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Using nationally representative data from 40 low- and middle-income countries, the authors find very low use of important CVD preventive medications, including blood pressure lowering drugs, statins, and aspirin.

O artigo objetiva analisar a Política Nacional dos Resíduos Sólidos frente à situação dos catadores no Brasil, como uma questão de cidadania aos envolvidos. Nesse intuito, são examinadas as políticas governamentais existentes sobre o tema, assim como a necessidade da participação da comunidade brasileira, de maneira ativa e responsável, no âmbito dessas políticas. Neste trabalho, aponta-se para a necessidade da existência de políticas voltadas à destinação correta dos resíduos sólidos, assim como a inclusão social e a emancipação econômica dos catadores de materiais recicláveis e reutilizáveis no Brasil.

Klebsiella pneumoniae, one of the most common pathogens found in hospital-acquired infections, is often resistant to multiple antibiotics. In fact, multidrug-resistant (MDR) K. pneumoniae producing KPC or OXA-48-like carbapenemases are recognized as a serious global health threat. In this sense, we evaluated the virulence of K. pneumoniae KPC(+) or OXA-48(+) aiming at potential antimicrobial therapeutics. K. pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC) and the expanded-spectrum oxacillinase OXA-48 isolates were obtained from patients treated in medical care units in Lisbon, Portugal. The virulence potential of the K. pneumonia clinical isolates was tested using the Galleria mellonella model. For that, G. mellonella larvae were inoculated using patients KPC(+) and OXA-48(+) isolates. Using this in vivo model, the KPC(+) K. pneumoniae isolates showed to be, on average, more virulent than OXA-48(+). Virulence was found attenuated when a low bacterial inoculum (one magnitude lower) was tested. In addition, we also report the use of a synthetic polycationic oligomer (L-OEI-h) as a potential antimicrobial agent to fight infectious diseases caused by MDR bacteria. L-OEI-h has a broad-spectrum antibacterial activity and exerts a significantly bactericidal activity within the first 5-30 min treatment, causing lysis of the cytoplasmic membrane. Importantly, the polycationic oligomer showed low toxicity against in vitro models and no visible cytotoxicity (measured by survival and health index) was noted on the in vivo model (G. mellonella), thus L-OEI-h is foreseen as a promising polymer therapeutic for the treatment of MDR K. pneumoniae infections.

This paper proposes a Local Energy Market using a P2P blockchain-powered marketplace where agents bilaterally trade energy after the consumption and production period, and not before, as usual in electricity market design. The EU and MIBEL regulatory framework for Renewable Energy Communities potentially creates space for such a market, but some improvements in the settlement procedures and agent’s participation must be met.

OBJECTIVES To examine whether the gender of applicants and peer reviewers and other factors influence peer review of grant proposals submitted to a national funding agency. SETTING Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). DESIGN Cross-sectional analysis of peer review reports submitted from 2009 to 2016 using linear mixed effects regression models adjusted for research topic, applicant's age, nationality, affiliation and calendar period. PARTICIPANTS External peer reviewers. PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURE Overall score on a scale from 1 (worst) to 6 (best). RESULTS Analyses included 38 250 reports on 12 294 grant applications from medicine, architecture, biology, chemistry, economics, engineering, geology, history, linguistics, mathematics, physics, psychology and sociology submitted by 26 829 unique peer reviewers. In univariable analysis, male applicants received more favourable evaluation scores than female applicants (+0.18 points; 95% CI 0.14 to 0.23), and male reviewers awarded higher scores than female reviewers (+0.11; 95% CI 0.08 to 0.15). Applicant-nominated reviewers awarded higher scores than reviewers nominated by the SNSF (+0.53; 95% CI 0.50 to 0.56), and reviewers from outside of Switzerland more favourable scores than reviewers affiliated with Swiss institutions (+0.53; 95% CI 0.49 to 0.56). In multivariable analysis, differences between male and female applicants were attenuated (+0.08; 95% CI 0.04 to 0.13) whereas results changed little for source of nomination and affiliation of reviewers. The gender difference increased after September 2011, when new evaluation forms were introduced (p=0.033 from test of interaction). CONCLUSIONS Peer review of grant applications at SNSF might be prone to biases stemming from different applicant and reviewer characteristics. The SNSF abandoned the nomination of peer reviewers by applicants. The new form introduced in 2011 may inadvertently have given more emphasis to the applicant's track record. We encourage other funders to conduct similar studies, in order to improve the evidence base for rational and fair research funding.

