Estimation of primary production in the Mahshahr creeks (Khozestan-Persian Gulf) using field and remote sensing data

Primary production is an important indicator of aquatic ecological systems. The spatial and temporal pattern of OPP is helpful for global climate change study. In this study the spatial and temporal variability of primary productivity in the 3 creeks of Northwest of Persian Gulf from Feb 2014 to Nov 2014 was estimated using a VGPM primary productivity model and insitu measurement. Single Peak of primary productivity appeared in April (0.356 gc/m2/d) and fall in July (0.217gc/m2/d). From the correlation analysis, we found that observed primary production has a good relationship with measured primary production (p<0.01, R2=0.60). A linear regression was then established to quantify the relationship between them. The RMSE of its function was good (0.3 mg/m3). In summary, the Landsat8 data are potentially capable of monitoring Case-II waters such as this creeks to some extent

Artificial Sequences and Complexity Measures

In this paper we exploit concepts of information theory to address the fundamental problem of identifying and defining the most suitable tools to extract, in a automatic and agnostic way, information from a generic string of characters. We introduce in particular a class of methods which use in a crucial way data compression techniques in order to define a measure of remoteness and distance between pairs of sequences of characters (e.g. texts) based on their relative information content. We also discuss in detail how specific features of data compression techniques could be used to introduce the notion of dictionary of a given sequence and of Artificial Text and we show how these new tools can be used for information extraction purposes. We point out the versatility and generality of our method that applies to any kind of corpora of character strings independently of the type of coding behind them. We consider as a case study linguistic motivated problems and we present results for automatic language recognition, authorship attribution and self consistent-classification.Comment: Revised version, with major changes, of previous "Data Compression approach to Information Extraction and Classification" by A. Baronchelli and V. Loreto. 15 pages; 5 figure

Edge-Cut Bounds on Network Coding Rates

Active networks are network architectures with processors that are capable of executing code carried by the packets passing through them. A critical network management concern is the optimization of such networks and tight bounds on their performance serve as useful design benchmarks. A new bound on communication rates is developed that applies to network coding, which is a promising active network application that has processors transmit packets that are general functions, for example a bit-wise XOR, of selected received packets. The bound generalizes an edge-cut bound on routing rates by progressively removing edges from the network graph and checking whether certain strengthened d -separation conditions are satisfied. The bound improves on the cut-set bound and its efficacy is demonstrated by showing that routing is rate-optimal for some commonly cited examples in the networking literature.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43451/1/10922_2005_Article_9019.pd

The Metabolic Consequences of Hepatic AMP-Kinase Phosphorylation in Rainbow Trout

AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), a phylogenetically conserved serine/threonine protein kinase, is proposed to function as a “fuel gauge” to monitor cellular energy status in response to nutritional environmental variations. However, in fish, few studies have addressed the metabolic consequences related to the activation of this kinase. This study demonstrates that the rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) possesses paralogs of the three known AMPK subunits that co-diversified, that the AMPK protein is present in the liver and in isolated hepatocytes, and it does change in response to physiological (fasting-re-feeding cycle) and pharmacological (AICAR and metformin administration and incubations) manipulations. Moreover, the phosphorylation of AMPK results in the phosphorylation of acetyl-CoA carboxylase, a main downstream target of AMPK in mammals. Other findings include changes in hepatic glycogen levels and several molecular actors involved in hepatic glucose and lipid metabolism, including mRNA transcript levels for glucokinase, glucose-6-phosphatase and fatty acid synthase both in vivo and in vitro. The fact that most results presented in this study are consistent with the recognized role of AMPK as a master regulator of energy homeostasis in living organisms supports the idea that these functions are conserved in this piscine model

Analysis of the third-grade curriculum for health subjects: Application of Health Education Curriculum Analysis Tool

