Maria Fazio

Gender-related effect of clinical and genetic variables on the cognitive impairment in multiple sclerosis

Abstract.Background:Cognitive impairment may occur at any time during the course of multiple sclerosis (MS), and it is often a major cause of disability in patients with the disease. The APOE-ε4 allele is the major known genetic risk factor for late onset familial and sporadic Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), and it seems to be implicated in cognitive decline in normal elderly persons.Objective:To investigate the clinical and genetic variables that can be associated with the cognitive decline in patients with MS.Methods:Five-hundred and three patients with clinically definite MS underwent a battery of neuropsychological tests and, according to the number of failed tests, were divided into cognitively normal and impaired. All patients were genotyped for APOE gene polymorphisms.Results:Fifty-six percent of MS patients showed, to different extents, cognitive impairment. Cognitive decline was predominant in men and was associated with disease duration, Kurtzke Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) score, a low level of education, and, interestingly, the ε4 allele of the APOE gene. By contrast, cognitive impairment in women was independent of any investigated variable.Conclusion:The findings demonstrate that clinical and genetic factors play a role in men affected by MS developing cognitive impairment.

Apolipoprotein E genotype does not influence the progression of multiple sclerosis

Abstract.Objective:To investigate the association between apolipoprotein E (APOE) polymorphisms and the progression of MS.Methods:We investigated 428 subjects affected by clinically defined MS, with a disease duration of at least three years. We collected data concerning the age at onset of MS, clinical type, disease duration and disability according to the expanded disability status scale (EDSS). We also calculated the progression index (PI) to evaluate disease progression. APOE genotyping and the –491 A/T polymorphism of the APOE promoter were determined.Results:No association was observed between the APOE ε4 allele and clinical characteristics of our study population. We also investigated the –491 A/T APOE promoter polymorphism in 236 MS subjects and did not find any association between the –491 A/T polymorphism and the selected clinical variables.Conclusions:In our population the APOE ε4 allele and the –491 A/T APOE promoter polymorphism are not associated with a more rapid course of MS.

Adding long-term availability, obfuscation, and encryption to multi-cloud storage systems

Nowadays, storage services offer a new way for Cloud providers to do business. This new trend is proved by the number of Cloud storage providers that are continuously appearing on the market. By now, using Cloud storage services is becoming a common practice for end-users. However, the current Cloud storage providers do not offer any guarantees regarding long-term availability and privacy. In fact, data stored in the Cloud could be locked-in, lost, or violated in terms of privacy. In this work, we present an innovative system that on one hand allows end-users to simultaneously rely on different Cloud storage providers in a transparent way and on the other hand to enforce long-term availability, obfuscation, and encryption. Our system is highly reliable, in fact, if a provider is not temporarily or permanently available, end-users continue accessing their data in a secure way. In addition, only the end-users have the full control of the overall security of their data and no sensitive information are disclosed to Cloud storage providers. Several experiments allow us to discuss the performance of our system compared against existing solutions.

Heterogeneous Sensors Become Homogeneous Things in Smart Cities

Smart Cities offer a new approach for optimizing services, reducing costs, simplifying the management of Future Cities, enabling new services for citizens. In the Future Internet initiatives, Sensors Networks assume even more a crucial role, especially for making smarter cities. Sensors, becoming smart, will represent the peripheral elements of a complex future ICT world. However, due to the specific application field, smart sensors are very heterogeneous in terms of communication technologies, sensing features and elaboration capabilities. To overcome issues due to the high heterogeneity in this paper we present a new architecture able to make a dual abstraction of complex sensing infrastructures along with data they collect. An important key of this work is to provide a service at world wide level, that is scalable and flexible. The architecture implementation is based on Sensor Web Enablement standard specifications and makes use of the Contiki Operating System for accomplishing the Internet of Things.

