INTAMAP: The design and implementation of an interoperable automated interpolation web service

INTAMAP is a Web Processing Service for the automatic spatial interpolation of measured point data. Requirements were (i) using open standards for spatial data such as developed in the context of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), (ii) using a suitable environment for statistical modelling and computation, and (iii) producing an integrated, open source solution. The system couples an open-source Web Processing Service (developed by 52°North), accepting data in the form of standardised XML documents (conforming to the OGC Observations and Measurements standard) with a computing back-end realised in the R statistical environment. The probability distribution of interpolation errors is encoded with UncertML, a markup language designed to encode uncertain data. Automatic interpolation needs to be useful for a wide range of applications and the algorithms have been designed to cope with anisotropy, extreme values, and data with known error distributions. Besides a fully automatic mode, the system can be used with different levels of user control over the interpolation process.     

Continuous planar phospholipid bilayer supported on porous silicon thin film reflector

Reconstituting artificial membranes for in vitro studies of cell barrier mechanisms and properties is of major interest in biology. Here, artificial membranes supported on porous silicon photonic crystal reflectors are prepared and investigated. The materials are of interest for label-free probing of supported membrane events such as protein binding, molecular recognition, and transport. The porous silicon substrates are prepared as multilayered films consisting of a periodically varying porosity, with pore dimensions of a few nanometers in size. Planar phospholipid bilayers are deposited on the topmost surface of the oxidized hydrophilic mesoporous silicon films. Atomic force microscopy provides evidence of continuous bilayer deposition at the surface, and optical measurements indicate that the lipids do not significantly infiltrate the porous region. The presence of the supported bilayer does not obstruct the optical spectrum from the porous silicon layer, suggesting that the composite structures can act as effective optical biosensors.     

Towards a Possibilistic Logic Handling of Preferences

The classical way of encoding preferences in decision theory is by means of utility or value functions. However agents are not always able to deliver such a function directly. In this paper, we relate three different ways of specifying preferences, namely by means of a set of particular types of constraints on the utility function, by means of an ordered set of prioritized goals expressed by logical propositions, and by means of an ordered set of subsets of possible choices reaching the same level of satisfaction. These different expression modes can be handled in a weighted logical setting, here the one of possibilistic logic. The aggregation of preferences pertaining to different criteria can then be handled by fusing sets of prioritized goals. Apart from a better expressivity, the benefits of a logical representation of preferences are to put them in a suitable format for reasoning purposes, or for modifying them.     

Cytochemical investigation of the digestive gland of two strombidae species (Strombus gigas and Strombus pugilis) in relation to the nutrition

Strombus gigas and Strombus pugilis are threatened species and aquaculture represents a good alternative solution to the fishing. In this study, we highlighted the intracellular digestion process in the digestive gland of two Strombidae species, S. gigas and Strombuspugilis, by the cytochemical characterization of two lysosomal enzymes: acid phosphatase and arylsulfatase. In order to check the efficiency of artificial food digestion, we conducted the characterization on freshly collected, starved and artificially fed individuals of S. pugilis. TEM observations of digestive gland sections from freshly collected individuals of both species revealed the presence of acid phosphatase and arylsulfatase activity mostly located in the apical third of digestive cells. Both enzymes were also detected in artificially fed individuals. In response to the starvation, acid phosphatase is not produced anymore by digestive cells, while arylsulfatase is still present. To our knowledge, this is the first cytochemical validation of intracellular digestion of artificial food in Strombidae. This study highlights the intracellular digestion of artificial food developed for Strombidae aquaculture. Moreover, we have shown that the lysosomal activity could be used as a feed index. Microsc. Res. Tech. 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Logic for improving integrity checking in relational data bases⋆

Summary When an updating operation occurs on the current state of a data base, one has to ensure the new state obeys the integrity constraints. So, some of them have to be evaluated on this new state. The evaluation of an integrity constraint can be time consuming, but one can improve such an evaluation by taking advantage from the fact that the integrity constraint is satisfied in the current state. Indeed, it is then possible to derive a simplified form of this integrity constraint which is sufficient to evaluate in the new state in order to determine whether the initial constraint is still satisfied in this new state. The purpose of this paper is to present a simplification method yielding such simplified forms for integrity constraints. These simplified forms depend on the nature of the updating operation which is the cause of the state change. The operations of inserting, deleting, updating a tuple in a relation as well as transactions of such operations are considered. The proposed method is based on syntactical criteria and is validated through first order logic. Examples are treated and some aspects of the method application are discussed.The work reported in this paper was supported by the D.R.E.T.     

