Phadeo : un environnement pour FPGA virtuel

Texte issu de COMPAS'2015Les FPGAs virtuels présentent de nombreux avantages : portabilité du bitstream, gestion de l'obsolescence, etc. acquis au prix d'une perte en performances (surface, fréquence) et de la mise au point d'un environnement d'exploitaiton adéquat. Cet article présente Phadeo, un environnement issu de Madeo, développé dans le cadre du projet ANR ARDyT, qui permet d'évaluer les architectures reconfigurables au travers d'outils d'exploitation. Phadeo est dével-lopé en Pharo [1], un langage et environnement inspiré de Smalltalk, et possède de bonnes caractéristiques telles que l'extensibilité ou la modificatio

Ethanol-induced sensitization depends preferentially on D-1 rather than D-2 dopamine receptors

Behavioral sensitization, defined as a progressive increase in the locomotor stimulant effects elicited by repeated exposure to drugs of abuse, has been used as an animal model for drug craving in humans. the mesoaccumbens dopaminergic system has been proposed to be critically involved in this phenomenon; however, few studies have been designed to systematically investigate the effects of dopaminergic antagonists on development and expression of behavioral sensitization to ethanol in Swiss mice. We first tested the effects of D-1 antagonist SCH-23390 (0-0.03 mg/kg) or D-2 antagonist Sulpiride (0-30 mg/kg) on the locomotor responses to an acute injection of ethanol (2.0 g/kg). Results showed that all tested doses of the antagonists were effective in blocking ethanol's stimulant effects. in another set of experiments, mice were pretreated intraperitoneally with SCH-23390 (0.01 mg/kg) or Sulpiride (10 mg/kg) 30 min before saline or ethanol injection, for 21 days. Locomotor activity was measured weekly for 20 min. Four days following this pretreatment, all mice were challenged with ethanol. Both antagonists attenuated the development of ethanol sensitization, but only SCH-23390 blocked the expression of ethanol sensitization according to this protocol. When we tested a single dose (30 min before tests) of either antagonist in mice treated chronically with ethanol, both antagonists attenuated ethanol-induced effects. the present findings demonstrate that the concomitant administration of ethanol with D-1 but not D-2 antagonist prevented the expression of ethanol sensitization, suggesting that the neuroadaptations underlying ethanol behavioral sensitization depend preferentially on D-1 receptor actions. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Univ São Paulo, Inst Ciencias Biomed, Dept Farmacol, BR-05508900 São Paulo, BrazilUniv São Paulo, Fac Ciencias Farmaceut, BR-05508900 São Paulo, BrazilUniv Fed ABC, Ctr Matemat Comp & Cognicao, Santo Andre, SP, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Dept Psicobiol, São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Dept Psicobiol, São Paulo, BrazilWeb of Scienc

Towards a Meta-Language for the Concurrency Concern in DSLs

International audienceAbstract—Concurrency is of primary interest in the development of complex software-intensive systems, as well as thedeployment on modern platforms. Furthermore, Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) are increasingly used in industrial processes toseparate and abstract the various concerns of complex systems.However, reifying the definition of the DSL concurrency remainsa challenge. This not only prevents leveraging the concurrencyconcern of a particular domain or platform, but it also hinders:a) the development of a complete understanding of the DSLsemantics; b) the effectiveness of concurrency-aware analysistechniques; c) the analysis of the deployment on parallelarchitectures. In this paper, we present M oCCML, a dedicatedmeta-language for formally specifying the concurrency concernwithin the definition of a DSL. The concurrency constraintscan reflect the knowledge in a particular domain, but also theconstraints of a particular platform. MoCCML comes with acomplete language workbench to help a DSL designer in thedefinition of the concurrency directly within the concepts of theDSL itself, and a generic workbench to simulate and analyzeany model conforming to this DSL. Mo CCML is illustrated onthe definition of an lightweight extension of SDF (SynchronousData Flow)

Enhancement of behavioral sensitization, anxiety-like behavior, and hippocampal and frontal cortical CREB levels following cocaine abstinence in mice exposed to cocaine during adolescence

