A New Variational Association Process for the Verification of Geometrical Specifications”,

When this new association process of a datum is performed to verify a geometrical specification, measured points are considered as perturbations which generate modifications of the nominal geometry by variation of its location, orientation, and intrinsic dimensional characteristics, without requiring rotation and translation variables as the traditional methods usually do (Bourdet, et al., 1996, Advanced Mathematical Tools in Metrology II, World Scientific) with torsors or matrices. This new association process (Choley, 2005, Ph.D. thesis, Ecole Central, Paris; Choley, et al., 2006, Advanced Mathematica

Pre-designing of a mechatronic system using an analytical approach with dymola

This paper presents a pre-dimensioning method applied to a mechatronic system and regarding the vibrational aspect, through a simple modeling process in Dymola environment. We study the vibration transmission between dynamic exciters (motors) and receivers (electronic cards) which are located on a simply supported rectangular plate, using an analytical approach. This new method will allow us to perform representative and robust modeling and simulation. The solution for this issue would be a pre-sizing and pre-positioning procedure. It aims to determine a set of possible technical solutions and principal characteristics before the definitive choice of components and precise sizing of the system. The presented method predicts also behaviour of the mechatronic system. In order to validate the model with respect to the finite element method, selected simulation results are presented

Trueness and precision of the real-time RT-PCR method for quantifying the chronic bee paralysis virus genome in bee homogenates evaluated by a comparative inter-laboratory study

The Chronic bee paralysis virus (CBPV) is the aetiological agent of chronic bee paralysis, a contagious disease associated with nervous disorders in adult honeybees leading to massive mortalities in front of the hives. Some of the clinical signs frequently reported, such as trembling, may be confused with intoxication syndromes. Therefore, laboratory diagnosis using real-time PCR to quantify CBPV loads is used to confirm disease. Clinical signs of chronic paralysis are usually associated with viral loads higher than 108 copies of CBPV genome copies per bee (8 log(10) CBPV/bee). This threshold is used by the European Union Reference Laboratory for Bee Health to diagnose the disease. In 2015, the accuracy of measurements of three CBPV loads (5, 8 and 9 log(10) CBPV/bee) was assessed through an inter-laboratory study. Twenty-one participants, including 16 European National Reference Laboratories, received 13 homogenates of CBPV-infected bees adjusted to the three loads. Participants were requested to use the method usually employed for routine diagnosis. The quantitative results (n = 270) were analysed according to international standards NF ISO 13528 (2015) and NF ISO 5725-2 (1994). The standard deviations of measurement reproducibility (S-R) were 0.83, 1.06 and 1.16 at viral loads 5, 8 and 9 log(10) CBPV/bee, respectively. The inter-laboratory confidence of viral quantification (+/- 1.96 S-R) at the diagnostic threshold (8 log(10) CBPV/bee) was +/- 2.08 log(10) CBPV/bee. These results highlight the need to take into account the confidence of measurements in epidemiological studies using results from different laboratories. Considering this confidence, viral loads over 6 log(10) CBPV/bee may be considered to indicate probable cases of chronic paralysis

A Novel Acyl-CoA Beta-Transaminase Characterized from a Metagenome

BACKGROUND: Bacteria are key components in all ecosystems. However, our knowledge of bacterial metabolism is based solely on the study of cultivated organisms which represent just a tiny fraction of microbial diversity. To access new enzymatic reactions and new or alternative pathways, we investigated bacterial metabolism through analyses of uncultivated bacterial consortia. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We applied the gene context approach to assembled sequences of the metagenome of the anaerobic digester of a municipal wastewater treatment plant, and identified a new gene which may participate in an alternative pathway of lysine fermentation. CONCLUSIONS: We characterized a novel, unique aminotransferase that acts exclusively on Coenzyme A (CoA) esters, and proposed a variant route for lysine fermentation. Results suggest that most of the lysine fermenting organisms use this new pathway in the digester. Its presence in organisms representative of two distinct bacterial divisions indicate that it may also be present in other organisms

A pan-European epidemiological study reveals honey bee colony survival depends on beekeeper education and disease control

Reports of honey bee population decline has spurred many national efforts to understand the extent of the problem and to identify causative or associated factors. However, our collective understanding of the factors has been hampered by a lack of joined up trans-national effort. Moreover, the impacts of beekeeper knowledge and beekeeping management practices have often been overlooked, despite honey bees being a managed pollinator. Here, we established a standardised active monitoring network for 5 798 apiaries over two consecutive years to quantify honey bee colony mortality across 17 European countries. Our data demonstrate that overwinter losses ranged between 2% and 32%, and that high summer losses were likely to follow high winter losses. Multivariate Poisson regression models revealed that hobbyist beekeepers with small apiaries and little experience in beekeeping had double the winter mortality rate when compared to professional beekeepers. Furthermore, honey bees kept by professional beekeepers never showed signs of disease, unlike apiaries from hobbyist beekeepers that had symptoms of bacterial infection and heavy Varroa infestation. Our data highlight beekeeper background and apicultural practices as major drivers of honey bee colony losses. The benefits of conducting trans-national monitoring schemes and improving beekeeper training are discussed

Classification des points d'un ouvert d'un espace euclidien relativement a la distance au bord, etude topologique et quantitative des classes obtenues

SIGLECNRS T Bordereau / INIST-CNRS - Institut de l'Information Scientifique et TechniqueFRFranc

Dimension de Hausdorff et dérivées des fonctions croissantes typiques

We endow the space Cr of nondecreasing functions on the unit interval [0, 1] with the uniform metric and consider its subspace Ccr of continuous nondecreasing functions. Then, we mainly prove: 1) In the sense of Baire categories, for most f ∈ Ccr, and also for most f ∈ Cr, we have: (a) the Stieljes measure mes f of f is carried by a set of Hausdorff dimension zero, (b) More precisely, f has zero left and right Diny lower derivatives everywhere outside a set of Hausdorff dimension zero, (c) For any 0 ≤ α ≤ ∞, the set of all t ∈ [0, 1] at which α is the left and right Diny upper derivative of f , is of Hausdorff dimension 1. 2) For most f ∈ Ccr, we have: (a) the set of all t at which f has an infinite Diny derivative contains a Cantor set in any nonempty open subset of [0, 1], (b) the same is true for the set of t at which f has positive and finite Diny lower derivative. 3) If A is any countable subset of [0, 1], then for most f ∈ Cr (a) mes f is atomic, and f is (left and right) discontinuous at each t ∈ A, (b) f has a zero lower derivative at each of its continuity point. Some other properties are proved which often mean that the fact that the measure mes f is carried by a set of null Hausdorff dimension does not imply similar properties for the derivative of f. 1 We give direct and elementary proofs of all these properties, except (1c)(when 0 < α < ∞) which is the more tricky one, and except (2b) and (3b) for the proof of which we need a geometric approach, using closely results and methods of [9]. Finally, we also explain how the property 1 c can be adapted to the case of typical functions with bounded variations