Determining cellular and biochemical function of a novel adhesion molecule in kidneys.

Acute kidney injury is an abrupt loss of kidney function that develops in short time with limited effective treatments other than kidney transplantation. We have identified TMIGD1 (Transmembrane immuno- globulin domain 1) as a novel receptor expressed in various organs and tissues, mainly in cell with epithelial origin. TMIGD1 regulates cell morphology and adhesion and its extracellular domain mediates its activity. Knocking down of TMIGD1 using short hairpin RNA (shRNA) increased cell death in human kidney epithelial cells (HK2). On the other hand, HEK293 cells over expressing TMIGD1 protected cells from oxidative stress and nutrient deprivation induced injuries. Furthermore, TMIGD1 expression is reduced in vivo and in vitro kidney injury models. TMIGD1 expression was regulated by ubiquitination and degradation by proteosome 26s. Thus, we present TMIGD1 as a novel receptor that plays important roles in regulation of cell morphology, cell- cell interaction and cell survival

Age Minimization in Energy Harvesting Communications: Energy-Controlled Delays

We consider an energy harvesting source that is collecting measurements from a physical phenomenon and sending updates to a destination within a communication session time. Updates incur transmission delays that are function of the energy used in their transmission. The more transmission energy used per update, the faster it reaches the destination. The goal is to transmit updates in a timely manner, namely, such that the total age of information is minimized by the end of the communication session, subject to energy causality constraints. We consider two variations of this problem. In the first setting, the source controls the number of measurement updates, their transmission times, and the amounts of energy used in their transmission (which govern their delays, or service times, incurred). In the second setting, measurement updates externally arrive over time, and therefore the number of updates becomes fixed, at the expense of adding data causality constraints to the problem. We characterize age-minimal policies in the two settings, and discuss the relationship of the age of information metric to other metrics used in the energy harvesting literature.Comment: Appeared in Asilomar 201

Age-Minimal Transmission in Energy Harvesting Two-hop Networks

We consider an energy harvesting two-hop network where a source is communicating to a destination through a relay. During a given communication session time, the source collects measurement updates from a physical phenomenon and sends them to the relay, which then forwards them to the destination. The objective is to send these updates to the destination as timely as possible; namely, such that the total age of information is minimized by the end of the communication session, subject to energy causality constraints at the source and the relay, and data causality constraints at the relay. Both the source and the relay use fixed, yet possibly different, transmission rates. Hence, each update packet incurs fixed non-zero transmission delays. We first solve the single-hop version of this problem, and then show that the two-hop problem is solved by treating the source and relay nodes as one combined node, with some parameter transformations, and solving a single-hop problem between that combined node and the destination.Comment: Appeared in IEEE Globecom 201

Energy Harvesting Networks with General Utility Functions: Near Optimal Online Policies

We consider online scheduling policies for single-user energy harvesting communication systems, where the goal is to characterize online policies that maximize the long term average utility, for some general concave and monotonically increasing utility function. In our setting, the transmitter relies on energy harvested from nature to send its messages to the receiver, and is equipped with a finite-sized battery to store its energy. Energy packets are independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) over time slots, and are revealed causally to the transmitter. Only the average arrival rate is known a priori. We first characterize the optimal solution for the case of Bernoulli arrivals. Then, for general i.i.d. arrivals, we first show that fixed fraction policies [Shaviv-Ozgur] are within a constant multiplicative gap from the optimal solution for all energy arrivals and battery sizes. We then derive a set of sufficient conditions on the utility function to guarantee that fixed fraction policies are within a constant additive gap as well from the optimal solution.Comment: To appear in the 2017 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1705.1030

Engineering Advanced Training Environment for Crisis Management: The Pandora Project

The paper describes the technical framework of a near real-life training environment for learning activities suitable for training in crisis scenarios. The underlying architecture features a design that makes provision for a learning environment capable of training collaborative, as well as independent, decision making skills among crisis managers in potential crisis situations. Modelling the training scenarios takes into consideration both the pragmatic nature of responding to crisis, as well as the human behavioural factors involved in dealing with situations of chaos and uncertainty. This work is part of ongoing research on the Pandora1 project, which aims to provide a near-real training environment at affordable cost