Non-destructive Techniques Methodologies for the Detection of Ancient Structures under Heritage Buildings

[EN] Structures and elements buried beneath heritage buildings are frequent but are often unknown and inaccessible. Therefore, they are difficult to locate in general if an archaeological excavation is not carried out, with the economic cost and time involved. It is important to discover them in order to increase our knowledge of cultural heritage, as well as to know, recover and improve the state of conservation of the materials that make up these structures. This paper presents methodologies for locating old structures using a low-cost NDT approach, with a qualitative and quantitative analysis of GPR profiles in heritage buildings. Small perforations are performed at critical points and introducing an endoscope for verification. Various crypts have been located using the proposed methodologies in a real study case: The Church of the Asución of Llíria in Spain.Gil Benso, E.; Mas Tomas, MDLA.; Lerma Elvira, C.; Torner, ME.; Vercher Sanchis, J. (2021). Non-destructive Techniques Methodologies for the Detection of Ancient Structures under Heritage Buildings. International journal of architectural heritage (electronic). 15(10):1457-1473. https://doi.org/10.1080/15583058.2019.1700320S14571473151

Transcriptomic Coordination in the Human Metabolic Network Reveals Links between n-3 Fat Intake, Adipose Tissue Gene Expression and Metabolic Health

Understanding the molecular link between diet and health is a key goal in nutritional systems biology. As an alternative to pathway analysis, we have developed a joint multivariate and network-based approach to analysis of a dataset of habitual dietary records, adipose tissue transcriptomics and comprehensive plasma marker profiles from human volunteers with the Metabolic Syndrome. With this approach we identified prominent co-expressed sub-networks in the global metabolic network, which showed correlated expression with habitual n-3 PUFA intake and urinary levels of the oxidative stress marker 8-iso-PGF2α. These sub-networks illustrated inherent cross-talk between distinct metabolic pathways, such as between triglyceride metabolism and production of lipid signalling molecules. In a parallel promoter analysis, we identified several adipogenic transcription factors as potential transcriptional regulators associated with habitual n-3 PUFA intake. Our results illustrate advantages of network-based analysis, and generate novel hypotheses on the transcriptomic link between habitual n-3 PUFA intake, adipose tissue function and oxidative stress

X chromosome inactivation does not necessarily determine the severity of the phenotype in Rett syndrome patients

Rett syndrome (RTT) is a severe neurological disorder usually caused by mutations in the MECP2 gene. Since the MECP2 gene is located on the X chromosome, X chromosome inactivation (XCI) could play a role in the wide range of phenotypic variation of RTT patients; however, classical methylation-based protocols to evaluate XCI could not determine whether the preferentially inactivated X chromosome carried the mutant or the wild-type allele. Therefore, we developed an allele-specific methylation-based assay to evaluate methylation at the loci of several recurrent MECP2 mutations. We analyzed the XCI patterns in the blood of 174 RTT patients, but we did not find a clear correlation between XCI and the clinical presentation. We also compared XCI in blood and brain cortex samples of two patients and found differences between XCI patterns in these tissues. However, RTT mainly being a neurological disease complicates the establishment of a correlation between the XCI in blood and the clinical presentation of the patients. Furthermore, we analyzed MECP2 transcript levels and found differences from the expected levels according to XCI. Many factors other than XCI could affect the RTT phenotype, which in combination could influence the clinical presentation of RTT patients to a greater extent than slight variations in the XCI pattern

Discrétisation de champs aléatoires pour l’étude des valeurs extrêmes par une approche hybride couplant décomposition par chaos polynomial et krigeage.

