Evaluation of romanian maize local landraces for increasing the efficiency of their use in breeding programs

At present there can be noticed a main interest of plant genetic resources users for accessing information related to characterization and evaluation descriptors. Maize genetic resources represented by local populations originating from different areas, represent important useful genes sources for improving species. Their e is possible due to studies and comprehensive measures which can lead to the maintenance of biodiversity and increase its efficiency. The paper presents the results of characterization and evaluation of a total of 61 local landraces with cold test index >80%, selected from a total of 300 studied local landraces. These local landraces can be useful genes sources for maize breeding at low temperature, being a main trait for maize cultivation in wetter and colder areas in Romania. The study shows a high diversity for most of the morphological characterization descriptors of the plant, ear and kernel, physiological evaluation at low temperature resistance of the plantlets, precocity and biochemical evaluation for kernels quality. In order to obtain information, at intervariety level, for maize local landraces studied, molecular characterization was performed by RAPD method (random amplified polymorphic DNA). Many maize local populations with values of characterization and evaluation descriptors of real interest were emphasized. Utilization of these local landraces as starting material can lead to the identification of useful genes sources for improvement of important agronomic characters of maize (yield capacity, precocity, resistance to low temperatures, quality and genetic integrity)

Access Control in the ATLAS TDAQ Online Cluster

ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus) is a general-purpose detector for studying high-energy particle interactions: it is the largest particle detector experiment at CERN and it is built around one of the interaction points of the proton beams accelerated by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The detector generates an impressive amount of raw data: 64 TB per second as a result of 40 MHz proton-proton collision rate with 1.6 MB data for each such event. The handling of such data rate is managed by a three levels Trigger and Data Acquisition (TDAQ) system, which filters out the events not relevant from physics research point of view and selects in the end in the order of 1000 events per second to be stored for offline analyses. This system comprises a significant number of hardware devices, software applications and human personnel to supervise the experiment operation. Their protection against damages as a result of misuse and their optimized exploitation by avoiding the conflicting accesses to resources are key requirements for the successful running of ATLAS. At the same time the number of users accessing the experiment resources from CERN and external institutes is considerable: the experiment is a collaboration involving roughly 3,000 physicists at 174 institutions in 38 countries. Additionally, the users are characterized by a high mobility between presence on site and at home universities locations. All these operation conditions call for an access control mechanism to protect the ATLAS resources. This thesis presents our contribution to the analysis, design, implementation and deployment of the access control solution for the protection of ATLAS Online cluster and the TDAQ software running on it. The authors were involved in the research activity at CERN from 2004 to 2008 in the ATLAS System Administration team and the TDAQ Controls and Configuration team. The access control solution we worked on is a step forward from the model based on group accounts used in past experiments at CERN to the model characterized by individual user accounts and permissions assignment to users by means of roles and roles hierarchy. Hence the access control solution for the ATLAS Online cluster revolves around the Role Based Access Control (RBAC) model which fulfills the ATLAS experiment’s requirements for action traceability and accountability and offers the flexibility to accommodate the high number of users. The original contribution of this thesis consists in designing a solution on top of RBAC model to address in a coherent way the protection needs from the cluster system administration level (remote access, login on the nodes, restrict access to tools execution on the nodes) to the TDAQ software level (TDAQ components protecting their functions). At the same time, the solution is open for integration with other experiment systems through the command line client and Application Programming Interface offered in Java and C++. Our work focuses on the authorization of user actions based on the access control policies, while the user authentication function is handled by the system administration specific services. The solution applies the RBAC concepts at system administration level with Linux traditional security mechanisms for seamless integration in the Scientific Linux CERN running on the cluster nodes. At the application level, we developed a dedicated service (TDAQ Access Manager) to serve the TDAQ Software components in managing the access control policies and to take the authorization decisions. We built this service on top of the OASIS XACML industry standard while paying special attention to the critical non-functional aspects like availability, performance, scalability and monitoring. We finished the deployment in production in time for the first beam accelerated in LHC in autumn 2008. The setup currently consists in a high availability cluster of 6+1 nodes running the TDAQ Access Manager Service for ~3800 user accounts and ~440 roles. Each node of Access Manager Service is able to handle ~800 authorization requests per second from TDAQ software running on the ~3000 nodes of the ATLAS Online cluster. It is integrated with the system administration monitoring system for continue surveillance of service availability and performance. This production setup has run successfully in the last 4 years and has allowed ATLAS to take data steadily and efficiently, leading to the first major discovery: the Higgs boson

The Influence of Weather Conditions and Local Climate on Particulate Matter (PM10) Concentration in Metropolitan Area of Iasi, Romania

The aim of this study is to evaluate the role of the weather conditions and local climate on the temporal and spatial variability of particulate matters (PM 10) in Iași city which is facing major pollution problems in the recent years. Daily data from 4 monitoring stations of Environmental Protection Agency-Iași–for main weather parameters and particulate matters – and the temperature from an inner temperature and relative humidity observation network inside the city were used for a three year study (2013-2015). Linear correlation, composite analysis and multiple regression are the main statistical methods applied in the analysis. In brief, the most important meteorological parameters enhancing air pollution in Iași seem to be represented by thermal inversions developing in the region strongly related to local climate conditions. The Pearson correlation coefficient (stronger than -0.40) between PM10 and thermal gradient, the difference in the PM10 concentration exceeding 20 μg/m3 between strong thermal inversions and unstable conditions and the leading role of thermal gradients in multiple regression are the main indicators of the great role of thermal inversion in generating and sustaining pollution conditions in this area. The maximum concentrations of PM10 occur in May and March, gathering more than 30% of the days for the entire year. Complementary studies were taken into account in order to analyse the aerosol optical properties retrieved from Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET-NASA)

Configuration and control of the ATLAS trigger and data acquisition

ATLAS is a general purpose experiment aimed at studying high-energy particle interactions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This paper describes the evolution of the Controls and Configuration system of the ATLAS Trigger and Data Acquisition from the Technical Design Report to the first events taken with circulating beams. We present the lessons learned during the development. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved