ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF A BREEDING PROGRAMME FOR SETTING UP TWO HIGH PERFORMANCES BEE LINES

This study aimed to evaluate costs, incomes and financial results related to the creation of two Apis Mellifica Carpatica lines, based on a specific Breeding Programme within a closed population. The two beelines have been carefully selected for the bee populations living in two areas of Romania: North Moldavia and South Muntenia. A new selection technology is set up in order to produce high performance queen bees, well adapted to the environmental conditions mainly to picking. Genetic gain will be get by selling the mated selected queens belonging to the two lines to various beekeepers interested to obtain more and high quality bee products

ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF A BREEDING PROGRAMME FOR SETTING UP TWO HIGH PERFORMANCES BEE LINES

This study aimed to evaluate costs, incomes and financial results related to the creation of two Apis Mellifica Carpatica lines, based on a specific Breeding Programme within a closed population. The two beelines have been carefully selected for the bee populations living in two areas of Romania: North Moldavia and South Muntenia. A new selection technology is set up in order to produce high performance queen bees, well adapted to the environmental conditions mainly to picking. Genetic gain will be get by selling the mated selected queens belonging to the two lines to various beekeepers interested to obtain more and high quality bee products

About the Dynamic Behaviour of Composite Bars Reinforced with Cotton or Hemp Fibers

In this paper, the authors designed several green composites with natural reinforcements (hemp and cotton fibers) and the matrix is a synthetic resin (epoxy resin). On having produced the samples, the authors determined the dynamic mechanical characteristics. The dynamic parameters were determined from the bar free vibrations. The next experimental rig was used: the bars were clamped at one end and left free at the other end. At the free end, a Bruel&Kjaer accelerometer with 0.04 pC/ms-2 sensitivity was placed, in order to record the beam dynamic response. A force was applied at the free end to bend the beams, and after bending, the force was cancelled and the beams were left to vibrate freely. The accelerometer was connected to a Nexus signal conditioner, and the signal conditioner was connected to a SPIDER 8 data acquisition system made by Hottinger Baldwin Messtec. The acquisition system was connected to a notebook and the experimental parameters were obtained through the CATMAN EASY software. From the free vibrations recording, the next mechanical parameters were determined: the eigenfrequency of the first eigenmode, the damping factors per mass unit and per unit length, the loss factor and the dynamic Young modulus and stiffness. From the results obtained, it can be concluded that the materials with epoxy resin reinforced with hemp have better vibration damping properties as compared to the composites made from epoxy reinforced with cotton fibers

Correlative study of structural and optical properties of ZnSe under severe plastic deformation

The effect of plastic deformation on the optical and structural properties of ZnSe crystals has been investigated. The optical properties have been monitored by cathodoluminescence measurements as a function of the deformation degree. Remarkable differences in the defect-related emissions from the most severely deformed areas have been encountered. Deformation of the crystal lattice of ZnSe, associated with slip phenomena, has been studied by means of Electron Backscattered Diffraction and micro-Raman spectroscopy. The relation between the deformation and the optical properties of the ZnSe crystals has been described

Refactoring GrPPI:Generic Refactoring for Generic Parallelism in C++

Funding: EU Horizon 2020 project, TeamPlay (https://www.teamplay-xh2020.eu), Grant Number 779882, UK EPSRC Discovery, grant number EP/P020631/1, and Madrid Regional Government, CABAHLA-CM (ConvergenciA Big dAta-Hpc: de Los sensores a las Aplicaciones) Grant Number S2018/TCS-4423.The Generic Reusable Parallel Pattern Interface (GrPPI) is a very useful abstraction over different parallel pattern libraries, allowing the programmer to write generic patterned parallel code that can easily be compiled to different backends such as FastFlow, OpenMP, Intel TBB and C++ threads. However, rewriting legacy code to use GrPPI still involves code transformations that can be highly non-trivial, especially for programmers who are not experts in parallelism. This paper describes software refactorings to semi-automatically introduce instances of GrPPI patterns into sequential C++ code, as well as safety checking static analysis mechanisms which verify that introducing patterns into the code does not introduce concurrency-related bugs such as race conditions. We demonstrate the refactorings and safety-checking mechanisms on four simple benchmark applications, showing that we are able to obtain, with little effort, GrPPI-based parallel versions that accomplish good speedups (comparable to those of manually-produced parallel versions) using different pattern backends.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Prevalence and Outcomes for Heavily Treatment-Experienced (HTE) Individuals Living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus in a European Cohort

