IMoG -- a methodology for modeling future microelectronic innovations

[Context and motivation] The automotive industry is currently undergoing a fundamental transformation towards software defined vehicles. The automotive market of the future demands a higher level of automation, electrification of the power train, and individually configurable comfort functions. [Question/problem] These demands pose a challenge to the automotive development cycle, because they introduce complexity by larger and not yet well explored design spaces that are difficult to manage. [Principal ideas/results] To cope with these challenges, the main players along the value chain have an increased interest in collaborating and aligning their development efforts along joint roadmaps. Roadmap development can be viewed as a field of requirements engineering with the goal to capture product aspects on an appropriate level of abstraction to speed up investment decisions, reduce communication overhead and parallelize development activities, while complying with competition laws. [Contribution] In this paper, we present a refinement of the "Innovation Modeling Grid" (IMoG), which encompasses a methodology, a process and a proposed notation to support joint analysis of development roadmaps. IMoG is focused on the automotive domain, yet there are clear potentials for other applications.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure

IMoG - a methodology for modeling future microelectronic innovations

[Context and motivation] The automotive industry is currently undergoing a fundamental transformation towards software defined vehicles. The automotive market of the future demands a higher level of automation, electrification of the power train, and individually configurable comfort functions. [Question/problem] These demands pose a challenge to the automotive development cycle, because they introduce complexity by larger and not yet well explored design spaces that are difficult to manage. [Principal ideas/results] To cope with these challenges, the main players along the value chain have an increased interest in collaborating and aligning their development efforts along joint roadmaps. Roadmap development can be viewed as a field of requirements engineering with the goal to capture product aspects on an appropriate level of abstraction to speed up investment decisions, reduce communication overhead and parallelize development activities, while complying with competition laws. [Contribution] In this paper, we present a refinement of the "Innovation Modeling Grid" (IMoG), which encompasses a methodology, a process and a proposed notation to support joint analysis of development roadmaps. IMoG is focused on the automotive domain, yet there are clear potentials for other applications

Meteorological and air quality measurements in a city region with complex terrain: influence of meteorological phenomena on urban climate

On 8 and 9 July 2018 extensive observations were conducted under fair-weather conditions in the German city of Stuttgart and its surroundings. This intensive observation period, part of the four weeks Urban Climate Under Change (UC)2 campaign, intended to provide a comprehensive data set to understand the complex interactions of thermally induced wind systems, vertical turbulent mixing and air pollutant concentration distribution in the atmospheric boundary layer of the city. Stuttgart has a very special and complex topography with a city center located in a basin surrounded by hills with heights of 250 to 300 m influencing the wind and flow system, reducing the wind speed, causing inhibited dispersion of air pollutants. Cold air flows from the surrounding plains can penetrate into the urban areas and influence the urban climate including the air quality. For investigating these effects with a focus on urban climate, combinations of different measurement platforms and techniques were used, such as in situ stationary and mobile measurements with cars, vertical profiling by means of tethered balloons, radiosondes, a drone, and aircraft observations, remote sensing devices and satellite-based instruments. Numerous atmospheric processes in an urban area regarding boundary layer evolution, inversion, local wind systems, urban heat island, etc. were observed. Some important findings are: Temperature observations provide local information about the warmest areas in the city and about the city and its surroundings. The urban heat island effect was evident from the results of stationary and mobile air temperature measurements as higher air temperature was measured in Stuttgart basin compared to its surroundings. Considerable spatio-temporal differences concerning the wind (speed and direction), turbulence and the convective boundary depth are evident. Lower wind speeds were observed during the nighttime and the main wind direction in the Stuttgart valley was measured to be southwest, which carried cold air from the hillsides into the city and pollutants to the windward side of the city into the Neckar valley. The low wind speed favored the accumulation of pollutants in a shallow nocturnal boundary layer close to the surface. During the day, the overall pollutant concentration was reduced by vertical convective mixing. The vertical profile measurements have shown that the applied techniques provided a good overview to understand the vertical characteristics of meteorological parameters and pollutants as well as the stability of the atmosphere and extent of the urban boundary layer. It also showed that the extent of atmospheric mixing determines the dispersion, dilution and mixing of emitted pollutants. Finally, the additional comprehensive air-chemical observations (surface and satellite based) allow understanding the diurnal cycle of air pollutants in the atmospheric boundary layer of the city of Stuttgart. Satellite-based observations from Sentinel‑5P/TROPOMI have shown their potential for mapping urban pollution islands and urban pollution plumes even in cities with a complex terrain like Stuttgart. These observations assisted to obtain a comprehensive data set intended for the validation of a novel urban climate model, PALM‑4U

Regionally coupled atmosphere-ocean-sea ice-marine biogeochemistry model ROM: 1. Description and validation

The general circulation models used to simulate global climate typically feature resolution too coarse to reproduce many smaller-scale processes, which are crucial to determining the regional responses to climate change. A novel approach to downscale climate change scenarios is presented which includes the interactions between the North Atlantic Ocean and the European shelves as well as their impact on the North Atlantic and European climate. The goal of this paper is to introduce the global ocean-regional atmosphere coupling concept and to show the potential benefits of this model system to simulate present-day climate. A global ocean-sea ice-marine biogeochemistry model (MPIOM/HAMOCC) with regionally high horizontal resolution is coupled to an atmospheric regional model (REMO) and global terrestrial hydrology model (HD) via the OASIS coupler. Moreover, results obtained with ROM using NCEP/NCAR reanalysis and ECHAM5/MPIOM CMIP3 historical simulations as boundary conditions are presented and discussed for the North Atlantic and North European region. The validation of all the model components, i.e., ocean, atmosphere, terrestrial hydrology, and ocean biogeochemistry is performed and discussed. The careful and detailed validation of ROM provides evidence that the proposed model system improves the simulation of many aspects of the regional climate, remarkably the ocean, even though some biases persist in other model components, thus leaving potential for future improvement. We conclude that ROM is a powerful tool to estimate possible impacts of climate change on the regional scale

Delineating the molecular and phenotypic spectrum of the SETD1B-related syndrome

Purpose: Pathogenic variants in SETD1B have been associated with a syndromic neurodevelopmental disorder including intellectual disability, language delay, and seizures. To date, clinical features have been described for 11 patients with (likely) pathogenic SETD1B sequence variants. This study aims to further delineate the spectrum of the SETD1B-related syndrome based on characterizing an expanded patient cohort. Methods: We perform an in-depth clinical characterization of a cohort of 36 unpublished individuals with SETD1B sequence variants, describing their molecular and phenotypic spectrum. Selected variants were functionally tested using in vitro and genome-wide methylation assays. Results: Our data present evidence for a loss-of-function mechanism of SETD1B variants, resulting in a core clinical phenotype of global developmental delay, language delay including regression, intellectual disability, autism and other behavioral issues, and variable epilepsy phenotypes. Developmental delay appeared to precede seizure onset, suggesting SETD1B dysfunction impacts physiological neurodevelopment even in the absence of epileptic activity. Males are significantly overrepresented and more severely affected, and we speculate that sex-linked traits could affect susceptibility to penetrance and the clinical spectrum of SETD1B variants. Conclusion: Insights from this extensive cohort will facilitate the counseling regarding the molecular and phenotypic landscape of newly diagnosed patients with the SETD1B-related syndrome

Meteorological and air quality measurements in a city region with complex terrain: influence of meteorological phenomena on urban climate

On 8 and 9 July 2018 extensive observations were conducted under fair-weather conditions in the German city of Stuttgart and its surroundings. This intensive observation period, part of the four weeks Urban Climate Under Change (UC)2 campaign, intended to provide a comprehensive data set to understand the complex interactions of thermally induced wind systems, vertical turbulent mixing and air pollutant concentration distribution in the atmospheric boundary layer of the city. Stuttgart has a very special and complex topography with a city center located in a basin surrounded by 250 to 300 m higher hills influencing the wind and flow system, reducing the wind speed, and causing inhibited dispersion of air pollutants. Cold air flows from the surrounding plains can penetrate the urban areas and influence the urban climate including the air quality. For investigating these effects with a focus on urban climate, combinations of different measurement platforms and techniques were used, such as in situ stationary and mobile measurements with cars, vertical profiling by means of tethered balloons, radiosondes, a drone, and aircraft observations, remote sensing devices and satellite-based instruments. Numerous atmospheric processes in an urban area regarding boundary layer evolution, inversion, local wind systems, urban heat island, etc. were observed. Some important findings are: Temperature observations provide local information about the warmest areas in the city and about the city and its surroundings. The urban heat island effect was evident from the results of stationary and mobile air temperature measurements as the higher air temperature was measured in the Stuttgart basin compared to its surroundings. Considerable spatio-temporal differences concerning the wind (speed and direction), turbulence and the convective boundary depth are evident. Lower wind speeds were observed during the nighttime and the main wind direction in the Stuttgart valley was measured to be southwest, which carried cold air from the hillsides into the city and pollutants to the windward side of the city into the Neckar valley. The low wind speed favored the accumulation of pollutants in a shallow nocturnal boundary layer close to the surface. During the day, the overall pollutant concentration was reduced by vertical convective mixing. The vertical profile measurements have shown that the applied techniques provided a good overview to understand the vertical characteristics of meteorological parameters and pollutants as well as the stability of the atmosphere and extent of the urban boundary layer. It also showed that the extent of atmospheric mixing determines the dispersion, dilution and mixing of emitted pollutants.Finally, the additional comprehensive air-chemical observations (surface and satellite based) allow an understanding of the diurnal cycle of air pollutants in the atmospheric boundary layer of the city of Stuttgart. Satellite-based observations from Sentinel‑5P/TROPOMI have shown their potential for mapping urban pollution islands and urban pollution plumes even in cities with a complex terrain like Stuttgart. These observations assisted to obtain a comprehensive data set intended for the validation of a novel urban climate model, PALM‑4U

Cln5 represents a new type of cysteine-based S-depalmitoylase linked to neurodegeneration

Genetic CLN5 variants are associated with childhood neurodegeneration and Alzheimer’s disease; however, the molecular function of ceroid lipofuscinosis neuronal protein 5 (Cln5) is unknown. We solved the Cln5 crystal structure and identified a region homologous to the catalytic domain of members of the N1pC/P60 superfamily of papain-like enzymes. However, we observed no protease activity for Cln5; and instead, we discovered that Cln5 and structurally related PPPDE1 and PPPDE2 have efficient cysteine palmitoyl thioesterase (S-depalmitoylation) activity using fluorescent substrates. Mutational analysis revealed that the predicted catalytic residues histidine-166 and cysteine-280 are critical for Cln5 thioesterase activity, uncovering a new cysteine-based catalytic mechanism for S-depalmitoylation enzymes. Last, we found that Cln5-deficient neuronal progenitor cells showed reduced thioesterase activity, confirming live cell function of Cln5 in setting S-depalmitoylation levels. Our results provide new insight into the function of Cln5, emphasize the importance of S-depalmitoylation in neuronal homeostasis, and disclose a new, unexpected enzymatic function for the N1pC/P60 superfamily of proteins