Early detection and information extraction for weather-induced floods using social media streams

Today we are using an unprecedented wealth of social media platforms to generate and share information regarding a wide class of events, which include extreme meteorological conditions and natural hazards such as floods. This paper proposes an automated set of services that start from the availability of weather forecasts, including both an event detection technique and a selective information retrieval from on-line social media. The envisioned services aim to provide qualitative feedback for meteorological models, detect the occurrence of an emergency event and extract informative content that can be used to complement the situational awareness. We implement such services and evaluate them during a recent weather induced flood. Our approach could be highly beneficial for monitoring agencies and meteorological offices, who act in the early warning phase, and also for authorities and first responders, who manage the emergency response phase

Noninvasive Structural Analysis of Intermediate Species During Fibrillation: An Application of Small-Angle X-Ray Scattering

Structural investigation of intermediately formed oligomers and pre-fibrillar species is of tremendous importance in order to elucidate the structural principles of fibrillation, and because intermediate species have been suggested as the pathogenic agents in several amyloid diseases. Structural investigations are however greatly complicated by the dynamic changes between structural states of very different sizes and life-times. Small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) is an ideal method to handle this challenge. The method provides information about the fibrillation process (number of species present and their volume fractions) and low-resolution 3-dimensional structural models of individual species, notably also of the intermediately formed, in-process species from undisturbed fibrillation equilibria. Here, we provide a detailed description of the methods used for the measurement and analysis of SAXS data from fibrillating samples, exemplified using data from our own research

Integrative Structural Biology: Using X-ray Crystallography, Small-Angle X-ray Scattering, and Cryogenic Electron Microscopy to Determine Protein Structures

The field of structural biology focuses on determining and studying the structures of macromolecules in order to understand how three-dimensional shape dictates function at the molecular level. There are a variety of experimental tools that can be used to determine protein structures, and each technique has its strengths and weaknesses. This chapter focuses on three of these techniques: X-ray crystallography, small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), and cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM). Each technique is introduced, and its strengths and weaknesses as a tool for protein structure determination are discussed. The emphasis of this chapter is that while these techniques on their own can provide a wealth of information regarding protein structure, when combined they complement each other to paint a more complete picture of the three-dimensional architecture of proteins. Two examples from the literature are provided where all three techniques were utilized to learn the fine details of protein structure. The first example reveals the structural details of how multiple proteins assemble to replicate DNA, while the second shows how multiple structures of a single enzyme with and without substrate bound can provide the molecular details of a catalytic cycle