Mining Dynamic Document Spaces with Massively Parallel Embedded Processors

Currently Océ investigates future document management services. One of these services is accessing dynamic document spaces, i.e. improving the access to document spaces which are frequently updated (like newsgroups). This process is rather computational intensive. This paper describes the research conducted on software development for massively parallel processors. A prototype has been built which processes streams of information from specified newsgroups and transforms them into personal information maps. Although this technology does speed up the training part compared to a general purpose processor implementation, however, its real benefits emerges with larger problem dimensions because of the scalable approach. It is recommended to improve on quality of the map as well as on visualisation and to better profile the performance of the other parts of the pipeline, i.e. feature extraction and visualisation

Immune sensing of Candida albicans requires cooperative recognition of mannans and glucans by lectin and Toll-like receptors

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Risk profiles and one-year outcomes of patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation in India: Insights from the GARFIELD-AF Registry.

BACKGROUND: The Global Anticoagulant Registry in the FIELD-Atrial Fibrillation (GARFIELD-AF) is an ongoing prospective noninterventional registry, which is providing important information on the baseline characteristics, treatment patterns, and 1-year outcomes in patients with newly diagnosed non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF). This report describes data from Indian patients recruited in this registry. METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 52,014 patients with newly diagnosed AF were enrolled globally; of these, 1388 patients were recruited from 26 sites within India (2012-2016). In India, the mean age was 65.8 years at diagnosis of NVAF. Hypertension was the most prevalent risk factor for AF, present in 68.5% of patients from India and in 76.3% of patients globally (P < 0.001). Diabetes and coronary artery disease (CAD) were prevalent in 36.2% and 28.1% of patients as compared with global prevalence of 22.2% and 21.6%, respectively (P < 0.001 for both). Antiplatelet therapy was the most common antithrombotic treatment in India. With increasing stroke risk, however, patients were more likely to receive oral anticoagulant therapy [mainly vitamin K antagonist (VKA)], but average international normalized ratio (INR) was lower among Indian patients [median INR value 1.6 (interquartile range {IQR}: 1.3-2.3) versus 2.3 (IQR 1.8-2.8) (P < 0.001)]. Compared with other countries, patients from India had markedly higher rates of all-cause mortality [7.68 per 100 person-years (95% confidence interval 6.32-9.35) vs 4.34 (4.16-4.53), P < 0.0001], while rates of stroke/systemic embolism and major bleeding were lower after 1 year of follow-up. CONCLUSION: Compared to previously published registries from India, the GARFIELD-AF registry describes clinical profiles and outcomes in Indian patients with AF of a different etiology. The registry data show that compared to the rest of the world, Indian AF patients are younger in age and have more diabetes and CAD. Patients with a higher stroke risk are more likely to receive anticoagulation therapy with VKA but are underdosed compared with the global average in the GARFIELD-AF. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION-URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT01090362

Model-Based Application Development for Massively Parallel Embedded Systems

The development of embedded systems in information-rich contexts is governed by some intertwined trends. The increase of both volume of data to be processed and the related processing functionality feeds the growing complexity of applications. Independently, the processing hardware that is needed to process these applications is becoming increasingly parallel and heterogeneous (many-core) because of performance and power problems. Furthermore, today's compiler technology is not able to translate sequential legacy code for multi-core or many-core systems in an efficient way. This thesis addresses the problem of generating efficient code for a number of cores, that operate synchronously. Examples are SIMD and VLIW architectures. In this thesis we restrict ourselves to architectures that include a control processor that provides the instruction stream. In practice the manufacturers of such many-core processors only provide a C-compiler that supports hardware intrinsic instructions. This situation usually requires manual adaptation of sequential code. Unfortunately, a first feedback of the implementation on the targeted parallel architecture only comes late in the development trajectory. Moreover, during implementation phases more engineers enter the project and this increases the risk of early errors proliferating to later phases. Although some parts of the system can be modelled in high level language(s) (e.g., MATLAB), the typical approach lacks a single integral and executable framework allowing for an immediate system-wide verification. This thesis proposes an integral design methodology, named IRIS, for the development of firmware for many-core architectures. The methodology is illustrated by three cases: a colour image processing pipeline for a printer, stochastic image quantisation, and data mining of dynamic document spaces. For the three cases the various development phases and the associated development roles result in mathematical models, that can be directly transcribed in a functional language. The executable models are subsequently transformed into a series of implementation models, that converge to the targeted many-core implementation

Reconfigurable Multicore Architectures for Streaming Applications

This chapter addresses reconfigurable heterogenous and homogeneous multicore system-on-chip (SoC) platforms for streaming digital signal processing applications, also called DSP applications. In streaming DSP applications, computations can be specified as a data flow graph with streams of data items (the edges) flowing between computation kernels (the nodes). Most signal processing applications can be naturally expressed in this modeling style. Typical examples of streaming DSP applications are wireless baseband processing, multimedia processing, medical image processing, sensor processing (e.g., for remote surveillance cameras), and phased array radars. In a heterogeneous multicore architecture, a core can either be a bitlevel reconfigurable unit (e.g., FPGA), a word-level reconfigurable unit, or a general-purpose programmable unit (digital signal processor (DSP) or general purpose processor (GPP)). We assume the cores of the SoC are interconnected by a reconfigurable network-on-chip (NoC). The programmability of the individual cores enables the system to be targeted at multiple application domains.\ud \ud We take a holistic approach, which means that all aspects of systems design need to be addressed simultaneously in a systematic way. This is key for an efficient overall solution, because an interesting optimization in a small corner of the design might lead to inefficiencies in the overall design.\ud \ud We introduce streaming applications and multi-core architectures We present key design criteria for streaming applications and give a multi-dimensional classification of architectures for streaming applications. For each category one or more sample architectures are presented. \u

Human dectin-1 deficiency and mucocutaneous fungal infections.

Contains fulltext : 80438.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Mucocutaneous fungal infections are typically found in patients who have no known immune defects. We describe a family in which four women who were affected by either recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis or onychomycosis had the early-stop-codon mutation Tyr238X in the beta-glucan receptor dectin-1. The mutated form of dectin-1 was poorly expressed, did not mediate beta-glucan binding, and led to defective production of cytokines (interleukin-17, tumor necrosis factor, and interleukin-6) after stimulation with beta-glucan or Candida albicans. In contrast, fungal phagocytosis and fungal killing were normal in the patients, explaining why dectin-1 deficiency was not associated with invasive fungal infections and highlighting the specific role of dectin-1 in human mucosal antifungal defense

Human dectin-1 deficiency and mucocutaneous fungal infections

Mucocutaneous fungal infections are typically found in patients who have no known immune defects. We describe a family in which four women who were affected by either recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis or onychomycosis had the early-stop-codon mutation Tyr238X in the β-glucan receptor dectin-1. The mutated form of dectin-1 was poorly expressed, did not mediate β-glucan binding, and led to defective production of cytokines (interleukin-17, tumor necrosis factor, and interleukin-6) after stimulation with β-glucan or Candida albicans. In contrast, fungal phagocytosis and fungal killing were normal in the patients, explaining why dectin-1 deficiency was not associated with invasive fungal infections and highlighting the specific role of dectin-1 in human mucosal antifungal defense