Seismic motion in urban sites consisting of blocks in welded contact with a soft layer overlying a hard half space: I. Finite set of blocks

We address the problem of the response to a seismic wave of an urban site consisting of $N$ non-identical, non-equispaced blocks overlying a soft layer underlain by a hard substratum. The results of a theoretical analysis, appealing to a space-frequency mode-matching (MM) technique, are compared to those obtained by a space-time finite element (FE) technique. The two methods are shown to give rise to the same prediction of the seismic response for N=1 and N=2 blocks. The mechanism of the interaction between blocks and the ground, as well as that of the mutual interaction between blocks, are studied. It is shown that the presence of a small number of blocks modifies the seismic disturbance in a manner which evokes qualitatively, but not quantitatively, what was observed during the 1985 Michoacan earthquake in Mexico City. Disturbances at a much greater level, induced by a large number of blocks (in fact, a periodic set) are studied in the companion paper.Comment: submitted to Geophys.J.Int

Low n-6/n-3 Gestation and Lactation Diets Influence Early Performance, Muscle and Adipose Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid Content and Deposition, and Relative Abundance of Proteins in Suckling Piglets

Elevated omega-6 (n-6) and omega-3 (n-3) polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) ratios in swine diets can potentially impose a higher risk of inflammatory and metabolic diseases in swine. A low ratio between the two omega PUFAs has beneficial effects on sows' and piglets' production performance and immunity status. At present, there are few studies on how sow nutrition directly affects the protein and fat deposition in suckling piglets. Two groups of sows were fed diets with high or low n-6/n-3 polyunsaturated ratios of 13:1 (SOY) and 4:1 (LIN), respectively, during gestation and lactation. Longissimus dorsi muscle and adipose tissue from newborn piglets, nourished only with sow's milk, were subjected to fatty acid profiling by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and to proteomics assays based on nano-liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry (nLC-HRMS). Fatty acid profiles on both muscle and adipose tissues resembled the magnitude of the differences between fatty acid across diets. Proteomic analysis revealed overabundance of 4 muscle and 11 adipose tissue proteins in SOY compared to LIN in both piglet tissues. The detected overabundance of haptoglobin, an acute-phase protein, and the stimulation of protein-coding genes and proteins related to the innate immune response and acute inflammatory response could be associated with the pro-inflammatory role of n-6 PUFAs

Short communication:Intra- and inter-individual milk microbiota variability in healthy and infected water buffalo udder quarters

The concept that ruminant mammary gland quarters are anatomically and physiologically unrelated has been recently challenged by immunological evidence. How this interdependence reflects on individual quarter milk microbiota is unknown. The aim of the present study was to cover this gap by investigating the interdependence of quarters among the same mammary gland at the milk microbiota level using next-generation sequencing of the V4\u201316S rRNA gene. A total of 52 samples were included in this study and classified as healthy or affected by subclinical mastitis. Extraction of DNA, amplification of the V4\u201316S rRNA gene, and sequencing using Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA) were carried out. We found that the intra-individual variability was lower than the inter-individual one. The present findings further support at milk microbiota level the hypothesis of the interdependence of quarters, as previously demonstrated following immunological studies, suggesting that individual factors (e.g., immunity, genetics) may have a role in modulating milk microbiota

Genetic diversity measures of local European beef cattle breeds for conservation purposes

This study was undertaken to determine the genetic structure, evolutionary relationships, and the genetic diversity among 18 local cattle breeds from Spain, Portugal, and France using 16 microsatellites. Heterozygosities, estimates of Fst, genetic distances, multivariate and diversity analyses, and assignment tests were performed. Heterozygosities ranged from 0.54 in the Pirenaica breed to 0.72 in the Barrosã breed. Seven percent of the total genetic variability can be attributed to differences among breeds (mean Fst = 0.07; P < 0.01). Five different genetic distances were computed and compared with no correlation found to be significantly different from 0 between distances based on the effective size of the population and those which use the size of the alleles. The Weitzman recursive approach and a multivariate analysis were used to measure the contribution of the breeds diversity. The Weitzman approach suggests that the most important breeds to be preserved are those grouped into two clusters: the cluster formed by the Mirandesa and Alistana breeds and that of the Sayaguesa and Tudanca breeds. The hypothetical extinction of one of those clusters represents a 17% loss of diversity. A correspondence analysis not only distinguished four breed groups but also confirmed results of previous studies classifying the important breeds contributing to diversity. In addition, the variation between breeds was sufficiently high so as to allow individuals to be assigned to their breed of origin with a probability of 99% for simulated samples

