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e12528 Background: Pts with ABC have a diverse clinical course and OS rates vary significantly among pts. New strategies had potentially changed the natural history of these pts, however data from clinical studies are still lacking and Real-World Studies (RWS) are crucial in clinical outcome evaluation. Methods: AMBRA is a longitudinal cohort study, aiming to describe the choice of first and subsequent lines of treatment in HER2-ve ABC pts receiving at least one CHT (SABCS 2016, P5-15-07 & P5-14-09) in the years 2012-2015. The present analysis is focused on the description of Progression-Free Survival (PFS) and OS according to the biologic subtype in the deceased population. So far, 791/1500 pts have been registered into the study and 255 (32.2%) are evaluable. Time to event analysis between subtypes was evaluated by Cox-Mantel Hazard Ratio and Logrank Test. DFS by Wilcoxon Rank-Sum Test. Results: Pts distribution according to molecular subtype was: Luminal A (86, 33.7%), Luminal B (107 (42.1%), TNBC (62, 24.3%). Median ages at diagnosis were 55.8, 52.9 and 55.1 years for the 3 subgroups, respectively. Mean DFS was significantly different according to the molecular subtypes: 87.28, 61.37 and 23.9 months. The difference between Luminal B and TNBC is statistically significant as well. Mean PFS of first-line therapy was 17.9 11.7 and 7.8 months respectively. Mean OS from first progression was 32.9 24.2 and 15.8 months respectively. Statistical details. Conclusions: Our data confirm in a RWS the different biological behaviour between Lum A and B. Metastatic life span is quite good for Luminal and disappointing for TNBC. Median time from last CHT and Death is quite short and similar.[Table: see text]

Nowadays, content retrieval is marking the Internet usage. User communications are no longer tied up to host interconnection. Information Centric Networking (ICN) models are proposed to cope with these changes. The new paradigm redesigns the Internet architecture to bring out content to the first level. Over the last decade, many key projects have proposed a large solution spectrum to rebuilt networking primitives focused on the content. One important and direct challenge of this shift is the large amount of routing states due to identifying contents rather than hosts. In this paper, we focus especially on DONA, one of the first ICN architecture, and analyse the required memory space to store routing states. Our study shows that today's technologies are not able to satisfy the content routing needs. Thus, we propose an enhancement of DONA called BADONA to deal with this problem. It uses the Bloom filter to drastically reduce the usage of the memory space. Finally, we evaluate our proposal performances to underscore its contribution.

International audience; Network packet tracing has been used for many different purposes during the last few decades, such as network software debugging, networking performance analysis, forensic investigation, and so on. Meanwhile, the size of packet traces becomes larger, as the speed of network rapidly increases. Thus, to handle huge amounts of traces, we need not only more hardware resources, but also e fficient software tools. However, traditional tools are inefficient at dealing with such big packet traces. In this paper, we propose pcapWT, an efficient packet extraction tool for large traces. PcapWT provides fast packet lookup by indexing an original trace using a Wavelet Tree structure. In addition, pcapWT supports multi-threading for avoiding synchronous I/O and blocking system calls used for file processing, and is particularly efficient on machines with SSD. PcapWT shows remarkable performance enhancements in comparison with traditional tools such as tcpdump and most recent tools such as pcapIndex in terms of index data size and packet extraction time. Our benchmark using large and complex traces shows that pcapWT reduces the index data size down below 1% of the volume of the original traces. Moreover, packet extraction performance is 20% better than with pcapIndex. Furthermore, when a small amount of packets are retrieved, pcapWT is hundreds of times faster than tcpdump.

Background Whether addition of fluorouracil to epirubicin, cyclophosphamide, and paclitaxel (EC-P) is favourable in adjuvant treatment of patients with node-positive breast cancer is controversial, as is the benefit of increased density of dosing. We aimed to address these questions in terms of improvements in disease-free survival. Methods In this 2 × 2 factorial, open-label, phase 3 trial, we enrolled patients aged 18-70 years with operable, node positive, early-stage breast cancer from 81 Italian centres. Eligible patients were randomly allocated in a 1:1:1:1 ratio with a centralised, interactive online system to receive either dose-dense chemotherapy (administered intravenously every 2 weeks with pegfilgrastim support) with fluorouracil plus EC-P (FEC-P) or EC-P or to receive standard-interval chemotherapy (administered intravenously every 3 weeks) with FEC-P or EC-P. The primary study endpoint was disease-free survival, assessed with the Kaplan-Meier method in the intention-to-treat population. Our primary comparisons were between dose schedule (every 2 weeks vs every 3 weeks) and dose type (FEC-P vs EC-P). This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT00433420. Findings Between April 24, 2003, and July 3, 2006, we recruited 2091 patients. 88 patients were enrolled in centres that only provided standard-intensity dosing. After a median follow-up of 7·0 years (interquartile range [IQR] 4·5-6·3), 140 (26%) of 545 patients given EC-P every 3 weeks, 157 (29%) of 544 patients given FEC-P every 3 weeks, 111 (22%) of 502 patients given EC-P every 2 weeks, and 113 (23%) of 500 patients given FEC-P every 2 weeks had a disease-free survival event. For the dose-density comparison, disease-free survival at 5 years was 81% (95% CI 79-84) in patients treated every 2 weeks and 76% (74-79) in patients treated every 3 weeks (HR 0·77, 95% CI 0·65-0·92; p=0·004); overall survival rates at 5 years were 94% (93-96) and 89% (87-91; HR 0·65, 0·51-0·84; p=0·001) and for the chemotherapy-type comparison, disease-free survival at 5 years was 78% (75-81) in the FEC-P groups and 79% (76-82) in the EC-P groups (HR 1·06, 0·89-1·25; p=0·561); overall survival rates at 5 years were 91% (89-93) and 92% (90-94; 1·16, 0·91-1·46; p=0·234). Compared with 3 week dosing, chemotherapy every 2 weeks was associated with increased rate of grade 3-4 of anaemia (14 [1·4%] of 988 patients vs two [0·2%] of 984 patients; p=0·002); transaminitis (19 [1·9%] vs four [0·4%]; p=0·001), and myalgias (31 [3·1%] vs 16 [1·6%]; p=0·019), and decreased rates of grade 3-4 neutropenia (147 [14·9%] vs 433 [44·0%]; p

Commercial users of modern communications networks have benefited from a huge progress of the related technologies. However, Public Safety Networks (PSNs) and devices did not follow the same trend. Very often, they still rely on voice or low speed data communications, tempting first responders to use their own private devices when they need to exchange real-time video or geolocation information. Under this consideration, national authorities and specialized organizations have recently initiated the integration of more recent technologies, such as cellular Long Term Evolution (LTE), even though they need further developments to cope with the harsh usages that safety personnel may face. This report proposes to move the evolution of these networks towards the recent evolution of networking technologies started with Software Defined networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). Based on the requirements derived from a standardized earthquake scenario and a study of the main improvements brought by this network softwarization, it analyzes how SDN and NFV can solve part of the issues raised with commercial LTE and enhance PSN communications. The capabilities of these new technologies are applied to a list of characteristics required by mission-critical networks, e.g., rapid deployment, reliability, security or resilience, taking advantage of features such as the separation between control and data planes or the simplified dynamic resources management. The resulting enhancements are then illustrated using example frameworks published in the literature for Cloud Radio Access Networks, resilient backhaul solution , isolated base stations, SDN-based architecture or Service Function Chaining.

