Polarization mode dispersion in radio-frequency interferometric embedded fiber-optic sensors

The effect of fiber birefringence on the propagation delay in an embedded fiber-optic strain sensor is studied. The polarization characteristics of the sensor are described in terms of polarization mode dispersion through the principal states of polarization and their differential group delay. Using these descriptors, an analytical expression for the response of the sensor for an arbitrary input state of polarization is given and experimentally verified. It is found that the differential group delay, as well as the input and output principal states of polarization, vary when the embedded fiber is strained, leading to fluctuations in the sensor output. The use of high birefringence fibers and different embedding geometries is examined as a means for reducing the polarization dependency of the sensor

Female Scent Signals Enhances Male Resistance to Influenza

Scent of receptive females as signal to reproduction stimulate male mice to olfactory search of a potential breeding partner^1, 2^. This searching behavior is coupled with infection risk due to bacterial contamination of the fecal and urine scent marks^4^. The theoretical consideration of host evolution under inevitable parasitic pressures, including helminthes, bacteria, virus etc., predicts adaptations that help protect against parasites associated with breeding^7^. In this study, we propose that acceptation of female signals by male mice leads to adaptive redistribution of immune defense directed to protection against respiratory infection risks. Our results reveal migration of macrophages and neutrophils to upper airways upon exposure to female odor stimulus resulting in increased resistance to influenza virus in male mice. Contrary to widely accepted immunosuppressive function of female sexual signals, our data provide the first demonstration of the adaptive immunological response to female odor stimulus through induction of nonspecific immune response in upper airways

Endosymbiosis morphological reorganization during metamorphosis diverges in weevils

Virtually all animals associate with beneficial symbiotic bacteria. Whether and how these associations are modulated across a host’s lifecycle is an important question in disentangling animal-bacteria interactions. We recently reported a case of complete morphological reorganization of symbiosis during metamorphosis of the cereal weevil, Sitophilus oryzae. In this model, the bacteriome, a specialized organ that houses the intracellular bacterium Sodalis pierantonius, undergoes a two-phase remodeling program synchronously driven by host and endosymbiont, resulting in a localization shift and the formation of multiple new bacteriomes. Here, we provide comparative data in a closely-related coleopteran, the red palm weevil Rhynchophorus ferrugineus, which is associated with the ancestral endosymbiont Nardonella. Using cell imaging experiments, we show that the red pal weevil bacteriome remains unchanged during metamorphosis, hence contrasting with what we reported in the cereal weevil S. oryzae. These findings highlight the complexity and divergence of host-symbiont interactions and their intertwining with host development, even in closely-related species. Abbreviations: DAPI: 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole; FISH: Fluorescence in situ hybridization; T3SS: Type III secretion system

Spatio-temporal development of streamflow droughts in north-west Europe

International audienceThis paper examines the spatial and temporal development of streamflow droughts in Europe over the last 40 years, differentiating the climatic factors that drive drought formation from catchment controls on drought manifestation. A novel approach for quantifying and comparing streamflow and precipitation depletion is presented. This approach considers atypical flow or rainfall events, as well as more severe droughts, regardless of the season in which they occur (although unlikely to constitute drought in an operational sense, sustained atypical flows are important with regard to understanding how droughts arise and develop). The amount of flow depletion is quantified at daily resolution based on the standardised departure from the mean day d flow, or flow anomaly. The index was derived for 2780 gauging points within north-west Europe using data from the FRIEND European Water Archive for the 1960-1995 period. Using a simple interpolation procedure these data were used to produce a time-series of grids, with a cell size of 18 km2, showing the spatial distribution of flow anomaly over the study area. A similar approach was used to characterise monthly precipitation anomalies, based on existing grid data (see New et al., 2000). The grids were analysed chronologically to examine the spatial and temporal coherency of areas showing large flow and/or precipitation anomalies, focussing on drought development during the 1975-1976 and 1989-1990 periods. Using a threshold approach, in which an anomaly of 2 standard deviations represents the onset of drought conditions, indices were developed to describe the time-varying extent and areal-severity (flow deficit) of streamflow and precipitation drought. Similar indices were used to describe how the magnitude and temporal variation of flow depletion varied spatially. In terms of streamflow depletion, the 1976 drought was found to be a highly coherent event, having a well defined start (in January 1976) and end (in September 1976). The worst and most persistent streamflow droughts occurred in southern England and northern France. Central parts of Europe experienced only severe streamflow depletion during the ?height' of the drought in June, July and August when there was negligible precipitation across large areas of Europe. In contrast, the 1989/90 period was characterised by a series of shorter and less severe droughts, with much greater variability over time. The relationship between precipitation drought and streamflow drought was less clear, which might have resulted from periods of precipitation depletion occurring randomly in time. Particularly high levels of streamflow drought were again observed in southern England and northern France. Several possible explanations for the increased drought occurrence over southern England and northern France were investigated using data from the 1976 event. However, immediately antecedent precipitation deficits could not explain the level of streamflow depletion which appears to have been enhanced by decreased discharge of groundwater into the river networks in this region. This can probably be attributed to large precipitation deficits during autumn 1975 and spring 1976: the consequent reduction in groundwater recharge ultimately led to depressed groundwater levels. Keywords: drought, streamflow depletion, streamflow drought, low-flow regimes, Drought Index</p

