Outbreak of gastroenteritis caused by Yersinia pestis in Afghanistan.

Plague, which is most often caused by the bite of Yersinia pestis-infected fleas, is a rapidly progressing, serious disease that can be fatal without prompt antibiotic treatment. In late December 2007, an outbreak of acute gastroenteritis occurred in Nimroz Province of southern Afghanistan. Of the 83 probable cases of illness, 17 died (case fatality 20·5%). Being a case was associated with consumption or handling of camel meat (adjusted odds ratio 4·4, 95% confidence interval 2·2-8·8, P<0·001). Molecular testing of patient clinical samples and of tissue from the camel using PCR/electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry revealed DNA signatures consistent with Yersinia pestis. Confirmatory testing using real-time PCR and immunological seroconversion of one of the patients confirmed that the outbreak was caused by plague, with a rare gastrointestinal presentation. The study highlights the challenges of identifying infectious agents in low-resource settings; it is the first reported occurrence of plague in Afghanistan

Reliability-based design optimization of shank chisel plough using optimum safety factor strategy

Reliability integration into tillage machine design process is a new strategy to overcome the drawbacks of classical design approaches and to achieve designs with a required reliability level. Furthermore, design optimization of soil tillage equipments under uncertainty seeks to design structures which should be both economic and reliable. The originality of this research is to develop an efficient methodology that controls the reliability levels for complex statistical distribution cases of random tillage forces. This developed strategy is based on design sensitivity concepts in order to determine the influence of each random parameter. The application of this method consists in taking into account the uncertainties on the soil tillage forces. The tillage forces are calculated in accordance with analytical model of McKyes and Ali with some modifications to include the effect of both soil–metal adhesion and tool speed. The different developments and applications show the importance of the developed method to improve the performance of the soil tillage equipments considering both random geometry and loading parameters. The developed method so-called OSF (Optimum Safety Factor) can satisfy a required reliability level without additional computing time relative to the deterministic design optimization study. Since the agricultural equipment parameters are extremely nonlinear, we extended the OSF approach to several nonlinear probabilistic distributions such as lognormal, uniform, Weibull and Gumbel probabilistic distribution laws

eBPF: A New Approach to Cloud-Native Observability, Networking and Security for Current (5G) and Future Mobile Networks (6G and Beyond)

Modern mobile communication networks and new service applications are deployed on cloud-native platforms. Kubernetes (K8s) is the de facto distributed operating system for container orchestration, and the extended version of the Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF)- in the Linux (and MS Windows) kernel- is fundamentally changing the approach to cloud-native networking, security, and observability. In this paper, we introduce what eBPF is, its potential for Telco cloud, and review some of the most promising pricing and billing models applied to this revolutionary operating system (OS) technology. These models include schemes based on a data source usage model or the number of eBPF agents deployed on the network, linked to specific eBPF modules. These modules encompass network observability, runtime security, and power dissipation monitoring. Next, we present our eBPF platform, named Sauron in this work, and demonstrate how eBPF allows us to write custom code and dynamically load eBPF programs into the kernel. These programs enable us to estimate the energy consumption of cloud-native functions, derive performance counters and gauges for transport networks, 5G applications, and non-access stratum protocols. Additionally, we can detect and respond to unauthorized access to cloud-native resources in real-time using eBPF. Our experimental results demonstrate the technical feasibility of eBPF in achieving highly performant monitoring, observability, and security tooling for current mobile networks (5G, 5G Advanced) as well as future networks (6G and beyond)

Structural health monitoring platform for industrial scale composite structures

Structural Health Monitoring technologies have been proposed in multiple research publications as a path forward to shift the current scheduled-based maintenance operations to a more physics-informed condition-based maintenance. The implementation of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) technologies on aircraft components requires the development of a single platform able to perform the required signal acquisition and data storage for posterior post-processing. This manuscript outlines the further developments on a SHM data acquisition platform which enables monitoring environmental temperature variations with parallel performance of both active Guided Wave Structural Health Monitoring and Electromechanical Impedance analysis with sequential upload of the test’s meta-data to an SQL database for posterior data processing and information safekeeping. The current platform was validated during the complete sensorization and damage detection on a large curved composite stiffened panel, representative an aircraft fuselage barrel section.European JTI-CleanSky2 program under the Grant Agreement n◦ 314768 for SHERLOC project (sherloc-project.com)

