Ideas previas en la Botánica

We have found the same kind of botanical preconcepts among students of 8th EGB and students of theTeacher-training School from Toledo. If students have studied sciences the previous years these preconcepts seem less abundant. The most widespread is that pine-cone is the fruit of pines trees. Other beliefs are referred to flowers, trees, potatoes, fruits, and seeds

KRRT: Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Tutor System

Knowledge Representation & Reasoning (KR&R) is a fundamental topic in Artificial Intelligence. A basic KR language is First– Order Logic (FOL), the most representative logic–based representation language, which is part of almost any introductory AI course. In this work we present KRRT (Knowledge Representation & Reasoning Tutor). KRRT is a Web–based system which main goal is to help the student to learn FOL as a KR&R language.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2004–0388

A Maut aprroach for reusing domain ontologies on the basis of the NeOn Methodlogy

Knowledge resource reuse has become a popular approach within the ontology engineering field, mainly because it can speed up the ontology development process, saving time and money and promoting the application of good practices. The NeOn Methodology provides guidelines for reuse. These guidelines include the selection of the most appropriate knowledge resources for reuse in ontology development. This is a complex decision-making problem where different conflicting objectives, like the reuse cost, understandability, integration workload and reliability, have to be taken into account simultaneously. GMAA is a PC-based decision support system based on an additive multi-attribute utility model that is intended to allay the operational difficulties involved in the Decision Analysis methodology. The paper illustrates how it can be applied to select multimedia ontologies for reuse to develop a new ontology in the multimedia domain. It also demonstrates that the sensitivity analyses provided by GMAA are useful tools for making a final recommendation

A MAUT approach for reusing ontologies

Knowledge resource reuse has become a popular approach within the ontology engineering field, mainly because it can speed up the ontology development process, saving time and money and promoting the application of good practices. The NeOn Methodology provides guidelines for reuse. These guidelines include the selection of the most appropriate knowledge resources for reuse in ontology development. This is a complex decision-making problem where different conflicting objectives, like the reuse cost, understandability, integration workload and reliability, have to be taken into account simultaneously. GMAA is a PC-based decision support system based on an additive multi-attribute utility model that is intended to allay the operational difficulties involved in the Decision Analysis methodology. The paper illustrates how it can be applied to select multimedia ontologies for reuse to develop a new ontology in the multimedia domain. It also demonstrates that the sensitivity analyses provided by GMAA are useful tools for making a final recommendation

Patient-specific iPSC-derived cellular models of LGMDR1

Limb-girdle muscular dystrophy recessive 1 (LGMDR1) represents one of the most common types of LGMD in the population, where patients develop a progressive muscle degeneration. The disease is caused by mutations in calpain 3 gene, with over 500 mutations reported to date. However, the molecular events that lead to muscle wasting are not clear, nor the reasons for the great clinical variability among patients, and this has so far hindered the development of effective therapies. Here we generate human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from skin fibroblasts of 2 healthy controls and 4 LGMDR1 patients with different mutations. The generated lines were able to differentiate into myogenic progenitors and myotubes in vitro and in vivo, upon a transient PAX7 overexpressing protocol. Thus, we have generated myogenic cellular models of LGMDR1 that harbor different CAPN3 mutations within a human genetic background, and which do not derive from muscular biopsies. These models will allow us to investigate disease mechanisms and test therapies. Despite the variability found among iPSC lines that was unrelated to CAPN3 mutations, we found that patient-derived myogenic progenitors and myotubes express lower levels of DMD, which codes a key protein in satellite cell regulation and myotube maturation

Anaerobic Treatment of Swine Wastewater in Semicontinuous Clayey Support Reactors

