Search

Yansu Wang,1,&ast; Yiting Xu,1,&ast; Tingting Hu,1 Yunfeng Xiao,2 Yufei Wang,1 Xiaojing Ma,1 Haoyong Yu,1 Yuqian Bao1 1Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai Clinical Center for Diabetes, Shanghai Diabetes Institute, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Diabetes Mellitus, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Radiology, Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China&ast;These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Yuqian Bao, Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, 600 Yishan Road, Shanghai, 200233, People’s Republic of China, Tel +86-21-64369181, Fax +86-21-64368031, Email yqbao@sjtu.edu.cnBackground: It has been reported recently that the ratio of uric acid to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (UHR) is correlated with several metabolic disorders. The present study aimed to investigate the associations of UHR with body fat content and distribution.Methods: This study enrolled 300 participants (58 men and 242 women) aged 18 to 65 years. The levels of serum uric acid and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol were measured by standard enzymatic methods. The overall fat content and segmental fat distribution were assessed with an automatic bioelectrical impedance analyzer. In the population with obesity, the visceral fat area (VFA) and subcutaneous fat area (SFA) were measured using magnetic resonance imaging.Results: Among the study population, 219 individuals (73.0%) were with obesity. The median level of UHR in individuals with obesity was 33.7% (26.2% - 45.9%), which was significantly higher than that in those without obesity [22.6% (17.0% - 34.4%), P < 0.01]. UHR was positively associated with overall fat content and seg

PURPOSE: The Medical Imaging and Data Resource Center (MIDRC) was created to facilitate medical imaging machine learning (ML) research for tasks including early detection, diagnosis, prognosis, and assessment of treatment response related to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and beyond. The purpose of this work was to create a publicly available metrology resource to assist researchers in evaluating the performance of their medical image analysis ML algorithms. APPROACH: An interactive decision tree, called MIDRC-MetricTree, has been developed, organized by the type of task that the ML algorithm was trained to perform. The criteria for this decision tree were that (1) users can select information such as the type of task, the nature of the reference standard, and the type of the algorithm output and (2) based on the user input, recommendations are provided regarding appropriate performance evaluation approaches and metrics, including literature references and, when possible, links to publicly available software/code as well as short tutorial videos. RESULTS: Five types of tasks were identified for the decision tree: (a) classification, (b) detection/localization, (c) segmentation, (d) time-to-event (TTE) analysis, and (e) estimation. As an example, the classification branch of the decision tree includes two-class (binary) and multiclass classification tasks and provides suggestions for methods, metrics, software/code recommendations, and literature references for situations where the algorithm produces either binary or non-binary (e.g., continuous) output and for reference standards with negligible or non-negligible variability and unreliability. CONCLUSIONS: The publicly available decision tree is a resource to assist researchers in conducting task-specific performance evaluations, including classification, detection/localization, segmentation, TTE, and estimation tasks.

Ensuring the data integrity of messages transmitted over the Controller Area Network (CAN) bus and other vehicular networks is achieved through the implementation of cryptographic authentication protocols. However, these protocols raise concerns about a significant increase in response time due to the restrictions on CAN frame size and bandwidth. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the impact on response time of CAN and CAN Flexible Data-rate (CAN FD) messages with the implementation of cryptographic message authentication codes (MACs) and the periodic transmission of these codes. Our evaluation is based on a randomized schedulability experiment to provide insights into the overhead incurred by adding authentication to the frame payloads.

Ensuring the data integrity of messages transmitted over the Controller Area Network (CAN) bus and other vehicular networks is achieved through the implementation of cryptographic authentication protocols. However, these protocols raise concerns about a significant increase in response time due to the restrictions on CAN frame size and bandwidth. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the impact on response time of CAN and CAN Flexible Data-rate (CAN FD) messages with the implementation of cryptographic message authentication codes (MACs) and the periodic transmission of these codes. Our evaluation is based on a randomized schedulability experiment to provide insights into the overhead incurred by adding authentication to the frame payloads.

The Controller Area Network (CAN) dominates in-vehicle networking systems in modern vehicles. CAN was designed with low-latency and reliability as key features. Authenticity of a CAN frame was not considered in the design, thus, most in-vehicle network nodes inherently trust received messages as coming from a legitimate source. As a result, it is trivial to program (or hack) a network node to spoof traffic. Authentication is challenging for CAN and related protocols, such as SAE J1939, due to limited frame sizes and high bus utilization. Adding a message authentication code (MAC) as a separate message can unduly stress the real-time delivery of safety-critical messages. Although this stressor is well-known, the impact of authentication protocols on real-time message delivery in CAN has not yet been thoroughly examined. In this paper, we provide the first comprehensive analysis of realtime schedulability analysis applied to authentication schemes for CAN, CAN Flexible Data-rate (CAN FD), and CAN extra long payload (CAN XL). We formulate the response time analysis for addition of MACs and periodic transmission of MACs, and we examine their impact on two case studies and through evaluation with randomized schedulability experiments over a wide range of message sets.

