Inferring microbiota functions from taxonomic genes: a review

Deciphering microbiota functions is crucial to predict ecosystem sustainability in response to global change. High-throughput sequencing at the individual or community level has revolutionized our understanding of microbial ecology, leading to the big data era and improving our ability to link microbial diversity with microbial functions. Recent advances in bioinformatics have been key for developing functional prediction tools based on DNA metabarcoding data and using taxonomic gene information. This cheaper approach in every aspect serves as an alternative to shotgun sequencing. Although these tools are increasingly used by ecologists, an objective evaluation of their modularity, portability, and robustness is lacking. Here, we reviewed 100 scientific papers on functional inference and ecological trait assignment to rank the advantages, specificities, and drawbacks of these tools, using a scientific benchmarking. To date, inference tools have been mainly devoted to bacterial functions, and ecological trait assignment tools, to fungal functions. A major limitation is the lack of reference genomes—compared with the human microbiota—especially for complex ecosystems such as soils. Finally, we explore applied research prospects. These tools are promising and already provide relevant information on ecosystem functioning, but standardized indicators and corresponding repositories are still lacking that would enable them to be used for operational diagnosis.

How Does Cyclogenesis Commence Given a Favorable Tropical Environment?

In a series of collaborative Russian–American works (Levina and Montgomery, 2009–2015), we applied the fundamental ideas of self-organization in turbulence with broken mirror symmetry, the so-called “helical” turbulence. In this context, tropical cyclogenesis is considered as a threshold extreme event in the three-dimensional helical moist convective atmospheric turbulence of a vorticity-rich environment of a pre-depression zone. This allowed us to discover a large-scale vortex instability and answer the question “When will cyclogenesis commence given a favorable tropical environment?”. The new instability emerges against the background of seemingly disorganized convection, without a well-defined center of near-surface circulation and noticeably precedes the formation of a tropical depression. This can give the fundamental ground and quantitative substantiation for the term “Potential Tropical Cyclone” as a beginning of TC genesis. In the present work, we explore in detail the crucial role of special convective coherent structures of cloud scales—vortical hot towers (VHTs)—in the formation and maintenance of the secondary circulation and, therefore, of the whole mesoscale vortex system. On this basis, we propose how the onset of large-scale instability, i.e., the beginning of TC genesis, can be diagnosed exactly and distantly with VHTs patterns in the field of temperature (satellite data) and vertical helicity (cloud-resolving numerical analysis). The present research is intended to contribute to a recently initiated development of operational diagnosis of the beginning of TC genesis based on GOES Imagery and supported by cloud-resolving numerical modeling.

Technique for operational diagnosis of pipelines of energy systems and complexes

THE PURPOSE. To consider the problems of reliability of pipeline systems of housing and communal services. To analyze existing methods for assessing the technical condition of pipelines. To develop an improved technique that allows you to search for various types of defects in pipelines. To develop a device for inertial excitation of low-frequency diagnostic vibration vibrations. To develop software in the LabVIEW environment for collecting, storing and processing signals from a sensitive sensor (piezoelectric sensor) installed on a pipeline. To conduct a series of experimental studies to te st the proposed methodology. METHODS. The method of inertial excitation of vibrations was used to excite vibrations in the wall of the investigated pipeline. To search for the natural frequencies of vibrations of the pipeline under study, mathematical mode ling methods were used, implemented in the ANSYS software package. During the experiments, the fast Fourier transform method was used to process the signals coming from the piezoelectric sensor. RESULTS. The article presents a technique for assessing the t echnical condition of pipelines, as well as a device for inertial excitation of vibrations. The article presents the results of experimental studies on a fiberglass pipeline, the results showed that when an oscillatory wave passes through the wall of a defect-free pipeline, its amplitude changes insignificantly. If there is a defect in the wall of the investigated pipeline, the vibration amplitude will be much weaker due to the dissipation of vibrational energy in the place of the defect. Thereby, it is pos sible to determine not only the presence of a defect, but also its size by the degree of attenuation of the signal amplitude CONCLUSION. The proposed technique is the basis for the creation of a new measuring and diagnostic complex for vibration control of pipelines.

FPGA implementation of fuzzy medical decision support system for disc hernia diagnosis

The aim of this study was to create a decision support system for disc hernia diagnostics based on real measurements of foot force values from sensors and fuzzy logic, as well as to implement the system on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The results show that the created fuzzy logic system had the 92.8% accuracy for pre-operational diagnosis and very high match between the Matlab and FPGA output (94.2% match for pre-operational condition, and 100% match for the post-operational and after physical therapy conditions). Interestingly enough, our system is also able to detect improvements in patient condition after the surgery and physical therapy. The main benefit of using FPGAs in this study is to create an inexpensive, portable expert system for real time acquisition, processing and providing the objective recommendation for disc hernia diagnosis and tracking the condition improvement.

Análise da operação de um subsistema do sistema de abastecimento de água de Campina Grande-PB

Water supply systems represent one of the main components of municipal infrastructure. The operation of these systems is a complex task due to the several variables that interfere with the water distribution dynamics. The objective of the work was to obtain a diagnosis of the operation of part of the water supply system of Campina Grande and to find the main limitations and potentialities of the system infrastructure. The system supplies water to several municipalities, serving an urban and a rural population of more than 500,000 inhabitants. For the operational diagnosis, hydraulic modeling was done using the Epanet 2 simulator. The operation was modeled from the water treatment plant to the pressure zone 2 of the Campina Grande system. Cadastral surveys of the water network were carried out, field surveys and interviews with the operators. Based on the scenarios analyzed it was possible to conclude that zone 2 of the supply system has little margin for increase demand , around 10%, that the system can not work outside the peak hours and the energy cost is mainly generated by the station of water treatment. In order to improve the vulnerability reduction operation, investments are required in the physical structure of the system and in monitoring and automation.