Two aims: 1) To assess the results of laparoscopically assisted vaginal management of deep endometriosis infiltrating the rectovaginal septum (RVS); 2) to pinpoint the differences between this procedure and that used for deep... more
Two aims: 1) To assess the results of laparoscopically assisted vaginal management of deep endometriosis infiltrating the rectovaginal septum (RVS); 2) to pinpoint the differences between this procedure and that used for deep endometriotic lesions located on the uterosacral ligaments (USL). Descriptive retrospective study. Twenty-nine consecutive patients operated for deep endometriosis infiltrating the RVS were included in this series. One patient only (3.5%) presented a major complication of the recto-vaginal fistula type. After a one step reoperation under anesthesia, the post operative history was uncomplicated and no sequelae are to be deplored. With respect to dysmenorrhea (DM), deep dyspareunia (DP) and chronic pelvic pain (CPP), there was an improvement in respectively 91.7% (22 patients), 100% (24 patients) and 92.9% (13 patients) of cases. For each of these 3 symptoms the median score according to the visual analog scale was significantly lower after the operation (for DM: 7.6+/-2.0 versus 1.7+/-2.6; for DP 7.5+/-1.9 versus 0.5+/-1.1; for CPP 5.9+/-2.8 versus 1.4+/-3.2) (p<0.0001). These results demonstrate that provided the surgeon is highly skilled in laparoscopy, operative laparoscopy is efficient for the treatment of patients presenting painful symptoms related to deep endometriotic infiltrating the RVS. From the technical point of view the rectum must be freed, leaving the deep endometriotic nodule attached to the posterior wall of the vagina. Resection of the whole lesion requires the posterior wall of the vagina to be resected, whereas ureterolysis is often unnecessary. So for lesions located on the RVS the vagina is opened systematically, unlike the situation when resecting deep endometriotic lesions infiltrating the USL. Deep pelvic endometriosis is not synonymous with endometriosis of the RVS. Lesions truly infiltrating the RVS represent only a small proportion of all deep endometriosis lesions.
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Many factors can affect the predictability of public bus services such as traffic, weather and local events. Other aspects, such as day of week or hour of day, may influence bus travel times as well, either directly or in conjunction with... more
Many factors can affect the predictability of public bus services such as traffic, weather and local events. Other aspects, such as day of week or hour of day, may influence bus travel times as well, either directly or in conjunction with other variables. However, the exact nature of such relationships between travel times and predictor variables is, in most situations, not known. In this paper we develop a framework that allows for flexible modeling of bus travel times through the use of Additive Models. In particular, we model travel times as a sum of linear as well as nonlinear terms that are modeled as smooth functions of predictor variables. The proposed class of models provides a principled statistical framework that is highly flexible in terms of model building. The experimental results demonstrate uniformly superior performance of our best model as compared to previous prediction methods when applied to a very large GPS data set obtained from buses operating in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
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The goal of the Student Forum is to encourage students to attend EDCC 2012 and present their work, exchange ideas with researchers and practitioners, and get early feedback on their research efforts. All papers were peer-reviewed by at... more
The goal of the Student Forum is to encourage students to attend EDCC 2012 and present their work, exchange ideas with researchers and practitioners, and get early feedback on their research efforts. All papers were peer-reviewed by at least three program committee members, and the authors were provided with detailed comments on their work. In the end we had one accepted paper for the Student forum.
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Abstract The characterization of database management system (DBMS) recovery mechanisms and the comparison of recovery features of different DBMS require a practical approach to benchmark the effectiveness of recovery in the presence of... more
Abstract The characterization of database management system (DBMS) recovery mechanisms and the comparison of recovery features of different DBMS require a practical approach to benchmark the effectiveness of recovery in the presence of faults. Existing ...
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This paper claims that the forging of a common identity among India, Brasil and South Africa based on their role as leaders in their respective regions is a relevant yet neglected aspect of their partnership that will ultimately determine... more
This paper claims that the forging of a common identity among India, Brasil and South Africa based on their role as leaders in their respective regions is a relevant yet neglected aspect of their partnership that will ultimately determine the success of IBSA. The argument is that ...
