Combining Task-level and System-level Scheduling Modes for Mixed Criticality Systems

Different scheduling algorithms for mixed criticality systems have been recently proposed. The common denominator of these algorithms is to discard low critical tasks whenever high critical tasks are in lack of computation resources. This is achieved upon a switch of the scheduling mode from Normal to Critical. We distinguish two main categories of the algorithms: system-level mode switch and task-level mode switch. System-level mode algorithms allow low criticality (LC) tasks to execute only in normal mode. Task-level mode switch algorithms enable to switch the mode of an individual high criticality task (HC), from low (LO) to high (HI), to obtain priority over all LC tasks. This paper investigates an online scheduling algorithm for mixed-criticality systems that supports dynamic mode switches for both task level and system level. When a HC task job overruns its LC budget, then only that particular job is switched to HI mode. If the job cannot be accommodated, then the system switches to Critical mode. To accommodate for resource availability of the HC jobs, the LC tasks are degraded by stretching their periods until the Critical mode exhibiting job complete its execution. The stretching will be carried out until the resource availability is met. We have mechanized and implemented the proposed algorithm using Uppaal. To study the efficiency of our scheduling algorithm, we examine a case study and compare our results to the state of the art algorithms.Comment: \copyright 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other work

In vitro anti-HIV activity of some Indian medicinal plant extracts

Background Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) persists to be a significant public health issue worldwide. The current strategy for the treatment of HIV infection, Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART), has reduced deaths from AIDS related disease, but it can be an expensive regime for the underdeveloped and developing countries where the supply of drugs is scarce and often not well tolerated, especially in persons undergoing long term treatment. The present therapy also has limitations of development of multidrug resistance, thus there is a need for the discovery of novel anti-HIV compounds from plants as a potential alternative in combating HIV disease. Methods Ten Indian medicinal plants were tested for entry and replication inhibition against laboratory adapted strains HIV-1IIIB, HIV-1Ada5 and primary isolates HIV-1UG070, HIV-1VB59 in TZM-bl cell lines and primary isolates HIV-1UG070, HIV-1VB59 in PM1 cell lines. The plant extracts were further evaluated for toxicity in HEC-1A epithelial cell lines by transwell epithelial model. Results The methanolic extracts of Achyranthes aspera, Rosa centifolia and aqueous extract of Ficus benghalensis inhibited laboratory adapted HIV-1 strains (IC80 3.6–118 μg/ml) and primary isolates (IC80 4.8–156 μg/ml) in TZM-bl cells. Methanolic extract of Strychnos potatorum, aqueous extract of Ficus infectoria and hydroalcoholic extract of Annona squamosa inhibited laboratory adapted HIV-1 strains (IC80 4.24–125 μg/ml) and primary isolates (IC80 18–156 μg/ml) in TZM-bl cells. Methanolic extracts of Achyranthes aspera and Rosa centifolia, (IC801-9 μg/ml) further significantly inhibited HIV-1 primary isolates in PM1cells. Methanolic extracts of Tridax procumbens, Mallotus philippinensis, Annona reticulate, aqueous extract of Ficus benghalensis and hydroalcoholic extract of Albizzia lebbeck did not exhibit anti-HIV activity in all the tested strains. Methanolic extract of Rosa centifolia also demonstrated to be non-toxic to HEC-1A epithelial cells and maintained epithelial integrity (at 500 μg/ml) when tested in transwell dual-chamber. Conclusion These active methanolic extracts of Achyranthes aspera and Rosa centifolia, could be further subjected to chemical analysis to investigate the active moiety responsible for the anti-HIV activity. Methanolic extract of Rosa centifolia was found to be well tolerated maintaining the epithelial integrity of HEC-1A cells in vitro and thus has potential for investigating it further as candidate microbicide

Rheumatoid arthritis - clinical aspects: 134. Predictors of Joint Damage in South Africans with Rheumatoid Arthritis

