Evolutionary Mechanisms of Long-Term Genome Diversification Associated With Niche Partitioning in Marine Picocyanobacteria.

Marine picocyanobacteria of the genera Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus are the most abundant photosynthetic organisms on Earth, an ecological success thought to be linked to the differential partitioning of distinct ecotypes into specific ecological niches. However, the underlying processes that governed the diversification of these microorganisms and the appearance of niche-related phenotypic traits are just starting to be elucidated. Here, by comparing 81 genomes, including 34 new Synechococcus, we explored the evolutionary processes that shaped the genomic diversity of picocyanobacteria. Time-calibration of a core-protein tree showed that gene gain/loss occurred at an unexpectedly low rate between the different lineages, with for instance 5.6 genes gained per million years (My) for the major Synechococcus lineage (sub-cluster 5.1), among which only 0.71/My have been fixed in the long term. Gene content comparisons revealed a number of candidates involved in nutrient adaptation, a large proportion of which are located in genomic islands shared between either closely or more distantly related strains, as identified using an original network construction approach. Interestingly, strains representative of the different ecotypes co-occurring in phosphorus-depleted waters (Synechococcus clades III, WPC1, and sub-cluster 5.3) were shown to display different adaptation strategies to this limitation. In contrast, we found few genes potentially involved in adaptation to temperature when comparing cold and warm thermotypes. Indeed, comparison of core protein sequences highlighted variants specific to cold thermotypes, notably involved in carotenoid biosynthesis and the oxidative stress response, revealing that long-term adaptation to thermal niches relies on amino acid substitutions rather than on gene content variation. Altogether, this study not only deciphers the respective roles of gene gains/losses and sequence variation but also uncovers numerous gene candidates likely involved in niche partitioning of two key members of the marine phytoplankton

Możliwość stosowania narzędzi modelowania ewakuacji dla taboru kolejowego

Evacuation modelling technology offers designers and regulators of train new opportunities to rigorously test designs and theories in order to improve the passengers’ safety. This paper deals with the opportunity to use these tools for the railway industry. The FDS+Evac and buildingEXODUS softwares are used to model and simulate the evacuation of rolling stock. Firstly, in order to demonstrate the reliability of these tools to calculate the complete evacuation time, a comparative study was achieved between a real test, simulations done with FDS+Evac and simulations done with buildingEXODUS. Multiple simulations are performed to capture the stochastic variations in egress times. The philosophy of this comparative study is to realize the real test in one hand, and to use evacuation modelling tools with the incoming data (population, train geometry, initial position of the people, and known characteristics of the population) of the real test in another hand. The goal is not to stall the simulations results with the real test but to analyze the results of calculations by themselves. The following study highlights the interest of using evacuation modelling for the railway industry and shows their reliability in order to satisfy the TSI RST HS 2008/232/CE and the future TSI LOC&PAS. A confrontation „modelling – full-scale test” is presented and analysed.Technika modelowania ewakuacji daje konstruktorom i ciałom nadzorującym pociągi nowe możliwości rygorystycznego sprawdzenie konstrukcji i teorii tak, aby poprawić bezpieczeństwo pasażerów. W artykule omówiono możliwość zastosowania tych narzędzi w kolejnictwie. Do modelowania i symulacji ewakuacji pasażerów z taboru kolejowego stosuje się programy komputerowe FDS+Evac oraz buildingEXODUS. Po pierwsze, dla zademonstrowania niezawodności tych narzędzi do obliczenia całkowitego czasu ewakuacji, dokonano analizy porównawczej dla próby rzeczywistej, symulacji przeprowadzonej za pomocą FDS+Evac i za pomocą buildingEXODUS. Wykonano symulacje wielokrotne w celu uchwycenia wariacji stochastycznych czasów wyjścia. Intencją tej analizy porównawczej jest z jednej strony reali-zacja próby rzeczywistej, a z drugiej strony użycie narzędzi modelowania ewakuacji z wykorzystaniem danych pochodzących z prób rzeczywistych (liczba osób, geometria pociągu, położenie początkowe osób, znana charakterystyka populacji osób). Celem nie jest tu konfrontacja wyników symulacji i wyników próby rzeczywistej, ale analiza wyników obliczeń jako takich. Wykonana następnie analiza podkreśla zainteresowanie modelowaniem ewakuacji w kolejnictwie i pokazuje jego wiarygodność przy spełnieniu normy TSI RST HS 2008/232/CE i przyszłej TSI LOC&PAS. Przedstawiono i przeanalizowano zestawienie „Modelowanie – próba w skali naturalnej

