The Coordinated Radio and Infrared Survey for High-mass Star Formation. II. Source Catalog

The CORNISH project is the highest resolution radio continuum survey of the Galactic plane to date. It is the 5 GHz radio continuum part of a series of multi-wavelength surveys that focus on the northern GLIMPSE region (10° < l < 65°), observed by the Spitzer satellite in the mid-infrared. Observations with the Very Large Array in B and BnA configurations have yielded a 1.''5 resolution Stokes I map with a root mean square noise level better than 0.4 mJy beam 1. Here we describe the data-processing methods and data characteristics, and present a new, uniform catalog of compact radio emission. This includes an implementation of automatic deconvolution that provides much more reliable imaging than standard CLEANing. A rigorous investigation of the noise characteristics and reliability of source detection has been carried out. We show that the survey is optimized to detect emission on size scales up to 14'' and for unresolved sources the catalog is more than 90% complete at a flux density of 3.9 mJy. We have detected 3062 sources above a 7σ detection limit and present their ensemble properties. The catalog is highly reliable away from regions containing poorly sampled extended emission, which comprise less than 2% of the survey area. Imaging problems have been mitigated by down-weighting the shortest spacings and potential artifacts flagged via a rigorous manual inspection with reference to the Spitzer infrared data. We present images of the most common source types found: H II regions, planetary nebulae, and radio galaxies. The CORNISH data and catalog are available online at http://cornish.leeds.ac.uk.

Evaluating forensic biology results given source level propositions

The evaluation of forensic evidence can occur at any level within the hierarchy of propositions depending on the question being asked and the amount and type of information that is taken into account within the evaluation. Commonly DNA evidence is reported given propositions that deal with the sub-source level in the hierarchy, which deals only with the possibility that a nominated individual is a source of DNA in a trace (or contributor to the DNA in the case of a mixed DNA trace). We explore the use of information obtained from examinations, presumptive and discriminating tests for body fluids, DNA concentrations and some case circumstances within a Bayesian network in order to provide assistance to the Courts that have to consider propositions at source level. We use a scenario in which the presence of blood is of interest as an exemplar and consider how DNA profiling results and the potential for laboratory error can be taken into account. We finish with examples of how the results of these reports could be presented in court using either numerical values or verbal descriptions of the results.

Ultrasound scan as a potential source of nosocomial and cross-infection: a literature review

AbstractThe authors review the main concepts regarding the importance of cleaning/disinfection of ultrasonography probes, aiming a better comprehension by practitioners and thus enabling strategies to establish a safe practice without compromising the quality of the examination and the operator productivity. In the context of biosafety, it is imperative to assume that contact with blood or body fluids represents a potential source of infection. Thus, in order to implement cleaning/disinfection practice, it is necessary to understand the principles of infection control, to consider the cost/benefit ratio of the measures to be implemented, and most importantly, to comprehend that such measures will not only benefit the health professional and the patient, but the society as a whole.

Inférence de source de traces d'essence retrouvées dans des débris d'incendie: Evaluation de la contribution de la chromatographie en phase gazeuse couplée à la spectrométrie de masse à rapport isotopique

