Regional Climate Simulations on EU-INDIA Grid Infrastructures: Methodologies and Performance

In this paper, we present a possible approach to use different Grid infrastructures across Europe and India for regional climate simulations and discuss in details the advantages and limitations in using them. The application taken into consideration is the Regional Climate Model RegCM4, which has been recently re-written for making it more efficient and easier to be fully exploited on any kind of computational infrastructure. We describe here the methods applied to port this package on the Grid infrastructures made available by the EU-IndiaGrid project. We also discuss different approaches, the way to run the model on both European and Indian infrastructures and our promising approach to deal with data management issues. Use of RegCM on Grid infrastructure has further been compared with that on HPC resources. The domain worked upon for these tests is the South-Asia CORDEX domain, which is of great importance for the Indian Summer Monsoon. Our final conclusion is that, for certain class of experiments, RegCM4 model can be efficiently and easily integrated on Grid infrastructures, by means of the procedures described in this paper.     

Peroxidase-catalyzed oxidation of β-carotene in HL-60 cells and in model systems: Involvement of phenoxyl radicals

Recent studies provide extensive evidence for the importance of carotenoids in protecting against oxidative stress associated with a number of diseases. In particular, reactions of carotenoids with phenoxyl radicals generated by peroxidasecatalyzed one-electron metabolism of phenolic compounds may represent an important antioxidant function of carotenoids. To further our understanding of the antioxidant mechanisms of carotenoids, we used in the present work two different phenolic compounds, phenol and a polar homologue of vitamin E (2,2,5,7,8-pentamethyl-6-hydroxychromane, PMC), as representatives of two different types of phenols to study reactions of their respective phenoxyl radicals with carotenoids in cells and in model systems. We found that phenoxyl radicals of PMC did not oxidize β-carotene in either HL-60 cells or in model systems with horseradish peroxidase (HRP)/H₂O₂. In contrast, the phenoxyl radicals generated from phenol (by native myeloperoxidase in HL-60 cells or HRP/H₂O₂ in model systems) effectively oxidized β-carotene and other carotenoids (canthaxanthin, lutein, lycopene). One-electron reduction of the phenoxyl radical by ascorbate (assayed by electron spin resonance-detectable formation of semidehydroascorbyl radicals) prevented HRP/H₂O₂-induced oxidation of β-carotene. PMC, but not phenol, protected β-carotene against oxidation induced by a lipid-soluble azo-initiator of peroxyl radicals. No adducts of peroxidase/phenol/H₂O₂-induced β-carotene oxidation intermediates with phenol were detected by high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis of the reaction mixture. Since carotenoids are essential constituents of the antioxidant defenses in cells and biological fluids, their depletion through the reaction with phenoxyl radicals formed from endogenous, nutritional and environmental phenolics, as well as phenolic drugs, may be an important factor in the development of oxidative stress.     

Evaluation of the salt leaching method for the production of ethylene propylene diene monomer rubber foams

The thermomechanical behavior of ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) foams produced with the salt leaching method has been investigated and compared with the behavior of EPDM foams obtained from conventional blowing agents. Moreover, the salt-leaching process has been optimized to minimize salt residues and the influence of different parameters (such as average particle size and particle size distribution) has been investigated. Scanning electron microscopy and density measurements highlighted that salt-leaching leads to the formation of open-cell porosity with cell dimensions of around 60 to 80 μm, while foams obtained with the two traditional foaming agents lead to closed-cell porosity. Compression set values indicate that the behavior of the foams produced with salt leaching are more similar to the unfoamed rubber, characterized by higher elasticity and low residual deformation. Two theoretical models were successfully applied to the compression curves (Mooney-Rivlin and Exponential-Logarithmic) and they highlighted the effect of foaming on the properties of EPDM rubber and in particular the higher chain extensibility obtained through the salt leaching foaming method.     

Stabilization of strict‐feedback nonlinear systems with input delay using closed‐loop predictors

In this paper, we consider the control problem of strict‐feedback nonlinear systems with time‐varying input and output delays. The approach is based on the usual observer/predictor/feedback approach, but the novelty is the use of the closed‐loop dynamics in the predictor. This approach allows to develop two designs, an instantaneous predictor and a delay differential equation‐based predictor, that both attain the same performance in terms of system trajectories and input signal as in the case with no delays. The design based on delay differential equations allows to build a cascade of predictors to deal with arbitrarily large delay bounds. The resulting controller is much simpler to implement than classical infinite‐dimensional predictors, and it is robust with respect to actuation and measurement disturbances. We illustrate the approach with an application to the control of a chaotic system with input delay. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Infiltrating the zebrafish swarm: design,implementation and experimental tests of a miniature robotic fish lure for fish–robot interaction studies

Robotic fish are nowadays developed for various types of research, such as bio-inspiredrobotics, biomimetics and animal behavior studies. In the context of our research on the social interactions of the zebrafish Danio Rerio, we developed a miniature robotic fish lure for direct underwater interaction with the living fish. This remotely controlled and waterproof device has a total length of 7.5 cm with the same size ratio as zebrafish and is able to beat its tail with different frequencies and amplitudes, while following the group of living animals using a mobile robot moving outside water that is coupled with the robotic lure using magnets. The robotic lure is also equipped with a rechargeable battery and can be used autonomously underwater for experiments of up to 1 h. We performed experiments with the robot moving inside an aquarium with living fish to analyze its impact on the zebrafish behavior. We found that the beating rate of the tail increased the attractiveness of the lure among the zebrafish shoal. We also demonstrated that the lure could influence a collective decision of the zebrafish shoal, the swimming direction, when moving with a constant linear speed inside a circular corridor. This new robotic fish design and the experimental results are promising for the field of fish–robot interaction.     

The Cost of Environmental Constraints in Traffic Networks: Assessing the Loss of Optimality

Increasing numbers of hard environmental constraints are being imposed in urban traffic networks by authorities in an attempt to mitigate pollution caused by traffic. However, it is not trivial for authorities to assess the cost of imposing such hard environmental constraints. This leads to difficulties when setting the constraining values as well as implementing effective control measures. For that reason, quantifying the cost of imposing hard environmental constraints for a certain network becomes crucial. This paper first indicates that for a given network, such cost is not only related to the attribution of environmental constraints but also related to the considered control measures. Next, we present an assessment criterion that quantifies the loss of optimality under the control measures considered by introducing the environmental constraints. The criterion can be acquired by solving a bi-level programming problem with/without environmental constraints. A simple case study shows its practicability as well as the differences between this framework and other frameworks integrating the environmental aspects. This proposed framework is widely applicable when assessing the interaction of traffic and its environmental aspects.     

An autonomic approach for P2P/cloud collaborative environments

The rise of Cloud Computing has progressively dimmed the interest in volunteer and peer-to-peer computing, in general. However, efficient and cost-effective large scale distributed collaborative environments cannot be achieved leveraging upon the Cloud alone. In this paper, we propose a novel hybrid P2P/cloud approach where components and protocols are autonomically configured according to specific target goals, such as cost-effectiveness, reliability and availability. The proposed approach is based on the Networked Autonomic Machine (NAM) framework, which allows distributed system designers to include different kinds of cost and performance constraints. As an example, we show how the NAM-based approach can be used to design collaborative storage systems, enabling the definition of an autonomic policy to decide, according to cost minimization and data availability goals, how to part data chunks among peer nodes and Cloud, based on the local perception of the P2P network.     

Evolutionary forwarding games in delay tolerant networks: Equilibria,mechanism design and stochastic approximation

In this paper, we apply evolutionary games to non-cooperative forwarding control in Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs). The main focus is on mechanisms to rule the participation of the relays to the delivery of messages in DTNs. Thus, we express the success probability as a function of the competition that takes place within a large population of mobiles, and we characterize the effect of reward-based mechanisms on the performance of such systems. Devices acting as active relays, in fact, sacrifice part of their batteries in order to support message replication and thus increase the probability to reach the destination. In our scheme, a relay can choose the strategy by which they participate to the message relaying. A mobile that participates receives a unit of reward based on the reward mechanism selected by the network. A utility function is introduced as the difference between the expected reward and the energy cost, i.e., the cost spent by the relay to sustain forwarding operations. We show how the evolution dynamics and the equilibrium behavior (called Evolutionary Stable Strategy – ESS) are influenced by the characteristics of inter contact time, energy expenditure and pricing characteristics.We extend our analysis to mechanisms that the system can introduce in order to have the message delivered to the destination with high probability within a given deadline and under energy constraints which bound the number of released copies per message. Finally, we apply our findings in order to devise decentralized forwarding algorithms that are rooted in the theory of stochastic approximations. Thus, we demonstrate that the ESS can be attained without complete knowledge of the system state and letting the source monitor number of released copies per message only. We provide extensive numerical results to validate the proposed scheme.     

Fabrication of layered polydimethylsiloxane/perfluoropolyether microfluidic devices with solvent compatibility and valve functionality

The development of multilayer soft lithography methodology has seen polydimethysiloxane (PDMS) as the preferred material for the fabrication of microfluidic devices. However, the functionality of these PDMS microfluidic chips is often limited by the poor chemical resistance of PDMS to certain solvents. Here, we propose the use of a photocurable perfluoropolyether (PFPE), specifically FOMBLIN^® MD40 PFPE, as a candidate material to provide a solvent-resistant buffer layer to make the device substantially impervious to chemically induced swelling. We first carried out a systematic study of the solvent resistance properties of FOMBLIN^® MD40 PFPE as compared with PDMS. The comparison presented here demonstrates the superiority of FOMBLIN^® MD40 PFPE over PDMS in this regard; moreover, the results permitted to categorize solvents in four different groups depending on their swelling ratio. We then present a step-by-step recipe for a novel fabrication process that uses multilayer lithography to construct a comprehensive solvent-resistant device with fluid and control channels integrated with a valve structure and also permitting easy establishment of outside connections.     

oDect: an RFID‐based object detection API to support applications development on mobile devices

The RFID technology is becoming ever more popular in the development of ubiquitous computing applications. A full exploitation of the RFID potential requires the study and implementation of human–computer interaction (HCI) modalities to be able to support wide usability by the target audience. This implies the need for programming methodologies specifically dedicated to support the easy and efficient prototyping of applications to have feedback from early tests with users. On the basis of our field‐working experience, we have designed oDect, a high‐level language and platform‐independent application programming interface (API), ad hoc designed to meet the needs of typical applications for mobile devices (smart phones and PDAs). oDect aims at allowing application developers to create their prototypes focusing on the needs of the final users, without having to care about the low‐level software that interacts with the RFID hardware. Further, in an end‐user developing (EUD) approach, oDect provides specific support for the application end‐user herself to cope with typical problems of RFID applications in detecting objects. We describe in detail the features of the API and discuss the findings of a test with four programmers, where we analyse and evaluate the use of the API in four sample applications. We also present results of an end‐user test, which investigated strengths and weaknesses of the territorial agenda (TA) concept. The TA is an RFID‐based citizen guide that aids—through time‐ and location‐based reminders—users in their daily activities in a city. The TA directly exploits EUD features of oDect, in particular concerning the possibility of linking detected objects with custom actions. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.