Defending European Airports: Cyber-Physical Threat Analysis in Total Airport Management

In the past, airports relied on a host of information systems and control applications that were loosely integrated. The software infrastructure components that supported water, heating and lighting systems did not exchange data with baggage handling applications, nor with air traffic management systems. In turn, these infrastructures were isolated from information systems to aid passenger movements through check-in to departures and onto the aircraft. Many airports have, however, begun to implement Airport Operations Plans that improve situation awareness and support collaborative optimisation through increased levels of integration and connectivity. This paper identifies different architectures that support a new generation of Airport Operations Centres (APOC). Subsequent sections summarise the cyber security threats that arise from interconnection and inter-dependence. The closing paragraphs present mitigations that increase the cyber resilience of APOCs and also address a number of associated safety concerns

Collaborative decision making: results of experiments to identify limitations of information exchanges in stand and gate operations

Summary What are the benefits of exchanging information to build a CDM environment? The A-CDM-D project was set up in 1999 to investigate development of a CDM system. A key part of the project was the evaluation of the operational benefit of information exchange to airlines and other partners in the ATM system. To achieve this EUROCONTROL organised a data collection process in which several airline and airport partners provided data in an "open book" approach, focusing on stand and gate operations. This enabled a detailed analysis of who had what information when, and what was the quality of the information. The goal of this analysis was to decide if there would be a benefit in information sharing and hence from Collaborative Decision Making

Europe’s next step in Airport Performance Management Research

The paper will provide an insight into the next steps of Total Airport Management research as it is being conducted by Europe’s ambitious Single European Sky ATM Research program (SESAR2020) as project PJ.04. SESAR 2020 is planned to be operated in two defined program waves, covering the years 2016-2019 for wave 1 and 2019-2022 in the second wave. The paper will focus on the second of two so called solutions in PJ.04. Solution 2 addresses the delivery of concepts and ultimately industrially developed prototypes for Collaborative Airport Performance Management. The preceding SESAR 1 program focused on developing and validating a number of key elements of the performance-based collaborative airport operations management concept. It centred essentially on the definition and management of the Airport Operations Plan and the description of the collaborative processes associated to the Airport Operations Centre. It became evident, following an in-depth analysis of the SESAR 1 results, that further TAM research and development is required. Three main research topics have been identified: situation and impact assessment, collaborative mitigation and performance management, and the exploitation of available operational airport process data in an intelligent, automated way. Following the European Operational Concept Validation Methodology, solution 2 of the Total Airport Management Project and its newly to be developed concept elements will be passing from the initial idea (V0) to the scoping (V1; 2017) stage, followed by the feasibility assessment (V2; 2018/2019) and finally, in the second wave of the program (2019-2022), to the performance assessment (V3) level. Maturity gate assessments will ensure the proper completeness of the working results, supported by corresponding validation activities, before the work on the next maturity level can be formally started. The key aim of Solution PJ.04-02 is to develop procedures, mechanisms and tools to support stakeholder groups that are cooperatively conducting airport operations, providing enhanced multi-stakeholder decision support especially in adverse conditions, such as bad weather, strikes, or unforeseen events such as runway blockages. The components of solution 2 will address intra-airport and airport-network aspects, highest sophistication levels such as those dealing with environmental performance or automated airport learning environments and optimised utilisation of resources in a demand versus capacity balancing approach. The philosophy of Collaborative Decision Making advocated in SESAR 1 is that of ‘consensus’ building amongst the different airport stakeholders. This consists of each stakeholder assessing the performance impact on their own operations of any constraining situation and performing a dialogue around the potential solution to be implemented. To enable the stakeholders to efficiently assess the implications of various options, adequate support tools need to be developed as well as ensuring that the collaborative procedures to be followed are adapted to the eventual deployment scenario in terms of different airport categories (large hubs and small/medium regional airports). Expected benefits will be part of the scoping phase, together with an estimation of the associated magnitude. The paper will present the results of the V1 activity, the ideas, the resulting concept elements and their defined scopes and the validation roadmap for the next maturity stages. Following the SESAR 1 philosophy in terms of deployment, the results of PJ.04 after completion of wave 2 of the SESAR 2020 program can be subject to mandatory prescription in the ECAC area by the European Commission

