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Este trabajo se enmarca en las aplicaciones de las redes neuronales en el estudio y modelamiento delos fenómenos presentes en la fotósfera solar. La investigación propuesta se basa en el modelo de redesadversarias generativas haciendo uso de las módulos de inteligencia artificial de Pytorch. Se busca entrenaruna red neuronal capaz de generar grupos de imágenes de una alta similitud con imágenes de entrenamiento,dichas imágenes corresponden a magnitudes físicas de la fotósfera solar tales como densidad, campomagnético, velocidad del plasma, temperatura, entre otras, obtenidas del código de simulación MURaM,aunque la red neuronal puede entrenarse para generar imágenes de cualquier magnitud física. El trabajo seenfoca en la generación de imágenes de campo magnético en la fotósfera solar. Se presentan los resultadosde entrenamiento de la red neuronal, la comparativa entre las imágenes de entrenamiento y las imágenesgeneradas, y se proponen los retos para usar estas herramientas en el estudio de la fotósfera solar.

This work has been financed by the European Commission (EU) through the LIFE project ZERO WASTE WATER (LIFE19 ENV/ES/000631), the Waterworks 2014 Cofounded Call (Water JPI/Horizon) through the Pioneer_STP (PCIN-2015-022 MINECO (AEI)/ID 199 (UE)) and by the Spanish Government (AEI) through GRANDSEA (CTM2014-55397-JIN), TREASURE (CTQ2017-83225-C2-1-R) and ECOPOLYVER (PID2020-112550RB-C21 and PID2020-112550RB-C22) projects. Alba Pedrouso also acknowledges the Xunta de Galicia (Spain) for her post-doctoral fellowship (ED481B-2021-041). Authors from the USC belong to the Galician Competitive Research Group (GRC D431C-2021/37). Authors gratefully acknowledge the staff of the WWTP for their support., Two-stage partial nitritation (PN) and anammox (AMX) systems showed promising results for applying auto-trophic nitrogen removal under mainstream conditions. In this study, a pilot-scale (600 L per reactor) two-stage PN/AMX system was installed in a municipal wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) provided with a high-rate activated sludge (HRAS) system for organic carbon removal. The PN/AMX system was operated without tem-perature control (ranging from 11 to 28 degrees C) and was subjected to the same variations in wastewater charac-teristics as the WWTP (22 to 63 mg NH4+- N/L). The developed strategy is simple, does not require the addition of chemicals and is characterised by short start-up periods. The PN process was established by applying a high hydraulic load and maintained by in situ accumulated free nitrous acid (FNA) of 0.015-0.2 mg HNO2-N/L. Based on pH value, a controlled aeration strategy was applied to achieve the target nitrite to ammonium ratio in the effluent (1.1 g NO2--N/g NH4+-N) to feed the AMX reactor. Although NOB were not fully washed out from the system, nitrite accumulation remained (>99 %) stable with no evidence of NOB activity. In the AMX reactor, an overall nitrogen removal efficiency of 80 % was achieved. Regarding effluent quality, 12 +/- 3 mg TN/L was obtained, but 5 mg NO3--N/L was already in the HRAS effluent. The relative abundance of NOB showed a strong negative correlation with the FNA concentration, providing a good strategy for establishing PN under main-stream conditions., European Commission (EU) through the LIFE project ZERO WASTE WATER LIFE19 ENV/ES/000631, Waterworks 2014 Cofounded Call (Water JPI/Horizon) through the Pioneer_STP (MINECO (AEI)/(UE)) ED481B-2021-041, Spanish Government (AEI) 199, CTM2014-55397-JIN, CTQ2017-83225-C2-1-R, PID2020-112550RB-C21, Xunta de Galicia PID2020-112550RB-C22, PCIN-2015-022

Fraction comparison tasks are commonly used in research to assess students’ knowledge of fractions. However, as fractions are complex multi-faceted constructs that are understood in distinct manners by different groups of children, it is relevant to investigate the properties of fraction comparison tasks to understand what conclusions can be validly drawn from their outcomes. In this paper, we perform a psychometric analysis of secondary data from a fraction comparison task performed by 403 school children from 10 to 12 years of age. The task consisted of 24 fraction pairs to be compared. These pairs could share or not a common component (numerator or denominator) and could be either congruent or incongruent (i.e. items for which naive comparison of the natural numbers composing the fractions leads to the same or different answer than comparing the fractions’ magnitudes). Results showed that congruent items had substantially higher scores and lower discrimination indices than incongruent items. Strikingly, congruent items without common components showed null or negative discrimination indices, driven both by unusually low scores obtained by top-performing children and unusually high scores obtained by low-performing children. Finally, a confirmatory factor analysis suggested a 3-factor structure, with all incongruent items pooled into a single factor, as the best for describing the responses of students who were not extremely guided by item congruency. Our results confirm that fraction comparison items elicit complex patterns of responses across different groups of students, questioning simple interpretations of item characteristics such as congruency.

