Purpose: Predictive biomarkers are needed to aid the individualization of radiotherapy (RT) in breast cancer. Cancer-associated fibroblasts have been implicated in tumor radioresistance and can be identified by platelet-derived growth factor receptor-beta (PDGFRb). This study aims to analyze how PDGFRb expression affects RT benefit in a large randomized RT trial. Methods: PDGFRb was assessed by im

We report here the complete genome sequence and characterization of Yersinia bacteriophage vB_YenP_ϕ80-18. ϕ80-18 was isolated in 1991 using a Y. enterocolitica serotype O:8 strain 8081 as a host from a sewage sample in Turku, Finland, and based on its morphological and genomic features is classified as a podovirus. The genome is 42 kb in size and has 325 bp direct terminal repeats characteristic

The bacteriophage vB_YecM-φR1-37 (φR1-37) is a lytic yersiniophage that can propagate naturally in different Yersinia species carrying the correct lipopolysaccharide receptor. This large-tailed phage has deoxyuridine (dU) instead of thymidine in its DNA. In this study, we determined the genomic sequence of phage φR1-37, mapped parts of the phage transcriptome, characterized the phage particle prot

Despite continued efforts by educators, UN declarations and numerous international agreements, progress is still limited in handling major global challenges such as ecosystem collapse, accelerating climate change, poverty, and inequity. The capacity to collaborate globally on addressing these issues remains weak. This historical review of research on global learning for sustainable development (GL

Young birds in cold environments face a range of age-specific thermal challenges. Studying the thermal biology of young birds throughout ontogeny may further our understanding of how such challenges are met. We investigated how age and environmental parameters influenced surface temperature gradients across various body regions of wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans) chicks on Bird Island, South

Volatiles are of key importance for host-plant recognition in insects. In the pollination system of Lithophragma flowers and Greya moths, moths are highly specialized on Lithophragma, in which they oviposit and thereby pollinate the flowers. Floral volatiles in Lithophragma are highly variable between species and populations, and moths prefer to oviposit into Lithophragma flowers from populations

Control theory is emerging as a source of solutions for many problems in the computing systems domain, and in particular for resource allocation. However, the techniques proposed to date in the literature, do not successfully address the difficulty of devising allocation schemes that are general enough, provide stability guarantees, and can be parametrised and managed by system administrators, or

Motivation While the pay-as-you-go model of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) clouds is more flexible than an in-house IT infrastructure, it still has a resource-based interface towards users, who can rent virtual computing resources over relatively long time scales. There is a fundamental mismatch between this resource-based interface and what users really care about: performance.

A number of techniques have been proposed to provide runtime performance guarantees while minimizing power consumption. One drawback of existing approaches is that they work only on a fixed set of components (or actuators) that must be specified at design time. If new components become available, these management systems must be redesigned and reimplemented. In this paper, we propose PTRADE, a nov

An important challenge in the design and implementation of self-optimizing systems is that of finding a model that maps changes in a tunable parameter (or “knob”) into an effect on the performance, power, or energy, of the overall system. This paper describes ARPE (Analyzing the Relationship between Parameters and Effectors), an open source tool to analyze the effect of parameter changes on the be

Feedback controllers are typically applied to computing systems by acting on some quantities ("tunable parameters" in the computer science lexicon, e.g., a packet drop rate) to attain some goal (e.g., a required bandwidth allocation). In other words, control loops are closed around the computing system. In the authors' opinion, this is definitely a partial use of control. Many critical parts of co

This chapter deals with Model-Based AutoTuning (MBAT). Besides describing the main flow and phases of such a tuning procedure, the main advantages of the underlying methodological approach are evidenced, namely the availability of a parametric process model to simulate the loop and assess its behaviour and characteristics such as performance and robustness, the possibility of stipulating the contr

This paper presents a library of (PID) controller models adopting the object-oriented approach, and written in Modelica. Peculiar to this work is that controllers are represented both as dynamic continuous-time and digital models, achieving consistence between the two and accounting for the functionalities of typical industrial implementations. This allows the designer to use realistic controllers

Many functions of operating systems are keen to be realised as feedback controllers. Doing so has a non negligible design impact, but also a significant payoff in terms of simplicity and generality. This paper presents a complete operating system scheduler, at present implemented in a microcontroller kernel, entirely composed of a PI-based control structure. The proposed scheduler is experimented

A recently published paper addressed the so called "PI+p" controller (i.e., a PI augmented with an additional, stable pole) and demonstrated that said controller yields interesting results particularly if tuned with the "contextual" approach, where model-based rules are used in conjunction with a relay experiment so as to provide at the same time the tuned regulator, and the tuning model. In this

In some recent papers it was shown that preemptive process schedulers in multitasking operating systems can be viewed, and above all designed, as discrete-time feedback controls with very simple (I- or PI-type) regulators, yielding significant advantages over classical scheduling policies as for time complexity and parameter interpretability. In this work, the same problem is tackled with a predic

Regulators are conceived as dynamic systems, but almost invariantly implemented as computer code. In the opinion of the authors the relationships between those two worlds are frequently overlooked in control education, although an insufficient knowledge of the involved concepts can hinder the correct operation of the realised systems. This manuscript presents a didactic activity that aims at closi

This paper investigates a novel approach to derive self-adaptive software by automatically modifying the model of the application using a control-theoretical approach. Self adaptation is achieved at the model level to assure that the model-which lives alongside the application at run-time- continues to satisfy its reliability requirements, despite changes in the environment that might lead to a vi

Self-adaptive applications are capable of changing their behavior thousands of times per second to autonomically find a way to accomplish given goals despite working in an unpredictable environment whose conditions can vary continuously. In this work we propose an evolvable system that runs self-adaptive applications on top of a heterogeneous system consisting of a general purpose processor and a