Multicriteria Modelling of Irrigation Water Market at Basin Level

This paper develops a multi-criteria methodology to simulate irrigation water markets at basin level. For this purpose it is assumed that irrigators try to optimise personal multi-attribute utility functions via their productive decision making process (crop mix), subject to a set of constraints based upon the structural features of their farms. In this sense, farmers with homogeneous behaviour regarding water use have been grouped, such groups being established as .types. to be considered in the whole water market simulation model. This model calculates the equilibrium through a solution that maximises aggregate welfare, which is quantified as the sum of the multi-attribute utilities reached by each of the participating agents. This methodology has been empirically applied for the Duero Basin (Northern Spain), finding that the implementation of this institution would increase economic efficiency and agricultural labour demand, particularly during droughts.Water markets, Multi-Attribute Utility Theory, Irrigation water, Duero Valley (Spain).

TBL1 is required for the mesenchymal phenotype of transformed breast cancer cells

The epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and its reversion (MET) are related to tumor cell dissemination and migration, tumor circulating cell generation, cancer stem cells, chemoresistance, and metastasis formation. To identify chromatin and epigenetic factors possibly involved in the process of EMT, we compare the levels of expression of epigenetic genes in a transformed human breast epithelial cell line (HMEC-RAS) versus a stable clone of the same cell line expressing the EMT master regulator ZEB1 (HMEC-RAS-ZEB1). One of the factors strongly induced in the HMEC-RAS-ZEB1 cells was Transducin beta-like 1 (TBL1), a component of the NCoR complex, which has both corepressor and coactivator activities. We show that TBL1 interacts with ZEB1 and that both factors cooperate to repress the promoter of the epithelial gene E-cadherin (CDH1) and to autoactivate the ZEB1 promoter. Consistent with its central role, TBL1 is required for mesenchymal phenotypes of transformed breast epithelial and breast cancer cell lines of the claudin-low subtype. Importantly, a high expression of the TBL1 gene correlates with poor prognosis and increased proportion of metastasis in breast cancer patients, indicating that the level of TBL1 expression can be used as a prognostic marker.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad BFU2014-53543-P, BFU2017-85420-RJunta de Andalucía BIO-32

Energy Efficiency of Hybrid-Power HetNets: A Population-like Games Approach

In this paper, a distributed control scheme based on population games is proposed. The controller is in charge of dealing with the energy consumption problem in a Heterogeneous Cellular Network (HetNet) powered by hybrid energy sources (grid and renewable energy) while guaranteeing appropriate quality of service (QoS) level at the same time. Unlike the conventional approach in population games, it considers both atomicity and non-anonymity. Simulation results show that the proposed population-games approach reduces grid consumption by up to about 12% compared to the traditional best-signal level association policy.U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research FA9550-17-1-0259Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte DPI2016-76493-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Empresa DPI2017-86918-

Effects of Non-Circular Motions on Azimuthal Color Gradients

Assuming that density waves trigger star formation, and that young stars preserve the velocity components of the molecular gas where they are born, we analyze the effects that non-circular gas orbits have on color gradients across spiral arms. We try two approaches, one involving semi-analytical solutions for spiral shocks, and another with magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) numerical simulation data. We find that, if non-circular motions are ignored, the comparison between observed color gradients and stellar population synthesis models would in principle yield pattern speed values that are systematically too high for regions inside corotation, with the difference between the real and the measured pattern speeds increasing with decreasing radius. On the other hand, image processing and pixel averaging result in systematically lower measured spiral pattern speed values, regardless of the kinematics of stellar orbits. The net effect is that roughly the correct pattern speeds are recovered, although the trend of higher measured $\Omega_p$ at lower radii (as expected when non-circular motions exist but are neglected) should still be observed. We examine the Martinez-Garcia et al. (2009) photometric data and confirm that this is indeed the case. The comparison of the size of the systematic pattern speed offset in the data with the predictions of the semi-analytical and MHD models corroborates that spirals are more likely to end at Outer Lindblad Resonance, as these authors had already found.Comment: 32 pages, 15 figures, accepted to Ap

