Performance of a Vertical‐Slot Fish Pass for the Sea Lamprey Petromyzon marinus L. and Habitat Recolonization

In 2011, a vertical‐slot fish pass was built at the Coimbra Açude‐Ponte dam (Mondego River, Portugal), approximately 45 km upstream from the river mouth. The performance of this infrastructure for sea lamprey passage was evaluated between 2011 and 2015 using several complementary methodologies, namely radio telemetry [conventional and electromyogram (EMG)], passive integrated transponder (PIT) telemetry and electrofishing surveys. During the study period, the electrofishing revealed a 29‐fold increase in the abundance of larval sea lamprey upstream of the fish pass. Of the 20 radio‐tagged individuals released downstream from the dam, 33% managed to find and successfully surpass the obstacle in less than 2 weeks, reaching the spawning areas located in the upstream stretch of the main river and in one important tributary. Fish pass efficiency was assessed with a PIT antenna installed in the last upstream pool and revealed a 31% efficiency, with differences between and within migratory seasons. Time of day and river flow significantly influenced the attraction efficiency of the fish pass, with lampreys negotiating it mainly during the night period and when discharge was below 50 m³ s^?1. Sea lampreys tagged with EMG transmitters took 3 h to negotiate the fish pass, during which high muscular effort was only registered during passage, or passage attempts, of the vertical slots. The use of complementary methodologies provided a comprehensive passage evaluation for sea lamprey, a species for which there is a considerable paucity of valuable data concerning behavioural, physiological and environmental influences on obstacle negotiation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

BiOSS: A system for biomedical ontology selection

In biomedical informatics, ontologies are considered a key technology for annotating, retrieving and sharing the huge volume of publicly available data. Due to the increasing amount, complexity and variety of existing biomedical ontologies, choosing the ones to be used in a semantic annotation problem or to design a specific application is a difficult task. As a consequence, the design of approaches and tools addressed to facilitate the selection of biomedical ontologies is becoming a priority. In this paper we present BiOSS, a novel system for the selection of biomedical ontologies. BiOSS evaluates the adequacy of an ontology to a given domain according to three different criteria: (1) the extent to which the ontology covers the domain; (2) the semantic richness of the ontology in the domain; (3) the popularity of the ontology in the biomedical community. BiOSS has been applied to 5 representative problems of ontology selection. It also has been compared to existing methods and tools. Results are promising and show the usefulness of BiOSS to solve real-world ontology selection problems. BiOSS is openly available both as a web tool and a web service.     

Degradation of Leaf Litter Phenolics by Aquatic and Terrestrial Isopods

To investigate species-specific decomposition rates of litter from native (Quercus faginea) and introduced (Eucalyptus globulus) tree species in Portugal, we monitored changes in the phenolic signature of leaf litter during decomposition as mediated by an aquatic, Proasellus coxalis (Isopoda: Asellota), and two terrestrial, Porcellio dispar and Eluma caelatum (Isopoda: Oniscidea), detritivores. Although the litter of Eucalyptus and Quercus did not differ in overall protein precipitation capacity, we detected differences in terms of contents of particular phenolic compounds and phenol oxidation products. Accordingly, we observed food-specific consumption rates in Proasellus, but not in the terrestrial isopods. Proasellus digested Eucalyptus at significantly higher rates than Quercus, whereas the opposite was the case for Eluma, and Porcellio digested both litter types equally well. Despite slight differences in detail, effects of Proasellus on changes in the signature of litter phenolics were similar for both litter types, whereas terrestrial isopods—Porcellio and Eluma, although they differed from each other—digestively degraded phenolic compounds in Eucalyptus and Quercus litter, respectively, in different ways. Overall, however, degradation of litter phenolics was similarly effective on both litter types. From these data, we conclude that decomposition of Eucalyptus litter does not proceed more slowly than of litter from native Portuguese trees.     

Digestibility and nutritional value of crude oil from three amaranth species

Oils from a selection ofAmaranthus caudatus, A. hypochondriacus andA. cruentus were extracted with hexane. The crude oils were analyzed for acid value, saponification and iodine number, and were included in basal casein diets for rat studies at 5 and 10% levels to replace equal amounts of refined cottonseed oil. The oils fromA. cruentus andA. hypochondriacus were similar in the oil properties studied and different fromA. caudatus. At either 5 or 10% food intake levels, weight gain and PER were not statistically different from values reported for cottonseed oil. True digestibility of amaranth oil was lower than that of cottonseed oil.A. cruentus oil gave the lowest digestibility. Oil levels induced statistical differences in food intake and digestibility. Oils fromA. caudatus, A. hypochondriacus and cottonseed induced similar serum cholesterol levels, while oil fromA. cruentus gave statistically higher values. Hemoglobin, hematocrit and serum proteins were similar among all groups. Microscopic analysis of the organs of the rats revealed some changes that were also found in cottonseed oil-fed rats. It was concluded that crude amaranth oil has lower digestibility than cottonseed oil, but that it is not responsible for growth-depressing effects when the seed is fed raw as compared to processed materials.     

