Instrumental and Initial Experimental Testing of Solar Habitat I

This report presents a description of the analytical and experimental procedures used to determine the performance of all subsystems and models for Solar Habitat I. It includes a description of the instrumentation necessary for evaluating all subsystems and models and the corresponding test methods used. Experimental test data is presented and compared with the results based on previously developed analytical models

Women and unpaid family work in the EU

This study provides an analysis of the size and value of unpaid family care work at the European Union level. It proposes a method which relies on harmonised European surveys. It also compares two EU member States, Italy and Poland, whose time use data contain additional detailed information on child care and elderly care work. The study aims at improving the existing indicators in order to have a reliable quantitative picture to use in discussions on unpaid family care work at EU level

Identification of "pathologs" (disease-related genes) from the RIKEN mouse cDNA dataset using human curation plus FACTS, a new biological information extraction system

BACKGROUND: A major goal in the post-genomic era is to identify and characterise disease susceptibility genes and to apply this knowledge to disease prevention and treatment. Rodents and humans have remarkably similar genomes and share closely related biochemical, physiological and pathological pathways. In this work we utilised the latest information on the mouse transcriptome as revealed by the RIKEN FANTOM2 project to identify novel human disease-related candidate genes. We define a new term "patholog" to mean a homolog of a human disease-related gene encoding a product (transcript, anti-sense or protein) potentially relevant to disease. Rather than just focus on Mendelian inheritance, we applied the analysis to all potential pathologs regardless of their inheritance pattern. RESULTS: Bioinformatic analysis and human curation of 60,770 RIKEN full-length mouse cDNA clones produced 2,578 sequences that showed similarity (70–85% identity) to known human-disease genes. Using a newly developed biological information extraction and annotation tool (FACTS) in parallel with human expert analysis of 17,051 MEDLINE scientific abstracts we identified 182 novel potential pathologs. Of these, 36 were identified by computational tools only, 49 by human expert analysis only and 97 by both methods. These pathologs were related to neoplastic (53%), hereditary (24%), immunological (5%), cardio-vascular (4%), or other (14%), disorders. CONCLUSIONS: Large scale genome projects continue to produce a vast amount of data with potential application to the study of human disease. For this potential to be realised we need intelligent strategies for data categorisation and the ability to link sequence data with relevant literature. This paper demonstrates the power of combining human expert annotation with FACTS, a newly developed bioinformatics tool, to identify novel pathologs from within large-scale mouse transcript datasets

Seroprevalence of bovine herpesvirus 1 related alphaherpesvirus infections in free-living and captive cervids in Poland.

To determine the occurrence of bovine herpesvirus 1 (BoHV-1) related alphaherpesvirus infections in cervids, 1194 serum samples of wild ruminants originating from 59 forest districts of Poland were tested with IBR gB ELISA and virus neutralization test (VNT) against BoHV-1 and cervid herpesvirus 1 (CvHV-1). The seroprevalence differed significantly between free-living and captive cervids (P<0.001) with a total of 89 out of 498 (17.9%) and 268 out of 696 (38.5%) seropositive animals in each type of population. In free-ranging cervids, the highest seroprevalence was found among red deer (25.6%) and in fallow deer (23.1%), while it was the lowest in roe deer (1.7%). The seroprevalence varied at the district level between 0 and 100% with the mean value of 17.4% (95% CI:10.1-24.0). Additionally, seroprevalence was associated with afforestation (chi(2)=7.5; P=0.006) and to some degree with the mean of cattle density in province (chi(2)=7.0; P=0.08). The mean antibody titre against CvHV-1 in VNT (161.8; 95%CI: 146.0-177.6) has been significantly higher (P<0.0001) than the mean titre of BoHV-1 antibodies (10.1; 95%CI: 8.9-11.4). The results showed that BoHV-1 related alphaherpesvirus infections are present in population of free-ranging and farmed cervids in Poland. Based on the VNT results and considering the low susceptibility of red deer to BoHV-1, it seems that the dominant alphaherpesvirus circulating in wild ruminants is most likely CvHV-1 and therefore it is rather unlikely that deer in Poland could play any role as a reservoir of BoHV-1 for cattle

Synchrotron X-Ray Visualisation of Ice Formation in Insects during Lethal and Non-Lethal Freezing

Although the biochemical correlates of freeze tolerance in insects are becoming well-known, the process of ice formation in vivo is subject to speculation. We used synchrotron x-rays to directly visualise real-time ice formation at 3.3 Hz in intact insects. We observed freezing in diapausing 3rd instar larvae of Chymomyza amoena (Diptera: Drosophilidae), which survive freezing if it occurs above −14°C, and non-diapausing 3rd instar larvae of C. amoena and Drosophila melanogaster (Diptera: Drosophilidae), neither of which survive freezing. Freezing was readily observed in all larvae, and on one occasion the gut was seen to freeze separately from the haemocoel. There were no apparent qualitative differences in ice formation between freeze tolerant and non-freeze tolerant larvae. The time to complete freezing was positively related to temperature of nucleation (supercooling point, SCP), and SCP declined with decreasing body size, although this relationship was less strong in diapausing C. amoena. Nucleation generally occurred at a contact point with the thermocouple or chamber wall in non-diapausing larvae, but at random in diapausing larvae, suggesting that the latter have some control over ice nucleation. There were no apparent differences between freeze tolerant and non-freeze tolerant larvae in tracheal displacement or distension of the body during freezing, although there was markedly more distension in D. melanogaster than in C. amoena regardless of diapause state. We conclude that although control of ice nucleation appears to be important in freeze tolerant individuals, the physical ice formation process itself does not differ among larvae that can and cannot survive freezing. This suggests that a focus on cellular and biochemical mechanisms is appropriate and may reveal the primary adaptations allowing freeze tolerance in insects

Mechanisms governing fine particulate emissions from coal flames

The primary objective of this program was to provide a basic understanding of the principal processes that govern the formation of particulate matter in the 0.5--10 {mu}m size range in pulverized coal flames. The mechanism that produces ash particles in this size range is not clear. Particle sizes smaller than the 0.5--10 {mu}m size range are generally accepted to result from a vaporization/condensation mechanism while particles larger than this size result from the coalescence of ash in coal particles which may breakup as they burn. This program combined experimental and theoretical studies to understand the mechanisms which control the production of ash in the 0.5--10 {mu}m size range. (VC

Mechanisms governing fine particulate emissions from coal flames. Final report

The primary objective of this program was to provide a basic understanding of the principal processes that govern the formation of particulate matter in the 0.5--10 {mu}m size range in pulverized coal flames. The mechanism that produces ash particles in this size range is not clear. Particle sizes smaller than the 0.5--10 {mu}m size range are generally accepted to result from a vaporization/condensation mechanism while particles larger than this size result from the coalescence of ash in coal particles which may breakup as they burn. This program combined experimental and theoretical studies to understand the mechanisms which control the production of ash in the 0.5--10 {mu}m size range. (VC

The use of remotely sensed data and polish NFI plots for prediction of growing stock volume using different predictive methods

Forest growing stock volume (GSV) is an important parameter in the context of forest resource management. National Forest Inventories (NFIs) are routinely used to estimate forest parameters, including GSV, for national or international reporting. Remotely sensed data are increasingly used as a source of auxiliary information for NFI data to improve the spatial precision of forest parameter estimates. In this study, we combine data from the NFI in Poland with satellite images of Landsat 7 and 3D point clouds collected with airborne laser scanning (ALS) technology to develop predictive models of GSV. We applied an area-based approach using 13,323 sample plots measured within the second cycle of the NFI in Poland (2010&ndash;2014) with poor positional accuracy from several to 15 m. Four different predictive approaches were evaluated: multiple linear regression, k-Nearest Neighbours, Random Forest and Deep Learning fully connected neural network. For each of these predictive methods, three sets of predictors were tested: ALS-derived, Landsat-derived and a combination of both. The developed models were validated at the stand level using field measurements from 360 reference forest stands. The best accuracy (RMSE% = 24.2%) and lowest systematic error (bias% = &minus;2.2%) were obtained with a deep learning approach when both ALS- and Landsat-derived predictors were used. However, the differences between the evaluated predictive approaches were marginal when using the same set of predictor variables. Only a slight increase in model performance was observed when adding the Landsat-derived predictors to the ALS-derived ones. The obtained results showed that GSV can be predicted at the stand level with relatively low bias and reasonable accuracy for coniferous species, even using field sample plots with poor positional accuracy for model development. Our findings are especially important in the context of GSV prediction in areas where NFI data are available but the collection of accurate positions of field plots is not possible or justified because of economic reasons