Grid infrastructures for the electronics domain: requirements and early prototypes from an EPSRC pilot project

The fundamental challenges facing future electronics design is to address the decreasing – atomistic - scale of transistor devices and to understand and predict the impact and statistical variability these have on design of circuits and systems. The EPSRC pilot project “Meeting the Design Challenges of nanoCMOS Electronics” (nanoCMOS) which began in October 2006 has been funded to explore this space. This paper outlines the key requirements that need to be addressed for Grid technology to support the various research strands in this domain, and shows early prototypes demonstrating how these requirements are being addressed

Towards a grid-enabled simulation framework for nano-CMOS electronics

The electronics design industry is facing major challenges as transistors continue to decrease in size. The next generation of devices will be so small that the position of individual atoms will affect their behaviour. This will cause the transistors on a chip to have highly variable characteristics, which in turn will impact circuit and system design tools. The EPSRC project "Meeting the Design Challenges of Nano-CMOS Electronics" (Nana-CMOS) has been funded to explore this area. In this paper, we describe the distributed data-management and computing framework under development within Nano-CMOS. A key aspect of this framework is the need for robust and reliable security mechanisms that support distributed electronics design groups who wish to collaborate by sharing designs, simulations, workflows, datasets and computation resources. This paper presents the system design, and an early prototype of the project which has been useful in helping us to understand the benefits of such a grid infrastructure. In particular, we also present two typical use cases: user authentication, and execution of large-scale device simulations

MicroR159 regulation of most conserved targets in Arabidopsis has negligible phenotypic effects

BACKGROUND A current challenge of microRNA (miRNA) research is the identification of biologically relevant miRNA:target gene relationships. In plants, high miRNA:target gene complementarity has enabled accurate target predictions, and slicing of target mRNAs has facilitated target validation through rapid amplification of 5' cDNA ends (5'-RACE) analysis. Together, these approaches have identified more than 20 targets potentially regulated by the deeply conserved miR159 family in Arabidopsis, including eight MYB genes with highly conserved miR159 target sites. However, genetic analysis has revealed the functional specificity of the major family members, miR159a and miR159b is limited to only two targets, MYB33 and MYB65. Here, we examine the functional role of miR159 regulation for the other potential MYB target genes. RESULTS For these target genes, functional analysis failed to identify miR159 regulation that resulted in any major phenotypic impact, either at the morphological or molecular level. This appears to be mainly due to the quiescent nature of the remaining family member, MIR159c. Although its expression overlaps in a temporal and spatial cell-specific manner with a subset of these targets in anthers, the abundance of miR159c is extremely low and concomitantly a mir159c mutant displays no anther defects. Examination of potential miR159c targets with conserved miR159 binding sites found neither their spatial or temporal expression domains appeared miR159 regulated, despite the detection of miR159-guided cleavage products by 5'-RACE. Moreover, expression of a miR159-resistant target (mMYB101) resulted predominantly in plants that are indistinguishable from wild type. Plants that displayed altered morphological phenotypes were found to be ectopically expressing the mMYB101 transgene, and hence were misrepresentative of the in vivo functional role of miR159. CONCLUSIONS This study presents a novel explanation for a paradox common to plant and animal miRNA systems, where among many potential miRNA-target relationships usually only a few appear physiologically relevant. The identification of a quiescent miR159c:target gene regulatory module in anthers provides a likely rationale for the presence of conserved miR159 binding sites in many targets for which miR159 regulation has no obvious functional role. Remnants from the demise of such modules may lead to an overestimation of miRNA regulatory complexity when investigated using bioinformatic, 5'-RACE or transgenic approaches.RSA was funded by an ANU postgraduate scholarship and by a CSIRO Emerging Science Initiative. JL is the recipient of an ANU international student postgraduate scholarship. This research was supported by an Australian Research Council grant DP0773270

Secure, performance-oriented data management for nanoCMOS electronics

The EPSRC pilot project Meeting the Design Challenges of nanoCMOS Electronics (nanoCMOS) is focused upon delivering a production level e-Infrastructure to meet the challenges facing the semiconductor industry in dealing with the next generation of ‘atomic-scale’ transistor devices. This scale means that previous assumptions on the uniformity of transistor devices in electronics circuit and systems design are no longer valid, and the industry as a whole must deal with variability throughout the design process. Infrastructures to tackle this problem must provide seamless access to very large HPC resources for computationally expensive simulation of statistic ensembles of microscopically varying physical devices, and manage the many hundreds of thousands of files and meta-data associated with these simulations. A key challenge in undertaking this is in protecting the intellectual property associated with the data, simulations and design process as a whole. In this paper we present the nanoCMOS infrastructure and outline an evaluation undertaken on the Storage Resource Broker (SRB) and the Andrew File System (AFS) considering in particular the extent that they meet the performance and security requirements of the nanoCMOS domain. We also describe how metadata management is supported and linked to simulations and results in a scalable and secure manner

The potential risk of communication media in conveying critical information in the aircraft maintenance organisation : A case study

Thank you to Universiti Kuala Lumpur Malaysian Institute of Aviation Technology and University of Aberdeen, Scotland for the strong support.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Integrating security solutions to support nanoCMOS electronics research

The UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded Meeting the Design Challenges of nanoCMOS Electronics (nanoCMOS) is developing a research infrastructure for collaborative electronics research across multiple institutions in the UK with especially strong industrial and commercial involvement. Unlike other domains, the electronics industry is driven by the necessity of protecting the intellectual property of the data, designs and software associated with next generation electronics devices and therefore requires fine-grained security. Similarly, the project also demands seamless access to large scale high performance compute resources for atomic scale device simulations and the capability to manage the hundreds of thousands of files and the metadata associated with these simulations. Within this context, the project has explored a wide range of authentication and authorization infrastructures facilitating compute resource access and providing fine-grained security over numerous distributed file stores and files. We conclude that no single security solution meets the needs of the project. This paper describes the experiences of applying X.509-based certificates and public key infrastructures, VOMS, PERMIS, Kerberos and the Internet2 Shibboleth technologies for nanoCMOS security. We outline how we are integrating these solutions to provide a complete end-end security framework meeting the demands of the nanoCMOS electronics domain

Contribution of growth hormone-releasing hormone and somatostatin to decreased growth hormone secretion in elderly men

Objective. The pathophysiology of the decline in circulating growth hormone (GH) concentrations that may occur with ageing remains elusive. We have investigated the potential contributions of decreased endogenous GH-releasing hormone (GHRH) and increased somatostatin secretion to this phenomenon.Design and methods. The strategy used was to stimulate GH secretion in 8 young (20 - 24 years old, body mass index (BMI) 22.8 ± 2.8 kg/m2) and 8 elderly (68- 82 years old, BMI 23.4 ± 1.6 kg/m2) male subjects on separate occasions by means of: (i) intravenous bolus 0.5 ).lg/kg D-Ala2 GHRH(1-29)-NH alone; (ii) 0.5 μg/kg GHRH after pretreatment with two oral doses of 50 mg atenolol (to inhibit somatostatin secretion); (iii) 1.25 mg oral bromocriptine alone (to increase endogenous GHRH and/or inhibit somatostatin); (iv) 50 mg oral atenolol plus 1.25 mg oral bromocriptine; and (v) 0.5 μg/kg GHRH after pre-treatment with 1.25 mg oral bromocriptine.Results. The elderly men had a significantly lower peak and area under curve (AUC) GH response to intravenous GHRH when compared with 8 young men (peak 3.1 ± 1.0 ng/ml v. 21.6 ± 5.0 ng/ ml, AUC 205 ±56 ng/ ml/min v.1 315 ± 295 ng/ ml/ min, P < 0.05). Pre-treatment with atenolol before GHRH administration produced no significant increase in peak and AUC GH response in both groups, whlch remained lower in the elderly men than in their young counterparts (peak 5.5 ±1.8 ng/ ml v. 29.3 ± 7.0 ng/ml, AUC 327 ± 90 ng/ml/min v. 2 017 ± 590 ng/ ml/min, P < 0.05). Bromocriptine alone did not cause a significant rise in GH concentration in either elderly or young subjects (peak 3.1 ± 1.1 v. 8.8 ± 3.2 ng/ ml, P > 0.05). When atenolol was administered before bromocriptine, both groups responded but the elderly subjects had a significantly greater peak and AUC response (peak 3.6 ± 0.7 v. 10:7 ± 2.1 ng/ ml; AUC 191 ± 39 v. 533 ± 125 ng/ ml/ min, P < 0.05). Bromocriptine given before GHRH failed to potentiate GHRH action on GH release in either group. Of 5 elderly men who tmderwent further evaluation of GH secretory ability, 2 subjects had GH levels > 10 ng/ rnl, either basally or after intravenous GHRH. The remaining 3 had an initially impaired GH response to bolus intravenous GHRH. After 100 μg GHRH subcutaneously twice daily for up to 2 weeks the GH responses to intravenous bolus GHRH (0.5μg /kg) were reassessed. One exhibited a normal response (> 10 ng/ rnl) after 1 week of daily GHRH treatment, another had a nearnormal response after 2 weeks (9.7 ng/ rnl), while the third still had an impaired response by the end of the 2-week treatment period (3.2 ng/ ml).Conclusions. The restoration of endogenous GH secretion in these elderly subjects by means of GHRH priming, and the failure of manipulation of somatostatinergic tone to restore a normal GH response to GHRH suggests that somatotroph atrophy due to a reduction in endogenous GHRH secretion is the principal cause of the diminished GH secretion with ageing