The last line effect explained

Micro-clones are tiny duplicated pieces of code; they typically comprise only few statements or lines. In this paper, we study the “Last Line Effect,” the phenomenon that the last line or statement in a micro-clone is much more likely to contain an error than the previous lines or statements. We do this by analyzing 219 open source projects and reporting on 263 faulty micro-clones and interviewing six authors of real-world faulty micro-clones. In an interdisciplinary collaboration, we examine the underlying psychological mechanisms for the presence of these relatively trivial errors. Based on the interviews and further technical analyses, we suggest that so-called “action slips” play a pivotal role for the existence of the last line effect: Developers’ attention shifts away at the end of a micro-clone creation task due to noise and the routine nature of the task. Moreover, all micro-clones whose origin we could determine were introduced in unusually large commits. Practitioners benefit from this knowledge twofold: 1) They can spot situations in which they are likely to introduce a faulty micro-clone and 2) they can use PVS-Studio, our automated micro-clone detector, to help find erroneous micro-clones

Weighted Dirac combs with pure point diffraction

A class of translation bounded complex measures, which have the form of weighted Dirac combs, on locally compact Abelian groups is investigated. Given such a Dirac comb, we are interested in its diffraction spectrum which emerges as the Fourier transform of the autocorrelation measure. We present a sufficient set of conditions to ensure that the diffraction measure is a pure point measure. Simultaneously, we establish a natural link to the theory of the cut and project formalism and to the theory of almost periodic measures. Our conditions are general enough to cover the known theory of model sets, but also to include examples such as the visible lattice points.Comment: 44 pages; several corrections and improvement

Delirium is not associated with anticholinergic burden or polypharmacy in older patients on admission to an acute hospital:an observational case control study

BACKGROUND: Older people are commonly prescribed multiple medications, including medications with anticholinergic effects. Polypharmacy and anticholinergic medications may be risk factors for the development of delirium. METHODS: Patients from a medical admission unit who were over 70, with DSM-IV diagnosed delirium and patients without delirium, were investigated. Number of drugs prescribed on admission and anticholinergic burden using two scales (the Anticholinergic Cognitive Burden Scale [ACB] and the Anticholinergic Drug Scale [ADS]) were recorded from electronic prescribing records. The relationship and predictive ability of these were explored. RESULTS: The sample included 125 patients with DSM-IV diagnosed delirium and 122 patients without delirium. The mean age of the sample was 84.0 years. The median number of drugs prescribed was 7: 79.8 % were prescribed ≥5 drugs and 29.0 % ≥10 drugs. The median ACB score was 1 and the median ADS score was 1.5. 73.4 % of patients had an ACB score of ≥1 and 73.0 % had a ADS score ≥1. There was no association between: number of drugs prescribed, rate of polypharmacy, rate of excessive polypharmacy, ACB score and ADS score, and a diagnosis of delirium on admission. Only acetylcholinesterase inhibitor use predicted delirium (OR 3.86, p = 0.04) and the number of drugs prescribed was negatively correlated with age (spearman rho = −0.18, p = 0.006). CONCLUSION: Neither number of drugs prescribed, polypharmacy or anticholinergic burden were associated with delirium on admission, questioning the clinical usefulness of anticholinergic drug scales. Further research is needed to unpick fully the relationship between, drugs, anticholinergic burden, age, and prevalent delirium in older patients and whether there is any role for these scales in clinical practice. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12877-016-0336-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Considering Polymorphism in Change-Based Test Suite Reduction

With the increasing popularity of continuous integration, algorithms for selecting the minimal test-suite to cover a given set of changes are in order. This paper reports on how polymorphism can handle false negatives in a previous algorithm which uses method-level changes in the base-code to deduce which tests need to be rerun. We compare the approach with and without polymorphism on two distinct cases ---PMD and CruiseControl--- and discovered an interesting trade-off: incorporating polymorphism results in more relevant tests to be included in the test suite (hence improves accuracy), however comes at the cost of a larger test suite (hence increases the time to run the minimal test-suite).Comment: The final publication is available at link.springer.co

Pure point diffraction and cut and project schemes for measures: The smooth case

We present cut and project formalism based on measures and continuous weight functions of sufficiently fast decay. The emerging measures are strongly almost periodic. The corresponding dynamical systems are compact groups and homomorphic images of the underlying torus. In particular, they are strictly ergodic with pure point spectrum and continuous eigenfunctions. Their diffraction can be calculated explicitly. Our results cover and extend corresponding earlier results on dense Dirac combs and continuous weight functions with compact support. They also mark a clear difference in terms of factor maps between the case of continuous and non-continuous weight functions.Comment: 30 page