Minimal information for studies of extracellular vesicles 2018 (MISEV2018): a position statement of the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles and update of the MISEV2014 guidelines

The last decade has seen a sharp increase in the number of scientific publications describing physiological and pathological functions of extracellular vesicles (EVs), a collective term covering various subtypes of cell-released, membranous structures, called exosomes, microvesicles, microparticles, ectosomes, oncosomes, apoptotic bodies, and many other names. However, specific issues arise when working with these entities, whose size and amount often make them difficult to obtain as relatively pure preparations, and to characterize properly. The International Society for Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV) proposed Minimal Information for Studies of Extracellular Vesicles (“MISEV”) guidelines for the field in 2014. We now update these “MISEV2014” guidelines based on evolution of the collective knowledge in the last four years. An important point to consider is that ascribing a specific function to EVs in general, or to subtypes of EVs, requires reporting of specific information beyond mere description of function in a crude, potentially contaminated, and heterogeneous preparation. For example, claims that exosomes are endowed with exquisite and specific activities remain difficult to support experimentally, given our still limited knowledge of their specific molecular machineries of biogenesis and release, as compared with other biophysically similar EVs. The MISEV2018 guidelines include tables and outlines of suggested protocols and steps to follow to document specific EV-associated functional activities. Finally, a checklist is provided with summaries of key points

FLUVIS - interaktive Visualisierung von Stroemungsdaten Abschlussbericht

In the BMBF-project FLUVIS, GMD and Daimler-Benz developed from April 1994 to March 1996 a virtual environment for the visualisation of 3-dimensional fluid data. Various visualisation concepts have been developed or extended to 3 dimensions and have been proven on a set of real simulations. A copy of the responsive workbench with its software, both devloped at GMD, will be installed at Daimler-Benz for practical use in automotive design. Various publications document the workbench and the results of this project. (orig.)Im BMBF-Verbundprojekt FLUVIS mit den Projektpartnern GMD und Daimler-Benz entstand vom April 1994 bis Maerz 1996 ein 3D-Visualisierungssystem von 3D-Stroemungsdaten in einer virtuellen Umgebung. An mehereren durchgefuehrten Simulationsrechnungen wurde die praktische Einsetzbarkeit sowohl neu entwickelter als auch auf 3 Dimensionen erweiterter Visualisationskonzepte unter Beweis gestellt. Die bei der GMD entwickelte Responsive Workbench und die Software werden bei Daimler-Benz im praktischen Einsatz stehen. Ueber das Projekt und die Responsive Workbench gab es mehrere Veroeffentlichungen. (orig.)Available from TIB Hannover: F96B1276+a / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEBundesministerium fuer Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Technologie, Bonn (Germany)DEGerman

Werkzeugunterstuetzte Parallelisierung von Finite-Element Anwendungen (PARFEM) Abschlussbericht

Goal of the PARFEM project was the development of software tools and methods to support the efficient treatment of large sparse matrices on parallel computers. Also new algorithms for the solution of such systems should be investigated. Portability of all components was an important aspect. Finally, the algorithms and methods should be integrated in the well-known FE software package PERMAS. The parallelization concept for PERMAS is based on the exploitation of task parallelism and not on the usual mesh partitioning (or domain decomposition) technique. The solution of the sparse system leads to the execution on many tasks which operate on independent data and which can be executed in parallel. A task graph controls the data dependency. A scheduler maps those tasks to processors and tries to achieve load balance. As an alternative to the standard direct Cholesky solver parallel preconditioned cg-solvers and parallel multifrontal solvers were implemented and investigated: - Several variants of preconditioners were tested as well as different storage schemes. The optimal variants showed very good speed-up results and the execution time was shorter than the time of the standard direct solver for a large number of processors. The integration into the PERMAS code, however, lead to some loss of scalability. - A parallel multifrontal solver was integrated and parallelized using the tools developed in the project. Speedup figures on an IBM SP2 system were satisfactory. The PARFEM project was very important for the development of the PERMAS code. The tools in PARFEM made it possible to maintain one version of the code for sequential and parallel platforms. Users can use the parallel code without additional training since the user interface was not changed at all. Since portability was very important the project used PARMACS and later MPI as portability platform. The parallel approach could even be executed on workstation clusters although, due to weak communication performance, not very efficiently. (orig.)SIGLEAvailable from TIB Hannover: F98B607+a / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekBundesministerium fuer Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Technologie, Bonn (Germany)DEGerman