Design randomizations and spatial corrections have increased understanding of genotypic, spatial, and residual effects in field experiments, but precisely measuring spatial heterogeneity in the field remains a challenge. To this end, our study evaluated approaches to improve spatial modeling using high-throughput phenotypes (HTP) via unoccupied aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was measured by a multi-spectral MicaSense camera and ImageBreed. Contrasting to baseline agronomic trait spatial correction and a baseline multi-trait model, a two-stage approach that quantified NDVI local environmental effects (NLEE) was proposed. Firstly, NLEE were separated from additive genetic effects over the growing season using two-dimensional spline (2DSpl), separable autoregressive (AR1) models, or random regression models (RR). Secondly, the NLEE were leveraged within agronomic trait genomic best linear unbiased prediction (GBLUP) either modeling an empirical covariance for random effects, or by modeling fixed effects as an average of NLEE across time or split among three growth phases. Modeling approaches were tested using simulation data and Genomes-to-Fields (G2F) hybrid maize (ZeamaysL.) field experiments in 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2020 for grain yield, grain moisture, and ear height. The two-stage approach improved heritability, model fit, and genotypic effect estimation compared to all baseline models. Electrical conductance and elevation from a 2019 soil survey significantly improved model fit, while 2DSpl NLEE were most correlated to the soil parameters and grain yield 2DSpl effects. Simulation of field effects demonstrated improved specificity for RR models. In summary, NLEE increased experimental accuracy and understanding of field spatio-temporal heterogeneity.

Eris is currently the most massive known dwarf planet in the Solar system, it has one known satellite, Dysnomia (Brown & Schaller 2007; Holler et al. 2020). There have been several attempts trying to identify the rotation period of Eris from visible ground based measurements which resulted in a wide range of possible values (Duffard et al., 2008). Here we present some new light curve data of Eris, taken with ∼1m-class ground based telescopes, with the GROND instrument at the 2.2m MPG/ESO telescope La Silla, and also with the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Observations of Eris with GROND were made in 3 nights in August 2010. Auxiliary ground based photometry data of Eris from five telescopes were obtained in irregular intervals between 2005 and 2020 (see table 1.) TESS observed Eris in Sector 30 with its Camera 1 and CCD 3. A significant portion of the light curve data had to be excluded due to Eris’ encounter with nearby background sources which left a dominant feature in the background-subtracted image. We note that due to the limited length of the TESS light blocks (2.3 d and 6.6 d) it was not possible to detect light curve periods in to order or close to the orbital period (15.78 d). For most of the ground-based measurements we used our night-averaged values for the 1.5m, La Hita and CA2.2m data), except for the GROND measurements, for which we used the all the individual data points. In addition, we also considered previously published data, including ground-based data from Carraro et al., 2006 and Duffard et al., 2008, and the SWIFT satellite data from Roe et al., 2008. We assumed that i) the light curve amplitude is the same in any of the photometric bands used and ii) the light curve can be described by a simple sinusoidal variation. With these assumptions each model light curve can be described by four parameters: a light curve amplitude, period, phase-shift, and an offset from the photometric zero point. We allowed a different offset for each measurement block even if the data were taken by the same instrument and filter combination (1.5m measurements) due to the year-long gaps between the measurement blocks. We chose an amplitude A and period P, and determined the best fitting light curve phase using a Levenberg–Marquardt minimization algorithm. We expect that the best-fitting period-amplitude values provide the lowest C(P,A) values. We searched the period range P ∈ [1d, 15.88 d], where 15.88 d is the orbital period of Dysnomia, and it would correspond to a synchronised rotation. The C(P,A) contour map shows two minima, one at P ≈ 8 h, and A ≈ 0.05, and another at P ≈ 11.5 h, and A ≈ 0.08. To check the robustness of this result, we repeated the process by modifying the photometric data points by adding a random value with normal distribution and repeating the fitting process several times for the whole data set. The same two minima popped up in all cases. TESS data favours a rotation period of 59.420±0.527 h (See Figure 1.), while ground based data is more compatible with a synchronous or nearly synchronous rotation (See Figure 2.). We inspected the colours calculated from the GROND photometry and compared our results to previous values from the literature (Table 2). The optical colours (B-V, V-R, R-I) are in good agreement with previous colours, but the J-H colour from GROND is different from the ones in the literature. Also, we can see a big scatter in those. (See Table 2.) One possible explanation can be, that there is a big CH4 feature on the surface of Eris, which has strong absorption lines in H band, and it can change the NIR colour, but not the optical ones. To confirm this, more long-term optical and NIR measurements are needed. Finally, we use the simple tidal evolution code by Hastings et al. (2016) to calculate the evolution of the satellite orbit (only the semi-major axis in this approximation) and the spin evolution of Eris and Dysnomia. Although the spin period of Eris is not well defined yet, it is an interesting question whether the possible rotation periods of Eris – ranging from a few hours to the orbit-synchronous state – are feasible in terms of tidal evolution, using the current knowledge on the system components.

