Measuring and Assessing Urban Sprawl: What are the Remaining Options for Future Settlement Development in Switzerland for 2030?

Transformation of land use in and around European cities is proceeding as fast as never before, and urban sprawl is a reality in Europe. This process is coming along with significant landscape changes that can even lead to the loss of landscape identity. Is it possible to find indications of which regions are prone to urban sprawl in order to curtail undesired future settlement developments in time? To answer this question we used settlement development scenarios for Switzerland, and analysed their spatial implications using a set of four metrics, which allow for comparing the degree of urban sprawl in different regions. Two aspects were explored: (1) by how much settlement development could potentially increase in Switzerland, and (2) the suitability of the metrics as indicators for characterizing and assessing the development of urban sprawl. The results show that overall in Switzerland the urban permeation and dispersion of settlement areas is likely to increase (in all scenarios), but to different degrees. However, the results differ very much between the various types of settlement and between the cantons, and even a decrease in urban dispersion is possible. In combination with scenarios of settlement growth, the metrics provide useful evidence on regional characteristics such as the overall pressure of settlement development and likely transformations of the respective settlement types that should be taken into account in spatial development concepts. There is a need for calibration of the indicators on a regional level to define specific thresholds to limit urban spraw

A Demonstrator for the ATLAS Level-1 Muon to Central Trigger Processor Interface (MUCTPI)

The Level-1 Muon Trigger Interface (MUCTPI) to the Central Trigger Processor (CTP) receives trigger information from the detector- specific logic of the muon trigger. This information contains up to two muon-track candidates per sector. The MUCTPI combines the information of all sectors and calculates total multiplicity values for each of six programmable pT thresholds. It avoids double counting of single muons by taking into account the fact that some of the trigger sectors overlap. The MUCTPI sends the multiplicity values to the CTP which takes the final Level-1 decision. For every Level-1 Accept (L1A) the MUCTPI sends region-of-interest (RoI) information to the Level-2 trigger and event data to the data acquisition system. A demonstrator of the MUCTPI has been built which has the performance of the final system but has limited flexibility for calculating the overlap. The functionality and the performance of the demonstrator are presented

Using XDAQ in Application Scenarios of the CMS Experiment

XDAQ is a generic data acquisition software environment that emerged from a rich set of of use-cases encountered in the CMS experiment. They cover not the deployment for multiple sub-detectors and the operation of different processing and networking equipment as well as a distributed collaboration of users with different needs. The use of the software in various application scenarios demonstrated the viability of the approach. We discuss two applications, the tracker local DAQ system for front-end commissioning and the muon chamber validation system. The description is completed by a brief overview of XDAQ.Comment: Conference CHEP 2003 (Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics, La Jolla, CA

The CMS Event Builder

The data acquisition system of the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider will employ an event builder which will combine data from about 500 data sources into full events at an aggregate throughput of 100 GByte/s. Several architectures and switch technologies have been evaluated for the DAQ Technical Design Report by measurements with test benches and by simulation. This paper describes studies of an EVB test-bench based on 64 PCs acting as data sources and data consumers and employing both Gigabit Ethernet and Myrinet technologies as the interconnect. In the case of Ethernet, protocols based on Layer-2 frames and on TCP/IP are evaluated. Results from ongoing studies, including measurements on throughput and scaling are presented. The architecture of the baseline CMS event builder will be outlined. The event builder is organised into two stages with intelligent buffers in between. The first stage contains 64 switches performing a first level of data concentration by building super-fragments from fragments of 8 data sources. The second stage combines the 64 super-fragments into full events. This architecture allows installation of the second stage of the event builder in steps, with the overall throughput scaling linearly with the number of switches in the second stage. Possible implementations of the components of the event builder are discussed and the expected performance of the full event builder is outlined.Comment: Conference CHEP0

A novel SCN5A mutation, F1344S, identified in a patient with Brugada syndrome and fever-induced ventricular fibrillation

Objective Brugada syndrome (BS) is an inherited electrical cardiac disorder characterized by right bundle branch block pattern and ST segment elevation in leads V1 to V3 on surface electrocardiogram that can potentially lead to malignant ventricular tachycardia and sudden cardiac death. About 20% of patients have mutations in the only so far identified gene, SCN5A, which encodes the α-subunit of the human cardiac voltage-dependent sodium channel (hNav1.5). Fever has been shown to unmask or trigger the BS phenotype, but the associated molecular and the biophysical mechanisms are still poorly understood. We report on the identification and biophysical characterization of a novel heterozygous missense mutation in SCN5A, F1344S, in a 42-year-old male patient showing the BS phenotype leading to ventricular fibrillation during fever. Methods The mutation was reproduced in vitro using site-directed mutagenesis and characterized using the patch clamp technique in the whole-cell configuration. Results The biophysical characterization of the channels carrying the F1344S mutation revealed a 10mV mid-point shift of the G/V curve toward more positive voltages during activation. Raising the temperature to 40.5°C further shifted the mid-point activation by 18mV and significantly changed the slope factor in Nav1.5/F1344S mutant channels from − 6.49 to − 10.27mV. Conclusions Our findings indicate for the first time that the shift in activation and change in the slope factor at a higher temperature mimicking fever could reduce sodium currents' amplitude and trigger the manifestation of the BS phenotyp