HERDECT -Utilisation des données satellites Sentinel-2 pour quantifier la production d'herbe

Grazed grass is the cheapest feed item in a feed ration. Good grass management requires knowledge ofthe available amount of grass. Simplifying and automating these grass measurements can help inmaintaining or even developing grazing. The HERDECT project aims to build methods for estimating thequantity of grass from remote sensing tools (remote acquisition) and to estimate their operationalfeasibility. This research presents a comparison of regression methods on several variables extractedfrom Sentinel-2 images with field data. The goal is to develop predictive models of grass height andbiomass. A set of experimental field data was collected on 18 sites mainly located in the western part ofmainland France. These data were used to assess the reliability of the models. The biomass and grassheight estimates obtained with satellites were compared with field data from HERDECT project farms and"grass growth" network. The results showed a high forecast quality for common use by farmers.L’herbe pâturée est l’aliment disponible le moins coûteux dans les exploitations d’élevage. L’optimisationde la gestion de l’herbe passe entre autres par une connaissance des quantités disponibles. Afin desimplifier et d’automatiser ces mesures d’herbe, et ainsi contribuer au maintien voire au développementdu pâturage, le projet HERDECT s’est attaché à construire des méthodes d’estimation de la biomassedes prairies à partir d’outils de télédétection (d’acquisition à distance) et à en estimer la faisabilitéopérationnelle. Cette recherche présente une comparaison de méthodes de régression sur plusieursvariables extraites des images Sentinel-2 avec des données terrains afin de développer des modèles deprévision de hauteur d’herbe et de biomasse sur pied. Un ensemble de données expérimentales deterrain, collectées sur 18 sites majoritairement situés dans la partie Ouest de la France métropolitaine, aété utilisé pour évaluer la capacité des modèles produits à estimer la hauteur d’herbe et la biomasse desprairies. Les estimations biomasses et hauteurs d’herbe obtenues grâce au satellite ont été comparéesaux données terrain issues des fermes du projet HERDECT et du réseau « pousse de l’herbe ». Lesrésultats présentés montrent une bonne qualité de la prévision utile pour un usage de masse

Energy poverty and emerging debates: Beyond the traditional triangle of energy poverty drivers

This paper evaluates whether, how, and why policy documents in six diverse European countries (Spain, France, Portugal, the UK, North Macedonia, and Slovenia) link energy poverty to other related policy areas. Our exploratory study suggests that the most explicit links to energy poverty are made in energy efficiency policies rather than in energy price and income policies, due to the dominant techno-economic approach to addressing energy poverty. As countries with a long tradition of addressing energy poverty, France and the UK integrate energy poverty to a greater extent in linked policies. Policy integration is reflected in EU efforts to include energy poverty in climate and energy policies. Emerging debates linked to energy poverty include good governance, citizens' agency, new energy services, and new threats from the energy transition. We argue that the spatial divide of energy poverty across Europe is more than a physical (infrastructural) divide. It is a policy (political) divide embedded in the economic and political space co-shaped by national path dependencies, such as the social welfare system, the energy market, the level of experience of dealing with energy poverty, and the influence of EU policies. These conditions determine the national policy integration efforts linked to energy poverty. © 2022 Elsevier Lt

Temporal Exceptional Model Mining Using Dynamic Bayesian Networks

The discovery of subsets of data that are characterized by models that differ significantly from the entire dataset, is the goal of exceptional model mining. With the increasing availability of temporal data, this task has clear relevance in discovering deviating temporal subprocesses that can bring insight into industrial processes, medical treatments, etc. As temporal data is often noisy, high-dimensional and has complex statistical dependencies, discovering such temporal subprocesses is challenging for current exceptional model mining methods. In this paper, we introduce Temporal Exceptional Model Mining to capture multiple and complex relationships among temporal variables of a dataset in a principled way. Our contributions are as follows: (i) we define the new task of temporal exceptional model mining; (ii) we characterize the discovery of exceptional temporal submodels using dynamic Bayesian networks by means of a new distance measure, (iii) we introduce a search procedure for exceptional dynamic Bayesian networks optimized by properties of the proposed distance, and (iv) the practical value of the proposed method is demonstrated based on simulated data and process data of funding applications and by comparisons with other exceptional model mining methods