A substantial increase in the risk of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) has greatly impacted the global healthcare industry. Harmful pathogens adhere to a variety of surfaces and infect personnel on contact, thereby promoting transmission to new hosts. This is particularly worrisome in the case of antibiotic-resistant pathogens, which constitute a growing threat to human health worldwide and require new preventative routes of disinfection. In this study, we have incorporated different loading levels of a porphyrin photosensitizer capable of generating reactive singlet oxygen in the presence of O2 and visible light in a water-soluble, photo-cross-linkable polymer coating, which was subsequently deposited on polymer microfibers. Two different application methods are considered, and the morphological and chemical characteristics of these coated fibers are analyzed to detect the presence of the coating and photosensitizer. To discern the efficacy of the fibers against pathogenic bacteria, photodynamic inactivation has been performed on two different bacterial strains, Staphylococcus aureus and antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli, with population reductions of >99.9999 and 99.6%, respectively, after exposure to visible light for 1 h. In response to the current COVID-19 pandemic, we also confirm that these coated fibers can inactivate a human common cold coronavirus serving as a surrogate for the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Ground-Based and Airborne Telescopes IX (2022), Montreal, Jul 17-22, 2022.--Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering vol. 12182 Article number 121820M, MARCOT Pathfinder is a precursor for MARCOT (Multi Array of Combined Telescopes) at Calar Alto Observatory (CAHA) in Spain. MARCOT is intended to provide CARMENES, currently fiber-fed from the CAHA 3.5m Telescope, with a 5-15m light collecting area from a battery of several tens of small telescopes that are incoherently fed into the final joint single fiber feed of the spectrograph. The modular concept, based on commercially available telescopes, results in cost estimates that are a fraction of the ones for extremely large telescopes (ELT). As a novel approach, MARCOT will employ Multi-Mode Photonic Lanterns (MM-PL) that are being developed as a variant of classical photonic lanterns, to combine the light from the individual telescopes to a single fiber feed to the instrument. This progress report presents the overall concept of MARCOT, the pathfinder telescope and enclosure that is being commissioned at CAHA, the concept of MM-PL, and the next step of installing the Potsdam Multiplex Raman Spectrograph (MRS). MARCOT Pathfinder will be used to validate the conceptual design and predicted performance of MM-PL on sky with a 7-unit telescope prototype. © 2022 SPIE., The authors acknowledge financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa award to the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV20170709). This research has been partially funded by the Junta de Andalucia (SOMM17 5208 IAA). KM, JD, and MMR acknowledge support from BMBF grant 03Z22AN11 "Astrophotonics", DFG grant 326946494, "NAIR", and BMBF grant 03Z22AI1 "Strategic Investment", at the Zentrum fur Innovationskompetenz innoFSPEC.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the relationship between high-skill immigration and multinational activity. I assemble a novel firm-level dataset on high-skill visa applications and show that there is a large home-bias effect, such that foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the US tend to hire more migrant workers from their home countries compared to US firms. I build and estimate a quantitative model that includes trade, MNE production, and the migration decisions of high-skill workers. The model is then used to run two main counterfactual exercises. The first one evaluates the implications of a more restrictive immigration policy in the US. High-skill industries in the US predominantly reallocate to India and Canada, while real wages decrease for US workers. In the second counterfactual exercise, I increase the barriers to MNE production and find that modeling migration significantly affects the quantitative welfare gains generated by MNEs.

A common problem in acoustic design is the placement of speakers or receivers for public address systems, telecommunications, and home smart speakers or digital personal assistants. We present a novel algorithm to automatically place a speaker or receiver in a room to improve the intelligibility of spoken phrases in a design. Our technique uses a sound propagation optimization formulation to maximize the Speech Transmission Index (STI) by computing an optimal location of the sound receiver. We use an efficient and accurate hybrid sound propagation technique on complex 3D models to compute the Room Impulse Responses (RIR) and evaluate their impact on the STI. The overall algorithm computes a globally optimal position of the receiver that reduces the effects of reverberation and noise over many source positions. We evaluate our algorithm on various indoor 3D models, all showing significant improvement in STI, based on accurate sound propagation.

