Similar mortality and reduced loss to follow-up in integrated compared with vertical programs providing antiretroviral treatment in sub-saharan Africa.

Vertical HIV programs have achieved good results but may not be feasible or appropriate in many resource-limited settings. Médecins sans Frontières has treated HIV in vertical programs since 2000 and over time integrated HIV treatment into general health care services using simplified protocols. We analyzed the survival probability among patients receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) from 2003 to 2010 in integrated versus vertical programs in 9 countries in sub-Saharan Africa

Amonia plasma functionalization of carbon nanotubes for supercapacitor applications

Treballs Finals de Grau de Física, Facultat de Física, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2022, Tutors: Roger Amade Rovira, Cèsar Ferrater MartorellThe modification of the surface of carbon nanotubes grown by plasma enchanced chemical vapour deposition with a plasma treatment allows the alteration of their supercapacitor properties. The modified nanotubes show a noteworthy increase in their specific capacitance from 4.2 mF up to 8.2 mF using cyclic voltammetry at a scan rate of 50 mV s−1 in a Na2SO4 solution. Furthermore, the increased capacitance of the nanotubes was also studied in galvanostatic chargedischarge experiments, which showed a capacity increment from 1.9 mF up to 3.2 mF

Nuevos escenarios para el aprendizaje cambiando las reglas del juego educativo

The pedagogical relationship in universities should change if we pretended to obtain citizens with a professional profile who are committed with the social reality. This change should be made at least on three of the various levels involved: on institutional level, on academic level and on student level. To achieve this we need to "invent" new scenarios for the educational action, deliver autonomy to the educational process and re-install a sense to the learning process. And one of the proposals that could fit in this change could be the so-called service learning, although there are surely many more to which attention should be paid. In summary, if we attend the real needs of education, there might exist the possibility that we do not throw into the abyss those marionettes of a cyclic reality of the same orthopaedic educational process, but that we point out on other forms of knowledge transfer meaning that we prefer to educate real professionals capable to transform the world and responsible for their own learning process. That way, changing the rules of the game, it might be possible to understand that our interest for the educational process is much stronger than for the institution; and that what we really want is to educate responsible individuals and not to “manufacture” talents; as what really is of interest is to unite efforts for a transformation of a society of which everyone who belongs to it should feel proud of. Everyone, because we can only achieve this pride if we are convinced that everyone counts in itLa relación pedagógica en la universidad debería cambiar si lo que pretendemos es conseguir ciudadanos profesionales comprometidos con la realidad social. Y este cambio debería hacerse, por lo menos, en tres de los niveles implicados: en la institución, en el profesorado y en el alumnado. Para conseguirlo se requiere “inventar” nuevos escenarios para la acción educativa, administrar autonomía al proceso educativo y dotar de nuevo sentido al aprendizaje. Y una de las propuestas que podría encajar en este cambio es la que viene llamándose aprendizaje servicio, aunque seguro que hay muchísimas más a las que se debería prestar mucha atención. En suma, y si atendemos a las necesidades reales de la educación, cabe la posibilidad de que no lancemos al abismo marionetas de una realidad cíclica producto del mismo proceso educativo ortopédico, sino que, apostando por otras formas de transmisión del conocimiento, demos a entender que preferimos educar auténticos profesionales capacitados para transformar el mundo y responsables de su proceso de aprendizaje. De este modo, cambiando las reglas del juego, quizá se llegue a entender que nuestro interés es mayor por el proceso educativo que por la institución; que lo que pretendemos realmente es educar individuos responsables, y no fabricar talentos; que lo que nos interesa de verdad es aunar esfuerzos para la transformación de una sociedad de la que todos nos sintamos orgullosos de formar parte. Todos, porque sólo podremos alcanzar este orgullo si nos convencemos de que todos contamo

Has Trump’s brand of populism affected International business?

Treballs Finals del Grau d'Empresa Internacional, Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2018-2019, Tutor: Patricia García­-Duran Huet(eng) This study aims to determine whether Donald Trump’s brand of populism has had a negative impact on international business. Trump is known as a populist who carries out protectionist measures and classical economic theory tells us that protectionism negatively affects international business. In view of that, the hypothesis of this work is that Trump has been bad for international business. A literature review of the impact of Trump’s policies indicates that he has provoked several trade wars and while a few domestic companies have benefited from it, the impact both on US economy and on international business has been negative. This has been the case because his policies create uncertainty.(cast) Este estudio pretende determinar si el populismo de Donald Trump ha tenido un impacto negativo en el mundo de la empresa internacional. Trump es conocido como un populista que lleva a cabo medidas proteccionistas y la teoría económica clásica demuestra que el proteccionismo afecta negativamente al mundo de la empresa internacional. En vista de esto, la hipótesis de este trabajo es que Trump ha sido malo para la empresa internacional. Un análisis de publicaciones sobre el impacto de las políticas de Trump indica que ha provocado varias guerras comerciales y que, mientras algunas empresas nacionales se han beneficiado de ello, el impacto tanto en la economía estadounidense como en el mundo de la empresa internacional ha sido negativo. Esto se ha debido a que sus políticas crean incertidumbre