NMR and EPR studies of room temperature highly fluorinated graphite heat-treated under fluorine atmosphere

Semi-ionic carbon fluoride obtained by reaction of graphite with a gaseous mixture of IF₅, HF and F₂ was modified by a post-fluorination at various temperatures in the range 100-680 °C. The resulting materials were studied by ¹⁹F-NMR and EPR both at room temperature and at different experimental temperatures from 200 to 360 K and from 100 to 473 K for NMR and EPR experiments, respectively. ¹⁹F-NMR gives information about the residual intercalated iodine fluoride species (IF₅, IF₆⁻ and IF₇) such as the temperature of their removal from the host fluorocarbon matrix and their mobility into the interlayer space. The nature of the C-F bonding was investigated by ¹⁹F-NMR, MAS/¹³C-NMR, FT-IR spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction. The C-F bonding changes from semi-ionic to a mainly covalent character at a fluorination post-treatment temperature close to 450 °C. This transformation coincides with the removal of the iodine fluoride species from the host structure. The densities of the paramagnetic dangling bonds were studied by EPR; this technique allows also to investigate the local environment of the dangling bonds in the fully fluorinated samples (obtained with fluorination post-treatment temperatures higher than 450 °C). As a matter of fact, an hyperfine structure was observed for these samples; it results from interaction of the dangling bond electron with six neighboring fluorine nuclei. The role of the intercalated species (iodine fluoride compounds and HF) on the mechanisms of the extra-fluorination is also discussed.     

Yielding of Microstructured Geomaterial by Distinct Element Method Analysis

The purpose of this paper is to present macro- and micro-study on the yielding of microstructured geomaterials by numerical experiments. This target is achieved by carrying out 63 one-dimensional and biaxial compressions tests on an idealized bonded geomaterial with an extension of distinct element method, into which bond contact models proposed were implemented. Numerical results indicate that: (a) preconsolidated pressure appears to attribute to bond and looseness in the geomaterials, and an increase in void ratio leads to a decrease in yielding stress in one-dimensional tests; (b) an increase in bonding strength at interparticle contacts results in an increase in yielding stress and cohesion, and an internal friction angle that is smaller than the critical state value; (c) the observed first-yielding (initiation of bond breakage) is stress path dependent, and gross-yield (defined with respect to volumetric strain) of microstructured geomaterials is evidently related to bond breakage.     

On Modeling Coordination via Asynchronous Communication and Enhanced Matching

The paper proposes a theoretical study of a coordination language embodying Linda's asynchronous communication primitive with a refined matching mechanism based on pairs composed of attribute names associated with their values. Computations in this language are described by means of an operational semantics, reporting the whole traces of executions. The non-compositionality of this intuitive operational semantics motivates the design of a compositional and fully abstract denotational semantics, which is then exploited for studying program equivalence in this setting.     

Preface: Volume 68, Number 3

Modern information systems rely more and more on combining concurrent, distributed, mobile and heterogenous components. This move from old systems, typically conceived in isolation, induces the need for new languages and software architectures. In particular, coordination languages have been proposed to cleanly separate computational aspects and communication. On the other hand, software architects face the problem of specifying and reasoning about non-functional requirements. All these issues are widely perceived as fundamental to improve software productivity, to enhance maintainability, to advocate modularity, to promote reusability, and to lead to systems more tractable and more amenable to verification and global analysis.The FOCLASA workshop was organized on August 24th 2002 as a satellite event of Concur'02 with the aim of bringing together researchers working on the foundations of component-based computing, coordination, and software architectures.This volume contains selected 12 papers presented at the workshop. They were reviewed by the program committee, consisting, besides the editors, of

• Rocco De Nicola (University of Firenze, Italy)

• Jos Luiz Fiadeiro (ATX Software and University of Lisbon, Portugal)

• Roberto Gorrieri (University of Bologna, Italy)

• Paola Inverardi (University L'Aquila, Italy)

• Joost Kok (University of Leiden, The Netherlands)

• Antonio Porto (New University of Lisbon, Portugal)

We would like to thank them together with the authors of the papers for their contribution to the meeting. We would also like to thank Michael Mislove for his help in editing this volume. Finally, we are grateful to L. Brim, M. Kretinsky, and A. Kucera for their help in organizing the workshop in Brno.