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The main petroleum product transported through pipelines in Canada is diluted bitumen (dilbit), a semi-liquid form of heavy crude oil mixed with natural gas condensates to facilitate transport. The weathering, fate, behaviour, and environmental effects of dilbit are crucial to consider when responding to a spill, however few environmental studies on dilbit have been completed. Here we report on 11-day long experimental spills of dilbit (Cold Lake Winter Blend) in outdoor micro-cosms meant to simulate a low-energy aquatic system containing natural lake water and sedi-ments treated with a low (1:8,000 oil:water) and high (1:800 oil:water) volume of dilbit. In the first 24 hours of the experiment, volatile hydrocarbons quickly evaporated from the dilbit, result-ing in increased dilbit density and viscosity. These changes in dilbit’s physical and chemical properties ultimately led to its submergence after 8 days. We also detected rapid accumulation of polycyclic aromatic compounds in the water column of the treated-microcosms following the spills. Our study provides new information on the environmental fate and behaviour of dilbit in a freshwater environment that will be critical to environmental risk assessments of proposed pipe-line projects. In particular, our study demonstrates the propensity for dilbit to sink under ambient environmental conditions in fresh waters typical of many boreal lakes.

We studied 2011 cycling mode share at the census-tract level in Montréal and Vancouver, Canadian cities with relatively high mode shares and diverse bike infrastructure. We examined whether mode share variability, for all commuters and male and female commuters separately, was related to proximity to any bikeway, proximity to four bikeway types, slopes on routes to bikeways, or commute times. Cycling mode shares at the census-tract level varied from 0 to 20.4%. About a third of cycle commuters were female, but this proportion approached parity with males in census tracts with mode shares of 7% and higher. A one-kilometer closer proximity to any bikeway was associated with four times higher cycling mode share. Proximity to cycle tracks was associated with higher cycling mode shares in both cities. Other bikeway types did not have similar associations in the two cities, and the pattern of results suggested that the networks formed may have been more important than specific bikeway characteristics. Uphill slopes to bikeways were associated with somewhat lower mode shares in bivariate analyses but not in adjusted models. Cycle commuting was most common in neighborhoods with intermediate average commute durations: 20 to 29 minutes. Our results suggest that cycle tracks and bikeways that form a connected network are associated with higher neighborhood cycling commute mode shares. These features appeared even more important to women, and their cycling (or not) was strongly related to overall cycling mode shares.

Data S1. Results of HMM-motif search for KN-A, KN-B, and PBL-Red domains. Data S2. Alignment of the KN-A, KN-B, and PBL-Red domains. (PDF 66 kb)

Datacenters provide the infrastructure for cloud computing services used by millions of users everyday. Many such services are distributed over multiple datacenters at geographically distant locations possibly in different continents. These datacenters are then connected through high speed WAN links over private or public networks. To perform data backups or data synchronization operations, many transfers take place over these networks that have to be completed before a deadline in order to provide necessary service guarantees to end users. Upon arrival of a transfer request, we would like the system to be able to decide whether such a request can be guaranteed successful delivery. If yes, it should provide us with transmission schedule in the shortest time possible. In addition, we would like to avoid packet reordering at the destination as it affects TCP performance. Previous work in this area either cannot guarantee that admitted transfers actually finish before the specified deadlines or use techniques that can result in packet reordering. In this paper, we propose DCRoute, a fast and efficient routing and traffic allocation technique that guarantees transfer completion before deadlines for admitted requests. It assigns each transfer a single path to avoid packet reordering. Through simulations, we show that DCRoute is at least 200 times faster than other traffic allocation techniques based on linear programming (LP) while admitting almost the same amount of traffic to the system. 23rd IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing (HiPC)

Additional file 1: Fig. S1. A-C – Syssomonas multiformis sucks out the cytoplasm of the prey; D – three cells of Syssomonas (s) suck out the cytoplasm of the same prey cell together, other Syssomonas cells (arrows) become attracted and swim to the same prey cell; E – unusual flagellated cell of Syssomonas containing vesicular structures; F – cells of Syssomonas with engulfed starch granules swim to the starch crystals druse and hide within the starch crystals. Fig. S2. Rice grain destruction in Petri dish with Pratt medium and presence of the cells of Parabodo caudatus (p rey) only (A) and Syssomonas multiformis (B) after 9 days of incubation.

Table S1. Genomic resources used in this study. Table S2. Archaeplastidal homeobox collection of TALE protein analyzed in this study. Table S3. KNOX domain homology among KNOX classes. Table S4. Primers used in this study. Table S5. Yeast-two-hybrid constructs used in this study. Table S6. Homeobox profile in Trebouxiophyceae. (XLSX 370 kb)

Note S1. Lack of TALE TFs in Trebouxiophyceae. Note S2. Horizontal transfer may explain the presence of Rhodophyta TALE heterodimers in Picocystis and Klebsormidium of Viridiplantae. (PDF 55 kb)

Method S1. Collecting TALE homeobox protein sequences. Method S2. Phylogenetic reconstruction. Method S3. Homology motif/domain search. Method S4. Intron comparison. Method S5. Cloning of Yeast-two-hybrid constructs. (PDF 57 kb)

