Semantically Resolving Type Mismatches in Scientific Workflows

Scientists are increasingly utilizing Grids to manage large data sets and execute scientific experiments on distributed resources. Scientific workflows are used as means for modeling and enacting scientific experiments. Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is a major component of Microsoft’s .NET technology which offers lightweight support for long-running workflows. It provides a comfortable graphical and programmatic environment for the development of extended BPEL-style workflows. WF’s visual features ease the syntactic composition of Web services into scientific workflows but do nothing to assure that information passed between services has consistent semantic types or representations or that deviant flows, errors and compensations are handled meaningfully. In this paper we introduce SAWSDL-compliant annotations for WF and use them with a semantic reasoner to guarantee semantic type correctness in scientific workflows. Examples from bioinformatics are presented

Overview of Tunisia\u27s marine environment in support of administrative policies and programmes

The dissertation is a real investigation in the marine environment field, which few people are familiar with, although it concerns everybody. The investigation being carried out in three steps; each step covering one aspect of the marine environment, and the result is given in the conclusion. As a first step, the main problems affecting the marine environment in Tunisia, are identified and analysed. An attempt is made to identify the impact of such problems on the marine environment, human health and the national economy. In the second part, the institutional framework, dealing with the marine environment, is presented and analysed. The role of the different organisations is identified showing the mains strengths and weaknesses of the network. In the same part, the legal framework is also studied. The national environmental legislation is analysed in the context of pollution prevention, waste management and resources management. The international legislation is analysed focusing on the involvement of Tunisia in the global and regional marine environmental treaties, and the implications of the implementation of such treaties on the administration and the national economy. The third part covers the different approaches adopted in dealing with marine pollution. Public awareness, financial incentives, management of municipal and industrial wastes in the coastal zone and the response strategy are all discussed in this part. The deficiencies of the different approaches and strategies are also highlighted. The conclusion is a summary of all the findings and results of the study. It contains also some recommendations for the improvement of some actions and a review of others

Cultural Production in Qatar: Design, Dialog and the New Authentic

Qatar, as a rapidly modernizing Arab country with a highly heterogeneous emergent community, is working to achieve a balance between accelerated development and cultural identity. Qatar’s cross-cultural environment and diverse attributes offer unprecedented opportunity to produce forward-looking, “100% Qatari Products,” that express a New Authentic. This thesis explores social dynamics governing cultural production in Qatar, and it challenges unproductive manifestations of social hierarchy—particularly related to norms surrounding the default working relationship between designers and artisans. The research highlights and celebrates the inherent diversity of the Qatari artifact, creating a platform and methods wherein designers and artisans collaborate equally and meaningfully. This thesis re-envisions authenticity as a celebration of magnified possibilities of creativity and innovation that emanate from a cross-cultural environment

G protein-coupled receptor heteromers are key players in substance use disorder

International audienceG protein-coupled receptors (GPCR) represent the largest family of membrane proteins in the human genome. Physical association between two different GPCRs is linked to functional interactions which generates a novel entity, called heteromer, with specific ligand binding and signaling properties. Heteromerization is increasingly recognized to take place in the mesocorticolimbic pathway and to contribute to various aspects related to substance use disorder. This review focuses on heteromers identified in brain areas relevant to drug addiction. We report changes at the molecular and cellular levels that establish specific functional impact and highlight behavioral outcome in preclinical models. Finally, we briefly discuss selective targeting of native heteromers as an innovative therapeutic option

STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF OBESITY ON IMMUNE CELLS ACTIVITY AND CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE RISK IN EL-OUED (ALGERIA) WOMEN

Objective: This study was conducted to find out the effect of obesity on immune cells activity and some biochemical markers in women. Methods: The experimentation is carried out on 30 voluntary individuals were divided into two groups; 15 women with obesity (Body Mass Index [BMI]>30) were selected, On the other hand, we took 15 witnesses (BMI<30). All the volunteers were subjected to estimate the lipid profile, biochemical, and hematological parameters. Results: Results obtained show that there was a significant increase of blood glucose (p<0.05), triglyceride (p<0.05) and uric acid (p<0.001) and no significant change of other biochemical markers in obese people’s group when compared to the control subjects. In addition, the hematological results demonstrated that there was a significant decrease (p<0.05) of lymphocytes, hemoglobin, hematocrit, and mean corpuscular volume levels (p<0.01) in women with obesity compared to the controls. Conclusion: Our study reveals that the obesity may be induce the sever alteration in lipid profile which cause the cardiovascular risk for this population. In addition, the obesity causes a remarkable change in some biochemical markers and blood constituent’s anemia or other metabolic disorder in the body

Identification and assessment of Modifiable and Non-Modifiable risk factors and oxidative stress in pathophysiology of stroke diseases- a review

The aim of this review is the identifying the main factors risk factors and manifesting the role of oxidative stress as factors associated with stroke diseases. It is very difficult to determine the cause of stroke but studies scientists have shown that some characteristics and non-modifiable factors of peoples played a major role in developing strokelike, age, Gender, Race and Heredity. Other modifiable risk factors includehypertension, Heart disease, Diabetes mellitus, Dyslipidemia and Obesity have also been associated with higher stroke incidence. On the other hand, studies support that oxidative stress is directly involved in the genesis and aggressiveness appearance of stroke. However, cerebral dysfunction like Ischaemia would be followed by reperfusion leads to increased production of free radicals which induce also oxidative stress. In conclusion, changing human behavior in life is the first way to prevent stroke disease; on the other hand, we suggest that antioxidants treatment has great benefits in improving patient health and decreasing the vascular complications of stroke

Mixed Finite Element Computation of Energy Release Rate in Anisotropic Materials Based on Virtual Crack Closure-Integral Method

The material with anisotropic properties are becoming widely essential due to the ease to manipulate their mechanical properties in order to obtain a particular quality, insure safety or a specific behavior. Those kind of materials are considered anisotropic because their characteristics and behavior are dependent to every direction of the material’s orientation. In this work, the virtual crack closure-integral technique is implemented to a mixed finite element, in addition with the stiffness derivative procedure, to evaluate the energy release rate of crack extension in anisotropic materials. A simulation of a cracked edge rectangular plat with anisotropic characteristics is taken for example. The results obtained are in good agreement with the analytical results, making the proposed technique a good model for fracture investigation and allow it to study more complicated cases in future works

The Role of Social Capital in the Creation of Family-Owned Smes Empirical Study by Entrepreneurs Sfax Region

Entrepreneurship has widely studied the importance of the entrepreneur’s social capital in the acquisition of external resources, notably financial and informational resources, to lannch a business. This relational capital is often influenced by factors related to family and professional experience. In this sense, we provide an in-depth study of the development and amplification of relational capital of a project carrier in order to analyze how a network of entrepreneurial relationships could be equipped with the necessary means for the radiation of its company. This present work aims at exploring the distinctive elements of the family business’s social capital.In fact, a qualitative exploratory study was conducted with reference out to nine entrepreneurs in order to highlight these key points