Data conditioning and climate sensitivity analysis of a probablistic rainfall-runoff model

The Munster Blackwater catchment, in the South West of Ireland, was regularly subject to flooding, prior to flood allevation works. The towns of Mallow and Fermoy within the catchment suffered many disturbances for their inhabitants with sometimes severe economic losses. A good knowledge of rainfall-runoff processes is important in order to understand the causes of flooding to be able to develop new infrastructure to manage flooding. The first part of this project focuses on the rainfall and river flow data collection from different sources: the 15-minute time step precipitation data from the OPW, the 15-minute river level/river flow from the OPW and the EPA and the precipitation data from MÉRA (Met Éireann ReAnalysis- Climate ReAnalysis). MÉRA is a very high resolution climate reanalysis dataset which was used to calculate the monthly and annual rainfall in a specific year, for example for 2010 for selected locations (the nearest point to each rain gauge). Initial analysis of the measured OPW data shows significant numbers of missing values and outliers for the precipitation data. A method was developed to cluster the rain gauges with similar precipitation patterns based on the amount of precipitation of the nearest points to these rain gauges from MÉRA. Then a gap filling method was applied in each cluster to fill the missing values of each rain gauge with its cluster members. Other methods were also examined to obtain quality controlled data. The second part of this project applies a conceptual hydrological model, PDM (Probability Distributed Model) developed by Moore (Moore, 2007) to the Munster Blackwater catchment. The model considers each point of a catchment as a single storage unit with a specific storage capacity (depth) that can be described by a Pareto distribution. PDM is suitable for a variety of catchments, and has minimal data and computational requirements. The input is 15-minute precipitation data from different rain gauges and 15-minute river level/river flow data from river stations along the river. The calibration was applied on three subcatchments of the Munster Blackwater catchment. The validation was applied for years between 2010 to 2017. The calibrations and validations indicate that the PDM model can explain most of the variability of observed flows in the different subcatchments over a period of years, especially when a high standard of data quality is available, for example in 2015. Then validation of the model for flood events was examined. Validation was applied for the highest flood event in each year during 2010 to 2017. The accuracy of the model runs are different for each subcatchment with the best accuracy of 93% in the Dromcummer subcatchment and the accuracies in Mallow Rail BR and Killavullen being 80 % and 78% respectively. The model estimates the peak and low flow very well in Dromcummer. The computed flow is underestimated in Mallow and overestimated in Killavullen. The third part of the project is to use the PDM model in a precipitation and river flow sensitivity analysis. This was achieved by increasing the precipitation amounts in the datasets by 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30% to examine how the peak flows and low flows respond. It was found that the peak flows increase by amounts similar to the precipitation increases. The low flows increase at a much lower rate than the precipitation increases. It is known that in a scenario of climate change for a warming world that the precipitation increases by a maximum of 7% per degree C increase in accordance with the Clausius-Clapeyron equation. However as a warming world also increases evaporation and will likely impact the soil moisture status, it is considered that flood flows might increase at a rate less than the precipitation increases. This can be examined by increasing the value of potential evaporation by 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30% .These conditions were not included in this and it is ecommended that further research be done in this area for Ireland

Faster universal modeling for two source classes

The Universal Modeling algorithms proposed in [2] for two general classes of finite-context sources are reviewed. The above methods were constructed by viewing a model structure as a partition of the context space and realizing that a partition can be reached through successive splits. Here we start by constructing recursive counting algorithms to count all models belonging to the two classes and use the algorithms to perform the Bayesian Mixture. The resulting methods lead to computationally more efficient Universal Modeling algorithms

Geoprivacy protection of agricultural data

A major challenge of sharing spatially explicit agricultural and agri-environmental data is to identify the trade-off between field parcel confidentiality and spatial pattern preservation. in this study, the main drawback of point-based obfuscation was identified and the polygon-based obfuscation methods were designed and developed to overcome these issues

Parameter dependence and analysis of the 2HDM neutral Higgs boson pair production and decay at future lepton colliders

In this work, we present a study of the neutral Higgs bosons in the two Higgs doublet model (2HDM) in terms of their production processes and decay channels as a function of the model parameters. The analysis is performed for all four types of the 2HDM and the most promising processes and decay channels are identified for each type of the model. Several Higgs boson mass scenarios below and above the threshold of decay to gauge boson pair are introduced and the corresponding categories of final states are analyzed. The event analysis including collider beam spectrum and detector simulation shows that future lepton colliders have the potential to explore regions in the 2HDM parameter space, which have not yet been excluded by LHC, in a few weeks of operation. Final results are presented in terms of the signal distributions on top of the background and 95% CL exclusion and 5$\sigma$ contours based on center of mass energy of $\sqrt{s}$ = 500 GeV at the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) or International Linear Collider (ILC).Comment: 12 pages, 20 figures, added event analysis and LHC SM Higgs measurement constraint

Lactococcus garvieae, an unusual pathogen in infective endocarditis: case report and review of the literature

