A sustainable model for ICT capacity building in developing countries

System administrators are often asked to apply their professional expertise in unusual situations, or under tight resource constraints. What happens, though, when the “situation” is a foreign country with only basic technical infrastructure, and the task is to bauild systems which are able to survive and grow in these over-constrained environments? In this paper we report on our experiences in two very different countries – Cuba and Ethiopia – where we ran a number of ICT projects. In those projects we assisted local universities to upgrade their ICT infrastructure and services. This included skills and process building for local system administrators. Based on our experiences we formulate a model for sustainable ICT capacity building. We hope this model will be useful for other organizations doing similar projects

Development and evaluation of automatic landing control laws for power lift STOL aircraft

A series of investigations were conducted to generate and verify through ground bases simulation and flight research a data base to aid in the design and certification of advanced propulsive lift short takeoff and landing aircraft. Problems impacting the design of powered lift short haul aircraft that are to be landed automatically on STOL runways in adverse weather were examined. An understanding of the problems was gained by a limited coverage of important elements that are normally included in the certification process of a CAT 3 automatic landing system

RIBAR and xRIBAR: methods for reproducible relative MS/MS-based label-free protein quantification

Mass spectrometry-driven proteomics is increasingly relying on quantitative analyses for biological discoveries. As a result, different methods and algorithms have been developed to perform relative or absolute quantification based on mass spectrometry data. One of the most popular quantification methods are the so-called label-free approaches, which require no special sample processing, and can even be applied retroactively to existing data sets. Of these label-free methods, the MS/MS-based approaches are most often applied, mainly because of their inherent simplicity as compared to MS-based methods. The main application of these approaches is the determination of relative protein amounts between different samples, expressed as protein ratios. However, as we demonstrate here, there are some issues with the reproducibility across replicates of these protein ratio sets obtained from the various, MS/MS-based label-free methods, indicating that the existing methods are not optimally robust. We therefore present two new Methods (called RIBAR and xRIBAR) that use the available MS/MS data more effectively, achieving increased robustness. Both the accuracy and the precision of our novel methods are analyzed and compared to the existing methods to illustrate the increased robustness of our new methods over existing ones

Pancancer analysis of DNA methylation-driven genes using MethylMix.

Aberrant DNA methylation is an important mechanism that contributes to oncogenesis. Yet, few algorithms exist that exploit this vast dataset to identify hypo- and hypermethylated genes in cancer. We developed a novel computational algorithm called MethylMix to identify differentially methylated genes that are also predictive of transcription. We apply MethylMix to 12 individual cancer sites, and additionally combine all cancer sites in a pancancer analysis. We discover pancancer hypo- and hypermethylated genes and identify novel methylation-driven subgroups with clinical implications. MethylMix analysis on combined cancer sites reveals 10 pancancer clusters reflecting new similarities across malignantly transformed tissues

Development and evaluation of automatic landing control laws for light wing loading STOL aircraft

Automatic flare and decrab control laws were developed for NASA's experimental Twin Otter. This light wing loading STOL aircraft was equipped with direct lift control (DLC) wing spoilers to enhance flight path control. Automatic landing control laws that made use of the spoilers were developed, evaluated in a simulation and the results compared with these obtained for configurations that did not use DLC. The spoilers produced a significant improvement in performance. A simulation that could be operated faster than real time in order to provide statistical landing data for a large number of landings over a wide spectrum of disturbances in a short time was constructed and used in the evaluation and refinement of control law configurations. A longitudinal control law that had been previously developed and evaluated in flight was also simulated and its performance compared with that of the control laws developed. Runway alignment control laws were also defined, evaluated, and refined to result in a final recommended configuration. Good landing performance, compatible with Category 3 operation into STOL runways, was obtained

Modelling of priority pollutants releases from urban areas

In the framework of the EU project ScorePP (Source Control Options for Reducing Emissions of Priority Pollutants), dynamic PPs (priority pollutants) fate models are being developed to assess appropriate strategies for limiting the release of PPs from urban sources and for treating PPs on a variety of spatial scales. Different possible sources of PP releases were mapped and both their release pattern and their loads were quantified as detailed as possible. This paper focuses on the link between the gathered PP sources data and the dynamic models of the urban environment. This link consists of: (1) a method for the quantitative and structured storage of temporal emission pattern information, (2) the coupling of GIS-based spatial emission source data with temporal emission pattern information and (3) the generation of PP release time series to feed the dynamic sewer catchment model. Steps 2 and 3 were included as the main features of a dedicated software tool. Finally, this paper also illustrates the method’s applicability to generate model input timeseries for generic pollutants (N, P and COD/BOD) in addition to priority pollutants