The potential of a GIS-based scoping system: An Israeli proposal and case study

In the environmental impact assessment (EIA) lifecycle, scoping is regarded as the most important stage for the quality of the entire process. Even though many EIA methods exist, only a few of them are specifically suited for scoping. Despite the well-acknowledged potential of geographical information systems (CIS) for EIA and their seemingly widespread use, the applicability of GIS for scoping has not been analyzed sufficiently. This article advances a GIS-based scoping method and discusses the conditions necessary for its utilization. Two specific issues are addressed: the ability of a GIS-based system to identify the pertinent environmental effects on the basis of readily available information under stringent time and budget constraints, and the institutional infrastructure needed for such a system to operate effectively. These issues are analyzed in a case study conducted in Israel. In this case study, the proposed GIS-based scoping system identified all the main effects found independently in a comprehensive environmental impact statement (EIS), as well as issues not analyzed in the EIS. A centralized institutional scoping structure, whereby EIS guidelines are issued by a single entity, is found to be important for the operation of such a system, because it can enjoy the economies of scale and scope involved in setting up and operating a GIS system for scoping purposes

Energy-Aware Lease Scheduling in Virtualized Data Centers

Energy efficiency has become an important measurement of scheduling algorithms in virtualized data centers. One of the challenges of energy-efficient scheduling algorithms, however, is the trade-off between minimizing energy consumption and satisfying quality of service (e.g. performance, resource availability on time for reservation requests). We consider resource needs in the context of virtualized data centers of a private cloud system, which provides resource leases in terms of virtual machines (VMs) for user applications. In this paper, we propose heuristics for scheduling VMs that address the above challenge. On performance evaluation, simulated results have shown a significant reduction on total energy consumption of our proposed algorithms compared with an existing First-Come-First-Serve (FCFS) scheduling algorithm with the same fulfillment of performance requirements. We also discuss the improvement of energy saving when additionally using migration policies to the above mentioned algorithms.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on High Performance Scientific Computing, March 5-9, 2012, Hanoi, Vietna

Role of miR-148a in hepatitis B associated hepatocellular carcinoma

Hepatitis B virus encoded X antigen (HBx) is a trans-regulatory protein that alters the activity of selected transcription factors and cytoplasmic signal transduction pathways. HBx transcriptionally up-regulates the expression of a unique gene, URG11, which in turn transcriptionally up-regulates beta-catenin, thereby contributing importantly to hepatocarcinogenesis. HBx and URG11 also alter the expression of multiple microRNAs, and by miRNA array analysis, both were shown to promote the expression of miR-148a. Elevated miR-148a was also seen in HBx positive liver samples from infected patients. To study the function of miR-148a, anti-148a was introduced into HepG2 and Hep3B cells stably expressing HBx or stably over-expressing URG11. Anti-miR-148a suppressed cell proliferation, cell cycle progression, cell migration, anchorage independent growth in soft agar and subcutaneous tumor formation in SCID mice. Introduction of anti-miR-148a increased PTEN protein and mRNA expression, suggesting that PTEN was targeted by miR-148a. Anti-miR-148a failed to suppress PTEN expression when co-transfected with reporter gene mutants in the 3'UTR of PTEN mRNA. Introduction of anti-miR-148a also resulted in depressed Akt signaling by HBx and URG11, resulting in decreased expression of beta-catenin. Thus, miR-148a may play a central role in HBx/URG11 mediated HCC, and may be an early diagnostic marker and/or therapeutic target associated with this tumor type.published_or_final_versio

Sustainable Mobility in Cities

The objective of the project 'Sustainable Mobility in Cities' was to advance an approach for identifying policy packages for sustainable mobility. The study combined qualitative and quantitative methodological components: In the qualitative part of the analysis, market segmentation techniques were used to identify groups and locations positively or negatively affected by transport-related policy instruments. In the quantitative part of the study, a method for developing a synthetic population as the basis for a microsimulation of urban travel demand and traffic was developed. The project was a co-operation between the Department of Geography of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Institute of Spatial Planning. The reports presents the results of the study

Analyzing the EGEE production grid workload: application to jobs submission optimization

International audienceGrids reliability remains an order of magnitude below clusters on production infrastructures. This work is aims at improving grid application performances by improving the job submission system. A stochastic model, capturing the behavior of a complex grid workload management system is proposed. To instantiate the model, detailed statistics are extracted from dense grid activity traces. The model is exploited in a simple job resubmission strategy. It provides quantitative inputs to improve job submission performance and it enables quantifying the impact of faults and outliers on grid operations

