PD (L) 1-Inhibitors and Radiation: A Good Combination for Local and Systemic Effects?

Radiation therapy is an important component in treatment of solid tumours, in a locally advanced situation and also in a metastatic situation. Indications for using PD- (L) -1 inhibitors increase especially in the metastatic situation, but also in locally advanced solid tumours. Preclinical data show local and systemically effective synergies between local irradiation and an application of checkpoint inhibitors. In the metastatic situation, a possible abscopal effect is of particular interest. This abscopal effect can be achieved especially in concurrent approaches of PD-(L)-1-inhibitors and stereotactic radiation with higher single doses like 3 x 8 Gy or 4 x 12,5 Gy. In locally advanced tumours a local enhancement of the radiation effect, and also an abscopal effect to eliminate potential micrometastases to is of great interest to achieve healing. In this treatment situation promising results are seen in the application of PD-(L)-1-inhibitors as maintenance after concurrent chemoradiation especially in non-small cell lung cancer, as well as in concurrent applications of conventionally fractionated radiotherapy and PD-(L)-1 inhibitors. These approaches and results are considered from the clinician’s point of view.

Improving GPU Performance with a Power-Aware Streaming Multiprocessor Allocation Methodology

Graphics processing units (GPUs) are extensively used as accelerators across multiple application domains, ranging from general purpose applications to neural networks, and cryptocurrency mining. The initial utilization paradigm for GPUs was one application accessing all the resources of the GPU. In recent years, time sharing is broadly used among applications of a GPU, nevertheless, spatial sharing is not fully explored. When concurrent applications share the computational resources of a GPU, performance can be improved by eliminating idle resources. Additionally, the incorporation of GPUs in embedded and mobile devices increases the demand for power efficient computation due to battery limitations. In this article, we present an allocation methodology for streaming multiprocessors (SMs). The presented methodology works for two concurrent applications on a GPU and determines an allocation scheme that will provide power efficient application execution, combined with improved GPU performance. Experimental results show that the developed methodology yields higher throughput while achieving improved power efficiency, compared to other SM power-aware and performance-aware policies. If the presented methodology is adopted, it will lead to higher performance of applications that are concurrently executing on a GPU. This will lead to a faster and more efficient acceleration of execution, even for devices with restrained energy sources.

Adaptive Hierarchical Scheduling Framework for TiRTOS

The complexity of embedded real-time systems has increased, and most applications have large diversity in execution times of their tasks. Therefore, most traditional scheduling techniques do not satisfy requirements of such applications. This article proposes an adaptive hierarchical scheduling framework for a set of independent concurrent applications composing of soft and hard real time tasks, that run on a single processor. It ensures temporal partitioning between independent applications with budget adaption feature, where CPU time of each application is periodically and dynamically assigned. Implemented in the kernel of TI-RTOS on a resource constrained platform, experiments show that proposed scheme provides good performance for multiple applications with dynamic tasks under overload conditions. Compared with traditional priority scheduler originally implemented in TI-RTOS and EDF scheduler, it achieves low miss ratio with minimal overhead while yielding temporal partitioning.

Improving biological control of stalk borers in sugarcane by applying silicon as a soil amendment

The sugarcane stalk borers, Sesamia spp. (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) are the most destructive sugarcane insect pests in Iran. The efficiency of Telenomus busseolae Gahan (Hymenoptera: Scelionidae) used alone or in combination with silicon fertilization was investigated for controlling the sugarcane stalk borers under field conditions. The treatments were: a combination of silicon plus multiple releases of 2,500 T. busseolae, and multiple releases of 5,000, 2,500 and 1,250 T. busseolae alone. Plots receiving no soil amendment or parasites were included as the controls. Three weeks after the first application of each treatment, 100 shoots were selected randomly from each plot and the percentage of dead heart was determined. Then, three months after the first application of parasites, the percentage of stalks damaged, the percentage of internodes bored, and the level of parasitism were determined. Finally, at harvest the percentage of stalks damaged, the percentage of internodes bored, and sugarcane quality characteristics were determined. Results indicated that the efficiency of parasitism increased when combined with an application of silicon fertilizer. The release of 2,500 T. busseolae followed by an application of silicon fertilizer decreased dead hearts to 4%, while 12% dead hearts was observed in the control plots. For the combination treatment, the percentages of stalk damage were 1.5% and 17.2%, at 3 weeks and 3 months after time release, respectively. However, the percentages of stalk damage were 35.2% and 51% when no treatment was applied. Cane quality was significantly higher with the application of silicon fertilizer plus the release of 2,500 T. busseolae, followed by releasing 5,000 Hymenoptera. The level of parasitism was also greater when parasites were released in combination with an application of silicon. We conclude that biological control by egg parasitoids can be enhanced with concurrent applications of silicon fertilizer as a soil amendment and thereby creating a more robust, Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program of stalk borers in Iranian sugarcane fields.

A Path Construction Algorithm for Translation Validation Using PRES+ Models

Multi-core and multi-processor architectures have predominated the domain of embedded systems permitting easy mapping of concurrent applications to such architectures. The programs, in general, are subjected to significant optimizing and parallelizing transformations, automated and also human guided, before being mapped to an architecture. Modelling parallel behaviour and formally verifying that their functionality is preserved during synthesis are challenging tasks. Untimed PRES+ models are found to be suitable for the specification of parallel behaviour. Path cover oriented equivalence checking methods have been found to be quite effective for sequential behaviour. Path construction for parallel behaviour, however, is significantly more complex than that for sequential behaviour due to all possible interleavings of the parallel operations. Identification of the path covers depends upon choosing appropriate cut-points. In this paper, the need for introducing cut-points dynamically has been underlined and a mechanism to achieve this task is proposed. Details on how to construct a path cover using dynamic cut-points is presented.