Adolescence has been linked to greater risk-taking and novelty-seeking behavior and a higher prevalence of drug abuse and risk of relapse. Decreases in cyclic adenosine monophosphate response element binding protein (CREB) and phosphorylated CREB (pCREB) have been reported after repeated cocaine administration in animal models. We compared the behavioral effects of cocaine and abstinence in adolescent and adult mice and investigated possible age-related differences in CREB and pCREB levels. Adolescent and adult male Swiss mice received one daily injection of saline or cocaine (10 mg/kg, i.p.) for 8 days. On day 9, the mice received a saline injection to evaluate possible environmental conditioning. After 9 days of withdrawal, the mice were tested in the elevated plus maze to evaluate anxiety-like behavior. Twelve days after the last saline/cocaine injection, the mice received a challenge injection of either cocaine or saline, and locomotor activity was assessed. One hour after the last injection, the brains were extracted, and CREB and pCREB levels were evaluated using Western blot in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and hippocampus. The cocaine-pretreated mice during adolescence exhibited a greater magnitude of the expression of behavioral sensitization and greater cocaine withdrawal-induced anxiety-like behavior compared with the control group. Significant increases in CREB levels in the PFC and hippocampus and pCREB in the hippocampus were observed in cocaine-abstinent animals compared with the animals treated with cocaine in adulthood. Interestingly, significant negative correlations were observed between cocaine sensitization and CREB levels in both regions. These results suggest that the behavioral and neurochemical consequences of psychoactive substances in a still-developing nervous system can be more severe than in an already mature nervous systemFundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq

Principal component analysis of the well-being at work and respect for human rights questionnaire (WWRRR) in the mediterranean region

Background: The Well-Being at Work and Respect for human Rights Questionnaire (WWRR) was conceived based on the hypothesis that the perception of respect for users' rights is an essential element of well-being in the workplace in healthcare. The objective of the study is to examine the principal components of the WWRR. Methods: A random sample representative of a set of professionals working in three different healthcare networks in Tunisia, North-Macedonia, and Italy was enrolled (n=426). Each professional completed a questionnaire on sociodemographic data and the WWRR. The WWRR consists of six items on beliefs about: satisfaction at work, users’ satisfaction, organization at work, respect of users’ and staff human rights, adequacy of resources. A seventh item assesses the perceived needs of personnel. Correlation between the items was evaluated by analysing the principal components with Varimax rotation and Kaiser normalization (which included all components with an Eigen value> 1). Results: A single factor covered over 50% of the variance, all the items of the questionnaire were closely related and compose a single factor. Tunisia presented some differences regarding the item about the human rights of staff. Conclusion: Satisfaction with the respect for the rights of users is strongly correlated with the other factors that are part of the concept of the organizational well-being of health care providers. The WWRR provides a means of measuring this important and often neglected dimension

G∀min∃ : Exploration de la frontière entre les langages de spécification exécutables et les outils d’analyse du comportement

The formal verification community strives to prove the correctness of a specification using formal logic and mathematical proofs. The tremendous progress in computer-aided formal verification tools, along with an ever-growing number of success stories renders these methods essential in the system designer toolbox. However, with the advent of domain-specific models and languages, many formalisms are proposed for writing dynamic system specifications, each one adapted to the specific needs of the targeted domain. A new question emerges: How to bridge the gap between these domain-specific formalisms, geared toward domain experts, and the formal verification tools, geared towards mathematicians? One of the answers, ubiquitous in the literature, relies on using model transformations to syntactically translate the domain-specific model to the verification model. We argue that this approach is counterproductive leading to semantic multiplication, which requires equivalence proofs that can be hard to provide and maintain.In this dissertation, I present a new semantic-level answer developed, refined, and evaluated during the last 10 years with the help of 6 postdoctoral fellows, 8 Ph.D. candidates, and 12 collaborative projects. This approach, named G∀min∃, promises a modular, compositional, and reusable software architecture allowing the design of a wide variety of behavior exploration tools. The core building block of this approach is a language-agnostic semantic-level interface, which acts as a bridge between the dynamic semantics of a domain-specific language and the behavior analysis tools. Here we propose a formalization of the interface along with some reusable operators for creating behavior analysis tools for interactive debugging, model-checking, and runtime monitoring. Besides reviewing almost a decade of fruitful research, this document allows me to introduce some new research directions, which hopefully will ease the burden of creating novel specification-design environments and render the design process more productive.La communauté de la vérification formelle s’efforce de prouver la conformité d’une spécification par l’utilisation de la logique formelle et de preuves mathématiques. Les progrès considérables réalisés dans les outils de vérification formelle assistée par ordinateur, ainsi que le nombre croissant de réussites, rendent ces méthodes essentielles dans la boîte à outils des concepteurs de systèmes. Cependant, avec l’avènement des modèles et des langages spécifiques à un domaine, un grand nombre de formalismes ont été proposés pour écrire des spécifications de systèmes dynamiques, chacun étant adapté aux besoins spécifiques du domaine ciblé. Une nouvelle question émerge : Comment combler le fossé entre ces formalismes spécifiques au domaine, orientés vers les experts du domaine et les outils de vérification formelle, orientés vers les mathématiciens ? Une des réponses, omniprésente dans la littérature, repose sur l’utilisation de transformations de modèles pour traduire syntaxiquement le modèle spécifique au domaine vers le modèle de vérification. Nous soutenons que cette approche est contre-productive et conduit à une multiplication sémantique, qui nécessite des preuves d’équivalence qui peuvent être difficiles à fournir et à maintenir.Dans ce manuscrit, je présente une nouvelle réponse au niveau sémantique développée, raffinée et évaluée au cours des 10 dernières années avec l’aide de 6 ingénieurs postdoctoraux, 8 candidats au doctorat et 12 projets collaboratifs. Cette approche, nommée G∀min∃, promet une architecture logicielle modulaire, compositionnelle et réutilisable permettant la conception d’une grande variété d’outils d’exploration du comportement. La brique de base de cette approche est une interface de niveau sémantique agnostique au langage, qui agit comme un pont entre la sémantique dynamique d’un langage spécifique au domaine et les outils d’analyse du comportement. Nous proposons ici une formalisation de l’interface ainsi que quelques opérateurs réutilisables pour la création d’outils d’analyse du comportement pour le débogage interactif, le contrôle de modèle et la surveillance de l’exécution. En plus de passer en revue près d’une décennie de recherches fructueuses, ce document me permet de présenter quelques nouvelles directions de recherche, qui, nous l’espérons, allégeront le poids de la création de nouveaux environnements de conception de spécifications, et rendront le processus de conception plus productif