Tingting Hu,1,&ast; Nannan Pang,2,&ast; Zheng Li,1 Dan Xu,1 Jing Jing,1 Fengsen Li,1 Jianbing Ding,3 Jing Wang,1 Min Jiang1 1Xinjiang Laboratory of Respiratory Disease Research, Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital Affiliated to Xinjiang Medical University, Urumqi, 830000, People’s Republic of China; 2CAS Key Laboratory of Bio-Medical Diagnostics, Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou, 215163, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Immunology, College of Basic Medicine, Xinjiang Medical University, Urumqi, 830000, People’s Republic of China&ast;These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Jing Wang; Min Jiang, Xinjiang Laboratory of Respiratory Disease Research, Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital Affiliated to Xinjiang Medical University, Urumqi, People’s Republic of China, Tel +86-13999908413 ; +86-13999162873, Email jingw_xj@163.com; 250579087@qq.comBackground: Excessive activation of M1 macrophages affects the chronic inflammatory response of the airways and leads to the development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Therefore, it needs to be closely monitored and investigated. MAPK signaling pathway is involved in the activation of M1 macrophages, and N6-methyladenosine (m6A) is involved in the pathogenesis of COPD. However, it is unknown whether activation of the MAPK signaling pathway is mediated by m6A in M1 macrophages in COPD.Methods: The GEO data were analyzed using bioinformatics techniques to assess the differences between COPD and healthy individuals in the levels of M1 macrophages, their secreted cytokines, and m6A regulators. The MAPK signaling pathway was significantly enriched in the list of differentially regulated genes between COPD and healthy individuals. We further analyzed the correlation between M1 macrophages, m6A, and the MAPK signaling pathway. Next, blood samples from COPD and healthy individuals were collected and analyzed

The allocation of software functions to processors under compute capacity and network links constraints is an important optimization problem in the field of embedded distributed systems. We present a hybrid approach to solve the allocation problem combining a constraint solver and a worst-case traversal time (WCTT) analysis that verifies the network timing constraints. The WCTT analysis is implemented as an industrial black-box program, which makes a tight integration with constraint solving challenging. We contribute to a new multi-objective constraint solving algorithm for integrating external under-approximating functions, such as the WCTT analysis, with constraint solving, and prove its correctness. We apply this new algorithm to the allocation problem in the context of automotive service-oriented architectures based on Ethernet networks, and provide a new dataset of realistic instances to evaluate our approach.

Yu Ni,1,&ast; Yuqin Chen,2,&ast; Xuheng Jiang,3 Tao Pu,1 Ling Zhang,4 Shaobin Li,2 Linhong Hu,1 Bing Bai,1 Tingting Hu,1 Limei Yu,2 Yibin Yang1,2 1Department of Nephrology, Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical University, Zunyi, 563003, People’s Republic of China; 2Key Laboratory of Cell Engineering of Guizhou Province, Zunyi City, Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical University, Zunyi, 563003, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Emergency, Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical University, Zunyi, 563003, People’s Republic of China; 4Zhuhai Campus of Zunyi Medical University, Zhuhai, 519041, People’s Republic of China&ast;These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Limei Yu, Department of Nephrology, Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical University, Zunyi, 563003, People’s Republic of China, Email ylm720@sina.com Yibin Yang, Key Laboratory of Cell Engineering of Guizhou Province, Zunyi City, Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical University, Zunyi, 563003, People’s Republic of China, Email yyb1011@sina.comBackground and Aims: Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is a prevalent and intractable microvascular complication of diabetes mellitus (DM), the process of which is closely related to abnormal expression of angiogenesis-regulating factors (ARFs). Stem cell transplantation might be a novel strategy for treating DKD. This study aims to explore the effect of transplantation of human amniotic mesenchymal stem cells (hAMSCs) on renal microangiopathy in a type 1 DKD rat model (T1DRM).Methods: Seventy-two rats were randomly divided into three groups, including normal control group, DKD group, and hAMSCs transplantation group. T1DRM was established using a rat tail vein injection of streptozotocin (STZ) (55 mg/kg). hAMSCs were obtained from placental amniotic membranes during cesarean delivery and transplanted at 3 and 4 weeks through penile veins. At 6, 8, and 12 weeks following transplantation, blood glucose levels, renal function