Lorsque de l'essence est employée pour allumer et/ou propager un incendie, l'inférence de la source de l'essence peut permettre d'établir un lien entre le sinistre et une source potentielle. Cette inférence de la source constitue une alternative intéressante pour fournir des éléments de preuve dans ce type d'événements où les preuves matérielles laissées par l'auteur sont rares. Le but principal de cette recherche était le développement d'une méthode d'analyse de spécimens d'essence par GC-IRMS, méthode pas routinière et peu étudiée en science forensique, puis l'évaluation de son potentiel à inférer la source de traces d'essence en comparaison aux performances de la GC-MS. Un appareillage permettant d'analyser simultanément les échantillons par MS et par IRMS a été utilisé dans cette recherche. Une méthode d'analyse a été développée, optimisée et validée pour cet appareillage. Par la suite, des prélèvements d'essence provenant d'un échantillonnage conséquent et représentatif du marché de la région lausannoise ont été analysés. Finalement, les données obtenues ont été traitées et interprétées à l'aide de méthodes chimiométriques. Les analyses effectuées ont permis de montrer que la méthodologie mise en place, aussi bien pour la composante MS que pour l'IRMS, permet de différencier des échantillons d'essence non altérée provenant de différentes stations-service. Il a également pu être démontré qu'à chaque nouveau remplissage des cuves d'une station-service, la composition de l'essence distribuée par cette station est quasi unique. La GC-MS permet une meilleure différenciation d'échantillons prélevés dans différentes stations, alors que la GC-IRMS est plus performante lorsqu'il s'agit de comparer des échantillons collectés après chacun des remplissages d'une cuve. Ainsi, ces résultats indiquent que les deux composantes de la méthode peuvent être complémentaires pour l'analyse d'échantillons d'essence non altérée. Les résultats obtenus ont également permis de montrer que l'évaporation des échantillons d'essence ne compromet pas la possibilité de grouper des échantillons de même source par GC-MS. Il est toutefois nécessaire d'effectuer une sélection des variables afin d'éliminer celles qui sont influencées par le phénomène d'évaporation. Par contre, les analyses effectuées ont montré que l'évaporation des échantillons d'essence a une forte influence sur la composition isotopique des échantillons. Cette influence est telle qu'il n'est pas possible, même en effectuant une sélection des variables, de grouper correctement des échantillons évaporés par GC-IRMS. Par conséquent, seule la composante MS de la méthodologie mise en place permet d'inférer la source d'échantillons d'essence évaporée. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ When gasoline is used to start and / or propagate an arson, source inference of gasoline can allow to establish a link between the fire and a potential source. This source inference is an interesting alternative to provide evidence in this type of events where physical evidence left by the author are rare. The main purpose of this research was to develop a GC-IRMS method for the analysis of gasoline samples, a non-routine method and little investigated in forensic science, and to evaluate its potential to infer the source of gasoline traces compared to the GC-MS performances. An instrument allowing to analyze simultaneously samples by MS and IRMS was used in this research. An analytical method was developed, optimized and validated for this instrument. Thereafter, gasoline samples from a large sampling and representative of the Lausanne area market were analyzed. Finally, the obtained data were processed and interpreted using chemometric methods. The analyses have shown that the methodology, both for MS and for IRMS, allow to differentiate unweathered gasoline samples from different service stations. It has also been demonstrated that each new filling of the tanks of a station generates an almost unique composition of gasoline. GC-MS achieves a better differentiation of samples coming from different stations, while GC-IRMS is more efficient to distinguish samples collected after each filling of a tank. Thus, these results indicate that the two components of the method can be complementary to the analysis of unweathered gasoline samples. The results have also shown that the evaporation of gasoline samples does not compromise the possibility to group samples coming from the same source by GC-MS. It is however necessary to make a selection of variables in order to eliminate those which are influenced by the evaporation. On the other hand, the carried out analyses have shown that the evaporation of gasoline samples has such a strong influence on the isotopic composition of the samples that it is not possible, even by performing a selection of variables, to properly group evaporated samples by GC-IRMS. Therefore, only the MS allows to infer the source of evaporated gasoline samples.

rDock: A Fast, Versatile and Open Source Program for Docking Ligands to Proteins and Nucleic Acids

Identification of chemical compounds with specific biological activities is an important step in both chemical biology and drug discovery. When the structure of the intended target is available, one approach is to use molecular docking programs to assess the chemical complementarity of small molecules with the target; such calculations provide a qualitative measure of affinity that can be used in virtual screening (VS) to rank order a list of compounds according to their potential to be active. rDock is a molecular docking program developed at Vernalis for high-throughput VS (HTVS) applications. Evolved from RiboDock, the program can be used against proteins and nucleic acids, is designed to be computationally very efficient and allows the user to incorporate additional constraints and information as a bias to guide docking. This article provides an overview of the program structure and features and compares rDock to two reference programs, AutoDock Vina (open source) and Schrodinger's Glide (commercial). In terms of computational speed for VS, rDock is faster than Vina and comparable to Glide. For binding mode prediction, rDock and Vina are superior to Glide. The VS performance of rDock is significantly better than Vina, but inferior to Glide for most systems unless pharmacophore constraints are used; in that case rDock and Glide are of equal performance. The program is released under the Lesser General Public License and is freely available for download, together with the manuals, example files and the complete test sets, at http://rdock.sourceforge.net/

Metals and Selenium as bioindicators of geographic and trophic segregation in Giant Petrels Macronectes spp.