Synthèse physique dirigée par les modèles pour les architectures nanométriques du futur

In the context where the traditional CMOS technology approaches its limits, some nanowire-based fabric proposals emerged, which all exhibit some common key characteristics. Among these, their bottom-up fabrication process leads to a regularity of assembly, which means the end of custom-made computational fabrics in favor of regular structures. Hence, research activities in this area, focus on structures conceptually similar to today’s reconfigurable PLA and/or FPGA architectures. A number of different fabrics and architectures are currently under investigation, e. g.CMOL, FPNI, NASIC. These proof-of-concept architectures take into account some fabrication constraints and support fault tolerance techniques. What is still missing is the ability to capitalize on these experiments while offering a one-stop shopping point for further research, especially at the physical-design level of the circuit design tool-flow. Sharing metrics, tools, and exploration capabilities is the next challenge to the nano-computingcommunity.We address this problem by proposing a model-driven physical-design toolkit based on the factorization of common domain-specific concepts and the reification of the tool-flow. We used this tool-flow to drive the design-space exploration in the context of a novel nanoscale architecture, and we showed that such an approach assures design convergence based on frequent quantitative evaluations, moreover it enables incremental evolution of the architecture and the automation flow.Actuellement, comme la technologie CMOS arrive à ses limites, plusieurs alternatives architecturales nanométriques sont étudiées. Ces architectures partagent des caractéristiques communes, comme par exemple la régularité d’assemblage, qui contraint le placement de dispositifs physiques à des motifs réguliers. Par conséquence, les activités de recherche dans ce domaine sont focalisées autour des structures régulièressimilaires, d’un point de vue conceptuel, aux architectures réconfigurables de type PLA et FPGA. Parmi ces différents travaux, ont peut citer CMOL, FPNI, NASIC. Ces prototypes architecturaux sont conçus pour répondre à des contraintes de fabrication et incluent des politiques detolérance aux défauts. Par contre, il manque la possibilité d’exploiter ces expériences et d’offrir une solution qui, en capitalisant les résultats obtenus, puisse offrir une infrastructure unique pour les futurs recherches dans ce domaine. Ceci est vrai surtout au niveau du flot de conception physique ciblant l’automatisation du processus de création de circuit. Le partage de métriques, outils et supports d’exploration est le futur défi de la communauté nano-électronique.On répond à ce problème en proposant un flot de conception physique, reposant sur une méthodologie de développement dirigé par les modèles, qui factorise les concepts métiers et réifie les éléments du flot de conception. Nous avons utilisé ce flot pour explorer l’espace de conception d’une nouvelle architecture nano-métrique et on a montré qu’une telle démarche permet la convergence du processus de conception à l’aide de fréquentes évaluations quantitatives. De plus, cette méthodologie permet l’évolution incrémentielle de l’architecture et du flot de conception

G∀min∃ : Exploration de la frontière entre les langages de spécification exécutables et les outils d’analyse du comportement

