Exotic Halophila stipulacea is an introduced carbon sink for the Eastern Mediterranean Sea

Carbon and nitrogen storage in exotic Halophila stipulacea were compared to that in native Posidonia oceanica and Cymodocea nodosa meadows and adjacent unvegetated sediments of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and to that in native H. stipulacea of the Red Sea at sites with different biogeochemical conditions and level of human pressure. Exotic H. stipulacea possessed considerable storing capacity, with 2-fold higher Corg stock (0.71 ± 0.05 kg m−2 in the top 20 cm of sediment) and burial (14.78 gCorg m−2 y−1) than unvegetated areas and C. nodosa meadows and, surprisingly, comparable to P. oceanica. N (0.07 ± 0.01 kg m−2) and Cinorg (14.06 ± 8.02 kg m−2) stocks were similar between H. stipulacea and C. nodosa or unvegetated sediments, but different to P. oceanica. Corg and N stocks were higher in exotic than native H. stipulacea populations. Based on isotopic mixing model, organic material trapped in H. stipulacea sediments was mostly allochthonous (seagrass detritus 17% vs seston 67%). Corg stock was similar between monospecific and invaded C. nodosa meadows by H. stipulacea. Higher stocks were measured in the higher human pressure site. H. stipulacea introduction may contribute in the increase of carbon sequestration in the Eastern Mediterranean

CleanET: enabling timing validation for complex automotive systems

Timing validation for automotive systems occurs in late integration stages when it is hard to control how the instances of software tasks overlap in time. To make things worse, in complex software systems, like those for autonomous driving, tasks schedule has a strong event-driven nature, which further complicates relating those task-overlapping scenarios (TOS) captured during the software timing budgeting and those observed during validation phases. This paper proposes CleanET, an approach to derive the dilation factor r caused due to the simultaneous execution of multiple tasks. To that end, CleanET builds on the captured TOS during testing and predicts how tasks execution time react under untested TOS (e.g. full overlap), hence acting as a mean of robust testing. CleanET also provides additional evidence for certification about the derived timing budgets for every task. We apply CleanET to a commercial autonomous driving framework, Apollo, where task measurements can only be reasonably collected under 'arbitrary' TOS. Our results show that CleanET successfully derives the dilation factor and allows assessing whether execution times for the different tasks adhere to their respective deadlines for unobserved scenarios.This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under grant TIN2015- 65316-P, the SuPerCom European Research Council (ERC) project under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 772773), and the HiPEAC Network of Excellence. MINECO partially supported Jaume Abella under Ramon y Cajal postdoctoral fellowship (RYC-2013-14717).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

R-Parity Violation and Non-Abelian Discrete Family Symmetry

We investigate the implications of R-parity violating operators in a model with family symmetry. The family symmetry can determine the form of R-parity violating operators as well as the Yukawa matrices responsible for fermion masses and mixings. In this paper we consider a concrete model with non-abelian discrete symmetry Q_6 which contains only three R-parity violating operators. We find that ratios of decay rates of the lepton flavor violating processes are fixed thanks to the family symmetry, predicting BR(tau to 3e)/BR(tau to 3mu) ~ 4 m_{mu}^2/m_{tau}^2.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figure

Enigmatic persistence of dissolved organic matter in the ocean

Marine dissolved organic matter (DOM) contains more carbon than the combined stocks of Earth’s biota. Organisms in the ocean continuously release a myriad of molecules that become food for microheterotrophs, but, for unknown reasons, a residual fraction persists as DOM for millennia. In this Perspective, we discuss and compare two concepts that could explain this persistence. The long-standing ‘intrinsic recalcitrance’ paradigm attributes DOM stability to inherent molecular properties. In the ‘emergent recalcitrance’ concept, DOM is continuously transformed by marine microheterotrophs, with recalcitrance emerging on an ecosystems level. Both concepts are consistent with observations in the modern ocean, but they imply very different responses of the DOM pool to climate-related changes. To better understand DOM persistence, we propose a new overarching research strategy — the ecology of molecules — that integrates the concepts of intrinsic and emergent recalcitrance with the ecological and environmental context

Testing and integrating the WLCG/EGEE middleware in the LHC computing

The main goal of the Experiment Integration and Support (EIS) team in WLCG is to help the LHC experiments with using proficiently the gLite middleware as part of their computing framework. This contribution gives an overview of the activities of the EIS team, and focuses on a few of them particularly important for the experiments. One activity is the evaluation of the gLite workload management system (WMS) to assess its adequacy for the needs of the LHC computing in terms of functionality, reliability and scalability. We describe in detail how the experiment requirements can be mapped to validation criteria, and the WMS performances are accurately measured under realistic load conditions over prolonged periods of time. Another activity is the integration of the Service Availability Monitoring system (SAM) with the experiment monitoring framework. The SAM system is widely used in the EGEE operations to identify malfunctions in Grid services, but it can be adapted to perform the same function on experiment-specific services. We describe how this has been done for some LHC experiments, which are now using SAM as part of their operations

The Length and Flexibility of the 2-Substituent of 9-Ethyladenine Derivatives Modulate Affinity and Selectivity for the Human A2A Adenosine Receptor

The A2A adenosine receptor (A2A AR) is a key target for the development of pharmacological tools for the treatment of central nervous system disorders. Previous works have demonstrated that the insertion of substituents at various positions on adenine leads to A2A AR antagonists with affinity in the micromolar to nanomolar range. In this work, a series of 9-ethyladenine derivatives bearing phenylalkylamino, phenylakyloxy or phenylakylthio groups of different lengths at the 2-position were synthesised and tested against the human adenosine receptors. The derivatives showed sub-micromolar affinity for these membrane proteins. The further introduction of a bromine atom at the 8-position has the effect of improving the affinity and selectivity for all ARs and led to compounds that are able bind to the A2A AR subtype at low nanomolar levels. Functional studies confirmed that the new adenine derivatives behave as A2A AR antagonists with half-maximal inhibitory concentration values in the nanomolar range. Molecular modelling studies provide a description of the possible binding mode of these compounds at the A2A AR and an interpretation of the affinity data at this AR subtype

New-onset atrial fibrillation as first clinical manifestation of latent Brugada syndrome: prevalence and clinical significance

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Growth impacts in a changing ocean: insights from two coral reef fishes in an extreme environment

Determining the life-history consequences for fishes living in extreme and variable environments will be vital in predicting the likely impacts of ongoing climate change on reef fish demography. Here, we compare size-at-age and maximum body size of two common reef fish species (Lutjanus ehrenbergii and Pomacanthus maculosus) between the environmentally extreme Arabian/Persian Gulf (‘Arabian Gulf’) and adjacent comparably benign Oman Sea. Additionally, we use otolith increment width profiles to investigate the influence of temperature, salinity and productivity on the individual growth rates. Individuals of both species showed smaller size-at-age and lower maximum size in the Arabian Gulf compared to conspecifics in the less extreme and less variable environment of the Oman Sea, suggesting a life-history trade-off between size and metabolic demands. Salinity was the best environmental predictor of interannual growth across species and regions, with low growth corresponding to more saline conditions. However, salinity had a weaker negative effect on interannual growth of fishes in the Arabian Gulf than in the Oman Sea, indicating Arabian Gulf populations may be better able to acclimate to changing environmental conditions. Temperature had a weak positive effect on the interannual growth of fishes in the Arabian Gulf, suggesting that these populations may still be living within their thermal windows. Our results highlight the potential importance of osmoregulatory cost in impacting growth, and the need to consider the effect of multiple stressors when investigating the consequences of future climate change on fish demography

Composite Leptoquarks at the LHC

If electroweak symmetry breaking arises via strongly-coupled physics, the observed suppression of flavour-changing processes suggests that fermion masses should arise via mixing of elementary fermions with composite fermions of the strong sector. The strong sector then carries colour charge, and may contain composite leptoquark states, arising either as TeV scale resonances, or even as light, pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons. The latter, since they are coupled to colour, get a mass of the order of several hundred GeV, beyond the reach of current searches at the Tevatron. The same generic mechanism that suppresses flavour-changing processes suppresses leptoquark-mediated rare processes, making it conceivable that the many stringent constraints may be evaded. The leptoquarks couple predominantly to third-generation quarks and leptons, and the prospects for discovery at LHC appear to be good. As an illustration, a model based on the Pati-Salam symmetry is described, and its embedding in models with a larger symmetry incorporating unification of gauge couplings, which provide additional motivation for leptoquark states at or below the TeV scale, is discussed.Comment: 10 pp, version to appear in JHE