Soft Water Level Sensors for Characterizing the Hydrological Behaviour of Agricultural Catchments

An innovative soft water level sensor is proposed to characterize the hydrological behaviour of agricultural catchments by measuring rainfall and stream flows. This sensor works as a capacitor coupled with a capacitance to frequency converter and measures water level at an adjustable time step acquisition. It was designed to be handy, minimally invasive and optimized in terms of energy consumption and low-cost fabrication so as to multiply its use on several catchments under natural conditions. It was used as a stage recorder to measure water level dynamics in a channel during a runoff event and as a rain gauge to measure rainfall amount and intensity. Based on the Manning equation, a method allowed estimation of water discharge with a given uncertainty and hence runoff volume at an event or annual scale. The sensor was tested under controlled conditions in the laboratory and under real conditions in the field. Comparisons of the sensor to reference devices (tipping bucket rain gauge, hydrostatic pressure transmitter limnimeter, Venturi channels…) showed accurate results: rainfall intensities and dynamic responses were accurately reproduced and discharges were estimated with an uncertainty usually acceptable in hydrology. Hence, it was used to monitor eleven small agricultural catchments located in the Mediterranean region. Both catchment reactivity and water budget have been calculated. Dynamic response of the catchments has been studied at the event scale through the rising time determination and at the annual scale by calculating the frequency of occurrence of runoff events. It provided significant insight into catchment hydrological behaviour which could be useful for agricultural management perspectives involving pollutant transport, flooding event and global water balance

Zero-Shot Multi-View Indoor Localization via Graph Location Networks

Indoor localization is a fundamental problem in location-based applications. Current approaches to this problem typically rely on Radio Frequency technology, which requires not only supporting infrastructures but human efforts to measure and calibrate the signal. Moreover, data collection for all locations is indispensable in existing methods, which in turn hinders their large-scale deployment. In this paper, we propose a novel neural network based architecture Graph Location Networks (GLN) to perform infrastructure-free, multi-view image based indoor localization. GLN makes location predictions based on robust location representations extracted from images through message-passing networks. Furthermore, we introduce a novel zero-shot indoor localization setting and tackle it by extending the proposed GLN to a dedicated zero-shot version, which exploits a novel mechanism Map2Vec to train location-aware embeddings and make predictions on novel unseen locations. Our extensive experiments show that the proposed approach outperforms state-of-the-art methods in the standard setting, and achieves promising accuracy even in the zero-shot setting where data for half of the locations are not available. The source code and datasets are publicly available at https://github.com/coldmanck/zero-shot-indoor-localization-release.Comment: Accepted at ACM MM 2020. 10 pages, 7 figures. Code and datasets available at https://github.com/coldmanck/zero-shot-indoor-localization-releas

