Short-term growth and biomechanical responses of the temperate seagrass Cymodocea nodosa to CO2 enrichment

Seagrasses are often regarded as climate change 'winners' because they exhibit higher rates of photosynthesis, carbon fixation and growth when exposed to increasing levels of ocean acidification. However, questions remain whether such growth enhancement compromises the biomechanical properties of the plants, altering their vulnerability to structural damage and leaf loss. Here, we investigated the short-term (6 wk) effects of decreasing pH by CO2 enrichment on the growth, morphology and leaf-breaking force of the temperate seagrass Cymodocea nodosa. We found that the plant biomass balance under levels of acidification representative of short-term climate change projections (pH 8.04) was positive and led to an increase in leaf abundance in the shoots. However, we also found that plant biomass balance was negative under levels of acidification experienced presently (pH 8.29) and those projected over the long-term (pH 7.82). Leaf morphology (mean leaf length, thickness and width) was invariant across our imposed acidification gradient, although leaves were slightly stronger under [CO2] representative of short-term climate change. Taken together, these findings indicate that a subtle increase in growth and mechanical resistance of C. nodosa is likely to occur following short-to medium-term changes in ocean chemistry, but that these positive effects are unlikely to be maintained over the longer term. Our study emphasises the need to account for the interdependencies between environmental conditions and variations in multiple aspects of the structure and functioning of seagrass communities when considering the likely consequences of climate change.Mobility Fellowships Programme of the EuroMarine Consortium (European Commission Seventh Framework Programme) [FP7-ENV-2010.2.2.1-3]; Foundation of Science and Technology of Portugal [SFRH/BPD/119344/2016, PTDC/MAR-EST/3223/2014]; Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) through the UK Ocean Acidification Research Programme (UKOARP) [NE/H017445/1]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Ressenyes

Index de les obres ressenyades: Ana M. LÓPEZ SALA ; Lorenzo CACHÓN, Juventud e inmigración. Desafíos para la participación y para la integración. Dirección General de Juventud de la Consejería de Empleo y Asuntos Sociales del Gobierno de Canarias, 2007

Máximo DÍAZ CASANOVA. El cambio social planificado y la cultura. El desarrolla social en las zonas ruralmente deprimidas.

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Juan Luis RECIO ADRADOS y Orlando RODRÍGUEZ.. Conducta antisocial violencia y drogas en la escuela .

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First and second language visual word recognition : neighbourhood effects in Spanish and English

Current models of visual word recognition assume that the recognition of a stimulus word is affected by orthographically similar words (orthographic neighbourhood). In this thesis I explore the effects of neighbourhood on monolingual and bilingual word recognition. In particular I study the influence of Word Frequency, Neighbourhood Size (N) and Neighbourhood Frequency (NF) in English and Spanish lexical processing. N refers to the number of real words that can be created from a given word by changing one letter at a time while preserving letter position. NF refers to the frequency of the neighbours in relation to the frequency of the target word. There is a great deal of controversy as to whether orthographic neighbours facilitate or inhibit lexical processing and whether neighbourhood effects are consistent across languages. These questions are examined in four experiments carried out within the lexical decision paradigm.Experiment 1 investigates the effects of Word Frequency, N and NF with English stimuli and twenty-four English native speakers. Latency differences are not statistically reliable, but they show a tendency for both N and NF to be facilitative of lexical processing. Experiment 2 examines the same variables with Spanish stimuli and sixty-three Spanish native speakers. Data reveals null effects of N and reliable inhibitory effects of NF, with an interaction of NF with Word Frequency. In Spanish having higher frequency neighbours seems to delay lexical decision times, and this effect appears to be stronger for low frequency words. Experiment 3 explores neighbourhood effects in eighty bilingual speakers of English and Spanish with bilingual stimuli presented in two language blocks. General results show null effects of N and significant inhibitory effects of NF. Results by target language show reliable facilitative effects of N in English and highly robust inhibitory effects of NF in Spanish. Experiment 4 further investigates effects of NF in a cross-language lexical decision task with semantic translation) priming done with sixty-four bilingual speakers of English and Spanish. The purpose of the experiment is to examine the strength of cross-language priming effects under four NF conditions (NF Leaders and Nonleaders, for targets and primes). Data shows reliable priming effects in both language directions, LI to L2 and L2 to LI. Data also exhibits significant interaction between language and the priming influence of NF Leader primes and NF Nonleaders primes.The results of these experiments are discussed in the light of current experimental research and in terms of contemporary models of monolingual and bilingual lexical representation. Further questions for future research are outlined