Xiaohang Li,1 Xu Li,1 Simei Chen,1 Yang Wu,1 Yuhan Liu,1 Tingting Hu,1 Jiayi Huang,1 Jianlin Yu,1 Zihuan Pei,1 Tingting Zeng,2 Liming Tan1 1Department of Clinical Laboratory, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Jiangxi Province Key Laboratory of Laboratory Medicine, Nanchang, Jiangxi, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Clinical Laboratory, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang, Jiangxi, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Liming TanDepartment of Clinical Laboratory, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Jiangxi Province Key Laboratory of Laboratory Medicine, No. 1 Minde Road, Donghu District, Nanchang, Jiangxi, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 791-86300410Email ndefy84029@ncu.edu.cnPurpose: To explore the clinical significance of tumor necrosis factor receptor-associated protein (TRAP1), mitotic arrest deficient 2 (mad2) and anti-nuclear mitotic spindle apparatus antibody (MSA) in the diagnosis of small cell lung cancer (SCLC).Patients and Methods: Serum concentrations of TRAP1 and MSA were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), including SCLC group (Num.=86), non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) group (Num.=105), pulmonary nodules (PN) group (Num.=94), and 60 healthy subjects as control group (Num.=60). Whereas fluorescence quantitative PCR (qt-PCR) method was used to detect the expression of mad2.Results: The expression of TRAP1 was low in SCLC and NSCLC compared with the other two groups, and was the lowest in SCLC, which was negatively correlated with the occurrence of the disease (P< 0.05); the sensitivity and specificity of TRAP1 for SCLC were 75.29%, 93.33%, and the area under SCLC curve was 0.903; compared with the other three groups, the level of MSA was the highest in the SCLC, and the results were significantly different (P< 0.05), while the area under the SCLC curve was 0.856, and the sensitivity and specificity were 62.

Tingting Hu,1 Juanjuan Huang,2 Kun Fang3 1Department of Chemoradiation Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, 325000, People’s Republic of China; 2Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, 325000, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Surgery, Yinchuan Women and Children’s Hospital, Yinchuan, Ningxia, 750001, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Kun FangDepartment of Surgery, Yinchuan Women and Children’s Hospital, No. 56, Wenhua Street, Yinchuan, Ningxia, 750001, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail k99ftl@163.comPurpose: Mucinous carcinoma of the breast (MCB) is a rare malignant tumour. Therefore, it is urgent to establish a survival prediction model for MCB patients.Methods: Clinicopathological and follow-up data of MCB patients diagnosed between 2010 and 2015 were retrieved from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Result (SEER) database. The significant factors were screened out and generated Kaplan–Meier (K-M) curves for each prognostic factor. Additionally, these factors were then utilized to build a nomogram for predicting 3-, 4-, and 5-year overall survival (OS) of MCB patients. The nomogram was evaluated using calibration curves, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and decision curve analysis (DCA).Results: Moreover, a total of 4326 MCB patients were retrieved. Age, American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) stage, surgery, radiotherapy and bone metastasis were identified as independently prognosis factors for OS. The corresponding areas under the ROC curves (AUCs) of the nomogram at 3, 4 and 5 years in the training and validation set were 0.770, 0.788, 0.805, 0.778, 0.797, and 0.802, respectively. The calibration curves and DCA revealed that the prediction model had an excellent performance. Finally, the risk stratification system confirmed that the powerful role of the nomogram in distinguishing results and risk stratification.Conclusion: Briefly, the nomogram incorpo

Jiaping Zhou,1 Qiaomei Zhou,1 Gaofeng Shu,2 Xiaojie Wang,1 Yuanfei Lu,1 Haiyan Chen,1 Tingting Hu,1 Jinsong Cai,1 Yongzhong Du,2 Risheng Yu1 1Department of Radiology, Second Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310009, People’s Republic of China; 2Institute of Pharmaceutics, College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Yongzhong DuInstitute of Pharmaceutics, College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Zhejiang University, 866 Yuhangtang Road, Hangzhou 310058, Zhejiang Province, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 571 8820 8435Email duyongzhong@zju.edu.cnRisheng YuDepartment of Radiology, Second Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, 88 Jiefang Road, Hangzhou 310009, Zhejiang Province, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 571 8778 3925Email risheng-yu@zju.edu.cnPropose: The early diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with ferritin heavy chain (Fth) modified by alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) promoter has been studied. However, no study has focused on the considerable upregulation and specific targeting effects of transferrin receptors (TfR) caused by the transfection of plasmids encoded with the AFP promoter. Thus, the objective of our study was to investigate whether the transfection of Fth gene modified with AFP promoter (AFP@Fth) could be used for early diagnosis and enhanced treatment of HCC.Methods: The AFP@Fth plasmid was transfected into AFP positive cells. The expression of intracellular Ferritin was verified by Western blot, and the upregulation of TfR was confirmed by immunofluorescence and flow cytometry analysis. Cellular iron accumulation resulting in decreased imaging signals was examined by magnetic resonance imagining. Doxorubicin liposome modified with transferrin (Tf-LPD) was prepared to investigate the efficiency of the subsequent treatment after transfection. The enhanced drug distribution and eff

Cyber-Physical Systems are usually subject to dependability requirements such as safety and reliability constraints. Over the last 50 years, a body of efficient fault-tolerance mechanisms has been devised to handle faults occurring at run-time. However, properly implementing those mechanisms is a time-consuming task that requires a great deal of know-how. In this paper, we propose a general framework which allows system designers to decouple functional and non-functional concerns, and express non- functional properties at design time using domain-specific languages. In the spirit of generative programming, functional models are then automatically “augmented” with dependability mechanisms. Importantly, the real-time behavior of the initial models in terms of sampling times and meeting deadlines is preserved. The practicality of the approach is demonstrated with the automated implementation of one prominent software fault-tolerance pattern, namely N-Version Programming, in the CPAL model-driven engineering workflow.

