An ET-Based Two-Phase Method for the Calibration and Application of Distributed Hydrological Models

Water Resources Management - Parameter calibration is a core process for the application of distributed hydrological models, which depends strongly on river runoff records. However, the sparse...     

Demonstration of Sustainable Development of Groundwater through Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR)

Water Resources Management - Sustained pumping of groundwater can lead to declining water levels in wellfields and concerns regarding the sustainability of groundwater resources. Aquifer Storage...     

Adding sense to the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is being widely presented as the next revolution toward massively distributed information, where any real-world object can automatically participate in the Internet and thus be globally discovered and queried. Despite the consensus on the great potential of the concept and the significant progress in a number of enabling technologies, there is a general lack of an integrated vision on how to realize it. This paper examines the technologies that will be fundamental for realizing the IoT and proposes an architecture that integrates them into a single platform. The architecture introduces the use of the Smart Object framework to encapsulate radio-frequency identification (RFID), sensor technologies, embedded object logic, object ad-hoc networking, and Internet-based information infrastructure. We evaluate the architecture against a number of energy-based performance measures, and also show that it outperforms existing industry standards in metrics such as network throughput, delivery ratio, or routing distance. Finally, we demonstrate the feasibility and flexibility of the architecture by detailing an implementation using Wireless Sensor Networks and Web Services, and describe a prototype for the real-time monitoring of goods flowing through a supply chain.     

Cubical Mass-Spring Model design based on a tensile deformation test and nonlinear material model

Mass-Spring Models (MSMs) are used to simulate the mechanical behavior of deformable bodies such as soft tissues in medical applications. Although they are fast to compute, they lack accuracy and their design remains still a great challenge. The major difficulties in building realistic MSMs lie on the spring stiffness estimation and the topology identification. In this work, the mechanical behavior of MSMs under tensile loads is analyzed before studying the spring stiffness estimation. In particular, the performed qualitative and quantitative analysis of the behavior of cubical MSMs shows that they have a nonlinear response similar to hyperelastic material models. According to this behavior, a new method for spring stiffness estimation valid for linear and nonlinear material models is proposed. This method adjusts the stress-strain and compressibility curves to a given reference behavior. The accuracy of the MSMs designed with this method is tested taking as reference some soft-tissue simulations based on nonlinear Finite Element Method (FEM). The obtained results show that MSMs can be designed to realistically model the behavior of hyperelastic materials such as soft tissues and can become an interesting alternative to other approaches such as nonlinear FEM.     

A qualitative human-centric evaluation of flexibility in middleware implementations

Today middleware is much more powerful, more reliable and faster than it used to be. Nevertheless, for the application developer, the complexity of using middleware platforms has increased accordingly. The volume and variety of application contexts that current middleware technologies have to support require that developers be able to anticipate the widest possible range of execution environments, desired and undesired effects of different programming strategies, handling procedures for runtime errors, and so on. This paper shows how a generic framework designed to evaluate the usability of notations (the Cognitive Dimensions of Notations Framework, or CDN) has been instantiated and used to analyze the cognitive challenges involved in adapting middleware platforms. This human-centric perspective allowed us to achieve novel results compared to existing middleware evaluation research, typically centered around system performance metrics. The focus of our study is on the process of adapting middleware implementations, rather than in the end product of this activity. Our main contributions are twofold. First, we describe a qualitative CDN-based method to analyze the cognitive effort made by programmers while adapting middleware implementations. And second, we show how two platforms designed for flexibility have been compared, suggesting that certain programming language design features might be particularly helpful for developers.     

Extension of belief functions to infinite-valued events

We generalise belief functions to many-valued events which are represented by elements of Lindenbaum algebra of infinite-valued ?ukasiewicz propositional logic. Our approach is based on mass assignments used in the Dempster–Shafer theory of evidence. A generalised belief function is totally monotone and it has Choquet integral representation with respect to a unique belief measure on Boolean events.     

Flavonoids of “La Alcarria” honey A study of their botanical origin

Summary The flavonoids present in ten selected samples of La Alcarria honey with different pollen compositions have been HPLC analysed in order to establish if correlations between botanical origin and flavonoid profiles are possible. A common flavonoid pattern is observed in the different samples showing that pollen is not the main source of honey flavonoids. A close correlation between the flavonoid patterns of honey flavonoids and propolis flavonoids has been found suggesting that flavonoid analysis could be more useful in geographical origin determinations than in botanical origin studies.

---

Flavonoide des La-Alcarria-Honigs Eine Studie ihres botanischen Ursprungs

Zusammenfassung Die Flavonoide in Proben in Alcarria-Honig mit unterschiedlicher Pollenzusammensetzung wurden untersucht, um Kortrelationen zwischen dem botanischen Ursprung und den möglichen Flavonoiden zu finden. In den verschiedenen Proben wurde ein Flavonoid-Muster gefunden, wobei der Pollen nicht die Hauptquelle der Honigflavonoide ist. Es wurde jedoch eine enge Korrelation zwischen den Flavonoid-Mustern des Honigs und des Bienenkittharzes gefunden, was für die geographische Herkunft wichtiger ist als die botanische.

     

Gap Junctional Communication via Connexin43 between Purkinje Fibers and Working Myocytes Explains the Epicardial Activation Pattern in the Postnatal Mouse Left Ventricle

The mammalian ventricular myocardium forms a functional syncytium due to flow of electrical current mediated in part by gap junctions localized within intercalated disks. The connexin (Cx) subunit of gap junctions have direct and indirect roles in conduction of electrical impulse from the cardiac pacemaker via the cardiac conduction system (CCS) to working myocytes. Cx43 is the dominant isoform in these channels. We have studied the distribution of Cx43 junctions between the CCS and working myocytes in a transgenic mouse model, which had the His-Purkinje portion of the CCS labeled with green fluorescence protein. The highest number of such connections was found in a region about one-third of ventricular length above the apex, and it correlated with the peak proportion of Purkinje fibers (PFs) to the ventricular myocardium. At this location, on the septal surface of the left ventricle, the insulated left bundle branch split into the uninsulated network of PFs that continued to the free wall anteriorly and posteriorly. The second peak of PF abundance was present in the ventricular apex. Epicardial activation maps correspondingly placed the site of the first activation in the apical region, while some hearts presented more highly located breakthrough sites. Taken together, these results increase our understanding of the physiological pattern of ventricular activation and its morphological underpinning through detailed CCS anatomy and distribution of its gap junctional coupling to the working myocardium.     

Molecular Genetics of Conjunctival Melanoma and Prognostic Value of TERT Promoter Mutation Analysis

The aim of this study was exploration of the genetic background of conjunctival melanoma (CM) and correlation with recurrent and metastatic disease. Twenty-eight CM from the Rotterdam Ocular Melanoma Study group were collected and DNA was isolated from the formalin-fixed paraffin embedded tissue. Targeted next-generation sequencing was performed using a panel covering GNAQ, GNA11, EIF1AX, BAP1, BRAF, NRAS, c-KIT, PTEN, SF3B1, and TERT genes. Recurrences and metastasis were present in eight (29%) and nine (32%) CM cases, respectively. TERT promoter mutations were most common (54%), but BRAF (46%), NRAS (21%), BAP1 (18%), PTEN (14%), c-KIT (7%), and SF3B1 (4%) mutations were also observed. No mutations in GNAQ, GNA11, and EIF1AX were found. None of the mutations was significantly associated with recurrent disease. Presence of a TERT promoter mutation was associated with metastatic disease (p-value = 0.008). Based on our molecular findings, CM comprises a separate entity within melanoma, although there are overlapping molecular features with uveal melanoma, such as the presence of BAP1 and SF3B1 mutations. This warrants careful interpretation of molecular data, in the light of clinical findings. About three quarter of CM contain drug-targetable mutations, and TERT promoter mutations are correlated to metastatic disease in CM.     

An evaluation of the performance of an automated procedure for comparative modelling of protein tertiary structure

A 3-D model of a protein can be constructed from its amino acidsequence and the 3-D structures of one or more homologues byannealing three sets of fragments: the structurally conservedregions, structurally variable regions and the side chains.The method encoded in the computer program COMPOSER was assessedby generating 3-D models of eight proteins whose crystal structuresare already known and for which 3-D structures of homologuesare available. In the structurally conserved regions, differencesbetween modelled and X-ray structures are smaller than the differencesbetween the X-ray structures of the modelled protein and thehomologues used to build the model. When several homologuesare used, the contributions of the known structures are weighted,preferably by the square of sequence similarity; this is especiallyimportant when the similarities of the homologues to the modelledstructure differ greatly. The ‘collar’ extensionapproach, in which a similar region of different length in ahomologue is used to extend the framework, can result in a moreaccurate model. If known homologues comprise more than one relatedgroup of proteins and they are both distantly related to theunknown, then alignment of the sequence to be modelled witheach group of homologues facilitates identification of structurallyconserved regions of the unknown and leads to an improved model.Models have root mean square differences (r.m.s.d.s) with thestructures defined by X-ray analysis of between 0.73 and 1.56Å for all C atoms, for seven of the eight models. Forthe model of mucor pepsin, where the closest homologue has 33%sequence identity and 20% of the residues are in structurallyvariable regions, the r.m.s.d. for the framework region is 1.71Å and the r.m.s.d. for all C atoms is 3.47 Â.