In the conventional photovoltaic (PV) fed quasi-Z (qZ) network-based impedance-source converters (ISCs), the PV array is connected to their input, whereas in the proposed topology in this article, an additional array is paralleled to the second qZ-network's capacitor (C 2). This modification allows harvesting more PV power through full utilization of the employed qZ-network in the classical ISCs. Moreover, the proposal offers higher conversion efficiency since the current in the second qZ-network's inductor (i_L2) is smaller. The voltage of the added PV array (PV 2) is independent of the voltage of the primary array (PV 1) in a wide range, which promotes tracking their maximum power points (MPPs) separatly, achieving a higher efficiency even under partial shading. The use of two separate maximum power point trackings (MPPTs) in one converter is a challenge since the perturbation done by the first MPPT alters the power in PV 2 as well, and vice versa. Therefore, a two MPPs tracker algorithm, which perturbs two parameters and observes four variables, is proposed for the presented converter. The theoretical analysis is validated through real-time hardware-in-the-loop tests, and it demonstrates that at least 11% more power can be harvested compared to the conventional qZ-network-based ISC.

This paper presents the design and the experimental results of a 28 GHz vector modulator based on the concept of vector sum. Its compact printed structure uses a 90° hybrid coupler and a Wilkinson power combiner, and is controlled by two reflection-type attenuators, using four p-i-n diodes. The obtained results show that the proposed structure can control both phase and amplitude, simultaneously, with 360° phase shift range, making it suitable for applications using beamforming, in adaptive antennas, such as 5G systems.

In this work we present a test platform for the rapid prototyping of power electronic converters. The platform consists of a Texas Instruments (TI) digital-signal-controller (DSC) TMS320F28379D connected to an Opal-RT real-time digital simulator capable of hardware-in-the-Ioop (HIL) simulations. Both the HIL simulator and the DSC are programmed based on Matlab/Simulink, with the latter making use of the embedded coder for the C2000 processors family. The proposed test platform allows high flexibility and fast development for control of power electronic converters, all based on a single software development environment. A complete specification of the platform components and a corresponding step-by-step implementation is presented. An example of a grid connected single-phase T-type converter illustrates the system operation and the platform capabilities.

A model predictive-based control strategy for the quasi-Z-source inverter (qZSI) with battery for photovoltaic (PV) power conversion system is proposed in this paper. Usually, in the control of the battery-assisted qZSI, only the injected power to the grid and the maximum power point tracking of the PV are controlled. The battery charges, discharges, or floats depending on the available PV power and demanded power. Thus, a low-frequency current ripple is generated on top of the ripple caused by the shoot through state in the second inductor L 2 and the battery. In the proposed approach, the battery current is directly controlled. The power injection is fulfilled with the maximum power capture from PV panels, along with a decoupled active and reactive power control. The validity of the proposed method is proved by using a detailed simulation model, showing a no low-frequency current ripple in both the inductor L 2 and battery.

This paper presents a multilevel topology of photovoltaic (PV) system with integrated energy storage system (ESS). In this proposed topology, half of the cells are connected to PV panels, the rest are connected to batteries. The sum of the cells are connected in series to form a dc-link, which is then connected to an H-bridge to convert the dc voltage to an ac one. The advantage of the proposed topology compared to the modular multilevel converter (MMC) as well as compared to the cascaded H-bridge converter is that less active switches are needed here. More switches are saved as the level of the output voltage increases, which results to a cheaper and less sizable converter. A local maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm is proposed for this converter, which requires the voltage and current of each sub-module. Hence, there are no losses related to partial shading effect here. The excess of power in case of high irradiation levels is stored in the batteries, and is recovered when needed. A detailed simulation program has been built to test the effectiveness of the proposed converter; the obtained results are shown in the paper.

We present a hybrid simulation and a real-time test platform for developing control systems for photovoltaic (PV) inverters with integrated battery energy storage (BES). The platform consists of a dual-stage single-phase PV inverter system, DC coupled with a full-bridge grid connected inverter, which emulates the charge regulator and battery bank. The real-time control of the two power electronic converters is implemented in a Simulink/dSpace platform, together with the real-time simulation model of the battery pack. The input power can be provided by either a high performance PV emulator or by a physical PV array. The platform enables real-time testing of PV$+$textbf{{BES control systems and energy management systems (EMS), for a variety of battery technologies, which can be modelled in detail and emulated by the full-bridge grid connected inverter. Such flexibility is difficult to achieve with real BES systems, due to electrical safety and cost constrains of high power charge regulators and battery packs.

