Tool support for data protection impact assessment in the smart grid.

The smart grid promises to enable novel energy services, supporting a greater integration of renewable energy sources. Major issues in this context are data protection and privacy risks, wherein malicious actors or organizations misuse personal data that is collected, processed and stored to enable these services. To address this problem, the European Commission has proposed a risk-driven process to data protection impact assessment. In this article, we introduce this process and present a tool that can support its implementation

Online Reasoning about the Root Causes of Software Rollout Failures in the Smart Grid.

An essential ingredient of the smart grid is software-based services. Increasingly, software is used to support control strategies and services that are critical to the grid's operation. Therefore, its correct operation is essential. For various reasons, software and its configuration needs to be updated. This update process represents a significant overhead for smart grid operators and failures can result in financial losses and grid instabilities. In this paper, we present a framework for determining the root causes of software rollout failures in the smart grid. It uses distributed sensors that indicate potential issues, such as anomalous grid states and cyber-attacks, and a causal inference engine based on a formalism called evidential networks. The aim of the framework is to support an adaptive approach to software rollouts, ensuring that a campaign completes in a timely and secure manner. The framework is evaluated for a software rollout use-case in a low voltage distribution grid. Experimental results indicate it can successfully discriminate between different root causes of failure, supporting an adaptive rollout strategy

Ligands of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ increase the generation of vascular endothelial growth factor in vascular smooth muscle cells and in macrophages.

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors-γ (PPARγ) are ligand-inducible transcription factors of the nuclear hormone receptor superfamily. We examined the effect of PPARγ activation on the generation of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), one of the major angiogenic agents. Rat vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC) and murine macrophages RAW264.7 were incubated for 24 h with PPARγ activators: prostaglandin J2 and ciglitazone. PPARγ were expressed in VSMC and RAW cells and their activity was upregulated in the presence of PGJ2 and ciglitazone. Incubation of the cells with PPARγ activators significantly augmented the release of VEGF protein into the media, both in resting and in IL-1β- or LPS-stimulated cultures. The higher protein generation was connected with the increased expression of mRNA and transcriptional activation of VEGF promoter. We conclude that the activation of PPARγ upregulates the generation of VEGF and may be involved in the regulation of angiogenesis

Tool Support für Data Protection Impact Assessment im Smart Grid

The smart grid promises to enable novel energy services, supporting a greater integration of renewable energy sources. Major issues in this context are data protection and privacy risks, wherein malicious actors or organizations misuse personal data that is collected, processed and stored to enable these services. To address this problem, the European Commission has proposed a risk-driven process to data protection impact assessment. In this article, we introduce this process and present a tool that can support its implementation

GWAS-selected SNPs and associations with coeliac disease.

<p>GWAS-selected SNPs and associations with coeliac disease.</p

Frequencies of positive predicting alleles.

<p>Frequencies of positive predicting alleles.</p