EpimiRBase was established in 2015 in order to provide complete and up-to-date information on all publications relating to microRNA and epilepsy. The fully-searchable database includes information on up- and down-regulated microRNAs in the brain and blood, as well as functional studies, and covers both experimental models and human epilepsy. We hope you find this a useful resource for your research.

Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders, affecting approximately 65 million people worldwide. It is characterized by recurring seizures; abnormal, synchronous firing of groups of neurons within the brain that disrupt sensory, motor and other brain functions. Although anti-epileptic drugs help control seizures for a majority of patients, about 1 in 3 patients are drug-resistant and there is no cure for epilepsy. Analysis of brain tissue from patients and experimental models suggests there are large-scale changes in gene expression within affected brain regions. Understanding what controls gene expression may open new avenues for treatment or prevention of epilepsy.

MicroRNAs are short non-coding RNAs which function to fine-tune protein levels in all cells. They achieve this mainly by sequence-specific binding to 3’untranslated regions of target mRNA. The result is post-transcriptional interference in gene expression which reduces protein levels either by promoting destabilisation of mRNA or translational repression. Research published since 2010 shows that microRNAs are important regulators of gene expression in epilepsy, altering levels of proteins that control cell death, inflammation, re-wiring of neuronal networks and other cell functions. MicroRNAs have also been identified in the blood after injury to the brain which may serve as biomarkers of epilepsy.

Visit EpimirBase today and please let me know if if you find it useful or have questions.

The Fourth Irish Supercomputer List was released this week. This is the first time in the history of the list that there has been no change since the last update. There are several proposed installations that we are anticipating late in 2015 and early in 2016. In the meantime we will be updating some statistics which will be available at www.IrishSupercomputerList.org soon.

There has been a lot happening with the only four known national / regional supercomputer lists lately. Here is a brief on each of the four countries and at the bottom, links to all.

China

Until now the Chinese list has been difficult to find, easier at some times, and at other times it seems to disappear completely. Additionally, attempts to translate it into English with Google translate yielded moderate results at best. However the China list has just been released in an English language version through the Top500 – not hard to find any more! Hopefully this will be a regular happening. See here for more info.

India

India has just announced a $730 million program to bolster its standing as a supercomputing power, which currently isn’t what it used to be. See here for more info.

Commonwealth of Independent States

The Commonwealth of Independent States (a regional organisation whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics, including the Russian Federation) have had a top 50 supercomputer list since 2004, however I have only recently been made aware of this nice explanation. Their list (below) translates well with Google translate.

Ireland

Back on the Emerald Isle, things have cooled off with list #3 in November 2014, compared to the explosive growth seen between list #1 in November 2013 and list #2 in June 2014. This year, due to ISC 2015 being in July instead of June, the Top500 (and therefore the Irish Supercomputer List which always lags the Top500 by a week) will be released in July.

The Lists:

• Ireland
  • List: http://www.IrishSupercomputerList.org
• Commonwealth of Independent States
  • Explanation: http://hpc.msu.ru/?q=node/49
  • List: http://top50.supercomputers.ru/?page=rating
• India
  • List: http://topsupercomputers-india.iisc.ernet.in/
• China
  • Announcement and List: http://top500.org/blog/chinas-2014-hpc-top100-list-in-english/

The third Irish Supercomputer List was released today, and for the first time we have entrants from Northern Ireland. Queen’s University Belfast has two machines on the list, at positions 13 and 23. University College Dublin also has two new machines including the new Earth Institure’s Gaia at number 15 and the School of Mathematical Science’s Orr2 at position 19. UCD’s Sonic, now on its third recent upgrade and adding almost one TFlop/s of performance remains at position 18.

The combined number of CPU cores over all machines on the current list is over 75,000. The list also shows that Ireland is following a global trend of harnessing coprocessor technologies for HPC. 25% of the machines on the list make use of coprocessors, with a combined total of over 106,000 coprocessor cores. The combined performance of all machines is 648 Tflops/s.

The full list is here.

The June 2014 Irish Supercomputer List was released on June 30, increasing the number of installations by over 50%. That’s 8 new machines in 6 months!

Some quick facts about the machines currently on the list:

• Total CPU cores: almost 70,000
• Total Accelerator cores: over 100,000
• Total RAM (15 reporting): 73TB
• Total Storage (10 reporting): 1172TB
• Most machines (6/23): Trinity College Dublin
• Top Vendor: Dell 29% (6/21 reporting)
• Most popular chip: Intel (20/23)
• Number of machines per sector: Academia(12), Industry(7), Other(4)
• Total performance: 676TFlop
• Average performance: 30TFlop