Температурный дрейф собственных частот микромеханического гироскопа

Целью работы является определение характеристик влияниятемпературного воздействия на собственные частоты микромеханического гироскопа, чувствительный элемент которого расположен на кремниевой пластине с кристаллографической ориентацией (111), имеющей изотропию механических и температурных свойств во всех направлениях. Необходимость контроля метрологических характеристик, зависящих от собственных частот во всем температурном диапазоне, подтверждает актуальность данной темы исследования. В ходе исследования в среде ANSYS проведен температурно-модальный анализ модели, имитирующей первичные колебания микромеханического гироскопа. Модель микрорезонатора, выбранная в качестве имитатора первичных колебаний микромеханического гироскопа, адекватно отражает характер колебаний массы по оси первичных колебаний. В результате получены температурные зависимости собственных частот и определены наиболее температурно-независимые моды колебаний для осциллятора, выполненного на кремниевой пластине с кристаллографической ориентацией (111)

Forecasting environmental equity: Air quality responses to road user charging in Leeds, UK

Sustainable development requires that the goals of economic development, environmental protection and social justice are considered collectively when formulating development strategies. In the context of planning sustainable transport systems, trade-offs between the economy and the environment, and between the economy and social justice have received considerable attention. In contrast, much less attention has been paid to environmental equity, the trade-off between environmental and social justice goals, a significant omission given the growing attention to environmental justice by policy makers in the EU and elsewhere. In many countries, considerable effort has been made to develop clean transport systems by using, for example, technical, economic and planning instruments. However, little effort has been made to understand the distributive and environmental justice implications of these measures. This paper investigates the relationship between urban air quality (as NO2) and social deprivation for the city of Leeds, UK. Through application of a series of linked dynamic models of traffic simulation and assignment, vehicle emission, and pollutant dispersion, the environmental equity implications of a series of urban transport strategies, including road user cordon and distance based charging, road network development, and emission control, are assessed. Results indicate a significant degree of environmental inequity exists in Leeds. Analysis of the transport strategies indicates that this inequity will be reduced through natural fleet renewal, and, perhaps contrary to expectations, road user charging is also capable of promoting environmental equity. The environmental equity response is however, sensitive to road pricing scheme design

"We do not appreciate being experimented on": Developer and Researcher Views on the Ethics of Experiments on Open-Source Projects

A tenet of open source software development is to accept contributions from users-developers (typically after appropriate vetting). But should this also include interventions done as part of research on open source development? Following an incident in which buggy code was submitted to the Linux kernel to see whether it would be caught, we conduct a survey among open source developers and empirical software engineering researchers to see what behaviors they think are acceptable. This covers two main issues: the use of publicly accessible information, and conducting active experimentation. The survey had 224 respondents. The results indicate that open-source developers are largely open to research, provided it is done transparently. In other words, many would agree to experiments on open-source projects if the subjects were notified and provided informed consent, and in special cases also if only the project leaders agree. While researchers generally hold similar opinions, they sometimes fail to appreciate certain nuances that are important to developers. Examples include observing license restrictions on publishing open-source code and safeguarding the code. Conversely, researchers seem to be more concerned than developers about privacy issues. Based on these results, it is recommended that open source repositories and projects address use for research in their access guidelines, and that researchers take care to ask permission also when not formally required to do so. We note too that the open source community wants to be heard, so professional societies and IRBs should consult with them when formulating ethics codes.Comment: 15 pages with 42 charts and 3 tables; accepted versio

Pathogenesis of Hepatitis B Virus Associated Chronic Liver Disease

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is associated with chronic liver diseases (CLD), which progress from hepatitis to fibrosis, cirrhosis, and finally hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) over 30–50 years. The pathogenesis of CLD is immune mediated, which is characterized by persistent immune responses against virus infected hepatocytes. During bouts of CLD, the virus gene encoding the hepatitis B x antigen (HBx) is increasingly found integrated at multiple sites within the human genome. Many of these integrated templates express HBx, which is a trans-regulatory protein that supports virus gene expression and replication on one hand, but also alters patterns of gene expression in the infected cell. HBx alters gene expression by constitutively activating signal transduction pathways in the cytoplasm and promoting epigenetic mediated changes in the expression of cellular genes. In doing so, HBx contributes to the persistence of virus infected cells and to the pathogenesis of CLD by triggering multiple hallmarks which are characteristic of cancer