Transient radio lines from axion miniclusters and axion stars

Gravitationally bound clumps of dark matter axions in the form of “miniclusters” or even denser “axion stars” can generate strong radio signals through axion-photon conversion when encountering highly magnetized neutron star magnetospheres. We systematically study encounters of axion clumps with neutron stars and characterize the axion infall, conversion and the subsequent propagation of the photons. We show that the high density and low escape velocity of the axion clumps lead to strong, narrow, and temporally characteristic transient radio lines with an expected duration varying from seconds to months. Our work comprises the first end-to-end modeling pipeline capable of characterizing the radio signal generated during these transient encounters, quantifying the typical brightness, anisotropy, spectral width, and temporal evolution of the radio flux. The methods developed here may prove essential in developing dedicated radio searches for transient radio lines arising from miniclusters and axion stars

Response of Invasive Longhorn Beetles (Coleoptera: Lamiinae) to Known Cerambycid Aggregation-Sex Pheromones in the Puna District of Hawaii Island

The Queensland longhorn borer (QLB; Acalolepta aesthetica [Olliff 1890]; Coleoptera: Cerambycidae: Lamiinae: Monochamini) and plumeria long- horn borer (PLB; Lagocheirus obsoletus [Thomson 1778] = Lagocheirus undatus [Voet 1778]; Coleoptera: Cerambycidae: Lamiinae: Acanthocini) are invasive longhorn beetle species that have become established on the island of Hawaii. Both QLB and PLB are polyphagous. Known hosts of QLB include cacao, citrus, kukui, and breadfruit in Hawaii, and QLB are known to attack live, healthy trees. Currently the beetle occurs in the Puna district of the island, but its range is expanding. PLB is a pest of plumeria and other ornamental plants throughout the state of Hawaii and elsewhere. As a first step towards developing a monitoring tool for these invasive beetles, we tested four known aggregation-sex pheromones of cerambycids in this subfamily—monochamol, fuscumol acetate, fuscumol, and geranylacetone—that have proven effective for attracting more than 30 lamiine species in different areas of the world. When tested in panel traps, these compounds individually and in a blend attracted 9 QLB total, which was not significantly different than the 5 QLB captured in solvent control traps. In contrast, traps baited with one of the tested compounds, fuscumol acetate, captured significantly more PLB than solvent blank control traps. We discuss future research directions for developing attractants using chemical ecology approaches to monitor QLB and PLB