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) causes progressive joint damage and functional disability. Studies on factors affecting joint damage as clinical outcome are lacking in Africa. The aim of the present study was to identify predictors of joint damage in adult South Africans with established RA. Methods: A cross-sectional study of 100 black patients with RA of >5 years were assessed for joint damage using a validated clinical method, the RA articular damage (RAAD) score. Potential predictors of joint damage that were documented included socio-demographics, smoking, body mass index (BMI), disease duration, delay in disease modifying antirheumatic drug (DMARD) initiation, global disease activity as measured by the disease activity score (DAS28), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), C reactive protein (CRP), and autoantibody status. The predictive value of variables was assessed by univariate and stepwise multivariate regression analyses. A p value <0.05 was considered significant. Results: The mean (SD) age was 56 (9.8) years, disease duration 17.5 (8.5) years, educational level 7.5 (3.5) years and DMARD lag was 9 (8.8) years. Female to male ratio was 10:1. The mean (SD) DAS28 was 4.9 (1.5) and total RAAD score was 28.3 (12.8). The mean (SD) BMI was 27.2 kg/m2 (6.2) and 93% of patients were rheumatoid factor (RF) positive. More than 90% of patients received between 2 to 3 DMARDs. Significant univariate predictors of a poor RAAD score were increasing age (p = 0.001), lower education level (p = 0.019), longer disease duration (p < 0.001), longer DMARD lag (p = 0.014), lower BMI (p = 0.025), high RF titre (p < 0.001) and high ESR (p = 0.008). The multivariate regression analysis showed that the only independent significant predictors of a higher mean RAAD score were older age at disease onset (p = 0.04), disease duration (p < 0.001) and RF titre (p < 0.001). There was also a negative association between BMI and the mean total RAAD score (p = 0.049). Conclusions: Patients with longstanding established RA have more severe irreversible joint damage as measured by the clinical RAAD score, contrary to other studies in Africa. This is largely reflected by a delay in the initiation of early effective treatment. Independent of disease duration, older age at disease onset and a higher RF titre are strongly associated with more joint damage. The inverse association between BMI and articular damage in RA has been observed in several studies using radiographic damage scores. The mechanisms underlying this paradoxical association are still widely unknown but adipokines have recently been suggested to play a role. Disclosure statement: C.I. has received a research grant from the Connective Tissue Diseases Research Fund, University of the Witwatersrand. All other authors have declared no conflicts of interes

International Consensus Statement on Rhinology and Allergy: Rhinosinusitis

Background: The 5 years since the publication of the first International Consensus Statement on Allergy and Rhinology: Rhinosinusitis (ICAR‐RS) has witnessed foundational progress in our understanding and treatment of rhinologic disease. These advances are reflected within the more than 40 new topics covered within the ICAR‐RS‐2021 as well as updates to the original 140 topics. This executive summary consolidates the evidence‐based findings of the document. Methods: ICAR‐RS presents over 180 topics in the forms of evidence‐based reviews with recommendations (EBRRs), evidence‐based reviews, and literature reviews. The highest grade structured recommendations of the EBRR sections are summarized in this executive summary. Results: ICAR‐RS‐2021 covers 22 topics regarding the medical management of RS, which are grade A/B and are presented in the executive summary. Additionally, 4 topics regarding the surgical management of RS are grade A/B and are presented in the executive summary. Finally, a comprehensive evidence‐based management algorithm is provided. Conclusion: This ICAR‐RS‐2021 executive summary provides a compilation of the evidence‐based recommendations for medical and surgical treatment of the most common forms of RS

