SELENE: Self-Monitored Dependable Platform for High-Performance Safety-Critical Systems.

© 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.[Otros] xisting HW/SW platforms for safety-critical systems suffer from limited performance and/or from lack of flexibility due to building on specific proprietary components. This jeopardizes their wide deployment across domains. While some research has been done to overcome these limitations, they have had limited success owing to missing flexibility and extensibility. Flexibility and extensibility are the cornerstones of industry adoption: industries dealing in capital goods need technologies on which they can rely on during decades (e.g. avionics, space, automotive). SELENE aims at covering this gap by proposing a new family of safety-critical computing platforms, which builds upon open source components such as the RISC-V instruction set architecture, GNU/Linux, and the Jailhouse hypervisor. SELENE will develop an advanced computing platform that is able to: (1) adapt the system to the specific requirements of different application domains, to changing environmental conditions, and to internal conditions of the system itself; (2) allow the integration of applications of different criticalities and performance demands in the same platform, guaranteeing functional and temporal isolation properties; (3) achieve flexible diverse redundancy by exploiting the inherent redundant capabilities of the multicore; and (4) efficiently execute compute-intensive applications by means of specific accelerators.This work has received funding from the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 871467.Hernández Luz, C.; Flich Cardo, J.; Paredes Palacios, R.; Lefebvre, C.; Allende, I.; Abella, J.; Trilla, D.... (2020). SELENE: Self-Monitored Dependable Platform for High-Performance Safety-Critical Systems. IEEE. 370-377. https://doi.org/10.1109/DSD51259.2020.00066S37037

Neurobeachin, a Regulator of Synaptic Protein Targeting, Is Associated with Body Fat Mass and Feeding Behavior in Mice and Body-Mass Index in Humans

Neurobeachin (Nbea) regulates neuronal membrane protein trafficking and is required for the development and functioning of central and neuromuscular synapses. In homozygous knockout (KO) mice, Nbea deficiency causes perinatal death. Here, we report that heterozygous KO mice haploinsufficient for Nbea have higher body weight due to increased adipose tissue mass. In several feeding paradigms, heterozygous KO mice consumed more food than wild-type (WT) controls, and this consumption was primarily driven by calories rather than palatability. Expression analysis of feeding-related genes in the hypothalamus and brainstem with real-time PCR showed differential expression of a subset of neuropeptide or neuropeptide receptor mRNAs between WT and Nbea+/− mice in the sated state and in response to food deprivation, but not to feeding reward. In humans, we identified two intronic NBEA single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that are significantly associated with body-mass index (BMI) in adult and juvenile cohorts. Overall, data obtained in mice and humans suggest that variation of Nbea abundance or activity critically affects body weight, presumably by influencing the activity of feeding-related neural circuits. Our study emphasizes the importance of neural mechanisms in body weight control and points out NBEA as a potential risk gene in human obesity

The polyamine transporter Slc18b1(VPAT) is important for both short and long time memory and for regulation of polyamine content in the brain.

SLC18B1 is a sister gene to the vesicular monoamine and acetylcholine transporters, and the only known polyamine transporter, with unknown physiological role. We reveal that Slc18b1 knock out mice has significantly reduced polyamine content in the brain providing the first evidence that Slc18b1 is functionally required for regulating polyamine levels. We found that this mouse has impaired short and long term memory in novel object recognition, radial arm maze and self-administration paradigms. We also show that Slc18b1 KO mice have altered expression of genes involved in Long Term Potentiation, plasticity, calcium signalling and synaptic functions and that expression of components of GABA and glutamate signalling are changed. We further observe a partial resistance to diazepam, manifested as significantly lowered reduction in locomotion after diazepam treatment. We suggest that removal of Slc18b1 leads to reduction of polyamine contents in neurons, resulting in reduced GABA signalling due to long-term reduction in glutamatergic signalling

Downloading digital video games: predictors, moderators and consequences

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how personal and social factors influence attitudes towards downloading pirated games from the internet. It also examines the moderators between attitudes and intention to download pirated digital video games. Design/methodology/approach – The research was conducted using convenience samples in a large university in Western Australia. The data were analysed mostly through regression models. Findings – Self-efficacy, affect and moral judgement have significant influences upon attitudes towards downloading pirated games from the internet. Conversely, habits, facilitating conditions and social factors do not have significant influences upon attitudes towards downloading pirated games from the internet. In addition, attitudes towards downloading pirated digital video games from the internet have a significant influence upon the intention to download pirated digital video games from the internet. It is also found that the level of internet usage, the level of internet time spent and the internet speed do not moderate the relationship between attitudes and intention to download pirated games from the internet. Research limitations/implications – The major limitation is the use of a convenience sample. Therefore, future research should replicate and extend this study by using more valid random samples. In addition, qualitative approach, field experiment and foolspeed campaign analysis need to be considered to gain a better understanding of why internet users indulge in games piracy.Practical implications – Authorities should create awareness campaigns about digital video games piracy to alert the public about the risk of being caught and the consequence of unethical behaviour. Managers, marketers and policy makers should collaborate to combat piracy to prevent illegal downloading of free pirated games in the future. Originality/value – The paper assesses the impact of six antecedents and the attitudes towards downloading pirated digital video games from the internet that will lead to the intention to download pirated digital video games from the Internet

Differential feeding behavior of <i>Nbea+/−</i> and WT mice.