El Sector català de les llavors i els planters. Una aposta per la qualitat de la producció

Fa cent anys, la Mancomunitat de Catalunya, a través dels seus serveis agraris, va contribuir a introduir la genètica vegetal a Catalunya. La Generalitat, l'any 1933, a través del Servei de Terra Campa, va començar a certificar llavors per a la sembra. Després de la Guerra Civil, a l'Estat espanyol es va començar a reglamentar la producció i el comerç de llavors i planters fins que l'any 1972 es publicà la llei de llavors. L'any 1983 la Generalitat de Catalunya obtingué la transferència sobre el control i la certificació de la producció i comerç de llavors i planters. Durant els darrers vint-i-cinc anys són moltes les empreses catalanes (algunes multinacionals) i associacions que han impulsat iniciatives per poder posar a l'abast dels pagesos llavors i planters amb garanties per poder assegurar una producció agrària de qualitat.Hace cien años, la Mancomunidad de Cataluña, a través de sus servicios agrarios, contribuyó a introducir la genética vegetal en Cataluña. La Generalidad, en 1933, a través del Servicio de Tierra Campa, comenzó a certificar semillas para la siembra. Después de la Guerra Civil, en España se empezó a reglamentar la producción y comercio de semillas y plantas de vivero y en el año 1972 se publicó la ley de semillas. En 1983 la Generalidad de Cataluña obtuvo la transferencia sobre el control y certificación de la producción y comercio de semillas y plantas de vivero y contribuyó a la adaptación europea de la legislación española. Durante los últimos veinticinco años son muchas las empresas catalanas (algunas de ellas multinacionales) y asociaciones que han impulsado iniciativas para poner al alcance de los campesinos semillas y plantas de vivero con garantías para poder asegurar una producción agraria de calidad

Challenges and opportunities with drug repurposing: finding strategies to find alternative uses of therapeutics

Drug repurposing(or repositioning) implies finding new therapeutic indications for existingdrugs (including approved, failed, discontinued and experimental drugs), andrepresents a substantial percentage of recent drug approvals, generating anestimated revenue of USD 250 billion per annum (25% of the total revenue).Accordingly, the drug discovery community is now actively engaged in organized,systematic drug repositioning.Here, we present a brief overview of the mainchallenges faced by repurposing projects, including legal and commercialbarriers, the need of tools to assimilate heterogeneous large-scale data, andthe fact that the universe of repurposing candidates is finite and expandsslowly, possibly requiring to progressively move repurposing efforts tounexplored areas of therapeutics.Opportunities within the field are alsobriefly presented, including newcollaborative models and the impact ofprecision medicine, ar also discussed.Fil: Talevi, Alan. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencas Exactas. Laboratorio de Investigación y Desarrollo de Bioactivos; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Bellera, Carolina Leticia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencas Exactas. Laboratorio de Investigación y Desarrollo de Bioactivos; Argentin

Reliability analysis of the Finnish power system

Maintaining power system security and adequacy has become more and more challenging due to the desire to decarbonize the electricity sector promoting renewable electricity. Power inadequacy occurs when the available production capacity does not suffice the demand. Finland wants to phase out coal by 2030 in a bid to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions and closures of condensing power plants are expected to affect power adequacy during high demand. The main targets of the work are to find out if the power system of Finland will be reliable by 2030, if the decommission of technologies that use traditional energy sources threat the power balance and what impacts will the introduction of renewable technologies cause on the reliability of the power system. The loss of load probability method using a daily peak load variation curve appears to be the most widely accepted technique and used more often than any other approach, where the criterion of adequacy becomes some acceptable risk level at which the load will exceed the probable available capacity. The development of the tool was made using MATLAB. Once the code was finished, first the reliability of the developed program is evaluated testing historical data of electricity consumption in Finland. The results obtained show that the designed tool is very sensitive to changes in the load duration curve, specifically sensitive to the maximum load peaks. Secondly is made a forecast of the reliability of the Finnish power system in 2030, studying how the installed capacities of each technology will change and setting three different scenarios of electricity consumption represented by different load duration curves. The final evaluation considers three cases, one in which the nuclear power plant of Hanhikivi 1 is commissioned, another in which it is not commissioned and a third one considering the unavailability of wind power installed capacity during peak load demand. First two cases give a reduction of the expected load loss in the power system for year 2030, which in the worst case is a 47% lower than the current value. This could indicate that the Finnish power system will be very reliable in the way that the electricity generating facilities will be sufficient to meet the country's electricity demand during most of the year, but in the third case the risk of power inadequacy increases alarmingly due to the intermittent nature of the renewable technologies and the decommissioning of thermal power plants