AllJoyn Lambda: An architecture for the management of smart environments in IoT

The increasing number of everyday embedded devices that are interconnected over the Internet leads to the need of new software solutions for managing them in an efficient, scalable, and smart way. In addition, such devices produce a huge amount of information, causing the well known Big Data problem, that need to be stored and processed. This emerging scenario, known as Internet of Things (IoT), raises two main challenges: large-scale smart environments management and Big Data storage/analytics. In this paper, we address both challenges, proposing AllJoyn Lambda, a software solution integrating AllJoyn in the Lambda architecture used for Big Data storage and analytics. In order, to describe how the architecture works, a software prototype integrating the AllJoyn system with MongoDB and Storm is presented and tested, analyzing a “smart home” case of study. Finally, we will focus on how can be possible to manage embedded devices in a smart fashion processing both batch and real-time data.

AIPAC: Automatic IP address configuration in mobile ad hoc networks

We present an innovative protocol for the automatic configuration of the IP address in ad hoc networks. This protocol assigns unique IP address to each node and manages possible duplicate addresses due to the mobility of nodes in the network. It avoids the storage of large amounts of data and makes use of procedures that minimize the number of exchanged packets. The protocol also provides a new mechanism, called Gradual Merging of networks that causes the merging process of networks according to their evolution. Ns2 simulations are carried out to validate and characterize the performance of our proposed approach.

Cloud4sens: a cloud-based architecture for sensor controlling and monitoring

This article discusses two strategies for managing sensing resources in the cloud and providing them as a service. The first strategy follows the data-centric model, where the cloud offers environmental data to its clients as a service, without any knowledge of how data are measured and processed. The second strategy adopts the device-centric model, which enables the cloud clients to use a virtual sensing infrastructure that they can customize for specific purposes. They can access sensed data and customize one or more virtual devices. The article also presents a cloud framework, called Cloud4Sens, that combines both the data-centric and device-centric models, enabling the end-user to choose which type of cloud service he needs. The proposed solution was designed according to the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) specifications defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium and exploits well known technologies, such as XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) communications and X509 certificates.

Virtual machine provisioning through satellite communications in federated Cloud environments

Cloud federation offers plenty of new services and business opportunities. However, many advanced services cannot be implemented in the real Cloud market due to several issues that have not been overcome yet. One of these concerns is the transfer of huge amount of data among federated Clouds. This paper aims to overcome such a limitation proposing an approach based on satellite communications. By comparing performance in data delivery on the Internet and satellite systems, it is evident that satellite technologies are enough ripe to be competitive against systems with a wired infrastructure. Thus, we propose to make use of satellite transmission to implement fast delivery of huge amount of data. Through the discussion of a use case, where a WEB TV company offers a streaming service, we show how to practically apply the proposed strategy in a real scenario, specifying the involvement of Cloud providers, Cloud users, satellite companies and end-user clients.

IP address autoconfiguration in ad hoc networks: design, implementation and measurements

Ad hoc networks allow to create very dynamic communication systems, which are independent from any fixed infrastructure. One of the most important issues regarding the management of an ad hoc network is the configuration of the system according to the way users move. Since a centralized control structure does not exist, we need to determine how the IP addresses must be assigned to the nodes in the network. This task becomes more complex since the nodes can connect or disconnect unexpectedly, and the topology of the network changes throughout the time. Furthermore, a network can split into two or more parts and even merging of different networks may occur. In this work, we have addressed these issues through our new protocol, named AIPAC, for configuration and management of IP addresses in a large and highly mobile ad hoc network. The performances of this solution are evaluated through the NS2 simulator, which allowed us to check the correctness of the protocol and to estimate the control traffic generated under different operating conditions.

Characterizing Cloud Federation in IoT

The advent of both Cloud computing and Internet of Things (IoT) is changing the way of conceiving information and communication systems. Generally, we talk about IoT Cloud to indicate a new type of distributed system consisting of a set of smart devices interconnected with a remote Cloud infrastructure, platform, or software through the Internet and able to provide IoT as a Service (IoTaaS). In this paper, we discuss the near future evolution of IoT Clouds towards federated ecosystems, where IoT providers cooperate to offer more flexible services. Moreover, we present a general three-layer IoT Cloud Federation architecture, highlighting new business opportunities and challenges.