vSPARQL: A View Definition Language for the Semantic Web

Translational medicine applications would like to leverage the biological and biomedical ontologies, vocabularies, and data sets available on the semantic web. We present a general solution for RDF information set reuse inspired by database views. Our view definition language, vSPARQL, allows applications to specify the exact content that they are interested in and how that content should be restructured or modified. Applications can access relevant content by querying against these view definitions. We evaluate the expressivity of our approach by defining views for practical use cases and comparing our view definition language to existing query languages

ASSESSING THE EFFICIENCY OF MODIFIED CLAYS FOR DECONTAMINATE AGRICULTURAL WASTE WATER BY PESTICIDE RESIDUES

Many anthropic activities, including the agricultural and food industries, give rise to environmental problems for which it is necessary to find solutions. The presence of undesirable substances in water, the soil and foodstuffs can pose a risk to the health and hygiene to humans and animals. It is therefore essential to study methods for removing pollutants from these matrices, as to make them compatible with the maintenance of healthy environmental conditions. This paper aims at verifying the possibility of using modified clays (or organic-clays) to remove contaminants from waste water coming from different areas. This work derives from the necessity to overcome the numerous, negative aspects of current techniques and offers new, effective, easy to use and economic methods. The adsorption of the different pesticides onto micelle-clay complexes and unmodified montmorillonite clay were measured to allow the determination of the maximum pesticide quantity adsorbed in order to obtain a dose-effect relationship for practical applications. The modified clay Cloisite 20A was showed to be more efficient for use in treatment plants for the adsorption of chlorpyrifos and penconazole from aqueous solutions whereas metalaxyl is more efficiently removed by Cloisite 30B. Adsorption tests in laboratory using Cloisite 20 A were also developed for cyazofamid and cyprodinil and the results showed a high affinity of the both fungicides for the organoclay. Therefore Cloisite 20 A was show to be the most efficient organoclay from those tested in this study. This, in part, is explained by the structure of the modifier quaternary salt which contains two aliphatic chains on the structure and determinate a higher space between the layers of the montmorillonite. Subsequently a depuration scheme was developed to test the practical applicability of the Cloisite 20A organoclay and the results showed it to be efficient for decontaminating pesticide-containing water derived from vineyards. The adsorption tests in the pilot system show a removal of three of the pesticide considered, cyazofamid, penconazole and cyprodinil, to be similar to that predicted from the adsorption tests developed in the laboratory. The recovery of the modified clay after the adsorption was shown to be dependent on the presence of surfactants in the pesticide formulation. For the adsorption test of penconazole, which contains a higher quantity of surfactants in the formulation, if compared with the formulation of cyazofamid, the recovery of Cloisite 20 A was 20% higher. For the fungicide cyprodinil, formulated with antifoaming agents, an alternative treatment of the clay-water suspension was necessary. After adsorption the suspension was passed through a compost layer which determinates the sedimentation of the clay at the compost surface. Concerning the waste disposal, for instance the organoclay composted after the adsorption, additional treatments appear to be necessary for pesticides with moderate and high persistence in soil as penconazole and cyprodinil. The fungicide cyazofamid shows a significant decrease after 90 days, in favourable conditions of compost humidity and environment temperature. The results of the modelling exercise shows that the FOCUS PEARL model, generally used for calculating leaching and drainage of PPP from open field cultivations to ground/surface water could be parameterised to simulate PPP emissions from greenhouses to surface water. For the case study, weather conditions were found to have a major role on the PPP emissions from glasshouses and the open field. The more controlled climate in the greenhouse prevented a substantial precipitation excess as was observed for the open field, which had a large effect on the leaching concentrations. Furthermore, in greenhouse cultivation it was noticed that the temperature has a slightly higher influence on CC-M emissions from the greenhouse than the irrigation excess volume. However, the main conclusion of this exercise was that there are potential PPP emissions to surface water associated with crop cultivation in greenhouses, contrary to what is stated in the European Council Regulation 1107/2009, article 3. Therefore a possible use of the outputs of this exercise is in future work to develop decontamination systems for greenhouses or for open field cultivation