We analysed concentrations of cadmium, lead, mercury and selenium in blood from males and females of the 2 sibling species of giant petrels, the northern Macronectes halli and the southern M. giganteus, breeding sympatrically at Bird Island (South Georgia, Antarctica). Blood samples were collected in 1998 during the incubation period, from 5 November to 10 December. Between species, cadmium and lead concentrations were significantly higher for northern than for southern giant petrels, which probably resulted from northern giant petrels wintering in more polluted areas (mainly on the Patagonian Shelf and Falkland Islands) compared to southern giant petrels (wintering mainly around South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands). Between sexes, cadmium concentrations were significantly higher for females than for males in both species, corresponding to the more pelagic habits of females compared to the more scavenging habits of males. Lead and cadmium concentrations in circulating blood decreased significantly over the incubation period, suggesting that when breeding at Bird Island, exposure to the source of pollution had ended, and these metals had been cleared from the blood and excreted, or rapidly transferred to other tissues. Association of lead and cadmium with a common source of pollution was further corroborated by a significant positive correlation between the levels of the 2 elements found. Mercury levels were similar between the species, but showed an opposite trend between sexes, with males showing higher levels than females in northern giant petrels, and the opposite was true in southern giant petrels, with no changes throughout incubation. Selenium levels were similar between sexes, but significantly greater for northern than for southern giant petrels. Moreover, there was a significant increase in the selenium levels over the incubation period in northern giant petrels. Age of adult birds did not affect metal concentrations. Coefficients of variation of metal levels were consistently lower for northern than for southern giant petrels, particularly for mercury, suggesting that the former species is more dietary specialised than the latter. Contaminant analyses, when combined with accurate information on seabird movements, obtained through geolocation or satellite tracking, help us to understand geographic variation of pollution in the marine environment.

Mikrokontrolleriohjaus led-ryhmälle

Luonnonvarojen ehtyminen ja ympäristön saastuminen on luonut kysyntää uusille, energiaa säästäville ja ympäristöystävällisille teknologioille. Valaistuksessa tällainen teknologia on led-tekniikka. Led-tekniikalla on useita etuja verrattuna kilpaileviin tekniikoihin kuten pitkä elinikä, ympäristöystävällisyys ja mekaaninen kestävyys. Ledejä käytetään nykyään laajalti erilaisissa erikoissovelluksissa, erityisesti jos vaatimuksena on valon värillisyys. Näihin päiviin asti ledien hinta ja heikko valontuotto ovat rajoittaneet led-valaisimien yleistymistä hehkulamppujen ja muiden valaisintyyppien korvaajina. Tekniikan nopea kehittyminen on tehnyt led-tekniikasta varteenotettavan vaihtoehdon myös yleisvalaistukseen. Uusimpien valkoisten ledien valotehokkuus on 2 - 5 -kertainen hehkulamppuun verrattuna. Led-tekniikassa on vielä paljon käyttämätöntä potentiaalia, tulevaisuudessa päästäneen 10 - 15 -kertaiseen valotehokkuuteen hehkulamppuun verrattuna. Työssä suunnitellaan mikrokontrolleripohjainen ohjausjärjestelmä valkoista valoa tuottavalle led-valaisimelle, jonka värisävyä ja kirkkautta käyttäjä voi säätää. Valkoinen valo synnytetään sekoittamalla neljän erivärisen led-rivin valoa. Mikrokontrolleri ohjaa kutakin led-riviä väriensekoitusteoriaan perustuen. Mikrokontrolleriohjaus huomioi myös ledien optisten ominaisuuksien muutokset lämpötilan suhteen. Mikrokontrolleriohjauksen suorituskyky todetaan käytännön mittauksilla.