Summary of key bibliometric characteristics of documents reviewed (PDF 279Â kb)

This work deals with the implementation and development of a PSpice based modeling platform for 10 kV/100 A SiC MOSFET power modules. The studied SiC MOSFET power module is composed of a total of 9 dies connected in parallel with 10.0 kV blocking voltage capability. The proposed model was implemented based on the already established McNutt Hefner model originally developed for discrete single-die based SiC-MOSFETs. The proposed model has been verified both with static and dynamic experimental data and at different temperatures. Moreover, the energy loss assessment has been performed for a variety of operating parameters (e.g., stray inductance, gate resistance), different load current and supply voltages. The model was also verified with parallel connection of several power modules in order to predict the current unbalance as a result of various parasitic elements in the test circuit. The developed model has been further extended to study the electro-thermal behaviour under short circuit with accurate predictability, and validated with the experimental data. Finally, the operational robustness of the model was judged by simulating an arbitrary Buck, and Boost converter where the converter efficiency was studied with varying circuit parameters.

This paper analyzes a 10MW medium voltage Back-to-Back (BTB) Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC) without a DC-Link capacitor with half-bridge submodules. It focusses on the system behavior under single-line-to-ground (SLG) fault when there is no capacitor on the DC-Link. The fault current is computed numerically and compared with the simulated results. The converter control behaviour with regards to the injection of the positive sequence currents in the presence of unbalanced terminal voltages has been investigated. Finally, the converter protection using cell level chopper control strategy is presented to prevent DC overvoltages in the sub-modules during faults.

portuguesO aumento da esperanca de vida, do numero de idosos e do numero de idosos dependentes (ID’s), requer a articulacao de diversos cuidados formais e informais. Reconhece-se o papel dos cuidadores informais (CI’s) e, tambem, no âmbito da saude, a importância da visitacao domiciliaria. Nesta, geralmente, a atencao da equipa centra-se no idoso dependente (ID), relegando para segundo plano o cuidador informal. Este, pela responsabilidade assumida, pode padecer de uma sobrecarga com efeitos nefastos em diferentes dimensoes da sua vida. Para perceber quais os fatores que mais influenciam a sobrecarga dos CI’s, realizou-se um estudo quantitativo, no concelho de Belmonte, que envolveu uma amostra de CI’s e ID’s. O instrumento de colheita de dados, de administracao indireta, aplicado entre 2012 e 2013, incluia: Questionarios Gerais, Escala de Pfeiffer Short Portable Mental Status Questionary; Indice de Barthel e Escala de Zarit. Analisaram-se e identificaram-se as caracteristicas contextuais, a situacao clinica do CI e a sua percecao da qualidade de vida face a sobrecarga. A maioria dos CI´s apresenta niveis de sobrecarga elevados, principalmente os que sao mais velhos, conjuges, com baixa formacao, com patologias e que consideram ter pior qualidade de vida que as pessoas da mesma idade e genero. EnglishThe increase in life expectancy, the number of elderly and the number of dependent elderly (DE’s), requires the coordination of various formal and informal care. It recognizes the role of informal caregivers (IC’s) and, in health, the importance of home visitation. Generally, the attention of the homevisitation team focuses on the dependent elderly (DE), relegating to the background the informal caregiver (IC). The responsibility assumed by IC can bring an overload with losses in different dimensions of his life. This study intend to perceive which factors most influence the burden of IC’s. A quantitative study was conducted in county of Belmonte based on a sample of IC's and DE’s. The data collection instrument was indirect administration, applied between 2012 and 2013, and it contained: General Questionnaires, Scale Portable Mental Status Pfeiffer Questionnaire, Barthel Index and Burden Interview of Zarit. The contextual characteristic, the clinical condition of the IC and his perception of quality of life due to the overload were analyzed and identified. The majority of IC's of the sample has high levels of burden, mainly IC's older, married/spouse, low level of education, with pathologies and who reported worse quality of life conditions.