Towards hand biometrics in mobile devices

The increasing demand of security oriented to mobile applications has raised the attention to biometrics, as a proper and suitable solution for providing secure environment to mobile devices. With this aim, this document presents a biometric system based on hand geometry oriented to mobile devices, involving a high degree of freedom in terms of illumination, hand rotation and distance to camera. The user takes a picture of their own hand in the free space, without requiring any flat surface to locate the hand, and without removals of rings, bracelets or watches. The proposed biometric system relies on an accurate segmentation procedure, able to isolate hands from any background; a feature extraction, invariant to orientation, illumination, distance to camera and background; and a user classification, based on k-Nearest Neighbor approach, able to provide an accurate results on individual identification. The proposed method has been evaluated with two own databases collected with a HTC mobile. First database contains 120 individuals, with 20 acquisitions of both hands. Second database is a synthetic database, containing 408000 images of hand samples in different backgrounds: tiles, grass, water, sand, soil and the like. The system is able to identify individuals properly with False Reject Rate of 5.78% and False Acceptance Rate of 0.089%, using 60 features (15 features per finger

The relationship of perceived social support with subjective well-being and quality of life among inmates

Incarceration in a prison causes drastic changes in the lives of inmates, forcing them to adapt their personal resources, in order to deal with emotional challenges, as well as new social and institutional rules. The adaptation process gains efficiency when there is effective social support (SS), allowing for better quality of life (QOL) for inmates. Subjective well-being (SWB) and, above all, positive affective experiences have a positive and cumulative influence on the individuals’ well-being, having an important role in improving QOL. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between perceived social support (PSS) and SWB and QOL in inmates. The sample consists of 55 male inmates from two regional prisons in northern Portugal, with a mean age of 41 years. The instruments used were the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule and the WHO Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOLBREF). From the legal-criminal profile, most inmates are primary, with prison time of 1 to 5 years, and a sentence to still be completed of between 2 and 5 years, they have a reasonable relationship with other inmates and a very good relationship with the prison staff. A significant correlation was found between PSS of significant others with all dimensions of QOL, between PSS and QOL, and between the total dimension of SWB and the general and psychological dimensions of QOL. The PSS is lower than that of the general population and inmates with greater PSS experience positive affect more frequently. Data is discussed and implications for working with inmates in prison are suggested.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Procesos biocatalíticos para la producción de carbohidratos bioactivos: fructooligosacáridos y quitooligosacáridos

Tesis Doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Biología Molecular. Fecha de lectura: 14-07-2017Esta tesis tiene embargado el acceso al texto completo hasta el 14-01-201

SÁNCHEZ PARDO, L. (1994). La evaluación de la efectividad de los programas de atención a drogodependientes en la empresa. Madrid: MAPFRE. Y otros.

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Pedestrian Road Accident Index for Municipalities: The Portuguese Case

Portuguese road traffic accidents statistics show that the number of accidents with fatalities and serious injuries has in general decreased in recent years. However, the number of accidents involving pedestrians is still high when compared with those observed in other countries of the European Union. In order to assess this problem, an index of pedestrian road traffic accidents for municipalities that could be used in decision-making about pedestrian safety measures is proposed. The use of absolute values of accidents involving pedestrians (running over) does not allow itself a reliable comparison of pedestrian safety level between municipalities. In this sense, the approach proposed uses the information available in the Portuguese database PORDATA to calculate a municipal index that takes into account the degree of exposure of pedestrians to accident, based on national and municipal resident population annual growth rates and number of pedestrian's casualties. This index allows to identify the municipalities with unfavourable deviation to national numbers of road accidents involving pedestrians (per 10000 inhabitants), supporting the plan and allocation of human and economic resources for the diagnosis, definition and implementation of safety measures. The results obtained can be visualized in a GIS for a more comprehensive comparison between municipalities. The analyses performed for Portugal showed that, in general, municipalities with higher resident population annual growth rates, located mostly along the coastline and in more consolidated urban areas, tend to present better index values, which points to the need to intervene in less consolidated areas.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio