A functional analysis of electrical load curve modelling for some households specific electricity end-uses

Proceedings are available at http://iet.jrc.ec.europa.eu/energyefficiency/conference/6th-international-conference-energy-efficiency-domestic-appliances-and-lighting-eedal11Presentation is available at http://www.eedal.dk/Conference/~/media/EEDAL/Sessions/Session%207/EEDAL_GRANDJEAN_Arnaud_Presentation.ashxInternational audienceIn the next decades the European residential sector will face a series of deep technical and behavioural breaks. Among them are : the integration of new electrical domestic end-uses, the development of plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles, the increase of heat pumps implementations, the improvement and the technological changes in small electrical appliances. This will imply some behavioural modifications in the lifestyles. For example, the wishes in terms of comfort and the way electrical devices are used will evolve significantly. The energy consumption is likely to increase but the residential load curve will also be strongly modified. We then propose a functional analysis which enables to take into account, for each end-use, according to its own specificities, the key points that allow to build-up a relevant load curve. This will lead us to step down at the appliance level which will be the starting point of our modelling method. After a general description of the methodology, we will present three case studies for the following end-uses: washing, cooling and lighting. We will consider for each device the main determining factors of which are the technical features, the occupancy patterns of the household members, the activity scenarios in the dwellings, the climate. This bottomup approach will generate intrinsically some kind of diversity needed to represent the temporality and the level of the power demand for a large number of households. This methodology allows, after an aggregation step, the calculation of the load curves for households at various spatial scales

CUBAIR, Confort des Usagers des Bâtiments tertiaires par l'usage de techniques de traitement de l'AIR

International audienc

Anatomical distribution of Toxoplasma gondii in naturally and experimentally infected lambs

Consumption of raw or undercooked meat containing Toxoplasma gondii tissue cysts is one of the main sources of infection for humans worldwide. Among the various species intended for human consumption, sheep appear to be a high risk for human infection. The present study focused on the detailed anatomical distribution of Toxoplasma gondii in naturally and experimentally infected lambs using fresh and frozen samples of various pieces of meat, from a public health perspective. The first objective was to rank the edible parts intended for human consumption according to the detectable parasite burden by real-time PCR targeting the 529-bp repeated element. The second objective was to evaluate the impact of freezing by comparing the detection efficiency of the quantitative PCR between fresh and frozen tissues, as imports of lamb carcasses/cuts may arrive frozen or chilled. The highest estimated parasite loads were observed in skeletal muscles, and more particularly in edible portions such as quadriceps femoris muscle, intercostal muscles, deltoid muscle and diaphragm, with a significant difference in detectable parasite burden between fresh and frozen samples (p < 0.0001) or natural and experimental infection (p < 0.0001). Thoracic and pelvic limbs (3278–1048 parasites/g muscle) were ranked at the top of the list. Toxoplasma gondii DNA was detected in all the edible parts of lamb studied. These results suggest that lamb meat represents a risk for consumers. Further investigations are needed in order to confirm these differences in larger numbers of animals and in different breeds

GABAB Receptor Subunit GB1 at the Cell Surface Independently Activates ERK1/2 through IGF-1R Transactivation

BACKGROUND: Functional GABA(B) receptor is believed to require hetero-dimerization between GABA(B1) (GB1) and GABA(B2) (GB2) subunits. The GB1 extracellular domain is required for ligand binding, and the GB2 trans-membrane domain is responsible for coupling to G proteins. Atypical GABA(B) receptor responses observed in GB2-deficient mice suggested that GB1 may have activity in the absence of GB2. However the underlying mechanisms remain poorly characterized. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here, by using cells overexpressing a GB1 mutant (GB1asa) with the ability to translocate to the cell surface in the absence of GB2, we show that GABA(B) receptor agonists, such as GABA and Baclofen, can induce ERK1/2 phosphorylation in the absence of GB2. Furthermore, we demonstrate that GB1asa induces ERK1/2 phosphorylation through Gi/o proteins and PLC dependent IGF-1R transactivation. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our data suggest that GB1 may form a functional receptor at the cell surface in the absence of GB2

Synonymous Genes Explore Different Evolutionary Landscapes

The evolutionary potential of a gene is constrained not only by the amino acid sequence of its product, but by its DNA sequence as well. The topology of the genetic code is such that half of the amino acids exhibit synonymous codons that can reach different subsets of amino acids from each other through single mutation. Thus, synonymous DNA sequences should access different regions of the protein sequence space through a limited number of mutations, and this may deeply influence the evolution of natural proteins. Here, we demonstrate that this feature can be of value for manipulating protein evolvability. We designed an algorithm that, starting from an input gene, constructs a synonymous sequence that systematically includes the codons with the most different evolutionary perspectives; i.e., codons that maximize accessibility to amino acids previously unreachable from the template by point mutation. A synonymous version of a bacterial antibiotic resistance gene was computed and synthesized. When concurrently submitted to identical directed evolution protocols, both the wild type and the recoded sequence led to the isolation of specific, advantageous phenotypic variants. Simulations based on a mutation isolated only from the synthetic gene libraries were conducted to assess the impact of sub-functional selective constraints, such as codon usage, on natural adaptation. Our data demonstrate that rational design of synonymous synthetic genes stands as an affordable improvement to any directed evolution protocol. We show that using two synonymous DNA sequences improves the overall yield of the procedure by increasing the diversity of mutants generated. These results provide conclusive evidence that synonymous coding sequences do experience different areas of the corresponding protein adaptive landscape, and that a sequence's codon usage effectively constrains the evolution of the encoded protein