Construction of a high anchored wall at highway EX-A1 (Spain)

Descripción de la problemática encontrada en un desmonte de la autovía EX-A1 (Navalmoral de la Mata-Frontera portuguesa). Descripción de la solución adoptada: muro anclado. Highway EX-A1, near the Spain-Portugal border, crosses a Tertiary formation of weak marly rocks that are affected by high tectonic stresses that had created a good number of failure planes within the rock. During the past geologic times, some large landslides had taken place. They are now covered by Quaternary soils. The design of high cuts in this type of rock formation is somewhat troublesome. The paper indicates one of the solutions that have been implemented to stabilize one of the main highway cuts. L’autoroute EX-A1, près de la frontière entre l’Espagne et le Portugal, traverse une formation tertiaire de roches marneuses faibles avec des contraintes tectoniques élevées qui ont provoqué de nombreuses surfaces de rupture dans la roche. Au cours des temps géologiques passés, des grands glissements ont eu lieu et ils se retrouvent maintenant couverts par des sols quaternaires. Le projet d’excavations de grande hauteur dans cette formation rocheuse est généralement problématique. L’article décrit la solution qui a été mise en oeuvre pour stabiliser un des principaux déblais de l’autoroute

Graphene Oxide-Supported Oxime Palladacycles as Efficient Catalysts for the Suzuki–Miyaura Cross-Coupling Reaction of Aryl Bromides at Room Temperature under Aqueous Conditions

Palladacycles are highly efficient precatalysts in cross-coupling reactions whose immobilization on carbonaceous materials has been hardly studied. Herein, we report a detailed study on the synthesis and characterization of new oxime palladacycle-graphene oxide non-covalent materials along with their catalytic activity in the Suzuki–Miyaura reaction. Catalyst 1-GO, which has been fully characterized by ICP, XPS, TGA, and UV-Vis analyses has been demonstrated to be an efficient catalyst for the Suzuki–Miyaura coupling between aryl bromides and arylboronic acids using very low catalyst loadings (0.002 mol % of Pd) at room temperature under aqueous conditions.Financial support from the University of Alicante (UAUSTI16-03, UAUSTI16-10, VIGROB-173), the Spanish Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (CTQ2015-66624-P) is acknowledged

Influencia de los estribos en el modelado dinámico de puentes

La repentina puesta fuera de servicio de puentes sometidos a la acción sísmica ha despertado un interés creciente por la comprensión de su comportamiento. En puentes pequeños o medianos los terraplenes de acceso son una parte muy significativa de la estructura. La práctica habitual de considerar los apoyos rígidos no representa adecuadamente la realidad, especialmente en puentes del tipo "integral" en que el estribo es solidario del tablero y los movimientos de este actúan directamente sobre el terraplen. El modelado de la rigidez y amortiguamiento de éste debe afectar a la frecuencia propia del sistema global en un sentido semejante al de los cimientos. Por ello, se presenta un sencillo modelo dinámico para el análisis paramétrico de la influencia de las impedancias dinámicas de los estribos en el comportamiento sísmico de puentes con estribo integral, donde se puede observar la influencia que tanto sobre la frecuencia propia como sobre el amortiguamiento globales tiene una correcta cuantifícación de aquéllas

Efecto del uso de claves y de la relación semántica en la recuperación de la información desde la memoria episódica en niños con TEL y en niños con desarrollo típico.