Europe’s next step in Total Airport Management research

Within the two solutions that spawn SESAR 2020’s four year project PJ.04 Total Airport Management, challenges of enhanced collaborative airport performance monitoring and management will be addressed and the work of the SESAR program continued. The solutions address concepts and enablers that provide monitoring and management capabilities to key decision making personal in an Airport Operations Control Center or similar decision making collaboration groups. The solutions, their assigned so-called operational improvement steps and their associated technical and operational enablers will progress through maturity levels, ensured by gate reviews, evaluating numerous validation objectives against evidences provided by validation exercises. The two solutions will define the de-facto standard of collaborative airport operations monitoring and management procedures, described in the key concept document Operational Service Environment Description. The work provides insight into the specific operational improvement steps and their associated enablers that will be developed within this project. From a top-down perspective, the operational daily life with the solutions’ results will be explained. The work will describe what the operational improvement steps of the two solutions will be about and how these will influence daily operational life for operational decision making actors in collaborative airport decision making environments. It will explain the work program that has been set for SESAR 2020’s project PJ.04 Total Airport Management

Extraction des Terres Rares contenues dans les aimants permanents des Déchets des équipements électriques et électroniques

L'utilisation croissante des terres rares (TR) dans bon nombre d'innovations technologiques récentes ont conduit à une augmentation rapide (plus 50% ces dix dernières années) de leur demande. Le développement continu de " technologies vertes " particulièrement friandes de ces éléments, contribue largement à cette demande croissante et qui sera durable dans le temps. Dans ce contexte, l'Europe dans sa stratégie " Matières premières ", met le recyclage au centre de ses préoccupations pour assurer une partie de la sécurisation de ses approvisionnements en TR. Le recyclage des TR, à l'échelle industrielle, demeure assez peu développé alors qu'il présente de nombreux avantages par rapport à l'exploitation des ressources primaires : * l'Europe constitue une des plus importantes régions de consommation de TR au travers de ses industries à haute valeur ajoutée. Elle a en outre accumulé pendant des dizaines d'années des biens de consommation qui, arrivés en fin de vie, constituent des ressources secondaires d'où pourraient être extraites des TR ; * la dépendance européenne et française vis-à-vis des ressources provenant de pays étrangers peut être réduite au travers du recyclage des déchets post-consommation ; * la production de ressources métalliques par exploitation des ressources secondaires se fait le plus souvent avec des consommations énergétiques bien inférieures à celles observées pour l'exploitation des ressources primaires. Ainsi, afin d'accroitre l'efficacité de l'utilisation des TR et de diminuer la dépendance européenne vis-à-vis de ces éléments stratégiques, un effort de recherche et développement doit être réalisé dans tous les domaines de leur cycle de vie qu'il s'agisse de l'exploitation des minerais ou de celle des équipements en fin de vie tels que ceux qui constituent la cible du projet EXTRADE, à savoir les Déchets des Equipements Electriques et Electroniques (D3E). Dans ce contexte, le projet EXTRADE ambitionne de développer de nouvelles filières de valorisation des aimants permanents à terres rares (APTR) présents dans les D3E en ciblant 3 types d'équipements que sont i) les disques durs d'ordinateurs, ii) les haut-parleurs des matériels audio et vidéo et iii) les petits moteurs électriques présents dans les TIC (Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication) et les PAM (Petits Appareils Managers). EXTRADE propose d'aborder le recyclage des APTR en considérant la filière dans son ensemble en partant du gisement de DEEE, en développant des opérations unitaires de traitements des DEEE destinées à récupérer le contenu en APTR massifs, et en mettant au point des traitements thermiques, physiques et physico-chimiques destinés à produire de nouveaux aimants et/ou des fractions enrichies en alliages de TR compatibles avec une valorisation dans les circuits hydro-métallurgiques de production de TR

Extraction des Terres Rares contenues dans les aimants permanents des Déchets des équipements électriques et électroniques