Three micronized clayey supports in laboratory-scale tank reactors under mesophilic conditions were studied. From the results obtained in a previous work, the temperature of θ = 25 °C was chosen. The start up and performance of these bioreactors, operating on swine wastewater feed, were also studied. The anaerobic treatment in a semicontinuous regime was carried out. Four stirred tank reactors were used, one of them containing suspended biomass for reference, while the rest contained various suspended micronized clay supports. The supports chosen were zeolite, esmectite, and saponite. The higher removal efficiency (about η COD 70% to 3.6 d HRT) was obtained when HRT increased in saponite and esmectite support reactors. Esmectite support showed the best anaerobic activity of microorganisms (μmax equal to 0.576 d–1). The reactor with zeolite support and the reference (non-support reactor) showed the worst yield in methane. The methane production model proposed by Chen and Hashimoto to achieve an optimum purifying performance was carried out. It accurately predicted the performance of the process and may be used in the design of treatment units

Integral Field Spectroscopy and multi-wavelength imaging of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC5668: an unusual flattening in metallicity gradient

We present the analysis of the full bi-dimensional optical spectral cube of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 5668, observed with the PPAK IFU at the Calar Alto observatory 3.5m telescope. We make use of broad-band imaging to provide further constraints on the evolutionary history of the galaxy. This dataset will allow us to improve our understanding of the mechanisms that drive the evolution of disks. We investigated the properties of 62 H II regions and concentric rings in NGC 5668 and derived maps in ionized-gas attenuation and chemical (oxygen) abundances. We find that, while inwards of r\,$\sim\,36",\sim$\,4.4kpc\,$\sim$\,0.36\,$(\frac {D_{25}}{2})$ the derived O/H ratio follows the radial gradient typical of spiral galaxies, the abundance gradient beyond r$\sim36"$ flattens out. The analysis of the multi-wavelength surface brightness profiles of NGC 5668 is performed by fitting these profiles with those predicted by chemo-spectrophotometric evolutionary models of galaxy disks. From this, we infer a spin and circular velocity of $\lambda$=0.053 and v$_{c}$=167\,km\,s$^{-1}$, respectively. The metallicity gradient and rotation curve predicted by this best-fitting galaxy model nicely match the values derived from the IFU observations, especially within r\,\sim36\arcsec. The same is true for the colors despite of some small offsets and a reddening in the bluest colors beyond that radius. On the other hand, deviations of some of these properties in the outer disk indicate that a secondary mechanism, possibly gas transfer induced by the presence of a young bar, must have played a role in shaping the recent chemical and star formation histories of NGC 5668.Comment: 44 pages, 13 figures, Accepted for publication in ApJ. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:astro-ph/020649

Immediate effects of dasatinib on the migration and redistribution of naïve and memory lymphocytes associated with lymphocytosis in chronic myeloid leukemia patients

Introduction: Dasatinib is a dual SRC/ABL tyrosine kinase inhibitor used to treat chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) that is known to have unique immunomodulatory effects. In particular, dasatinib intake typically causes lymphocytosis, which has been linked to better clinical response. Since the underlying mechanisms are unknown and SRC family kinases are involved in many cell motility processes, we hypothesized that the movement and migration of lymphocytes is modulated by dasatinib. Patients, Materials and Methods: Peripheral blood samples from CML patients treated with second-line dasatinib were collected before and 2 h after the first dasatinib intake, and follow-up samples from the same patients 3 and 6 months after the start of therapy. The migratory capacity and phenotype of lymphocytes and differential blood counts before and after drug intake were compared for all study time-points. Results: We report here for the first time that dasatinib intake is associated with inhibition of peripheral blood T-cell migration toward the homeostatic chemokines CCL19 and CCL21, which control the trafficking toward secondary lymphoid organs, mainly the lymph nodes. Accordingly, the proportion of lymphocytes in blood expressing CCR7, the chemokine receptor for both CCL19 and CCL21, decreased after the intake including both naïve CD45RA+ and central memory CD45RO+ T-cells. Similarly, naïve B-cells diminished with dasatinib. Finally, such changes in the migratory patterns did not occur in those patients whose lymphocyte counts remained unchanged after taking the drug. Discussion: We, therefore, conclude that lymphocytosis induced by dasatinib reflects a pronounced redistribution of naïve and memory populations of all lymphocyte subsets including CD4+ and CD8+ T-cells and B-cells