Cyber-Physical Systems are usually subject to dependability requirements such as safety and reliability constraints. Over the last 50 years, a body of efficient fault-tolerance mechanisms has been devised to handle faults occurring at run-time. However, properly implementing those mechanisms is a time-consuming task that requires a great deal of know-how. In this paper, we propose a general framework which allows system designers to decouple functional and non-functional concerns, and express non- functional properties at design time using domain-specific languages. In the spirit of generative programming, functional models are then automatically “augmented” with dependability mechanisms. Importantly, the real-time behavior of the initial models in terms of sampling times and meeting deadlines is preserved. The practicality of the approach is demonstrated with the automated implementation of one prominent software fault-tolerance pattern, namely N-Version Programming, in the CPAL model-driven engineering workflow.

Jiaping Zhou,1 Qiaomei Zhou,1 Gaofeng Shu,2 Xiaojie Wang,1 Yuanfei Lu,1 Haiyan Chen,1 Tingting Hu,1 Jinsong Cai,1 Yongzhong Du,2 Risheng Yu1 1Department of Radiology, Second Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310009, People’s Republic of China; 2Institute of Pharmaceutics, College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Yongzhong DuInstitute of Pharmaceutics, College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Zhejiang University, 866 Yuhangtang Road, Hangzhou 310058, Zhejiang Province, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 571 8820 8435Email duyongzhong@zju.edu.cnRisheng YuDepartment of Radiology, Second Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, 88 Jiefang Road, Hangzhou 310009, Zhejiang Province, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 571 8778 3925Email risheng-yu@zju.edu.cnPropose: The early diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with ferritin heavy chain (Fth) modified by alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) promoter has been studied. However, no study has focused on the considerable upregulation and specific targeting effects of transferrin receptors (TfR) caused by the transfection of plasmids encoded with the AFP promoter. Thus, the objective of our study was to investigate whether the transfection of Fth gene modified with AFP promoter (AFP@Fth) could be used for early diagnosis and enhanced treatment of HCC.Methods: The AFP@Fth plasmid was transfected into AFP positive cells. The expression of intracellular Ferritin was verified by Western blot, and the upregulation of TfR was confirmed by immunofluorescence and flow cytometry analysis. Cellular iron accumulation resulting in decreased imaging signals was examined by magnetic resonance imagining. Doxorubicin liposome modified with transferrin (Tf-LPD) was prepared to investigate the efficiency of the subsequent treatment after transfection. The enhanced drug distribution and eff

Preventive and reactive maintenance require the collection of an ever-increasing amount of information from industrial plants and other complex systems, like those based on robotized cells, a need that can be fulfilled by means of a suitable event notification mechanism. At the same time, timing and delivery reliability requirements in those scenarios are typically less demanding than in other cases, thus enabling the adoption of best-effort notification approaches. This paper presents, evaluates, and compares some of those approaches, based on either standard CAN messaging or a recently proposed protocol extension called CAN XR. In the second case, the combined use of Bloom filters is also envisaged to increase flexibility. Results show that the latter approaches are advantageous in a range of event generation rates and network topologies of practical relevance.

Controller Area Network (CAN) technology is nowadays ubiquitous in vehicular applications and is also gaining popularity in other contexts, for instance, embedded and industrial automation systems. The recent standardization of CAN with flexible data rate (CAN FD), as well as other academic proposals, have highlighted the usefulness of enhancing the CAN physical and data link layers to attain better performance and other features. This paper describes a portable software-defined CAN controller called SDCC. Besides being handy as a research tool for experimenting with novel protocol concepts at the data link layer, SDCC is also fully capable of real-time execution. Hence, it can interact with real-world CAN devices through a physical bus interface.

Preventive and reactive maintenance require the collection of an ever-increasing amount of information from industrial plants and other complex systems, like those based on robotized cells, a need that can be fulfilled by means of a suitable event notification mechanism. At the same time, timing and delivery reliability requirements in those scenarios are typically less demanding than in other cases, thus enabling the adoption of best-effort notification approaches. This paper presents, evaluates, and compares some of those approaches, based on either standard CAN messaging or a recently proposed protocol extension called CAN XR. In the second case, the combined use of Bloom filters is also envisaged to increase flexibility. Results show that the latter approaches are advantageous in a range of event generation rates and network topologies of practical relevance.

