The Reliability of FPGA circuit designs in the presence of radiation induced configuration upsets

FPGAs are an appealing solution for space-based remote sensing applications. However, an a low-earth orbit, FPGAs are susceptible t o Single-Event Upsets (SEUs). In an effort to understand the effects of SEUs, an SEU simulator based on the SLAAC-1V computing board has been developed. This simulator artifically upsets the conjiguration memory of an FPGA and measures its impact on FPGA designs. The accuracy of this simulation environment has been verified using ground-based radiation testing. This sim{approx}ulataon tool is being used to characterize the reliabilitg of SEU mitigation techniques for PI'GAs

Dissecting the Autocrine and Paracrine Roles of the CCR2-CCL2 Axis in Tumor Survival and Angiogenesis

The CCL2 CCR2 axis is likely to contributes to the development and progression of cancer diseases by two major mechanisms; autocrine effect of CCL2 as a survival/growth factor for CCR2+ cancer cells and, the attraction of CCR2+ CX3CR1+tumor associated macrophages that in the absence of CCR2 hardly migrate. Thus far no in vivo system has been set up to differentiate the selective contribution of each of these features to cancer development. Here we employed a chimera animal model in which all non-malignant cells are CCR2−/−, but all cancer cells are CCR2+, combined with an adoptive transfer system of bone marrow (BM) CX3CR1+ cells from CCR2+ mice harboring a targeted replacement of the CX3CR1gene by an enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) reporter gene (cx3cr1gfp), together with the CD45.1 congene. Using this system we dissected the selective contribution of CX3CR1+CCR2+ cells, which comprise only about 7% of CD11b+ BM cells, to tumor development and angiogenesis. Showing that aside for their direct pro-angiogenic effect they are essential for the recruitment of other CD11b+ cells to the tumor site. We further show that the administration of CCR2-Ig, that selectively and specifically neutralize CCL2, to mice in which CCR2 is expressed only on tumor cells, further suppressed tumor development, implicating for the key role of this chemokine supporting tumor survival in an autocrine manner. This further emphasizes the important role of CCL2 as a target for therapy of cancer diseases

Discovery of X-Ray Polarization from the Black Hole Transient Swift J1727.8−1613

\ua9 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.We report the first detection of the X-ray polarization of the bright transient Swift J1727.8−1613 with the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer. The observation was performed at the beginning of the 2023 discovery outburst, when the source resided in the bright hard state. We find a time- and energy-averaged polarization degree of 4.1% \ub1 0.2% and a polarization angle of 2.\ub02 \ub1 1.\ub03 (errors at 68% confidence level; this translates to ∼20σ significance of the polarization detection). This finding suggests that the hot corona emitting the bulk of the detected X-rays is elongated, rather than spherical. The X-ray polarization angle is consistent with that found in submillimeter wavelengths. Since the submillimeter polarization was found to be aligned with the jet direction in other X-ray binaries, this indicates that the corona is elongated orthogonal to the jet

Hardness by design technique for field programmable gate arrays.

FPGAs are an attractive alternative for many space-based computing operations. While radiation hardened FPGAs are available, SRAM-based FPGAs are susceptible to Single-Event Upsets (SEUs). Several FPGA design hardening techniques are investigated to improve the reliability of FPGA designs operating in a radiation environment. The improved design reliability provided by these techniques are measured using a single-event upset simulation environment

SEU mitigation for half-latches in xilinx virtex FPGAs.

The performance, in-system reprogrammability, flexibility, and reduced costs of SRAM-based field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) make them very interesting for high-speed, on-orbit data processing, but, because the current generation of radiation-tolerant SRAM-based FPGAs are derived directly from COTS versions of the chips, their memory structures are still susceptible to single-event upsets (SEUs) . While previous papers have described the SEU characteristics and mitigation techniques for the configuration and user memory structures on the Xilinx Virtex family of FPGAs, we will concentrate on the effects of SEUs on 'half-latch' structures within the Virtex architecture, describe techniques for mitigating these effects, and provide new experimental data which illustrate the effectiveness of one of these mitigation techniques under proton radiation