Importance of long-term cycles for predicting water level dynamics in natural lakes

Lakes are disproportionately important ecosystems for humanity, containing 77% of the liquid surface freshwater on Earth and comprising key contributors to global biodiversity. With an ever-growing human demand for water and increasing climate uncertainty, there is pressing need for improved understanding of the underlying patterns of natural variability of water resources and consideration of their implications for water resource management and conservation. Here we use Bayesian harmonic regression models to characterise water level dynamics and study the influence of cyclic components in confounding estimation of long-term directional trends in water levels in natural Irish lakes. We found that the lakes were characterised by a common and well-defined annual seasonality and several inter-annual and inter-decadal cycles with strong transient behaviour over time. Importantly, failing to account for the longer-term cyclic components produced a significant overall underestimation of the trend effect. Our findings demonstrate the importance of contextualising lake water resource management to the specific physical setting of lakes

A comparative study of calibration methods for low-cost ozone sensors in IoT platforms

© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.This paper shows the result of the calibration process of an Internet of Things platform for the measurement of tropospheric ozone (O 3 ). This platform, formed by 60 nodes, deployed in Italy, Spain, and Austria, consisted of 140 metal–oxide O 3 sensors, 25 electro-chemical O 3 sensors, 25 electro-chemical NO 2 sensors, and 60 temperature and relative humidity sensors. As ozone is a seasonal pollutant, which appears in summer in Europe, the biggest challenge is to calibrate the sensors in a short period of time. In this paper, we compare four calibration methods in the presence of a large dataset for model training and we also study the impact of a limited training dataset on the long-range predictions. We show that the difficulty in calibrating these sensor technologies in a real deployment is mainly due to the bias produced by the different environmental conditions found in the prediction with respect to those found in the data training phase.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Efficiency of university education: A partial frontier analysis

This article investigates the efficiency of the university education using two linked databases (Saber Pro and Saber 11) from the Colombian Institute for Evaluation of Education (ICFES) corresponding to 2014. We use a non-parametric frontier approach that combines the "order m" technique with the concept of a meta-frontier to disaggregate students' total efficiency in generic skills in quantitative reasoning, critical reading, and written communication, into the parts attributable to the students themselves and the university. The analysis is performed by academic programme and by education sector (public vs. private). Results indicate that most of the inefficiency of students in the assessment of generic skills in higher education is attributable to the students themselves and a significant number of students could improve their performance in the assessment in each of the academic programmes if they performed as efficiently as those located on the frontier. Furthermore, the inefficiency share of students varies between academic programmes and university sectors, with students in the private sector more inefficient than those in the public sector in some and less inefficient in others. This research constitutes the first application of the technique of "order m" with the approach of the meta-frontier for the analysis of educational efficiency using data at the student and university levels

Experimental evidences for the use of two macroalgal species, Ascophyllum nodosum and Fucus vesiculosus as biomonitors of N sources

Proyecto ANILE (CTM2009-08396, CTM2010-08804-E) Plan Nacional de I+D+i y Proyecto RADIALES (IEO)Postprint2,263

La división sintética vinculada al algoritmo de la división de polinomios una propuesta para bachillerato

Este trabajo surge por nuestra inquietud acerca de las dificultades que tienen estudiantes de bachillerato en la división polinómica. Queremos proponer el algoritmo de división sintética como una forma más fácil para llevar a cabo la división, además, vamos a enfatizar en las características esenciales del algoritmo de la división de polinomios para dar sentido a ambas junto con la relación que hay entre ellas

La división sintética vinculada al algoritmo de la división de polinomios una propuesta para secundaria

Este trabajo surge por nuestra inquietud acerca de las dificultades que presentan los estudiantes de secundaria al desarrollar la división polinómica. Queremos proponer el algoritmo de división sintética como una forma más fácil, rápida y compacta para llevar a cabo la división de polinomios, además, enfatizamos en las características esenciales del algoritmo de la división de polinomios para dar sentido a ambas junto con la relación que hay entre ellas

Estudio exegético sobre la relación entre la revelación y el juicio de Dios para los gentiles en el contexto de Romanos 1:18-21

La yuxtaposición entre revelación y juicio, en una correspondencia biunívoca, que involucra grado y profundidad, es la base estructural de este estudio exegético, bajo el núcleo textual de Romanos 1:18-21. Los términos y expresiones de esta perícopa convergen en la universalidad de un conocimiento previo de la revelación divina, que reúne conceptualmente los elementos divinos de la revelación y la ira, y genera juicio. Las construcciones sintáctico-semánticas de los cuatro versos anteriores constituyen un puente sólido entre la revelación y el juicio. En este sentido, es esencial detectar las características histórico-teológicas de los elementos textuales determinantes y relevantes en Romanos 1:18-21, que favorecen la calificación del grado de conocimiento de los gentiles citados en la epístolaTesisLIMAUnidad de Posgrado de TeologíaEstudios bíblico

