Smart Agro-Services in the Farm-Oriented Open Data in Europe (FOODIE) Platform: Insights from the Automatic Delimitation of Management Zones

Farm-Oriented Open Data in Europe (FOODIE) will provide specific and high-value applications and services for the support in the planning and decision-making processes of farmers and other stakeholders groups related to the agricultural and environmental domains. This paper focuses on FOODIE services based on machine learning algorithms and other artificial intelligence techniques providing, for instance, forecasting models to predict crop diseases or proposing management zones by means of clustering homogeneous zones of land. In particular, the service for the automatic delimitation of management zones is reviewed and tested in a case study. The results show the great potential of this smart agro-service for land classification.</jats:p

Critical phenomena of thick branes in warped spacetimes

We have investigated the effects of a generic bulk first-order phase transition on thick Minkowski branes in warped geometries. As occurs in Euclidean space, when the system is brought near the phase transition an interface separating two ordered phases splits into two interfaces with a disordered phase in between. A remarkable and distinctive feature is that the critical temperature of the phase transition is lowered due to pure geometrical effects. We have studied a variety of critical exponents and the evolution of the transverse-traceless sector of the metric fluctuations.Comment: revtex4, 4 pages, 4 figures, some comments added, typos corrected, published in PR

Clutch size in great tits (Parus major) in orange-groves of Valencia and in the holm oak forest of Monte Poblet (Tarragona)

La estación de nidificación del Carbonero Común (Parus major) en la franja mediterránea ibérica comienza en abril y finaliza en julio. No obstante, la fecha media de puesta es diferente en distintas localidades. El tamaño medio de la puesta gira en torno a los 7 huevos por nido en las localidades estudiadas. Este valor es diferente del tamaño de la puesta al norte de los Pirineos y en regiones más occidentales de la Península Ibérica.In the Iberian Mediterranean area, the Great Tit's breeding season starts in April and finishes in July, but the mean laying date differs in different areas. The mean clutch size is about 7 eggs in the study sites. This values is significantly lower than mean clutch size both in more northern localities and in Salamanca (western Spain)

WASPSS: A Clinical Decision Support System for Antimicrobial Stewardship

The increase of infections caused by resistant bacteria has become one of the major health-care problems worldwide. The creation of multidisciplinary teams dedicated to the implementation of antimicrobial stewardship programmes (ASPs) is encouraged by all clinical institutions to cope with this problem. In this chapter, we describe the Wise Antimicrobial Stewardship Program Support System (WASPSS), a CDSS focused on providing support for ASP teams. WASPSS gathers the required information from other hospital systems in order to provide decision support in antimicrobial stewardship from both patient-centered and global perspectives. To achieve this, it combines business intelligence techniques with a rule-based inference engine to integrate the data and knowledge required in this scenario. The system provides functions such as alerts, recommendations, antimicrobial prescription support and global surveillance. Furthermore, it includes experimental modules for improving the adoption of clinical guidelines and applying prediction models related with antimicrobial resistance. All these functionalities are provided through a multi-user web interface, personalized for each role of the ASP team

Characterization of bacteriophages infecting clinical isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa stored in a culture collection

Some clinical isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa stored in our culture collection did not grow or grew poorly and showed lysis on the culture plates when removed from the collection and inoculated on MacConkey agar. One hypothesis was that bacteriophages had infected and killed those clinical isolates. To check the best storage conditions to maintain viable P. aeruginosa for a longer time, clinical isolates were stored at various temperatures and were grown monthly. We investigated the presence of phage in 10 clinical isolates of P. aeruginosa stored in our culture collection. Four strains of P. aeruginosa were infected by phages that were characterized by electron microscopy and isolated to assess their ability to infect. The best condition to maintain the viability of the strains during storage was in water at room temperature. Three Siphoviridae and two Myoviridae phages were visualized and characterized by morphology. We confirmed the presence of bacteriophages infecting clinical isolates, and their ability to infect and lyse alternative hosts. Strain PAO1, however, did not show lysis to any phage. Mucoid and multidrug resistant strains of P. aeruginosa showed lysis to 50% of the phages tested.Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP) Divisao de Doencas Infecciosas Laboratorio Especial de Microbiologia ClinicaInstituto Adolfo Lutz Nucleo de Microscopia EletronicaUNIFESP, Divisao de Doencas Infecciosas Laboratorio Especial de Microbiologia ClinicaSciEL

Development and characterization of an eggplant (Solanum melongena) doubled haploid population and a doubled haploid line with high androgenic response

[EN] We developed an eggplant doubled haploid (DH) population from a commercial hybrid through androgenesis in microspore culture. Morphological variation, reproductive ability and androgenic responsiveness were evaluated. The DH population showed segregation in vegetative traits related to leaf, flower and fruit, and in reproductive traits such as fruit and seed setting or germination rate. The DH population and subsequent generations also presented variation in the androgenic response, with null, low and high response lines. From this population, we were able to identify the first eggplant highly androgenic DH line (DH36), remarkably similar to the donor hybrid in terms of morphology and reproductive ability, but stably producing four times more calli than the hybrid. The segregating DH population is potentially useful for genetic studies and mapping of several traits, whereas the highly androgenic line DH36 may be used as a model line to facilitate the study of eggplant androgenesis and embryogenesis for both basic and applied research.We would like to thank the reviewers of this manuscript for their critical and helpful comments. This work was supported by Grant AGL2014-55177-R to JMSS from Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO) jointly funded by FEDER. ARS is supported by a Predoctoral Fellowship from the FPI Program of Universitat Politecnica de Valencia.Rivas-Sendra, A.; Manuel Campos-Vega; Calabuig-Serna, A.; Seguí-Simarro, JM. (2017). Development and characterization of an eggplant (Solanum melongena) doubled haploid population and a doubled haploid line with high androgenic response. 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Effects of an internal sulfate attack and an alkali-aggregate reaction in a concrete dam

The alkali-aggregate reaction and the internal sulfate attack are two chemical reactions that lead to expansions in concrete structures. The former is one of the main causes of expansions in concrete dams and has been extensively reported in the literature, whereas the latter is less common and, thus, less studied. The confluence of both reactions in one structure is highly unlikely but still possible as shown by the case of the dam studied in this paper. This gravity dam exhibits significantly high non-recoverable displacements that may only be justified by the superposition of both phenomena. This paper focuses on the study of a concrete dam whose diagnosis hypotheses have changed throughout the years according to evolution of the behavior observed. The hypotheses proposed in the study are validated by conducting numerical analyses through 3D and 2D finite element models. The results confirmed the diagnosis proposed and the capability of the model to reproduce the behavior of the dam

Structural diagnosis of a concrete dam with cracking and high nonrecoverable displacements

Expansions in concrete dams may be caused by chemical or physical sources; however, in certain occasions the evidences observed in the dam may not be attributed to a single cause. Mequinenza is an example of a concrete dam affected by expansions and high nonrecoverable displacements that cannot be explained by the most frequent pathologies. This paper presents new hypotheses that could justify such behavior by assuming the superposition of a global phenomenon of water induced expansion in concrete in the entire dam and a localized effect consisting in the opening of cracks in the construction joints located in one of the blocks. This is validated by conducting numerical analyses through 2D finite element models that consider the nonlinear behavior of the construction joints and use zero-thickness interface elements to simulate the potential cracking planes in the dam. The results confirmed the diagnosis proposed and the capability of the model to reproduce the behavior of the dam, revealing the significant contribution of the opening of the cracks to the non-recoverable displacements in the dam

Microrna-21 and colorectal cancer

Introducción. Los microRNAs son estructuras moleculares con actividad post-transcripcional que están implicados en la regulación de la expresión genética. Diversos estudios ponen de manifiesto la participación de los microRNAs con distintas funciones fisiológicas, así como con el proceso de la oncogénesis. La expresión de los microRNAs puede verse alterada en las neoplasias por su interacción bien con los genes supresores de tumores, bien con los oncogenes. Discusión. Llevamos a cabo una revisión de la literatura sobre el microRNA-21, poniendo de manifiesto la evidencia existente entre el microRNA-21 y la enfermedad neoplásica, de forma especial con el cáncer colorrectal. Conclusiones. El estado actual de los microRNAs hace necesario continuar con la investigación existente entre la etiopatogenia de las neoplasias y los microRNAs. El conocimiento de la verdadera implicación de los microRNAs en la fisiopatología de la enfermedad neoplásica, permitirá ampliar las supuestas aplicaciones clínicas del miR-21 no sólo a la determinación del pronóstico del cáncer colorrectal, sino también desde el punto de vista diagnóstico al poder diferenciar las lesiones de la mucosa colónicaIntroduction. MicroRNAs are molecular structures with post-transcriptional activity, involved in the gene expression regulation. Several studies have demonstrated the involvement of microRNAs in different physiological functions, as well as in the oncogenesis process. The expression of microRNAs may be altered in the tumors by either interaction with tumor suppressor genes or oncogenes. Discussion. A review of the medical literature on microRNA-21 has been conducted, showing the evidence between microRNA-21 and neoplastic disease, specially with colorectal cancer. Conclusion. The current status of microRNAs makes necessary to continue the investigation of the pathogenesis of cancer and microRNAs. The knowledge of the involvement of microRNAs in the pathophysiology of neoplastic disease, will allow to extend the supposed clinical applications of miR-21 not only to the determination of the prognosis of colorectal cancer, but also for the differential diagnosis of processes of colonic mucosa

Using elephant movements to assess landscape connectivity under Peninsular Malaysia's central forest spine land use policy

One of the most vital and urgent global conservation challenges is to deal with the loss and fragmentation of wildlife habitats, particularly for large‐bodied and wide‐ranging terrestrial megafauna. The Central Forest Spine Master Plan for Ecological Linkages (CFS) was developed by the Malaysian Federal Government in 2010 to protect biodiversity and ecosystem services by securing landscape connectivity between Peninsular Malaysia's main forest blocks. Here we present an evaluation of the effectiveness of the CFS master plan to promote functional connectivity for Asian elephants, one of its focal species. The specific objectives of our study were to identify the most critical forest patches to maintain connectivity for elephants in Peninsular Malaysia, assess functional connectivity within the CFS ecological linkages, and identify alternative corridors where appropriate to enhance CFS effectiveness. We used the largest animal movement dataset in Peninsular Malaysia (220,000 GPS locations from 53 elephants) to develop models of elephant movement probability and to estimate landscape resistance using step selection functions based on landscape characteristics. According to our evaluation of 28 linkages, 57% of them provided high functional connectivity, 28% provided acceptable connectivity, and 14% provided low to no connectivity. A very important and positive finding is that the CFS linkages with the highest centrality values (i.e., the most important to maintain overall connectivity in Peninsular Malaysia) also score highly in functional connectivity (i.e., they are actually effective corridors for elephant movement). This means that an adequate CFS implementation can lead to high levels of functional connectivity among Peninsular Malaysia's main forest blocks. Based on our assessment, we recommend to conduct some revisions on the CFS plan to ensure its effectiveness