Simulating fuel consumption and vehicle emissions in an Australian context

Road transport is a major source of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions around the world. There is an increasing interest in accurate information on local vehicle emission levels for policy development and sustainable traffic management. Previous studies have shown that emission predictions for the Australian situation need to reflect both the Australian fleet and driving behaviour to avoid unreliable outcomes. This paper discusses a new Australian vehicle emission software (PΔP) and a case-study where traffic simulation software (Aimsun) is combined with PΔP to demonstrate how consistent results can be achieved for the Australian situation. The case-study is an Australian city modelled using the microscopic simulator to generate the required trajectory data of each individual vehicle for the emission model. The simulation results are used in a number of ways: to assess the impacts of urban driving behaviour on fuel consumption, to create maps showing where and when elevated emission levels occur and to compare results with another program (COPERT Australia). The paper will also discuss where further research is required.

Implementació d'un ERP open source amb programació a mida

This work presents, from the perspective of a freelancer professional, a case study of a practical and real implementation of an Open Source ERP software suite to a very small company, including the development of a custom software module to adapt the suite to the particular needs of the company.

Servei de rutes basat en Open Source Routing Machine

Aquesta memòria descriu la preparació, l'execució i els resultats obtinguts d'implementar un sistema calculador de rutes. El projecte Open Source Routing Machine és un motor calculador de rutes d'alt rendiment que utilitza les dades de OpenStreetMaps per calcular el camí més curt entre dos punts. En aquest projecte final no únicament es volen utilitzar les dades OpenStreetMap sinó que també es pretenen utilitzar dades pròpies en format shapefile i poder visualitzar-los en un visor web. Aquest visor permet a l'usuari, de forma senzilla, sol•licitar rutes al servidor OSRM creat, obtenint la ruta desitjada en molt pocs milisegons

Au bord d'une source

Soitinnus: Piano.

Análises seqüenciais de agrupamentos aplicadas ao estudo de partículas atmosféricas

The present paper has as objective to apply a sequential Cluster Analysis to the atmospheric particles: Hierarchical Cluster Analysis followed by Nonhierarchical Cluster Analysis. The hierarchical cluster analysis results were used as start point for the nonhierarchical cluster analysis as an agglomerative technique. These particles were taken from two areas of the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre, Charqueadas and Sapucaia do Sul., from may /97 to may/98, using a High Volume Sampler (Hi-Vol). Around 10,000 particles were analysed by Scanning Electron Microscope with Energy-Dispersive X-Ray microanalysis (SEM-EDS). The Hierarchical Cluster Analysis allowed the identification of five groups of particles, whose amounts were differentiated according to the summer and the winter campaigns. The abundance of each type of particles inside each group according to the different sections was verified by the Nonhierarchical Cluster Analysis, resulting in information about the emissions sources. The groups of particles of Si/Al and Si and of Fe/Zn and Fe for Charqueadas were more significant in section 2 and 3 (NW and W wind directions) and in section 1 (SE wind direction), evidencing the influence of the coal power plant and steel industry, respectively located in these quadrants. In Sapucaia do Sul the data were more heterogeneous, causing a certain difficulty to identify the source as anthropogenic. Nevertheless the group of particles containing Fe was found in sectors of NW/W wind directions which shows the influence of the steel plant.

Avaliação de poluição do ar por chumbo particulado: uma abordagem geoquímica

High lead concentrations up to 5478 mg kg-1 were detected in dry atmospheric precipitations in Rio Grande city and adjacent area. Lead anomalies cover up to 30% of the study area. Lead concentration measurement in dry atmospheric precipitation and suspended particulate matter provides a possibility to detect concentrations above lead threshold in the air. The most impacted areas are fishermen's villages. The most possible source of lead in the air is uncontrolled sub industrial activity of local population