Leila Savari,1 Maryam Shafiei,2 Hamid AllahverdiPour,1 Hossein Matlabi1 1Department of Health Education and Promotion, Faculty of Health Sciences, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran; 2Department of Educational Planning and Administration, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran Purpose: Applying the Health Education Curriculum Analysis Tool (HECAT), the third-grade curriculum was assessed in accordance with health-related items.Methods: A multimethod research was used to investigate the student textbooks and three modules including healthy eating, physical activity, and safety. Based on purposive sampling, curriculum committees were made up of teachers, elementary school principals, members of the parents&ndash;teachers&rsquo; associations, and health care experts.Results: Data obtained from the group discussion were analyzed based on the conventional content analysis approach. All modules received coverage percentages of &lt;34%. The highest mean coverage percentage belonged to the safety module (25.59%) and the lowest to healthy eating (12.78%).Conclusion: Suggested solutions were classified based on three general themes such as clarifying and determining healthy dietary behaviors and actions, educating life skills and adopting healthy diet behaviors, and finally utilizing social norms for adopting with healthy diet patterns. Keywords: module, safety, physical activity, Iran, health education, HECAT, primary schools, safety module, healthy eatin

Early Detection of Agglomeration in Conical Spouted Beds Using Recurrence Plots

The agglomeration of particles in a conical spouted bed was investigated using a recurrence plot (RP) and recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) of the pressure fluctuations (PFs) and acoustic emission (AE) signals. Experiments were carried out in a 45° conical spouted bed with sugar particles (dp = 720 μm; ?p = 1580 kg/m3). Water was sprayed incrementally into the bed to produce agglomerates during the operation. Several recurrence quantification parameters were calculated during the agglomeration process, and the most suitable ones were chosen for early prediction of the agglomeration in the bed. The results show that recurrence rate, determinism, and laminarity of PFs and AE signals increase during the agglomeration process, which indicate that bed behavior becomes more periodic and deterministic in nature. Additional examination of the RQA parameters show that AE signals are substantially more sensitive to the hydrodynamic changes that occur in the bed, compared to those of PFs, and therefore can detect changes earlier, with more accuracy.</p

Correction: Tuberculosis patients in an Indian mega-city: Where do they live and where are they diagnosed?

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0183240.]

Tuberculosis patients in an Indian mega-city: Where do they live and where are they diagnosed?

Objective: Tuberculosis (TB) is a major source of mortality in urban India, with many structural challenges to optimal care delivery. In the government TB program in Chennai, India’s fourth most populous city, there is a 49% gap between the official number of smear-positive TB patients diagnosed and the official number registered in TB treatment within the city in 2014. We hypothesize that this “urban registration gap” is partly due to rural patients temporarily visiting the city for diagnostic evaluation. Methods: We collected data for one month (May 2015) from 22 government designated microscopy centers (DMCs) in Chennai where 90% of smear-positive TB patients are diagnosed and coded patient addresses by location. We also analyzed the distribution of chest symptomatics (i.e., patients screened for TB because of pulmonary symptoms) and diagnosed smear-positive TB patients for all of Chennai’s 54 DMCs in 2014. Results: At 22 DMCs in May 2015, 565 of 3,543 (15.9%) chest symptomatics and 71 of 412 (17.2%) diagnosed smear-positive patients had an address outside of Chennai. At the city’s four high patient volume DMCs, 54 of 270 (20.0%) smear-positive patients lived out-of-city. At one of these high-volume DMCs, 31 of 59 (52.5%) smear-positive patients lived out-of-city. Out of 6,135 smear-positive patients diagnosed in Chennai in 2014, 3,498 (57%) were diagnosed at the four high-volume DMCs. The 32 DMCs with the lowest patient volume diagnosed 10% of all smear-positive patients. Conclusions: TB case detection in Chennai is centralized, with four high-volume DMCs making most diagnoses. One-sixth of patients are from outside the city, most of whom get evaluated at these high-volume DMCs. This calls for better coordination between high-volume city DMCs and rural TB units where many patients may take TB treatment. Patient mobility only partly explains Chennai’s urban registration gap, suggesting that pretreatment loss to follow-up of patients who live within the city may also be a major problem