The Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Risk Mitigation Centres of Excellence of the European Union: The case of Morocco

The CBRN Risk Mitigation Centres of Excellence of the European Union are a European Commission initiative created to reinforce national and, therefore, regional, capacities regarding nuclear, chemical and biological security outside the European Union. They are made of a network of political and technical experts that mobilize resources in order to achieve a coherent CBRN policy through technical cooperation projects that have been tailored depending on the needs of each partner State. This paper focuses on the origin, legal basis and structure of the CoE taking the Centre of Excellence located in Rabat, Morocco, as a very illustrative example of the CoE functioning and potential. The case of Morocco is especially interesting as it hosts the Secretariat for the African Atlantic Façade, one of the eight regions where CoE can be found.Les Centres d’Excellence (CoE) pour l’atténuation des risques CBRN de l’Union Européenne sont une initiative de la Commission Européenne créé pour renforcer des capacités nationaux et, par conséquent, régionaux, en matière de la sécurité nucléaire, chimique et biologique en dehors de l’Union Européenne. Ils sont constitués d’un réseau d’experts politiques et techniques qui mobilisent des ressources afn de parvenir à une politique CBRN cohérente à travers des projets de coopération technique qui ont été adaptés en fonction des besoins de chaque Etat partenaire. Ce document met l’accent sur l’origine, la base juridique et la structure des Centres d’Excellence en prenant le Centre d’Excellence situé à Rabat, au Maroc, comme un exemple très illustratif du fonctionnement et le potentiel des CoE. Le cas du Maroc est particulièrement intéressant car elle héberge le Secrétariat pour la Façade Atlantique de l’Afrique, l’une des huit régions où les CoE peuvent être trouvés.los Centros de Excelencia (CoE) de mitigación de riesgos QBRN de la Unión Europea son una iniciativa de la Comisión Europea creada para fortalecer las capacidades nacionales y, por ende, regionales, en materia de seguridad nuclear, química y biológica fuera de la Unión Europea. Están formados por una red de expertos políticos y técnicos que movilizan recursos para lograr una política QBRN coherente a través de proyectos de cooperación técnica que han sido adaptados a las necesidades de cada país socio. Este documento se centra en el origen, fundamento jurídico y la estructura de los Centros de Excelencia tomando como caso de estudio el Centro ubicado en Rabat, Marruecos, como un ejemplo muy ilustrativo del funcionamiento y el potencial de los CoE. El caso de Marruecos es particularmente interesante ya que alberga la Secretaría de la Fachada Africana Atlántica, de las ocho regiones en las que se pueden encontrar Centros de Excelencia

Multimodal reading and second language learning

Most of the texts that second language learners engage with include both text (written and/or spoken) and images. The use of images accompanying texts is believed to support reading comprehension and facilitate learning. Despite their widespread use, very little is known about how the presentation of multiple input sources affects the attentional demands and the underlying cognitive processes involved. This paper provides a review of research on multimodal reading, with a focus on attentional processing. It first introduces the relevant theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence provided in support of the use of pictures in reading. It then reviews studies that have looked at the processing of text and pictures in first and second language contexts. Based on this review, main gaps in research and future research directions are identified. The discussion provided in this paper aims at advancing research on multimodal reading in a second language. Achieving a better understanding of the underlying cognitive processes in multimodal reading is crucial to inform pedagogical practices and to develop theoretical accounts of second language multimodal reading

Exploring the adaptive capabilities of the brain following unilateral conductive hearing loss

Plasticity in adulthood potentially allows the recovery of perceptual abilities following sensory impairments. Training-dependent recovery of sound localisation accuracy following unilateral conductive hearing loss has been widely used to study the adaptability of the auditory system. Previous studies have implicated the inferior colliculus (IC) in this plasticity, but have not examined whether neural correlates of training-induced plasticity are found in this midbrain structure. To explore this question, we performed chronic electrophysiological recordings in the IC of ferrets while they were trained to adapt to unilateral hearing loss, induced by reversibly plugging one ear. We found that IC responses were initially disrupted by monaural hearing loss, which coincided with impaired localisation behaviour. With daily training, however, adaptive changes occurred in the spatial response properties of IC neurons and in the animals’ localisation behaviour. Neural correlates of training-induced adaptation are therefore found in the IC, supporting its role in auditory spatial plasticity. These results also provide insight into how sound azimuth is encoded by IC neurons. Demonstrating that training-dependent adaptation has potential therapeutic value for people with hearing disorders requires an understanding of the persistence and context dependence of this plasticity, and of the extent to which adaptation generalises to untrained sounds. By measuring the behavioural effects in ferrets of repeated periods of monaural occlusion in the same ear and then of the opposite ear, we show that adaptation leaves a “memory trace” that determines how localisation accuracy is affected when unilateral hearing loss is experienced again. To evaluate the generalisation of learning, we measured localisation accuracy after adaptation using different bandwidth stimuli presented in silence or against background noise. Our results show a positive relationship between generalisation and the degree of adaptation achieved. Finally, a virtual reality setup was developed for investigating these questions in human participants

Evaluación formativa y sumativa para entornos educativos online. Memoria del proyecto de innovación y mejora de la Calidad Docente, 2015/243

El objetivo principal de el proyecto es identificar diferentes procesos y modalidades que permitan convertir la evaluación sumativa (EV) en evaluación formativa (EF), específicamente en entornos educativos online, de modo que la evaluación, además de certificar la adquisición de unos conocimientos determinados, pueda convertirse en un instrumento del proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje

Controlling Salmonella in Poultry using Bacteriophages

Public health concerns associated with high prevalence of foodborne salmonellosis, the emergence of antibiotic-resistant organisms and the identification of poultry meat and products as one of the most common sources of Salmonella support the need for new pathogen control strategies in the poultry industry. Scientific research has focused on the use of bacteriophages as therapeutic agents for humans and animals; however, limited studies have been conducted on bacteriophage application on food safety, especially on poultry. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the phage density and exposure time required to reduce Salmonella load on experimentally inoculated chicken meat. In Experiment 1, serovars of Salmonella were tested for antimicrobial susceptibility and rifampicin-resistant isolates were generated. Cocktails of the serovars Enteritidis, Kentucky and Typhimurium (EKT), and Hadar and Heidelberg (HH), were inoculated on chicken breast samples to a target of 104 CFU/g. A mixture of three lytic bacteriophages, active against multiple Salmonella serovars was applied to chicken samples. A total of 84 samples (25 +/- 2 g) per each cocktail were distributed among a negative control, Salmonella-inoculated positive control, Salmonella-inoculated samples treated with the phage mixture at differing titers (105, 106, 107, 108, and 109 PFU/ml) with two identical samples at 0, 15, 30, 60, 120, 360 min at 4 degrees C. Experiment 2 evaluated nalidixic acid-resistant Salmonella Typhimurium among negative control, Salmonella-inoculated control (positive control), Salmonella with two phage titers (105 and 109 PFU/ml) at 0, 30, 60 and 120 min at 25 degrees C and 4 degrees C. Results showed differences in means for Salmonella cocktail EKT ranged from 0.1 to 0.7 log10 CFU/g with 0.7 log10 for 108 PFU/ml, 30 min, 4 degrees C. For Salmonella cocktail HH, reductions ranged from 0.1 to 0.4 log10 CFU/g with 0.4 log10 on samples treated with 108 PFU/ml, 120 min, 4 degrees C. For the Experiment 2, a higher phage concentration (109 PFU/ml) at 120 min post-inoculation storage at 25 degrees C was required to yield a 0.9 log10 difference in means. These findings showed that higher concentrations of bacteriophage were more effective controlling Salmonella than lower ones at both temperatures. In addition, temperature, time and bacterial attachment may influence phage efficacy

Warm inflation in presence of magnetic fields

We present preliminary results on the possible effects that primordial magnetic fields can have for a warm inflation scenario, based on global supersymmetry, with a new-inflation-type potential. This work is motivated by two considerations: first, magnetic fields seem to be present in the universe on all scales, which rises the possibility that they could also permeate the early universe; second, the recent emergence of inflationary models where the inflaton is not assumed to be isolated but instead it is taken as an interacting field, even during the inflationary expansion. The effects of magnetic fields are included resorting to Schwinger proper time method.Comment: Published in AIP Conf. Proc. 1548, 288 (2013), IX Mexican School on Gravitation and Mathematical Physics: Cosmology for the XXIst Centur

Ultrasonic system models and measurements

In this work ultrasonic models and measurements are used to characterize a number of the important elements of an ultrasonic measurement system as well as the entire system. Ultrasonic measurement models for predicting the response from reference reflectors are described, including a new ultrasonic measurement model recently developed to simulate the ultrasonic response of an infinitely long cylindrical cavity. The reference reflectors considered include spherical pores, flat-bottom holes and side-drilled holes, which are commonly used in nondestructive evaluation studies. These reflectors are employed in a series of modeling/experimental studies to assess where approximate and more exact scattering models are needed and to estimate the significance of beam variations over the reflector surface. Model-based simulated flaw responses are compared to experimentally determined flaw responses from these reference reflectors and the accuracy of the models is discussed.;The role that an ultrasonic piezoelectric transducer plays in an ultrasonic measurement system can be described in terms of the transducer\u27s input electrical impedance and its sensitivity. A new model-based method for simultaneously determining the impedance and sensitivity of commercial ultrasonic immersion transducers is developed. This method is based on a pulse-echo setup and relies only on electrical measurements. It is demonstrated that sensitivities obtained with this new method agree well with the sensitivities obtained using a more complex three-transducer method originally developed for lower-frequency acoustic transducers that has been used in many previous studies. The influence of the pulser/receiver settings on the transducer electrical impedance and sensitivity is also discussed. Cabling effects present are compensated for in the new pulse-echo method.;The transducer impedance and sensitivity measurements obtained using this new pulse-echo method are combined with measurements/models for all the other electrical elements in an ultrasonic measurement system to determine a system transfer function that characterizes the effect of all the electrical and electromechanical components in the system. It is shown that by combining the system transfer function with models of the acoustic/elastic process present in a measurement system it is possible to accurately simulate the output voltage of the entire ultrasonic measurement system