Methodologies for Designing Power-Aware Smart Card Systems

Smart cards are some of the smallest computing platforms in use today. They have limited resources, but a huge number of functional requirements. The requirement for multi-application cards increases the demand for high performance and security even more, whereas the limits given by size and energy consumption remain constant. We describe new methodologies for designing and implementing entire systems with regard to power awareness and required performance. To make use of this power-saving potential, also the higher layers of the system - the operating system layer and the application domain layer - are required to be designed together with the rest of the system. HW/SW co-design methodologies enable the gain of system-level optimization. The first part presents the abstraction of smart cards to optimize system architecture and memory system. Both functional and transactional-level models are presented and discussed. The proposed design flow and preliminary results of the evaluation are depicted. Another central part of this methodology is a cycle-accurate instruction-set simulator for secure software development. The underlaying energy model is designed to decouple instruction and data dependent energy dissipation, which leads to an independent characterization process and allows stepwise model refinement to increase estimation accuracy. The model has been evaluated for a high-performance smart card CPU and an use-case for secure software is given

Impairments in Episodic-Autobiographical Memory and Emotional and Social Information Processing in CADASIL during Mid-Adulthood

Staniloiu A, Woermann FG, Markowitsch HJ. Impairments in Episodic-Autobiographical Memory and Emotional and Social Information Processing in CADASIL during Mid-Adulthood. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. 2014;8: 227.Cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL) – is the most common genetic source of vascular dementia in adults, being caused by a mutation in NOTCH3 gene. Spontaneous de novo mutations may occur, but their frequency is largely unknown. Ischemic strokes and cognitive impairments are the most frequent manifestations, but seizures affect up to 10% of the patients. Herein, we describe a 47-year-old male scholar with a genetically confirmed diagnosis of CADASIL (Arg133Cys mutation in the NOTCH3 gene) and a seemingly negative family history of CADASIL illness, who was investigated with a comprehensive neuropsychological testing battery and neuroimaging methods. The patient demonstrated on one hand severe and accelerated deteriorations in multiple cognitive domains such as concentration, long-term memory (including the episodic-autobiographical memory domain), problem solving, cognitive flexibility and planning, affect recognition, discrimination and matching, and social cognition (theory of mind). Some of these impairments were even captured by abbreviated instruments for investigating suspicion of dementia. On the other hand the patient still possessed high crystallized (verbal) intelligence and a capacity to put forth a façade of well-preserved intellectual functioning. Although no definite conclusions can be drawn from a single case study, our findings point to the presence of additional cognitive changes in CADASIL in middle adulthood, in particular to impairments in the episodic-autobiographical memory domain and social information processing (e.g., social cognition). Whether these identified impairments are related to the patient’s specific phenotype or to an ascertainment bias (e.g., a paucity of studies investigating these cognitive functions) requires elucidation by larger scale research

Bericht über die Präsentation des Buches von M. Tarchnishvili, herausgegeben von Nugzar Papuashvili

Der georgische Kirchengeschichtler und Philologe Nugzar Papuashvili stellte das von ihm herausgegebene Werk des georgischen katholischen Priesters Michael Tarchnishvili über die Geschichte der georgischen Kirche von den Anfängen bis zum Ende des 7. Jahrhunderts vor. Der Tübinger Philosoph Georg Koridze würdigte die Edition des Werks und stellte sie in den Zusammenhang der georgischen Geschichte. Die Ausgabe fußt auf gründlicher Forschungsarbeit und enthält Kommentare und Fußnoten