We present an efficient message delivery framework, called MeDeHa, which enables communication in an internet connecting heterogeneous networks that is prone to disruptions in connectivity. MeDeHa is complementary to the IRTF's Bundle Architecture: besides its ability to store messages for unavailable destinations, MeDeHa can bridge the connectivity gap between infrastructure-based and multi-hop infrastructure-less networks. It benefits from network heterogeneity (e.g., nodes supporting more than one network and nodes having diverse resources) to improve message delivery. For example, in IEEE 802.11 networks, participating nodes may use both infrastructure- and ad-hoc modes to deliver data to otherwise unavailable destinations. It also employs opportunistic routing to support nodes with episodic connectivity. One of MeDeHa's key features is that any MeDeHa node can relay data to any destination and can act as a gateway to make two networks inter-operate or to connect to the backbone network. The network is able to store data destined to temporarily unavailable nodes till the time of their expiry. This time period depends upon current storage availability as well as quality-of-service needs (e.g., delivery delay bounds) imposed by the application. We showcase MeDeHa's ability to operate in environments consisting of a diverse set of interconnected networks and evaluate its performance through extensive simulations using a variety of scenarios with realistic synthetic and real mobility traces. Our results show significant improvement in average delivery ratio and a significant decrease in average delivery delay in the face of episodic connectivity. We also demonstrate that MeDeHa supports different levels of quality-of-service through traffic differentiation and message prioritization.

Communication networks, whether they are wired or wireless, have traditionally been assumed to be connected at least most of the time. However, emerging applications such as emergency response, special operations, smart environments, VANETs, etc. coupled with node heterogeneity and volatile links (e.g. due to wireless propagation phenomena and node mobility) will likely change the typical conditions under which networks operate. In fact, in such scenarios, networks may be mostly disconnected, i.e., most of the time, end-to-end paths connecting every node pair do not exist. To cope with frequent, long-lived disconnections, opportunistic routing techniques have been proposed in which, at every hop, a node decides whether it should forward or store-and-carry a message. Despite a growing number of such proposals, there still exists little consensus on the most suitable routing algorithm(s) in this context. One of the reasons is the large diversity of emerging wireless applications and networks exhibiting such “episodic” connectivity. These networks often have very different characteristics and requirements, making it very difficult, if not impossible, to design a routing solution that fits all. In this paper, we first break up existing routing strategies into a small number of common and tunable routing modules (e.g. message replication, coding, etc.), and then show how and when a given routing module should be used, depending on the set of network characteristics exhibited by the wireless application. We further attempt to create a taxonomy for intermittently connected networks. We try to identify generic network characteristics that are relevant to the routing process (e.g., network density, node heterogeneity, mobility patterns) and dissect different “challenged” wireless networks or applications based on these characteristics. Our goal is to identify a set of useful design guidelines that will enable one to choose an appropriate routing protocol for the application or network in hand. Finally, to demonstrate the utility of our approach, we take up some case studies of challenged wireless networks, and validate some of our routing design principles using simulations.

e13032Background: Endocrine therapy (ET) is the initial therapy for HR+ patients. Primary endocrine resistance (PER) is defined as a relapse while on the first 2 years of adjuvant ET, or PD within ...

e13078Background: Two randomized studies demonstrated that Nab-P produces a significantly higher overall response rate (ORR), longer Time to Progression (TTP) and greater overall survival (OS) in A...

e13076Background: mCHT is the minimum biologically effective dose of a CHT agent, given at regular dosing regimen with no prolonged drug free interval. Aim of this observational retrospective study...

Evaluating new network protocols, applications, and architectures uses many kinds of experimentation environments: simulators, emulators, testbeds, and sometimes, combinations of these. As the functionality and complexity of these tools increases, mastering and efficiently using each of them is becoming increasingly difficult. In this paper, we consider how to make it easier to use multiple tools separately and together to improve the productivity of network researchers. We show how a single object model which encompasses every aspect of a typical experimentation workow can be used to completely describe experiments to be run within very different experimentation environments. Although Nepi is still in early design and prototyping stage, we expect that its ability to describe and automate easily complex mixed experiments will enable further experimentation with heterogenous networks.

