Megapixel camera arrays enable high-resolution animal tracking in multiwell plates

Tracking small laboratory animals such as flies, fish, and worms is used for phenotyping in neuroscience, genetics, disease modelling, and drug discovery. An imaging system with sufficient throughput and spatiotemporal resolution would be capable of imaging a large number of animals, estimating their pose, and quantifying detailed behavioural differences at a scale where hundreds of treatments could be tested simultaneously. Here we report an array of six 12-megapixel cameras that record all the wells of a 96-well plate with sufficient resolution to estimate the pose of C. elegans worms and to extract high-dimensional phenotypic fingerprints. We use the system to study behavioural variability across wild isolates, the sensitisation of worms to repeated blue light stimulation, the phenotypes of worm disease models, and worms’ behavioural responses to drug treatment. Because the system is compatible with standard multiwell plates, it makes computational ethological approaches accessible in existing high-throughput pipelines

Proceedings of the 4^thBEAT-PCD Conference and 5^thPCD Training School

Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) is an inherited ciliopathy leading to chronic suppurative lung disease, chronic rhinosinusitis, middle ear disease, sub-fertility and situs abnormalities. As PCD is rare, it is important that scientists and clinicians foster international collaborations to share expertise in order to provide the best possible diagnostic and management strategies. ‘Better Experimental Approaches to Treat Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia’ (BEAT-PCD) is a multidisciplinary network funded by EU COST Action (BM1407) to coordinate innovative basic science and clinical research from across the world to drive advances in the field. The fourth and final BEAT-PCD Conference and fifth PCD Training School were held jointly in March 2019 in Poznan, Poland. The varied program of plenaries, workshops, break-out sessions, oral and poster presentations were aimed to enhance the knowledge and skills of delegates, whilst also providing a collaborative platform to exchange ideas. In this final BEAT-PCD conference we were able to build upon programmes developed throughout the lifetime of the COST Action. These proceedings report on the conference, highlighting some of the successes of the BEAT-PCD programme

Multi-support seismic input generation: an harmonization with code prescriptions

The seismic analysis of Submerged Floating Tunnels moored by cables is addressed with particular attention to spatial variability of the excitation. A uniformly modulated random process, whose spatial variability is governed by a single coherency function, is deemed adequate to model the multi-support seismic input for the given structure of large dimension, and moderately long periods, undergoing limited plastic deformation. A novel method to obtain response spectrum compatible accelerograms is proposed, based on the explicit expression of the median pseudo-acceleration response spectrum induced by the adopted power density function (PSD). This expression is used to identify the parameters of the PSD function that minimize the difference with the elastic response spectrum prescribed by EN 1998. The minimization process is discussed and parameters for the PSD spectra are obtained for the soil types considered by Eurocode 8. With reference to soil type C, samples of the free-field motion are then generated using a proved and theoretically sound approach. They show a satisfactory agreement with the prescribed response spectra. To model the cables, a 3 node isoparametric cable element is enriched by including hydrodynamic loading, within a numerical procedure for the dynamic time domain step-by-step analysis of non-linear discretized systems. An example of application is shown that makes reference to the bed profile of Qiandao Lake (People’s Republic of China), where a plan exists to build the first SFT prototype

Black-box Modelling of an Anti-seismic Isolator

contributo su CD-ROM, 17 pp

A numerical procedure for simulating the multi-support seismic response of submerged floating tunnels anchored by cables

The modeling and seismic analysis of submerged floating tunnels moored by cables is addressed with particular attention to spatial variability of the excitation. Dissipation modeling issues and cables dis- cretization are also discussed. A uniformly modulated random process, whose spatial variability is governed by a single coherency function, is deemed adequate to model the multi-support seismic input for a given structure of large dimension undergoing limited plastic deformation, as the one considered here. A novel method to obtain response spectrum compatible accelerograms is proposed, based on the explicit expression of the median pseudo-acceleration response spectrum induced by the adopted power density function (PSD). This expression is used to identify the parameters of the PSD function that minimize the difference with the elastic response spectrum prescribed by EN 1998; the minimization process is discussed and parameters for the PSD spectra are obtained. Samples of the free-field motion are then generated using a proved and theoretically sound approach and reach a satisfactory agreement with the prescribed response spectra. To model the cables, a 3 node isoparametric cable element is enriched by including hydrodynamic loading, within a numerical procedure for the dynamic time domain step-by-step analysis of non-linear discretized systems. An example of application is shown that makes reference to the bed profile of Qiandao Lake (People's Republic of China), where a plan exists to build the first SFT prototype

Multi-support seismic input and response of submergedfloating tunnels anchored by cables

The modeling and seismic analysis of Submerged Floating Tunnels moored by cables is addressed with particular attention to spatial variability of the excitation. A uniformly modulated random process is deemed adequate to model the spatial variability of the seismic input for the given structure. A novel method to obtain response spectrum compatible accelerograms is proposed, that is based on the explicit expression of the median pseudo-acceleration response spectrum induced by the adopted power density function (PSD), which is then used to identify the parameters of the PSD function that minimize the difference with the elastic response spectrum prescribed by EN 1998. The minimization process is discussed and parameters for the PSD spectra are obtained. Samples of the free-field motion are then generated using a proved and theoretically sound approach and reach a satisfactory agreement with the prescribed response spectra. To model the cables, a 3 node isoparametric cable element, formulated in the coordinates of the dynamic model, is enriched, by including hydrodynamic loading, within a numerical procedure for the dynamic time domain step-by-step analysis of non-linear discretized systems. Cables discretization and dissipation modeling issues are addressed. An example of application is shown, that makes reference to the bed profile of Qiandao Lake (People’s Republic of China), where the first SFT prototype should be built; additional analyses tend to assess the sensitivity to soil parameters