Trace elements and C and N isotope composition in two mushroom species from a mine-spill contaminated site

Fungi play a key role in the functioning of soil in terrestrial ecosystems, and in particular in the remediation of degraded soils. The contribution of fungi to carbon and nutrient cycles, along with their capability to mobilise soil trace elements, is well-known. However, the importance of life history strategy for these functions has not yet been thoroughly studied. This study explored the soil-fungi relationship of two wild edible fungi, the ectomycorrhizal Laccaria laccata and the saprotroph Volvopluteus gloiocephalus. Fruiting bodies and surrounding soils in a mine-spill contaminated area were analysed. Isotope analyses revealed Laccaria laccata fruiting bodies were 15N-enriched when compared to Volvopluteus gloiocephalus, likely due to the transfer of 15N-depleted compounds to their host plant. Moreover, Laccaria laccata fruiting bodies δ13C values were closer to host plant values than surrounding soil, while Volvopluteus gloiocephalus matched the δ13C composition to that of the soil. Fungal species presented high bioaccumulation and concentrations of Cd and Cu in their fruiting bodies. Human consumption of these fruiting bodies may represent a toxicological risk due to their elevated Cd concentrations

A quality management based on the Quality Model life cycle

Managing quality is a hard and expensive task that involves the execution and control of processes and techniques. For a good quality management, it is important to know the current state and the objective to be achieved. It is essential to take into account with a Quality Model that specifies the purposes of managing quality. QuEF (Quality Evaluation Framework) is a framework to manage quality in MDWE (Model-driven Web Engineering). This paper suggests managing quality but pointing out the Quality Model life cycle. The purpose is to converge toward a quality continuous improvement by means of reducing effort and time.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2010-20057-C03-02Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN 2010-12312-EJunta de Andalucía TIC-578

Childcare constraints on immigrant integration

Si bien la maternidad es una de las principales causas de la persistencia de las brechas de género, su impacto en la creciente proporción de madres inmigrantes en Europa es menos conocido. Este artículo se pregunta cómo afecta la carga del cuidado de los hijos a la integración de las inmigrantes en el mercado laboral. Para identificar su contribución a la brecha de empleo entre nativas e inmigrantes, esta investigación analiza los microdatos de la Encuesta Europea de Población Activa (EU-LFS, por sus siglas en inglés) entre 2004 y 2019. La EU-LFS recoge información sobre el comportamiento contrafactual de las encuestadas si: a) no tuvieran responsabilidades de cuidado; b) pudieran encontrar un trabajo compatible con ellas, o c) tuvieran acceso a servicios de cuidado de sus hijos. Esta información permite obtener estimaciones del impacto del cuidado en la oferta de trabajo comparables entre once países. Nuestros resultados muestran que la carga del cuidado de los hijos es el principal obstáculo para la integración de las madres inmigrantes. Mientras que la brecha de empleo entre las madres inmigrantes no comunitarias y las nativas en el norte y el sur de Europa es de 35 y 17 puntos porcentuales (pp), respectivamente, la inactividad motivada por el cuidado de los hijos explica dos tercios (24 pp y 12 pp) de esta. Rechazamos la hipótesis de que la diferencia en el cuidado de los hijos se deba únicamente a los rasgos sociodemográficos de las inmigrantes o a las normas tradicionales de cuidado. Nuestras estimaciones sugieren que al menos una cuarta parte (5,8 pp y 2,6 pp) de la brecha se debe al mayor coste de oportunidad del trabajo remunerado al que se enfrentan las madres inmigrantes; que la igualdad de acceso al cuidado de los hijos podría reducirla en 10 pp y 7 pp, y que la exclusión de las inmigrantes de los acuerdos de tiempo flexible podría explicar la mayor y más persistente brecha en el norte. Este trabajo contribuye a la literatura sobre la integración de la población inmigrante; destaca que la penalización de los hijos es el principal obstáculo para la oferta de trabajo de las mujeres inmigrantes. Las diferencias en la forma en que las sociedades europeas manejan la carga del cuidado pueden explicar sus registros en la integración de los hogares de los inmigrantes, lo que sugiere que las políticas familiares podrían ser fundamentales en la combinación de políticas de integración e incluso influir en la propia decisión de emigrar.While motherhood is one of the main reasons for the persistence of gender gaps, its impact on the rising share of immigrant mothers in Europe is less well understood. This paper asks how the burden of childcare affects the labor market integration of immigrants. To identify the contribution of this burden to the native-immigrant employment gap, it exploits European Labor Force Survey (EU-LFS) microdata from 2004 to 2019. This survey collects information on respondents’ counterfactual behaviour, in the event that: a) they had no care responsibilities; b) they could find a job compatible with their care responsibilities; c) they had access to childcare services. This information allows estimates to be obtained of the impact of childcare on labor supply comparable across eleven countries. Our results show that the burden of childcare is the major obstacle to the integration of immigrant mothers. While the employment gap between non-EU immigrant and native mothers in Northern and Southern Europe is 35 and 17 percentage points (pp) respectively, two-thirds (24 pp and 12 pp) of it is explained by childcare motivated inactivity. We reject the hypothesis that the childcare gap is solely driven by immigrants’ sociodemographic traits or traditional parenting norms. Our estimates suggest that at least a quarter (5.8 pp and 2.6 pp) of the gap is due to the higher opportunity cost of paid work faced by immigrant mothers; that equal access to childcare could reduce it by 10 pp and 7 pp; and that immigrants’ exclusion from flexible time arrangements could explain the larger size and higher persistence of the gap in the North

