Assessment of a Flexible Architecture for Distributed Control*

Production pipelines of manufactory industries present several machines and robots in which the movements of interpolated axes are managed by computerized numerical controls (CNCs). These are typically synchronized with several other simpler actuators along the pipeline of production. CNCs have to be flexible, easily expandable, and reusable, when pipelines of production are frequently reconfigured to realize different arranged pipelines with different technical requirements. In this paper, the assessment of a flexible CNC for such reconfigurable pipelines is presented. The analysis has been focused on defining objective metrics that can be applied for assessing performance and feasibility of distributed controls for pipelines. The method proposed has been applied on the distributed control architecture defined in the MUPAAC ESPRIT HPCN (Multi Processor Architecture for Automatic Control, High Performance Computer Networking of the European Commission). MUPAAC architecture and prototype has been assessed in order to identify the critical configurations and the limits of the architecture.     

Simple baseband synchronisation scheme for tamed frequencymodulation

A novel carrier and clock synchronisation scheme for tamed frequency modulation is presented. It requires one complex sample per bit, like the digital Costas loop for offset in-phase and quadrature modulations, and is based on processing baseband samples of the phase of the received signal. The performance of the synchroniser is assessed by S-curves and simulated acquisition trajectories     

Oxidation of unsaturated fatty acids with ruthenium and osmium tetroxide

The oxidation of the alkali metal salts of oleic and undecylenic acid with ruthenium and osmium tetroxides is reported. The oxidants are used in catalytic amounts in conjunction with an excess of the in-expensive cooxidant sodium hypochlorite. Ruthenium tetroxide cleaves the carbon-carbon double bond of potassium oleate, to give pelargonic and gives sebacic acid. With osmium tetroxide, hydroxylation of the double bond of potassium oleate gives a 95% yield oferythro-9,10-dihydroxystearic acid. The osmium tetroxide oxidation of sodium undecylenate results in the formation of 10,11-dihydroxyundecanoic acid and the cleavage product sebacic acid in varying yields.     

The PINK1 p.Asn521Thr Variant Is Associated with Earlier Disease Onset in GRN/C9orf72 Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration

Genetic frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) is characterized by heterogeneous phenotypic expression, with a disease onset highly variable even in patients carrying the same mutation. Herein we investigated if variants in lysosomal genes modulate the age of onset both in FTLD due to GRN null mutations and C9orf72 expansion. In a total of 127 subjects (n = 74 GRN mutations and n = 53 C9orf72 expansion carriers), we performed targeted sequencing of the top 98 genes belonging to the lysosomal pathway, selected based on their high expression in multiple brain regions. We described an earlier disease onset in GRN/C9orf72 pedigrees in subjects carrying the p.Asn521Thr variant (rs1043424) in PTEN-induced kinase 1 (PINK1), a gene that is already known to be involved in neurodegenerative diseases. We found that: (i) the PINK1 rs1043424 C allele is significantly associated with the age of onset; (ii) every risk C allele increases hazard by 2.11%; (iii) the estimated median age of onset in homozygous risk allele carriers is 10–12 years earlier than heterozygous/wild type homozygous subjects. A replication study in GRN/C9orf72 negative FTLD patients confirmed that the rs1043424 C allele was associated with earlier disease onset (−5.5 years in CC versus A carriers). Understanding the potential mechanisms behind the observed modulating effect of the PINK1 gene in FTLD might prove critical for identifying biomarkers and/or designing drugs to modify the age of onset, especially in GRN/C9orf72-driven disease.     

Deep Resequencing of 9 Candidate Genes Identifies a Role for ARAP1 and IGF2BP2 in Modulating Insulin Secretion Adjusted for Insulin Resistance in Obese Southern Europeans

Type 2 diabetes is characterized by impairment in insulin secretion, with an established genetic contribution. We aimed to evaluate common and low-frequency (1–5%) variants in nine genes strongly associated with insulin secretion by targeted sequencing in subjects selected from the extremes of insulin release measured by the disposition index. Collapsing data by gene and/or function, the association between disposition index and nonsense variants were significant, also after adjustment for confounding factors (OR = 0.25, 95% CI = 0.11–0.59, p = 0.001). Evaluating variants individually, three novel variants in ARAP1, IGF2BP2 and GCK, out of eight reaching significance singularly, remained associated after adjustment. Constructing a genetic risk model combining the effects of the three variants, only carriers of the ARAP1 and IGF2BP2 variants were significantly associated with a reduced probability to be in the lower, worst, extreme of insulin secretion (OR = 0.223, 95% CI = 0.105–0.473, p < 0.001). Observing a high number of normal glucose tolerance between carriers, a regression posthoc analysis was performed. Carriers of genetic risk model variants had higher probability to be normoglycemic, also after adjustment (OR = 2.411, 95% CI = 1.136–5.116, p = 0.022). Thus, in our southern European cohort, nonsense variants in all nine candidate genes showed association with better insulin secretion adjusted for insulin resistance, and we established the role of ARAP1 and IGF2BP2 in modulating insulin secretion.     

Refinements and asymptotic performance of bandwidth-efficient turbo product codes

In this letter, a turbo product code (TPC) is combined with multilevel modulations (8-phase-shift keying and 16-quadrature amplitude modulation). The component codes are Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquengem (BCH) or extended BCH. We derive soft-input/soft-output modules based on the dual code, with exact Euclidean metrics, and we show that the iterative TPC decoder gains no advantage in performance from this. Next, we evaluate asymptotic approximations for maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding from a combinatorial approach that can be applied to any bit-interleaved multilevel modulated code, once the first term (or terms) of the Hamming weight spectrum are known. For the TPCs and modulations studied in this letter, random bit interleaving before modulation leads to improved ML asymptotes. Simulations confirm that this advantage is maintained also under iterative decoding.