Simulating the Impact on the Local Economy of Alternative Management Scenarios for Natural Areas

This working paper estimates the impact on the local economy of the High Garda Natural Park of alternative management scenarios for the West Garda Regional Forest. The local economy is specialized in tourist services and strongly linked to the tourist presence and their level of expenditure. We wish to investigate the effects of the participative management strategy, which takes into account users preferences and the non-participative strategy, using the SAM multiplier analysis. The local SAM has been constructed considering three sectors: agriculture, tourism and a third aggregate sector including all the other activities. The resident population has been divided into two categories: residents employed in the tourist sector and the remaining resident population. The SAM analysis shows that the accounting representation of the local economy is meaningful and that the participative program, if chosen by the central regional management, would be the most desirable program also at the local level.Tourism, SAM, Multiplier analysis

Fault architecture in the Main Ethiopian Rift and comparison with experimental models: Implications for rift evolution and Nubia-Somalia kinematics

The Main Ethiopian Rift (MER) offers a complete record of the time–space evolution of a continental rift. We have characterized the brittle deformation in different rift sectors through the statistical analysis of a new database of faults obtained from the integration between satellite images and digital elevation models, and implemented with field controls. This analysis has been compared with the results of lithospheric-scale analogue models reproducing the kinematical conditions of orthogonal and oblique rifting. Integration of these approaches suggests substantial differences in fault architecture in the different rift sectors that in turn reflect an along-axis variation of the rift development and southward decrease in rift evolution. The northernmost MER sector is in a mature stage of incipient continental rupture, with deformation localised within the rift floor along discrete tectono-magmatic segments and almost inactive boundary faults. The central MER sector records a transitional stage in which migration of deformation from boundary faults to faults internal to the rift valley is in an incipient phase. The southernmost MER sector is instead in an early continental stage, with the largest part of deformation being accommodated by boundary faults and almost absent internal faults. The MER thus records along its axis the typical evolution of continental rifting, from fault-dominated rift morphology in the early stages of extension toward magma-dominated extension during break-up. The extrapolation of modelling results suggests that a variable rift obliquity contributes to the observed along-axis variations in rift architecture and evolutionary stage, being oblique rifting conditions controlling the MER evolution since its birth in the Late Miocene in relation to a constant post ca. 11 Ma ~ N100°E Nubia–Somalia motion.Published479-4923.2. Tettonica attiva3.3. Geodinamica e struttura dell'interno della TerraJCR Journalreserve

Assignment of Resources in Distributed Systems

In distributed processing systems it is often necessary to coordinate the allocation of shared resources that should be assigned in the processes in the modality of mutual exclusion; in such cases, the order in which the shared resources will be assigned in the processes that require them must be decided; in this paper we propose an aggregation operator (which could be used by a shared resources manager module) that will decide the order of allocation of the resources to the processes considering the requirements of the processes (shared resources) and the state of the distributed nodes where the processes operate (their computational load).Fil: la Red Martínez, David Luis. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales y Agrimensura; ArgentinaFil: Acosta, Julio César. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales y Agrimensura; ArgentinaFil: Agostini, Federico. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Instituto de Botánica del Nordeste. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias. Instituto de Botánica del Nordeste; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales y Agrimensura; Argentin

BLVector: Fast BLAST-Like Algorithm for Manycore CPU With Vectorization

New High-Performance Computing architectures have been recently developed for commercial central processing unit (CPU). Yet, that has not improved the execution time of widely used bioinformatics applications, like BLAST+. This is due to a lack of optimization between the bases of the existing algorithms and the internals of the hardware that allows taking full advantage of the available CPU cores. To optimize the new architectures, algorithms must be revised and redesigned; usually rewritten from scratch. BLVector adapts the high-level concepts of BLAST+ to the x86 architectures with AVX-512, to harness their capabilities. A deep comprehensive study has been carried out to optimize the approach, with a significant reduction in time execution. BLVector reduces the execution time of BLAST+ when aligning up to mid-size protein sequences (∼750 amino acids). The gain in real scenario cases is 3.2-fold. When applied to longer proteins, BLVector consumes more time than BLAST+, but retrieves a much larger set of results. BLVector and BLAST+ are fine-tuned heuristics. Therefore, the relevant results returned by both are the same, although they behave differently specially when performing alignments with low scores. Hence, they can be considered complementary bioinformatics tools.Fil: Gálvez Rojas, Sergio. Universidad de Malaga. Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Informática. Departamento de Lenguajes y Ciencias de la Computacion.; EspañaFil: Agostini, Federico. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Instituto de Botánica del Nordeste. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias. Instituto de Botánica del Nordeste; ArgentinaFil: Caselli, Javier. Universidad de Malaga. Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Informática. Departamento de Lenguajes y Ciencias de la Computacion.; EspañaFil: Hernandez, Agustina Pilar. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas; EspañaFil: Dorado, Gabriel. Universidad de Córdoba; Españ

Telerehabilitation for neurological motor impairment: a systematic review and meta-analysis on quality of life, satisfaction, and acceptance in stroke, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson’s disease

Telerehabilitation (TR) seems to be a viable and feasible solution to face the rehabilitative challenges posed by neurological impairments and to improve patients’ quality of life (QoL). This review aims to synthesize and analyze the evidence on the impact of physiotherapy intervention through TR on QoL in patients with stroke, Parkinson’s disease (PD), and multiple sclerosis (MS), together with an evaluation of their satisfaction and technology acceptance levels. Through a systematic search of the literature and a screening process, treatment effects were assessed with meta-analyses using the standardized mean difference, setting the confidence interval at 95%. We included 28 studies in the review, which were analyzed for methodological quality, whereas 16 studies were included in the meta-analyses. The results suggest a significant improvement in QoL in patients who underwent TR. We were unable to perform analyses for satisfaction and technology acceptance outcomes due to insufficient data. Overall, motor TR has a positive impact on the QoL of patients with neurological diseases, especially in stroke patients; although caution is needed in the interpretation of the results due to the high heterogeneity found. For PD and MS, TR seems to yield comparable results to in-person treatment

ccSOL omics: a webserver for solubility prediction of endogenous and heterologous expression in Escherichia coli

SUMMARY: Here we introduce ccSOL omics, a webserver for large-scale calculations of protein solubility. Our method allows (i) proteome-wide predictions; (ii) identification of soluble fragments within each sequences; (iii) exhaustive single-point mutation analysis.RESULTS: Using coil/disorder, hydrophobicity, hydrophilicity, β-sheet and α-helix propensities, we built a predictor of protein solubility. Our approach shows an accuracy of 79% on the training set (36 990 Target Track entries). Validation on three independent sets indicates that ccSOL omics discriminates soluble and insoluble proteins with an accuracy of 74% on 31 760 proteins sharing <30% sequence similarity.AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: ccSOL omics can be freely accessed on the web at http://s.tartaglialab.com/page/ccsol_group. Documentation and tutorial are available at http://s.tartaglialab.com/static_files/shared/tutorial_ccsol_omics.html.CONTACT: [email protected] INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online

Abnormalities in amphibian populations inhabiting agroecosystems in northeastern Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

The occurrence of abnormalities in amphibians has been reported in many populations, and its increase could be related to environmental pollution and habitat degradation. We evaluated the type and prevalence of abnormalities in 5 amphibian populations from agroecosystems with different degrees of agricultural disturbance (cultivated and reference areas). We detected 9 types of abnormalities, of which the most frequent were those occurring in limbs. The observed prevalence of abnormality in assessed populations from cultivated and reference areas was as follows: Rhinella fernandezae (37.1 and 10.2%, respectively), Leptodactylus latrans adults (28.1 and 9.2%) and juveniles (32.9 and 15.3%), and Hypsiboas pulchellus (11.6 and 2.8%). Scinax granulatus populations did not show abnormalities. Pseudis minuta, which was only detected in the reference area, exhibited a prevalence of 13.3%. For R. fernandezae, L. latrans, and H. pulchellus, generalized linear mixed models showed that prevalence of abnormalities was significantly higher (p < 0.05) in cultivated than in reference areas. L. latrans juveniles were more vulnerable to abnormalities than adults (p < 0.05). The presence of abnormalities in some species inhabiting different agroecosystems suggests that environmental stress factors might be responsible for their occurrence. While we detected pesticides (endosulfan, cypermethrin, and chlorpyrifos) and lower dissolved oxygen levels in ponds of the cultivated area, no data are currently available on how other factors, such as injuries from predators and parasite infections, vary by land use. Further research will be necessary to evaluate possible causes of abnormalities detected in the present study mainly in the context of factor interactions.Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Muse

Nueva propuesta para la administración de recursos y procesos en sistemas distribuidos

En los sistemas de procesamiento distribuido es necesario que los procesos que actúan en grupos deban tomar decisiones basados en acuerdos respecto del acceso a recursos; las decisiones pueden estar relacionadas con la realización de determinada actividad que requiera o no la sincronización de los procesos, es decir, que los procesos del grupo estén activos en los mismos lapsos de tiempo en sus respectivos procesadores, requiriendo el uso de recursos compartidos en la modalidad de exclusión mutua mediante consensos estrictos o no. Así surge el siguiente interrogante: ¿cuáles son los modelos de decisión y los operadores de agregación que habrá que generar para la toma de decisiones en la gestión de grupos de procesos, que trasciendan el enfoque tradicional de las ciencias de la computación, teniendo en cuenta la auto-regulación? Para ello habrá que considerar diferentes situaciones relacionadas con el hecho de compartir o no recursos y con el nivel de acuerdo o consenso requerido, que podrá ser estricto o no, con posibles requisitos de sincronización. Los modelos considerarán la posibilidad de imputación de datos faltantes y la fuzzyficación de ciertas variables, utilizando operadores OWA, buscando generar operadores de agregación específicos. Los modelos desarrollados se evaluarán comparando sus características con los modelos habitualmente utilizados. Se consideran modelos clásicos para acceder a recursos compartidas en la modalidad de exclusión mutua utilizando regiones críticas al algoritmo centralizado, al algoritmo distribuido de Lamport, Ricart y Agrawala, al algoritmo de anillo de fichas, entre otros.Eje: Arquitectura, Redes y Sistemas Operativos.Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informátic