International audience; In the drive towards Exascale, the extreme heterogeneity of supercomputers at all levels places a major development burden on HPC applications. To this end, performance portable abstractions such as those advocated by Kokkos, RAJA and HPX are becoming increasingly popular. At the same time, the unprecedented scalability requirements of such heterogeneous components means higher failure rates, motivating the need for resilience in systems and applications. Unfortunately, state-of-art resilience techniques based on checkpoint/restart are lagging behind performance portability efforts: users still need to capture consistent states manually, which introduces the need for fine-tuning and customization. In this paper we aim to close this gap by introducing a set of abstractions that make it easier for the application developers to reason about resilience. To this end, we extend the existing abstractions proposed by performance portability efforts towards resilience. By marking critical data structures that need to be checkpointed, one can enable an optimized runtime to automate checkpoint-restart using high performance and scalable asynchronously techniques. We illustrate the feasibility of our proposal using a prototype that combines the Kokkos runtime (HPC performance portability), with the VELOC runtime (large-scale low overhead checkpoint-restart). Our experimental results show negligible performance overhead compared compared with a manually tuned implementation of checkpoint-restart while requiring minimal changes in the application code.

Cassava, a food security crop in Africa, is grown throughout the tropics and subtropics. Although cassava can provide high productivity in suboptimal conditions, the yield in Africa is substantially lower than in other geographies. The yield gap is attributable to many challenges faced by cassava in Africa, including susceptibility to diseases and poor soil conditions. In this study, we carried out 3’RNA sequencing on 150 accessions from the National Crops Resources Research Institute, Ugandan for 5 tissue types, providing population-based transcriptomics resources to the research community in a web-based queryable cassava expression atlas. Differential expression and weighted gene co-expression network analysis were performed to detect 8,820 significantly differentially expressed genes (DEGs), revealing similarity in expression patterns between tissue types and the clustering of detected DEGs into 18 gene modules. As a confirmation of data quality, differential expression and pathway analysis targeting cassava mosaic disease (CMD) identified 27 genes observed in the plant-pathogen interaction pathway, several previously identified CMD resistance genes and two peroxidase family proteins different from the CMD2 gene. Present research work represents a novel resource towards understanding complex traits at expression and molecular levels for the development of resistant and high-yielding cassava varieties, as exemplified with CMD.

Modern breeding methods integrate next-generation sequencing and phenomics to identify plants with the best characteristics and greatest genetic merit for use as parents in subsequent breeding cycles to ultimately create improved cultivars able to sustain high adoption rates by farmers. This data-driven approach hinges on strong foundations in data management, quality control, and analytics. Of crucial importance is a central database able to (1) track breeding materials, (2) store experimental evaluations, (3) record phenotypic measurements using consistent ontologies, (4) store genotypic information, and (5) implement algorithms for analysis, prediction, and selection decisions. Because of the complexity of the breeding process, breeding databases also tend to be complex, difficult, and expensive to implement and maintain. Here, we present a breeding database system, Breedbase (https://breedbase.org/, last accessed 4/18/2022). Originally initiated as Cassavabase (https://cassavabase.org/, last accessed 4/18/2022) with the NextGen Cassava project (https://www.nextgencassava.org/, last accessed 4/18/2022), and later developed into a crop-agnostic system, it is presently used by dozens of different crops and projects. The system is web based and is available as open source software. It is available on GitHub (https://github.com/solgenomics/, last accessed 4/18/2022) and packaged in a Docker image for deployment (https://hub.docker.com/u/breedbase, last accessed 4/18/2022). The Breedbase system enables breeding programs to better manage and leverage their data for decision making within a fully integrated digital ecosystem. ispartof: G3-GENES GENOMES GENETICS vol:12 issue:7 ispartof: location:England status: published

