MONALISA 2.0 and the sea traffic management - a concept creating the need for new maritime information standards and software solutions

Postprint (published version

Reconciling the Metallicity Distributions of Gamma-ray Burst, Damped Lyman-alpha, and Lyman-break Galaxies at z=3

We test the hypothesis that the host galaxies of long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) as well as quasar-selected damped Lyman-alpha (DLA) systems are drawn from the population of UV-selected star-forming, high-z galaxies (generally referred to as Lyman-break galaxies). Specifically, we compare the metallicity distributions of the GRB and DLA populations to simple models where these galaxies are drawn randomly from the distribution of star-forming galaxies according to their star-formation rate and HI cross-section respectively. We find that it is possible to match both observational distributions assuming very simple and constrained relations between luminosity, metallicity and HI sizes. The simple model can be tested by observing the luminosity distribution of GRB host galaxies and by measuring the luminosity and impact parameters of DLA selected galaxies as a function of metallicity. Our results support the expectation that GRB and DLA samples, in contrast to magnitude limited surveys, provide an almost complete census of z=3 star-forming galaxies that are not heavily dust-obscured.Comment: 31 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap

Long-lasting cross-protection against influenza A by neuraminidase and M2e-based immunization strategies

There is mounting evidence that in the absence of neutralizing antibodies cross-reactive T cells provide protection against pandemic influenza viruses. Here, we compared protection and CD8+ T cell responses following challenge with H1N1 2009 pandemic and H3N2 viruses of mice that had been immunized with hemagglutinin (HA), neuraminidase (NA) and the extracellular domain of matrix protein 2 (M2e) fused to a virus-like particle (VLP). Mice were challenged a first time with a sublethal dose of H1N1 2009 pandemic virus and, four weeks later, challenged again with an H3N2 virus. Mice that had been vaccinated with HA, NA, NA + M2e-VLP and HA + NA + M2e-VLP were protected against homologous H1N1 virus challenge. Challenged NA and NA + M2e-VLP vaccinated mice mounted CD8+ T cell responses that correlated with protection against secondary H3N2 challenge. HA-vaccinated mice were fully protected against challenge with homologous H1N1 2009 virus, failed to mount cross-reactive CD8+ T cells and succumbed to the second challenge with heterologous H3N2 virus. In summary, NA- and M2e-based immunity can protect against challenge with (homologous) virus without compromising the induction of robust cross-reactive CD8+ T cell responses upon exposure to virus

Mixture of Kernels and Iterated Semidirect Product of Diffeomorphisms Groups

In the framework of large deformation diffeomorphic metric mapping (LDDMM), we develop a multi-scale theory for the diffeomorphism group based on previous works. The purpose of the paper is (1) to develop in details a variational approach for multi-scale analysis of diffeomorphisms, (2) to generalise to several scales the semidirect product representation and (3) to illustrate the resulting diffeomorphic decomposition on synthetic and real images. We also show that the approaches presented in other papers and the mixture of kernels are equivalent.Comment: 21 pages, revised version without section on evaluatio

Fractional-order operators: Boundary problems, heat equations

The first half of this work gives a survey of the fractional Laplacian (and related operators), its restricted Dirichlet realization on a bounded domain, and its nonhomogeneous local boundary conditions, as treated by pseudodifferential methods. The second half takes up the associated heat equation with homogeneous Dirichlet condition. Here we recall recently shown sharp results on interior regularity and on $L_p$-estimates up to the boundary, as well as recent H\"older estimates. This is supplied with new higher regularity estimates in $L_2$-spaces using a technique of Lions and Magenes, and higher $L_p$-regularity estimates (with arbitrarily high H\"older estimates in the time-parameter) based on a general result of Amann. Moreover, it is shown that an improvement to spatial $C^\infty$-regularity at the boundary is not in general possible.Comment: 29 pages, updated version, to appear in a Springer Proceedings in Mathematics and Statistics: "New Perspectives in Mathematical Analysis - Plenary Lectures, ISAAC 2017, Vaxjo Sweden

Universality in Bacterial Colonies

The emergent spatial patterns generated by growing bacterial colonies have been the focus of intense study in physics during the last twenty years. Both experimental and theoretical investigations have made possible a clear qualitative picture of the different structures that such colonies can exhibit, depending on the medium on which they are growing. However, there are relatively few quantitative descriptions of these patterns. In this paper, we use a mechanistically detailed simulation framework to measure the scaling exponents associated with the advancing fronts of bacterial colonies on hard agar substrata, aiming to discern the universality class to which the system belongs. We show that the universal behavior exhibited by the colonies can be much richer than previously reported, and we propose the possibility of up to four different sub-phases within the medium-to-high nutrient concentration regime. We hypothesize that the quenched disorder that characterizes one of these sub-phases is an emergent property of the growth and division of bacteria competing for limited space and nutrients.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure