scholarly journals Past times: Traffic in the rear-view mirror

2003 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 31-33
Author(s):  
John Lucocq

When I was a lad, the adage that “cells are not simply bags full of enzymes” was already popular in biology, and how true it turned out to be. We now know that eukaryotes comprise cellular compartments whose integrity and composition is maintained by specific mechanisms, including the membrane traffic between membrane-bound organelles. So what attracts cell biologists to the challenge of membrane traffic? One reason may be the complexity in composition and spatio-temporal dynamics -- a complexity that manifests itself in the sheer beauty of the physical forms of the trafficking organelles. Another motivation may be the simple question of how complex mixtures of substances can be moved around selectively in membrane-bound vesicles while maintaining the compositional integrity of organelles. Whatever the attraction, it is clear that the full molecular inventory of traffic machinery will be known soon, and we stand now on the threshold of a deeper understanding. It is therefore a good time to look at what has been achieved so far. Interestingly, the focus of membrane trafficking research has come full circle. Initially, discrete organelles with specialized functions were described and then came a mass of molecular information. Now, we are back to the organelles, trying to work out how they are built and how they function in a dynamic way. As in any story of science, the road to discovery has been crucially dependent on clever insights, married with technical developments at both molecular and atomic resolution.

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Roche ◽  
Béatrice Gaillard ◽  
Lucas Léger ◽  
Renélise Moutenda ◽  
Thomas Sochacki ◽  
...  

AbstractUnderstanding the spatio-temporal dynamics of endemic infections is of critical importance for a deeper understanding of pathogen transmission, and for the design of more efficient public health strategies. However, very few studies in this domain have focused on emerging infections, generating a gap of knowledge that hampers epidemiological response planning. Here, we analyze the case of a Chikungunya outbreak that occurred in Martinique in 2014. Using time series estimates from a network of sentinel practitioners covering the entire island, we first analyze the spatio-temporal dynamics and show that the largest city has served as the epicenter of this epidemic. We further show that the epidemic spread from there through two different propagation waves moving northwards and southwards, probably by individuals moving along the road network. We then develop a mathematical model to explore the drivers of the temporal dynamics of this mosquito-borne virus. Finally, we show that human behavior, inferred by a textual analysis of messages published on the social network Twitter, is required to explain the epidemiological dynamics over time. Overall, our results suggest that human behavior has been a key component of the outbreak propagation, and we argue that such results can lead to more efficient public health strategies specifically targeting the propagation process.


2020 ◽  
Vol 637 ◽  
pp. 117-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
DW McGowan ◽  
ED Goldstein ◽  
ML Arimitsu ◽  
AL Deary ◽  
O Ormseth ◽  
...  

Pacific capelin Mallotus catervarius are planktivorous small pelagic fish that serve an intermediate trophic role in marine food webs. Due to the lack of a directed fishery or monitoring of capelin in the Northeast Pacific, limited information is available on their distribution and abundance, and how spatio-temporal fluctuations in capelin density affect their availability as prey. To provide information on life history, spatial patterns, and population dynamics of capelin in the Gulf of Alaska (GOA), we modeled distributions of spawning habitat and larval dispersal, and synthesized spatially indexed data from multiple independent sources from 1996 to 2016. Potential capelin spawning areas were broadly distributed across the GOA. Models of larval drift show the GOA’s advective circulation patterns disperse capelin larvae over the continental shelf and upper slope, indicating potential connections between spawning areas and observed offshore distributions that are influenced by the location and timing of spawning. Spatial overlap in composite distributions of larval and age-1+ fish was used to identify core areas where capelin consistently occur and concentrate. Capelin primarily occupy shelf waters near the Kodiak Archipelago, and are patchily distributed across the GOA shelf and inshore waters. Interannual variations in abundance along with spatio-temporal differences in density indicate that the availability of capelin to predators and monitoring surveys is highly variable in the GOA. We demonstrate that the limitations of individual data series can be compensated for by integrating multiple data sources to monitor fluctuations in distributions and abundance trends of an ecologically important species across a large marine ecosystem.


Ecohydrology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiongfang Li ◽  
Yuting Zhu ◽  
Qihui Chen ◽  
Yu Li ◽  
Jing Chen ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 4926
Author(s):  
Nguyen Duc Luong ◽  
Nguyen Hoang Hiep ◽  
Thi Hieu Bui

The increasing serious droughts recently might have significant impacts on socioeconomic development in the Red River basin (RRB). This study applied the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) model to investigate spatio-temporal dynamics of soil moisture in the northeast, northwest, and Red River Delta (RRD) regions of the RRB part belongs to territory of Vietnam. The soil moisture dataset simulated for 10 years (2005–2014) was utilized to establish the soil moisture anomaly percentage index (SMAPI) for assessing intensity of agricultural drought. Soil moisture appeared to co-vary with precipitation, air temperature, evapotranspiration, and various features of land cover, topography, and soil type in three regions of the RRB. SMAPI analysis revealed that more areas in the northeast experienced severe droughts compared to those in other regions, especially in the dry season and transitional months. Meanwhile, the northwest mainly suffered from mild drought and a slightly wet condition during the dry season. Different from that, the RRD mainly had moderately to very wet conditions throughout the year. The areas of both agricultural and forested lands associated with severe drought in the dry season were larger than those in the wet season. Generally, VIC-based soil moisture approach offered a feasible solution for improving soil moisture and agricultural drought monitoring capabilities at the regional scale.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 690
Author(s):  
Tao Wu ◽  
Huiqing Shen ◽  
Jianxin Qin ◽  
Longgang Xiang

Identifying stops from GPS trajectories is one of the main concerns in the study of moving objects and has a major effect on a wide variety of location-based services and applications. Although the spatial and non-spatial characteristics of trajectories have been widely investigated for the identification of stops, few studies have concentrated on the impacts of the contextual features, which are also connected to the road network and nearby Points of Interest (POIs). In order to obtain more precise stop information from moving objects, this paper proposes and implements a novel approach that represents a spatio-temproal dynamics relationship between stopping behaviors and geospatial elements to detect stops. The relationship between the candidate stops based on the standard time–distance threshold approach and the surrounding environmental elements are integrated in a complex way (the mobility context cube) to extract stop features and precisely derive stops using the classifier classification. The methodology presented is designed to reduce the error rate of detection of stops in the work of trajectory data mining. It turns out that 26 features can contribute to recognizing stop behaviors from trajectory data. Additionally, experiments on a real-world trajectory dataset further demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in improving the accuracy of identifying stops from trajectories.


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