EARLY FLOWERING4 Recruitment of EARLY FLOWERING3 in the Nucleus Sustains the Arabidopsis Circadian Clock

in Plant Cell (2012), 24(2), 428-443

The plant circadian clock is proposed to be a network of several interconnected feedback loops, and loss of any component leads to changes in oscillator speed. We previously reported that Arabidopsis ... [more ▼]

The plant circadian clock is proposed to be a network of several interconnected feedback loops, and loss of any component leads to changes in oscillator speed. We previously reported that Arabidopsis thaliana EARLY FLOWERING4 (ELF4) is required to sustain this oscillator and that the elf4 mutant is arrhythmic. This phenotype is shared with both elf3 and lux. Here, we show that overexpression of either ELF3 or LUX ARRHYTHMO (LUX) complements the elf4 mutant phenotype. Furthermore, ELF4 causes ELF3 to form foci in the nucleus. We used expression data to direct a mathematical position of ELF3 in the clock network. This revealed direct effects on the morning clock gene PRR9, and we determined association of ELF3 to a conserved region of the PRR9 promoter. A cis-element in this region was suggestive of ELF3 recruitment by the transcription factor LUX, consistent with both ELF3 and LUX acting genetically downstream of ELF4. Taken together, using integrated approaches, we identified ELF4/ELF3 together with LUX to be pivotal for sustenance of plant circadian rhythms. [less ▲]

eCoBus: Smart and sustainable public transport in Luxembourg

Scientific Conference (2020, November)

Economies of scale in recoverable robust maintenance location routing for rolling stock

in Transportation Research. Part B, Methodological (2018), 117

We consider the problem of locating maintenance facilities in a railway setting. Different facility sizes can be chosen for each candidate location and for each size there is an associated annual facility ... [more ▼]

We consider the problem of locating maintenance facilities in a railway setting. Different facility sizes can be chosen for each candidate location and for each size there is an associated annual facility costs that can capture economies of scale in facility size. Because of the strategic nature of facility location, the opened facilities should be able to handle the current maintenance demand, but also the demand for any of the scenarios that can occur in the future. These scenarios capture changes such as changes to the line plan and the introduction of new rolling stock types. We allow recovery in the form of opening additional facilities, closing facilities, and increasing the facility size for each scenario. We provide a two-stage robust programming formulation. In the first-stage, we decide where to open what size of facility. In the second-stage, we solve a NP-hard maintenance location routing problem. We reformulate the problem as a mixed integer program that can be used to make an efficient column-and-constraint generation algorithm. To show that our algorithm works on practical sized instances, and to gain managerial insights, we perform a case study with instances from the Netherlands Railways. A counter intuitive insight is that economies of scale only play a limited role and that it is more important to reduce the transportation cost by building many small facilities, rather than a few large ones to profit from economies of scale. [less ▲]

Effect of Red Blood Cell Aging In Vivo on Their Aggregation Properties In Vitro: Measurements with Laser Tweezers

in Applied Sciences (2020), 10(21), 7581-10

Red blood cell (RBC) aggregation highly influences hemorheology and blood microcirculation in the human body. The aggregation properties of RBCs can vary due to numerous factors, including RBC age. The ... [more ▼]

Red blood cell (RBC) aggregation highly influences hemorheology and blood microcirculation in the human body. The aggregation properties of RBCs can vary due to numerous factors, including RBC age. The aim of this work was to estimate in vitro the differences in the RBC aggregation properties of different RBC age populations in single-cell experiments using laser tweezers. RBCs from five healthy volunteers were separated into four subpopulations by Percoll density gradient centrifugation. Each subpopulation of the RBC was separately resuspended in autologous plasma or dextran 70 kDa (50 mg/mL). The aggregation force between the single cells was measured with holographic laser tweezers. The obtained data demonstrated an enhancement of RBC aggregation force in doublets with age: the older the cells, the higher the aggregation force. The obtained data revealed the differences between the aggregation and aggregability of RBC in dependence of the RBC in vivo age. [less ▲]

The effect of workplace relocation on individuals’ activity travel behavior

in Journal of Transport and Land Use (2018), 11(1),

On working days, homes and workplaces can be seen as anchor locations at the heart of daily mobility patterns, as well as being central to an employee’s activity pattern. In this study, we investigate how ... [more ▼]

On working days, homes and workplaces can be seen as anchor locations at the heart of daily mobility patterns, as well as being central to an employee’s activity pattern. In this study, we investigate how workplace relocation affects the entire daily activity-travel chain. While past research has shown that workplace decentralization is often associated with higher car use for the commuting trip, little is known about the effect on the whole activity travel pattern. Two waves of a two-week travel diary were completed by 43 employees of the University of Luxembourg: one before and one after the relocation of their office. Using descriptive statistics as well as standard deviational ellipses (SDE) theory combined with the results of a clustering analysis showed that workers’ activity spaces (represented by the standard deviational ellipses) were significantly modified due to the relocation of a single anchor activity location, i.e., their workplace. [less ▲]

Effectiveness of the Two-Step Dynamic Demand Estimation model on large networks

in Proceedings of 2017 5th IEEE International Conference on Models and Technologies for Intelligent Transportation Systems (MT-ITS) (2017, June 28)

In this paper, the authors present a Two-Step approach that sequentially adjusts generation and distribution values of the (dynamic) OD matrix. While the proposed methodology already provided excellent ... [more ▼]

In this paper, the authors present a Two-Step approach that sequentially adjusts generation and distribution values of the (dynamic) OD matrix. While the proposed methodology already provided excellent results for updating demand flows on a motorway, the aim of this paper is to validate this conclusion on a real network: Luxembourg City. This network represents the typical middle-sized European city in terms of network dimension. Moreover, Luxembourg City has the typical structure of a metropolitan area, composed of a city centre, ring, and suburb areas. An innovative element of this paper is to use mobile network data to create a time-dependent profile of the generated demand inside and outside the ring. To support the claim that the model is ready for practical implementation, it is interfaced with PTV Visum, one of the most widely adopted software tools for traffic analysis. Results of these experiments provide a solid empirical ground in order to further develop this model and to understand if its assumptions hold for urban scenarios. [less ▲]

The Effects of Natural Sounds and Proxemic Distances on the Perception of a Noisy Domestic Flying Robot

in ACM Transactions on Human - Robot Interaction (in press)

When flying robots are used in close-range interaction with humans, the noise they generate, also called consequential sound, is a critical parameter for user acceptance. We conjecture that there is a ... [more ▼]

When flying robots are used in close-range interaction with humans, the noise they generate, also called consequential sound, is a critical parameter for user acceptance. We conjecture that there is a benefit in adding natural sounds to noisy domestic drones. To test our hypothesis experimentally, we carried out a mixed-methods research study (N=56) on reported user perception of a sonified domestic flying robot with three sound conditions at three distances. The natural sounds studied were respectively added to the robot’s inherent noises during flying; namely a birdsong and a rain sound, plus a control condition of no added sound. The distances studied were set according to proxemics; namely near, middle, and far. Our results show that adding birdsong or rain sound affects the participants’ perceptions, and the proxemic distances play a nonnegligible role. For instance, we found that participants liked the bird condition the most when the drone was at far, while they disliked the same sound the most when at near. We also found that participants’ perceptions strongly depended on their associations and interpretations deriving from previous experience. We derived six concrete design recommendations. [less ▲]

Efficacité énergétique et fonctionnalité de bâtiments existants équipés de façades double peau

Doctoral thesis (2013)

An efficient goal-oriented sampling strategy using reduced basis method for parametrized elastodynamic problems

in Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations (2014)

In this paper, we study the class of linear elastodynamic problems with a ne parameter dependence using a goal-oriented approach by finite element (FE) and reduced basis (RB) methods. The main ... [more ▼]

In this paper, we study the class of linear elastodynamic problems with a ne parameter dependence using a goal-oriented approach by finite element (FE) and reduced basis (RB) methods. The main contribution of this paper is the "goal-oriented" proper orthogonal decomposition (POD)-Greedy sampling strategy within the RB approximation context. The proposed sampling strategy looks for the parameter points such that the output error approximation will be minimized by Greedy iterations. In estimating such output error approximation, the standard POD-Greedy algorithm is invoked to provide enriched RB approximations for the FE outputs. We propose a so-called "cross-validation" process to choose adaptively the dimension of the enriched RB space corresponding with the dimension of the RB space under consideration. Numerical results show that the new goal-oriented POD-Greedy sampling procedure with the cross-validation process improves signi ficantly the space-time output computations in comparison with the ones computed by the standard POD-Greedy algorithm. The method is thus ideally suited for repeated, rapid and reliable evaluations of input-output relationships in the space-time setting. [less ▲]

Efficient modeling of random heterogeneous materials with an uniform probability density function (slides)

Scientific Conference (2014)

Homogenised constitutive laws are largely used to predict the behaviour of composite structures. Assessing the validity of such homogenised models can be done by making use of the concept of “modelling ... [more ▼]

Homogenised constitutive laws are largely used to predict the behaviour of composite structures. Assessing the validity of such homogenised models can be done by making use of the concept of “modelling error”. First, a microscopic “faithful” -and potentially intractable- model of the structure is defined. Then, one tries to quantify the effect of the homogenisation procedure on a result that would be obtained by directly using the “faithful” model. Such an approach requires (a) the “faithful” model to be more representative of the physical phenomena of interest than the homogenised model and (b) a reliable approximation of the result obtained using the ”faithful” and intractable model to be available at cheap costs. We focus here on point (b), and more precisely on the extension of the techniques devel- oped in [3] [2] to estimate the error due to the homogenisation of linear, spatially random composite materials. Particularly, we will approximate the unknown probability density function by bounding its first moment. In this paper, we will present this idea in more detail, displaying the numerical efficiencies and computational costs related to the error estimation. The fact that the probability density function is uniform is exploited to greatly reduce the computational cost. We will also show some first attempts to correct the homogenised model using non-conforming, weakly intrusive microscopic patches. [less ▲]