147 research outputs found

    Optimal Management of Marine Inspection with Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

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    t New technologies and system communications are being applied in the industry, improving the efficiency and effectiveness. This paper is focused on novel technologies, software and materials that allow to explore deep ocean floor. Autonomous underwater vehicles require planning navigation models and algorithms. Sensors equipped in underwater vehicles allow to inspect and analyse inaccessible areas. Monitor and control measurement process is required to ensure suitable underwater operations. This paper presents a model using the main inspection process variables. The model calculates the field of view of the autonomous underwater vehicle to be determined according to the type of sensor, the orientation and the distance from the floor. This study aims at stabilising the fundaments to develop an autonomous route for the autonomous underwater vehicles and optimize its operation performance

    Replication and Explorations of High-Order Epistasis Using a Large Advanced Intercross Line Pedigree

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    Dissection of the genetic architecture of complex traits persists as a major challenge in biology; despite considerable efforts, much remains unclear including the role and importance of genetic interactions. This study provides empirical evidence for a strong and persistent contribution of both second- and third-order epistatic interactions to long-term selection response for body weight in two divergently selected chicken lines. We earlier reported a network of interacting loci with large effects on body weight in an F2 intercross between these high– and low–body weight lines. Here, most pair-wise interactions in the network are replicated in an independent eight-generation advanced intercross line (AIL). The original report showed an important contribution of capacitating epistasis to growth, meaning that the genotype at a hub in the network releases the effects of one or several peripheral loci. After fine-mapping of the loci in the AIL, we show that these interactions were persistent over time. The replication of five of six originally reported epistatic loci, as well as the capacitating epistasis, provides strong empirical evidence that the originally observed epistasis is of biological importance and is a contributor in the genetic architecture of this population. The stability of genetic interaction mechanisms over time indicates a non-transient role of epistasis on phenotypic change. Third-order epistasis was for the first time examined in this study and was shown to make an important contribution to growth, which suggests that the genetic architecture of growth is more complex than can be explained by two-locus interactions only. Our results illustrate the importance of designing studies that facilitate exploration of epistasis in populations for obtaining a comprehensive understanding of the genetics underlying a complex trait

    A Multitrait Genetic Study of Hemostatic Factors and Hemorrhagic Transformation after Stroke Treatment

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    BACKGROUND: Thrombolytic recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (r-tPA) treatment is the only pharmacologic intervention available in the ischemic stroke acute phase. This treatment is associated with an increased risk of intracerebral hemorrhages, known as hemorrhagic transformations (HTs), which worsen the patient\u27s prognosis. OBJECTIVES: to investigate the association between genetically determined natural hemostatic factors\u27 levels and increased risk of HT after r-tPA treatment. METHODS: Using data from genome-wide association studies on the risk of HT after r-tPA treatment and data on 7 hemostatic factors (factor [F]VII, FVIII, von Willebrand factor [VWF], FXI, fibrinogen, plasminogen activator inhibitor-1, and tissue plasminogen activator), we performed local and global genetic correlation estimation multitrait analyses and colocalization and 2-sample Mendelian randomization analyses between hemostatic factors and HT. RESULTS: Local correlations identified a genomic region on chromosome 16 with shared covariance: fibrinogen-HT, P = 2.45 × 10 CONCLUSION: We identified 4 shared loci between hemostatic factors and HT after r-tPA treatment, suggesting common regulatory mechanisms between fibrinogen and VWF levels and HT. Further research to determine a possible mediating effect of fibrinogen on HT risk is needed

    Spread of a SARS-CoV-2 variant through Europe in the summer of 2020.

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    Following its emergence in late 2019, the spread of SARS-CoV-21,2 has been tracked by phylogenetic analysis of viral genome sequences in unprecedented detail3–5. Although the virus spread globally in early 2020 before borders closed, intercontinental travel has since been greatly reduced. However, travel within Europe resumed in the summer of 2020. Here we report on a SARS-CoV-2 variant, 20E (EU1), that was identified in Spain in early summer 2020 and subsequently spread across Europe. We find no evidence that this variant has increased transmissibility, but instead demonstrate how rising incidence in Spain, resumption of travel, and lack of effective screening and containment may explain the variant’s success. Despite travel restrictions, we estimate that 20E (EU1) was introduced hundreds of times to European countries by summertime travellers, which is likely to have undermined local efforts to minimize infection with SARS-CoV-2. Our results illustrate how a variant can rapidly become dominant even in the absence of a substantial transmission advantage in favourable epidemiological settings. Genomic surveillance is critical for understanding how travel can affect transmission of SARS-CoV-2, and thus for informing future containment strategies as travel resumes. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited

    The miniJPAS survey: A search for extreme emission-line galaxies

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    This is an Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Context. Galaxies with extreme emission lines (EELGs) may play a key role in the evolution of the Universe, as well as in our understanding of the star formation process itself. For this reason an accurate determination of their spatial density and fundamental properties in different epochs of the Universe will constitute a unique perspective towards a comprehensive picture of the interplay between star formation and mass assembly in galaxies. In addition to this, EELGs are also interesting in order to explain the reionization of the Universe, since their interstellar medium (ISM) could be leaking ionizing photons, and thus they could be low z, analogous of extreme galaxies at high z. Aims. This paper presents a method to obtain a census of EELGs over a large area of the sky by detecting galaxies with rest-frame equivalent widths ≥300 Å in the emission lines [O II]λλ3727,3729Å, [O III]λ5007Å, and Hα. For this, we aim to use the J-PAS survey, which will image an area of ≈8000 deg2 with 56 narrow band filters in the optical. As a pilot study, we present a methodology designed to select EELGs on the miniJPAS images, which use the same filter dataset as J-PAS, and thus will be exportable to this larger survey. Methods. We make use of the miniJPAS survey data, conceived as a proof of concept of J-PAS, and covering an area of ≈1 deg2. Objects were detected in the rSDSS images and selected by imposing a condition on the flux in a given narrow-band J-PAS filter with respect to the contiguous ones, which is analogous to requiring an observed equivalent width larger than 300 Å in a certain emission line within the filter bandwidth. The selected sources were then classified as galaxies or quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) after a comparison of their miniJPAS fluxes with those of a spectral database of objects known to present strong emission lines. This comparison also provided a redshift for each source, which turned out to be consistent with the spectroscopic redshifts when available (|Δz/(1 + zspec)| ≤ 0.01). Results. The selected candidates were found to show a compact appearance in the optical images, some of them even being classified as point-like sources according to their stellarity index. After discarding sources classified as QSOs, a total of 17 sources turned out to exhibit EW0 ≥ 300 Å in at least one emission line, thus constituting our final list of EELGs. Our counts are fairly consistent with those of other samples of EELGs in the literature, although there are some differences, which were expected due to biases resulting from different selection criteria. © J. Iglesias-Páramo et al. 2022.This work has been partially funded by projects PID2019-107408GB-C44 from the Spanish PNAYA, co-funded with FEDER, and grand P18-FR-2664, funded by Junta de Andalucía. We acknowledge financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the “Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa” award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). RGD and LADG acknowledge financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the “Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa” award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709), and PID2019-109067-GB100. IM acknowledges financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the PID2019-106027GB-C41. JCM acknowledges partial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE) through the grant PGC2018-097585-B-C22. SDP is grateful to the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Nature et Technologies. LSJ acknowledges the support of CNPq (304819/2017-4) and FAPESP (2019/10923-5). JAFO acknowledges the financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Union – NextGenerationEU through the Recovery and Resilience Facility project ICTS-MRR-2021-03- CEFCA. Funding for the J-PAS Project has been provided by the Governments of España and Aragón though the Fondo de Inversión de Teruel, European FEDER funding and the MINECO and by the Brazilian agencies FINEP, FAPESP, FAPERJ and by the National Observatory of Brazil. Based on observations made with the JST/T250 telescope and PathFinder camera for the miniJPAS project at the Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre (OAJ), in Teruel, owned, managed, and operated by the Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA). We acknowledge the OAJ Data Processing and Archiving Unit (UPAD) for reducing and calibrating the OAJ data used in this work. Funding for OAJ, UPAD, and CEFCA has been provided by the Governments of Spain and Aragón through the Fondo de Inversiones de Teruel; the Aragón Government through the Research Groups E96, E103, and E16_17R; the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE) with grant PGC2018-097585-B-C21; the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO/FEDER, UE) under AYA2015-66211-C2-1-P, AYA2015-66211-C2-2, AYA2012-30789, and ICTS-2009-14; and European FEDER funding (FCDD10-4E-867, FCDD13-4E-2685). This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Funding for SDSS-IV has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. The SDSS-IV web site is https://www.sdss.org/. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 898633.Peer reviewe

    A922 Sequential measurement of 1 hour creatinine clearance (1-CRCL) in critically ill patients at risk of acute kidney injury (AKI)

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    Risk profiles and one-year outcomes of patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation in India: Insights from the GARFIELD-AF Registry.

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    BACKGROUND: The Global Anticoagulant Registry in the FIELD-Atrial Fibrillation (GARFIELD-AF) is an ongoing prospective noninterventional registry, which is providing important information on the baseline characteristics, treatment patterns, and 1-year outcomes in patients with newly diagnosed non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF). This report describes data from Indian patients recruited in this registry. METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 52,014 patients with newly diagnosed AF were enrolled globally; of these, 1388 patients were recruited from 26 sites within India (2012-2016). In India, the mean age was 65.8 years at diagnosis of NVAF. Hypertension was the most prevalent risk factor for AF, present in 68.5% of patients from India and in 76.3% of patients globally (P < 0.001). Diabetes and coronary artery disease (CAD) were prevalent in 36.2% and 28.1% of patients as compared with global prevalence of 22.2% and 21.6%, respectively (P < 0.001 for both). Antiplatelet therapy was the most common antithrombotic treatment in India. With increasing stroke risk, however, patients were more likely to receive oral anticoagulant therapy [mainly vitamin K antagonist (VKA)], but average international normalized ratio (INR) was lower among Indian patients [median INR value 1.6 (interquartile range {IQR}: 1.3-2.3) versus 2.3 (IQR 1.8-2.8) (P < 0.001)]. Compared with other countries, patients from India had markedly higher rates of all-cause mortality [7.68 per 100 person-years (95% confidence interval 6.32-9.35) vs 4.34 (4.16-4.53), P < 0.0001], while rates of stroke/systemic embolism and major bleeding were lower after 1 year of follow-up. CONCLUSION: Compared to previously published registries from India, the GARFIELD-AF registry describes clinical profiles and outcomes in Indian patients with AF of a different etiology. The registry data show that compared to the rest of the world, Indian AF patients are younger in age and have more diabetes and CAD. Patients with a higher stroke risk are more likely to receive anticoagulation therapy with VKA but are underdosed compared with the global average in the GARFIELD-AF. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION-URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT01090362

    The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

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    Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least 4m4m. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the 6.5m6.5m James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure
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