extending wenmr e infrastructure outside europe

WeNMR (Worldwide e-Infrastructure for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Structural Biology) is a EU FP7 project that brings together research teams in the Structural Biology area into a Virtual Research Community at a worldwide level, focusing on bio-molecular Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS). This has been achieved through the implementation of a grid based e-Infrastructure, now fully integrated into EGI, aimed at providing the user community with a platform integrating and streamlining the computational approaches necessary for NMR and SAXS data analysis and structural modelling. Nowadays more than 20% of the users come from outside Europe. Therefore, in the last year the WeNMR team has worked to extend the e-Infrastructure with new resource centres from South Africa, Latin America, North America, Mediterranean and Asia-Pacific areas, with the goal of involving their NGIs to support their local NMR/SAXS community. In particular, a program to interoperate with the OSG grid in US in collaboration with their SBGrid Virtual Organisation has started, and the first tests of WeNMR job submission to OSG have been successfully carried out in the last months. WeNMR is also involved, through its collaboration with the EU FP7 project CHAIN (Coordination & Harmonisation of Advanced e-INfrastructures) in the effort to foster interoperability among EGI and those other grid infrastructures in China and India, which are not based on the EMI/gLite middleware

WeNMR : the tale of virtual research community in NMR and structural biology

Structural biology and life sciences in general, and NMR in particular, have always been associated with advanced computing. The current challenges in the post-genomic era call for virtual research platforms that provide the worldwide research community with both user-friendly tools, platforms for data analysis and exchange, and an underlying e-Infrastructure. WeNMR, a three-year European Commission co-funded project started in November 2010, groups different research teams into a worldwide virtual research community. It builds on the established eNMR e-Infrastructure and its steadily growing virtual organisation, which is currently the second largest VO in the area of life sciences. WeNMR provides an e-Infrastructure platform and Science Gateway for structural biology. It involves researchers from around the world and will build bridges to other areas of structural biology

A Grid platform for the European Civil Protection e-Infrastructure: the Forest Fires use scenario

During the full cycle of the emergency management, Civil Protection operative procedures involve many actors belonging to several institutions playing different roles. In this context the sharing of information is a vital requirement to make correct and effective decisions. Therefore a European-wide technological infrastructure providing a distributed and coordinated access to different kinds of resources (data, information, services, expertise, etc.) could enhance existing Civil Protection applications and even enable new ones. In the recent years Grid technologies have reached a mature state providing a platform for secure and coordinated resource sharing between the participants in the so-called Virtual Organizations. Moreover the Earth and Space Sciences Informatics provide the conceptual tools for modelling the geospatial information shared in Civil Protection applications during its entire life cycle. Therefore a European Civil Protection e-infrastructure could be based on a Grid platform enhanced with Earth Sciences specific services. However Civil Protection applications stress the requirements of Earth Sciences research applications, for example in terms of real-time support. Therefore a set of high-level services specifically tailored for such applications must be built on top of the Grid platform. As a result of a requirement analysis, the FP6 project CYCLOPS has proposed an architectural framework for the future European Civil Protection e-Infrastructure. In this architecture a layer of high-level services tailored to Civil Protection applications is built on top of the EGEE Grid middleware. This architectural approach has been tested implementing a prototype of a grid-enabled RISICO, the application for wild fire risk assessment used by the Italian Civil Protection

The HER in alkaline media on Pt-modified three-dimensional Ni cathodes

[EN] Electrodeposited porous Ni layers and commercial Ni foams were submitted to spontaneous deposition of Pt, achieved by immersing the Ni substrates in H2PtCl6 solutions, at open circuit, to produce Pt-modified 3D Ni electrodes. When using Ni foams, the immersion was prolonged until the whole amount of H2PtCl6 in the solution had reacted. Such an approach, which granted an easy control of the Pt loading, could not be used for Ni trodeposits, since they underwent significant corrosion. The true Pt surface area was determined by measuring, for each electrode, the hydrogen desorption charge according to methods described in the literature. The ratios between Pt surface area and Pt loading were higher for Ni foam electrodes than for porous Ni electrodeposits. Both kinds of Pt-modified Ni electrodes were used as cathodes for hydrogen evolution in 1 M KOH. Cathodes with Pt loading below 0.5 mg cm(-2) (referred to geometric surface area) evolved hydrogen at -100 mA cm(-2) with a -75 mV overpotential. The better activity of foam electrodes as compared to electrodeposits, especially at low Pt loading, was mainly due to their higher Pt surface area per unit Pt mass. Copyright (C) 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The authors from IENI-CNR acknowledge the financial support of the Italian Ministry for Economic Development (MSE) - MSE-CNR Agreement on National Electrical System. I. Herraiz-Cardona is grateful to the Ministerio de Educacion of Spain for a post-graduate grant (Ref. AP2007-03737). The authors are indebted to Dr. Arianna Gambirasi, ICIS CNR, Padova, Italy for recording SEM images and to FILA INDUSTRIA CHIMICA SPA, San Martino di Lupari, Padova, Italy, owner of the Fei-ESem FEI Quanta 200 FEG instrument, for allowing its use for the research work described in this article.Fiameni, S.; Herraiz Cardona, I.; Musiani, M.; Pérez-Herranz, V.; Vázquez-Gómez, L.; Verlato, E. (2012). The HER in alkaline media on Pt-modified three-dimensional Ni cathodes. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy. 37(14):10507-10516. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2012.04.100S1050710516371

