Evaluation of the Evacuation of Essential Buildings: Interaction of Structural and Human Behaviour through Nonlinear Time-History Analysis and Agent-Based Modelling

In this article, a performance assessment of the evacuation system is established for educational buildings. Structural and geotechnical information of the building is collected and introduced into a database. A similar procedure was realized for the information related to the occupants. Using this information, a) the structural fragility and localized collapse were determined and b) the interaction of the person with the partial collapse was established. For the first aspect, nonlinear time history was used, and for the second, the agent-based modeling was applied to recreate the reaction of people that face the micro collapse. Therefore, the important results of this evaluation are: 1) To localize collapsed beans and columns that make inoperable evacuation routes, 2) to localize bottleneck areas that people concentration during evacuation, and 3) quantification of affected people, in terms of persons caught up in the building that cannot evacuate

Deciphering the light signal transduction mechanism in Staphylococcus aureus

Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Acinetobacter baumannii have been recognized by the WHO and the CDC as critical human pathogens. These microorganisms belong to the ESKAPE group, so named since they are capable of "escaping" antibiotic treatments. The infections caused by these pathogens result in a dramatic increase in the costs of medical care. Previous results from our laboratory have shown that these microorganisms can sense and respond to light. In S. aureus, light has been shown to modulate important pathogenicity determinants such as alpha toxin-dependent hemolysis, as well as virulence in an epithelial infection model, which could have implications in human infections. Light also regulates persistence, metabolism, and the ability to kill competitors such as C. albicans, in this microorganism. To our knowledge, the ability of S. aureus to sense and respond to light constitutes a newly described physiological trait. These pathogens could sense light to synchronize their behavior with the circadian rhythm of their hosts, likely as a strategy to optimize infection development. Identification of the photoreceptors involved in light sensing in S. aureus would provide important insights into the light signal transduction cascade. Despite no traditional photoreceptors were found encoded in its genome, we identified the presence of three putative proteins containing GAF domains. GAF domains have been shown to be part of phytochromes and cyanobacteriochromes along with other domains such as PHY and PAS. While in two of them the GAF domain encompasses the full-length protein sequence, suggesting a new photoreceptor architecture, the last one harbors a GAF N-terminal domain associated with a C-terminal histidine kinase. The genomic environment of each putative photoreceptor was determined, and genes such as LuxR, involved in a quorum-sensing regulation; and DegU, identified as a response regulator of bacterial motility, virulence and biofilm formation, were found in their close proximity. Recent results from our group show that motility in S. aureus is not only modulated by blue light, but also by red and green lights. This is compatible with multiple GAF photoreceptors as they exist in two thermally stable states interconvertible by light, absorbing in different regions of the spectrum. Moreover, the presence of three cysteine residues were observed, residue shown to be essential for binding of the bilin chromophore. In this sense, it is interesting to note that S. aureus produces Staphylobilin as a product of heme metabolism. In addition, we amplified the DNA fragments encoding these putative photoreceptors from S. aureus USA300 strain, and subcloned them into the expression vector pET-TEV, to corroborate that they are active photoreceptors upon light absorption. Finally, proteomic results are discussed which suggest new pathways modulated by light in S. aureus such as cell wall synthesis and recycling.Fil: Arana, N. A.. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Rosario. Centro de Estudios Fotosintéticos y Bioquímicos. Universidad Nacional de Rosario. Facultad de Ciencias Bioquímicas y Farmacéuticas. Centro de Estudios Fotosintéticos y Bioquímicos; ArgentinaFil: Müller, G. L.. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Rosario. Centro de Estudios Fotosintéticos y Bioquímicos. Universidad Nacional de Rosario. Facultad de Ciencias Bioquímicas y Farmacéuticas. Centro de Estudios Fotosintéticos y Bioquímicos; ArgentinaFil: Mussi, María Alejandra. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Rosario. Centro de Estudios Fotosintéticos y Bioquímicos. Universidad Nacional de Rosario. Facultad de Ciencias Bioquímicas y Farmacéuticas. Centro de Estudios Fotosintéticos y Bioquímicos; ArgentinaLVII SAIB Meeting; XVI SAMIGE MeetingArgentinaSociedad Argentina De Investigación Bioquímica Y Biología MolecularSociedad Argentina de Microbiología Genera

Mineral prices persistence and the development of a new energy vehicle industry in China: A fractional integration approach

In this paper we examine price persistence in a set of minerals critical for the production of new energy vehicles. We implement techniques based on fractional integration also allowing for non-linearities and structural breaks at unknown periods of time. The results show that the series are generally very persistent, with orders of integration equal to or higher than 1 in practically all cases. The only exceptions being cobalt, tin and zinc if breaks are permitted and only for a given subsample. These findings are extremely relevant to initiate a discussion about the challenges that the new energy vehicle industry faces in China. China's government has already enforced some relevant initiatives to stabilise prices, but we conclude that additional measures will be necessary considering the high degree of uncertainty of certain supply-demand factors.Prof. Luis A. Gil-Alana gratefully acknowledges financial support from the MINEIC-AEI-FEDER PID2020-113691RB-I00 project from ‘Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad’ (MINEIC), ‘Agencia Estatal de Investigación’ (AEI) Spain and ‘Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional’ (FEDER). He also acknowledges support from an internal Project of the Universidad Francisco de Vitoria, Madrid, Spain

Classification of coffee beans by GC-C-IRMS, GC-MS, and 1H-NMR

In a previous work using 1H-NMR we reported encouraging steps towards the construction of a robust expert system for the discrimination of coffees from Colombia versus nearby countries (Brazil and Peru), to assist the recent protected geographical indication granted to Colombian coffee in 2007.This system relies on fingerprints acquired on a 400MHz magnet and is thus well suited for small scale random screening of samples obtained at resellers or coffee shops. However, this approach cannot easily be implemented at harbour's installations, due to the elevated operational costs of cryogenic magnets. This limitation implies shipping the samples to the NMR laboratory, making the overall approach slower and thereby more expensive and less attractive for large scale screening at harbours. In this work, we report on our attempt to obtain comparable classification results using alternative techniques that have been reported promising as an alternative toNMR: GC-MS andGC-C-IRMS.Although statistically significant information could be obtained by all threemethods, the results showthat the quality of the classifiers dependsmainly on the number of variables included in the analysis; hence NMR provides an advantage since more molecules are detected to obtain a model with better predictions