A mixed finite element discretization scheme for a concrete carbonation model with concentration-dependent porosity

We discuss a prototypical reaction-diffusion-flow problem in saturated/unsaturated porous media. The special features of our problem are: the reaction produces water and therefore the flow and transport are coupled in both directions and moreover, the reaction may alter the microstructure. This means we have a variable porosity in our model. For the spatial discretization we propose a mass conservative scheme based on the mixed finite element method (MFEM). The scheme is semi-implicit in time. Error estimates are obtained for some particular cases. We apply our finite element methodology for the case of concrete carbonation – one of the most important physico-chemical processes affecting the durability of concrete

Application of an integrated approach to evaluate health risks for toxic chemicals by linking multimedia environmental and PBPK models

The paradigm of health risk assessment may consist of two main pillars, i.e., the exposure and dose-response assessments. Human exposure to chemicals via multiple pathways can be estimated by environmental multimedia models, which calculate the distribution of chemicals in the component media, i.e., air, water, soil, plants, and animal media. Combined with the information about human behaviors such as dietary habits, time spent outside, and etc, the multimedia models can provide an estimation of the daily chemical intake by inhalation or ingestion by humans. Physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models are used to estimate the body burden of toxic chemicals throughout the entire human lifespan, integrating the evolution of the physiology and anatomy from childhood to advanced aged. The use of such PBPK models overcomes the limitations that dose-response modelling holds, e.g., it simply determines the relationship between the dose and the probability of an effect. The European project 2-FUN (Full-chain and UNcertainty Approaches for Assessing Health Risks in FUture ENvironmental Scenarios) aims at improving the approaches currently used in exposure and dose-response assessments. According to the aim of that project, an environmental multimedia model and a generic PBPK model are coupled as an integrated tool (2-FUN tool) and built up on a platform system, Ecolego. This study presents here the first application of the integrated tool to perform the full-chain risk assessment of a chemical for human health, considering multiple exposure pathways of chemical via inhalation of out-door air, and ingestion of water and foods. For this application of the tool, a case study was designed based on the information available in a region situated on the Seine river watershed, downstream of the Paris megacity and Benzo(a)pyrene (B(a)P) was selected as a target chemical substance. This study focuses especially on the propagation of uncertainty and inter-individual variability along the modelling chain. A probabilistic simulation was then performed to identify the input parameters and exposure pathways sensitive to model outputs (e.g., internal effective concentrations in organs)

Around the tangent cone theorem

A cornerstone of the theory of cohomology jump loci is the Tangent Cone theorem, which relates the behavior around the origin of the characteristic and resonance varieties of a space. We revisit this theorem, in both the algebraic setting provided by cdga models, and in the topological setting provided by fundamental groups and cohomology rings. The general theory is illustrated with several classes of examples from geometry and topology: smooth quasi-projective varieties, complex hyperplane arrangements and their Milnor fibers, configuration spaces, and elliptic arrangements.Comment: 39 pages; to appear in the proceedings of the Configurations Spaces Conference (Cortona 2014), Springer INdAM serie

Whale-watching contributions for the study of cetacean-cephalopod interactions

Cephalopods are the primary source of food for several species of odontocetes. The unstable nature of this trophic resource is likely to affect the ecology of their cetacean predators. This can be reflected in whale conservation status but also in the tourist activities which focus on cetacean observation. However, the study of cetacean-cephalopod interactions is limited by the complicated and heavy logistics of dedicated scientific campaigns. Fortunately, this limitation can be overcome by coupling modern molecular tools with indirect sampling methods. In this note we present the first results of a project to involve whale watching companies, which represent an intense observation effort worldwide, in the collection of biological material and information for studies of cetacean-cephalopod interactions and cephalopod distribution. In early 2020 we contacted all whale watching companies on São Miguel Island, Azores. All of them welcomed the invitation and received training and a sampling kit. Nine cephalopod tissue samples were collected, most of them in close association with sperm whales. All samples were determined by DNA barcoding (confirmed in a few cases by morphological observation) to belong to the gelatinous giant octopod Haliphron atlanticus (Octopoda, Alloposidae). We believe that, although the Azores may have particularly favourable conditions for participatory science, similar programs can be replicated elsewhere.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Numerical modelling of the one-dimensional diffusion by random walkers

In this paper we describe a numerical method of cellular automaton type to study the diffusion processes. The macroscopic diffusive behavior of a set of microscopic particles is obtained by the numerical simulation of particles motion as random walkers. We derive the averaging space-time scale needed for a macroscopical description of the diffusion process with a given precision. As an application we estimate the evacuation time by diffusion of a given number of particles from a fluid layer

Cd content in phosphate fertilizer: Which potential risk for the environment and human health?

Cadmium (Cd) is a heavy metal that accumulates in soil and in living organisms and causes severe and permanent damage. Its presence in the soil depends largely on the use of phosphate fertilizers. Phosphorite and apatite rocks used in phosphate fertilizers production contain several other minerals, including Cd. The amount of Cd incorporated in phosphate fertilizers depends on the type of phosphorite and apatite rocks (with low or high Cd content). Cd is present in soil mainly in insoluble form and has no bioavailability for plants. However, plants can increase Cd solubility by releasing root exudates that change the pH of the rhizosphere, therefore increasing Cd accumulation. Once crops absorb Cd, it enters the food chain. Food is the primary source of Cd exposure (for the non-smoking population), with cereals, nuts and legumes, and fish and shellfish being the major contributors. Progressive accumulation of Cd in humans impairs kidney function, affects the liver, and causes bone demineralization. Cd classification as a human carcinogen goes back to the 1990s. The European Union adopted Regulation (EU) 2019/1009, limiting Cd content in organo-mineral fertilizer having total phosphorus (P) content of 5% P2O5 equivalent at 60 mg kg−1 P2O5. This threshold seems inadequate compared to the threshold values for Cd currently in place in some EU countries: 12 member states have a Cd threshold between 20 and 50 mg kg−1 P2O5, 8 have the same threshold as that proposed in the regulation, and 2 have a higher threshold. Meanwhile, the new EU Regulation on CAP Strategic Plans explicitly references soil health and fertility protection and the limitation of contaminants in fertilizers. Fertilizers with low Cd content, with thresholds no higher than 20 mg kg−1 P2O5, would effectively limit bioaccumulation. As stopping P fertilizer application cannot be an option, strategies such as the use of P fertilizers with low Cd content, the use of cultivars that accumulate less Cd in their consumed parts, production of mineral P fertilizers with higher nutrient use efficiency than those actually produced, the decadmiation of P rocks from the raw materials, soil phytoremediation before crops cultivation, and increased use of recovered nutrients, should be adopted

Correlation effects during liquid infiltration into hydrophobic nanoporous mediums

Correlation effects arising during liquid infiltration into hydrophobic porous medium are considered. On the basis of these effects a mechanism of energy absorption at filling porous medium by nonwetting liquid is suggested. In accordance with this mechanism, the absorption of mechanical energy is a result expenditure of energy for the formation of menisci in the pores on the shell of the infinite cluster and expenditure of energy for the formation of liquid-porous medium interface in the pores belonging to the infinite cluster of filled pores. It was found that in dependences on the porosity and, consequently, in dependences on the number of filled pores neighbors, the thermal effect of filling can be either positive or negative and the cycle of infiltration-defiltration can be closed with full outflow of liquid. It can occur under certain relation between percolation properties of porous medium and the energy characteristics of the liquid-porous medium interface and the liquid-gas interface. It is shown that a consecutive account of these correlation effects and percolation properties of the pores space during infiltration allow to describe all experimental data under discussion

Treatment outcome in infant acute lymphoblastic leukemia

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