BACKGROUND: Although antiretroviral treatments have improved survival of persons living with HIV, their long-term use may limit available drug options. We estimated the prevalence of heavily treatment-experienced (HTE) status and the potential clinical consequences of becoming HTE. SETTING: EuroSIDA, a European multicentre prospective cohort study. METHODS: A composite definition for HTE was developed, based on estimates of antiretroviral resistance and prior exposure to specific antiretroviral regimens. Risks of progressing to clinical outcomes were assessed by Poisson regression, comparing every HTE individual with three randomly-selected controls who never became HTE. RESULTS: Of 15,570 individuals under follow-up in 2010-2016, 1617 (10.4%, 95% CI 9.9-10.9%) were classified as HTE. 1093 individuals became HTE during prospective follow-up (HTE incidence rate 1.76, CI 1.66-1.87 per 100 person-years of follow-up). The number of HTE individuals was highest in West/Central Europe (636/4019 persons, 15.7%) and lowest in East Europe (26/2279 persons, 1.1%). Although most HTE individuals maintained controlled viral loads (<400 copies/ml), many had low CD4 counts (≤350 cells/µl). After controlling for age, immunological parameters and pre-existing comorbidities, HTE status was not associated with the risk of new AIDS (adjusted incidence rate ratio, aIRR 1.44, CI 0.86-2.40, p = 0.16) or non-AIDS clinical events (aIRR 0.96, CI 0.74-1.25, p = 0.77). CONCLUSIONS: HTE prevalence increased with time. After adjusting for key confounding factors, there was no evidence for an increased risk of new AIDS or non-AIDS clinical events in HTE. Additional therapeutic options and effective management of comorbidities remain important to reduce clinical complications in HTE individuals

Immunomagnetic microbeads for screening with flow cytometry and identification with nano-liquid chromatography mass spectrometry of ochratoxins in wheat and cereal

Multi-analyte binding assays for rapid screening of food contaminants require mass spectrometric identification of compound(s) in suspect samples. An optimal combination is obtained when the same bioreagents are used in both methods; moreover, miniaturisation is important because of the high costs of bioreagents. A concept is demonstrated using superparamagnetic microbeads coated with monoclonal antibodies (Mabs) in a novel direct inhibition flow cytometric immunoassay (FCIA) plus immunoaffinity isolation prior to identification by nano-liquid chromatography–quadrupole time-of-flight-mass spectrometry (nano-LC-Q-ToF-MS). As a model system, the mycotoxin ochratoxin A (OTA) and cross-reacting mycotoxin analogues were analysed in wheat and cereal samples, after a simple extraction, using the FCIA with anti-OTA Mabs. The limit of detection for OTA was 0.15 ng/g, which is far below the lowest maximum level of 3 ng/g established by the European Union. In the immunomagnetic isolation method, a 350-times-higher amount of beads was used to trap ochratoxins from sample extracts. Following a wash step, bound ochratoxins were dissociated from the Mabs using a small volume of acidified acetonitrile/water (2/8 v/v) prior to separation plus identification with nano-LC-Q-ToF-MS. In screened suspect naturally contaminated samples, OTA and its non-chlorinated analogue ochratoxin B were successfully identified by full scan accurate mass spectrometry as a proof of concept for identification of unknown but cross-reacting emerging mycotoxins. Due to the miniaturisation and bioaffinity isolation, this concept might be applicable for the use of other and more expensive bioreagents such as transport proteins and receptors for screening and identification of known and unknown (or masked) emerging food contaminants