Trade-off between constitutive and inducible resistance against herbivores is only partially explained by gene expression and glucosinolate production.

The hypothesis that constitutive and inducible plant resistance against herbivores should trade-off because they use the same resources and impose costs to plant fitness has been postulated for a long time. Negative correlations between modes of deployment of resistance and defences have been observed across and within species in common garden experiments. It was therefore tested whether that pattern of resistance across genotypes follows a similar variation in patterns of gene expression and chemical defence production. Using the genetically tractable model Arabidopsis thaliana and different modes of induction, including the generalist herbivore Spodoptera littoralis, the specialist herbivore Pieris brassicae, and jasmonate application, constitutive and inducibility of resistance was measured across seven A. thaliana accessions that were previously selected based on constitutive levels of defence gene expression. According to theory, it was found that modes of resistance traded-off among accessions, particularly against S. littoralis, in which accessions investing in high constitutive resistance did not increase it substantially after attack and vice-versa. Accordingly, the average expression of eight genes involved in glucosinolate production negatively predicted larval growth across the seven accessions. Glucosinolate production and genes related to defence induction on healthy and herbivore-damaged plants were measured next. Surprisingly, only a partial correlation between glucosinolate production, gene expression, and the herbivore resistance results was found. These results suggest that the defence outcome of plants against herbivores goes beyond individual molecules or genes but stands on a complex network of interactions

Parallel logic programming systems

Projet CHLOEParallelizing logic programming has attracted much interest in the research community, because of the intrinsic or and and parallelisms of logic programs. One research stream aims at transparent exploitation of parallelism in existing logic programming languages such as Prolog while the family of concurrent logic languages develops constructs allowing programmers to express the concurrency, that is the communication and synchronization between parallel process, inside their algorithms. This paper mainly concentrates on transparent exploitation of parallelism and surveys the most mature solutions to the problems to be solved in order to obtain efficient implementations. These solutions have been implemented and the most efficient parallel logic programming systems reach effective speedups over state-of-the-art sequential Prolog implementations. The paper also addresses current and prospective research issues aiming to extend the applicability and the efficiency of existing systems,such as models merging the transparent parallelism and the concurrent logic languages approaches, combination of constraint logic programming with parallelism and use of highly parallel architectures

Cascade Failure in a Phase Model of Power Grids

We propose a phase model to study cascade failure in power grids composed of generators and loads. If the power demand is below a critical value, the model system of power grids maintains the standard frequency by feedback control. On the other hand, if the power demand exceeds the critical value, an electric failure occurs via step out (loss of synchronization) or voltage collapse. The two failures are incorporated as two removal rules of generator nodes and load nodes. We perform direct numerical simulation of the phase model on a scale-free network and compare the results with a mean-field approximation.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Testing multiple levels of influence in the intergenerational transmission of alcohol disorders from a developmental perspective: The example of alcohol use promoting peers and μ-opioid receptor M1 variation

This study examined the interplay between the influence of peers who promote alcohol use and μ-opioid receptor M1 (OPRM1) genetic variation in the intergenerational transmission of alcohol use disorder (AUD) symptoms while separating the “traitlike” components of AUD symptoms from their age-specific manifestations at three ages from emerging adulthood (17–23 years) to adulthood (29–40 years). The results for males were consistent with genetically influenced peer selection mechanisms as mediators of parent alcoholism effects. Male children of alcoholics were less likely to be carriers of the G allele in single nucleotide polymorphism A118G (rs1799971), and those who were homozygous for the A allele were more likely to affiliate with alcohol use promoting peers who increased the risk for AUD symptoms at all ages. There was evidence for women of an interaction between OPRM1 variation and peer affiliations but only at the earliest age band. Peer influences had stronger effects among women who were G-carriers. These results illustrate the complex ways in which the interplay between influences at multiple levels of analysis can underlie the intergenerational transmission of alcohol disorders as well as the importance of considering age and gender differences in these pathways

