpose of this study was to investigate Canadian practice patterns for the medical and surgical management of primary, recurrent, and multiple intracerebral abscesses. Methods: A self-administered, cross-sectional, electronic survey was distributed to active staff and resident members of the Canadian Neurosurgical Society and Canadian Neurosurgery Research Collaborative. Responses between subgroups were analyzed using the Chi-square test. Results: In total, 101 respondents (57.7%) completed the survey. The majority (60.0%) were staff neurosurgeons working in an academic, adult care setting (80%). We identified a consensus that abscesses >2.5 cm in diameter should be considered for surgical intervention. The majority of respondents were in favor of excising an intracerebral abscess over performing aspiration if located superficially in non-eloquent cortex (60.4%), located in the posterior fossa (65.4%), or causing mass effect leading to herniation (75.3%). The majority of respondents were in favor of reoperation for recurrent abscesses if measuring greater than 2.5 cm, associated with progressive neurological deterioration, the index operation was an aspiration and did not include resection of the abscess capsule, and if the recurrence occurred despite prior surgery combined with maximal antibiotic therapy. There was no consensus on the use of topical intraoperative antibiotics. Conclusion: This survey demonstrated heterogeneity in the medical and surgical management of primary, recurrent, and multiple brain abscesses among Canadian neurosurgery attending staff and residents.1

Background: Cirrhosis has now emerged as an important public health problem globally and is currently the leading cause of death among liver-related diseases. Aspartate Aminotransferase to-platelet ratio index, a newer prognostic modality has been demonstrated to be a very effective non-invasive diagnostic for identifying advanced liver fibrosis by several studies. In this study, we looked at the efficacy of Aspartate Aminotransferase to-platelet ratio index as a non-invasive prognostic marker for liver cirrhosis in patients attending a tertiary care centre in India. Methods: In this case control analytical study 100 cases of individuals with cirrhosis and 100 controls over a period of 2 years were enrolled. Aspartate Aminotransferase to-platelet ratio index was calculated along with all the clinical characteristics, as well as biochemical charcacteristics including liver function tests, kidney function tests, prothrombin time, and examination findings including Ultrasonography. Results: Our study results showed that 48% of the study participants belonged to the age groups of 40-60 years. We also observed a statistically significant difference between the study groups with respect to the distribution of APRI. (p-value Conclusion: Thus, our study results conclude that APRI is an important non-invasive prognostic tool that can be utilised for prognostication of liver cirrhosis.

This paper focuses on verifying the neighbouring k-edge coloration technique for balancing multi-color problems in the bipartite graph. Thus, it eliminates triangular copies of similar colour shades while maintaining exactly two colours spacing between the edges. It is achieved by inducing bipartite color selections from two unique color sets say and . Thus, ensures the minimum colour interference exists by employing a fair version of the neighbouring k-edge colouring technique. Theoretical evidence, theorems, and proofs are discussed, and results shows the superiority for equitable colourable of Wi-Fi applications. &nbsp

Supplementary Tables 1-6. Supplementary Table 1: Clinico-pathological demographics of CD133high and CD133low GBM; Supplementary Table 2: Positive and negative correlation probe sets present in CD133-signature; Supplementary Table 3: Drug targets acquired from CD133 gene signature connectivity map; Supplementary Table 4: qRT-PCR Primers; Supplementary Table 5: Genes used to complete network analysis; Supplementary Table 6: Molecular Subtypes of GBM samples used

Supplementary Figures 1-6. Supplementary Figure 1: CD133 correlates patient outcome with GIC selfrenewal and proliferative capacities in human GBM; Supplementary Figure 2: Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) results for embryonic stem cell gene sets in CD133high- and CD133low-signature REMBRANDT samples; Supplementary Figure 3: CD133+ GICs are resistant to most compounds selected from CD133 connectivity mapping; Supplementary Figure 4: Pyrvinium specifically targets CD133+ GICs; Supplementary Figure 5: Overexpression of CD133; Supplementary Figure 6: Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) results of Pyrvinium or DMSO control treated GICs

Purpose: Clonal evolution of cancer may be regulated by determinants of stemness, specifically self-renewal, and current therapies have not considered how genetic perturbations or properties of stemness affect such functional processes. Glioblastoma-initiating cells (GICs), identified by expression of the cell surface marker CD133, are shown to be chemoradioresistant. In the current study, we sought to elucidate the functional role of CD133 in self-renewal and identify compounds that can specifically target this CD133+ treatment-refractory population.Experimental Design: Using gain/loss-of-function studies for CD133 we assessed the in vitro self-renewal and in vivo tumor formation capabilities of patient-derived glioblastoma cells. We generated a CD133 signature combined with an in silico screen to find compounds that target GICs. Self-renewal and proliferation assays on CD133-sorted samples were performed to identify the preferential action of hit compounds. In vivo efficacy of the lead compound pyrvinium was assessed in intracranial GIC xenografts and survival studies. Lastly, microarray analysis was performed on pyrvinium-treated GICs to discover core signaling events involved.Results: We discovered pyrvinium, a small-molecule inhibitor of GIC self-renewal in vitro and in vivo, in part through inhibition of Wnt/β-catenin signaling and other essential stem cell regulatory pathways. We provide a therapeutically tractable strategy to target self-renewing, chemoradioresistant, and functionally important CD133+ stem cells that drive glioblastoma relapse and mortality.Conclusions: Our study provides an integrated approach for the eradication of clonal populations responsible for cancer progression, and may apply to other aggressive and heterogeneous cancers. Clin Cancer Res; 21(23); 5324–37. ©2015 AACR.

The peripheral arterial occlusive disease is responsible for a significant amount of morbidity and mortality in patients of endstage renal disease. This disease might not be as common as end-stage renal disease in vascular complications arising after renal transplant. The peripheral arterial occlusive disease is responsible for lower limb amputation in chronic kidney disease. It is important to identify the peripheral arterial occlusive disease as it may lead to septicaemia which in turn can result in multiple organ failure and thus can prove to be a potentially fatal complication of renal disease. Here the authors report a case of a 42-year-old female who had undergone a renal transplant four years back. She presented with breathlessness and bilateral pedal oedema along with autoamputation of toes and ultimately had to be taken for haemodialysis. The patient was intrervene for an arteriovenous fistula for haemodialysis in view of graft rejection. Through this brief case report, the authors highlight the importance of a neglected autoamputation which was a missed warning sign of impending renal graft rejection in the present case.

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are a groundbreaking innovation in nanotechnology. CNTs have exceptional fabric properties, making them an ideal reinforcement for Al-based composites. Al-CNT composites are expected to be used in aircraft applications due to their unique properties, as well as beneficial materials due to their energising mechanical properties. Although numerous researches investigated on mechanical properties of Al/CNT composites, the load transfer effect have not yet been clarified in detailed manner. Thus, the load transfer effect in CNT-Al composites is the focus of this review article.