Canine leishmaniasis: the key points for qPCR result interpretation

Background: Diagnosis and follow up of CanL is difficult since the range of clinical signs is varied and seroprevalence is high in endemic areas. The aims of this study were: i) demonstrate the advantages of Leishmania qPCR to diagnose and control CanL and highlight its prognostic value and ii) propose guidelines for tissue selection and infection monitoring. Findings: This study included 710 dogs living in an endemic area of leishmaniasis. Forty percent (285/710) exhibited clinical signs consistent with CanL. Infection was detected in 36.3% (258/710) of the dogs of which 4.5% (32/710) were detected by qPCR, 16.2% (115/710) detected by ELISA and 15.6% (111/710) tested positive for both tests. Only 17.9% (127/710) of the dogs were classified sick (affected) with CanL. All symptomatic dogs with medium or high ELISA titers were qPCR-positive in blood samples. All dogs with inconclusive or low ELISA results with high or medium qPCR parasitemia values developed the disease. Seventy one percent of asymptomatic ELISA-positive dogs confirmed by qPCR (medium to high parasitemia) developed the disease. Bone marrow or lymph node aspirate should be selected to ensure the absence of the parasite in asymptomatic dogs: 100-1,000 parasites/ml in bone marrow are detectable in blood, whereas lower parasite loads are usually negative. Almost 10% of negative samples in blood were positive in conjunctival swabs. Conclusions: Because qPCR allows parasite quantification, it is an effective tool to confirm a diagnosis of CanL in (i) cases of inconclusive ELISA results, (ii) when the dog has not yet seroconverted, or (iii) for treatment monitoring

In Vitro Models for Studying Secondary Plant Metabolite Digestion and Bioaccessibility

There is an increased interest in secondary plant metabolites, such as polyphenols and carotenoids, due to their proposed health benefits. Much attention has focused on their bioavailability, a prerequisite for further physiological functions. As human studies are time consuming, costly, and restricted by ethical concerns, in vitro models for investigating the effects of digestion on these compounds have been developed and employed to predict their release from the food matrix, bioaccessibility, and assess changes in their profiles prior to absorption. Most typically, models simulate digestion in the oral cavity, the stomach, the small intestine, and, occasionally, the large intestine. A plethora of models have been reported, the choice mostly driven by the type of phytochemical studied, whether the purpose is screening or studying under close physiological conditions, and the availability of the model systems. Unfortunately, the diversity of model conditions has hampered the ability to compare results across different studies. For example, there is substantial variability in the time of digestion, concentrations of salts, enzymes, and bile acids used, pH, the inclusion of various digestion stages; and whether chosen conditions are static (with fixed concentrations of enzymes, bile salts, digesta, and so on) or dynamic (varying concentrations of these constituents). This review presents an overview of models that have been employed to study the digestion of both lipophilic and hydrophilic phytochemicals, comparing digestive conditions in vitro and in vivo and, finally, suggests a set of parameters for static models that resemble physiological conditions

Genetic Control of Canine Leishmaniasis: Genome-Wide Association Study and Genomic Selection Analysis

Background: the current disease model for leishmaniasis suggests that only a proportion of infected individuals develop clinical disease, while others are asymptomatically infected due to immune control of infection. The factors that determine whether individuals progress to clinical disease following Leishmania infection are unclear, although previous studies suggest a role for host genetics. Our hypothesis was that canine leishmaniasis is a complex disease with multiple loci responsible for the progression of the disease from Leishmania infection. Methodology/Principal Findings: genome-wide association and genomic selection approaches were applied to a population-based case-control dataset of 219 dogs from a single breed (Boxer) genotyped for ~170,000 SNPs. Firstly, we aimed to identify individual disease loci; secondly, we quantified the genetic component of the observed phenotypic variance; and thirdly, we tested whether genome-wide SNP data could accurately predict the disease. Conclusions/Significance: we estimated that a substantial proportion of the genome is affecting the trait and that its heritability could be as high as 60%. Using the genome-wide association approach, the strongest associations were on chromosomes 1, 4 and 20, although none of these were statistically significant at a genome-wide level and after correcting for genetic stratification and lifestyle. Amongst these associations, chromosome 4: 61.2-76.9 Mb maps to a locus that has previously been associated with host susceptibility to human and murine leishmaniasis, and genomic selection estimated markers in this region to have the greatest effect on the phenotype. We therefore propose these regions as candidates for replication studies. An important finding of this study was the significant predictive value from using the genomic information. We found that the phenotype could be predicted with an accuracy of ~0.29 in new samples and that the affection status was correctly predicted in 60% of dogs, significantly higher than expected by chance, and with satisfactory sensitivity-specificity values (AUC = 0.63)