Microprocessor design has recently encountered many constraints such as power, energy, reliability, and temperature. Among these challenging issues, temperature-related issues have become especially important within the past several years. We summarize recent thermal management techniques for microprocessors, focusing on those that affect or rely on the microarchitecture. We categorize thermal management techniques into six main categories: temperature monitoring, microarchitectural techniques, floorplanning, OS/compiler techniques, liquid cooling techniques, and thermal reliability/security. Temperature monitoring, a requirement for Dynamic Thermal Management (DTM), includes temperature estimation and sensor placement techniques for accurate temperature measurement or estimation. Microarchitectural techniques include both static and dynamic thermal management techniques that control hardware structures. Floorplanning covers a range of thermal-aware floorplanning techniques for 2D and 3D microprocessors. OS/compiler techniques include thermal-aware task scheduling and instruction scheduling techniques. Liquid cooling techniques are higher-capacity alternatives to conventional air cooling techniques. Thermal reliability/security issues cover temperature-dependent reliability modeling, Dynamic Reliability Management (DRM), and malicious codes that specifically cause overheating. Temperature-related issues will only become more challenging as process technology continues to evolve and transistor densities scale up faster than power per transistor scales down. The overall objective of this survey is to give microprocessor designers a broad perspective on various aspects of designing thermal-aware microprocessors and to guide future thermal management studies.

Dysphagia occurs in the majority of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and is known to correlate with abnormalities of oropharyngeal function. The aim of this study was to evaluate pharyngoesophageal activity in patients with early-stage PD. Newly diagnosed PD patients with a symptom duration not exceeding 3 years were included. All PD patients were questioned about symptoms of dysphagia and underwent combined multichannel intraluminal impedance manometry and multiple rapid swallow tests. Fifty-four patients (22 men and 32 women, 67.1 ± 10.3 years) were enrolled. The duration of Parkinsonian motor symptoms was 11.5 ± 8.8 months, the Hoehn and Yahr stage was 1.6 ± 0.4, and the total Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale was 25.1 ± 18.6. Esophageal manometry in the liquid swallow and viscous swallow tests was abnormal in 22 (40.7%) and 31 (67.4%) patients, respectively. Although manometric abnormalities were more common in patients with more severe dysphagia symptoms, many patients with no or minimal symptoms also had manometric abnormalities. Repetitive deglutition significantly correlated with failed peristalsis and incomplete bolus transit. Abnormal responses to multiple rapid swallow tests were found in 33 out of 54 patients; 29 with incomplete inhibition (repetitive contraction) and 4 with failed peristalsis. These results suggest that the majority of patients with early-stage PD showed pharyngeal and esophageal dysfunction even before clinical manifestations of dysphagia, which may reflect selective involvement of either the brain stem or the esophageal myenteric plexus in early-stage PD.

Background: High-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) is a sensitive systemic marker of inflammation, and increased levels of hs-CRP are associated with inflammatory reactions. Microglia-mediated neuroinflammation has been hypothesized to play an important role in the pathogenesis of idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, the clinical value of hs-CRP in PD is poorly defined. Therefore, we conducted this study to investigate the clinical value of hs-CRP in patients with PD. Methods: We examined 212 patients with de novo PD, 253 patients with acute ischemic cerebrovascular disease and 119 healthy subjects and investigated the differences in hs-CRP among these 3 groups. The PD group was classified into 4 subgroups according to the Hoehn and Yahr stage to investigate the relationship between hs-CRP and symptom severity. Results: There was no significant difference in the hs-CRP value between the PD and the ischemic cerebrovascular disease groups, but the subjects in the 2 disease groups demonstrated higher hs-CRP levels than those in the normal control group. A post-hoc analysis of the 4 PD subgroups showed no significant differences in hs-CRP values. In addition, this study demonstrated that the odds ratio of the PD group by hs-CRP was 2.037 (95% CI 1.180–3.517; p = 0.011). Conclusion: We suggest that our results could support the hypothesis that neuroinflammation contributed to the pathogenesis of PD and cautiously assume that elevated hs-CRP might have a clinical value as a risk factor for PD.

The results of this study suggest that color vision abnormalities may be one of the non-motor clinical characteristics of PD-related dysfunction in contrast to ET. In addition, the severity of axial motor symptoms was closely related to visual dysfunction. Confirmation of these findings as well as the mechanisms underlying these results requires further study.

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