Improving effect of metal and oxide nanoparticles encapsulated in porous silica on fermentative biohydrogen production by Clostridium butyricum.

in Bioresource Technology (2013), 133C

This paper investigated the enhancement effect of nanometre-sized metallic (Pd, Ag and Cu) or metallic oxide (Fe(x)O(y)) nanoparticles on fermentative hydrogen production from glucose by a Clostridium ... [more ▼]

This paper investigated the enhancement effect of nanometre-sized metallic (Pd, Ag and Cu) or metallic oxide (Fe(x)O(y)) nanoparticles on fermentative hydrogen production from glucose by a Clostridium butyricum strain. These nanoparticles (NP) of about 2-3nm were encapsulated in porous silica (SiO(2)) and were added at very low concentration (10(-6)molL(-1)) in batch hydrogen production test. The cultures containing iron oxide NP produced 38% more hydrogen with a higher maximum H(2) production rate (HPR) of 58% than those without NP or with silica particles only. The iron oxide NP were used in a 2.5L sequencing-batch reactor and showed no significant effect on the yields (established at 2.2mol(hydrogen)mol(glucose)(-1)) but an improvement of the HPR (+113%, reaching a maximum HPR of 86mL(hydrogen)L(-1)h(-1)). These results suggest an improvement of the electron transfers trough some combinations between enzymatic activity and inorganic materials. [less ▲]

Improving functional performance and muscle power 4-to-6 months after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction

in Journal of Sports Science & Medicine [=JSSM] (2011), 10

IMPROVING GENOMIC PREDICTION BY EUROGENOMICS COLLABORATION

in Proceedings of the 9th World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production (2010)

Improving Groundwater Flow Model Conceptualisation and Calibration with ERT and Self-potential Methods

in EarthDoc - Near Surface 2011 – 17th European Meeting of Environmental and Engineering Geophysics (2011, September 14)

The self-potential (SP) method relies on passive measurements of the ambient electrical potential at the ground surface or in boreholes. When the electrokinetic effect is the dominant contribution, the ... [more ▼]

The self-potential (SP) method relies on passive measurements of the ambient electrical potential at the ground surface or in boreholes. When the electrokinetic effect is the dominant contribution, the resulting signal is called the streaming potential and contains information about groundwater fluxes that can be useful for calibration of groundwater flow models. The streaming potential forward equation was implemented in the HydroGeoSphere model, which simulates 3D groundwater flow and solute transport in porous media, including fractured geological formations. HydroGeoSphere is able to calculate the streaming potential given a distribution of Darcy velocity and electrical resistivity. Since groundwater flow modelling relies on a conceptual model, prior information on the distribution of the geological units and hydraulic conductivity at the site is mandatory. However, this information is often scarce or missing. In this work, we use the electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) and the SP methods as an additional source of information for building the groundwater flow model. ERT is used to identify the location of fractured zones in a fractured and karstified calcareous aquifer of South Belgium. The SP signal is used with PEST in order to calibrate the groundwater flow model and better constrain the hydraulic conductivity of the fractured zones. [less ▲]

Improving Interferometric Null Depth Measurement with statistics : theory and first results with the Palomar Fiber Nuller

Scientific conference (2010, June)

A new "self-calibrated" statistical analysis method has been developed for reducing nulling interferometry data. The idea is to use the statistical distributions of the fluctuating null depths and beam ... [more ▼]

A new "self-calibrated" statistical analysis method has been developed for reducing nulling interferometry data. The idea is to use the statistical distributions of the fluctuating null depths and beam intensities to retrieve the astrophysical null depth (or equivalently the object's visibility) in the presence of fast instrumental fluctuations. The approach yields an accuracy much better (at least ten times) than is presently possible with standard data reduction methods, because the null depth accuracy is no longer limited by the magnitude of the phase and intensity errors but by uncertainties on their probability distributions. This approach was tested on the sky with the two-aperture fiber nulling instrument mounted on the Palomar Hale telescope. Using our new data analysis approach alone - and no observations of calibrators - , we find that astrophysical null depths lower than 0.001 can be reliably measured in the near infrared, with error bars as low as a few 10^-4. This statistical analysis is not specific to our instrument and may be applicable to other interferometers. Therefore I'll also present the application of this method to the measurement of Cepheids angular diameters at the VLTI with a sensitivities down to ~60µas. [less ▲]

Improving mini-livestock production in Kinshasa : example of a research project financed by the CUD.

Conference (2006, November 16)

Improving Null Depth Measurement with statistics : theory and first results with the Palomar Fiber Nuller

Scientific conference (2010, February)

A unique statistical data analysis method has been developed for reducing nulling interferometry data. The idea is to make use of the statistical distributions of the fluctuating null depths and beam ... [more ▼]

A unique statistical data analysis method has been developed for reducing nulling interferometry data. The idea is to make use of the statistical distributions of the fluctuating null depths and beam intensities to retrieve the astrophysical null depth in the presence of fluctuations. The approach yields an accuracy much better than is possible with standard data reduction methods, because the accuracy of the null depth is not limited by the sizes of the phase and intensity errors but by the uncertainties on these errors. The result is an improvement in the instrumental null depth measurement limit of roughly an order of magnitude. We show in this paper that broadband null depths of 10-4 can be measured in the lab with our infrared Fiber Nuller without achromatic phase shifters. On sky results are also dramatically improved, with measured contrasts up to 5 x 10-4 with our instrument mounted on the Hale telescope at the Palomar Observatory. This statistical analysis is not specific to our instrument and may be applicable to other interferometers. [less ▲]

Improving Overlay Routing scalability using an Internet Coordinate System

Doctoral thesis (2012)

