Energy requirements of error correction codes in diffusion-based molecular communication systems

Molecular Communications is a promising area with significant potential applications. To enhance the reliability of the transmission process, self-orthogonal convolutional codes (SOCCs) are proposed and investigated with respect to both bit error rate (BER) and energy efficiency. The codes are compared to both an un-coded system and one that employs Hamming codes to show that they can provide a benefit for molecular communication systems. The influence of the channel memory is also analysed in this paper. In addition, taking into account the extra energy required to implement the coding, the critical distance is investigated as another performance metric for nano-to-nano device communication, nano-to-macro device communication and macro-to-nano device communication. Considering the transmission distance and the operating BER of the designed system, the designer can determine whether the use of coding is beneficial or which code better suits the system

Schizotypy-Related Magnetization of Cortex in Healthy Adolescence Is Colocated With Expression of Schizophrenia-Related Genes.

BACKGROUND: Genetic risk is thought to drive clinical variation on a spectrum of schizophrenia-like traits, but the underlying changes in brain structure that mechanistically link genomic variation to schizotypal experience and behavior are unclear. METHODS: We assessed schizotypy using a self-reported questionnaire and measured magnetization transfer as a putative microstructural magnetic resonance imaging marker of intracortical myelination in 68 brain regions in 248 healthy young people (14-25 years of age). We used normative adult brain gene expression data and partial least squares analysis to find the weighted gene expression pattern that was most colocated with the cortical map of schizotypy-related magnetization. RESULTS: Magnetization was significantly correlated with schizotypy in the bilateral posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus (and for disorganized schizotypy, also in medial prefrontal cortex; all false discovery rate-corrected ps < .05), which are regions of the default mode network specialized for social and memory functions. The genes most positively weighted on the whole-genome expression map colocated with schizotypy-related magnetization were enriched for genes that were significantly downregulated in two prior case-control histological studies of brain gene expression in schizophrenia. Conversely, the most negatively weighted genes were enriched for genes that were transcriptionally upregulated in schizophrenia. Positively weighted (downregulated) genes were enriched for neuronal, specifically interneuronal, affiliations and coded a network of proteins comprising a few highly interactive "hubs" such as parvalbumin and calmodulin. CONCLUSIONS: Microstructural magnetic resonance imaging maps of intracortical magnetization can be linked to both the behavioral traits of schizotypy and prior histological data on dysregulated gene expression in schizophrenia

BioScript: programming safe chemistry on laboratories-on-a-chip

This paper introduces BioScript, a domain-specific language (DSL) for programmable biochemistry which executes on emerging microfluidic platforms. The goal of this research is to provide a simple, intuitive, and type-safe DSL that is accessible to life science practitioners. The novel feature of the language is its syntax, which aims to optimize human readability; the technical contributions of the paper include the BioScript type system and relevant portions of its compiler. The type system ensures that certain types of errors, specific to biochemistry, do not occur, including the interaction of chemicals that may be unsafe. The compiler includes novel optimizations that place biochemical operations to execute concurrently on a spatial 2D array platform on the granularity of a control flow graph, as opposed to individual basic blocks. Results are obtained using both a cycle-accurate microfluidic simulator and a software interface to a real-world platform

Machine Learning in Tribology

Tribology has been and continues to be one of the most relevant fields, being present in almost all aspects of our lives. The understanding of tribology provides us with solutions for future technical challenges. At the root of all advances made so far are multitudes of precise experiments and an increasing number of advanced computer simulations across different scales and multiple physical disciplines. Based upon this sound and data-rich foundation, advanced data handling, analysis and learning methods can be developed and employed to expand existing knowledge. Therefore, modern machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI) methods provide opportunities to explore the complex processes in tribological systems and to classify or quantify their behavior in an efficient or even real-time way. Thus, their potential also goes beyond purely academic aspects into actual industrial applications. To help pave the way, this article collection aimed to present the latest research on ML or AI approaches for solving tribology-related issues generating true added value beyond just buzzwords. In this sense, this Special Issue can support researchers in identifying initial selections and best practice solutions for ML in tribology

Design Trade-offs for reliable On-Chip Wireless Interconnects in NoC Platforms

The massive levels of integration following Moore\u27s Law making modern multi-core chips prevail in various domains ranging from scientific applications to bioinformatics applications for consumer electronics. With higher and higher number of cores on the same die traditional bus based interconnections are no longer a scalable communication infrastructure. On-chip networks were proposed enabled a scalable plug-and-play mechanism for interconnecting hundreds of cores on the same chip. Wired interconnects between the cores in a traditional Network-on-Chip (NoC) system, becomes a bottleneck with increase in the number of cores thereby increasing the latency and energy to transmit signals over them. Hence, there has been many alternative emerging interconnect technologies proposed, namely, 3D, photonic and multi-band RF interconnects. Although they provide better connectivity, higher speed and higher bandwidth compared to wired interconnects; they also face challenges with heat dissipation and manufacturing difficulties. On-chip wireless interconnects is one other alternative proposed which doesn\u27t need physical interconnection layout as data travels over the wireless medium. They are integrated into a hybrid NOC architecture consisting of both wired and wireless links, which provides higher bandwidth, lower latency, lesser area overhead and reduced energy dissipation in communication. An efficient media access control (MAC) scheme is required to enhance the utilization of the available bandwidth. A token-passing protocol proposed to grant access of the wireless channel to competing transmitters. This limits the number of simultaneous users of the communication channel to one although multiple wireless hubs are deployed over the chip. In principle, a Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) based medium access scheme would improve the utilization of the wireless resources. However, this requires design of multiple very precise, high frequency transceivers in non-overlapping frequency channels. Therefore, the scalability of this approach is limited by the state-of-the-art in transceiver design. The Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) enables multiple transmitter-receiver pairs to send data over the wireless channel simultaneously. The CDMA protocol can significantly increase the performance of the system while lowering the energy dissipation in data transfer. The CDMA based MAC protocol outperforms the wired counterparts and several other wireless architectures proposed in literature in terms of bandwidth and packet energy dissipation. However, the reliability of CDMA based wireless NoC\u27s is limited, as the probability of error is eminent due to synchronization delays at the receiver. The thesis proposes the use of an advanced filter which improves the performance and also reduces the error due to synchronization delays. This thesis also proposes investigation of various channel modulation schemes on token passing wireless NoC\u27s to examine the performance and reliability of the system. The trade-off between performance and energy are established for the various conditions. The results are obtained using a modified cycle accurate simulator

Early priming of the immune system: Identifying predictive markers of innate immunity and calcium signalling for the development of asthma

Asthma remains one of the most common chronic diseases in childhood, developing already early in life. In the first year of life, children start to present with wheeze, which is currently classified as multi-trigger or viral-wheeze based on specific triggers and their long-term time course. An early prediction of children with wheeze and at risk for subsequent asthma is currently difficult and underlying immune mechanisms of distinct wheeze phenotypes are unknown. As early priming of the immune system occurs already prenatally, we aim to identify predictive markers for children at risk for subsequent development of childhood wheeze and asthma. From previous work of our research group, innate immune regulation, in particular antiviral immunity (LY75, CD209, IPS1) and Ca2+-signalling pathways, e.g. CALM2 and genes related to store-operated calcium entry (ITPR2, STIM2, ORAI1, ORMDL3 and ATP2A3) have been shown to be differentially expressed between asthmatics and healthy children during disease manifestation at school-age. Here, we aimed to assess these genes at the earliest time point, namely at birth. We investigated gene regulation as potential predictive markers for the development of subsequent wheeze phenotypes. The mRNA-expression of selected candidate genes of Ca2+-signalling (CALM2, ITPR2, ORAI1, STIM2, ORMDL3, ATP2A3) and innate immunity (CD209, LY75, FPR2, IPS1) was measured in CBMCs of children with subsequent wheeze phenotypes compared to healthy children (HC). Children were selected from the PAULINA/PAULCHEN cohort (n=200). Phenotypic classification in multitrigger, persistent viral or early viral wheeze and healthy control was based on clinical information from questionnaires answered by the parents at age 3 and/or 6 years. Previously, cord blood was taken from healthy neonates with strict inclusion criteria, and CBMCs were isolated within 24 hours, kept unstimulated or were stimulated with PHA or LpA for 72h. Gene expression at mRNA level was assessed via qRT-PCR, and analysed with the Wilcoxon rank sum test. The following results were obtained and are presented in this thesis: 1. Expression of all candidate genes of calcium signalling and viral innate immunity was detectable and varied significantly or trend-wise between the different wheeze subgroups and healthy controls (mainly ITPR2, CALM2, ORAI1, STIM2, FPR2, IPS1, LY75). 2. Children with persistent viral wheeze showed a lower expression of the candidate 103 genes (ITPR2, CALM2, ORAI1, STIM2, ATP2A3, IPS1, LY75, CD209) than the other wheeze subgroups. 3. Children with persistent multitrigger wheeze showed a distinct pattern of elevated expression for the candidate genes (ITPR2, CALM2, ORAI1, STIM2, ORMDL3, ATP2A3, S100A9 FPR2, IPS1, LY75, CD209). This was visible for the whole calcium-signalling pathway, supporting the view of persistent multitrigger wheeze as distinct entity and suggests a pathophysiological relevance of calcium signalling. 4. Despite parallels in clinical presentation, late-onset multitrigger wheeze share gene expression patterns with persistent viral rather than persistent multitrigger wheeze, suggesting a different underlying pathophysiology. Taken together, these results affirm the emerging view of childhood asthma as a complex disease and show that differences in immune regulation are already visible at birth. Importantly, especially the findings for persistent multitrigger wheeze could eventually, after suitable validation for example in a larger cohort with higher case numbers, help in the development of specific biomarkers before disease manifestation, which may contribute to closer clinical monitoring and in the long-term potentially to a change in therapy for patients with distinct phenotypes of childhood asthma

Resilient Cloud-based Replication with Low Latency

Existing approaches to tolerate Byzantine faults in geo-replicated environments require systems to execute complex agreement protocols over wide-area links and consequently are often associated with high response times. In this paper we address this problem with Spider, a resilient replication architecture for geo-distributed systems that leverages the availability characteristics of today's public-cloud infrastructures to minimize complexity and reduce latency. Spider models a system as a collection of loosely coupled replica groups whose members are hosted in different cloud-provided fault domains (i.e., availability zones) of the same geographic region. This structural organization makes it possible to achieve low response times by placing replica groups in close proximity to clients while still enabling the replicas of a group to interact over short-distance links. To handle the inter-group communication necessary for strong consistency Spider uses a reliable group-to-group message channel with first-in-first-out semantics and built-in flow control that significantly simplifies system design.Comment: 25 pages, extended version of Middleware 2020 pape

Revisiting the high-performance reconfigurable computing for future datacenters

Modern datacenters are reinforcing the computational power and energy efficiency by assimilating field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The sustainability of this large-scale integration depends on enabling multi-tenant FPGAs. This requisite amplifies the importance of communication architecture and virtualization method with the required features in order to meet the high-end objective. Consequently, in the last decade, academia and industry proposed several virtualization techniques and hardware architectures for addressing resource management, scheduling, adoptability, segregation, scalability, performance-overhead, availability, programmability, time-to-market, security, and mainly, multitenancy. This paper provides an extensive survey covering three important aspects-discussion on non-standard terms used in existing literature, network-on-chip evaluation choices as a mean to explore the communication architecture, and virtualization methods under latest classification. The purpose is to emphasize the importance of choosing appropriate communication architecture, virtualization technique and standard language to evolve the multi-tenant FPGAs in datacenters. None of the previous surveys encapsulated these aspects in one writing. Open problems are indicated for scientific community as well