Astro2020 White Paper: A Direct Measure of Cosmic Acceleration

Nearly a century after the discovery that we live in an expanding Universe, and two decades after the discovery of accelerating cosmic expansion, there remains no direct detection of this acceleration via redshift drift - a change in the cosmological expansion velocity versus time. Because cosmological redshift drift directly determines the Hubble parameter H(z), it is arguably the cleanest possible measurement of the expansion history, and has the potential to constrain dark energy models (e.g. Kim et al. 2015). The challenge is that the signal is small - the best observational constraint presently has an uncertainty several orders of magnitude larger than the expected signal (Darling 2012). Nonetheless, direct detection of redshift drift is becoming feasible, with upcoming facilities such as the ESO-ELT and SKA projecting possible detection within two to three decades. This timescale is uncomfortably long given the potential of this cosmological test. With dedicated experiments it should be possible to rapidly accelerate progress and detect redshift drift with only a five-year observational baseline. Such a facility would also be ideal for precision radial velocity measurements of exoplanets, which could be obtained as a byproduct of the ongoing calibration measurements for the experiment.Comment: White paper submitted to the Astro2020 Decadal Survey. 6 page

Scale-down of an orbital shaken bioreactor: High cell density cultivation in perfusion mode and virus production

Application of single-use bioreactors has been commonly shown for several cell culture-based production systems including commercial vaccine production. Compared to stainless steel bioreactors, competitive cell growth characteristics as well as virus yields can be reached [1]. In addition to conventional stirred tank reactors (STR), wave bioreactors or orbital shaken bioreactors (OSBs) are available that rely on alternative mixing regimes. For small-scale screening of clones and media, cell maintenance and process optimization, OSBs are the most widely used system. Besides their simple design and ease of handling, OSBs allow for robust processes due to reduced mechanical stress caused by stirring and aeration [2]. Furthermore, scale-up (£ 2500 L) is simplified as larger OSBs rely on the same basic principles for mixing and aeration (e.g. bubble-free surface gassing). Particularly for high cell density (HCD) processes, high oxygen transfer rates, short mixing times, and low shear stress are beneficial. Until now, the step from spin tubes or shake flasks into larger OSBs was rather large, as only the OSB SB10-X (Kühner AG, Switzerland) with a minimum working volume (wv) of 4-5 L was available. In this study, a novel scale-down 3 L vessel module (wv = 1-3 L) for the OSB SB10-X was evaluated for cultivation of suspension BHK-21 cells (CEVA, Germany) in perfusion mode to HCD. Cultivation was carried out in serum-free medium in a 3 L and 10 L single-use standard bag with 3 L and 5 L initial wv and 100 and 70 rpm shaking frequency with a shaking diameter of 50 mm, respectively. For perfusion, an alternating tangential flow system (ATF2, Repligen) with a cut-off of 0.4 µm (SB10-X) and 0.5 µm (SB3-X), respectively, was used. Following an initial batch phase of 2-3 days, perfusion was initiated. After a complete media exchange, cells in the 3 L vessel module were infected with a fusogenic oncolytic virus (rVSV-NDV, recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus-Newcastle disease virus) at a cell concentration of 44.5x106 cells/mL at a multiplicity of infection (MOI) of 10-4. The obtained data were compared to a cultivation of BHK-21 cells in the standard SB10-X module (infection at a cell concentration of 12.5x106 cells/mL with yellow fever virus WHO 17D-213/77 with an MOI of 10-3) and to a cultivation in a 1 L STR. The novel 3 L vessel module allowed for a successful and direct scale-down utilizing the SB10-X backbone without the need for further optimization. For both the SB10-X and the 3 L vessel module, the ATF system was successfully coupled and cell concentrations of 32.7x106 cells/mL and 45.9x106 cells/mL were reached with high viabilities above 98%, respectively. A faster doubling time (tD=22 h) was observed in the 3 L vessel module compared to the SB10-X system (tD=27 h). For rVSV-NDV production, similar infectious virus titers were reached compared to perfusion cultivations of BHK-21 cells in a 1 L STR. Volumetric media consumption was significantly reduced in the 3 L vessel module, facilitating the implementation of OSB systems in non-industrial research environments. All in all, we demonstrated the adaptability and scalability of the single-use OSB system for the production of various viruses in HCD perfusion mode. References [1] Gallo-Ramirez, L. E., A. Nikolay, Y. Genzel, and U. Reichl. 2015. Bioreactor concepts for cell culture-based viral vaccine production. Expert Rev Vaccines 14 (9):1181-95. doi: 10.1586/14760584.2015.1067144 [2] Klöckner W, Diederichs S, Büchs J. Orbitally shaken single-use bioreactors. Adv Biochem Eng Biotechnol. 2014;138:45-60. doi: 10.1007/10_2013_188. PMID: 23604207

