Caracterización de la población de Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. dianthi en la costa Noroeste de Cádiz y control mediante composts supresivos de las marchiteces vasculares

Las marchiteces vasculares constituyen uno de los tipos de enfermedades vegetales más importantes y estudiadas de las causadas por hongos. Los principales agentes causantes de este tipo de enfermedad son: Fusarium oxysporum (Schlecht ex Fries) (Fusariosis vasculares) y Verticillium dahliae Kleb. (Verticilosis vasculares). En la búsqueda de alternativas sostenibles, las sociedades desarrolladas generan una gran cantidad de residuos orgánicos procedentes de la industria agrícola. Estos residuos tras un proceso de compostaje podrían ser usados como sustratos hortícolas. Además, algunos composts de alta calidad o bien sustratos enriquecidos con agentes de control biológico inciden disminuyendo las enfermedades producidas por algunos de los principales hongos fitopatógenos, siendo además una alternativa al Bromuro de Metilo en los cultivos en contenedor, presentando un fenómeno denominado supresividad. En este sentido, la presente Tesis Doctoral se desglosa en dos objetivos: el estudio de la diversidad y prevalencia racial de una población de Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. dianthi (Fod) obtenida de plantas enfermas en una zona con una alta tradición en el cultivo del clavel (Noroeste de la provincia de Cádiz); y la evaluación de sustratos formulados con composts de residuos agroindustriales en cuatro patosistemas (Fusarium/clavel, Fusarium/tomate, Verticillium/algodón y Verticillium/olivo) y el estudio de los factores implicados en esos fenómenos supresivos.We surveyed the diversity of races and prevalence of pathogenic populations of Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. dianthi (Fod) in an area in the northwest of the province of Cadiz (Spain). From 54 farms, 132 isolates were collected from wilted carnation plants. Molecular techniques, namely phylogenetic studies [using RAPD-PCR fingerprinting and sequencing of the transcription elongation factor (TEF1-α)] and analysis with racespecific molecular markers were used to characterize these isolates. Selected isolates from RAPD groups were phenotypically evaluated by pathogenicity tests. All these data showed that Fod race 2 was the most frequent and prevalent race in the study area, followed by race 1 or 8. Moreover, phylogenetic analyses showed similar results, which were different to those of the race-specific PCR assays. Three findings were highlights from these results: i) seven isolates were not classified in groups where Fod testers were clustered, even they showed different results when race-specific markers were used, ii) ten isolates with retarded race 1 or 8 specific-band were characterized as F. proliferatum by TEF1-α gene sequencing and clustered into an outgroup, and iii) six isolates failed to generate an amplification signal using race-specific markers. Furthermore, three of them were grouped close to the race 2 tester according to the phylogenetic analyses, and showed the same differential pathogenicity as race 2. This may indicate the presence of a Fod race 2 subgroup in this region

Optimising care pathways for adult anorexia nervosa. What is the evidence to guide the provision of high‐quality, cost‐effective services?

The aim of this paper is to consider how changes in service planning and delivery might improve the care pathways for adult anorexia nervosa. Although anorexia nervosa has a long history in Europe, its framing as a mental disorder is quite recent. The changing forms and increasing epidemiology of eating disorders has led to the expansion of specialised services. Although some services provide care over the entire clinical course, more often services are divided into those that care for children and adolescents or adults. The transition needs to be carefully managed as currently these services may have a different ethos and expectations. Services for adults have a broad range of diversity (diagnostic subtype, medical severity, comorbidity, stage of illness and psychosocial functioning) all of which impacts on prognosis. A tailored, approach to treatment planning could optimise the pathway. Facilitating early help seeking and rapid diagnosis in primary care and reducing specialised services waiting lists for assessment and treatment could be a form of secondary prevention. The use of precision models and /or continuous outcome monitoring might reduce the third of patients who require more intensive care by applying augmentation strategies. Finally, gains from intensive care might be sustained by relapse prevention interventions and community support to bridge the transition home. Together these measures might reduce the proportion of patients (currently a third) with ill health for over 20 years. For this group rehabilitation strategies may improve functioning until new treatment emerge

Rain Removal in Traffic Surveillance: Does it Matter?

