Analysis of turbulence in fog episodes

Many processes interact in a complex and highly non-linear way during the life cycle of fog, the turbulent transport being among them. Observations and analysis of turbulence are, then, fundamental to our understanding of the physical mechanisms involved with fog formation, evolution and dissipation. Data gathered by fast-response sonic anemometers are processed using wavelet methods in order to estimate turbulence parameters such as kinetic energy or fluxes during the successive stages of fog evolution

Analysis of turbulent exchange and coherent structures in the stable atmospheric boundary layer based on tower observations

Using data collected at the Spanish low troposphere research centre CIBA (Centro de Investigación de la Baja Atmósfera) and at the Cabauw Experimental Site for Atmospheric Research (CESAR) in the Netherlands, we analysed the most significant features of different coherent structures occurring in the stable atmospheric boundary layer. In particular, we used both the Reynolds and wavelet methods to analyse a solitary wave, a gravity wave, a density current and a low-level jet. For each of these structures, we found that wavelet analysis had the capacity to distinguish the different scales involved in these events due to the different timing and heights of the thermal instabilities and downdrafts associated with the disturbances. In addition, the wavelet method highlights the different roles of turbulence and coherent structures in the transfer of heat, moisture and CO2 in the nocturnal boundary layer.This study was supported by the Spanish government through the project CGL 2009- 12797-C03-03

Observational and Numerical Simulation Study of a Sequence of Eight Atmospheric Density Currents in Northern Spain

A sequence of eight atmospheric density current fronts occurred in consecutive days are identified and analyzed using micrometeorological time series and numerical simulations. Observations were collected in the context of the INTERCLE project, which took place from September 2002 to November 2003 at the CIBA (Research Centre for the Lower Atmosphere) site located over the northern Spanish plateau. Numerical simulations used the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model with fine horizontal resolution (1 km). Both observations and simulations agree that the arrival of the density currents are characterized by a sharp change in temperature, wind velocity, wind direction and specific humidity and a source of intermittent turbulence. However, comparison between model and observations shows that the model predicts the intrusion of the density currents earlier than is observed. In addition, wavelet techniques applied to the data help distinguish the different scales present in the events, and therefore can reveal traces of gravity waves induced by the arrival of the density currents

Gestión del corzo en Zaragoza: de conservación a control poblacional

As it has happened with other wild ungulates in Europe, the roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) population in Aragon has suffered a considerable expansion during the last two decades. In the Iberian Mountains of Zaragoza (SIZ) this process come along with an increasing sporting interest in the species and the raising of conflicts due to crop damage, mainly on fruit trees and vineyards. The Government of Aragon is responsible of managing big game populations and fixes the hunting quotas. During the elaboration of hunting plans it has to consider different and even opposite interests and points of view, so availability of reliable population trends it is essential for the management of these populations. It has been developed a scheme for monitoring roe deer population in Aragon based on strip transect counts of pellet groups. This information is complemented by the sightings of roe deer during a fox and lagomorph monitoring scheme based on spotlight counts from car. In the Iberian Mountain System of Zaragoza, between 2005 and 2009, the survey results point that the roe deer abundance has doubled, and the mean density reaches 5.4 ± 0.33 roe deer/km2. Initially, management plans followed a conservative criterion in order to keep the population growing, with a moderate extraction rate, still hunt and a balanced sex-specific quota. Due to the positive trend of the species and the necessity of reducing damage caused to agriculture, mainly fruit trees, the management goals change to population control and it was decided to increase hunting pressure: hunting season was extended, hunting drives with dogs are authorized and the extraction rate is raised. Although the hunting quota fulfillment is close to 80%, and the number of shot deer has increased from 193 in 2005 to 1.084 in 2009, until now there is no reduction in the population growth.Al igual que ha ocurrido con otros ungulados en el resto de Europa, durante las dos últimas décadas la población de corzo (Capreolus capreolus) ha experimentado una considerable expansión en Aragón. En el Sistema Ibérico zaragozano (SIZ) este proceso se ha visto acompañado por un incremento del interés cinegético hacia la especie y por una creciente conflictividad asociada a los daños en cultivos de leñosas. En Aragón es la Administración la responsable de planificar el aprovechamiento cinegético de la caza, asignando los cupos de captura a los cotos de caza. Durante la elaboración de los planes de caza se debe atender a posiciones e intereses muchas veces contrapuestos, por lo que para gestionar estas poblaciones es imprescindible contar con datos objetivos sobre su estado. Para ello se ha desarrollado un plan de seguimiento del corzo en Aragón basado en la realización periódica de transectos de recuento de grupos fecales sobre recorridos fijos. Esta información se complementa con las observaciones de corzo registradas en una red de fareos nocturnos diseñada originalmente para el seguimiento de lagomorfos y zorro. Los datos obtenidos en el SIZ indican que entre 2005 y 2009 la abundancia media de corzo se ha duplicado y que su densidad media alcanza 5,4 ± 0,33 corzos/km2. Inicialmente los planes de caza seguían criterios conservadores que permitiesen mantener la población en crecimiento, con una tasa de extracción moderada, un cupo equilibrado entre machos y hembras y una caza selectiva a rececho. Ante la evolución positiva de la especie y la necesidad de atenuar las protestas por daños en cultivos, fundamentalmente frutales, se ha cambiado a una estrategia de control poblacional con un notable incremento de la presión cinegética: se amplía el periodo hábil de caza, se autoriza la caza en batidas y se aumenta la tasa de extracción, aunque se ha mantenido la sex-ratio equilibrada en los cupos. A pesar de que el cumplimiento del cupo se sitúa en torno al 80%, y se ha pasado de 193 capturas en 2005 a 1.084 en 2009, hasta ahora no se ha conseguido frenar el crecimiento poblacional