AUTOMATED RECONSTRUCTION OF 3D BUILDINGS IN HISTORIC CITY CENTERS FROM LIDAR DATA AND 2D BUILDING FOOTPRINTS

This paper describes a process for the automated generation of 3D buildings using 2D building footprints derived from cadastral maps and LIDAR point cloud data. In our approach we extract relevant geometric information from 2D building footprints in order to classify point cloud data. One key concept is the fact that roofs in most cases are aligned to the angles of the walls of a building. This concept is utilized to create contiguous surfaces and to extract ridges. In a field study involving two historic city centers in Switzerland we evaluate the results of our approach

The developmental psychopathology of alcohol use and alcohol disorders: Research achievements and future directions

The last 25 years have seen significant advances in our conceptualization of alcohol use and alcohol use disorders within a developmental framework, along with advances in our empirical understanding that have been potentiated by advances in quantitative methods. These include advances in understanding the heterogeneity of trajectories of alcohol outcomes; new insights about early childhood antecedents, and adolescence and emerging adulthood as important developmental periods for alcohol outcomes; a more nuanced understanding of the influences of developmental transitions, and their timing and contexts; a greater appreciation for the importance of considering multiple levels of analysis (including an increasing number of genetically informative studies); a continuing focus on studying multiple pathways underlying alcohol outcomes; and an increasing focus on studying the effects of alcohol exposure on future development. The current paper reviews these advances and suggests directions for future study

The Increasing Diversity and Complexity of Family Structures for Adolescents

The structure of adolescents’ families, and thus parental forms, in the United States, have become more heterogeneous and fluid over the past several decades. These changes are due to increases in never‐married, single parents, divorce, cohabitation, same‐sex parenting, multipartnered fertility, and co‐residence with grandparents. We document current diversity and complexity in adolescents’ families as important context for rethinking future parenting theory and research. We also discuss how understandings of adolescents’ families are somewhat limited by current methods used to measure characteristics of families. We recommend social network and profile‐based methods as alternatives to capturing key dimensions of family structure and processes. Understanding the diversity of households and families in which adolescents are raised can improve theory and research on parenting

Testing Whether and When Parent Alcoholism Uniquely Affects Various Forms of Adolescent Substance Use

The current study examined the distal, proximal, and time-varying effects of parents’ alcohol-related consequences on adolescents’ substance use. Previous studies show that having a parent with a lifetime diagnosis of alcoholism is a clear risk factor for adolescents’ own substance use. Less clear is whether the timing of a parent’s alcohol-related consequences differentially predicts the adolescent’s own substance involvement. Using a multilevel modeling approach, we tested whether adolescents showed elevated rates of alcohol, heavy alcohol, marijuana and other illegal drug use (a) at the same time that parents showed alcohol-related consequences (time-varying effects), (b) if parents showed greater alcohol-related consequences during the child’s adolescence (proximal effects), and (c) if parents had a lifetime diagnosis of alcoholism that predated the child’s adolescence (distal effects). We tested these effects in a high-risk sample of 451 adolescents assessed over three waves beginning at ages 11–15 from 1988 to 1991 (53 % male, 71 % non-Hispanic Caucasian, 54 % children of alcoholic parents and 46 % matched controls). Strong and consistent distal effects of parent alcoholism on adolescent’s substance use were found, though no additional risk was associated with proximal effects. Limited time-varying effects were also found. The importance of differentiating the timing effects of parent alcoholism in identifying underlying mechanisms of risk for adolescent substance use is discussed

On-line power system inertia calculation using wide area measurements

Future developments in power systems, e.g. relatively larger generator sets, the virtual power plant and synthetic inertia concept and connection of generation assets over inverters, will cause the system inertia to vary significantly. During system operation, if the inertia of the system is significantly lower than anticipated at the planning stage, then the existing, deterministic protection and control may fail to ensure system stability. Therefore, the ability to accurately determine the inertia of individual system areas, and the system as a whole, online would be very useful. In this paper, an Inertia Calculation Application (ICA), which could be implemented as part of a Wide Area Monitoring Protection and Control scheme, is presented. The necessary wide area measurements must be processed during large disturbances to the active power balance of the system. The ICA has been validated by using computer simulations, under laboratory conditions and by using real-life data recorded by a transmission system operator