Nowadays lots of real time applications are used over the Internet: voice over IP, online video games, etc. For these applications the performance of the path between two communicating nodes is critical ... [more ▼]

Nowadays lots of real time applications are used over the Internet: voice over IP, online video games, etc. For these applications the performance of the path between two communicating nodes is critical. Particularly, most of these applications require small delays between communicating nodes. For these applications, the problem is that the choice of the routes in the Internet is generally not very much guided by performance concerns. It is well known that for lots of node pairs the default Internet path is suboptimal and there exists an alternative path providing a smaller delay between these nodes. In this thesis, we mainly address the problem of finding these alternative paths. Replacing Internet's routing philosophy in order to obtain default paths providing the best performance possible should be a good theoretical solution. However, replacing Internet's routing philosophy by a brand new one is very difficult or even impossible in practice. Another solution is to leave the default routes as they are and to perform indirect routing. Consider a path AB between two nodes A and B. If a path ACB has a smaller delay than AB, then, instead of sending data directly to B, A can send them to C and C can relay them to B. This is called overlay routing because we manage the routing in an overlay network built on top of the Internet (i.e. at the application level). Overlay routing is a promising way to improve the quality of service in the Internet but its main drawback is its poor scalability: measuring the characteristics of the paths, exchanging the measurement results between the nodes and computing the best routes in the full mesh overlay network generally implies a high consumption of resources. In this thesis, our main contribution is the design of a lightweight one-hop overlay routing mechanism improving the latencies: we define criteria that rely on the information provided by an Internet Coordinate System (ICS) in order to provide a small set of potential one-hop shortcuts for any given path in the network with small costs. Our best criterion does not guarantee to find the best shortcut for any given path in a network but, even in networks with hundreds or thousands of nodes, it will restrict the search for potential shortcuts to about one or two percent of the total number of nodes. Even if the estimation-based approach of overlay routing is our main contribution, this thesis also presents general results about routing shortcuts and Internet Coordinate Systems. For an ICS, a routing shortcut is a Triangle Inequality Violation (TIV) and it is often a big problem. Indeed, a TIV will cause estimation errors since, in this particular case, nodes cannot be embedded into any metric space. In this thesis, we study TIVs existing in the Internet and their impact on the Vivaldi ICS. This analysis leads to two contributions. Firstly, we propose criteria to establish, with a high probability of success, if there exists a shortcut or not for a given path AB. Secondly, we propose a Two-Tier architecture for ICSes that mitigates the effect of TIVs on the estimations. Finally, this thesis also discusses the efficiency of two solutions proposed in the literature in order to obtain an ICS that can deal with TIVs. The first one consists in applying non-linear transformations to delays before trying to embed them in a metric space. The second one consists in modelling the estimation problem as a matrix completion problem in order to completely avoid the embedding in a metric space. [less ▲]

Improving Public Outcomes in Developing Countries. Application of Incentive Theory to Foreign Aid and Public Resource Management

Doctoral thesis (2006)

This Ph.D. thesis applies incentive theory – and especially, when relevant, the principal-agent theory – to several aspects of public resource management in developing countries. It uses analytical models ... [more ▼]

This Ph.D. thesis applies incentive theory – and especially, when relevant, the principal-agent theory – to several aspects of public resource management in developing countries. It uses analytical models taking account of realistic constraints of these economies. The first part of the dissertation studies the incentive problems associated with foreign aid management. The second part deals with some “domestic” problems linked with public resource management in those countries. Chapter 2 proposes an analytical framework to guide the design of public expenditure management systems (more precisely, the type of controls a Ministry of Finance could apply to line ministries) according to country-specific parameters. Chapter 3 suggests that, when traditional incentives (sanctions and rewards) fail – which may be the case, at least in the short run, in many developing countries) – increasing public affairs transparency can help improve public outcomes, notably through relying on "informal" accountability systems. Chapter 4 reviews the literature and then draws some important results as to the motivation of public agents. In addition to specific results on the issues targeted in each chapter, this dissertation offers a coherent analytical picture of public resource management in developing countries, and a number of general lessons may be drawn. Improving public outcomes must indeed pass through providing public agents with adequate incentives, so as to align their interests with their principal’s. Different tools may be used, depending on their cost-effectiveness: e.g., controls, incentive premiums, factors acting on non-materialistic motivations or on informal accountability mechanisms. The thesis also proposes some lessons as to the sequencing of reforms dealing with public resource management. [less ▲]

Improving Retouched Bloom Filter for Trading Off Selected False Positives Against False Negatives

in Computer Networks (2010), 54(18), 3373-3387

Where distributed agents must share voluminous set membership information, Bloom fil- ters provide a compact, though lossy, way for them to do so. Numerous recent networking papers have examined the trade ... [more ▼]

Where distributed agents must share voluminous set membership information, Bloom fil- ters provide a compact, though lossy, way for them to do so. Numerous recent networking papers have examined the trade-offs between the bandwidth consumed by the transmis- sion of Bloom filters, and the error rate, which takes the form of false positives. This paper is about the retouched Bloom filter (RBF). An RBF is an extension that makes the Bloom fil- ter more flexible by permitting the removal of false positives, at the expense of introducing false negatives, and that allows a controlled trade-off between the two. We analytically show that creating RBFs through a random process decreases the false positive rate in the same proportion as the false negative rate that is generated. We further provide some simple heuristics that decrease the false positive rate more than the corresponding increase in the false negative rate, when creating RBFs. These heuristics are more effective than the ones we have presented in prior work. We further demonstrate the advantages of an RBF over a Bloom filter in a distributed network topology measurement application. We finally discuss several networking applications that could benefit from RBFs instead of standard Bloom filters. [less ▲]