Controller Area Network (CAN) technology is nowadays ubiquitous in vehicular applications and is also gaining popularity in other contexts, for instance, embedded and industrial automation systems. The recent standardization of CAN with flexible data rate (CAN FD), as well as other academic proposals, have highlighted the usefulness of enhancing the CAN physical and data link layers to attain better performance and other features. This paper describes a portable software-defined CAN controller called SDCC. Besides being handy as a research tool for experimenting with novel protocol concepts at the data link layer, SDCC is also fully capable of real-time execution. Hence, it can interact with real-world CAN devices through a physical bus interface.

Tingting Hu,1,* Xuan Wu,2,* Ke Li,2 Yuan Li,2 Ping He,3 Zhiyuan Wu,4 Jie Fan,5 Weiwei Liu,2,6 Ming Guan1,4 1Department of Clinical Laboratory, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 2Central Laboratory and Department of Laboratory Medicine, Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital, Tongji University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Nuclear Medicine, Nanjing Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Clinical Laboratory, Huashan Hospital North, Fudan University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 5Department of Pathology, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 6Department of Laboratory Medicine, Shanghai Skin Disease Hospital, Tongji University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Weiwei LiuCentral Laboratory and Department of Laboratory Medicine, Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital, Tongji University, No. 301 Middle Yanchang Road, Shanghai, People’s Republic of ChinaTel/fax +86-21-6630 6905Email huashanvivian@126.comMing GuanDepartment of Clinical Laboratory, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, No. 12 Middle Wulumuqi Road, Shanghai, People’s Republic of ChinaTel/fax +86-21-5288 8048Email guanming88@126.comPurpose: Restoring lost function to suppressor gene products has captured the interest of the research community in the field of gene therapy. AKAP12, also known as Gravin/AKAP250, is a tumor suppressor gene, and its deregulation may be responsible for cancer progression. The aim of this study was to investigate whether AKAP12 mRNA has an anti-cancer function by regulating onco-miRNA expression in colorectal cancer (CRC) cells.Methods: miRNAs targeting AKAP12 were predicted by bioinformatics analysis and further confirmed by dual-luciferase reporter assays and RT-qPCR. The alte

Nowadays, Controller Area Network is still the most popular solution for in-vehicle communications in automotive scenarios. Recently, the CAN with eXtensible in-frame Replyproposal has been introduced, which permits several nodes to write at the same time on the bus in the data field of legacy CAN frames. This enables several new interesting communication services, including distributed key generation and highly-efficient data exchanges according to the combined message approach. Unfortunately, having several concurrent devices acting as transmitters for the same message impairs the ability of the protocol to detect global errors, hence worsening its robustness against electromagnetic disturbance. In this paper, this problem is analyzed in detail and some solutions are proposed, which make CAN XR as robust as the standard CAN protocol.

Nowadays, Controller Area Network is still the most popular solution for in-vehicle communications in automotive scenarios. Recently, the CAN with eXtensible in-frame Replyproposal has been introduced, which permits several nodes to write at the same time on the bus in the data field of legacy CAN frames. This enables several new interesting communication services, including distributed key generation and highly-efficient data exchanges according to the combined message approach. Unfortunately, having several concurrent devices acting as transmitters for the same message impairs the ability of the protocol to detect global errors, hence worsening its robustness against electromagnetic disturbance. In this paper, this problem is analyzed in detail and some solutions are proposed, which make CAN XR as robust as the standard CAN protocol.

The ever-increasing variety of services built on top of the Controller Area Network (CAN), along with the recent discovery of vulnerabilities in CAN-based automotive systems (some of them demonstrated in practice) stimulated a renewed attention to security-oriented enhancements of the CAN protocol. The issue is further compounded nowadays because, unlike in the past, security can no longer be enforced by physical bus segregation. This paper describes how CAN XR, a recently proposed extension of the CAN data-link layer, can effectively support the distributed calculation of arbitrary binary Boolean functions, which are the foundation of most security protocols, without necessarily disclosing their operands on the bus. The feasibility of the approach is then shown through experimental evaluation and by confirming its applicability to a shared key generation protocol proposed in literature.

Controller area network (CAN) has been the de facto standard in the automotive industry for the past two decades. Recently, CAN with flexible data-rate (CAN FD) has been standardized, which achieves noticeably higher throughput. Further improvements are still possible for CAN, by exploiting its peculiar physical layer to carry out distributed operations among network nodes, implemented as atomic transactions mapped on quasi-conventional frame exchanges. In this paper, a proposal is made for an extension to the CAN protocol, termed CAN with eXtensible in-frame Reply (CAN XR), which enables upper protocol layers to define new custom services devoted to, e.g., network management, application-specific functions, and high-efficiency data transfer. The key point is that CAN XR retains full backward compatibility with CAN, therefore, there is no need to change the protocol specification once again.