Varying weather conditions, including rainfall and snowfall, are generally regarded as a challenge for computer vision algorithms. One proposed solution to the challenges induced by rain and snowfall is to artificially remove the rain from images or video using rain removal algorithms. It is the promise of these algorithms that the rain-removed image frames will improve the performance of subsequent segmentation and tracking algorithms. However, rain removal algorithms are typically evaluated on their ability to remove synthetic rain on a small subset of images. Currently, their behavior is unknown on real-world videos when integrated with a typical computer vision pipeline. In this paper, we review the existing rain removal algorithms and propose a new dataset that consists of 22 traffic surveillance sequences under a broad variety of weather conditions that all include either rain or snowfall. We propose a new evaluation protocol that evaluates the rain removal algorithms on their ability to improve the performance of subsequent segmentation, instance segmentation, and feature tracking algorithms under rain and snow. If successful, the de-rained frames of a rain removal algorithm should improve segmentation performance and increase the number of accurately tracked features. The results show that a recent single-frame-based rain removal algorithm increases the segmentation performance by 19.7% on our proposed dataset, but it eventually decreases the feature tracking performance and showed mixed results with recent instance segmentation methods. However, the best video-based rain removal algorithm improves the feature tracking accuracy by 7.72%.Comment: Published in IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation System

The Faculty Notebook, September 2015

The Faculty Notebook is published periodically by the Office of the Provost at Gettysburg College to bring to the attention of the campus community accomplishments and activities of academic interest. Faculty are encouraged to submit materials for consideration for publication to the Associate Provost for Faculty Development. Copies of this publication are available at the Office of the Provost

5th Workshop on Agri-food Research-WiA.16

[SPA] Este libro contiene los resúmenes trabajos presentados al V Workshop en Investigación Agroalimentaria (WiA. 16) organizado por el Programa de doctorado en Técnicas Avanzadas en Investigación y Desarrollo Agrario y Alimentario (TAIDA) de la UPCT y celebrado en Cartagena del 9 al 10 de mayo de 2016. El programa científico se estructura en cuatro sesiones: Biotecnología Agroalimentaria, Tecnología e Ingeniería de Alimentos, Tecnología e Ingeniería de Producción Vegetal y Ingeniería Agroforestal y Económica. [ENG] The scientific manuscripts presented in the 5th Workshop on Agri-Food Research (WIA.16) are here presented. WiA.16 is an annual. Presentations showed a great scientific interest and reflect the high potential of the Research Groups that belong to the several departments and institutions integrated into our PhD Program (UPCT, CEBAS-CSIC, and IMIDA). We expect that during the celebration of this Workshop, the coexistence and exchange of ideas and experiences among PhD candidates, research groups, researchers, technicians, etc.. has been favored

5th International Symposium on Bacterial Cellulose

Book of abstracts[Excerpt] This event, which has been held biennially since 2013, mobilizes experts from the field, to discuss all aspects of research related to Bacterial Cellulose Biotechnology, including the biology and genetics of producing microorganisms, production biotechnologies and different areas of application, namely biomedicine, food and cosmetic industries, pharmaceutical applications, composites, pulp and paper. Previous editions took place in New Orleans (2013), Gdansk (2015), Fukuoka (2017) and Porto (2019). The 5th ISBC will be held in Jena - Germany, at the Steigenberger Esplanade Jena hotel, between 22 and 23, September 2022. As with previous events, this Symposium aims to attract international researchers and innovative start ups to communicate and share the latest developments in this fast-moving and continually expanding field of Bacterial Cellulose. [...

A Comprehensive Survey on Applications of Transformers for Deep Learning Tasks

Transformer is a deep neural network that employs a self-attention mechanism to comprehend the contextual relationships within sequential data. Unlike conventional neural networks or updated versions of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) such as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), transformer models excel in handling long dependencies between input sequence elements and enable parallel processing. As a result, transformer-based models have attracted substantial interest among researchers in the field of artificial intelligence. This can be attributed to their immense potential and remarkable achievements, not only in Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks but also in a wide range of domains, including computer vision, audio and speech processing, healthcare, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Although several survey papers have been published highlighting the transformer's contributions in specific fields, architectural differences, or performance evaluations, there is still a significant absence of a comprehensive survey paper encompassing its major applications across various domains. Therefore, we undertook the task of filling this gap by conducting an extensive survey of proposed transformer models from 2017 to 2022. Our survey encompasses the identification of the top five application domains for transformer-based models, namely: NLP, Computer Vision, Multi-Modality, Audio and Speech Processing, and Signal Processing. We analyze the impact of highly influential transformer-based models in these domains and subsequently classify them based on their respective tasks using a proposed taxonomy. Our aim is to shed light on the existing potential and future possibilities of transformers for enthusiastic researchers, thus contributing to the broader understanding of this groundbreaking technology