Abstract Failure prediction methods are becoming sine qua non conditions for effective availability enhancement in complex computer and communication systems. Therefore, there is a growing need for validation, benchmarking and assessment... more
Abstract Failure prediction methods are becoming sine qua non conditions for effective availability enhancement in complex computer and communication systems. Therefore, there is a growing need for validation, benchmarking and assessment of such methods on ...
ABSTRACT This paper proposes a mechanism that allows concurrent detection of malicious data access through the online analysis of the Data-base Management Systems (DBMS) audit trail. The proposed mechanism uses a directed graph... more
ABSTRACT This paper proposes a mechanism that allows concurrent detection of malicious data access through the online analysis of the Data-base Management Systems (DBMS) audit trail. The proposed mechanism uses a directed graph representing the profile of valid ...
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Research Interests: Safety and Industries
The South in World Politics is a timely analysis of the influence and effectiveness of developing states in shaping the international order from the politics of the Cold War to the challenges of globalization and the rising power of... more
The South in World Politics is a timely analysis of the influence and effectiveness of developing states in shaping the international order from the politics of the Cold War to the challenges of globalization and the rising power of emerging economies. Serving as a ...
Abstract This article argues that the long-term sustainability of the trilateral partnership established in 2003 between India, Brazil, and South Africa (IBSA) rests on a more conscious engagement with their regional partners. The... more
Abstract This article argues that the long-term sustainability of the trilateral partnership established in 2003 between India, Brazil, and South Africa (IBSA) rests on a more conscious engagement with their regional partners. The construction of a strong regional ...
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ABSTRACT Failure prediction is a promising technique to improve dependability of computer systems, in particular when it is important to foresee incoming failures and take corrective actions to avoid downtime or data corruption. Failure... more
ABSTRACT Failure prediction is a promising technique to improve dependability of computer systems, in particular when it is important to foresee incoming failures and take corrective actions to avoid downtime or data corruption. Failure prediction is especially adequate in long running systems where internal errors accumulate and eventually lead to failures. The problem is that such systems do evolve. The workload and even the system itself changes over time, and this may affect the performance of the failure predictor. However, training failure prediction algorithms is a complex and time-consuming task and should be performed only when needed. Thus, it is important to understand if a system change affects prediction performance, to avoid running the target system with an ineffective predictor and prevent unnecessary retraining efforts. In this work we study the performance of a failure predictor when used to forecast failures in a web-serving system subject to successive updates. We observe and analyze the variation of performance in terms of ROC-AUC using fault injection and virtualization for the generation of the data needed for the assessment. Our results suggest that re-training is indeed necessary.
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ABSTRACT Web Services are a technology designed to support the invocation of remote elements by client applications, with the goal of providing interoperable application-to-application interaction while assuring vendor and platform... more
ABSTRACT Web Services are a technology designed to support the invocation of remote elements by client applications, with the goal of providing interoperable application-to-application interaction while assuring vendor and platform independence. In business-critical environments, the occurrence of interoperability issues can have disastrous consequences, including direct financial costs, reputation, and client fidelity losses. Despite this, experience shows that services interoperability is still quite difficult to achieve. The goal of this paper is to propose a practical testing process to understand the real level of interoperability provided by web services platforms. An extensible tool, that implements the proposed approach, has been used to run a large campaign during which we have tested the interoperability of a large number of web services, comprising both home-implemented and publicly available services, deployed on top of several web service platforms and against 11 client-side web service platforms. Numerous issues have been disclosed, showing the effectiveness of the proposed approach and the importance of having an automatic tool for testing web services for interoperability.
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Abstract The characterization of database management system (DBMS) recovery mechanisms and the comparison of recovery features of different DBMS require a practical approach to benchmark the effectiveness of recovery in the presence of... more
Abstract The characterization of database management system (DBMS) recovery mechanisms and the comparison of recovery features of different DBMS require a practical approach to benchmark the effectiveness of recovery in the presence of faults. Existing ...