Distribution of pines in Europe agrees with seedling differences in foliage frost tolerance, not with xylem embolism vulnerability

Drought and frosts are major determinants of plant functioning and distribution. Both stresses can cause xylem embolism and foliagedamage. The objective of this study was to analyse if the distribution of six common pine species along latitudinal and altitudinalgradients in Europe is related to their interspecific differences in frost tolerance and to the physiological mechanismsunderlying species-specific frost tolerance. We also evaluate if frost tolerance depends on plant water status. We studied survivalto a range of freezing temperatures in 2-year-old plants and assessed the percentage loss of hydraulic conductivity (PLC) duexylem embolism formation and foliage damage determined by needle electrolyte leakage (EL) after a single frost cycle to −15 °Cand over a range of predawn water potential (psipd) values.Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (México)Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y UniversidadesComunidad de Madri

Decreased TLR3 in Hyperplastic Adipose Tissue, Blood and Inflamed Adipocytes is Related to Metabolic Inflammation

Background/Aims: Obesity is characterized by the immune activation that eventually dampens insulin sensitivity and changes metabolism. This study explores the impact of different inflammatory/ anti-inflammatory paradigms on the expression of toll-like receptors (TLR) found in adipocyte cultures, adipose tissue, and blood. Methods: We evaluated by real time PCR the impact of acute surgery stress in vivo (adipose tissue) and macrophages (MCM) in vitro (adipocytes). Weight loss was chosen as an anti-inflammatory model, so TLR were analyzed in fat samples collected before and after bariatric surgery-induced weight loss. Associations with inflammatory and metabolic parameters were analyzed in non-obese and obese subjects, in parallel with gene expression measures taken in blood and isolated adipocytes/ stromal-vascular cells (SVC). Treatments with an agonist of TLR3 were conducted in human adipocyte cultures under normal conditions and upon conditions that simulated the chronic low-grade inflammatory state of obesity. Results: Surgery stress raised TLR1 and TLR8 in subcutaneous (SAT), and TLR2 in SAT and visceral (VAT) adipose tissue, while decreasing VAT TLR3 and TLR4. MCM led to increased TLR2 and diminished TLR3, TLR4, and TLR5 expressions in human adipocytes. The anti-inflammatory impact of weight loss was concomitant with decreased TLR1, TLR3, and TLR8 in SAT. Cross-sectional associations confirmed increased V/ SAT TLR1 and TLR8, and decreased TLR3 in obese patients, as compared with non-obese subjects. As expected, TLR were predominant in SVC and adipocyte precursor cells, even though expression of all of them but TLR8 (very low levels) was also found in ex vivo isolated and in vitro differentiated adipocytes. Among SVC, CD14+ macrophages showed increased TLR1, TLR2, and TLR7, but decreased TLR3 mRNA. The opposite patterns shown for TLR2 and TLR3 in V/ SAT, SVC, and inflamed adipocytes were observed in blood as well, being TLR3 more likely linked to lymphocyte instead of neutrophil counts. On the other hand, decreased TLR3 in adipocytes challenged with MCM dampened lipogenesis and the inflammatory response to Poly(I:C). Conclusion: Functional variations in the expression of TLR found in blood and hypertrophied fat depots, namely decreased TLR3 in lymphocytes and inflamed adipocytes, are linked to metabolic inflammation

The Catalan Surveillance Network of SARS-CoV-2 in Sewage: design, implementation, and performance

Wastewater-based epidemiology has shown to be an efficient tool to track the circulation of SARS-CoV-2 in communities assisted by wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). The challenge comes when this approach is employed to help Health authorities in their decision-making. Here, we describe the roadmap for the design and deployment of SARSAIGUA, the Catalan Surveillance Network of SARS-CoV-2 in Sewage. The network monitors, weekly or biweekly, 56 WWTPs evenly distributed across the territory and serving 6 M inhabitants (80% of the Catalan population). Each week, samples from 45 WWTPs are collected, analyzed, results reported to Health authorities, and finally published within less than 72 h in an online dashboard ( https://sarsaigua.icra.cat ). After 20 months of monitoring (July 20-March 22), the standardized viral load (gene copies/day) in all the WWTPs monitored fairly matched the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases along the successive pandemic waves, showing a good fit with the diagnosed cases in the served municipalities (Spearman Rho = 0.69). Here we describe the roadmap of the design and deployment of SARSAIGUA while providing several open-access tools for the management and visualization of the surveillance data.The authors wish to thank the staff from all the WWTPs monitored for their help and technical support during the sampling campaigns. The authors acknowledge the funding received from the ACA and the ASPCAT from the Catalan Government (Generalitat de Catalunya). ICRA authors acknowledge the funding provided by the Generalitat de Catalunya through the Consolidated Research Group grants ICRA-ENV 2017 SGR 1124 and ICRA-TiA 2017 SGR 1318. ICRA researchers also thank the funding from the CERCA program of the Catalan Government.Peer reviewe