1) Videos of morphology, life cycle, and feeding of novel predatory unicellular relatives of animals for "Insights into the origin of metazoan multicellularity from predatory unicellular relatives of animals"Video 1. Swimming of Syssomonas multiformis cell with rotation. Video 2. Attached cell of Syssomonas multiformis and rapid flagellum beating. Video 3. Amoeboflagellate stage of Syssomonas multiformis. Cells of eukaryotic prey Parabodo caudatus are also visible. Video 4. Loss of flagellum in Syssomonas multiformis and transition to amoeba. Video 5. Transformation of amoeba into a cyst in Syssomonas multiformis. Video 6. Palintomic divisions inside the cyst of Syssomonas multiformis. Video 7. Division into two cell structures in Syssomonas multiformis. Video 8. Cell and cyst of Syssomonas multiformis with vesicular structures inside. Video 9. Feeding of Syssomonas multiformis on eukaryotic prey. Video 10. Feeding of Syssomonas multiformis on bacteria. Video 11. Temporary cell aggregations of Syssomonas multiformis. Video 12. Floating rosette-like aggregation of Syssomonas multiformis. Video 13. Syncytium-like structures and budding of young flagellated daughter cells in Syssomonas multiformis. Video 14. Joint feeding of Pigoraptor vietnamica on dead cell of Parabodo caudatus. Video 15. Joint feeding of Pigoraptor chileana on dead cell of Parabodo caudatus. Video 16. Temporary cell aggregation of Pigoraptor chileana.2) Tree files (as newick and pdf files) and corresponding alignments for "Insights into the origin of metazoan multicellularity from predatory unicellular relatives of animals""alpha_amylase_1_LG_I_G4_1000UFboot_newick.tre": raw tree file in newick format of alpha amylase 1, corresponding to Table 1. Tree reconstruction performed with IQ-TREE (selected model based on ModelFinder: LG+I+G4, branch support was assessed with 1000 ultrafast bootstrap replicates)."alpha_amylase_1_LG_I_G4_1000UFboot.tre.pdf": unrooted tree of alpha amylase 1 as pdf file, corresponding to Table 1. Colored by lineage."alpha_amylase_1_trimal0.8.fasta": trimmed alignment used for tree reconstruction of alpha amylase 1"alpha_amylases_2_3_4_5_LG_R10_1000UFboot_newick.tre": raw tree file in newick format of alpha amylases 2-5, corresponding to Table 1. Tree reconstruction performed with IQ-TREE (selected model based on ModelFinder: LG+R10, branch support was assessed with 1000 ultrafast bootstrap replicates)."alpha_amylases_2_3_4_5_LG_R10_1000UFboot.tre.pdf": unrooted tree of alpha amylases 2-5 as pdf file, corresponding to Table 1. Colored by lineage."alpha_amylases_2_3_4_5_trimal0.8.fasta": trimmed alignment used for tree reconstruction of alpha amylases 2-5"alpha_glucosidases_1_2_3_4_LG_R10_1000UFboot_newick.tre": raw tree file in newick format of alpha glucosidases 1-4, corresponding to Table 1. Tree reconstruction performed with IQ-TREE (selected model based on ModelFinder: LG+R10, branch support was assessed with 1000 ultrafast bootstrap replicates)."alpha_glucosidases_1_2_3_4_LG_R10_1000UFboot.tre.pdf": unrooted tree of alpha glucosidases 1-4 as pdf file, corresponding to Table 1. Colored by lineage."alpha_glucosidases_1_2_3_4_trimal0.8.fasta": trimmed alignment used for tree reconstruction of alpha glucosidases 1-4"glycogen_debranching_enzyme_AGL_LG_R7_1000UFboot_newick.tre": raw tree file in newick format of glycogen debranching enzyme AGL, corresponding to Table 1. Tree reconstruction performed with IQ-TREE (selected model based on ModelFinder: LG+R7, branch support was assessed with 1000 ultrafast bootstrap replicates)."glycogen_debranching_enzyme_AGL_LG_R7_1000UFboot.tre.pdf": unrooted tree of glycogen debranching enzyme AGL as pdf file, corresponding to Table 1. Colored by lineage."glycogen_debranching_enzyme_AGL_trimal0.8.fasta": trimmed alignment used for tree reconstruction of glycogen debranching enzyme AGL"glycogen_phosphorylase_PYG_LG_R10_1000UFboot_newick.tre": raw tree file in newick format of glycogen phosphorylase PYG, corresponding to Table 1. Tree reconstruction performed with IQ-TREE (selected model based on ModelFinder: LG+R10, branch support was assessed with 1000 ultrafast bootstrap replicates)."glycogen_phosphorylase_PYG_LG_R10_1000UFboot.tre.pdf": unrooted tree of glycogen phosphorylase PYG as pdf file, corresponding to Table 1. Colored by lineage."glycogen_phosphorylase_PYG_trimal0.8.fasta": trimmed alignment used for tree reconstruction of glycogen phosphorylase PYG

Subroutine to calculate soil modulus as a as a power function of the confining stresses