The high variability of solar irradiance, originated by moving clouds, causes fluctuations in Photovoltaic (PV) power generation, and can negatively impact the grid stability. For this reason, grid codes have incorporated ramp-rate limitations for the injected PV power. Energy Storage Systems (ESS) coordinated by ramp-rate (RR) control algorithms are often applied for mitigating these power fluctuations to the grid. These algorithms generate a power reference to the ESS that opposes the PV fluctuations, reducing them to an acceptable value. Despite their common use, few performance comparisons between the different methods have been presented, especially from a battery status perspective. This is highly important, as different smoothing methods may require the battery to operate at different regimes (i.e., number of cycles and cycles deepness), which directly relates to the battery lifetime performance. This paper intends to fill this gap by analyzing the different methods under the same irradiance profile, and evaluating their capability to limit the RR and maintain the battery State of Charge (SOC) at the end of the day. Moreover, an analysis into the ESS capacity requirements for each of the methods is quantified. Finally, an analysis of the battery cycles and its deepness is performed based on the well-established rainflow cycle counting method.

Background Universal health coverage (UHC) is critical to global poverty alleviation and equity of health systems. Many low-income and middle-income countries, including small island states in the Pacific, have committed to UHC and reforming their health financing systems to better align with UHC goals. This study provides the first comprehensive evidence on equity of the health financing system in Fiji, a small Pacific island state. The health systems of such states are poorly covered in the international literature. Methods The study employs benefit and financing incidence analyses to evaluate the distribution of health financing benefits and burden across the public and private sectors. Primary data from a cross-sectional survey of 2000 households were used to assess healthcare benefits and secondary data from the 2008–2009 Fiji Household Income and Expenditure Survey to assess health financing contributions. These were analysed by socioeconomic groups to determine the relative benefit and financing incidence across these groups. Findings The distribution of healthcare benefits in Fiji slightly favours the poor—around 61% of public spending for nursing stations and 26% of spending for government hospital inpatient care were directed to services provided to the poorest 20% of the population. The financing system is significantly progressive with wealthier groups bearing a higher share of the health financing burden. Conclusions The healthcare system in Fiji achieves a degree of vertical equity in financing, with the poor receiving a higher share of benefits from government health spending and bearing a lower share of the financing burden than wealthier groups.

Context: Little is known about the frequency of key mutations in thyroid cancer metastases and its relationship with the primary tumor genotype. Objectives: To evaluate the frequency of TERT promoter (TERTp), BRAF, and NRAS mutations in metastatic thyroid carcinomas, analyzing primary thyroid tumors, lymph node metastases (LNMs), and distant metastases. Design and Patients: Mutation analysis was performed in 437 tissue samples from 204 patients, mainly with papillary thyroid carcinomas (PTCs; n = 180), including 196 LNMs and 56 distant metastases. All the distant metastases included corresponded to radioiodine-refractory metastatic tissue. Results: We found the following mutation frequency in primary PTCs, LNMs, and distant metastases, respectively: TERTp: 12.9%, 10.5%, and 52.4%; BRAF: 44.6%, 41.7%, and 23.8%; and NRAS: 1.2%, 1.3%, and 14.3%. There was a significant concordance between the primary tumor genotype and the corresponding LNM for all the genes, in particular BRAF-mutated PTC. The overall concordance between primary tumors and respective distant metastases was low. In the group of patients with PTCs, we found a high frequency of TERTp mutations and a low frequency of BRAF mutations in distant metastases, in comparison with the paired primary tumors. When present in distant metastases, BRAF mutations frequently coexisted with TERTp mutations. Conclusions: When the genotype of primary tumors is compared with the genotype of LNMs, the concordance is high for all the genes studied. On the other hand, distant metastases show an enrichment in TERTp mutations and a decrease in BRAF mutations. TERTp mutations may play a role in distant metastases. This work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology through PhD Grants SFRH/BD/111321/2015 (to R.B.) and SFRH/BD/81940/2011 (to J.V.), Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional funds through the COMPETE2020—Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalization, Portugal 2020, funds through the Fundaçao Para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia/Ministerio da Ciencia, Tecnologia e Inovaçao in the framework of the Institute for Research and Innovation in Health Sciences Project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007274, the Advancing Cancer Research: From Basic Knowledge to Application Project NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000029, Projetos Estruturados de I&D&I, Norte 2020–Programa Operacional Regional do Norte, and Grant PI15/01501-FEDER from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, Madrid, Spain (to J.M.C.-T.).