Embedded control systems are becoming more and more popular, especially in relatively inexpensive consumer prod- ucts, like home appliances and building automation controllers. As a consequence, there is an ever increasing desire to reduce firmware development time and cost, without hampering relia- bility and performance. In this paper, a low-overhead firmware development framework is proposed, which allows programmers to develop and deploy typical real-time control software faster than using plain C-language programming. At the same time, experimental results confirm the framework’s efficiency and applicability even to low-end microcontrollers.

Thanks to its distributed and asynchronous medium access control mechanism, CAN is the ideal choice for interconnecting devices in event-driven systems. When timing requirements of applications are not particularly demanding, as in the case of, e.g., reactive and proactive maintenance, constraints on event delivery can be relaxed, so that their notification may rely on best-effort approaches. In this paper, a number of techniques are taken into account for notifying events in such a kind of systems, and their performance has been evaluated. Besides conventional CAN, a recent proposal for extending this protocol, termed CAN XR, is considered. Moreover, the adoption of Bloom filters to cope with rare events in very large systems has also been evaluated.

The ever-growing complexity of present-day software systems raises new and more stringent requirements on their availability, pushing designers to make use of sophisticated fault tolerance techniques far beyond the areas they were traditionally conceived for, and bringing new challenges to both the modelling and implementation phases. In this paper, we propose a design pattern to model in a domain-specific language one of the prominent fault-tolerant techniques, namely the N-version programming. It can be integrated seamlessly into existing applications to enhance their functional correctness, while still preserving the timing characteristics, in particular the sampling times. Besides, it is also designed in a way to ease the automatic code generation. A counterpart of the same framework is also implemented in a lower-level programming language, for use when direct model execution is impractical, like in severely resource-limited embedded targets.

Software fault injection is a powerful technique to evaluate the robustness of an application and guide in the choice of fault-tolerant mechanisms. It however requires a lot of time and know-how to be properly implemented, which severely hinders its applicability. We believe software fault injection can be made more “affordable” by automating it and have it integrated within a model-driven engineering design flow. We first propose in this paper a framework supporting these objectives. Then, illustrating on the domain-specific language CPAL, we present injection patterns that can be embedded in the application code and discuss the types of faults each supports, as well as implementation issues.

Fast-paced innovation in the embedded systems domain puts an ever increasing pressure on effective software development methods, leading to the growing popularity of Model-Based Design (MBD). In this context, a proper choice of modeling languages and related tools - depending on design goals and problem qualities - is crucial to make the most of MBD benefits. In this paper, a comparison between two dissimilar approaches to modeling is carried out, with the goal of highlighting their relative advantages and shortcomings. It focuses on a case study involving a well-known distributed agreement protocol, a choice motivated by the fact that embedded systems are nowadays quickly evolving towards distributed, fault-tolerant architectures.

Software fault injection is a powerful technique to evaluate the robustness of an application and guide in the choice of fault-tolerant mechanisms. It however requires a lot of time and know-how to be properly implemented, which severely hinders its applicability. We believe software fault injection can be made more “affordable” by automating it and have it integrated within a model-driven engineering design flow. We first propose in this paper a framework supporting these objectives. Then, illustrating on the domain-specific language CPAL, we present injection patterns that can be embedded in the application code and discuss the types of faults each supports, as well as implementation issues.

The ever-growing complexity of present-day software systems raises new and more stringent requirements on their availability, pushing designers to make use of sophisticated fault tolerance techniques far beyond the areas they were traditionally conceived for, and bringing new challenges to both the modelling and implementation phases. In this paper, we propose a design pattern to model in a domain-specific language one of the prominent fault-tolerant techniques, namely the N-version programming. It can be integrated seamlessly into existing applications to enhance their functional correctness, while still preserving the timing characteristics, in particular the sampling times. Besides, it is also designed in a way to ease the automatic code generation. A counterpart of the same framework is also implemented in a lower-level programming language, for use when direct model execution is impractical, like in severely resource-limited embedded targets.

Controller area network (CAN) has been the de facto standard in the automotive industry for the past two decades. Recently, CAN with flexible data-rate (CAN FD) has been standardized, which achieves noticeably higher throughput. Further improvements are still possible for CAN, by exploiting its peculiar physical layer to carry out distributed operations among network nodes, implemented as atomic transactions mapped on quasi-conventional frame exchanges. In this paper, a proposal is made for an extension to the CAN protocol, termed CAN with eXtensible in-frame Reply (CAN XR), which enables upper protocol layers to define new custom services devoted to, e.g., network management, application-specific functions, and high-efficiency data transfer. The key point is that CAN XR retains full backward compatibility with CAN, therefore, there is no need to change the protocol specification once again.

The ever-increasing variety of services built on top of the Controller Area Network (CAN), along with the recent discovery of vulnerabilities in CAN-based automotive systems (some of them demonstrated in practice) stimulated a renewed attention to security-oriented enhancements of the CAN protocol. The issue is further compounded nowadays because, unlike in the past, security can no longer be enforced by physical bus segregation. This paper describes how CAN XR, a recently proposed extension of the CAN data-link layer, can effectively support the distributed calculation of arbitrary binary Boolean functions, which are the foundation of most security protocols, without necessarily disclosing their operands on the bus. The feasibility of the approach is then shown through experimental evaluation and by confirming its applicability to a shared key generation protocol proposed in literature.