Data Partitioning Methods: Implementation and Static Evaluation Reports

this report we have described how two methods for automatically determining convenient data distributions out of sequential programs have been implemented in the ParaScope environment. The selected methods were proposed by [LiCh90, LiCh91] and [HuSa91, RaSa91]. We have described some modifications or extensions that we have made to the methods in order to implement them in a tool that accepts real Fortran programs. In general, we may conclude that automatic data distribution tools are viable both in terms of computation requirements and results. We consider the door is open for useful tools, not only for code generation, but also for program development with the aim of helping programmers to identify communication requirements and estimate their importance at compile time. We have measured the usefulness (in terms of number of times they are applicable) of the optimizations proposed by [LiCh91]. Two of them very seldom appear. Similarly, patterns corresponding to the general communication routines classified in [LiCh91] are not really frequent (7% of the reference patterns) as well as the decomposition in simple communication routines (7% of the reference patterns). Identification of the really important techniques is crucial to make a data distribution tool simple but efficient at the same time. One important observation is the sensibility to the pattern and cost estimates for individual operations. This implies that this modules have to be carefully tuned to the architecture and parallelization approach. This is easy but requires detailed analysis of a large base of programs and the execution of the generated code on a simulator, as planned for the last task of the project. With this tuning, we are quite confident that DDT will generate efficient data distributions an..

Crystallization of polypropylene in the presence of Miscanthus x giganteus stems fragments

International audienceMiscanthus Giganteus – reinforced polypropylene composites have been prepared by internal mixing. The effect of the size of the miscanthus fragments used as fillers onto the thermal properties of composites has been evaluated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and polarized light optical microscopy (POM). The kinetics of the crystallization processes have been evaluated by isothermal methods. The influence of the fiber‐matrix interface onto the melting/crystallization processes has been evaluated by adding a maleic anhydride–grafted polypropylene (MA‐g‐PP) coupling agent. A clear acceleration of the crystallization kinetics was observed in the presence of miscanthus stem fragments. However, the results showed that, for non‐coupled composites, the size and aspect ratio of those fragments had no significant influence onto the crystallization kinetics of polypropylene. The presence of the MA‐g‐PP coupling agent increased the kinetics and reduced the crystallization activation energy. Although relatively small, if a good fiber‐matrix interface is achieved, the size of the filler plays a significant role onto the crystallization kinetics of the matrix, with smaller fragment leading to faster kinetics and reduced activation energ

A Study of Data Sets and Affinity in Real Programs

To evaluate the quality of some methods which automatically derive data partitions from sequential code, it is necessary to have a set of benchmarks and an evaluation platform. This report presents the selection process of our set of benchmarks for performing this evaluation, and a characterization of the selected routines in terms of data sets used. Most of the approaches for automatic data partitioning are based on the Component Affinity Graph (CAG). The CAG stores the relevant information about preferences and conflicts in the alignment step of the data partitioning process. We have done some measurements to estimate the computational power required to process the CAG and the chances for finding regular data distributions among processors. Finally, three optimizations have been performed for increasing the amount of affinity relations obtained by current approaches: expression substitution, subscript substitution, and induction variable detection. A significant amount of new affinit..

Miscanthus stem fragment – Reinforced polypropylene composites: Development of an optimized preparation procedure at small scale and its validation for differentiating genotypes

International audienceThe production of ligno-cellulosic biomass-based composites requires the development of new methodologies to evaluate the reinforcement potential of a given biomass, such as miscanthus studied in the work. Miscanthus stems from thirteen genotypes were broken into elongated fragments and mixed with polypropylene composites in an internal mixer. The aim is to find the best protocol able to discriminate miscanthus genotypes for their reinforcement capability. The following process parameters were optimized in order to maximize the reinforcement effect of the stem fragment filler: mixing parameters (mixing time, rotor speed and chamber temperature), temperature, fragment content, size and length distributions and coupling agent. The relationship between the process parameters and the mechanical properties of composites were analyzed to evaluate the influence of genotype on reinforcement performance, showing the robustness of the protocol in effectively discriminating genotypes according to their reinforcing capacity

Natural filler-reinforced composites: Comparison of the reinforcing potential among technical fibers, stem fragments and industrial by-products

International audienceFillers, originating from eleven different plants, and which can be divided into three classes: technical fibers (curauà, jute and flax), crop stem fragments (miscanthus, sorghum and maize) and industrial by-products (agave, oak chips, wet draff, wheat straws and vine shoots), were compared to glass fibers in low density polyethylene and polypropylene reinforced composites, applying similar compounding and processing conditions. On average, modulus and strength were reduced by factors of 1.5, 2 and 3, when glass fibers were replaced by technical fillers, plant stem fragments and by-product fillers respectively. There was not much difference as to the decrease in impact strength among the three classes. The fillers that exhibited a good reinforcing capacity in one matrix provided comparatively low performance in the other. The evolution of the tensile strength, elastic modulus and elongation at break of low density polyethylene composites reinforced with curauà, flax, jute and glass fibers is not correlated with that of polypropylene-based composites

Detecting affinity for automatic data distribution

ABSTRACT Most of the approaches for automatic data partitioning are based on the Dimension Alignment Graph (DAG). The DAG stores the relevant information about preferences and conflicts in the alignment step of the data distribution process. We have done some experiments to analyze the complexity of the DAG in real codes and the chances for finding regular data distributions among processors. Three optimizations have been performed to increase the amount of affinity relations obtained by current approaches: expression substitution, subscript substitution, and induction variable detection. A significant amount of new affinity relations are obtained when these optimizations are applied. 1