A portable platform for accelerated PIC codes and its application to GPUs using OpenACC

We present a portable platform, called PIC_ENGINE, for accelerating Particle-In-Cell (PIC) codes on heterogeneous many-core architectures such as Graphic Processing Units (GPUs). The aim of this development is efficient simulations on future exascale systems by allowing different parallelization strategies depending on the application problem and the specific architecture. To this end, this platform contains the basic steps of the PIC algorithm and has been designed as a test bed for different algorithmic options and data structures. Among the architectures that this engine can explore, particular attention is given here to systems equipped with GPUs. The study demonstrates that our portable PIC implementation based on the OpenACC programming model can achieve performance closely matching theoretical predictions. Using the Cray XC30 system, Piz Daint, at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS), we show that PIC_ENGINE running on an NVIDIA Kepler K20X GPU can outperform the one on an Intel Sandybridge 8-core CPU by a factor of 3.4

Flexión compuesta esviada en secciones de hormigón armado doblemente simétricas. Dirección de capacidad máxima

The use of simplified stress-strain relationship to describe the behavior of the concrete in compression (rectangular parabola, rectangular block), leads to find that the maximum capacity of a double symmetric reinforced concrete section under axial load an biaxial bending in the main symmetrical axis of the section. For the same section, the use of hyperbolic stress-strain relationship to describe the concrete behavior is found that the maximum capacity of the section under elevated compression level and biaxial bending does not lay in the symmetry axis direction but in an arbitrary one. A collection of interaction diagrams, biaxial bending an axial load, (Mx, My) of two sections with different amount of steel and two different axial loads are calculated in this research for two different stress-strain relationship for concrete (rectangular parabola, and hyperbolic), in order to find the direction of maximum resistance of the section under axial load and biaxial bending.El uso de modelos constitutivos simplificados para caracterizar el comportamiento del hormigón, (parábola rectángulo, bloque rectangular), conduce a que la capacidad de agotamiento de una sección doblemente simétrica solicitada por un axil excéntrico se encuentre en la dirección de simetría principal. Si se evalúa la capacidad de la sección empleando un modelo hiperbólico para la descripción del hormigón se obtiene que para axiles elevados, la dirección de resistencia máxima presenta un cierto desvío respecto a la dirección de simetría principal tal como se obtiene con el uso de modelos simplificados. En este trabajo se determinan y comparan una serie de diagramas de interacción en flexión compuesta esviada (Mx, My) de dos secciones con cuantías y axiles crecientes y dos modelos constitutivos de hormigón (parábola rectángulo e hiperbólico) a fin de determinar la dirección en la que se encuentra la resistencia máxima de las secciones en los casos analizados

Effect of Alginate Concentrations on Characteristics of Lactobacillus acidophilus and Their Viability

Lactobacillus acidophilus, a probiotic bacterium, is important bacteria for establishing a balanced intestinal microflora. The number of probiotic bacteria that must be consumed to get the benefits is about ≥107 CFU/g. Viability of L. acidophilus is generally low due to environmental conditions, storage and processing. Therefore, it is essential to maintain the number of bacteria, including the use of coating material followed by freeze drying. This microencapsulation method study aimed to determine the exact concentration of alginate in order to improve viability and attain best microcapsule characteristics by freeze drying method. A completely randomized design with 4 treatments and 4 replications was used. Alginate concentrations used were 1%, 2%, 3%, and 4% (w/v). They showed that no significantly difference on cell viability but a significant by different moisture content and yield of microcapsules. Treatment with 4% concentration was the best on generating microcapsules L. acidophilus with viability of 97.89%, water content of 3.43%, yield of 16.32%. It could also reduce resistance to pH 2.0 and bile salt 0.5% respectively 4.90 log cfu/g and 4.38%log cfu/g of total initial bacteria 4.99 log cfu/g. Keywords: alginate,  microencapsulation, Lactobacillus acidophilus, viability and characteristics

Ontop: answering SPARQL queries over relational databases

We present Ontop, an open-source Ontology-Based Data Access (OBDA) system that allows for querying relational data sources through a conceptual representation of the domain of interest, provided in terms of an ontology, to which the data sources are mapped. Key features of Ontop are its solid theoretical foundations, a virtual approach to OBDA, which avoids materializing triples and is implemented through the query rewriting technique, extensive optimizations exploiting all elements of the OBDA architecture, its compliance to all relevant W3C recommendations (including SPARQL queries, R2RML mappings, and OWL2QL and RDFS ontologies), and its support for all major relational databases

A serving of blueberry (V. corymbosum) acutely improves peripheral arterial dysfunction in young smokers and non-smokers : two randomized, controlled, crossover pilot studies

Several studies have documented the important role of polyphenol-rich foods in the modulation of vascular remodelling and function. This study aimed to evaluate the capacity of a single portion of blueberry (V. corymbosum) to acutely improve peripheral arterial dysfunction in a group of young volunteers. Twenty-four healthy males (12 non-smokers and 12 smokers) were recruited for two different randomized, controlled, crossover pilot acute studies. In the first study, non-smokers were exposed to a control treatment (C; 300 mL of water with sugar) and a blueberry treatment (BB; 300 g of blueberry). In the second study, smokers underwent 3 different protocols: (1) - smoking treatment (S); (2) - control treatment (CS; 300 mL of water with sugar + smoking); (3) - blueberry treatment (BS; 300 g of blueberry + smoking). Each treatment (1 day long) was separated by a one week washout period. Blood pressure, peripheral arterial function (reactive hyperemia index, RHI, a marker of endothelial function) and arterial stiffness (digital augmentation index, dAix and dAix normalized by considering a heart rate of 75 bpm, dAix@75) were measured before and after each treatment. In the first study, the consumption of blueberry and control treatment acutely increased peripheral arterial function in the group of non-smokers. The improvement in RHI was higher and significantly different after blueberry treatment compared to the control treatment (54.8 \ub1 8.4% BB vs. 28.2 \ub1 8.3% C; p = 0.01). No effects were observed for markers of arterial stiffness, blood pressure and heart rate. Acute cigarette smoke significantly increased blood pressure and heart rate, while no significant effect was registered in peripheral arterial function and stiffness. The intake of blueberry and control treatment before a cigarette did not counteract the increase in blood pressure and heart rate, while it significantly improved peripheral arterial function. In particular, a significant increase was observed following BS (35.2 \ub1 7.5% RHI; p = 0.02) and CS treatments (34.6 \ub1 11.9% RHI; p = 0.02) when compared to only smoking treatment. No difference between BS and CS was detected. In conclusion, the intake of blueberry and control treatments acutely improved peripheral arterial dysfunction both in smoker and in non-smoker subjects. Further studies should be performed to confirm the results obtained and reveal the potential mechanisms of blueberry in the improvement of endothelial function

Early detection of poor glycemic control in patients with diabetes mellitus in sub-Saharan Africa: a cohort study in Mozambique

Introduction: WHO estimates 422 million cases of diabetes mellitus worldwide. Mozambique has the second-highest mortality related to DM in the African region. Objectives of the present study are to provide data about a DM care service in Mozambique and to evaluate early outcomes of treatment. Methods: The new patients diagnosed with DM in a two-years period in a health centre in Maputo (Mozambique) were included in a retrospective cohort study. Fasting blood glucose (FBG), waist circumference (WC) and BMI were collected at baseline and after three months. Results: 188 patients were enrolled. Median BMI, WC and FBG at baseline were respectively 28 kg/m2(Inter Quartile Range [IQR]23.4-31.8), 98cm (IQR 87-105) and 209mg/dL (IQR 143-295). A non-pharmacological intervention was prescribed for six patients, while 182 patients received metformin 500 mg b.i.d. FBG was significantly reduced at control (226[±103.7]mg/dL vs 186[±93.2]mg/dL, p<0.000); however, glycemic control was reached in 74 patients (39.4%); not controlled patients changed regimen. Elderly patients had a higher glycemic control (adjusted Odds Ratio 2.50, 95% CI 1.11-5.06, p=0.002). Conclusion: Strategies for early detection of scarce glycemic control are feasible in Mozambique and could lead to prompt regimen switch; an invasive therapeutic approach could be preferable in selected cases to achieve control