<p>Male mice were tested at the age of 8–10 weeks, prior to the manifestation of a significant body weight difference between the genotypes. Compared to WT mice, <i>Nbea</i>+/− mice <i>(A)</i> ate more <i>ad libitum</i> of the energy-dense and palatable high-fat high-sugar (HFHS) solid diet; <i>(B)</i> ate more standard chow upon 2-h refeeding after overnight food deprivation; <i>(C)</i> consumed more of the caloric and palatable 4.1% Intralipid, 10% sucrose, 10% glucose and 10% fructose solutions; but <i>(D)</i> they consumed the same amounts of tastants which do not contain calories, i.e. saline, 0.1% saccharin or 0.05% sucralose, despite their palatability. <i>Nbea</i>+/− mice <i>(E)</i> were not resistant to leptin, but they were <i>(F)</i> more sensitive to the anorexigenic naltrexone (NTX) than their WT counterparts. *, P<0.05; **, P<0.01; ***, P<0.001; error bars, ± SEM.</p

Nbea-haploinsufficient mice develop higher body weight due to higher adipose tissue mass.

<p>(A) Western blot analysis of whole brain demonstrates that Nbea protein expression in <i>Nbea</i>+/− mice is half of that in WT mice. The same blot was sequentially developed with anti-Nbea, anti-Lrba and anti-Cadherin. 1, ½ and ¼ indicate a dilution series of loaded protein. (B) Male and female <i>Nbea</i>+/− mice develop higher body mass than WT controls. From week 14 on we continuously detected a significant genotype effect on body mass in males and females combined (week 14–15 p<0.05, week 16–19 p<0.01, afterwards p<0.001). (C,D) qNMR scans of mice aged 6–22 weeks shows that increased body mass of <i>Nbea</i>+/− mice is caused by increased fat tissue mass (significant genotype effect in females between week 6–21, in males in week 13–16, linear model with body mass as covariate). (E) The in-out-difference between daily metabolizable energy and daily energy expenditure was significantly increased in <i>Nbea</i>+/− mice at the age of 8 weeks. (F) Plasma insulin and <i>(G)</i> leptin at 22 weeks of age were significantly increased in <i>Nbea</i>+/− mice. (H,I) High-fat feeding from age 14 weeks accelerates weight gain, more pronouncedly in <i>Nbea</i>+/− than in WT mice. * within males, ⁺within females, P<0.05; ** within males, ⁺⁺within females, P<0.01; *** within males, ⁺⁺⁺within females, P<0.001; error bars, ± SEM. In part <i>H</i>, all genotype differences were significant for males with at least P<0.05 (except weeks −2 and 7, n.s.) and for females with at least P<0.001 (except week −2, p<0.01).</p

Differential expression of feeding-related genes in <i>Nbea+/−</i> and WT mice under different feeding paradigms.

<p><i>Ad libitum</i>-fed, sated <i>Nbea</i>+/− and WT mice showed a differential expression of the dynorphin (DYN) mRNA in the hypothalamus <i>(A)</i> and of the melanocortin (MC) receptor-3 mRNA in the brainstem <i>(B)</i>. 16-h food deprivation differently affected expression of mRNAs encoding DYN, proopiomelanocortin (POMC), opioid-like receptor-1 (ORL1) and corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH) in the hypothalamus <i>(A)</i>, whereas no differences between the genotypes were triggered by food deprivation in the brainstem <i>(B)</i>. Exposure to the palatable HFHS diet did not affect gene expression differently in the <i>Nbea</i>+/− and WT animals. Only DYN mRNA was increased in the standard chow-fed controls <i>(C)</i>. * P<0.05; error bars, ± SEM. The following other genes were also analyzed, but their expression levels did not differ between the genotypes: AGRP, Agouti-related protein; AVP, vasopressin; CCK, cholecystokinin; CRHR, CRH receptor; DOR, delta opioid receptor; ENK, enkephalin; GHSR, growth hormone secretagogue receptor; GLP1R1, glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor 1; KOR, kappa opioid receptor; MCH, melanin concentrating hormone; MOR, mu opioid receptor; NPY, neuropeptide Y; ORX, orexin.</p

Odds ratio for overweight and obesity depending on <i>NBEA</i> genotypes in adults and children.

<p>Data are number of subjects in each group and number of subjects for each genotype (G) (% in each group). Allele frequency (A) for each group is given in percentage. GRR indicate genotype relative risk with a 95% confidence interval (CI). Odds ratio (OR) with a 95% confidence interval (CI) was calculated assuming an additive model. Association with overweight in the adult cohort was determined comparing subjects with normal weight (BMI<25 kg/m²) and overweight (BMI≥25 kg/m²). P indicates p-values adjusted for age and gender.</p

Association with BMI and body weight as continuous traits in adults and children for <i>NBEA</i> rs17775456 and rs7990537.

<p>Beta indicates transformed beta-values. P indicates p-values adjusted for significant covariates.</p