International audienceThis article addresses the characterization of extreme value statistics of continuous second order random field. More precisely, it focuses on the parametric study of engineering models under uncertainty. Hence, the quantity of interest of this model is defined on both a parametric space and a stochastic space. Moreover, we consider that the model is computationally expensive to evaluate. For this reason it is assumed that uncertainty propagation, at a single point of the parametric space, is achieved by polynomial chaos expansion. The main contribution of the present study is the development of an adaptive approach for the discretization of the random field modeling the quantity of interest. Objective of this new approach is to focus the computational budget over the areas of the parametric space where the minimum or the maximum of the field is likely to be for any realization of the stochastic parameters. To this purpose two original random field representations, based on polynomial chaos expansion and Kriging interpolation, are introduced. Moreover, an original adaptive enrichment scheme based on Kriging is proposed. Advantages of this approach with respect to accuracy and computational cost are demonstrated on several numerical examples. The proposed method is also illustrated on the parametric study of an aircraft wing under uncertainty.Cet article s’intéresse à la caractérisation des statistiques des valeurs extrêmes d’un champ aléatoire du second ordre. Plus précisément, il se concentre sur l’étude de modèles d’ingénierie paramétrés et affectés par des incertitudes. Par conséquent, la quantité d’intérêt du modèle est définie sur un espace paramétrique et sur un espace aléatoire. De plus, nous nous intéressons à des modèles dont l’évaluation est obtenue par un coût de calcul numérique important. Par conséquent nous supposons que la propagation d’incertitude, en un point du domaine paramétrique, est effectuée par décomposition par chaos polynomial. La contribution principale de notre étude est le développement d’une méthode de discrétisation adaptative du champ aléatoire modélisant la quantité d’intérêt du modèle. L’objectif de cette nouvelle approche est d’utiliser le budget de calcul pour explorer les zones de l’espace paramétrique où le minimum (ou le maximum) du champ aléatoire à le plus de chance d’être localisé et ce, pour toutes réalisations des paramètres aléatoires. Pour cela deux représentations originales basées sur la décomposition par chaos polynomial et le krigeage sont introduites. De plus, un nouveau critère d’enrichissement adaptatif, également basé sur les propriétés du krigeage, est proposé. Les avantages de cette approche en terme de précision et de coût de calcul sont illustrés par différentes applications numériques. Enfin, la méthode proposée est appliquée à l’étude paramétrique sous incertitude d’une aile d’avion

Static and Dynamic Aeroelastic Scaling of the CRM Wing via Multidisciplinary Optimization

International audienceNovel and disruptive aircraft configurations such as the blended wing-body, the truss-braced wing or the joined-wing aircraft aim to improve the performance of the classical wingbody aircraft. However, there are few to no data of previous similar aircraft to use for the design of these new concepts. For this reason, the use of aeroelastically similar flight demonstrators arises as a means to assess the flight qualities of these new concepts. Since flight demonstrators cannot often be a scaled down copy in all the aspects (e.g., the internal structure architecture), an optimization approach is needed to find the design that best fits the desired response. In this paper, we present a multidisciplinary optimization approach to design a wing that matches the aeroelastic response of the NASA Common Research Model (CRM). This response includes both the static deformed shape, and the scaled flutter modes, speeds and frequencies. In previous works, we successfully tested both the aeroelastic coupling and the dynamic similarity optimization by using test cases on the literature. All multidisciplinary analysis and optimizations were implemented using OpenMDAO framework. We used a global optimizer with surrogate models and mixture of experts. For the static aeroelastic part of the problem, we establish a coupling between a panel code and a linear finite element solver by using a GaussSeidel iterative method. The optimizer tries to minimize the difference between the nodal displacements of the scaled model and the scaled response of the reference aircraft. For the dynamic aeroelastic similarity, we first use the traditional approach where aerodynamic similarity is assumed and the problem can be treated as a structural modal optimization. For the optimization, we maximize the sum of the Modal Assurance Criterion (MAC) between the reference and current design modes once they have been paired according to their shape. The MAC value is also used to pair the modes

IgCaller for reconstructing immunoglobulin gene rearrangements and oncogenic translocations from whole-genome sequencing in lymphoid neoplasms

Immunoglobulin (Ig) gene rearrangements and oncogenic translocations are routinely assessed during the characterization of B cell neoplasms and stratification of patients with distinct clinical and biological features, with the assessment done using Sanger sequencing, targeted next-generation sequencing, or fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). Currently, a complete Ig characterization cannot be extracted from whole-genome sequencing (WGS) data due to the inherent complexity of the Ig loci. Here, we introduce IgCaller, an algorithm designed to fully characterize Ig gene rearrangements and oncogenic translocations from short-read WGS data. Using a cohort of 404 patients comprising different subtypes of B cell neoplasms, we demonstrate that IgCaller identifies both heavy and light chain rearrangements to provide additional information on their functionality, somatic mutational status, class switch recombination, and oncogenic Ig translocations. Our data thus support IgCaller to be a reliable alternative to Sanger sequencing and FISH for studying the genetic properties of the Ig loci

Non-coding recurrent mutations in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia

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