Ecotoxicological aspects related to the presence of pharmaceuticals in the aquatic environment

Pharmaceuticals are biologically active and persistent substances which have been recognized as a continuing threat to environmental stability. Chronic ecotoxicity data as well as information on the current distribution levels in different environmental compartments continue to be sparse and are focused on those therapeutic classes that are more frequently prescribed and consumed. Nevertheless, they indicate the negative impact that these chemical contaminants may have on living organisms, ecosystems and ultimately, public health. This article reviews the different contamination sources as well as fate and both acute and chronic effects on non-target organisms. An extensive review of existing data in the form of tables, encompassing many therapeutic classes is presented.

Symbolic fractional dynamics

Fractional dynamics reveals long range memory properties of systems described by means of signals represented by real numbers. Alternatively, dynamical systems and signals can adopt a representation where states are quantified using a set of symbols. Such signals occur both in nature and in man made processes and have the potential of a aftermath as relevant as the classical counterpart. This paper explores the association of Fractional calculus and symbolic dynamics. The results are visualized by means of the multidimensional technique and reveal the association between the fractal dimension and one definition of fractional derivative.

Practical aspects of slot-based task- splitting dispatching in its schedulability analysis

Consider the problem of scheduling a set of sporadic tasks on a multiprocessor system to meet deadlines using a tasksplitting scheduling algorithm. Task-splitting (also called semipartitioning) scheduling algorithms assign most tasks to just one processor but a few tasks are assigned to two or more processors, and they are dispatched in a way that ensures that a task never executes on two or more processors simultaneously. A certain type of task-splitting algorithms, called slot-based task-splitting, is of particular interest because of its ability to schedule tasks at high processor utilizations. We present a new schedulability analysis for slot-based task-splitting scheduling algorithms that takes the overhead into account and also a new task assignment algorithm.