Topic guide for focus group discussions with community members. (DOCX 22Â kb)

Network middleboxes must offer high availability, with automatic failover when a device fails. Achieving high availability is challenging because failover must correctly restore lost state (e.g., activity logs, port mappings) but must do so quickly (e.g., in less than typical transport timeout values to minimize disruption to applications) and with little overhead to failure-free operation (e.g., additional per-packet latencies of 10-100s of us). No existing middlebox design provides failover that is correct, fast to recover, and imposes little increased latency on failure-free operations. We present a new design for fault-tolerance in middleboxes that achieves these three goals. Our system, FTMB (for Fault-Tolerant MiddleBox), adopts the classical approach of "rollback recovery" in which a system uses information logged during normal operation to correctly reconstruct state after a failure. However, traditional rollback recovery cannot maintain high throughput given the frequent output rate of middleboxes. Hence, we design a novel solution to record middlebox state which relies on two mechanisms: (1) 'ordered logging', which provides lightweight logging of the information needed after recovery, and (2) a `parallel release' algorithm which, when coupled with ordered logging, ensures that recovery is always correct. We implement ordered logging and parallel release in Click and show that for our test applications our design adds only 30$\mu$s of latency to median per packet latencies. Our system introduces moderate throughput overheads (5-30%) and can reconstruct lost state in 40-275ms for practical systems.

Photovoltaic-thermal (PV-T) solar water heating systems are commonly envisioned as a combination of regular solar water heaters and grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) systems. Nevertheless, the PV circuit can be left in open-circuit mode to increase the effective thermal absorption or the PV electricity generated can be used to heat the storage fluid through a secondary electrical heating element. Annual dynamic simulations using representative solar water heating system sizes and representative PV-T technology were conducted for these three configurations. The purpose was to indirectly determine how they would perform on a temporary basis if used on demand by grid-operators as part of the renewable energy resources at their disposal. The results show that the use of local PV electricity to heat the storage fluid caused the shortest pump running time and lowest auxiliary energy consumption of all cases considered. In light of these results, it is reasonable to state that this solution is more efficient than disabling the PV array to increase the heat available at the collector. The practical implications of a potential application of these methods were also discussed.

3D Virtual Labs are the support of learning, a tool of education in the future. Learning in a 3D environment allows greater interaction with contents in a unique way as students perceive it as being really there. Simulations are being designed, a combination of real-world environment with the information supplied by devices, where measurements can be replicated and data analyzed. This study presents a virtual scenario of a Measurements and Instrumentation laboratory. Electrical Engineering courses aim to train students to succeed in meeting the challenges within competitive and everchanging professional contexts. In order to prepare undergraduate students for ongoing success, the courses must provide effective training in the application and development of practices, typically implemented in large projects and organizations. Developing high quality engineering course units is definitely a challenging task. Courses can be provided remotely, but careful planning is required to design quality course units because problems may occur in meeting quality targets. The developments in information and communication technologies (ICT), including multimedia and internet-based education platforms, facilitate the creation of reliable solutions to these challenges. Studies show that a smart application of multimedia technologies and webbased education platforms can provide great results towards better quality of engineering courses. Many challenges on how to suitably approach the educational process have already been put forward. Higher Education institutions use multiple approaches to teaching and learning, combining a range of methods, including e-learning, videoconferencing, face-to-face teaching and hard-copy resources in course delivery. The authors present a software model for engineering, which is based mainly on the Wirefusion® software, and a virtualreality platform called VEMA. The project intends to improve the quality of teaching and learning in higher education through effective application of information technologies and the sciences of learning. 3D virtual learning environments arise as solutions to the extent that, in addition to offering features associated with communication and information sharing, they promote flexible learning spaces and moments. At the level of higher education, and in accordance with the paradigm of Bologna, virtual environments acquire special importance to allow learning beyond the classroom time and space.

Broadband Remote Access Servers (BRASes) are crucial middleboxes in DSL access networks, providing the first IP point in the network for subscribers and enforcing operator policies. The number of functions provided by BRASes, combined with the key role they play in the network, means that these devices are expensive, difficult to change, and constitute a single point of failure. In order to overcome these limitations, we propose to virtualize the BRAS and to enhance it with a control interface that can be exploited by management systems in order to introduce live session migration and higher reliability. Our proof-of-concept implementation shows that our virtual software BRAS is able to handle thousands of sessions while forwarding and shaping traffic at rates of millions of packets per second on commodity hardware, and that the live session migration feature enables the implementation of high-reliability scenarios.

