Performance evaluation of a vehicular edge device for customer feedback in Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is the term used to specify the current industrial revolution, not only from a technological point of view but also from economical, sociological and strategical points of view. The revolution involves several traditional economic sectors, as is the case with the industrial ecosystem. The main benefits are related to creating value during the entire product lifecycle and in terms of customer feedback, which is particularly relevant to the automotive industry. Its disruptive diffusion is due to various enabling technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), and, as such, it is a vision rather than a technological step forward. Thus, this paper investigates a performance evaluation of an Edge OBD-II device, which collects data from vehicles in an autonomous way in order to provide customer feedback and tracking. The metrics evaluated were different sets of OBD-II Parameter IDs (PIDS), responsiveness, driver behaviour and CO2 pollution estimates. The experiments were performed using three vehicles in urban and highway areas in the city of Natal, Brazil. For validation purposes, the results obtained from the vehicles were compared with an OBD-II Emulator, which demonstrated the accuracy of the experiments.</p

Pml represses tumour progression through inhibition of mTOR

The promyelocytic leukaemia gene PML is a pleiotropic tumour suppressor. We have recently demonstrated that PML opposes mTOR-HIF1α-VEGF signalling in hypoxia. To determine the relevance of PML-mTOR antagonism in tumourigenesis, we have intercrossed Pml null mice with Tsc2 heterozygous mice, which develop kidney cysts and carcinomas exhibiting mTOR upregulation. We find that combined inactivation of Pml and Tsc2 results in aberrant TORC1 activity both in pre-tumoural kidneys as well as in kidney lesions. Such increase correlates with a marked acceleration in tumour progression, impacting on both the biology and histology of kidney carcinomas. Also, Pml inactivation decreases the rate of loss of heterozygosity (LOH) for the wt Tsc2 allele. Interestingly, however, aberrant TORC1 activity does not accelerate renal cystogenesis in Tsc2/Pml mutants. Our data demonstrate that activation of mTOR is critical for tumour progression, but not for tumour initiation in the kidney

Lrf suppresses prostate cancer through repression of a Sox9-dependent pathway for cellular senescence bypass and tumor invasion

Lrf has been previously described as a powerful proto-oncogene. Here we surprisingly demonstrate that Lrf plays a critical oncosuppressive role in the prostate. Prostate specific inactivation of Lrf leads to a dramatic acceleration of Pten-loss-driven prostate tumorigenesis through a bypass of Pten-loss-induced senescence (PICS). We show that LRF physically interacts with and functionally antagonizes SOX9 transcriptional activity on key target genes such as MIA, which is involved in tumor cell invasion, and H19, a long non-coding RNA precursor for an Rb-targeting miRNA. Inactivation of Lrf in vivo leads to Rb down-regulation, PICS bypass and invasive prostate cancer. Importantly, we found that LRF is genetically lost, as well as down-regulated at both the mRNA and protein levels in a subset of human advanced prostate cancers. Thus, we identify LRF as a context-dependent cancer gene that can act as an oncogene in some contexts but also displays oncosuppressive-like activity in Pten−/− tumors

A co-clinical approach identifies mechanisms and potential therapies for androgen deprivation resistance in prostate cancer

Here we report an integrated analysis that leverages data from treatment of genetic mouse models of prostate cancer along with clinical data from patients to elucidate new mechanisms of castration resistance. We show that castration counteracts tumor progression in a Pten-loss driven mouse model of prostate cancer through the induction of apoptosis and proliferation block. Conversely, this response is bypassed upon deletion of either Trp53 or Lrf together with Pten, leading to the development of castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). Mechanistically, the integrated acquisition of data from mouse models and patients identifies the expression patterns of XAF1-XIAP/SRD5A1 as a predictive and actionable signature for CRPC. Importantly, we show that combined inhibition of XIAP, SRD5A1, and AR pathways overcomes castration resistance. Thus, our co-clinical approach facilitates stratification of patients and the development of tailored and innovative therapeutic treatments

Targeting Lactate Dehydrogenase-A Inhibits Tumorigenesis and Tumor Progression in Mouse Models of Lung Cancer and Impacts Tumor-Initiating Cells

The lactate dehydrogenase-A (LDH-A) enzyme catalyzes the interconversion of pyruvate and lactate, is upregulated in human cancers, and is associated with aggressive tumor outcomes. Here we use an inducible murine model and demonstrate that inactivation of LDH-A in mouse models of NSCLC driven by oncogenic K-RAS or EGFR leads to decreased tumorigenesis and disease regression in established tumors. We also show that abrogation of LDH-A results in reprogramming of pyruvate metabolism, with decreased lactic fermentation in vitro, in vivo, and ex vivo. This was accompanied by reactivation of mitochondrial function in vitro, but not in vivo or ex vivo. Finally, using a specific small molecule LDH-A inhibitor, we demonstrated that LDH-A is essential for cancer-initiating cell survival and proliferation. Thus, LDH-A can be a viable therapeutic target for NSCLC, including cancer stem cell-dependent drug-resistant tumors