Seasonal copula models for the analysis of glacier discharge at King George Island, Antarctica

Modelling glacier discharge is an important issue in hydrology and climate research. Glaciers represent a fundamental water resource when melting of snow contributes to runoff. Glaciers are also studied as natural global warming sensors. GLACKMA association has implemented one of their Pilot Experimental Watersheds at the King George Island in the Antarctica which records values of the liquid discharge from Collins glacier. In this paper, we propose the use of time-varying copula models for analyzing the relationship between air temperature and glacier discharge, which is clearly non constant and non linear through time. A seasonal copula model is defined where both the marginal and copula parameters vary periodically along time following a seasonal dynamic. Full Bayesian inference is performed such that the marginal and copula parameters are estimated in a one single step, in contrast with the usual twostep approach. Bayesian prediction and model selection is also carried out for the proposed model such that Bayesian credible intervals can be obtained for the conditional glacier discharge given a value of the temperature at any given time point. The proposed methodology is illustrated using the GLACKMA real data where there is, in addition, a hydrological year of missing discharge data which were not possible to measure accurately due to hard meteorological conditions

Quantum chaos in the mesoscopic device for the Josephson flux qubit

We show that the three-junction SQUID device designed for the Josephson flux qubit can be used to study quantum chaos when operated at high energies. In the parameter region where the system is classically chaotic we analyze the spectral statistics. The nearest neighbor distributions $P(s)$ are well fitted by the Berry Robnik theory employing as free parameters the pure classical measures of the chaotic and regular regions of phase space in the different energy regions. The phase space representation of the wave functions is obtained via the Husimi distributions and the localization of the states on classical structures is analyzed.Comment: Final version, to be published in Phys. Rev. B. References added, introduction and conclusions improve

Vine copula models for predicting water flow discharge at King George Island, Antarctica

[EN]In order to understand the behavior of the glaciers, their mass balance should be studied. The loss of water produced by melting, known as glacier discharge, is one of the components of this mass balance. In this paper, a vine copula structure is proposed to model the multivariate and nonlinear dependence among the glacier discharge and other related meteorological variables such as temperature, humidity, solar radiation and precipitation. The multivariate distribution of these variables is expressed as a mixture of four components according to the presence or not of positive discharge and/or positive precipitation. Then, each of the four subgroups is modelled with a vine copula. The conditional probability of zero discharge for given meteorological conditions is obtained from the proposed joint distribution. Moreover, the structure of the vine copula allows us to derive the conditional distribution of the glacier discharge for the given meteorological conditions. Three different prediction methods for the values of the discharge are used and compared. The proposed methodology is applied to a large database collected since 2002 by the GLACKMA association from a measurement station located in the King George Island in the Antarctica. Seasonal effects are included by using different parameters for each season. We have found that the proposed vine copula model outperforms a previous work where we only used the temperature to predict the glacier discharge using a time-varying bivariate copula

Iron Metabolism in Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome

Obesity is an excessive adipose tissue accumulation that may have detrimental effects on health. Particularly, childhood obesity has become one of the main public health problems in the 21st century, since its prevalence has widely increased in recent years. Childhood obesity is intimately related to the development of several comorbidities such as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, dyslipidemia, type 2 diabetes mellitus, non-congenital cardiovascular disease, chronic inflammation and anemia, among others. Within this tangled interplay between these comorbidities and associated pathological conditions, obesity has been closely linked to important perturbations in iron metabolism. Iron is the second most abundant metal on Earth, but its bioavailability is hampered by its ability to form highly insoluble oxides, with iron deficiency being the most common nutritional disorder. Although every living organism requires iron, it may also cause toxic oxygen damage by generating oxygen free radicals through the Fenton reaction. Thus, iron homeostasis and metabolism must be tightly regulated in humans at every level (i.e., absorption, storage, transport, recycling). Dysregulation of any step involved in iron metabolism may lead to iron deficiencies and, eventually, to the anemic state related to obesity. In this review article, we summarize the existent evidence on the role of the most recently described components of iron metabolism and their alterations in obesity