University of Luxembourg

About: University of Luxembourg is a education organization based out in Luxembourg, Luxembourg. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & European union. The organization has 4744 authors who have published 22175 publications receiving 381824 citations.

Decentralized Traffic Aware Scheduling in 6TiSCH Networks: Design and Experimental Evaluation

Abstract: This paper capitalizes on two emerging trends, i.e., the growing use of wireless at the edge of industrial control networks and the growing interest to integrate IP into said networks. This is facilitated by recent design contributions from the IEEE and the IETF, where the former developed a highly efficient deterministic time–frequency scheduled medium access control protocol in the form of IEEE 802.15.4e timeslotted channel hopping (TSCH) and the latter IPv6 networking paradigms in the form of 6LoWPAN/ROLL, and scheduling approaches in the form of 6TiSCH. The focus of the present work is on advancing the state-of-the-art of deterministic 6TiSCH schedules toward more flexible but equally reliable distributed approaches. In addition, this paper aims to introduce the first implementation of 6TiSCH networks for factory automation environments: it outlines the challenges faced to overcome the scalability issues inherent to multihop dense low-power networks; the experimental results confirm that the naturally unreliable radio medium can support time-critical and reliable applications. These developments pave the way for wireless industry-grade monitoring approaches.

Independent and joint effects of the MAPT and SNCA genes in Parkinson disease.

Abstract: Objective: We studied the independent and joint effects of the genes encoding alpha-synuclein (SNCA) and microtubule-associated protein tau (MAPT) in Parkinson disease (PD) as part of a large meta-analysis of individual data from case-control studies participating in the Genetic Epidemiology of Parkinson's Disease (GEO-PD) consortium. Methods: Participants of Caucasian ancestry were genotyped for a total of 4 SNCA (rs2583988, rs181489, rs356219, rs11931074) and 2 MAPT (rs1052553, rs242557) single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs). Individual and joint effects of SNCA and MAPT SNPs were investigated using fixed- and random-effects logistic regression models. Interactions were studied on both a multiplicative and an additive scale, and using a case-control and case-only approach. Results: Fifteen GEO-PD sites contributed a total of 5,302 cases and 4,161 controls. All 4 SNCA SNPs and the MAPT H1-haplotype-defining SNP (rs1052553) displayed a highly significant marginal association with PD at the significance level adjusted for multiple comparisons. For SNCA, the strongest associations were observed for SNPs located at the 30 end of the gene. There was no evidence of statistical interaction between any of the 4 SNCA SNPs and rs1052553 or rs242557, neither on the multiplicative nor on the additive scale. Interpretation: This study confirms the association between PD and both SNCA SNPs and the H1 MAPT haplotype. It shows, based on a variety of approaches, that the joint action of variants in these 2 loci is consistent with independent effects of the genes without additional interacting effects. ANN NEUROL 2011; 69: 778-792

Attack Trees with Sequential Conjunction

Abstract: We provide the first formal foundation of SAND attack trees which are a popular extension of the well-known attack trees. The SAND attack tree formalism increases the expressivity of attack trees by introducing the sequential conjunctive operator \({\mathtt {SAND}}\). This operator enables the modeling of ordered events.

Anoxic conditions promote species-specific mutualism between gut microbes in silico

Abstract: The human gut is inhabited by thousands of microbial species, most of which are still uncharacterized. Gut microbes have adapted to each other's presence as well as to the host and engage in complex cross feeding. Constraint-based modeling has been successfully applied to predicting microbe-microbe interactions, such as commensalism, mutualism, and competition. Here, we apply a constraint-based approach to model pairwise interactions between 11 representative gut microbes. Microbe-microbe interactions were computationally modeled in conjunction with human small intestinal enterocytes, and the microbe pairs were subjected to three diets with various levels of carbohydrate, fat, and protein in normoxic or anoxic environments. Each microbe engaged in species-specific commensal, parasitic, mutualistic, or competitive interactions. For instance, Streptococcus thermophilus efficiently outcompeted microbes with which it was paired, in agreement with the domination of streptococci in the small intestinal microbiota. Under anoxic conditions, the probiotic organism Lactobacillus plantarum displayed mutualistic behavior toward six other species, which, surprisingly, were almost entirely abolished under normoxic conditions. This finding suggests that the anoxic conditions in the large intestine drive mutualistic cross feeding, leading to the evolvement of an ecosystem more complex than that of the small intestinal microbiota. Moreover, we predict that the presence of the small intestinal enterocyte induces competition over host-derived nutrients. The presented framework can readily be expanded to a larger gut microbial community. This modeling approach will be of great value for subsequent studies aiming to predict conditions favoring desirable microbes or suppressing pathogens.