Human capital and the intertemporal substitution for leisure : empirical evidence for Spain

In this paper we provide the first estimate of the intertemporal substitution for leisure in Spain, accounting for the impact of human capital accumulation. This would allow uncovering whether the intertemporal labour supply of Spanish workers is affected by human capital. Our empirical strategy consists of estimating the equation for the intertemporal substitution of leisure with and without accounting for human capital, what allows to detect hypothetical estimation biases associated to omitting the impact of human capital. To that end, we build a pseudo-panel data set combining the Spanish Family Expenditure Survey and the Labour Survey over the period 1987–1997. While the model that ignores human capital accumulation provides an estimate of the intertemporal elasticity of substitution for leisure about 0.25, comparable to previously available estimates for Spain and other economies, the model with human capital provides an estimate about 0.5, what confirms the existence of a bias in the former estimates. Finally, this bias is larger for the younger cohorts than for the older ones.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Viscothermal Losses in Double-Negative Acoustic Metamaterials

[EN] The influence of losses in double-negative metamaterial slabs recently introduced by Graciá-Salgado et al. [Phys. Rev. B 88, 224305 (2013)] is comprehensively studied. Viscous and thermal losses are considered in the linearized Navier-Stokes equations with no flow. Despite the extremely low thicknesses of boundary layers associated with each type of losses, the double-negative behavior is totally suppressed for the rigid structures under analysis. In other words, almost 100% of the energy transmitted into the slab is dissipated by viscothermal effects, in agreement with experimental data. Simulations undertaken for larger structures, using scale factors of up to 20 times, show that double-negative behavior is never recovered. The huge dissipation obtained by these structures leads us to propose them as interesting alternatives to conventional absorbers for specific situations, e.g., when treating low frequencies or when the excitation is narrow banded.V. M. G.-C. and J. S.-D. acknowledge the support from the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO), and the European Union Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) through Project No. TEC 2014-53088-C3-1-R.Cutanda-Henriquez, V.; Garcia Chocano, VM.; Sánchez-Dehesa Moreno-Cid, J. (2017). Viscothermal Losses in Double-Negative Acoustic Metamaterials. Physical Review Applied. 8(1):014029-1-014029-12. doi:10.1103/PhysRevApplied.8.014029S014029-1014029-128

Somatic embryogenesis and plant regeneration of Vitis vinifera cultivars 'Macabeo' and 'Tempranillo'

Different experimental conditions have been compared to achieve a high efficiency in embryogenic calli initiation from 'Macabeo' and 'Tempranillo' anthers. Specifically, two stages of anther development were tested (corresponding to tetrad cells or uninucleate pollen), and direct culture of anthers was compared to culture after a cold treatment of inflorescences (4 °C during 48 h). In addition, two induction media (C1 P and B2), mainly differing by microelement and cytokinin levels, were evaluated. Experiment repeatability was also examined with a repetition of anther culture one week later. Callus initiation was similar in all media and treatments for both cultivars, usually starting from the anther filament. A simple protocol for efficient induction of embryogenesis in 'Macabeo' and 'Tempranillo' consisted in:selecting the first inflorescence from hardwood cutting,excising anthers at uninucleate pollen stage without cold treatment of the inflorescences,incubating anthers on C1 P medium.The procedure used for embryo germination and plant regeneration, allowed to obtain a conversion rate up to 75 % in 'Macabeo' and 60 % in 'Tempranillo'. The protocol proposed represents the first regeneration system developed for the Spanish cultivars 'Macabeo' and 'Tempranillo'.

On the processing time for detection of Skype traffic

Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. [P. M. Santiago del Río. J. Ramos, J. L. García-Dorado, J. Aracil, A. Cuadra-Sánchez, and M. Cutanda-Rodríguez, "On the processing time for detection of Skype traffic", in 7th International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference, IWCMC 2011, p. 1784 - 1788The last few years have witnessed VoIP applications gaining a tremendous popularity and Skype, in particular, is leading this continuous expansion. Unfortunately, Skype follows a closed source and proprietary design, and typically uses encryption mechanisms, making it very difficult to identify its presence from a traffic aggregate. Several algorithms and approaches have been proposed to perform such task with promising results in terms of accuracy. However, such approaches typically require significant computation resources and it is unlikely that they can be deployed in nowadays high-speed networks. In this light, this paper focuses on cutting the processing cost of algorithms to detect Skype traffic. We have conveniently tuned a previous well-validated algorithm and we have assessed its performance. To this end, we have used real traces from public repositories, from a Spanish 3G operator, and synthetic traces. Our results show that a single process can detect Skype traffic at 1 Gbps rates reading replayed real traces directly from a NIC. Even more, 3.7 Gbps are achieved reading from traces previously allocated in memory using a single process and 45 Gbps using 16 concurrent processes. This fact paves the way for 10 Gbps processing in commodity hardware

Fish consumption patterns and hair mercury levels in children and their mothers in 17 EU countries

The toxicity of methylmercury (MeHg) in humans is well established and the main source of exposure is via the consumption of large marine fish and mammals. Of particular concern are the potential neurodevelopmental effects of early life exposure to low-levels of MeHg. Therefore, it is important that pregnant women, children and women of childbearing age are, as far as possible, protected from MeHg exposure.Within the European project DEMOCOPHES, we have analyzed mercury (Hg) in hair in 1799 mother–child pairs from 17 European countries using a strictly harmonized protocol for mercury analysis. Parallel, harmonized questionnaires on dietary habits provided information on consumption patterns of fish and marine products. After hierarchical cluster analysis of consumption habits of the mother–child pairs, the DEMOCOPHES cohort can be classified into two branches of approximately similar size: one with high fish consumption (H) and another with low consumption (L). All countries have representatives in both branches, but Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Portugal and Sweden have twice as many or more mother–child pairs in H than in L. For Switzerland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia the situation is the opposite, with more representatives in L than H.There is a strong correlation (r=0.72) in hair mercury concentration between the mother and child in the same family, which indicates that they have a similar exposure situation. The clustering of mother–child pairs on basis of their fish consumption revealed some interesting patterns. One is that for the same sea fish consumption, other food items of marine origin, like seafood products or shellfish, contribute significantly to the mercury levels in hair. We conclude that additional studies are needed to assess and quantify exposure to mercury from seafood products, in particular. The cluster analysis also showed that 95% of mothers who consume once per week fish only, and no other marine products, have mercury levels 0.55 µg/g. Thus, the 95th percentile of the distribution in this group is only around half the US-EPA recommended threshold of 1 µg/g mercury in hair. Consumption of freshwater fish played a minor role in contributing to mercury exposure in the studied cohort.The DEMOCOPHES data shows that there are significant differences in MeHg exposure across the EU and that exposure is highly correlated with consumption of fish and marine products. Fish and marine products are key components of a healthy human diet and are important both traditionally and culturally in many parts of Europe. Therefore, the communication of the potential risks of mercury exposure needs to be carefully balanced to take into account traditional and cultural values as well as the potential health benefits from fish consumption. European harmonized human biomonitoring programs provide an additional dimension to national HMB programs and can assist national authorities to tailor mitigation and adaptation strategies (dietary advice, risk communication, etc.) to their country’s specific requirements

Expansion and subfunctionalisation of flavonoid 3',5'-hydroxylases in the grapevine lineage

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Flavonoid 3',5'-hydroxylases (F3'5'Hs) and flavonoid 3'-hydroxylases (F3'Hs) competitively control the synthesis of delphinidin and cyanidin, the precursors of blue and red anthocyanins. In most plants, <it>F3'5'H </it>genes are present in low-copy number, but in grapevine they are highly redundant.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The first increase in <it>F3'5'H </it>copy number occurred in the progenitor of the eudicot clade at the time of the γ triplication. Further proliferation of <it>F3'5'H</it>s has occurred in one of the paleologous loci after the separation of Vitaceae from other eurosids, giving rise to 15 paralogues within 650 kb. Twelve reside in 9 tandem blocks of ~35-55 kb that share 91-99% identity. The second paleologous <it>F3'5'H </it>has been maintained as an orphan gene in grapevines, and lacks orthologues in other plants. Duplicate <it>F3'5'H</it>s have spatially and temporally partitioned expression profiles in grapevine. The orphan <it>F3'5'H </it>copy is highly expressed in vegetative organs. More recent duplicate <it>F3'5'H</it>s are predominately expressed in berry skins. They differ only slightly in the coding region, but are distinguished in the structure of the promoter. Differences in <it>cis</it>-regulatory sequences of promoter regions are paralleled by temporal specialisation of gene transcription during fruit ripening. Variation in anthocyanin profiles consistently reflects changes in the <it>F3'5'H </it>mRNA pool across different cultivars. More <it>F3'5'H </it>copies are expressed at high levels in grapevine varieties with 93-94% of 3'5'-OH anthocyanins. In grapevines depleted in 3'5'-OH anthocyanins (15-45%), fewer <it>F3'5'H </it>copies are transcribed, and at lower levels. Conversely, only two copies of the gene encoding the competing F3'H enzyme are present in the grape genome; one copy is expressed in both vegetative and reproductive organs at comparable levels among cultivars, while the other is transcriptionally silent.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These results suggest that expansion and subfunctionalisation of <it>F3'5'H</it>s have increased the complexity and diversification of the fruit colour phenotype among red grape varieties.</p

The potato developer (D) locus encodes an R2R3 MYB transcription factor that regulates expression of multiple anthocyanin structural genes in tuber skin

