Assessment of oceanographic services for the monitoring of highly anthropised coastal lagoons: The Mar Menor case study

Ocean monitoring systems are designed for continuous monitoring to track their evolution and anticipate environmental issues. However, they are often based on IoT systems that offer little spatial coverage and are hard to maintain. Satellite remote sensing offers good geographical coverage but they also face several challenges to become a monitoring system. This paper introduces an easy-to-use software tool to crawl water-quality data from up to 6 satellite instruments from the ESA and NASA. Particularly, Chl-a data is deeply analyzed in terms of reliability and data coverage for a highly anthropised coastal lagoon (Mar Menor, Spain), where serious socio-environmental issues are happening. Our results show a good linear correlation between in situ data and SRS data, reaching values close to 0.9, and stating the relevance of organic matter inputs from ephemeral streams in Chl-a concentrations. Moreover, temporal granularity is increased from 5 to 1.5 days by combining SRS sources.Preprin

The Sleep Quality- and Myopia-Linked PDE11A-Y727C Variant Impacts Neural Physiology by Reducing Catalytic Activity and Altering Subcellular Compartmentalization of the Enzyme

Recently, a Y727C variant in the dual-specific 3′,5′-cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterase 11A (PDE11A-Y727C) was linked to increased sleep quality and reduced myopia risk in humans. Given the well-established role that the PDE11 substrates cAMP and cGMP play in eye physiology and sleep, we determined if (1) PDE11A protein is expressed in the retina or other eye segments in mice, (2) PDE11A-Y7272C affects catalytic activity and/or subcellular compartmentalization more so than the nearby suicide-associated PDE11A-M878V variant, and (3) Pde11a deletion alters eye growth or sleep quality in male and female mice. Western blots show distinct protein expression of PDE11A4, but not PDE11A1-3, in eyes of Pde11a WT, but not KO mice, that vary by eye segment and age. In HT22 and COS-1 cells, PDE11A4-Y727C reduces PDE11A4 catalytic activity far more than PDE11A4-M878V, with both variants reducing PDE11A4-cAMP more so than PDE11A4-cGMP activity. Despite this, Pde11a deletion does not alter age-related changes in retinal or lens thickness or axial length, nor vitreous or anterior chamber depth. Further, Pde11a deletion only minimally changes refractive error and sleep quality. That said, both variants also dramatically alter the subcellular compartmentalization of human and mouse PDE11A4, an effect occurring independently of dephosphorylating PDE11A4-S117/S124 or phosphorylating PDE11A4-S162. Rather, re-compartmentalization of PDE11A4-Y727C is due to the loss of the tyrosine changing how PDE11A4 is packaged/repackaged via the trans-Golgi network. Therefore, the protective impact of the Y727C variant may reflect a gain-of-function (e.g., PDE11A4 displacing another PDE) that warrants further investigation in the context of reversing/preventing sleep disturbances or myopia.</p

Heat treatment conditions to prevent failure in die cast X38CrMoV5 steel parts

© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. The usual mechanical properties of martensitic steels are strongly linked to the complex microstructure obtained after their heat treatment, which is generally performed to achieve good hardness and/or tensile strength with acceptable ductility. In the present work, X38CrMoV5-1 (AISI H11-1) steel, classed as a hot-work tool steel with many applications, has been studied from the viewpoint of phase transformations and heat treatment. Parts are often manufactured by die-casting followed by quenching and tempering and the microstructure is highly sensitive to the process. Microstructural defects can lead to early failure of many parts at the service temperature as a consequence of the casting process and heat treatment conditions. The authors have used dilatometry and differential thermal analysis (DTA) techniques to study phase transformation during cooling and have determined CCT diagram. Heat treatment is not able to remove the casting dendritic microstructure or porosity, thus increasing the likelihood of brittle fracture, but it can prevent catastrophic failure in service conditions.Peer Reviewe

Manufacturing process and characterization by dilatometry and differential thermal analysis of X38CrMoV5-1 steel parts

The usual mechanical properties of martensitic steels are strongly linked to the complex microstructure obtained after heat treatment, which is generally performed to achieve good hardness and tensile strength with acceptable ductility. In the present work, X38CrMoV5-1 (AISI H11-1) steel, classed as a hot-work tool steel with many applications, has been studied from the viewpoint of phase transformations and its manufacturing process. Parts are often manufactured by die-casting followed by quenching and tempering and the microstructure obtained is highly sensitive to the process. Besides slight changes in chemical composition can have a huge impact on mechanical properties, so the amount and nature of alloying elements must be controlled because of their effect on precipitation of secondary carbides and their modification of tempering kinetics. [1-5] Previous studies on this steel have shown the optimal heat treatment to obtain an acceptable microstructure that guarantees the behaviour in service. It consists on an annealing at 780ºC/1hour, followed by a quenching at 1020ºC/1hour, and finally a double tempering at 580ºC/2 hours.Peer Reviewe