Lactococcus garvieae is an unusual cause of infective endocarditis (IE). No current diagnostic and therapeutic guidelines are available to treat IE caused by these organisms. Based on a case report, we provide a review of the literature of IE caused by L. garvieae and highlight diagnostic and treatment challenges of these infections and implications for management. A 50-year-old Asian male with mitral prosthetic valve presented to the hospital with intracranial haemorrhage, which was successfully treated. Three weeks later, he complained of generalized malaise. Further work up revealed blood cultures positive for Gram-positive cocci identified as L. garvieae by MALDI-TOF. An echocardiogram confirmed the diagnosis of IE. Susceptibility testing showed resistance only to clindamycin. Vancomycin plus gentamicin were started as empirical therapy and, subsequently, the combination of ceftriaxone plus gentamicin was used after susceptibility studies were available. After two weeks of combination therapy, ceftriaxone was continued as monotherapy for six additional weeks with good outcome. Twenty-five cases of IE by Lactococcus garvieae have been reported in the literature. Compared to other Gram-positive cocci, L. garvieae affects more frequently patients with prosthetic valves. IE presents in a subacute manner and the case fatality rate can be as high as 16%, comparable to that of streptococcal IE (15.7%). Reliable methods for identification of L. garvieae include MALDI-TOF, 16S RNA PCR, API 32 strep kit and BD Automated Phoenix System. Recommended antimicrobials for L. garvieae IE are ampicillin, amoxicillin, ceftriaxone or vancomycin in monotherapy or in combination with gentamicin

Laboratory Investigation of Fatigue Characteristics of Asphalt Mixtures with Steel Slag Aggregates

There are many steel-manufacturing factories in Iran. All of their byproducts, steel slag, are dumped randomly in open areas, causing many environmentally hazardous problems. This research is intended to study the effectiveness of using steel slag aggregate (SSA) in improving the engineering properties, especially fatigue life of Asphalt Concrete (AC) produced with steel slag. The research started by evaluating the physical properties of the steel slag aggregate. Then the 13 types of mixes which contain steel slag in portion of fine aggregates or in portion of coarse aggregates or in all portions of aggregates were tested. The effectiveness of the SSA was judged by the improvement in Marshall stability, indirect tensile strength, resilient modulus, and fatigue life of the AC samples. It was found that replacing the 50% of the limestone coarse or fine aggregate by SSA improved the mechanical properties of the AC mixes

Surveillance sanitaire des cocoteraies adultes en Afrique de l'Ouest. I. Contrôles ordinaires

La plupart des ravageurs connus dans les cocoteraies d'Afrique de l'Ouest passent le plus souvent inaperçus, bien qu'ils soient toujours présents. Dans certaines conditions, difficiles à définir, il y a pullulation d'un ou de plusieurs d'entre eux et, en conséquence, des dégâts importants peuvent alors se produire. Des contrôles sanitaires fréquents sont nécessaires pour la conduite de la méthode de lutte intégrée, généralement adoptée à présent en défense des cultures, ce qui suppose une bonne connaissance des ravageurs, de leur biologie et de leurs ennemis naturels. Comme pour le palmier à huile, il y a deux types de contrôles phytosanitaires : - les contrôles ordinaires, décrits dans ces " Conseils ", qui permettent de suivre l'ensemble des populations de ravageurs, d'insectes auxiliaires, et de détecter toute anomalie susceptible de se traduire par des dégâts préjudiciables ; - les contrôles spéciaux, spécifiques d'un ravageur donné, qui feront l'objet d'une autre page de Pratique agricole (1 ), et sont réalisés sur un échantillon d'observation plus important. Ils permettent de suivre plus précisément l'évolution de ce ravageur, l'intensité et l'étendue des dégâts qu'il provoque. Toutefois, la décision d'intervention par traitement ne peut être prise à bon escient qu'après examen attentif des résultats d'un ou de plusieurs contrôles spéciaux réalisés après détection de l'attaque par un contrôle ordinaire. La présente " Page de pratique agricole " traite de la conduite des contrôles phytosanitaires en cocoteraie de plus de quatre ans, entrée en production. La surveillance des jeunes cocoteraies, beaucoup plus vulnérables, fera également l'objet d'autres " Conseils ". (Résumé d'auteur

The B7 family member B7-H6 is a tumor cell ligand for the activating natural killer cell receptor NKp30 in humans

Cancer development is often associated with the lack of specific and efficient recognition of tumor cells by the immune system. Natural killer (NK) cells are lymphocytes of the innate immune system that participate in the elimination of tumors. We report the identification of a tumor cell surface molecule that binds NKp30, a human receptor which triggers antitumor NK cell cytotoxicity and cytokine secretion. This previously unannotated gene belongs to the B7 family and, hence, was designated B7-H6. B7-H6 triggers NKp30-mediated activation of human NK cells. B7-H6 was not detected in normal human tissues but was expressed on human tumor cells, emphasizing that the expression of stress-induced self-molecules associated with cell transformation serves as a mode of cell recognition in innate immunity

Expression Analysis of the Ligands for the Natural Killer Cell Receptors NKp30 and NKp44

BACKGROUND: The natural cytotoxicity receptors (NCR) are important to stimulate the activity of Natural Killer (NK) cells against transformed cells. Identification of NCR ligands and their level of expression on normal and neoplastic cells has important implications for the rational design of immunotherapy strategies for cancer. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here we analyze the expression of NKp30 ligand and NKp44 ligand on 30 transformed or non-transformed cell lines of different origin. We find intracellular and surface expression of these two ligands on almost all cell lines tested. Expression of NKp30 and NKp44 ligands was variable and did not correlate with the origin of the cell line. Expression of NKp30 and NKp44 ligand correlated with NKp30 and NKp44-mediated NK cell lysis of tumor cells, respectively. The surface expression of NKp30 ligand and NKp44 ligand was sensitive to trypsin treatment and was reduced in cells arrested in G(2)/M phase. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: These data demonstrate the ubiquitous expression of the ligands for NKp30 and NKp44 and give an important insight into the regulation of these ligands