We present the contribution of our team to ESA's P3-NEO-I project, where we have been responsible for the detection and analysis of lunar impact flashes. These events provide key information about the impact processes taking place when meteoroids hit the Moon, and also allow to quantify the impact hazard of asteroids and comets for Earth. We also focus on the development of a new system for lunar impact flashes observations which has been deployed at the Calar Alto Observatory (Spain). This system can observe these events simultaneously in three different wavelengths by means of high-frame-rate and high-resolution CMOS cameras. 1. Introduction The identification and analysis of flashes produced by the impact of meteoroids on the lunar surface is one of the techniques suitable for the study of the flux of interplanetary matter impacting the Earth. This method has the advantage that the area covered by one single detection instrument is much larger than the atmospheric volume monitored by meteor detectors on Earth. Our team at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) has been involved in the observation and analysis of these events since 1997 [1]. Since then, impact flashes have been unambiguously detected during the maximum activity period of several major meteor showers by using this technique, and flashes of sporadic origin have been also recorded [2]. For the detection of lunar impact flashes we have employed telescopes endowed with high-sensitivity CCD video cameras. Most of out telescopes are Schmidt-Cassegrain instruments with an aperture ranging between 28 to 50 cm, although some observational campaigns have been also performed with much larger instruments, such as, for instance, the 3.5 m telescope located at the Calar Alto Observatory [3]. During the last decade we have performed important improvements in the systems employed to detect these flashes. Most of these advances involved the use of faster cameras with higher resolution working at different wavelengths. In this work we focus on the systems employed by our team in the framework of ESA's P3NEOI project, and also on a new fast multiwavelength system deployed at the Calar Alto Observatory. 2. Contribution to the P3NEOI project Since 2019 our team is member of a consortium of eight astronomical observatories leaded by the company Deimos Space, This consortium presented a technical proposal to the ESA ITT AO/1-9591/18/D/MR "P3NEOI: observational support from collaborating observatories". We are responsible for the work package (WP) dedicated to the detection and analysis of lunar impact flashes. One of the aims of this WP is the quantification of the flux of interplanetary matter that impacts our planet. For this purpose we have employed several telescopes located at three observatories in Spain: La Sagra, La Hita, and Sevilla. New instrumentation has been tested within this WP, including CMOS cameras with a maximum frame rate of 168 fps at full resolution (1920x1200 pixels). A sample impact flash recorded with one of these devices is shown in Figure 1. The main advantages of these cameras in relation to previously-employed imaging devices have been analyzed. One of their main utilities is related to their ability to obtain light curves with enhanced resolution. The monitoring in different wavelengths has also provided the temperature of lunar impact flashes. Figure 1. Lunar impact flash recorded in the framework of the ESA P3NEOI project on 27 May 2020 at 20h48m49s UT, with a peak apparent magnitude of 5.5. 3. New instrumentation at CAHA Our team has deployed a new telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory (Spain) and one of its goals is to observe lunar impact flashes. This instrument has an aperture of 60 cm and employs a set of high-speed CMOS cameras (with a frame rate of 300 fps) that can observe, simultaneously, at three different wavelengths: namely, I, V and R. The telescope, which has been founded by the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation, is located within a dedicated 4-m automated dome and works in a coordinated way with the rest of instruments we are currently employing at different observatories in our country. Figure 2 shows an image of this new instrument, which can be controlled remotely. This new telescope has implied an important step for the analysis of the collision of meteoroids with the lunar ground. Figure 2. The new 60 cm telescope deployed at the Calar Alto Observatory. References [1] Ortiz, J.L. et al., J., 1999. A search for meteoritic flashes on the Moon. Astron. Astrophys. 343, L57–L60. [2] J.L. Ortiz, et al., 2000, Optical detection of meteoroidal impacts on the Moon. Nature 405, 921–923. [3] Madiedo J. M., Ortiz J. L., Yanagisawa M., Aceituno J. and Aceituno F. (2019b). "Impact flashes of meteoroids on the Moon". Meteoroids: Sources of Meteors on Earth and Beyond, Ryabova G. O., Asher D. J., and Campbell-Brown M. D. (eds.), Cambridge, UK. Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9781108426718, 2019, p. 136-158

Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) are thought to be among the least evolved Solar System objects, which retain information on the origin and evolution of the outer parts of it. They are located at far distances of the Sun, where the influence of our star is less dramatic than in the closer regions. Thus, these icy objects are extremely interesting bodies that hide plenty of information on the physical and dynamical processes thatshaped our Solar System.We only know a few retrograde TNOs so far (e.g. 2008 KV42 [1], 2011 KT19 [2], 2004 XR190). One of the few known retrograde objects listed in the MPC database as a scattered disk object is 2013 LU28, which has a high orbital eccentricity (e = 0.95), a large semimajor axis (a= 181 AU) and a very high inclination (i = 125.4º). This exotic object is also classified as an “extended centaur”, because its perihelion at 8.7 AU moves it into the centaur region.The physical properties of 2013 LU28, such as its rotational period and light curve amplitude, are unknown but can be revealed through photometry. With this aim, we observed this object during three observing runs on 2021 January and March using two telescopes, the 1.23 m telescope at Calar Alto Observatory in Almería, Spain and the 1.5 m telescope at Sierra Nevada Observatory in Granada, Spain. From these observations we derived the first determination of the rotational light curve of 2013LU28 from which we derived its rotational period and its peak-to-peak light curve amplitude. The obtained amplitude turned out to be higher than the average amplitude of most TNOs, which points toward an elongated or a binary object. Other magnitudes, such as its absolute magnitude (H) were also derived. We will present and discuss preliminary results on all the above. AcknowledgementsThe authors acknowledge financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). P.S-S. acknowledges financial support by the Spanish grant AYA- RTI2018-098657-J-I00 "LEO-SBNAF" (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE). We are grateful to the CAHA and OSN staffs. This research is partially based on observations collected at the Centro Astronómico Hispano Alemán (CAHA) at Calar Alto, operated jointly by Junta de Andalucı́a and Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientı́ficas (IAA-CSIC). This research was also partially based on observation carried out at the Observatorio de Sierra Nevada (OSN) operated by Instituto de Astrofı́sica de Andalucı́a (CSIC). Bibliography[1] B. Gladman, J. Kavelaars, J.-M. Petit, M. L. N. Ashby, J. Parker, J. et al. ApJ 697:L91–L94, 2009[2] Ying-Tung Chen , Hsing Wen Lin, Matthew J. Holman, Matthew J. Payne et al. ApJ 827:L24 (5pp), 2016