Experimental Ditching Loads on Aeronautical Flexible Structures

Ditching is an aircraft emergency condition that ends with the planned impact of the aircraft against water. Four main phases may be considered in a ditching event: Approach, Impact, Landing and Floatation This paper addresses some aspects of the second phase, an extreme case of fluid-structure coupling were high pressures may be developed during the impact of the sliding aircraft with water, which in turn may cause rupture of the structure, jeopardizing the required safe evacuation of crew and passengers. For completeness, the paper recalls a description of the ditching tests performed within the European funded research project SMAES. These tests were first used to derive a synthetic expression of the ditching loads based on rigid plates measurements. For flexible plates, these synthetic pressures are in turn corrected using local deformation (in terms of local delta-pitch and local delta-z deformation) in an iterative process. When comparing the deformations obtained using Finite Element Method simulation and the corrected synthetic pressures versus deformation measurements, the results show very good comparison of deformation shape time histories, good comparison of time of occurrence of peak deformation in each pick-up and only fair comparison in terms of deformation levels

Quantification of mixed contributions of primary producers from amino acid δ15N of marine consumers: a Bayesian approach.

Estimations of the trophic position (TP) and the food web nitrogen baseline from compound-specific isotope analysis of individual amino acids (CSIA-AA) are challenged when the diet of consumer organisms relies on different proportions of vascular and non-vascular primary producers. Here we provide a new method to infer such proportions using the δ15N patterns from individual AAs (δ15NAA) in the consumer. Combining published and new data, we first characterized the δ15NAA signatures in primary producers and determined the isotopic enrichment (β) for the major taxa of primary producers. Then, we applied MixSIAR Bayesian isotope mixing models to investigate the transfer of these signatures to marine primary consumers (molluscs, green turtles, zooplankton and fish), and their utility to quantify autotrophic sources. Reliable source proportions were quantified, using appropriate combinations of trophic discrimination factors (TDFs), and were used to estimate β values for each consumer. We demonstrated that phytoplankton, macroalgae and vascular plants have singular δ15NAA fingerprints that can be tracked from the δ15NAA values in their primary consumers, and can be used to estimate mixed baseline sources. This method is useful to accurately estimate βmix values from consumer δ15NAA signatures with no requirement to sample or characterize the primary producers supporting the food web, thus providing reliable TP estimates in complex environments dominated by vascular and non-vascular autotrophs. This study evidences a suitable integration of δ15NAA fingerprinting and MixSIAR for quantitative estimations of autotrophic sources, complementing other methods to quantify resource utilization in natural systems. This method represents a major advance to unravel trophic dynamics at the aquatic/terrestrial interface using CSIA-AA.PID2020-115620RB-100, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/50110001103

Light Triggered Enhancement of Antibiotic Efficacy in Biofilm Elimination Mediated by Gold-Silver Alloy Nanoparticles

This work was financed by national funds from FCT-Funda??o para a Ci?ncia e a Tecnologia, I.P., in the scope of the project UIDP/04378/2020 and UIDB/04378/2020 of the Research Unit on Applied Molecular Biosciences - UCIBIO and the project LA/P/0140/2020 of the Associate Laboratory Institute for Health and Bioeconomy-i4HB. FCT?MEC have also acknowledged for SFRH/BD/118350/2016 to CA-B, and Inn-Indigo 00002/2015 RA Detect to LR-G. Publisher Copyright: Copyright © 2022 Alves-Barroco, Rivas-García, Fernandes and Baptista.Bacterial biofilm is a tri-dimensional complex community of cells at different metabolic stages involved in a matrix of self-produced extracellular polymeric substances. Biofilm formation is part of a defense mechanism that allows the bacteria to survive in hostile environments, such as increasing resistance or tolerance to antimicrobial agents, causing persistent infections hard to treat and impair disease eradication. One such example is bovine mastitis associated with Streptococcus dysgalactiae subsp. dysgalactiae (SDSD), whose worldwide health and economic impact is on the surge. As such, non-conventional nanobased approaches have been proposed as an alternative to tackle biofilm formation and to which pathogenic bacteria fail to adapt. Among these, metallic nanoparticles have gained significant attention, particularly gold and silver nanoparticles, due to their ease of synthesis and impact against microorganism growth. This study provides a proof-of-concept investigation into the use of gold-silver alloy nanoparticles (AuAgNPs) toward eradication of bacterial biofilms. Upon visible light irradiation of AuAgNPs there was considerable disturbance of the biofilms' matrix. The hindering of structural integrity of the biofilm matrix resulted in an increased permeability for entry of antibiotics, which then cause the eradication of biofilm and inhibit subsequent biofilm formation. Additionally, our results that AuAgNPs inhibited the formation of SDSD biofilms via distinct stress pathways that lead to the downregulation of two genes critical for biofilm production, namely, brpA-like encoding biofilm regulatory protein and fbpA fibronectin-binding protein A. This study provides useful information to assist the development of nanoparticle-based strategies for the active treatment of biofilm-related infections triggered by photoirradiation in the visible.publishersversionpublishe