Thanks to its distributed and asynchronous medium access control mechanism, CAN is the ideal choice for interconnecting devices in event-driven systems. When timing requirements of applications are not particularly demanding, as in the case of, e.g., reactive and proactive maintenance, constraints on event delivery can be relaxed, so that their notification may rely on best-effort approaches. In this paper, a number of techniques are taken into account for notifying events in such a kind of systems, and their performance has been evaluated. Besides conventional CAN, a recent proposal for extending this protocol, termed CAN XR, is considered. Moreover, the adoption of Bloom filters to cope with rare events in very large systems has also been evaluated.

Embedded control systems are becoming more and more popular, especially in relatively inexpensive consumer prod- ucts, like home appliances and building automation controllers. As a consequence, there is an ever increasing desire to reduce firmware development time and cost, without hampering relia- bility and performance. In this paper, a low-overhead firmware development framework is proposed, which allows programmers to develop and deploy typical real-time control software faster than using plain C-language programming. At the same time, experimental results confirm the framework’s efficiency and applicability even to low-end microcontrollers.

Fast-paced innovation in the embedded systems domain puts an ever increasing pressure on effective software development methods, leading to the growing popularity of Model-Based Design (MBD). In this context, a proper choice of modeling languages and related tools - depending on design goals and problem qualities - is crucial to make the most of MBD benefits. In this paper, a comparison between two dissimilar approaches to modeling is carried out, with the goal of highlighting their relative advantages and shortcomings. It focuses on a case study involving a well-known distributed agreement protocol, a choice motivated by the fact that embedded systems are nowadays quickly evolving towards distributed, fault-tolerant architectures.

The synthesised collector for cassiterite, ZJ-3, is a 1-hydroxy-2-naphthoy hydroxamic acid similar to the traditional collector 2-hydroxy-3-naphthoy hydroxamic acid (F2O3). Tests of ZJ3 at the Chehe concentration plant in China were carried out and a concentrate grading 18.26% tin at a recovery of 92.68% cassiterite could be achieved after one flotation, two cleaning and one scavenging flotation stage., 11 refs., The synthesised collector for cassiterite, ZJ-3, is a 1-hydroxy-2-naphthoy hydroxamic acid similar to the traditional collector 2-hydroxy-3-naphthoy hydroxamic acid (F2O3). Tests of ZJ3 at the Chehe concentration plant in China were carried out and a concentrate grading 18.26% tin at a recovery of 92.68% cassiterite could be achieved after one flotation, two cleaning and one scavenging flotation stage.

Alternatives to sodium cyanide reagents have been tested for the treatment of ores from the lead-silver-zinc polymetallic Baoshan sulphide deposit in Hunan, China. The inhibitors TJ, ZnSO4, Na2SO3, and Na2S were added to low alkaline pulp to inhibit zinc sulphur minerals and adapted MB, 25 aerofloat and diethyl dithiocarbamate combination collectors were added to float lead minerals. The results showed that for small-scale tests the lead concentrate recovery rate increased to 10%, and the recovery rates of gold and silver in the lead concentrate increased by 7% and 11% respectively. Industrial scale tests gave 7%, 7.62%, and 9.65% increases in the recovery rates of lead and zinc, gold, and silver in the lead concentrate, respectively. After using the system for six months at the plant, it has been found that non-cyanide processing is a stable, cost effective, reliable, and flexible technology., Alternatives to sodium cyanide reagents have been tested for the treatment of ores from the lead-silver-zinc polymetallic Baoshan sulphide deposit in Hunan, China. The inhibitors TJ, ZnSO4, Na2SO3, and Na2S were added to low alkaline pulp to inhibit zinc sulphur minerals and adapted MB, 25 aerofloat and diethyl dithiocarbamate combination collectors were added to float lead minerals. The results showed that for small-scale tests the lead concentrate recovery rate increased to 10%, and the recovery rates of gold and silver in the lead concentrate increased by 7% and 11% respectively. Industrial scale tests gave 7%, 7.62%, and 9.65% increases in the recovery rates of lead and zinc, gold, and silver in the lead concentrate, respectively. After using the system for six months at the plant, it has been found that non-cyanide processing is a stable, cost effective, reliable, and flexible technology.