Optical sensors and sensing-based phenotyping techniques have become mainstream approaches in high-throughput phenotyping for improving trait selection and genetic gains in crops. We review recent progress and contemporary applications of optical sensing-based phenotyping (OSP) techniques in cereal crops and highlight optical sensing principles for spectral response and sensor specifications. Further, we group phenotypic traits determined by OSP into four categories – morphological, biochemical, physiological, and performance traits – and illustrate appropriate sensors for each extraction. In addition to the current status, we discuss the challenges of OSP and provide possible solutions. We propose that optical sensing-based traits need to be explored further, and that standardization of the language of phenotyping and worldwide collaboration between phenotyping researchers and other fields need to be established.

Visible and near-infrared (vis-NIRS) spectroscopy is a promising tool for increasing phenotyping throughput in plant breeding programs, but existing analysis software packages are not optimized for a breeding context. Additionally, commercial software options are often outside of budget constraints for some breeding and research programs. To that end, we developed an open-source R package, waves, for the streamlined analysis of spectral data with several cross-validation schemes to assess prediction accuracy. Waves is compatible with a wide range of spectrometer models and performs visualization, filtering, aggregation, cross-validation set formation, model training, and prediction functions for the association of vis-NIRS spectra with reference measurements. Furthermore, we have integrated this package into the Breedbase family of open-source databases, expanding the analysis capabilities of this growing digital ecosystem to a number of crop species. Taken together, the standalone and Breedbase versions of waves enhance the accessibility of tools for the analysis of spectral data during the plant breeding process. Core ideasO_LIwaves is an open-source R package for spectral data analysis in plant breeding C_LIO_LIBreeding relevant cross-validation schemes to evaluate predictive accuracy of models C_LIO_LIExtension of Breedbase--an open-source database--to support spectral data storage C_LIO_LIGraphical user interface developed for implementation of waves in Breedbase C_LI

We revisit the old question of how immigration affects the welfare of native workers. As opposed to most of the previous literature, we look at this question through the lens of firms, as they play a crucial role in immigration and are massively heterogeneous even within sectors. We use a novel establishment-level dataset from Germany to document a new dimension of firm heterogeneity: Large firms spend a higher share of their wage bill on immigrants than small firms. We show analytically and quantitatively that ignoring this heterogeneity in immigrant share leads to biased welfare gains from immigration. To do so, we set up and estimate a quantitative model where heterogeneous firms choose their immigrant share and validate the model using an instrumental variables strategy. We then use the model to quantify the welfare effects and the bias of a 20% increase in the number of immigrants in Germany as observed between 2011 and 2017. The welfare of natives increases both through higher wages and profits, and lower prices, with aggregate welfare gains of $4 billion for native workers and $15 billion for firm owners. Immigration leads native workers to reallocate within-sector across firms, a key mechanism that explains the source of the bias. If we estimate the model without firm-level data on immigrant employment, we would underestimate the welfare gains for native workers by 11%.

We present the execution model of Virtual Transport (VT) a new, Asynchronous Many-Task (AMT) runtime system that provides unprecedented integration and interoperability with MPI. We have developed VT in conjunction with large production applications to provide a highly incremental, high-value path to AMT adoption in the dominant ecosystem of MPI applications, libraries, and developers. Our aim is that the `MPI+X' model of hybrid parallelism can smoothly extend to become `MPI+VT +X'. We illustrate a set of design and implementation techniques that have been useful in building VT. We believe that these ideas and the code embodying them will be useful to others building similar systems, and perhaps provide insight to how MPI might evolve to better support them. We motivate our approach with two applications that are adopting VT and have begun to benefit from increased asynchrony and dynamic load balancing.

Modern breeding programs routinely use genome-wide information for selecting individuals to advance. The large volumes of genotypic information required present a challenge for data storage and query efficiency. Major use cases require genotyping data to be linked with trait phenotyping data. In contrast to phenotyping data that are often stored in relational database schemas, next-generation genotyping data are traditionally stored in non-relational storage systems due to their extremely large scope. This study presents a novel data model implemented in Breedbase (https://breedbase.org/) for uniting relational phenotyping data and non-relational genotyping data within the open-source PostgreSQL database engine. Breedbase is an open-source, web-database designed to manage all of a breeder’s informatics needs: management of field experiments, phenotypic and genotypic data collection and storage, and statistical analyses. The genotyping data is stored in a PostgreSQL data-type known as binary JavaScript Object Notation (JSONb), where the JSON structures closely follow the Variant Call Format (VCF) data model. The Breedbase genotyping data model can handle different ploidy levels, structural variants, and any genotype encoded in VCF. JSONb is both compressed and indexed, resulting in a space and time efficient system. Furthermore, file caching maximizes data retrieval performance. Integration of all breeding data within the Chado database schema retains referential integrity that may be lost when genotyping and phenotyping data are stored in separate systems. Benchmarking demonstrates that the system is fast enough for computation of a genomic relationship matrix (GRM) and genome wide association study (GWAS) for datasets involving 1,325 diploid Zea mays, 314 triploid Musa acuminata, and 924 diploid Manihot esculenta samples genotyped with 955,690, 142,119, and 287,952 genotype-by-sequencing (GBS) markers, respectively.

