gLite Workload Management System Performance Measurements

In this paper an introduction to the gLite Grid middleware and one of its most important components, Workload Management System (WMS), responsible for management of user jobs is given.Useful performance metrics of gLite WMS are defined from a Grid application point of view, and preliminary results of performance measurements are presented and briefly analyzed

Grid Approach to Path Integral Monte Carlo Calculations

Approach taken for the gridification of the developed Monte Carlo code for calculation of path integrals is described. Brief introduction to path integrals and Grids is given, and details on the implementation of SPEEDUP in the Grid environment are described. The numerical results obtained by the gridified version of the application are shortly presented, demonstrating its usefulness in the research in physics and related areas

A new treatment process to recover magnetite, zinc and lead from iron and steelmaking dusts and sludges

Steelmaking dusts are frequently classified as hazardous residues, due to their eco-toxicity characteristics. This derives mainly from the presence of heavy metals like zinc, lead and cadmium in their compositions, in forms that are easily leachable by water or slightly acidic or alkaline media. Following the most employed eco-toxicity standard tests, like DIN 38414-S41) from Germany, and TCLP (Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure)2) from the United States, steelmaking dusts present a high level of mobility of heavy metals, what is relevant for the evaluation of their environmental impact, when disposed in controlled landfills. In the present project (contract number ERB IC 15CT97-0704), a new process is being developed to recover valuable metals and products from steelmaking dusts and sludges. Two different process routes are being evaluated, both from the technical and from the economic points of view. A pre-treatment stage, based on water leaching of the dusts, is, in both cases, studied, to remove alkalis present in the wastes

A new phylodynamic model of Mycobacterium bovis transmission in a multi-host system uncovers the role of the unobserved reservoir

Multi-host pathogens are particularly difficult to control, especially when at least one of the hosts acts as a hidden reservoir. Deep sequencing of densely sampled pathogens has the potential to transform this understanding, but requires analytical approaches that jointly consider epidemiological and genetic data to best address this problem. While there has been considerable success in analyses of single species systems, the hidden reservoir problem is relatively under-studied. A well-known exemplar of this problem is bovine Tuberculosis, a disease found in British and Irish cattle caused by Mycobacterium bovis, where the Eurasian badger has long been believed to act as a reservoir but remains of poorly quantified importance except in very specific locations. As a result, the effort that should be directed at controlling disease in badgers is unclear. Here, we analyse densely collected epidemiological and genetic data from a cattle population but do not explicitly consider any data from badgers. We use a simulation modelling approach to show that, in our system, a model that exploits available cattle demographic and herd-to-herd movement data, but only considers the ability of a hidden reservoir to generate pathogen diversity, can be used to choose between different epidemiological scenarios. In our analysis, a model where the reservoir does not generate any diversity but contributes to new infections at a local farm scale are significantly preferred over models which generate diversity and/or spread disease at broader spatial scales. While we cannot directly attribute the role of the reservoir to badgers based on this analysis alone, the result supports the hypothesis that under current cattle control regimes, infected cattle alone cannot sustain M. bovis circulation. Given the observed close phylogenetic relationship for the bacteria taken from cattle and badgers sampled near to each other, the most parsimonious hypothesis is that the reservoir is the infected badger population. More broadly, our approach demonstrates that carefully constructed bespoke models can exploit the combination of genetic and epidemiological data to overcome issues of extreme data bias, and uncover important general characteristics of transmission in multi-host pathogen systems

Evidence for Multiple Polytypes of Semiconducting Boron Carbide (C\u3csub\u3e2\u3c/sub\u3eB\u3csub\u3e10\u3c/sub\u3e) from Electronic Structure

Boron carbides fabricated via plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition from different isomeric source compounds with the same C2B10H12 closo-icosa- hedral structure result in materials with very different direct (optical) band gaps. This provides compelling evidence for the existence of multiple polytypes of C2B10 boron carbide and is consistent with electron diffraction results

Characterization and pre-treatment of steelmaking dusts in order to recover valuable products

Steelmaking dusts are frequently classified as hazardous residues, due to their eco-toxicity characteristics. This derives mainly from the presence of heavy metals like zinc, lead and cadmium in their compositions, in forms that are easily leachable by water or slightly acidic or alkaline media. Following the most employed eco-toxicity standard tests, like DIN 38414-S41) from Germany, and TCLP (Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure)2) from the United States, steelmaking dusts present a high level of mobility of heavy metals, what is relevant for the evaluation of their environmental impact, when disposed in controlled landfills. By this work, financed by the European Communities COPERNICUS Programme, a characterisation of the dusts generated in different steelmaking plants has been done. Also, the behaviour of the dusts when washed with cold water has been evaluated, giving some informations on the mobility of metals and on the prospects for pre- treatment of the residues to recover valuable products