L'utilisation croissante des terres rares (TR) dans bon nombre d'innovations technologiques récentes ont conduit à une augmentation rapide (plus 50% ces dix dernières années) de leur demande. Le développement continu de " technologies vertes " particulièrement friandes de ces éléments, contribue largement à cette demande croissante et qui sera durable dans le temps. Dans ce contexte, l'Europe dans sa stratégie " Matières premières ", met le recyclage au centre de ses préoccupations pour assurer une partie de la sécurisation de ses approvisionnements en TR. Le recyclage des TR, à l'échelle industrielle, demeure assez peu développé alors qu'il présente de nombreux avantages par rapport à l'exploitation des ressources primaires : * l'Europe constitue une des plus importantes régions de consommation de TR au travers de ses industries à haute valeur ajoutée. Elle a en outre accumulé pendant des dizaines d'années des biens de consommation qui, arrivés en fin de vie, constituent des ressources secondaires d'où pourraient être extraites des TR ; * la dépendance européenne et française vis-à-vis des ressources provenant de pays étrangers peut être réduite au travers du recyclage des déchets post-consommation ; * la production de ressources métalliques par exploitation des ressources secondaires se fait le plus souvent avec des consommations énergétiques bien inférieures à celles observées pour l'exploitation des ressources primaires. Ainsi, afin d'accroitre l'efficacité de l'utilisation des TR et de diminuer la dépendance européenne vis-à-vis de ces éléments stratégiques, un effort de recherche et développement doit être réalisé dans tous les domaines de leur cycle de vie qu'il s'agisse de l'exploitation des minerais ou de celle des équipements en fin de vie tels que ceux qui constituent la cible du projet EXTRADE, à savoir les Déchets des Equipements Electriques et Electroniques (D3E). Dans ce contexte, le projet EXTRADE ambitionne de développer de nouvelles filières de valorisation des aimants permanents à terres rares (APTR) présents dans les D3E en ciblant 3 types d'équipements que sont i) les disques durs d'ordinateurs, ii) les haut-parleurs des matériels audio et vidéo et iii) les petits moteurs électriques présents dans les TIC (Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication) et les PAM (Petits Appareils Managers). EXTRADE propose d'aborder le recyclage des APTR en considérant la filière dans son ensemble en partant du gisement de DEEE, en développant des opérations unitaires de traitements des DEEE destinées à récupérer le contenu en APTR massifs, et en mettant au point des traitements thermiques, physiques et physico-chimiques destinés à produire de nouveaux aimants et/ou des fractions enrichies en alliages de TR compatibles avec une valorisation dans les circuits hydro-métallurgiques de production de TR

A new approach to DNA bending by polyamines and its implication in DNA condensation

International audienc

Glycemic dysregulation in a patient with type 2 diabetes treated with 5-azacitidine: a case report

Abstract Background Diabetes and myelodysplastic syndrome are two conditions that may coexist in a single patient, since both diseases are prevalent in the elderly. The pathophysiology of myelodysplastic syndrome involves recurrent genetic mutations, especially in genes controlling epigenetic regulation. Although the pathophysiology of diabetes is not well understood, several studies suggest a role of epigenetics in type 2 diabetes. Case presentation We report here for the first time the case of a 75-year-old Caucasian man who was treated for both diabetes and acute myeloid leukemia secondary to myelodysplastic syndrome, with a temporal association between glycemic dysregulation and the intake of 5-azacitidine. In fact, 2–3 days after starting each 7-day cycle of 5-azacitidine, he reported higher blood glucose levels, requiring an increased dose of self-administered insulin. Conclusion This observation could help to understand the pathophysiology of these two conditions and could encourage physicians to monitor blood glucose levels in patients under hypomethylating agent with a history of diabetes

Efficient DNA Transfection Mediated by the C-Terminal Domain of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Viral Protein R

Viral protein R (Vpr) of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 is produced late in the virus life cycle and is assembled into the virion through binding to the Gag protein. It is known to play a significant role early in the viral life cycle by facilitating the nuclear import of the preintegration complex in nondividing cells. Vpr is also able to interact with nucleic acids, and we show here that it induces condensation of plasmid DNA. We have explored the possibility of using these properties in DNA transfection experiments. We report that the C-terminal half of the protein (Vpr(52–96)) mediates DNA transfection in a variety of human and nonhuman cell lines with efficiencies comparable to those of the best-known transfection agents. Compared with polylysine, a standard polycationic transfection reagent, Vpr(52–96) was 10- to 1,000-fold more active. Vpr(52–96)-DNA complexes were able to reach the cell nucleus through a pH-independent mechanism. These observations possibly identify an alternate pathway for DNA transfection