218 p.Los niños con trastorno específico del lenguaje (TEL) presentan limitaciones que implican dificultades tanto en el dominio lingüístico como en el no lingüístico. Varios investigadores han señalado los problemas que exhiben estos menores a nivel de la memoria, principalmente la memoria de trabajo. Sin embargo son pocos, casi nulos, los estudios que centran su atención en la memoria de largo plazo, en especial la memoria episódica (ME). Por tal motivo, esta investigación tuvo como propósito corroborar los escasos datos existentes y ampliar la información respecto al desempeño de los niños con TEL en tareas de ME. Se evaluó el efecto del uso de claves y la relación semántica entre los estímulos en la recuperación de la información desde la ME en niños con TEL, comparando su desempeño con un grupo de pares de desarrollo típico de igual edad cronológica (5 años a 5 años 11 meses) y otro de igual nivel comprensivo (4 años a 4 años 11 meses). Los resultados corroboran lo señalado en estudios anteriores, los niños con TEL exhiben un desempeño significativamente inferior al grupo de igual edad. Pero, se encuentra un resultado diferente cuando se compara con aquellos de igual nivel comprensivo, evidenciando ambos grupos un rendimiento similar. Se plantea que los niños con TEL evidencian un nivel de procesamiento de información contextual similar a niños de menor edad en casi todas las situaciones de presentación de los estímulos, y semejante a sus pares típicos de igual edad cuando se cumplen con ciertas condiciones específicas, las que favorecen su procesamiento. Se discuten los resultados en torno a las diferencias y similitudes encontradas en los grupos, así como sus implicancias para el quehacer fonoaudiológico.Palabras clave: trastorno específico del lenguaje, memoria episódica, uso de claves, relaciones semánticas./ABSTRACT:Children with Specific Language Impairment exhibit limitations that imply difficulties both in linguistic and non-linguistic domains. Several researchers have pointed at the difficulties exhibited by children with SLI in memory processes, especially in working memory. Nevertheless there are few studies focusing their attention in long-term memory, especially in episodic memory (EM). Because of the lack of information on this topic is that the present research had the purpose of confirming the current sparse data, and to obtain more information about the performance of children with SLI in EM tasks. The effect of the use of cues and the semantic relationship between the stimuli on the information retrieval from EM were compared between children with SLI and two control groups, one group of typically developing peers matched by chronological age (5,0 to 5,11 years old), and another of similar comprehensive language skills (4,0 to 4,11 years old). Results confirm previous findings: children with SLI show a significantly lower performance than their chronological-matched peers. However, a different finding is made when comparing with peers with similar comprehensive skills, showing similar performance. It is hypothesized that children with SLI exhibit a level of processing of contextual information similar to younger peers in almost all situations of presentation of the stimulus, and similar to their typical peers when given specific situations are present, which help their processing. Results are discussed about the similarities and differences found in the groups, as well as the implications for the work of SLP.Keywords: Specific Language Impairment, episodic memory, use of cues, semantic relationship

Obesity dependent metabolic signatures associated with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease progression

Our understanding of the mechanisms by which nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) progresses from simple steatosis to steatohepatitis (NASH) is still very limited. Despite the growing number of studies linking the disease with altered serum metabolite levels, an obstacle to the development of metabolome-based NAFLD predictors has been the lack of large cohort data from biopsy-proven patients matched for key metabolic features such as obesity. We studied 467 biopsied individuals with normal liver histology (n=90) or diagnosed with NAFLD (steatosis, n=246; NASH, n=131), randomly divided into estimation (80% of all patients) and validation (20% of all patients) groups. Qualitative determinations of 540 serum metabolite variables were performed using ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (UPLCMS). The metabolic profile was dependent on patient body-mass index (BMI), suggesting that the NAFLD pathogenesis mechanism may be quite different depending on an individual’s level of obesity. A BMI-stratified multivariate model based on the NAFLD serum metabolic profile was used to separate patients with and without NASH. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.87 in the estimation and 0.85 in the validation group. The cutoff (0.54) corresponding to maximum average diagnostic accuracy (0.82) predicted NASH with a sensitivity of 0.71 and a specificity of 0.92 (negative/positive predictive values = 0.82/0.84). The present data, indicating that a BMI-dependent serum metabolic profile may be able to reliably distinguish NASH from steatosis patients, have significant implications for the development of NASH biomarkers and potential novel targets for therapeutic intervention