Human-Robot Collaboration as a new paradigm in circular economy for WEEE management

E-waste is a priority waste stream as identified by the European Commission due to fast technological changes and eagerness of consumers to acquire new products. The value chain of the Waste on Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) has to face several challenges: the EU directives requesting collection targets for 2019–2022, the costs of disassembly processes which is highly dependent on the applied technology and type of discarded device, and the sale of the obtained components and/or raw materials, with market prices varying according to uncontrolled variables at world level. This paper presents a human-robot collaboration for a recycling process where tasks are opportunistically assigned to either a human-being or a robot depending on the condition of the discarded electronic device. This solution presents some important advantages; i.e. tedious and dangerous tasks are assigned to robots whereas more value-added tasks are allocated to humans, thus preserving jobs and increasing job satisfaction. Furthermore, first results from a prototype show greater productivity and profitable projected investment

Can Electric Vehicles Deliver Energy and Carbon Reductions?

Electric vehicles (EVs) are often thought to be an important means for reducing both the greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption of global transport, particularly for road passenger transport. They are potentially more fuel efficient than comparable internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs), particularly in urban areas, because of regenerative braking. It is well-recognised that the energy efficiency of EVs decreases with the range the batteries must provide (because of rising battery mass), and that greenhouse gas comparisons with ICEVs depend on the grid electricity source. However, this paper argues that comparing EVs and ICEVs is much more complex than generally recognised. Uncertainties occur in both primary energy use and greenhouse gas emission calculations. Further, it may not be legitimate to evaluate these terms on a simple vehicle-km basis, because of spillover effects

Accelerating epistasis analysis in human genetics with consumer graphics hardware

BACKGROUND: Human geneticists are now capable of measuring more than one million DNA sequence variations from across the human genome. The new challenge is to develop computationally feasible methods capable of analyzing these data for associations with common human disease, particularly in the context of epistasis. Epistasis describes the situation where multiple genes interact in a complex non-linear manner to determine an individual's disease risk and is thought to be ubiquitous for common diseases. Multifactor Dimensionality Reduction (MDR) is an algorithm capable of detecting epistasis. An exhaustive analysis with MDR is often computationally expensive, particularly for high order interactions. This challenge has previously been met with parallel computation and expensive hardware. The option we examine here exploits commodity hardware designed for computer graphics. In modern computers Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) have more memory bandwidth and computational capability than Central Processing Units (CPUs) and are well suited to this problem. Advances in the video game industry have led to an economy of scale creating a situation where these powerful components are readily available at very low cost. Here we implement and evaluate the performance of the MDR algorithm on GPUs. Of primary interest are the time required for an epistasis analysis and the price to performance ratio of available solutions. FINDINGS: We found that using MDR on GPUs consistently increased performance per machine over both a feature rich Java software package and a C++ cluster implementation. The performance of a GPU workstation running a GPU implementation reduces computation time by a factor of 160 compared to an 8-core workstation running the Java implementation on CPUs. This GPU workstation performs similarly to 150 cores running an optimized C++ implementation on a Beowulf cluster. Furthermore this GPU system provides extremely cost effective performance while leaving the CPU available for other tasks. The GPU workstation containing three GPUs costs $2000 while obtaining similar performance on a Beowulf cluster requires 150 CPU cores which, including the added infrastructure and support cost of the cluster system, cost approximately$82,500. CONCLUSION: Graphics hardware based computing provides a cost effective means to perform genetic analysis of epistasis using MDR on large datasets without the infrastructure of a computing cluster

Improvements and Future Challenges for the Research Infrastructure in the Field of “Preschool Education”

Given the importance of the early stage of a child`s life and taking into account that there various initiatives underway to improve preschool programs in German, it is remarkable that there are only a few microdatasets covering the field of preschool education in Germany - even less if the focus is on nationally representative datasets. The majority of these at least provide information on attendance of preschool programs. In principle there are two main groups of data: data that comprise part of the official statistics and survey data. However, there are hardly any data which allow a linkage between preschool program information and child outcome data. Furthermore, better data for children up to three years are needed, as well as data for children from migrant families. In particular, there is a need for good panel data allowing to match individual data and institutional information Given the developments in the German data infrastructure, the potentials for preschool education research will certainly improve. Nevertheless there remain a number of gaps. Among the mentioned recommendations the paper recommend improvements in fields, such as better data on the quality of preschool programs, better data on the family context and the costs of preschool education and finally the paper addresses the need for detailed intervention studies (on a representative (generalizable) level, which help to learn more about the most effective and efficient parameters of preschool programs.preschool education, day care, child outcomes