Retrospective evaluation of whole exome and genome mutation calls in 746 cancer samples

Funder: NCI U24CA211006Abstract: The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) curated consensus somatic mutation calls using whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), respectively. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancers across 38 tumour types, we compare WES and WGS side-by-side from 746 TCGA samples, finding that ~80% of mutations overlap in covered exonic regions. We estimate that low variant allele fraction (VAF < 15%) and clonal heterogeneity contribute up to 68% of private WGS mutations and 71% of private WES mutations. We observe that ~30% of private WGS mutations trace to mutations identified by a single variant caller in WES consensus efforts. WGS captures both ~50% more variation in exonic regions and un-observed mutations in loci with variable GC-content. Together, our analysis highlights technological divergences between two reproducible somatic variant detection efforts

Application of hourly dynamic method for nZEB buildings in Italian context: analysis and comparisons in national calculation procedure framework

The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD 2018/844/EU) requires to Member States to upgrade the methodology for the energy performance assessment of buildings. The current calculation method, based on the monthly quasi steady state calculation procedure, could be replaced in the next years by an hourly dynamic calculation procedure (EN ISO 52016), in which a resistance-capacity (RC) model is implemented to consider with more accuracy the heat exchange through the building envelope. In this framework, the present work aims at analysing and comparing the energy needs of three reference case studies of nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEB), applying both calculation procedures in order to investigate the main difference of the two approaches. Two residential buildings and one office, compliant with Italian minimum requirements for nZEB, were defined, and several energy simulations were carried out for all different climatic zones of Italian territory. Preliminary results highlighted significant differences of energy need mainly due to different weight of heat loss and heat gains obtained with the two considered calculation methods. This paper represents a preliminary study, but further analysis are recommended in order to evaluate the overall energy use for different type and different operation profile of buildings

A New Simplified Dynamic Algorithm for Energy Estimation in Buildings: Description and Validation

Among other energy savings policies, European Directive 2018/884 promotes the adoption of building energy audits. In this perspective, the development of accurate, but simplified dynamic energy simulation tools is a fundamental step to reduce the costs of energy audits and consequently increase their diffusion, especially at the professional level. This paper presents SEAS Light, a simplified dynamic tool that estimates building heating and cooling energy demands. 75 test cases associated to typical Italian climates and building structures have been performed. SEAS Light results are compared with the ones obtained through the full dynamic energy software TRNSYS 17. The validation procedure shows that the proposed routine can evaluate both seasonal heating and cooling energy demands with a good accuracy, using three tuning coefficients presented in the manuscript

Resource allocation policies for QoS guarantee service provision over a CDMA satellite return link in the aircraft broadband communication system

In Next Generation Networks (NGN) a variety of services with different requirements, like real time communications, broadband Internet access, email services are expected. Consequently, Packet Scheduling mechanisms and Resource Allocation techniques for Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees will play a key role. This paper proposes two resource allocation strategies for a CDMA satellite return link, based on a Orthogonal Variable Spreading Factor (OVSF) codes with Earliest Deadline First policy (also referred to as Single Code CDMA) and Multi-Code with Generalized Processor Sharing policy (also referred to as Multi Code CDMA), respectively. Moreover a Minimum Power Allocation algorithm is implemented in order to maximize system capacity and guarantee Bit Error Rate (BER) requirements. An avionic environment has been taken as reference scenario and it is referred to as AirCom. The effectiveness of the two proposed algorithms for such a scenario is evaluated by means of software simulations using OPNET modeler. The work presented in this paper has been partially inserted in the framework of EU NATACHA project. © 2005 IEEE

Connection Admission Control Issues for a CDMA Return Link in the Aeronautical Broadband Communication System

One of the hot topics in the communication world is to realize a network able to offer a combination of services complying with different requirements in every place of the world, thus achieving the concept of "entertainment everywhere". In such a context a key role is played by aeronautical world that seems to be one of the last remaining islands in which broadband communications are not available. The present paper aims at studying resource management for a CDMA-based return link via satellite to provide passengers with new generation services. We focus on the connection admission control problem for QoS guarantees, analyzing in particular, the effective bandwidth concept over CDMA discussing its applicability to a multi-service packet switched network. Two admission control algorithms are then derived, based on the effective bandwidth concept for the circuit switched-like services and on a moving average window and linear predictor model for packet switched services. Finally, the performance over aeronautical broadband communication system is evaluated. © 2005 IEEE