Learning to translate by learning to communicate

We formulate and test a technique to use Emergent Communication (EC) with a pretrained multilingual model to improve on modern Unsupervised NMT systems, especially for low-resource languages. It has been argued that the currently dominant paradigm in NLP of pretraining on text-only corpora will not yield robust natural language understanding systems, and the need for grounded, goal-oriented, and interactive language learning has been highlighted. In our approach, we embed a modern multilingual model (mBART, Liu et. al. 2020) into an EC image-reference game, in which the model is incentivized to use multilingual generations to accomplish a vision-grounded task, with the hypothesis that this will align multiple languages to a shared task space. We present two variants of EC Fine-Tuning (Steinert-Threlkeld et. al. 2022), one of which outperforms a backtranslation-based baseline in 6/8 translation settings, and proves especially beneficial for the very low-resource languages of Nepali and Sinhala

Study of social behavior through mixed methodology in the context of a social-skills program for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder in a community setting

Al llarg de l'última dècada s'han realitzat s'han realitzat nombrosos estudis per avaluar l'eficàcia dels grups d'intervenció en habilitats socials per a persones amb trastorn de l'espectre autista (TEA). Segueix existint molta controvèrsia sobre quins factors beneficien a determinats pacients i quina metodologia es fa servir per a detectar-los, específicament en els contextos comunitaris. Els objectius d'aquesta tesi van ser: valorar l'efecte de l'adaptació d'un programa d'habilitats socials per a infants i adolescents amb TEA en un context hospitalari, analitzant l'efectivitat de el programa per disminuir símptomes de comorbiditat i augmentar les conductes socials i, utilitzar metodologia observacional per identificar els canvis socials. Es va adaptar l'escala observacional de Bauminger i es van codificar 10 sessions de grup. Les dades es van analitzar amb la tècnica de coordenades polars. Els resultats obtinguts en els tres estudis indiquen que la simptomatologia afectiva disminuir després de la intervenció. També s'observen resultats marginalment significatius en alguns comportaments socials, específicament el contacte ocular i la comunicació funcional. Observem que aquells pacients amb major coeficient intel·lectual verbal (CIV) van obtenir millor resposta a al tractament en els anteriors paràmetres. Malgrat aquests resultats obtinguts, cada participant segueix un curs únic. Cal seguir investigant els factors que influeixen en l'eficàcia d'aquests programes, com l'edat o el IQ, de manera que s'implementin intervencions que generin canvis significatius en aquests contextos comunitaris, on resulta més complex arribar a un major nombre de persones.A lo largo de la última década se han realizado se han realizado numerosos estudios para evaluar la eficacia de los grupos de intervención en habilidades sociales para personas con trastorno del espectro autista (TEA). Sigue existiendo mucha controversia sobre qué factores benefician a determinados pacientes y qué metodología se emplea para detectarlos, específicamente en los contextos comunitarios. Los objetivos de esta tesis fueron: valorar el efecto de la adaptación de un programa de habilidades sociales para niños y adolescentes con TEA en un contexto hospitalario, analizando la efectividad del programa para disminuir síntomas de comorbilidad y aumentar las conductas sociales y, utilizar metodología observacional para identificar los cambios sociales. Se adaptó la escala observacional de Bauminger y se codificaron 10 sesiones de grupo. Los datos se analizaron con la técnica de coordenadas polares. Los resultados obtenidos en los tres estudios indican que la sintomatología afectiva disminuyó después de la intervención. También se observan resultados marginalmente significativos en algunos comportamientos sociales, específicamente el contacto ocular y la comunicación funcional. Observamos que aquellos pacientes con mayor coeficiente intelectual verbal (CIV) obtuvieron mejor respuesta al tratamiento en los anteriores parámetros. A pesar de estos resultados obtenidos, cada participante sigue un curso único. Es necesario seguir investigando los factores que influyen en la eficacia de estos programas, como la edad o el IQ, de modo que se implementen intervenciones que generen cambios significativos en estos contextos comunitarios, donde resulta más complejo llegar a un mayor número de personas.Over the past decade, numerous studies have been conducted in order to evaluate the effectiveness of social skills intervention groups for people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Much controversy remains about which factors benefit certain patients and what methodology is used to detect them, specifically in community settings. The objectives of this thesis were: to assess the effect of the adaptation of a social skills program for children and adolescents with ASD in a hospital context, analyzing the effectiveness of the program to decrease comorbidity symptoms and increases social behaviors and, to use observational methodology to identify social changes. The Bauminger observational scale was adapted and 10 group sessions were coded. Data were analyzed with the polar coordinate technique. The results obtained in the three studies indicate that the affective symptomatology decreased after the intervention. Marginally significant results were also seen in some social behaviors, specifically eye contact and functional communication. We observed that those patients with a higher verbal intelligence quotient (IQ) obtained a better response to treatment in the above parameters. Despite these results, each participant followed a unique course. It is necessary to continue investigating the factors that influence the effectiveness of these programs, such as age or IQ, so that the implemented interventions generate significant changes in these community contexts, where it is more complex to reach a greater number of people