17523247
Artificial Innate Immune System: An Instant Defence Layer of Embryonics
Will mankind ever be able to construct the elusive ‘perpetuum mobile’? We are still far from being able to design systems with a guaranteed finite lifetime, let alone those that we can confidently expect to function unaided in the presence of faults. For example, the Beagle II Mars mission just failed due to malfunction and, worse, the Columbia Space Shuttle suffered the same fate with the loss of many lives. In this context, it is unsurprising that fault tolerance is an increasing emphasis of research into reliable systems. Perhaps if we learn from nature we could design systems, which are tolerant against faults and are able to function properly. Through millions of years of evolution, living things have developed such characteristics. They are cell-based systems that possess an immune system providing an unparalleled defence against faults caused by foreign invaders. It therefore seems intuitive that a generic fault-tolerant hardware system that is inspired by biology should therefore be cell-based and possess some of the immune defence characteristics found in nature. This paper extends the current work on Embryonics (embryological electronics) at the University of the West of England. It combines internal self-healing characteristics of embryonic cellular array based systems with an instant defence layer, inspired by nature’s innate immune system.
2824619
Partial-DNA Supported Artificial-Life in an Embryonic Array
13463425
Ontogenetic Cellular Hardware for Fault Tolerant Systems
39634221
Repair of the Genetic Material in Biologically Inspired Embryonic-Cell-Based Systems
7674451
A Reconfigurable Self-Healing Embryonic Cell Architecture
The long-term goal of our work described in this paper is the development of a biologically-inspired cellular fault-tolerant hardware system. The basic structure of the system is a multi-cellular embryonic array that is capable of achieving self-diagnostics, self-repair and fault recovery. The ‘nucleolus’ of the cell is a general purpose function unit comprised of a 2-to-1 multiplexer and a Dtype flip-flop. Input and configuration data to the function unit are provided by the DNA segment memory and I/O router. A diagnostic logic monitors the error free operation of the cell. When an error is detected the diagnostic logic requests the reconfiguration unit to kill the cell, transferring its function to a fault-free neighbouring cell. Once permission is granted, the faulty cell is eliminated and becomes transparent. The functionality of each cell will shift in the array until a spare cell is found. Finally the whole embryonic array recovers. Fault-free operation is then continued.
31532026
Bio-Inspired Reconfigurable Architecture for Reliable Systems
7696399
Noninvasive Three-Dimensional Cardiac Activation Imaging From Body Surface Potential Maps: A Computational and Experimental Study on a Rabbit Model
Three-dimensional (3-D) cardiac activation imaging (3-DCAI) is a recently developed technique that aims at imaging the activation sequence throughout the the ventricular myocardium. 3-DCAI entails the modeling and estimation of the cardiac equivalent current density (ECD) distribution from which the activation time at any myocardial site is determined as the time point with the peak amplitude of local ECD estimates. In this paper, we report, for the first time, an in vivo validation study assessing the feasibility of 3-DCAI in comparison with the 3-D intracardiac mapping, for a group of four healthy rabbits undergoing the ventricular pacing from various locations. During the experiments, the body surface potentials and the intramural bipolar electrical recordings were simultaneously measured in a closed-chest condition. The ventricular activation sequence noninvasively imaged from the body surface measurements by using 3-DCAI was generally in agreement with that obtained from the invasive intramural recordings. The quantitative comparison between them showed a root mean square (rms) error of 7.42 plusmn0.61 ms, a relative error (RE) of 0.24 plusmn0.03, and a localization error (LE) of 5.47 plusmn1.57 mm. The experimental results were also consistent with our computer simulations conducted in well-controlled and realistic conditions. The present study suggest that 3-DCAI can noninvasively capture some important features of ventricular excitation (e.g., the activation origin and the activation sequence), and has the potential of becoming a useful imaging tool aiding cardiovascular research and clinical diagnosis of cardiac diseases.
138777116
An approximate model of residual stress in injected molded parts
15017124
Fault modelling and co-simulation in flowFET-based biological array systems
The area of microelectronic fluidic arrays is rapidly developing into many different commercial products, one being biological arrays. As a consequence, efficient and reliable design and testing of these systems becomes of crucial importance. This paper shows some of the latest results obtained with regard to the flowFET fluidic transfer device, its fault-free and fault modelling, and the co-simulation of a microelectronic fluidic array for life sciences.
39876273
A Dependable Micro-Electronic Peptide Synthesizer Using Electrode Data
The research in the area of microelectronic fluidic devices for biomedical applications is rapidly growing. As faults in these devices can have serious personal implications, a system is presented which includes fault tolerance with respect to the synthesized biomaterials (peptides). It can employ presence and purity detection of peptide droplets via current (charge) tests of control electrodes or impedance (phase) measurements using direct sensing electrodes near the peptide collector area. The commercial multielectrode array performs better in pure and impure detection of peptides in impedance and phase. Our two-electrode X-MEF case shows slightly poorer results. In both cases the phase is the best choice for contents detection. If there are presence or purity problems, the location is marked, and repeated peptide synthesis at another collector site is initiated.
1306264
ORegAnno: an open access database and curation system for literature-derived promoters, transcription factor binding sites and regulatory variation
MOTIVATION
Our understanding of gene regulation is currently limited by our ability to collectively synthesize and catalogue transcriptional regulatory elements stored in scientific literature. Over the past decade, this task has become increasingly challenging as the accrual of biologically validated regulatory sequences has accelerated. To meet this challenge, novel community-based approaches to regulatory element annotation are required.


SUMMARY
Here, we present the Open Regulatory Annotation (ORegAnno) database as a dynamic collection of literature-curated regulatory regions, transcription factor binding sites and regulatory mutations (polymorphisms and haplotypes). ORegAnno has been designed to manage the submission, indexing and validation of new annotations from users worldwide. Submissions to ORegAnno are immediately cross-referenced to EnsEMBL, dbSNP, Entrez Gene, the NCBI Taxonomy database and PubMed, where appropriate.


AVAILABILITY
ORegAnno is available directly through MySQL, Web services, and online at http://www.oreganno.org. All software is licensed under the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL).