PetaFlow: a global computing-networking-visualisation unitwith social impact

International audienceThe PetaFlow application aims to contribute to the use of high performance computational resources forthe benefit of society. To this goal the emergence of adequate information and communication technologies withrespect to high performance computing-networking-visualisation and their mutual awareness is required. Thedeveloped technology and algorithms are presented and applied to a real global peta-scale data intensive scientificproblem with social and medical importance, i.e. human upper airflow modelling

Current anti-doping policy: a critical appraisal

BACKGROUND: Current anti-doping in competitive sports is advocated for reasons of fair-play and concern for the athlete's health. With the inception of the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA), anti-doping effort has been considerably intensified. Resources invested in anti-doping are rising steeply and increasingly involve public funding. Most of the effort concerns elite athletes with much less impact on amateur sports and the general public. DISCUSSION: We review this recent development of increasingly severe anti-doping control measures and find them based on questionable ethical grounds. The ethical foundation of the war on doping consists of largely unsubstantiated assumptions about fairness in sports and the concept of a "level playing field". Moreover, it relies on dubious claims about the protection of an athlete's health and the value of the essentialist view that sports achievements reflect natural capacities. In addition, costly antidoping efforts in elite competitive sports concern only a small fraction of the population. From a public health perspective this is problematic since the high prevalence of uncontrolled, medically unsupervised doping practiced in amateur sports and doping-like behaviour in the general population (substance use for performance enhancement outside sport) exposes greater numbers of people to potential harm. In addition, anti-doping has pushed doping and doping-like behaviour underground, thus fostering dangerous practices such as sharing needles for injection. Finally, we argue that the involvement of the medical profession in doping and anti-doping challenges the principles of non-maleficience and of privacy protection. As such, current anti-doping measures potentially introduce problems of greater impact than are solved, and place physicians working with athletes or in anti-doping settings in an ethically difficult position. In response, we argue on behalf of enhancement practices in sports within a framework of medical supervision. SUMMARY: Current anti-doping strategy is aimed at eradication of doping in elite sports by means of all-out repression, buttressed by a war-like ideology similar to the public discourse sustaining international efforts against illicit drugs. Rather than striving for eradication of doping in sports, which appears to be an unattainable goal, a more pragmatic approach aimed at controlled use and harm reduction may be a viable alternative to cope with doping and doping-like behaviour

The Schizosaccharomyces pombe Hsp104 Disaggregase Is Unable to Propagate the [PSI+] Prion

The molecular chaperone Hsp104 is a crucial factor in the acquisition of thermotolerance in yeast. Under stress conditions, the disaggregase activity of Hsp104 facilitates the reactivation of misfolded proteins. Hsp104 is also involved in the propagation of fungal prions. For instance, the well-characterized [PSI+] prion of Saccharomyces cerevisiae does not propagate in Δhsp104 cells or in cells overexpressing Hsp104. In this study, we characterized the functional homolog of Hsp104 from Schizosaccharomyces pombe (Sp_Hsp104). As its S. cerevisiae counterpart, Sp_hsp104+ is heat-inducible and required for thermotolerance in S. pombe. Sp_Hsp104 displays low disaggregase activity and cannot propagate the [PSI+] prion in S. cerevisiae. When overexpressed in S. cerevisiae, Sp_Hsp104 confers thermotolerance to Δhsp104 cells and reactivates heat-aggregated proteins. However, overexpression of Sp_Hsp104 does not propagate nor eliminate [PSI+]. Strikingly, [PSI+] was cured by overexpression of a chimeric chaperone bearing the C-terminal domain (CTD) of the S. cerevisiae Hsp104 protein. Our study demonstrates that the ability to untangle aggregated proteins is conserved between the S. pombe and S. cerevisiae Hsp104 homologs, and points to a role of the CTD in the propagation of the S. cerevisiae [PSI+] prion

Progress with the Prime Focus Spectrograph for the Subaru Telescope: a massively multiplexed optical and near-infrared fiber spectrograph

The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) is an optical/near-infrared multi-fiber spectrograph with 2394 science fibers, which are distributed in 1.3 degree diameter field of view at Subaru 8.2-meter telescope. The simultaneous wide wavelength coverage from 0.38 um to 1.26 um, with the resolving power of 3000, strengthens its ability to target three main survey programs: cosmology, Galactic archaeology, and galaxy/AGN evolution. A medium resolution mode with resolving power of 5000 for 0.71 um to 0.89 um also will be available by simply exchanging dispersers. PFS takes the role for the spectroscopic part of the Subaru Measurement of Images and Redshifts project, while Hyper Suprime-Cam works on the imaging part. To transform the telescope plus WFC focal ratio, a 3-mm thick broad-band coated glass-molded microlens is glued to each fiber tip. A higher transmission fiber is selected for the longest part of cable system, while one with a better FRD performance is selected for the fiber-positioner and fiber-slit components, given the more frequent fiber movements and tightly curved structure. Each Fiber positioner consists of two stages of piezo-electric rotary motors. Its engineering model has been produced and tested. Fiber positioning will be performed iteratively by taking an image of artificially back-illuminated fibers with the Metrology camera located in the Cassegrain container. The camera is carefully designed so that fiber position measurements are unaffected by small amounts of high special-frequency inaccuracies in WFC lens surface shapes. Target light carried through the fiber system reaches one of four identical fast-Schmidt spectrograph modules, each with three arms. Prototype VPH gratings have been optically tested. CCD production is complete, with standard fully-depleted CCDs for red arms and more-challenging thinner fully-depleted CCDs with blue-optimized coating for blue arms.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, submitted to "Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy V, Suzanne K. Ramsay, Ian S. McLean, Hideki Takami, Editors, Proc. SPIE 9147 (2014)