Optique: Zooming in on Big Data

Despite the dramatic growth of data accumulated by enterprises, obtaining value out of it is extremely challenging. In particular, the data access bottleneck prevents domain experts from getting the right piece of data within a constrained time frame. The Optique Platform unlocks the access to Big Data by providing end users support for directly formulating their information needs through an intuitive visual query interface. The submitted query is then transformed into highly optimized queries over the data sources, which may include streaming data, and exploiting massive parallelism in the backend whenever possible. The Optique Platform thus responds to one major challenge posed by Big Data in data-intensive industrial settings

Ontology Based Data Access in Statoil

Ontology Based Data Access (OBDA) is a prominent approach to query databases which uses an ontology to expose data in a conceptually clear manner by abstracting away from the technical schema-level details of the underlying data. The ontology is ‘connected’ to the data via mappings that allow to automatically translate queries posed over the ontology into data-level queries that can be executed by the underlying database management system. Despite a lot of attention from the research community, there are still few instances of real world industrial use of OBDA systems. In this work we present data access challenges in the data-intensive petroleum company Statoil and our experience in addressing these challenges with OBDA technology. In particular, we have developed a deployment module to create ontologies and mappings from relational databases in a semi-automatic fashion; a query processing module to perform and optimise the process of translating ontological queries into data queries and their execution over either a single DB of federated DBs; and a query formulation module to support query construction for engineers with a limited IT background. Our modules have been integrated in one OBDA system, deployed at Statoil, integrated with Statoil’s infrastructure, and evaluated with Statoil’s engineers and data

Preparation of Well-Compatibilized PP/PC Blends and Foams Thereof

The performance of polypropylene-poly(ethylene brassylate) block and graft copolymers and a polypropylene-polycaprolactone graft copolymer as compatibilizers for polypropylene-rich polypropylene/bisphenol A polycarbonate (PP/PC, 80/20 wt/wt) blends was elucidated. The copolymers were synthesized either by metal-catalyzed ring-opening polymerization or transesterification of a presynthesized polyester, initiated by hydroxyl-functionalized PPs, which themselves were obtained by catalytic routes or reactive extrusion, respectively. Spectroscopic fingerprints of the copolymers from liquid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in combination with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA), and rheology analyses of the blends indicated that the compatibilizers spontaneously organize at the interface of the two immiscible polymers leading to the formation of uniform, stable, nanophase morphologies. The effect of the compatibilizers on the performance of the PP/PC blends was evaluated, and well-compatibilized PP/PC blends showed improved melt strength and strain hardening when compared to pure PP. This was verified by the successful foam extrusion using isobutane as a blowing agent of well-compatibilized PP/PC blends to low-density PP-based foams, for which normally long-chain branched PP is required

KAJIAN FITOKIMIA EKSTRAK KULIT BIJI KAKAO (Theobroma cacao L.)

Kulit biji kakao memiliki komponen fitokimia yang diduga berpotensi untuk dimanfaatkan sebagai bahan pengawet alami. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah menetapkan komponen fitokimia yang terekstrak dari kulit biji kakao dan mengetahui potensi toksisitas ekstrak kulit biji kakao. Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah metode eksperimen yang dianalisis secara deskriptif. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa berdasarkan skrining fitokimia, kulit biji kakao yang diekstrak menggunakan etanol 70% mengandung alkaloid, flavonoid, tanin, saponin, dan triterpenoid. Analisis fitokimia menggunakan Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) menunjukkan ekstrak kulit biji kakao mengandung 2,3-butanediol (6,45%), benzeneacetic acid (2,33%), caffeine (23,51%), dan theobromine (65,99%). Pengujian toksisitas berdasarkan metode Brine Shrimp Lethality Test (BSLT) menunjukkan nilai LC50 ekstrak kulit biji kakao adalah 39.595,27 ppm, artinya ekstrak tersebut tidak bersifat toksik terhadap larva Artemia salina