Multi-core mixed-criticality real-time scheduling

Modern safety-critical real-time systems are realized via integration of multiple system components having varying criticality, designated based on consequence of failures, onto a single shared hardware platform. Such systems are known as ‘Mixed-Criticality Systems’. These systems are subjected to different certification standards that require high confidence (or assurance level against failures) for critical components (e.g., flight control) and relatively low confidence for less/non-critical components (e.g., cabin light control). The correctness of a mixed-criticality system depends on the correct functional behavior of the components with their corresponding assurance level at different criticality levels. To guarantee correctness, conventional real-time scheduling techniques that statically reserve resources to the components can be used. However, conservative reservation at all criticality levels often leads to under-utilization of system resources as the components do not necessarily require them at all times. To address this problem, mixed-criticality scheduling model was proposed. The fundamental objective is to efficiently allocate resources while ensuring safe execution of the critical components. The mixed-criticality scheduling requirement is as follows: all components must be scheduled to meet their deadlines as long as sufficient processing capacity is available and once the system demand is increased, critical components must be prioritized to meet their deadlines, whereas less/non-critical components can be penalized to meet the system demand. Although the problem of mixed-criticality scheduling on single-core platforms has been well studied, for multi-core platforms it has largely remained open. With this objective in focus, this thesis addresses some important problems of scheduling mixed-criticality systems on multi-core processors. Multi-core scheduling can broadly be classified as global and partitioned scheduling. Global scheduling allows components to execute on any core and migrate between cores at runtime. Partitioned scheduling statically assigns components to an individual core and does not allow them to migrate at runtime. Most existing global scheduling algorithms for mixed-criticality systems suffer from poor schedulability. To address this problem, a fluid execution rate based scheduling algorithm with a bounded analytical performance for mixed-criticality systems has been proposed earlier. However, the proposed fluid scheduling algorithm still suffer from schedulability issues. To this end, we first focus on the design of a global scheduling algorithm that is capable of scheduling a large class of such systems on multi-core platforms and has bounded analytical performance. We propose a multiple fluid execution rate based scheduling model for mixed-criticality systems and derive the analytical test for the algorithm. The proposed model considers different execution rates based on the system operation mode. Thus, by considering mode based dynamic execution rates the proposed algorithm is able to achieve better schedulability compared to existing algorithms. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm also has an optimal performance bound in terms of processor speedup. Most studies in mixed-criticality scheduling make an unrealistic assumption that all the less critical components can be abandoned or discarded when the critical components demand for additional processing resources. However, this method seriously impacts the performance of the less critical components which may not be suitable for many practical systems that require minimum service guarantees for these components. To address this issue, we focus on the partitioned scheduling for mixed-criticality systems which is preferred in the industry due to its strong iso- lation (freedom from interference) feature. The components executing on a core are unaffected by the critical components executing on another core unlike in global scheduling. Partitioning scheduling comprises components-to-core mapping (partitioning) strategy and scheduling algorithm on each core. Existing studies use classical partitioning strategies which are not efficient for the mixed-criticality setting. To address this problem, we propose an efficient partitioning strategy that has good performance for a wide variety of single-core mixed-criticality scheduling algorithms. This technique distributes the additional demand of the critical components evenly among all processing cores. By evenly distributing it, the scheduling capability of each core is increased, thus increasing the overall schedulability. To support maximum less critical components in the partitioned environment, we propose the semi-partitioned mixed-criticality scheduling model. In this model, the less critical components are migrated at runtime from a core which has insufficient processing capacity to another that has sufficient processing capacity. The resources corresponding to the migrating components are statically reserved on the core to which they migrate. Thus, by migrating these components at runtime, we are able to support maximum less critical components for a longer duration. These components will be eventually suspended from execution if the processing cores are not capable of supporting them.Doctor of Philosoph

Multi-rate fluid scheduling of mixed-criticality systems on multiprocessors

In this paper we consider the problem of mixed-criticality (MC) scheduling of implicit-deadline sporadic task systems on a homogenous multiprocessor platform. Focusing on dual-criticality systems, algorithms based on the fluid scheduling model have been proposed in the past. These algorithms use a dual-rate execution model for each high-criticality task depending on the system mode. Once the system switches to the high-criticality mode, the execution rates of such tasks are increased to meet their increased demand. Although these algorithms are speed-up optimal, they are unable to schedule several feasible dual-criticality task systems. This is because a single fixed execution rate for each high-criticality task after the mode switch is not efficient to handle the high variability in demand during the transition period immediately following the mode switch. This demand variability exists as long as the carry-over jobs of high-criticality tasks, that is jobs released before the mode switch, have not completed. Addressing this shortcoming, we propose a multi-rate fluid execution model for dual-criticality task systems in this paper. Under this model, high-criticality tasks are allocated varying execution rates in the transition period after the mode switch to efficiently handle the demand variability. We derive a sufficient schedulability test for the proposed model and show its dominance over the dual-rate fluid execution model. Further, we also present a speed-up optimal rate assignment strategy for the multi-rate model, and experimentally show that the proposed model outperforms all the existing MC scheduling algorithms with known speed-up bounds.MOE (Min. of Education, S’pore)Accepted versio