The formal verification community strives to prove the correctness of a specification using formal logic and mathematical proofs. The tremendous progress in computer-aided formal verification tools, along with an ever-growing number of success stories renders these methods essential in the system designer toolbox. However, with the advent of domain-specific models and languages, many formalisms are proposed for writing dynamic system specifications, each one adapted to the specific needs of the targeted domain. A new question emerges: How to bridge the gap between these domain-specific formalisms, geared toward domain experts, and the formal verification tools, geared towards mathematicians? One of the answers, ubiquitous in the literature, relies on using model transformations to syntactically translate the domain-specific model to the verification model. We argue that this approach is counterproductive leading to semantic multiplication, which requires equivalence proofs that can be hard to provide and maintain.In this dissertation, I present a new semantic-level answer developed, refined, and evaluated during the last 10 years with the help of 6 postdoctoral fellows, 8 Ph.D. candidates, and 12 collaborative projects. This approach, named G∀min∃, promises a modular, compositional, and reusable software architecture allowing the design of a wide variety of behavior exploration tools. The core building block of this approach is a language-agnostic semantic-level interface, which acts as a bridge between the dynamic semantics of a domain-specific language and the behavior analysis tools. Here we propose a formalization of the interface along with some reusable operators for creating behavior analysis tools for interactive debugging, model-checking, and runtime monitoring. Besides reviewing almost a decade of fruitful research, this document allows me to introduce some new research directions, which hopefully will ease the burden of creating novel specification-design environments and render the design process more productive.La communauté de la vérification formelle s’efforce de prouver la conformité d’une spécification par l’utilisation de la logique formelle et de preuves mathématiques. Les progrès considérables réalisés dans les outils de vérification formelle assistée par ordinateur, ainsi que le nombre croissant de réussites, rendent ces méthodes essentielles dans la boîte à outils des concepteurs de systèmes. Cependant, avec l’avènement des modèles et des langages spécifiques à un domaine, un grand nombre de formalismes ont été proposés pour écrire des spécifications de systèmes dynamiques, chacun étant adapté aux besoins spécifiques du domaine ciblé. Une nouvelle question émerge : Comment combler le fossé entre ces formalismes spécifiques au domaine, orientés vers les experts du domaine et les outils de vérification formelle, orientés vers les mathématiciens ? Une des réponses, omniprésente dans la littérature, repose sur l’utilisation de transformations de modèles pour traduire syntaxiquement le modèle spécifique au domaine vers le modèle de vérification. Nous soutenons que cette approche est contre-productive et conduit à une multiplication sémantique, qui nécessite des preuves d’équivalence qui peuvent être difficiles à fournir et à maintenir.Dans ce manuscrit, je présente une nouvelle réponse au niveau sémantique développée, raffinée et évaluée au cours des 10 dernières années avec l’aide de 6 ingénieurs postdoctoraux, 8 candidats au doctorat et 12 projets collaboratifs. Cette approche, nommée G∀min∃, promet une architecture logicielle modulaire, compositionnelle et réutilisable permettant la conception d’une grande variété d’outils d’exploration du comportement. La brique de base de cette approche est une interface de niveau sémantique agnostique au langage, qui agit comme un pont entre la sémantique dynamique d’un langage spécifique au domaine et les outils d’analyse du comportement. Nous proposons ici une formalisation de l’interface ainsi que quelques opérateurs réutilisables pour la création d’outils d’analyse du comportement pour le débogage interactif, le contrôle de modèle et la surveillance de l’exécution. En plus de passer en revue près d’une décennie de recherches fructueuses, ce document me permet de présenter quelques nouvelles directions de recherche, qui, nous l’espérons, allégeront le poids de la création de nouveaux environnements de conception de spécifications, et rendront le processus de conception plus productif

Maternal behavior and the role of opioid receptors on periaqueductal grey in female lactating rats.

A estimulação opioidérgica decorrente do tratamento com morfina em fêmeas reprodutoras gera efeitos moleculares e comportamentais tardios diferenciados de acordo com o estado fisiológico no momento do tratamento. Trabalhos prévios têm demonstrado um importante papel da substância cinzenta periaquedutal (PAG) neste fenômeno. Assim, investigou-se a expressão dos receptores opióides centrais, por meio de estudos da atividade dos seus genes e da presença dos respectivos produtos protéicos. Possíveis modulações decorrentes do uso agudo e crônico de agonistas dos receptores de opióides na PAG durante os períodos de gestação ou lactação no comportamento maternal em ratas também foram investigadas. Os resultados mostraram que a expressão dos receptores opióides na PAG em fêmeas é modulada tanto pelo estado fisiológico como por desafios farmacológicos com possíveis implicações para o comportamento maternal.Morphine-induced opioidergic stimulation leads to tardive molecular and behavioral changes in female rats. Previous works have demonstrated a role for the periaqueductal grey (PAG) on opioid-mediated behavioral selection during lactation. This study was designed to investigate the maternal behavior and the physiological and pharmacological modulation of the expression of opioid receptors. The results showed that PAG opioid gene expression is modulated both by physiological status and pharmacological treatments. These data may have implications for maternal behavior