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This paper presents fully kinetic particle simulations of plasma charging at lunar craters with the presence of lunar lander modules using the recently developed Parallel Immersed-Finite-Element Particle-in-Cell (PIFE-PIC) code. The computation model explicitly includes the lunar regolith layer on top of the lunar bedrock, taking into account the regolith layer thickness and permittivity as well as the lunar lander module in the simulation domain, resolving a nontrivial surface terrain or lunar lander configuration. Simulations were carried out to study the lunar surface and lunar lander module charging near craters at the lunar terminator region under mean and severe plasma environments. The lunar module’s position is also investigated to see its effect on the plasma charging relative to the craters. Differential surface charging was clearly resolved by the simulations. For the charging of a lunar lander module made of conducting materials, the results show a near-uniform potential close to that of its surrounding environment and moderate levels of local electric fields. Additionally, the risks associated with charging and discharging increase significantly under a more severe plasma charging environment as shown in the severe plasma environment cases.

This paper presents a recently developed particle simulation code package PIFE-PIC, which is a novel three-dimensional (3-D) parallel immersed finite element (IFE) particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation...

Through a case study of the professionally made architectural model in Britain between the late 1960s and the early1990s, this article draws from archaeologist Ian Hodder’s concept of entanglement and argues that the relationship between the architect, the architectural model, and the modelmaker exists as an entangled web of shifting distributions of power governed by asymmetric tensions and mutual dependencies. In tracing the changing relationship dynamics that led to a dramatic broadening of the model’s visual styles to incorporate both realism and creative abstraction during this period, this article describes the professionally made architectural model as the locus of an intricate web of interconnected dependencies in which the model, the modelmaker, and the architect reap both the positive and negative consequences of their increasingly fraught entrapment. Demonstrating how a study of their entanglement reveals the complexities that exist within the human-object interactions that surround them, this article highlights the mutual dependencies that bind the model, the maker, and the architect together.

Antarctic sea ice plays a critical role in the Earth system, influencing energy, heat and freshwater fluxes, air–sea gas exchange, ice shelf dynamics, ocean circulation, nutrient cycling, marine productivity and global carbon cycling. However, accurate simulation of recent sea-ice changes remains challenging and, therefore, projecting future sea-ice changes and their influence on the global climate system is uncertain. Reconstructing past changes in sea-ice cover can provide additional insights into climate feedbacks within the Earth system at different timescales. This paper is the first of two review papers from the Cycles of Sea Ice Dynamics in the Earth system (C-SIDE) working group. In this first paper, we review marine- and ice core-based sea-ice proxies and reconstructions of sea-ice changes throughout the last glacial–interglacial cycle. Antarctic sea-ice reconstructions rely mainly on diatom fossil assemblages and highly branched isoprenoid (HBI) alkenes in marine sediments, supported by chemical proxies in Antarctic ice cores. Most reconstructions for the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) suggest that winter sea ice expanded all around Antarctica and covered almost twice its modern surface extent. In contrast, LGM summer sea ice expanded mainly in the regions off the Weddell and Ross seas. The difference between winter and summer sea ice during the LGM led to a larger seasonal cycle than today. More recent efforts have focused on reconstructing Antarctic sea ice during warm periods, such as the Holocene and the Last Interglacial (LIG), which may serve as an analogue for the future. Notwithstanding regional heterogeneities, existing reconstructions suggest that sea-ice cover increased from the warm mid-Holocene to the colder Late Holocene with pervasive decadal- to millennial-scale variability throughout the Holocene. Studies, supported by proxy modelling experiments, suggest that sea-ice cover was halved during the warmer LIG when global average temperatures were ∼2 ∘C above the pre-industrial (PI). There are limited marine (14) and ice core (4) sea-ice proxy records covering the complete 130 000 year (130 ka) last glacial cycle. The glacial–interglacial pattern of sea-ice advance and retreat appears relatively similar in each basin of the Southern Ocean. Rapid retreat of sea ice occurred during Terminations II and I while the expansion of sea ice during the last glaciation appears more gradual especially in ice core data sets. Marine records suggest that the first prominent expansion occurred during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 4 and that sea ice reached maximum extent during MIS 2. We, however, note that additional sea-ice records and transient model simulations are required to better identify the underlying drivers and feedbacks of Antarctic sea-ice changes over the last 130 ka. This understanding is critical to improve future predictions.

