FlexRay-MilCAN Bridging

In a modern vehicle network, safety-critical systems must co-exist with current deterministic networks such as MilCAN. Additionally, it may be advantageous to use MilCAN to monitor the performance of a safety-critical system such as FlexRay. Following a brief overview of both MilCAN and FlexRay technologies, the progress of an ongoing investigation into bridging the two standards is presented. The current solution is acceptable under test conditions, but unlikely to be suited to real-world use. Future plans extending the investigation on to new and more suitable hardware are then briefly discusse

Through-life capability risk management for evolutionary complex military vetronics

The inherent nature of military vetronic systems, whose core constituents are a combination of soft and hard real-time, distributed, and in most cases embedded systems with mixed criticality; inevitably poses a challenge as how to deal with multidimensional complexity. Such complexity is not only the result of the actual technologies used but the stringent demands to have more flexible, reliable, powerful, easier to update and maintain military vehicles. This paper looks at some of the dimensions of complex military vetronic systems, such as functional partitioning, modularity and architectural concepts; making use of relevant standards and guidelines for architecture and verification and validation activities, the implementation of a testbed for technology insertion; a lifecycle model tailored to cope with such demands, incorporating risk management at a system level

Pretransplant Genetic Susceptibility: Clinical Relevance in Transplant-Associated Thrombotic Microangiopathy

Transplant-associated thrombotic microangiopathy (TA-TMA) is a life-threatening complication of allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). We hypothesized that pretransplant genetic susceptibility is evident in adult TA-TMA and further investigated the association of TMA-associated variants with clinical outcomes. We studied 40 patients with TA-TMA, donors of 18 patients and 40 control non-TMA HCT recipients, without significant differences in transplant characteristics. Genomic DNA from pretransplant peripheral blood was sequenced for TMA-associated genes. Donors presented significantly lower frequency of rare variants and variants in exonic/splicing/untranslated region (UTR) regions, compared with TA-TMA patients. Controls also showed a significantly lower frequency of rare variants in ADAMTS13, CD46, CFH, and CFI. The majority of TA-TMA patients (31/40) presented with pathogenic or likely pathogenic variants. Patients refractory to conventional treatment (62%) and patients that succumbed to transplant-related mortality (65%) were significantly enriched for variants in exonic/splicing/UTR regions. In conclusion, increased incidence of pathogenic, rare and variants in exonic/splicing/UTR regions of TA-TMA patients suggests genetic susceptibility not evident in controls or donors. Notably, variants in exonic/splicing/UTR regions were associated with poor response and survival. Therefore, pretransplant genomic screening may be useful to intensify monitoring and early intervention in patients at high risk for TA-TMA. © 2020 Georg Thieme Verlag. All rights reserved