Final report on deployment of consolidated platform and the overall architecture

This document is the final report about the activities of the Work Package 4 (WP4), aiming at provisioning a consistent e-infrastructure gradually integrating the existing isolated software solutions in the structural biology field into a single computing and data processing environment, based on the state of the art grid and cloud open source software tools and frameworks. This report follows the documents D4.3, MS14, D4.5 and MS15, respectively delivered at project month 15, 24, 26, 34, so that mostly the progress achieved until project month 36 not already described in the previous D4.5 ten months ago will be reported here, with references to MS15 when possible. The document starts with an updated description of the resources potentially available for the project from the EGI e-infrastructure, on top of which we built the consolidated West-Life platform. It then presents a detailed view of resource usage and their geographical distribution in the third and last year of the project, as obtained from the EGI Accounting Portal. The remaining of the document reports in details the final achievements about the three main aspects of the platform: the consolidated job management mechanism, the programmatic access to datasets and the unified security and accounting model

The Coexistence of asthma and Chronic Ostructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD): prevalence and risk factors in young, middle-aged and elderly people from the general population

Background: The joint distribution of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has not been well described. This study aims at determining the prevalence of self-reported physician diagnoses of asthma, COPD and of the asthma-COPD overlap syndrome and to assess whether these conditions share a common set of risk factors. Methods: A screening questionnaire on respiratory symptoms, diagnoses and risk factors was administered by mail or phone to random samples of the general Italian population aged 20–44 (n = 5163) 45–64 (n = 2167) and 65–84 (n = 1030) in the frame of the multicentre Gene Environment Interactions in Respiratory Diseases (GEIRD) study. Results: A physician diagnosis of asthma or COPD (emphysema/chronic bronchitis/COPD) was reported by 13% and 21% of subjects aged &lt;65 and 65–84 years respectively. Aging was associated with a marked decrease in the prevalence of diagnosed asthma (from 8.2% to 1.6%) and with a marked increase in the prevalence of diagnosed COPD (from 3.3% to 13.3%). The prevalence of the overlap of asthma and COPD was 1.6% (1.3%–2.0%), 2.1% (1.5%–2.8%) and 4.5% (3.2%–5.9%) in the 20–44, 45–64 and 65–84 age groups. Subjects with both asthma and COPD diagnoses were more likely to have respiratory symptoms, physical impairment, and to report hospital admissions compared to asthma or COPD alone (p&lt;0.01). Age, sex, education and smoking showed different and sometimes opposite associations with the three conditions. Conclusion: Asthma and COPD are common in the general population, and they coexist in a substantial proportion of subjects. The asthma-COPD overlap syndrome represents an important clinical phenotype that deserves more medical attention and further research.</br

Advanced e-Infrastructures for civil protection applications : the CYCLOPS project

During the full cycle of the emergency management, Civil Protection operative procedures involve many actors belonging to several institutions (civil protection agencies, public administrations, research centers, etc.) playing different roles (decision-makers, data and service providers, emergency squads, etc.). In this context the sharing of information is a vital requirement to make correct and effective decisions. Therefore a European-wide technologi- cal infrastructure providing a distributed and coordinated access to different kinds of resources (data, information, services, expertise, etc.) could enhance existing Civil Protection applications and even enable new ones. Such European Civil Protection e-Infrastructure should be designed taking into account the specific requirements of Civil Protection applications and the state-of-the-art in the scientific and technological disciplines which could make the emergency management more effective. In the recent years Grid technologies have reached a mature state providing a platform for secure and coordinated resource sharing between the participants collected in the so-called Virtual Organizations. Moreover the Earth and Space Sciences Informatics provide the conceptual tools for modeling the geospatial information shared in Civil Protection applications during its entire lifecycle. Therefore a European Civil Protection e-infrastructure might be based on a Grid platform enhanced with Earth Sciences services. In the context of the 6th Framework Programme the EU co-funded Project CYCLOPS (CYber-infrastructure for CiviL protection Operative ProcedureS), ended in December 2008, has addressed the problem of defining the re- quirements and identifying the research strategies and innovation guidelines towards an advanced e-Infrastructure for Civil Protection. Starting from the requirement analysis CYCLOPS has proposed an architectural framework for a European Civil Protection e-Infrastructure. This architectural framework has been evaluated through the development of prototypes of two operative applications used by the Italian Civil Protection for Wild Fires Risk Assessment (RISICO) and by the French Civil Protection for Flash Flood Risk Management (SPC-GD). The results of these studies and proof-of-concepts have been used as the basis for the definition of research and innovation strategies aiming to the detailed design and implementation of the infrastructure. In particular the main research themes and topics to be addressed have been identified and detailed. Finally the obstacles to the innovation required for the adoption of this infrastructure and possible strategies to overcome them have been discussed

Oxide-oxide galvanic displacement reactions: Effect of the concentration of the ions released by the sacrificial oxide

Abstract Galvanic displacement reactions between a solid oxide and a dissolved metal cation are interesting processes for the preparation of oxide nanoparticles or electrocatalytic layers consisting of secondary mixed oxides. Their mechanism is not yet fully clarified. The composition of the secondary mixed oxides and their growth rate depend on many physical and chemical variables. In the present study, we have focused on the effects of the concentration of the ions released from the sacrificial oxide to the solution, when they are intentionally added to reaction media. We have studied the displacement of sacrificial PbO2 by either Mn2+ or Co2+ cations in acetate solution that contained variable concentrations of Pb2+, using electrochemical methods, SEM-EDS and XPS. The evolution of the open circuit potential of the systems was monitored during the reactions. We have found that, for both divalent cations, increasing concentrations of Pb2+ ions in the acetate solutions caused the formation of mixed oxides richer in Pb. Effects on growth rate and equilibrium potential were different for Mn2+ and Co2+