Assessing the water balance of the Upper Rhine Graben hydrosystem

International audienceThe Upper Rhine alluvial aquifer is an important transboundary water resource. However, as in many alluvial systems, the aquifer inflows and outflows are not precisely known because of the difficulty of estimating the river infiltration flux and the boundary subsurface flow. To provide a thorough representation of the aquifer system, a coupled surface-subsurface model was applied to the whole aquifer basin, and several parameter sets were tested to investigate the uncertainty due to poorly known parameters (e.g. aquifer transmissivity computed by an inverse model, river bed characteristics). Twelve simulations were run and analyzed using standard statistical criteria and also a more advanced statistical method, the Karhunen Loève transform (KLT). This analysis showed that, although the model performed reasonably well, some piezometric level underestimations persisted in the south of the basin. An accurate representation of the aquifer behaviour would require river infiltration and the functioning of irrigation canals in the Hardt area to be taken into account. It also appeared that increasing the maximum river infiltration flow deteriorated the quality of the results. River infiltration to the aquifer was estimated to represent about 80% of the aquifer inflows with a mean annual value around 115 ± 16.5 m3/s, thus with an uncertainty of 14%. This quantity is larger than estimated in previous studies but is in agreement with some results obtained during low water periods. This important conclusion highlights the vulnerability of the Upper Rhine Graben aquifer to pollution from the rivers and to climate change since it is highly probable that the rivers' regimes will be affected by reduced snow cover on the neighbouring mountain ranges

Demonstration of the First Prototype of RUGBI, Design and Deployment of a Grid for Bioinformatics

présenté par N. Jacq, proceedings publiés par "Studies in health technology and informatics" seriesInternational audienceRUGBI is an industrial and academic project to design and deploy on top of existing technologies a computing grid offering a set of grid and bioinformatics services to analyse proteins. It aims to support life sciences SMEs for computing and storage, to deploy an interregional grid for bioinformatics and to create a biologists community in a grid environment. The proposed demonstration presents the first prototype of RUGBI architecture and bioinformatics services

Carbon isotope fractionation in protoplanetary disks

We investigate the gas-phase and grain-surface chemistry in the inner 30 AU of a typical protoplanetary disk using a new model which calculates the gas temperature by solving the gas heating and cooling balance and which has an improved treatment of the UV radiation field. We discuss inner-disk chemistry in general, obtaining excellent agreement with recent observations which have probed the material in the inner regions of protoplanetary disks. We also apply our model to study the isotopic fractionation of carbon. Results show that the fractionation ratio, 12C/13C, of the system varies with radius and height in the disk. Different behaviour is seen in the fractionation of different species. We compare our results with 12C/13C ratios in the Solar System comets, and find a stark contrast, indicative of reprocessing.Comment: 50 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Quality indicators as a tool in improving the introduction of new medicines

Quality indicators are increasingly used as a tool to achieve safe and quality clinical care, cost-effective therapy, for professional learning, remuneration, accreditation and financial incentives. A substantial number focus on drug therapy but few address the introduction of new medicines even though this is a burning issue. The objective was to describe the issues and challenges in designing and implementing a transparent indicator framework and evaluation protocol for the introduction of new medicines and to provide guidance on how to apply quality indicators in the managed entry of new medicines. Quality indicators need to be developed early to assess whether new medicines are introduced appropriately. A number of key factors need to be addressed when developing, applying and evaluating indicators including dimensions of quality, suggested testing protocols, potential data sources, key implementation factors such as intended and unintended consequences, budget impact and cost-effectiveness, assuring the involvement of the medical professions, patients and the public, and reliable and easy-to-use computerized tools for data collection and management. Transparent approaches include the need for any quality indicators developed to handle conflict of interests to enhance their validity and acceptance. The suggested framework and indicator testing protocol may be useful in assessing the applicability of indicators for new medicines and may be adapted to healthcare settings worldwide. The suggestions build on existing literature to create a field testing methodology that can be used to produce country-specific quality indicators for new medicines as well as a cross international approach to facilitate access to new medicines