Male sperm whale acoustic behavior observed from multipaths at a single hydrophone

Sperm whales generate transient sounds (clicks) when foraging. These clicks have been described as echolocation sounds, a result of having measured the source level and the directionality of these signals and having extrapolated results from biosonar tests made on some small odontocetes. The authors propose a passive acoustic technique requiring only one hydrophone to investigate the acoustic behavior of free-ranging sperm whales. They estimate whale pitch angles from the multipath distribution of click energy. They emphasize the close bond between the sperm whale’s physical and acoustic activity, leading to the hypothesis that sperm whales might, like some small odontocetes, control click level and rhythm. An echolocation model estimating the range of the sperm whale’s targets from the interclick interval is computed and tested during different stages of the whale’s dive. Such a hypothesis on the echolocation process would indicate that sperm whales echolocate their prey layer when initiating their dives and follow a methodic technique when foraging

Discrete ply model of circular pull-through test of fasteners in laminates

In aeronautical structures, assemblies with thin laminates are becoming increasingly usual, especially for fuselage design. In these structures, out-of-plane loads can appear in bolted joints and can lead to progressive punching of the fastener’s head in the laminate resulting, in some cases, in a failure mode called pull-through [1]. This complex phenomenon, which occurs in assemblies, was studied firstly by using a simplified ‘‘circular’’ pull-through test method. Qualitative micrographic examinations showed damage very similar to that observed in impacted specimens. The research presented here extends the Discrete Ply Model Method (DPM) developed by Bouvet et al. [2] to this case. The finite elements model is based on a particular mesh taking ply orientations into account. Cohesive elements are placed at the interfaces between solid elements to represent matrix cracks and delamination, thus allowing the natural coupling between these two damage modes to be represented. The model shows good correlation with test results, in terms of load/displacement curve, and correct prediction of the damage map until failure, including the splitting phenomenon

On the Validity of the Effective Field Theory Approach to SM Precision Tests

We discuss the conditions for an effective field theory (EFT) to give an adequate low-energy description of an underlying physics beyond the Standard Model (SM). Starting from the EFT where the SM is extended by dimension-6 operators, experimental data can be used without further assumptions to measure (or set limits on) the EFT parameters. The interpretation of these results requires instead a set of broad assumptions (e.g. power counting rules) on the UV dynamics. This allows one to establish, in a bottom-up approach, the validity range of the EFT description, and to assess the error associated with the truncation of the EFT series. We give a practical prescription on how experimental results could be reported, so that they admit a maximally broad range of theoretical interpretations. Namely, the experimental constraints on dimension-6 operators should be reported as functions of the kinematic variables that set the relevant energy scale of the studied process. This is especially important for hadron collider experiments where collisions probe a wide range of energy scales.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figures; v2: Comments and references added, conclusions unchange

Water Lenses for Low-Cost Concentrator Photovoltaics

The goal of this project was to study the economic feasibility of using water lenses to provide low-cost Concentrator PhotoVoltaic (CPV) arrays as an alternative to using conventional optics. We employed numerical analysis of the lens using Finite Element Analysis and ray tracing to conceive a light focusing apparatus with the goal of learning more about the advantages and limitations of such designs

Simplifying gene expression microarray comparative analysis.

Gene Expression Comparative Analysis allows bioinformatics researchers to discover the conserved or specific functional regulation of genes. This is achieved through comparisons between quantitative gene expression measurements obtained in different species on different platforms to address a particular biological system. Comparisons are made more difficult due to the need to map orthologous genes between species, pre-processing of data (normalization) and post-analysis (statistical and correlation analysis). In this paper we introduce a web-based software package called EXP-PAC which provides on line interfaces for database construction and query of data, and makes use of a high performance computing platform of computer clusters to run gene sequence mapping and normalization methods in parallel. Thus, EXP-PAC facilitates the integration of gene expression data for comparative analysis and the online sharing, retrieval and visualization of complex multi-specific and multi-platform gene expression results.<br /

Santé et vulnérabilités sociales : le point de vue du médecin généraliste

La crise économique actuelle bouleverse les approches et les modèles de solidarité des principaux États européens. Elle questionne aussi indirectement les modalités de l’analyse clinique et de la réponse médicale aux questions spécifiques posées par la paupérisation d’une frange non négligeable des patients

De nulle part, dès le départ

Quiconque a déjà croisé la route d’une femme enceinte sans papier dans la rue ou dans le dispositif de l’urgence sociale, une consultation de PMI ou une maternité, trouvera dans ce livre les réponses aux nombreuses questions qu’il s’est très probablement posées. Quelle construction maternelle ? Quel lien mère-enfant ? Quelle entrée dans la vie pour cet enfant dont les droits fondamentaux sont sacrifiés au nom des politiques migratoires ? Quelle place pour les différents dispositifs d’aide aux..

SWPS3 – fast multi-threaded vectorized Smith-Waterman for IBM Cell/B.E. and ×86/SSE2

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>We present swps3, a vectorized implementation of the Smith-Waterman local alignment algorithm optimized for both the Cell/BE and ×86 architectures. The paper describes swps3 and compares its performances with several other implementations.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>Our benchmarking results show that swps3 is currently the fastest implementation of a vectorized Smith-Waterman on the Cell/BE, outperforming the only other known implementation by a factor of at least 4: on a Playstation 3, it achieves up to 8.0 billion cell-updates per second (GCUPS). Using the SSE2 instruction set, a quad-core Intel Pentium can reach 15.7 GCUPS. We also show that swps3 on this CPU is faster than a recent GPU implementation. Finally, we note that under some circumstances, alignments are computed at roughly the same speed as BLAST, a heuristic method.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The Cell/BE can be a powerful platform to align biological sequences. Besides, the performance gap between exact and heuristic methods has almost disappeared, especially for long protein sequences.</p