Asparagus bean (Vigna. unguiculata ssp. sesquipedialis) is a distinctive subspecies of cowpea [Vigna. unguiculata (L.) Walp.] that apparently originated in East Asia and is characterized by extremely long and thin pods and an aggressive climbing growth habit. The crop is widely cultivated throughout Asia for the production of immature pods known as 'long beans' or 'asparagus beans'. While the genome of cowpea ssp. unguiculata has been characterized recently by high-density genetic mapping and partial sequencing, little is known about the genome of asparagus bean. We report here the first genetic map of asparagus bean based on SNP and SSR markers. The current map consists of 375 loci mapped onto 11 linkage groups (LGs), with 191 loci detected by SNP markers and 184 loci by SSR markers. The overall map length is 745 cM, with an average marker distance of 1.98 cM. There are four high marker-density blocks distributed on three LGs and three regions of segregation distortion (SDRs) identified on two other LGs, two of which co-locate in chromosomal regions syntenic to SDRs in soybean. Synteny between asparagus bean and the model legume Lotus. japonica was also established. This work provides the basis for mapping and functional analysis of genes/QTLs of particular interest in asparagus bean, as well as for comparative genomics study of cowpea at the subspecies level.

Asparagus bean (Vigna. unguiculata ssp. sesquipedialis) is a distinctive subspecies of cowpea [Vigna. unguiculata (L.) Walp.] that apparently originated in East Asia and is characterized by extremely long and thin pods and an aggressive climbing growth habit. The crop is widely cultivated throughout Asia for the production of immature pods known as 'long beans' or 'asparagus beans'. While the genome of cowpea ssp. unguiculata has been characterized recently by high-density genetic mapping and partial sequencing, little is known about the genome of asparagus bean. We report here the first genetic map of asparagus bean based on SNP and SSR markers. The current map consists of 375 loci mapped onto 11 linkage groups (LGs), with 191 loci detected by SNP markers and 184 loci by SSR markers. The overall map length is 745 cM, with an average marker distance of 1.98 cM. There are four high marker-density blocks distributed on three LGs and three regions of segregation distortion (SDRs) identified on two other LGs, two of which co-locate in chromosomal regions syntenic to SDRs in soybean. Synteny between asparagus bean and the model legume Lotus. japonica was also established. This work provides the basis for mapping and functional analysis of genes/QTLs of particular interest in asparagus bean, as well as for comparative genomics study of cowpea at the subspecies level.

This study investigates FDI versus export decisions under oligopoly in the trade liberalization, and examines how trade liberalization affects welfares in the Hotelling model of differentiated Bertrand duopoly. It uses a four-firm two-country Cournot oligopoly model to resolve the conflict between the theory, which predicts that a reduction in trade costs discourages FDI, and the empirical evidence, which is that trade liberalisation has led to an increase in FDI, and shows that both FDI and exporting can co-exist in the same market, in line with recent trends. In the static game, a reduction in trade costs causes a decrease in FDI, and the outcomes are often a prisoners’ dilemma where the firms are worse off when they all undertake FDI than when all firms from both markets choose to export. To avoid it, firms can tacitly collude over their FDI versus export decisions when the game is infinitely-repeated. Then a reduction in trade costs may lead firms to switch from exporting to undertaking FDI when trade costs are sufficiently high. The robustness of the analysis is checked by using the constant elasticity demand function. A two-country Hotelling model of spartial duopoly is developed to consider the welfare effects of trade liberalisation. It is shown that gains from trade occur when products are highly differentiated, and losses from trade occur when products are close substitutes, as the positive effect of more product choices overweighs the negative effect of the decreased home sales caused by trade liberalization when products are highly differentiated. This contrasts to Fujiwara (2009) who prove that there are always losses from trade in the Hotelling model. The reason behind is that the kinked demand market structure is often ignored, and by considering the full features of the Hotelling model, welfare effects depend on product differentiation and trade costs.

This study investigates FDI versus export decisions under oligopoly in the trade liberalization, and examines how trade liberalization affects welfares in the Hotelling model of differentiated Bertrand duopoly. It uses a four-firm two-country Cournot oligopoly model to resolve the conflict between the theory, which predicts that a reduction in trade costs discourages FDI, and the empirical evidence, which is that trade liberalisation has led to an increase in FDI, and shows that both FDI and exporting can co-exist in the same market, in line with recent trends. In the static game, a reduction in trade costs causes a decrease in FDI, and the outcomes are often a prisoners’ dilemma where the firms are worse off when they all undertake FDI than when all firms from both markets choose to export. To avoid it, firms can tacitly collude over their FDI versus export decisions when the game is infinitely-repeated. Then a reduction in trade costs may lead firms to switch from exporting to undertaking FDI when trade costs are sufficiently high. The robustness of the analysis is checked by using the constant elasticity demand function. A two-country Hotelling model of spartial duopoly is developed to consider the welfare effects of trade liberalisation. It is shown that gains from trade occur when products are highly differentiated, and losses from trade occur when products are close substitutes, as the positive effect of more product choices overweighs the negative effect of the decreased home sales caused by trade liberalization when products are highly differentiated. This contrasts to Fujiwara (2009) who prove that there are always losses from trade in the Hotelling model. The reason behind is that the kinked demand market structure is often ignored, and by considering the full features of the Hotelling model, welfare effects depend on product differentiation and trade costs.