Visible and near-infrared (vis-NIRS) spectroscopy is a promising tool for increasing phenotyping throughput in plant breeding programs, but existing analysis software packages are not optimized for a breeding context. Additionally, commercial software options are often outside of budget constraints for some breeding and research programs. To that end, we developed an open-source R package, waves, for the streamlined analysis of spectral data with several cross-validation schemes to assess prediction accuracy. Waves is compatible with a wide range of spectrometer models and performs visualization, filtering, aggregation, cross-validation set formation, model training, and prediction functions for the association of vis-NIRS spectra with reference measurements. Furthermore, we have integrated this package into the Breedbase family of open-source databases, expanding the analysis capabilities of this growing digital ecosystem to a number of crop species. Taken together, the standalone and Breedbase versions of waves enhance the accessibility of tools for the analysis of spectral data during the plant breeding process.Core ideaswaves is an open-source R package for spectral data analysis in plant breedingBreeding relevant cross-validation schemes to evaluate predictive accuracy of modelsExtension of Breedbase—an open-source database—to support spectral data storageGraphical user interface developed for implementation of waves in Breedbase

Domestic wastewater (WW) is an important carrier of nutrients usually wasted away by current centralised sewage treatment plants. The Run4Life project proposes an alternative strategy for increasing circularity of WW treatment systems and improving nutrient recovery rates and material qualities. This is based on a decentralised treatment of segregated black water (BW), kitchen waste and grey water combining existing and innovative technologies.Run4Life is currently improving innovative nutrient recovery technologies, these being: (i) an ultra-low flush vacuum toilet, which uses around 0.5L/flush, thus less water than conventional vacuum toilets, allowing concentration of BW compared to conventional toilets and vacuum toilets. (ii) Bio-electrochemical systems for nitrogen recovery, which recovers up to 12.8 g/m2*d of Nitrogen present in blackwater as liquid fertilizer (ammonium nitrate) iii) (Hyper-)thermophilic anaerobic digestion, which aims to recover the phosphorous and nitrogen in the hygienised effluent in a one-step treatment and ready for use as fertilisers. Nutrient recycling technologies from domestic WW are demonstrated at large scale in four demonstration sites where decentralised WW treatment systems are implemented: Ghent (Belgium, 430 houses), Helsingborg (Sweden, 320 apartments), Sneek (The Netherlands, 32 houses), and Vigo (Spain, 1 office building). This will result in solid and liquid NPK fertilizers being recovered in the form of struvite, ammonium nitrate, calcium phosphate, organic fertilizers and reclaimed water.The environmental, economic and societal impact of the obtained fertilizers is being tested by means of ecotoxicology tests, pot experiments, field trials, and by a selection of key performance indicators based on European, national and regional legislation present in the four different countries. Life cycle assessments are being performed for each technology and demonstration site, and active measures such as knowledge brokerage activities are being developed as an engagement strategy to advocate the institutional, legal and social acceptance of the Run4Life nutrient recovery technologies and fertilizers produced. In addition, new business models which can benefit from the Run4Life project are currently being assessed.It is expected that, by the end of the project, more than 90% of the water will be reused, and that nutrient recovery rates will achieve 100%.

Cassava is an important staple crop in sub‐Saharan Africa, due to its high productivity even on nutrient poor soils. The metabolic characteristics underlying this high productivity are poorly understood including the mode of photosynthesis, reasons for the high rate of photosynthesis, the extent of source/sink limitation, the impact of environment, and the extent of variation between cultivars. Six commercial African cassava cultivars were grown in a greenhouse in Erlangen, Germany, and in the field in Ibadan, Nigeria. Source leaves, sink leaves, stems and storage roots were harvested during storage root bulking and analyzed for sugars, organic acids, amino acids, phosphorylated intermediates, minerals, starch, protein, activities of enzymes in central metabolism and yield traits. High ratios of RuBisCO:phosphoenol pyruvate carboxylase activity support a C3 mode of photosynthesis. The high rate of photosynthesis is likely to be attributed to high activities of enzymes in the Calvin–Benson cycle and pathways for sucrose and starch synthesis. Nevertheless, source limitation is indicated because root yield traits correlated with metabolic traits in leaves rather than in the stem or storage roots. This situation was especially so in greenhouse‐grown plants, where irradiance will have been low. In the field, plants produced more storage roots. This was associated with higher AGPase activity and lower sucrose in the roots, indicating that feedforward loops enhanced sink capacity in the high light and low nitrogen environment in the field. Overall, these results indicated that carbon assimilation rate, the K battery, root starch synthesis, trehalose, and chlorogenic acid accumulation are potential target traits for genetic improvement., The Plant Journal, 102 (6), ISSN:0960-7412, ISSN:1365-313X