A dominant allele at the D locus (also known as I in diploid potato) is required for the synthesis of red and purple anthocyanin pigments in tuber skin. It has previously been reported that D maps to a region of chromosome 10 that harbors one or more homologs of Petuniaan2, an R2R3 MYB transcription factor that coordinately regulates the expression of multiple anthocyanin biosynthetic genes in the floral limb. To test whether D acts similarly in tuber skin, RT-PCR was used to evaluate the expression of flavanone 3-hydroxylase (f3h), dihydroflavonol 4-reductase (dfr) and flavonoid 3′,5′-hydroxylase (f3′5′h). All three genes were expressed in the periderm of red- and purple-skinned clones, while dfr and f3′5′h were not expressed, and f3h was only weakly expressed, in white-skinned clones. A potato cDNA clone with similarity to an2 was isolated from an expression library prepared from red tuber skin, and an assay developed to distinguish the two alleles of this gene in a diploid potato clone known to be heterozygous Dd. One allele was observed to cosegregate with pigmented skin in an F1 population of 136 individuals. This allele was expressed in tuber skin of red- and purple-colored progeny, but not in white tubers, while other parental alleles were not expressed in white or colored tubers. The allele was placed under the control of a doubled 35S promoter and transformed into the light red-colored cultivar Désirée, the white-skinned cultivar Bintje, and two white diploid clones known to lack the functional allele of D. Transformants accumulated pigment in tuber skin, as well as in other tissues, including young foliage, flower petals, and tuber flesh

Identification of stable QTLs for vegetative and reproductive traits in the microvine (Vitis vinifera L.) using the 18 K Infinium chip

UMR AGAP - équipe DAAV - Diversité, adaptation et amélioration de la vigne[b]Background[/b] [br/]The increasing temperature associated with climate change impacts grapevine phenology and development with critical effects on grape yield and composition. Plant breeding has the potential to deliver new cultivars with stable yield and quality under warmer climate conditions, but this requires the identification of stable genetic determinants. This study tested the potentialities of the microvine to boost genetics in grapevine. A mapping population of 129 microvines derived from Picovine x Ugni Blanc flb, was genotyped with the Illumina® 18 K SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) chip. Forty-three vegetative and reproductive traits were phenotyped outdoors over four cropping cycles, and a subset of 22 traits over two cropping cycles in growth rooms with two contrasted temperatures, in order to map stable QTLs (Quantitative Trait Loci). [br/][b]Results[/b] [br/]Ten stable QTLs for berry development and quality or leaf area were identified on the parental maps. A new major QTL explaining up to 44 % of total variance of berry weight was identified on chromosome 7 in Ugni Blanc flb, and co-localized with QTLs for seed number (up to 76 % total variance), major berry acids at green lag phase (up to 35 %), and other yield components (up to 25 %). In addition, a minor QTL for leaf area was found on chromosome 4 of the same parent. In contrast, only minor QTLs for berry acidity and leaf area could be found as moderately stable in Picovine. None of the transporters recently identified as mutated in low acidity apples or Cucurbits were included in the several hundreds of candidate genes underlying the above berry QTLs, which could be reduced to a few dozen candidate genes when a priori pertinent biological functions and organ specific expression were considered. [br/][b]Conclusions[/b] [br/]This study combining the use of microvine and a high throughput genotyping technology was innovative for grapevine genetics. It allowed the identification of 10 stable QTLs, including the first berry acidity QTLs reported so far in a Vitis vinifera intra-specific cross. Robustness of a set of QTLs was assessed with respect to temperature variatio

Berry Flesh and Skin Ripening Features in Vitis vinifera as Assessed by Transcriptional Profiling

Background Ripening of fleshy fruit is a complex developmental process involving the differentiation of tissues with separate functions. During grapevine berry ripening important processes contributing to table and wine grape quality take place, some of them flesh- or skin-specific. In this study, transcriptional profiles throughout flesh and skin ripening were followed during two different seasons in a table grape cultivar ‘Muscat Hamburg’ to determine tissue-specific as well as common developmental programs. Methodology/Principal Findings Using an updated GrapeGen Affymetrix GeneChip® annotation based on grapevine 12×v1 gene predictions, 2188 differentially accumulated transcripts between flesh and skin and 2839 transcripts differentially accumulated throughout ripening in the same manner in both tissues were identified. Transcriptional profiles were dominated by changes at the beginning of veraison which affect both pericarp tissues, although frequently delayed or with lower intensity in the skin than in the flesh. Functional enrichment analysis identified the decay on biosynthetic processes, photosynthesis and transport as a major part of the program delayed in the skin. In addition, a higher number of functional categories, including several related to macromolecule transport and phenylpropanoid and lipid biosynthesis, were over-represented in transcripts accumulated to higher levels in the skin. Functional enrichment also indicated auxin, gibberellins and bHLH transcription factors to take part in the regulation of pre-veraison processes in the pericarp, whereas WRKY and C2H2 family transcription factors seems to more specifically participate in the regulation of skin and flesh ripening, respectively. Conclusions/Significance A transcriptomic analysis indicates that a large part of the ripening program is shared by both pericarp tissues despite some components are delayed in the skin. In addition, important tissue differences are present from early stages prior to the ripening onset including tissue-specific regulators. Altogether, these findings provide key elements to understand berry ripening and its differential regulation in flesh and skin.This study was financially supported by GrapeGen Project funded by Genoma España within a collaborative agreement with Genome Canada. The authors also thank The Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion for project BIO2008-03892 and a bilateral collaborative grant with Argentina (AR2009-0021). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewe