An ensemble neural network approach for space-time landslide predictive modelling

There is an urgent need for accurate and effective Landslide Early Warning Systems (LEWS). Most LEWS are currently based on a single temporally-aggregated measure of rainfall derived from either in-situ measurements or satellite-based rainfall estimates. Relying on a summary metric of precipitation may not capture the complexity of the rainfall signal and its dynamics in space and time in triggering landslides. Here, we present a proof-of-concept for constructing a LEWS that is based on an integrated spatio-temporal modelling framework. Our proposed methodology builds upon a recent approach that uses a daily rainfall time series instead of the traditional cumulated scalar approximation. Specifically, we partition the study area into slope units and use a Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) to process a satellite-derived rainfall time series and combine the output features with a second neural network (NN) tasked with capturing the effect of terrain characteristics. To assess if our approach enhances accuracy, we applied it in Vietnam and compared it against a standard modelling approach that incorporates terrain characteristics and cumulative rainfall over 14 days. Our protocol leads to better performance in hindcasting landslides when using past rainfall estimates (CHIRPS), as compared to the standard modelling approach. While not tested here, our approach can be extended to rainfall obtained from weather forecasts, potentially leading to actual landslide forecasts

CleanET: enabling timing validation for complex automotive systems

Timing validation for automotive systems occurs in late integration stages when it is hard to control how the instances of software tasks overlap in time. To make things worse, in complex software systems, like those for autonomous driving, tasks schedule has a strong event-driven nature, which further complicates relating those task-overlapping scenarios (TOS) captured during the software timing budgeting and those observed during validation phases. This paper proposes CleanET, an approach to derive the dilation factor r caused due to the simultaneous execution of multiple tasks. To that end, CleanET builds on the captured TOS during testing and predicts how tasks execution time react under untested TOS (e.g. full overlap), hence acting as a mean of robust testing. CleanET also provides additional evidence for certification about the derived timing budgets for every task. We apply CleanET to a commercial autonomous driving framework, Apollo, where task measurements can only be reasonably collected under 'arbitrary' TOS. Our results show that CleanET successfully derives the dilation factor and allows assessing whether execution times for the different tasks adhere to their respective deadlines for unobserved scenarios.This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under grant TIN2015- 65316-P, the SuPerCom European Research Council (ERC) project under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 772773), and the HiPEAC Network of Excellence. MINECO partially supported Jaume Abella under Ramon y Cajal postdoctoral fellowship (RYC-2013-14717).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

First record of the invasive diatom Didymosphenia geminata (Lyngbye) Schmidt in a Patagonian Andean river of Argentina

The Futaleufú River, Argentina, was monitored monthly from June 2010 to August 2011, in order to detect the invasive diatom Didymosphenia geminata, which was previously observed in Chile. Plankton and periphyton samples were taken from 10 sites. Didymosphenia geminata was not found until late winter. In August 2010, the species was first detected at isolated points of the river but in spring and summer the algal coverage extended along several kilometers. The coverage of blooms, spread to deeper areas (pools) with varying depths, reached more than 2 m, invading epiphytic and epilithic substrates. In autumn the bloom diminished its coverage area and there were only small isolated patches. During the next winter, blooms were not observed until late August, when it was recorded again. The observations showed that D. geminata appeared, colonized and invaded the bed of the river at low flow situations in spring and summer and its blooms declined in autumn - when the flows increase - after having been dried in summer when flows were the lowest.Fil: Sastre, Alicia Viviana. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia "San Juan Bosco". Facultad de Ciencias Naturales - Sede Trelew. Departamento de Biología. Laboratorio de Hidrobiología; ArgentinaFil: Santinelli, Norma Herminia. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia "San Juan Bosco". Facultad de Ciencias Naturales - Sede Trelew. Departamento de Biología. Laboratorio de Hidrobiología; ArgentinaFil: Bauer, Gabriel A.. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia "San Juan Bosco". Facultad de Ciencias Naturales - Sede Esquel; ArgentinaFil: Ayesterán, M. Gabriel. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia "San Juan Bosco". Facultad de Ciencias Naturales - Sede Trelew. Departamento de Biología. Laboratorio de Hidrobiología; ArgentinaFil: Uyua, Noelia Mariel. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia "San Juan Bosco". Facultad de Ciencias Naturales - Sede Trelew. Departamento de Biología. Laboratorio de Hidrobiología; Argentin

A heuristic to minimize the cardinality of a real-time task set by automated task clustering

International audienceWe propose in this paper a method to automatically map functionalities (blocks of code corresponding to high-level features) with real-time constraints to tasks (or threads). We aim at reducing the number of tasks functions are mapped to, while preserving the schedulability of the initial system. We consider independent tasks running on a single processor. Our approach has been applied with fixed-task or fixed-job priorities assigned in a Deadline Monotonic (DM) or a Earliest Deadline First (EDF) manner

Testing and integrating the WLCG/EGEE middleware in the LHC computing

The main goal of the Experiment Integration and Support (EIS) team in WLCG is to help the LHC experiments with using proficiently the gLite middleware as part of their computing framework. This contribution gives an overview of the activities of the EIS team, and focuses on a few of them particularly important for the experiments. One activity is the evaluation of the gLite workload management system (WMS) to assess its adequacy for the needs of the LHC computing in terms of functionality, reliability and scalability. We describe in detail how the experiment requirements can be mapped to validation criteria, and the WMS performances are accurately measured under realistic load conditions over prolonged periods of time. Another activity is the integration of the Service Availability Monitoring system (SAM) with the experiment monitoring framework. The SAM system is widely used in the EGEE operations to identify malfunctions in Grid services, but it can be adapted to perform the same function on experiment-specific services. We describe how this has been done for some LHC experiments, which are now using SAM as part of their operations

can a rapid local cooling intervention help young soccer players?

The effects of a cooling strategy following repeated high-intensity running (RHIR) on soccer kicking performance in a hot environment (>30ºC) were investigated in youth soccer players. Fifteen academy under-17 players participated. In Experiment 1, players completed an all-out RHIR protocol (10×30 m, with 30s intervals). In Experiment 2 (cross-over design), participants performed this running protocol under two conditions: (1) following RHIR 5 minutes of cooling where ice packs were applied to the quadriceps/hamstrings, (2) a control condition involving passive resting. Perceptual measures [ratings of perceived exertion (RPE), pain and recovery], thigh temperature and kick-derived video three-dimensional kinematics (lower limb) and performance (ball speed and two-dimensional placement indices) were collected at baseline, post-exercise and intervention. In Experiment 1, RHIR led to small- to-large impairments (p < 0.03;d = −0.42–-1.83) across perceptual, kinematic and performance measures. In experiment 2, RPE (p < 0.01; Kendall’s W = 0.30) and mean radial error (p = 0.057; η2 = 0.234) increased only post-control. Significant small declines in ball speed were also observed post-control (p < 0.05; d = 0.35). Post-intervention foot centre-of-mass velocity was moderately faster in the cooling compared to control condition (p = 0.04; d = 0.60). In youth soccer players, a short cooling period was beneficial in counteracting declines in kicking performance, in particular ball placement, following intense running activity in the heat.9E1A-F9DD-3EB8 | Filipe Manuel ClementeN/

Androgen receptor expression in early triple-negative breast cancer: clinical significance and prognostic associations.

Background: Triple-negative breast cancers (TNBC) are characterized by aggressive tumour biology resulting in a poor prognosis. Androgen receptor (AR) is one of newly emerging biomarker in TNBC. In recent years, ARs have been demonstrated to play an important role in the genesis and in the development of breast cancer, although their prognostic role is still debated. In the present study, we explored the correlation of AR expression with clinical, pathological and molecular features and its impact on prognosis in early TNBC. Patients and Methods: ARs were considered positive in case of tumors with &gt;10% nuclear-stained. Survival distribution was estimated by the Kaplan Meier method. The univariate and multivariate analyses were performed. The difference among variables were calculated by chi-square test. Results: 81 TNBC patients diagnosed between January 2006 and December 2011 were included in the analysis. Slides were stained immunohistochemically for estrogen and progesterone receptors, HER-2, Ki-67, ALDH1, e-cadherin and AR. Of the 81 TNBC samples, 18.8% showed positive immunostaining for AR, 23.5% and 44.4% of patients were negative for e-cadherin and ALDH1, respectively. Positive AR immunostaining was inversely correlated with a higher Ki-67 (p &lt; 0.0001) and a lympho-vascular invasion (p = 0.01), but no other variables. Univariate survival analysis revealed that AR expression was not associated with disease-free survival (p = 0.72) or overall survival (p = 0.93). Conclusions: The expression of AR is associated with some biological features of TNBC, such as Ki-67 and lympho-vascular invasion; nevertheless the prognostic significance of AR was not documented in our analysis. However, since ARs are expressed in a significant number of TNBC, prospective studies in order to determine the biological mechanisms and their potential role as novel treatment target

Growth impacts in a changing ocean: insights from two coral reef fishes in an extreme environment

Determining the life-history consequences for fishes living in extreme and variable environments will be vital in predicting the likely impacts of ongoing climate change on reef fish demography. Here, we compare size-at-age and maximum body size of two common reef fish species (Lutjanus ehrenbergii and Pomacanthus maculosus) between the environmentally extreme Arabian/Persian Gulf (‘Arabian Gulf’) and adjacent comparably benign Oman Sea. Additionally, we use otolith increment width profiles to investigate the influence of temperature, salinity and productivity on the individual growth rates. Individuals of both species showed smaller size-at-age and lower maximum size in the Arabian Gulf compared to conspecifics in the less extreme and less variable environment of the Oman Sea, suggesting a life-history trade-off between size and metabolic demands. Salinity was the best environmental predictor of interannual growth across species and regions, with low growth corresponding to more saline conditions. However, salinity had a weaker negative effect on interannual growth of fishes in the Arabian Gulf than in the Oman Sea, indicating Arabian Gulf populations may be better able to acclimate to changing environmental conditions. Temperature had a weak positive effect on the interannual growth of fishes in the Arabian Gulf, suggesting that these populations may still be living within their thermal windows. Our results highlight the potential importance of osmoregulatory cost in impacting growth, and the need to consider the effect of multiple stressors when investigating the consequences of future climate change on fish demography

Model-independent Analysis of Lepton Flavour Violating Tau Decays

Many models for physics beyond the Standard Model predict lepton-flavour violating decays of charged leptons at a level which may become observable very soon. In the present paper we investigate the decays of a Tau into three charged leptons in a generic way, based on effective-field-theory methods, where the relevant operators are classified according to their chirality structure. We work out the decay distributions and discuss phenomenological implications.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures, references and comments adde