The analysis and evaluation of new wireless network protocols is a long process that requires mathematical analysis, simulations, and increasingly experimentations under real conditions. Measurements are essential to analyze the performance of wireless protocols such as IEEE 802.11 networks in real environments, but experimentations are complex to perform and analyze. Usually, network researchers develop their own tools, sometimes from scratch, to fit the requirements of their experimentations, and these tools are then abandoned when the paper is published. In this study, we emphasize the importance, for the network research community, to use and contribute to the development of open source measurement tools. In this regard, we propose a survey and classification of IEEE 802.11 wireless parameters and open source tools available to collect or estimate these parameters. We highlight the parameters that can be extracted from wireless traffic probes and those that are available through the driver of wireless cards. Then, we introduce and compare open source tools that can be used to make the measurements, with special attention to the flexibility of the tools and their application scope. Finally, we discuss with several case studies the combination of tools that best suit the needs of the wireless experiments and provide a list of common pitfalls to avoid.

Communication networks are traditionally assumed to be connected. However, emerging wireless applications such as vehicular networks, pocket-switched networks, etc., coupled with volatile links, node mobility, and power outages, will require the network to operate despite frequent disconnections. To this end, opportunistic routing techniques have been proposed, where a node may store-and-carry a message for some time, until a new forwarding opportunity arises. Although a number of such algorithms exist, most focus on relatively homogeneous settings of nodes. However, in many envisioned applications, participating nodes might include handhelds, vehicles, sensors, etc. These various "classesrdquo have diverse characteristics and mobility patterns, and will contribute quite differently to the routing process. In this paper, we address the problem of routing in intermittently connected wireless networks comprising multiple classes of nodes. We show that proposed solutions, which perform well in homogeneous scenarios, are not as competent in this setting. To this end, we propose a class of routing schemes that can identify the nodes of "highest utilityrdquo for routing, improving the delay and delivery ratio by four to five times. Additionally, we propose an analytical framework based on fluid models that can be used to analyze the performance of various opportunistic routing strategies, in heterogeneous settings.

In upcoming very high-speed wireless LANs (WLANs), the physical (PHY) layer rate may reach 600 Mbps. To achieve high efficiency at the medium access control (MAC) layer, we identify fundamental properties that must be satisfied by any CSMA-/CA-based MAC layers and develop a novel scheme called aggregation with fragment retransmission (AFR) that exhibits these properties. In the AFR scheme, multiple packets are aggregated into and transmitted in a single large frame. If errors happen during the transmission, only the corrupted fragments of the large frame are retransmitted. An analytic model is developed to evaluate the throughput and delay performance of AFR over noisy channels and to compare AFR with similar schemes in the literature. Optimal frame and fragment sizes are calculated using this model. Transmission delays are minimized by using a zero-waiting mechanism where frames are transmitted immediately once the MAC wins a transmission opportunity. We prove that zero-waiting can achieve maximum throughput. As a complement to the theoretical analysis, we investigate the impact of AFR on the performance of realistic application traffic with diverse requirements by simulations. We have implemented the AFR scheme in the NS-2 simulator and present detailed results for TCP, VoIP, and HDTV traffic. The AFR scheme described was developed as part of the IEEE 802.11n working group work. The analysis presented here is general enough to be extended to proposed schemes in the upcoming 802.11n standard. Trends indicated in this paper should extend to any well-designed aggregation schemes.

International audience; Software-Defined Networking (SDN) abstracts low- level network functionalities to simplify network management and reduce costs. The OpenFlow protocol implements the SDN concept by abstracting network communications as flows to be processed by network elements. In OpenFlow, the high-level policies are translated into network primitives called rules that are distributed over the network. While the abstraction offered by OpenFlow allows to potentially implement any policy, it raises the new question of how to define the rules and where to place them in the network while respecting all technical and administrative requirements. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive study of the so-called OpenFlow rules placement problem with a survey of the various proposals intending to solve it. Our study is multi-fold. First, we define the problem and its challenges. Second, we overview the large number of solutions proposed, with a clear distinction between solutions focusing on memory management and those proposing to reduce signaling traffic to ensure scalability. Finally, we discuss potential research directions around the OpenFlow rules placement problem.