Macrolides are broad-spectrum antibiotics used to treat a range of infections. Resistance to macrolides is often conferred by mobile resistance genes encoding Erm methyltransferases or Mph phosphotransferases. New erm and mph genes keep being discovered in clinical settings but their origins remain unknown, as is the type of macrolide resistance genes that will appear in the future. In this study, we used optimized hidden Markov models to characterize the macrolide resistome. Over 16 terabases of genomic and metagenomic data, representing a large taxonomic diversity (11 030 species) and diverse environments (1944 metagenomic samples), were searched for the presence of erm and mph genes. From this data, we predicted 28 340 macrolide resistance genes encoding 2892 unique protein sequences, which were clustered into 663 gene families ( Escherichia coli using a growth assay. Among the ten tested genes, seven conferred increased resistance to erythromycin, with five genes additionally conferring increased resistance to azithromycin, showing that our models can be used to predict new functional resistance genes. Our analysis also showed that macrolide resistance genes have diverse origins and have transferred horizontally over large phylogenetic distances into human pathogens. This study expands the known macrolide resistome more than ten-fold, provides insights into its evolution, and demonstrates how computational screening can identify new resistance genes before they become a significant clinical problem.

The purpose of this deliverable is to define the end-user requirements in order to prepare the configuration of the chemical sensors technologies (portable or wearable) that will be developed inside SnR in terms of ergonomic, power supply, size, weight, user interface characteristics. The operational requirements input from D1.2, combined with the results of D1.1 (referring to the task “State-of-the-art review on existing SAR technologies for the early location of entrapped victims”) will be used for the design and development of the RESCUE MIMS prototype; the S&R artificial sniffing tool will be developed, capable of measuring critical volatiles in the field, either for the early detection of toxic environments or for the localisation of entrapped victims and for ensuring the chemical protection of the First Responder.

This paper is a discussion of the possible subtle influence of smartphone camera technology on the aesthetics of photography. Using a paper in IEEE by the computer engineers Wenyuan Yin, Tao Mei, Chang Wen Chen, and Shipeng Li on the development of an app for smartphones, designed to aid the everyman photographer by helping him or her photograph more perfectly, in the initial run, eight different landmarks around the world.After a definition of key concepts as they are used in this paper, the paper by Yin et al. is analyzed solely with the purpose to find out what they mean by ”better” pictures – what their concept of aesthetics is.Several older papers with a similar intention but varying methods are discussed to provide an idea of a field where aesthetics are central, but not clearly defined. It is shown that the concept of aesthetics in this field is based almost entirely on the points given to pictures by users of photo databases, thus actually equating aesthetic value with mass-appeal.It is argued that this reliance on what is termed “mass aesthetics” seems to reduce the photographer to an anonymous figure without agency. Further it is argued, on the basis of the concepts of Walter Benjamin that the procedure designed by Yin et al. would render all aesthetic practices within the art of photography ritualistic.The paper concludes that it is useful in this discussion to distinguish between four separate types of aesthetics in the field of computational aesthetics: modern aesthetics, defined by the agency of the artist, mass aesthetics, defined by being authorless, the simplistic aesthetics, as utilized by the field which has been examined and finally, based on Yin et al., ritualized aesthetics.Ritualized aesthetics are defined by their dependence on repetition, therefore they become akin to religious ceremony, or, more simply a chant or hymn.

Cyber-security of industrial control systems (ICSs) is notoriously hard due to the peculiar constraints of the specific context. At the same time, the use of specifically crafted malware to target ICSs is an established offensive mean for opposing organisations, groups, or countries. We provide an overview of the results attained by the Preemptive project to improve the cyber-security of ICSs. Preemptive devised several integrated tools for detection and prevention of intrusions in this context. It also provides a way to correlate many small events giving rise to more significant ones, and shows the whole cybersecurity state to the user by means of specific human-machine interfaces.

Routing in Neighbourhood Area Network (NAN) for Smart Grid's Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) raises the need for Quality of Service (QoS)-Aware routing. This is due to the expanded list of applications that will result in the transmission of different types of traffic between NAN devices (i.e smart meters). In wireless mesh network (WMN) routing, a combination of multiple link metrics, though complex, has been identified as a possible solution for QoS routing. These complexities (i.e Np complete problem) can be resolved through the use of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) algorithm and pruning techniques. With the assumption that smart meters transmit IP packets of different sizes at different interval to represent AMI traffic, a case study of the performance of three Optimised Link State Routing (OLSR) link metrics is carried out on a grid topology NAN based WMN in ns-2 network simulator. The best two performing metric were used to show the possibility of combining multiple metrics with OLSR through the AHP algorithm to fulfill the QoS routing requirements of targeted AMI application traffic in NANs.

Recent advances in ad hoc Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) has posited it as a strong candidate in Smart Grid's Neighbourhood Area Network (NAN) for Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). However, its abysmal capacity and poor multi-hoping performance in harsh dynamic environment will require an improvement to its protocol stacks in order for it to effectively support the variable requirements of application traffic in Smart Grid. This paper presents a classification of Smart Grid traffics and examines the performance of HWMP (which is the default routing protocol of the IEEE 802.11s standard) with the Optimised Link State Routing (OLSR) protocol in a NAN based ad hoc WMN. Results from simulations in ns-3 show that HWMP does not outperform OLSR. This indicates that cross layer modifications can be developed in OLSR protocol to address the routing challenges in a NAN based ad hoc WMN.