Filetype
Due to the intrinsic uncertainty and variability affecting biochemical reaction networks, it is fundamental to assess their structural stability, i.e., to establish if all the networks having a given structure are stable independent of specific parameter values. For basic motifs in biochemical networks, we show that stability cannot be structurally proved by quadratic Lyapunov functions. However,
We propose a negative feedback architecture that regulates activity of artificial genes, or "genelets", to meet their output downstream demand, achieving robustness with respect to uncertain open-loop output production rates. In particular, we consider the case where the outputs of two genelets interact to form a single assembled product. We show with analysis and experiments that negative autoreg
Molecular systems are uncertain: The variability of reaction parameters and the presence of unknown interactions can weaken the predictive capacity of solid mathematical models. However, strong conclusions on the admissible dynamic behaviors of a model can often be achieved without detailed knowledge of its specific parameters. In systems with a sign-definite Jacobian, for instance, cycle-based cr
We consider a traffic control problem defined on a network graph, whose nodes represent buffers and whose arcs represent flow channels. We consider network models with a peculiar aspect: each element of the flow arriving at each node must be redirected towards a precise other node of the network, hence each buffer is naturally split in several queues, characterized according to statistics about th
We consider the problem of assessing structural stability of biochemical reaction networks with monotone reaction rates, namely of establishing if all the networks with a certain structure are stable regardless of specific parameter values. We investigate stability by absorbing the network equations in a linear differential inclusion and seeking for a polyhedral Lyapunov function proper to the con
This paper focuses on the regulation of RNA production for in vitro synthetic gene networks. We consider the problem of matching the production rate of several RNA species concurrently transcribed to form RNA complexes. We design regulatory feedback loops based on two schemes: negative auto-regulation (which can minimize the potentially harmful amount of molecules not used to form products) and cr
In this paper we consider a set of dynamically decoupled systems interconnected by control agents. We can visualize this architecture as a graph where subsystems are associated to nodes and control agents are associated to arcs. The interconnection between subsystems is determined by their input matrix. The decisions of each control agent can directly affect only the nodes connected by the corresp
Closed-loop positivity of feedback interconnections of positive monotone nonlinear systems is investigated. It is shown that an instantaneous gain condition on the open-loop systems which implies feedback well-posedness also guarantees feedback positivity. Furthermore, the notion of integral linear constraints (ILC) is utilised as a tool to characterise uncertainty in positive feedback systems. Ro
In this paper, we present two distributed algorithms to compute an equilibrium, that is optimal with respect to strictly convex and separable cost functions, for controlled traffic flow dynamics over networks under constant exogenous inflows. The dynamics is modeled in continuous time by the Cell Transmission Model and a non-FIFO Dynamic Network Loading Model, with traffic control. The two algorit
In operating systems, resource managers are developed according to simplicity, low overhead, low memory footprint, extensibility and efficiency. Thread schedulers are designed and developed following these implementation-related guidelines. The performance of the implementation is then tested over a set of benchmarks. However, the ability to provide real-time guarantees of these policies is rarely
A Keyless Signing Infrastructure (KSI) provides users with a means to timestamp documents on a per-second basis. The KSI consists of a global infrastructure with several server layers and by using Merkle hash trees, the root hash can be used to verify the integrity and timestamp of a document. Regular publication of root hashes, e.g., once per month, allows a document to be verified without suppor
Transfusion-related acute lung injury (TRALI) is a syndrome of respiratory distress triggered by blood transfusions and is the leading cause of transfusion-related mortality. TRALI has primarily been attributed to passive infusion of HLA and/or human neutrophil antigen antibodies present in transfused blood products, and predisposing factors such as inflammation are known to be important for TRALI
Harmonic periods have wide applicability in industrial real-time systems. Rate monotonic (RM) is able to schedule task sets with harmonic periods up to 100% utilization. Also, if there is no release jitter and execution time variation, RM and EDF generate the same schedule for each instance of a task. This property decreases the jitters which happen during sampling and actuation of the tasks, and
1. The amino acid l-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (l-DOPA) was extracted from tentacles of the sea anemone Metridium senile and from brains of the crayfish Pacifastacus leniuscuius.2. The identity of l-DOPA was ascertained by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry as the heptafluorobutyryl iso-butyl ester derivative. Dopa is identified with GC-MS for the first time and the derivatization is a novel mod
The contributions of cortico-cerebellar and cortico-striatal circuits to timing and time perception have often been a point of contention. In this review we propose that the cerebellum principally functions to reduce variability, through the detection of stimulus onsets and the sub-division of longer durations, thus contributing to both sub-second and supra-second timing. This sensitivity of the c
In this paper, we perform an iterative decoding threshold analysis of LDPC block code ensembles formed by terminating (J,K)-regular and irregular AR4JA-based LDPC convolutional codes. These ensembles have minimum distance growing linearly with block length and their thresholds approach the Shannon limit as the termination factor tends to infinity. Results are presented for various ensembles and te
We deal with the important applicative problem of distributed cameras calibration. We model a network of N cameras as an undirected graph in which communicating cameras can measure their relative orientation in a noisy way. These measures can be used in order to minimize a suitable cost function. The shape of this cost function depends on a vector of integers K. We propose two algorithms which in
To manage increasingly complicated 3D city models, a framework based on NoSQL database is proposed in this paper. The framework supports import and export of 3D city model according to international standards such as CityGML, KML/COLLADA and X3D. We also suggest and implement 3D model analysis and visualization in the framework. For city model analysis, 3D geometry data and semantic information (s
Recent advances of body networks enable the acquisition of personal context from various kinds of body sensors. As a result, how to build a platform to properly manage personal context becomes a problem. In order to address this issue, we design and implement a mobile physical space gateway (MPSG) which is a generic context management framework in mobile spaces. This framework includes three layer