Effect of low‐temperature plasma and chitosan treatment on wool dyeing with Acid Red 27

This study examines in detail the influence of low‐temperature plasma and biopolymer chitosan treatments on wool dyeability. Wool knitted fabrics were treated and characterized by whiteness and shrink‐resistance measurements. Surface modification was assessed by contact‐angle measurements of human hair fibers, which were used as a model to study the wetting properties of the treated wool knitted fabrics. The dyeing behavior was assessed from the diffusion mechanism point of view. The dyeing kinetics were measured at two different pHs (4.2 and 6.5) and three different temperatures (60, 85, and 100°C) to gain information about the contribution of the surface modification treatment to the dyeing mechanism. The exhaustion and reflectance data were compared, and the apparent diffusion coefficients were calculated. On the basis of the obtained results, a model for the dyeing mechanism of the chitosan treated wool was proposed. When treated with chitosan, the polymer sheath spread on the surface of the fibers acted as a predominant dyeing site in very short dyeing times, thus interacting with the dye and in later stages imparting the dye to the wool fiber. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 97: 2204–2214, 2005     

Unified reliability estimation and management of NoC based chip multiprocessors

We present a new architecture level unified reliability evaluation methodology for chip multiprocessors (CMPs). The proposed reliability estimation (REST) is based on a Monte Carlo algorithm. What distinguishes REST from the previous work is that both the computational and communication components are considered in a unified manner to compute the reliability of the CMP. We utilize REST tool to develop a new dynamic reliability management (DRM) scheme to address time-dependent dielectric breakdown and negative-bias temperature instability aging mechanisms in network-on-chip (NoC) based CMPs. Designed as a control loop, the proposed DRM scheme uses an effective neural network based reliability estimation module. The neural-network predictor is trained using the REST tool. We investigate how system’s lifetime changes when the NoC as the communication unit of the CMP is considered or not during the reliability evaluation process and find that differences can be as high as 60%. Full-system based simulations using a customized GEM5 simulator show that reliability can be improved by up to 52% using the proposed DRM scheme in a best-effort scenario with 2–9% performance penalty (using a user set target lifetime of 7 years) over the case when no DRM is employed.     

CRUDi framework proposal: financial industry application

The alignment of information systems with the business goals of an organisation, although a topic of great importance, is not always properly valued or taken into consideration. In general, managers have different opinions to chief information officers (CIOs) in relation to IS, especially with regard to their importance and value to the business and also in terms of investment needs. Here, we discuss and study new approaches to methods and tools for assessing the relative importance of each information system to business, focusing on the financial sector including banks and insurance companies. We suggest the introduction of new key indicators for better decision support and to identify investment priorities, and present results regarding the relative importance of each process to support the business strategy. The primary goal for the inherent research project is to analyse the main problems and difficulties encountered by IS and IT managers, featuring different players and how they relate. The main contributions of this work are the CRUDi framework as a tool to improve alignment between business and IS strategies and the CRUDi survey and its results qualifying the financial sector's opinion regarding the relative importance of processes and investments.     

Nickel Activation for Hydrogenolysis Reaction on USY Zeolite

The effects of the SAR (14 and 38) and of the methodology of introduction of nickel (wetness impregnation and ion exchange) on catalyst activation were investigated in Ni/USY model catalysts submitted to two activation treatments: reduction (A) and reduction/calcination/reduction, successively (B). the catalysts prepared by wetness impregnation, a marked increase in the catalytic activity after treatment B was observed. On the basis of the catalyst efficiency toward ethane hydrogenolysis, the lower SAR catalyst presents a threefold higher activity. On the contrary, the catalysts prepared by ion exchange, as well as a model catalyst prepared by wetness impregnation over a USY exhaustively exchanged with nickel ions, do not present measurable increasing of the catalytic activity under the same activation conditions. Monitoring the catalyst activation by EXAFS indicates the formation of nickel clusters in the impregnated catalysts after activation treatment B, which should be responsible for the high catalytic activity. However, TEM images reveal a bimodal particle size distribution, with large (ca. 20 nm) and small nickel particles. Temperature-programmed reduction performed under the same conditions of catalyst activation suggests that only the small nickel particles are activated under the experimental conditions adopted in this work.