Interoperable Registers and Registries in the EU: Perspectives from INSPIRE

INSPIRE is a EU-wide data and service infrastructure for the cross-border sharing of environmental data and for their use in support to policy making. This paper introduces the context, requirements and issues for registers and registries in INSPIRE, including persistent identifiers, versioning, multi-linguality, extensibility, linking and alignment with existing registers and cross-sector interoperability and re-use. In our presentation, besides highlighting open issues relevant not only in the scope of INSPIRE, we will report the results of an INSPIRE workshop on registers/registries taking place on 22-23 January 2014.JRC.H.6-Digital Earth and Reference Dat

State-of-the-art in Power Line Communications: from the Applications to the Medium

In recent decades, power line communication has attracted considerable attention from the research community and industry, as well as from regulatory and standardization bodies. In this article we provide an overview of both narrowband and broadband systems, covering potential applications, regulatory and standardization efforts and recent research advancements in channel characterization, physical layer performance, medium access and higher layer specifications and evaluations. We also identify areas of current and further study that will enable the continued success of power line communication technology.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications. Special Issue on Power Line Communications and its Integration with the Networking Ecosystem. 201

Structure properties change of ready-to-use nonwoven wiping materials over storage time

Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) caused by the transfer of nosocomial pathogens from high-touch environmental surfaces and medical devices are responsible for significant patient morbidity, mortality and economic cost.[1] An effective cleaning and disinfection practice plays a key role in preventing cross-contaminations and spread of HAIs.[2] Traditionally, healthcare staff has used the “bucket method”, which consists of towels saturated with diluted disinfectant contained in a bucket. This method exhibits several limitations such as improper disinfectant dilution, inadequate saturation, uneven moisture distribution, unknown material compatibility and possible contamination from reusing.[3-4] Among the most effective surface disinfection methods, the nonwoven ready-to-use disinfectant wipes are increasingly accepted for decontamination of high-touch surfaces because of its convenience and reliable performance.[5] Though some research has been done on the effectiveness of commercial available disinfecting wipes in practical use.[6] Whereas their behaviour during storage remains unknown. In addition, a lower or even abolished disinfectant efficacy of the active ingredients due to their interaction with the textile materials has been also reported.[7] This project studied the ageing of the disinfecting wipes over storage time. Chloramine as a surface disinfectant and 3 commercial wiping materials of polyester, viscose, and their combination have been selected. The wipes before and after the contact with disinfectant solution were analysed by FTIR (Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy) and DMA (Dynamic mechanical analysis).Xinyu Song acknowledges Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), Portugal, for its PhD grant financial support (SFRH/BD/130028/2017). Andrea Zille also acknowledges FCT through the iFCT Research contract (IF/00071/2015) and the project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007136 under the COMPETE and FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC) co-financed by European funds (FEDER) through the PT2020 program.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

esys-escript 5.6

Escript is a programming tool for implementing mathematical models in python using the finite element method (FEM). As users do not access the data structures it is very easy to use and scripts can run on desktop computers as well as highly parallel supercomputer without changes. Application areas for escript include earth mantle convection, geophysical inversion, earthquakes, porous media flow, reactive transport, plate subduction, erosion, and tsunamis

esys-escript 5.5

Escript is a programming tool for implementing mathematical models in python using the finite element method (FEM). As users do not access the data structures it is very easy to use and scripts can run on desktop computers as well as highly parallel supercomputer without changes. Application areas for escript include earth mantle convection, geophysical inversion, earthquakes, porous media flow, reactive transport, plate subduction, erosion, and tsunamis

Storage time effects on the bactericidal activity of plasma treated quats disinfectant-impregnated wipes

Introduction: An efficient cleaning and disinfection practice plays a crucial role in preventing cross-contamination in nosocomial environment. The binding of quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs) on cellulosic material which may fail the disinfection process hinder the broad use of pre-impregnated disinfecting wipes (ready-to-use disinfectant wipes) in hospital. Moreover, ageing of disinfectant-impregnated wipes may affect the products’ disinfection performance later in practice but very little research was performed regarding this issue. Objectives: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the adsorption change and antimicrobial activity due to the ageing of the disinfecting wipe over storage time with and without atmospheric Double Barrier Dielectric (DBD) plasma pre-treatment. The main questions to be answered are: i) How does the adsorption of active ingredients onto textile substrate change with storage time; ii) How does the antimicrobial efficacy vary by time. The study of the adsorption of QACs in storage is important to ensure hospitals daily workflow and to complement the products’ user manual of disinfectant and wipes in the market. Methods: Plasma–treated and untreated commercial wiping materials of polyester (PET), 55% cellulose/45%PET and 100% cotton were immerged into QACs solution with a certain liquor ration for 30 min, 3, 7, 15 and 30 days. The absorption and adsorption of quats onto wiping material were measured by UV spectrophotometer. Standards ASTM E 2149-13a was carried out to assess the antimicrobial efficacy. Results: There was evident increase of QACs adsorption in all wipes including plasma treated ones in function of the storage time. Plasma–treated PET showed a small increase in adsorption (~5%) while cotton wipes display a decrease in QACs adsorption (~5%). Surprisingly, the plasma-treated blend wipes are able to adsorb almost the double of the untreated ones (from 15% to around 30%). Cotton sample shows the lowest antimicrobial effect in all the cases. In PET and blend wipes the storage time has a significant influence on the Log reduction of E.coli. in both untreated and plasma treated samples. Conclusion: The use of blend wipes is recommended due to the best performance between adsorption and antimicrobial effect. Moreover, plasma treatment can significantly improve Gram-negative bactericidal effect if necessary.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), Portugal, for (SFRH/BD/ 130028/2017) and COST for the complete funding of the conference under CA 15114. iFCT Research Contract (IF/00071/2015) and the project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007136 under the COMPETE and FCT/MCTES(PIDDAC) co-financed by European funds (FEDER) through the PT 2020 progra

Reflexive polygons and rational elliptic surfaces

In this note we study in detail the geometry of eight rational elliptic surfaces naturally associated to the sixteen reflexive polygons. The elliptic fibrations supported by these surfaces correspond under mirror symmetry to the eight families of smooth del Pezzo surfaces with very ample anticanonical bundle