Measurement of event-shape observables in Z→ℓ+ℓ− events in pp collisions at √ s=7 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Event-shape observables measured using charged particles in inclusive $Z$-boson events are presented, using the electron and muon decay modes of the $Z$ bosons. The measurements are based on an integrated luminosity of $1.1 {\rm fb}^{-1}$ of proton--proton collisions recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV. Charged-particle distributions, excluding the lepton--antilepton pair from the $Z$-boson decay, are measured in different ranges of transverse momentum of the $Z$ boson. Distributions include multiplicity, scalar sum of transverse momenta, beam thrust, transverse thrust, spherocity, and $\mathcal{F}$-parameter, which are in particular sensitive to properties of the underlying event at small values of the $Z$-boson transverse momentum. The Sherpa event generator shows larger deviations from the measured observables than Pythia8 and Herwig7. Typically, all three Monte Carlo generators provide predictions that are in better agreement with the data at high $Z$-boson transverse momenta than at low $Z$-boson transverse momenta and for the observables that are less sensitive to the number of charged particles in the event.Comment: 36 pages plus author list + cover page (54 pages total), 14 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC, All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2014-0

Anisotropic B – T Phase Diagram of Non-Kramers System PrRh 2 Zn 20

International audienc

Desempenho e composição corporal de frangos de corte alimentados com diferentes níveis de proteína e de aminoácidos ou com livre escolha das dietas Performance and body composition of broilers fed different protein and amino acid levels or free-choice diets

Foi realizado um experimento com 600 frangos de corte (300 machos e 300 fêmeas) de 1 a 49 dias de idade. Foram usadas três dietas (D) experimentais, isoenergéticas (3.000 e 3.150 kcal EM/kg nas fases inicial e de crescimento, respectivamente), porém com diferentes níveis de proteína bruta (PB) e um dos quatro primeiros aminoácidos (AA) essenciais (Lis, Met+Cis, Tre e Trip): D1, (controle): 22%PB; D2, 24% de PB com AA 20% a mais que D1 (altaPB+20%AA) e D3: 20% PB e AA 12% a menos que D1 (baixaPB-12%AA). Na fase de crescimento, as PB foram de 20, 22 e 18% para D1, D2 e D3, respectivamente, mantidas as mesmas proporções em AA. Uma quarta dieta foi definida pelas aves por livre escolha entre as dietas extremas (D2 e D3). O delineamento adotado foi completamente casualizado, em esquema fatorial 2x4 (sexo x dietas), e cinco repetições de 15 aves por tratamento. A técnica do abate comparativo foi usada para ganho de gordura e proteína. Verificou-se que as aves alimentadas com dietas baixaPB-12%AA apresentaram pior CA, menor GP e menor ganho de proteína corporal. No entanto, houve melhor relação da proteína consumida com ganho de peso. Frangos recebendo dietas altaPB+20%AA tiveram pior aproveitamento da proteína consumida, não mostrando superioridade em GP, peso de partes e de carcaça às aves do grupo controle ou livre escolha. Ganho em gordura e proteína também foram semelhantes entre esses três tratamentos. As aves com livre escolha mostraram-se aptas em selecionar sua própria dieta, apresentando desempenho e composição corporal semelhantes às aves do grupo controle. O pior desempenho da dieta com baixa proteína foi mais evidente na fase inicial que na fase de crescimento. Machos foram mais eficientes que as fêmeas em utilizar os nutrientes consumidos sobretudo na fase de crescimento.<br>An experiment was carried out to evaluate the effect of diets with different protein levels and energy:protein ratio and amino acids on the performance and body composition of broilers (300 males and 300 females from 1 to 49 days of age), as well as the effect of these factors on the nutrients utilization efficiency. Three isoenergy experimental diets (D) were used (3000 and 3150kcal ME/kg for starter and growing phase, respectively) varying the levels of crude protein (CP) and the first 4 essential amino acids (AA) (lysine, methionine+cysteine, threonine and tryptophan): D1, control, with 22%CP; D2: 24%CP and 20% more AA than D1 (HighCP+20%AA) and D3, 20% CP and 12% less AA than D1 (LowCP-12%AA). On the growing phase the CP were 20, 22 and 18% for D1, D2 and D3, respectively, keeping the same AA proportion. A fourth diet was defined by free-choice between diets D2 and D3. Birds were alloted in a completely randomized design, in a 2 x 4 factorial (sex x diets) scheme and 5 replications of 15 birds each per treatment. Comparative slaughter technique was used for body fat and protein gain. Birds fed LowCP-12%AA diets showed reduced feed conversion, gain and body protein gain, but better protein intake-to-gain ratio. Broilers fed HighCP+20%AA diets had worse protein intake-to-gain ratio, but similar weight gain, cuts or carcass weight to control or free-choice birds. Fat and protein gain were similar among those 3 treatments. Free-choice birds showed the same performance and body composition of the control broilers. LowCP-12%AA diet was worse for broilers in starter phase than in growing phase. Male broilers were more efficient than females using nutrients, specially in the growing phase