Accurate genome-wide predictions of spatio-temporal gene expression during embryonic development

Comprehensive information on the timing and location of gene expression is fundamental to our understanding of embryonic development and tissue formation. While high-throughput in situ hybridization projects provide invaluable information about developmental gene expression patterns for model organisms like Drosophila, the output of these experiments is primarily qualitative, and a high proportion of protein coding genes and most non-coding genes lack any annotation. Accurate data-centric predictions of spatio-temporal gene expression will therefore complement current in situ hybridization efforts. Here, we applied a machine learning approach by training models on all public gene expression and chromatin data, even from whole-organism experiments, to provide genome-wide, quantitative spatiotemporal predictions for all genes. We developed structured in silico nano-dissection, a computational approach that predicts gene expression in >200 tissue-developmental stages. The algorithm integrates expression signals from a compendium of 6,378 genome-wide expression and chromatin profiling experiments in a cell lineage-aware fashion. We systematically evaluated our performance via cross-validation and experimentally confirmed 22 new predictions for four different embryonic tissues. The model also predicts complex, multi-tissue expression and developmental regulation with high accuracy. We further show the potential of applying these genome-wide predictions to extract tissue specificity signals from non-tissue-dissected experiments, and to prioritize tissues and stages for disease modeling. This resource, together with the exploratory tools are freely available at our webserver http://find.princeton.edu, which provides a valuable tool for a range of applications, from predicting spatio-temporal expression patterns to recognizing tissue signatures from differential gene expression profiles.Fil: Zhou, Jian*. University of Princeton; Estados UnidosFil: Schor, Ignacio Esteban. European Molecular Biology Laboratory; Alemania. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Neurociencias. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Neurociencias; ArgentinaFil: Yao, Victoria. University of Princeton; Estados UnidosFil: Theesfeld, Chandra L.. University of Princeton; Estados UnidosFil: Marco-Ferreres, Raquel. European Molecular Biology Laboratory; AlemaniaFil: Tadych, Alicja. University of Princeton; Estados UnidosFil: Furlong, Eileen E. M.. European Molecular Biology Laboratory; AlemaniaFil: Troyanskaya, Olga G.. University of Princeton; Estados Unido

Análisis de la capa límite atmosférica y su relación con el clima

Ponencia presentada en: I Congreso de la Asociación Española de Climatología “La climatología española en los albores del siglo XXI”, celebrado en Barcelona del 1 al 3 de diciembre de 1999.[ES]Dada la relación existente entre la capa límite atmosférica y el clima, se presenta un estudio de los diversos estados que puede presentar la capa límite atmosférica nocturna. Se analiza mediante la observación directa y remota y la simulación, el comportamiento de los distintos flujos turbulentos de calor y de momento que van a representar la interacción entre la micro y la macroescala.[EN]Knowing the relation between the atmospheric boundary layer and the climate, in this work we present a study of the different behaviour that the nocturnal atmospheric boundary layer shows. We have analyzed by means of simulation, and directly and remote measurements its different fluxes of heat and momentum in the ABL, since these fluxes are going to represent the relationship between the micro and the macroscale.Los datos de este estudio se han obtenido a partir de la campaña SABLES 98, financiada por la “Comisión Interministerial de ciencia y tecnología (CICYT), programa Clima”, proyecto CLI97-0343

14 th Conference on Harmonisation within Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling for Regulatory Purposes -2-6

Abstract: Airborne pollen particles can be dispersed into the atmosphere and depending on the meteorological conditions can reach large distances (~10 3 km) and produce allergic symptoms in a part of the population sensitive to it. In this study, the System for Integrated modeLling of Atmospheric coMposition (SILAM) in its inverse mode (source apportionment problem) is applied to determine the main source areas of the episodes that produced high pollen levels in eight aerobiological stations of the Xarxa Aerobiològica de Catalunya (Aerobiological Network of Catalonia) during the years 2006, 2007 and 2008. Because of the low local contribution to birch pollen in Catalonia (NE of Spain), it is believed that the occasional birch pollen peaks observed each spring may come from pollen emitted in other European regions. The model SILAM (Sofiev et al, 2006 a) in its adjoint (inverse) mode has been widely applied to study the contribution of long-range transport to the observed pollen peaks in north Europe (Sofiev et al., 2006 b

Breast Tumor Localization by Prone to Supine Landmark Driven Registration for Surgical Planning

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide. Screening programs and imaging improvements have increased the detection of clinically occult non-palpable lesions requiring preoperative localization. Wire guided localization (WGL) is the current standard of care for the excision of non-palpable carcinomas during breast conserving surgery. Due to the current limitations of intraoperative tumor localization approaches, the integration of multimodal imaging information may be especially relevant in surgical planning. This research proposes a novel method for performing preoperative image-to-surgical surface data alignment to determine the position of the tumor at the time of surgery and aid preoperative planning. First, the volume of the breast in the surgical position is reconstructed and a set of surface correspondences is defined. Then, the preoperative (prone) and intraoperative (supine) volumes are co-registered using landmark driven non-rigid registration methods. We compared the performances of diffeomorphic and Bspline based registration methods. Finally, our method was validated using clinical data from 67 patients considering as target registration error (TRE) the distance between the estimated tumor position and the reference surgical position. The proposed method achieved a TRE of 16.21 ± 8.18 mm and it could potentially assist the surgery planning and guidance of breast cancer treatment in the clinical practice.This work was supported in part by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under Project RTI2018-098682-B-I00 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER,UE), Project PI18/01625 (Instituto de Salud Carlos III) and Grant BGP18/00178 under Beatriz Galindo Programme; in part by the European Union's European Regional Development Fund (ERDF); and in part by the Madrid Government (Comunidad de Madrid-Spain) under the Multiannual Agreement with Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in the line Support for Research and Development Projects for Beatriz Galindo researchers, in the context of the V Plan Regional de Investigación Científíca e Innovación Tecnológica (PRICIT)

Chemical analysis of Greek pollen - Antioxidant, antimicrobial and proteasome activation properties

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Pollen is a bee-product known for its medical properties from ancient times. In our days is increasingly used as health food supplement and especially as a tonic primarily with appeal to the elderly to ameliorate the effects of ageing. In order to evaluate the chemical composition and the biological activity of Greek pollen which has never been studied before, one sample with identified botanical origin from sixteen different common plant taxa of Greece has been evaluated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Three different extracts of the studied sample of Greek pollen, have been tested, in whether could induce proteasome activities in human fibroblasts. The water extract was found to induce a highly proteasome activity, showing interesting antioxidant properties. Due to this activity the aqueous extract was further subjected to chemical analysis and seven flavonoids have been isolated and identified by modern spectral means. From the methanolic extract, sugars, lipid acids, phenolic acids and their esters have been also identified, which mainly participate to the biosynthetic pathway of pollen phenolics. The total phenolics were estimated with the Folin-Ciocalteau reagent and the total antioxidant activity was determined by the DPPH method while the extracts and the isolated compounds were also tested for their antimicrobial activity by the dilution technique.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The Greek pollen is rich in flavonoids and phenolic acids which indicate the observed free radical scavenging activity, the effects of pollen on human fibroblasts and the interesting antimicrobial profile.</p

Output Impedance Improvement Using Coupled Inductors

When using a single DC/DC converter with multiple outputs and having a buck topology, which has one filter inductor per output, the designer can choose to couple these outputs together. This paper demonstrates additional benefits of coupling output inductors together. Apart from saving mass and volume, and due to an improved small signal behaviour it also reduces the output impedance of the regulated output. The paper will analyse a seven output push-pull converter used as a space power converter module and verify the theoretical results with experimental measurements