© 2014, BMJ Publishing Group. All rights reserved. Introduction: Equitable health financing remains a key health policy objective worldwide. In low and middle-income countries (LMICs), there is evidence that many people are unable to access the health services they need due to financial and other barriers. There are growing calls for fairer health financing systems that will protect people from catastrophic and impoverishing health payments in times of illness. This study aims to assess equity in healthcare financing in Fiji and Timor-Leste in order to support government efforts to improve access to healthcare and move towards universal health coverage in the two countries. Methods and analysis: The study employs two standard measures of equity in health financing increasingly being applied in LMICs - benefit incidence analysis (BIA) and financing incidence analysis (FIA). In Fiji, we will use a combination of secondary and primary data including a Household Income and Expenditure Survey, National Health Accounts, and data from a cross-sectional household survey on healthcare utilisation. In Timor-Leste, the World Bank recently completed a health equity and financial protection analysis that incorporates BIA and FIA, and found that the distribution of benefits from healthcare financing is pro-rich. Building on this work, we will explore the factors that influence the pro-rich distribution. Ethics and dissemination: The study is approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of University of New South Wales, Australia (Approval number: HC13269); the Fiji National Health Research Committee (Approval # 201371); and the Timor-Leste Ministry of Health (Ref MS/UNSW/VI/218). Results: Study outcomes will be disseminated through stakeholder meetings, targeted multidisciplinary seminars, peer-reviewed journal publications, policy briefs and the use of other web-based technologies including social media. A user-friendly toolkit on how to analyse healthcare financing equity will be developed for use by policymakers and development partners in the region.

3D worlds provide excellent platforms to achieve performance results when designed for the needs of students, helping them to improve acquisition and allowing greater interaction with contents in a unique way.

Traditionally, the number of VMs running on a server and how quickly these can be migrated has been less than optimal mostly because of the memory and CPU requirements imposed on the system by the full-fledged OSes that the VMs run. More recently, work towards VMs based on minimalistic or specialized OSes has started pushing the envelope of how reactive or fluid the cloud can be. In this demo we will demonstrate how to concurrently execute thousands of Xen-based VMs on a single inexpensive server. We will also show instantiation and migraion of such VMs in tens of milliseconds, and transparent, wide area migration of virtualized middleboxes by combining such VMs with the multi-path TCP (MPTCP) protocol.

Teratomas in the neck are rare neoplasms. Most of them occur in infants less than 1 year and are benign. In contrast, thyroid teratomas in adults are malignant and have fatal outcomes because of spread of tumor refractory to treatment. We report a case of a primary thyroid malignant teratoma in a 37-year-old woman. She was treated successfully with a combination of surgery, postoperative cis-platinum-based chemotherapy, and radiation therapy to the neck. Although the time of follow-up is short (24 months), we attribute her successful outcome to the use of this intensive therapeutic approach.

Video comprises the majority of traffic on the Internet today, and most of it is delivered via Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) whose performance depends, to a large extent, on being able to deploy a (sometimes rather large) set of distributed content caches at different networks and geographical locations. Recently, ISPs have started deploying micro datacenters close to customers, giving the possibility to third parties to rent out this equipment.While such pay-on-demand infrastructure would allow CDNs to dynamically expand their capacity and improve their efficiency, a high performance, virtualized content cache would be needed for multiple tenants to be able to share such facilities. Towards this end we introduce Minicache, a Xen-based virtualized content cache prototype. A Minicache virtual machine has a small memory footprint (as small as 5MB in size), can boot in as little as 30 milliseconds, and can fill up a 10Gb pipe using data retrieved from storage devices.

Broadband Remote Access Servers (BRASes) play a crucial role in today's networks, handling all traffic coming from access networks (e.g., DSL traffic), applying operator policies and providing the first IP point in the network. It is perhaps unsurprising then, that these are expensive, proprietary, difficult-to-upgrade boxes. They also represent a large, single point of failure, making operators even more reticent to deploy new functionality for fear it might seriously disrupt day-to-day operations. In order to remove some of these barriers to innovation, we advocate for turning BRASes from the monolithic hardware boxes they are today into flexible, virtualized, software-based devices running on inexpensive commodity hardware. As a proofof-concept, we present the implementation and performance of a software BRAS based on ClickOS, a tiny Xen virtual machine designed specifically for network processing. Our software BRAS prototype can establish subscriber sessions at rates above 1, 000 per second, requires only 1MB of memory per 1, 000 established sessions, can boot in milliseconds, and can handle traffic at 10Gb/s for almost all packet sizes.