Key message Heritable variation in phenotypes extracted from multi-spectral images (MSIs) and strong genetic correlations with end-of-season traits indicates the value of MSIs for crop improvement and modeling of plant growth curve. Abstract Vegetation indices (VIs) derived from multi-spectral imaging (MSI) platforms can be used to study properties of crop canopy, providing non-destructive phenotypes that could be used to better understand growth curves throughout the growing season. To investigate the amount of variation present in several VIs and their relationship with important end-of-season traits, genetic and residual (co)variances for VIs, grain yield and moisture were estimated using data collected from maize hybrid trials. The VIs considered were Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Green NDVI, Red Edge NDVI, Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index, Enhanced Vegetation Index and simple Ratio of Near Infrared to Red (Red) reflectance. Genetic correlations of VIs with grain yield and moisture were used to fit multi-trait models for prediction of end-of-season traits and evaluated using within site/year cross-validation. To explore alternatives to fitting multiple phenotypes from MSI, random regression models with linear splines were fit using data collected in 2016 and 2017. Heritability estimates ranging from (0.10 to 0.82) were observed, indicating that there exists considerable amount of genetic variation in these VIs. Furthermore, strong genetic and residual correlations of the VIs, NDVI and NDRE, with grain yield and moisture were found. Considerable increases in prediction accuracy were observed from the multi-trait model when using NDVI and NDRE as a secondary trait. Finally, random regression with a linear spline function shows potential to be used as an alternative to mixed models to fit VIs from multiple time points.

Environmental noises can have a large impact on workplace productivity and health. We address the problem of designing large CAD structures that automatically meet the noise guidelines and standards. We present a novel approach that determines the optimal placement of sound sources such as generators, machinery, fans and HVAC appliances that can conform to these design requirements in indoor scenes. Our approach uses a hybrid sound propagation algorithm that combines elements of both geometric and wave-based techniques for handling higher and lower frequencies, respectively. We use an efficient simulated annealing approach for acoustic optimization that uses impulse response caching and sound source clustering to improve the convergence time. Finally, we present our approach in the context of a traditional CAD pipeline, where noise conformance requirements can be integrated during the early stages of the digital design phase. We highlight the approach’s performance on many complex CAD models corresponding to an office and a warehouse.

Con una investigación de mercados, se busca minimizar los riesgos comerciales de un producto o servicio, pero no es una garantía de éxito en su comercialización. Por lo que se debe de organizar de dos etapas. La primera es la planeación donde se formula el problema, el marco teórico, diseño del estudio y programación de actividades. La segunda está integrada por la preparación de la muestra, recolección de datos y su procesamiento, análisis de resultados y la elaboración y presentación del informe. La investigación puede ser básica o aplicada, de corte cualitativa donde se profundiza en el conocimiento de una situación de marketing en conceptos y manifestaciones de la naturaleza. Cuantitativa orientada a la medición de parámetros de una población para llegar a un resultado concluyente. Mientras que el enfoque de la investigación del producto, puede ser de consumo final o consumo intermedio. El planteamiento de la investigación de mercados depende de las variables en estudio y los procedimientos de las técnicas a utilizar para la obtención de datos tanto en fuentes primarias como secundarias. Cabe hacer mención que cada dato a recolectar debe tener una utilidad de no influir significativamente en la toma de decisiones.

We present a parallel time-domain wave solver designed for large and high frequency acoustic domains. Our approach is based on a novel scalable method for dividing acoustic field computations specifically for large-scale distributed memory clusters using parallel Adaptive Rectangular Decomposition (ARD). In order to efficiently compute the acoustic field for large or high frequency domains, we need to take full advantage of the compute resources of large clusters. This is done with new algorithmic contributions, including a hypergraph partitioning scheme to reduce the communication cost between the cores on the cluster, a novel domain decomposition scheme that reduces the amount of numerical dispersion error introduced by the load balancing algorithm, and a revamped pipeline for parallel ARD computation that increases memory efficiency and reduces redundant computations. Our resulting parallel algorithm makes it possible to compute the sound pressure field for high frequencies in large environments that are thousands of cubic meters in volume. We highlight the performance of our system on large clusters with 16,000 cores on homogeneous indoor and outdoor benchmarks up to 10 kHz. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time-domain parallel acoustic wave solver that can handle such large domains and frequencies.