Reliability assessment of automotive components under fatigue using numerical simulation and accelerated testing

In this paper, a Stochastic Response Surface (SRS) approach based on Polynomial Chaos Expansion (PCE) is used to conduct reliability analysis of automotive components subjected to fatigue loading. The PCE coefficients have been computed by regression analysis based on a quasi-random experimental design. In addition, an efficient truncation technique, namely low-rank index sets, has been used to reduce the number of unknown coefficients to be estimated, and consequently to reduce the number of finite element model calls required for the construction of the PCE. Once the PCE is obtained, the probability of failure for a target fatigue life is estimated by applying Monte-Carlo simulations. At the same time, fatigue accelerated testing are conducted on full scale automotive component to obtain experimental predictions of the structural reliability. The estimates of the probability of failure are in good agreement with those obtained by numerical computations based on PCE and Monte-Carlo simulations

Ecological study on fisheries important rivers and bays in the south part of the Caspian Sea 2nd phase: Gorgan Bay

In this study ichthyoplankton, phytoplankton, zooplankton, benthic and hydrochemistry parameters were studied. 9 out of 11 sampling stations were in the Gorgan Bay area and 2 of them were in the mouth of the Bay. Ichthyoplankton survey were carried out in 6 stations and the other surveys such as phytoplankton, etc were done in 11 stations in 2009. Gorgan Bay map and position of sampling sites are given at the end of material and methods section. Biomass and frequency of phytoplankton at different stations, months and seasons were calculated that are presented in Tables 1 to 3. Hydro-chemical parameters such as water temperature, air temperature, visibility, DO, BOD5, pH, Alkalinity (bicarbonate, carbonate and total), Hardness (calcium, magnesium), CL,EC, Salinity, N (nitrate, nitrite, NH_3), Phosphate were measured and results are shown Table 11. Biomass (mgr/m^3) and numbers (ind./m^3) of 47 genus of different phylum of phytoplanktons such as Cyanophyta, Chlorophyta, Pyrophyta, Chrysophyta and Euglenaphyta as well as different phylum of zooplanktons consist of Protozoa, Arthropoda, Rotifera and Cyliophora were estimated. Frequency of phytoplanktons (ind/m^3) was 131.2, 1.6, 65.3, 18.9 and 23.8 million respectively. Furthermore, their biomass was 308.4, 1.9, 1358.9, 295.1 and 124.7 mg/m^3, respectively. The maximum and minimum numbers were observed in Leptolingbaya belonged to Cyanophyta and Diatoms of Chrysophyta 84.3 and 0.025 million (ind/ m^3) respectively. The maximum and minimum biomass was observed in Gyrosigma (Chrysophyta) and Tetradron (Chloropyta), 12317.3 and 0.014 mg/m3 respectively. The average biomass of zooplankton was measured 531.74, 30.77, 225.07, and 96.26 mg/m^3 respectively and the total was attained 883.83 mg/m3 Table 5. The maximum and minimum biomass of all zooplanktons was estimated in November and July, 3446.23 and 6 mg/m^3 respectively. Furthermore, the maximum and minimum numbers of zooplanktons were found in September and July which were 48.4 and 0.002 millions respectively and the average number was 8.4 ind/m^3 Table 4. Also numbers and biomass (gr/m^2) of 11 families of benthos which inhabit Gorgan Bay such as Annelida, Mollusca and Arthropoda were investigated in separated stations and distinctive months. The maximum and minimum biomass of benthos was observed in January (42.91 gr/m^2) and March (0.6428 gr/m^2). The biomass was considerable in April, February, August and December (Tables: 4, 5 and 6)