Effects of Irrigation and Cluster Thinning on Tempranillo Grape and Wine Composition

With the aim of understanding the effects of water stress and cluster load on berry composition andwine quality, a four-year field test was conducted in a cv. Tempranillo vineyard in Extremadura (Spain).When the first berries appeared to be changing colour (onset of véraison), grapevines were subjected totwo different irrigation regimes, one supplying 100% of crop evapotranspiration, and the other 25%.In addition, two cluster load levels were tested for each irrigation regime: seven to nine and four to fiveclusters/m2 planting area. Both irrigation and thinning had an impact on most of the parameters analysedin the grapes and the wines, although the thinning effect was in general higher than the irrigation effect.Thus, deficit irrigation reduced malic acid and the titratable acidity of Tempranillo grape juice, whilecluster thinning increased all parameters analysed, except potassium concentrations. Similarly, the winecomposition was also affected differently by irrigation and by cluster thinning. Deficit irrigation reducedpH and increased titratable acidity, total phenol index and colour parameters, while cluster thinningincreased alcohol content, anthocyanin and colour intensity, and reduced pH and colour. The effect ofthe cluster thinning technique was independent of the irrigation regime in most of the wine parametersanalysed, except for total phenol index, where the effect of deficit irrigation (DI) was more pronounced ingrapevines also subjected to the cluster thinning treatment

Volume-preserving normal forms of Hopf-zero singularity

A practical method is described for computing the unique generator of the algebra of first integrals associated with a large class of Hopf-zero singularity. The set of all volume-preserving classical normal forms of this singularity is introduced via a Lie algebra description. This is a maximal vector space of classical normal forms with first integral; this is whence our approach works. Systems with a non-zero condition on their quadratic parts are considered. The algebra of all first integrals for any such system has a unique (modulo scalar multiplication) generator. The infinite level volume-preserving parametric normal forms of any non-degenerate perturbation within the Lie algebra of any such system is computed, where it can have rich dynamics. The associated unique generator of the algebra of first integrals are derived. The symmetry group of the infinite level normal forms are also discussed. Some necessary formulas are derived and applied to appropriately modified R\"{o}ssler and generalized Kuramoto--Sivashinsky equations to demonstrate the applicability of our theoretical results. An approach (introduced by Iooss and Lombardi) is applied to find an optimal truncation for the first level normal forms of these examples with exponentially small remainders. The numerically suggested radius of convergence (for the first integral) associated with a hypernormalization step is discussed for the truncated first level normal forms of the examples. This is achieved by an efficient implementation of the results using Maple

Typology of Firms Innovating in Products and Processes in a European Peripheral Region

El gap de conocimiento sobre el proceso de innovación en regiones económica y tecnológicamente menos desarrolladas o periféricas ha perjudicado el impacto económico esperado de las medidas de fomento innovador en estas regiones. El objetivo principal del presente trabajo es caracterizar a la empresa innovadora respecto a la empresa que no innova en Andalucía, una importante región española y una de las principales regiones periféricas de la Unión Europea. Para el trabajo empírico se ha utilizado una encuesta realizada a 430 empresas andaluzas de cuatro sectores productivos, tecnológicos y no tecnológicos, distinguiendo entre la innovación en productos y la innovación en procesos. El análisis de la tipología revela rasgos comunes asociados al tipo de innovación. Así, la organización que innova en productos se caracteriza por el desarrollo de una capacidad innovadora donde las fuentes de conocimiento interno predominan sobre las fuentes externas. Por su parte, la organización que innova en procesos fundamenta su capacidad innovadora en el conocimiento interno y en ciertas fuentes externas.The knowledge gap on the innovative process in economically and technologically less developed or peripheral regions has harmed the expected economic impact of innovative measures in these regions. The main objective of this paper is to characterise innovative firms in contrast with non-innovating companies in Andalusia, an important Spanish region and one of the main peripheral regions of the European Union. For the empirical research, a survey on 430 Andalusian firms from four technological and non-technological sectors was carried out, distinguishing between product innovation and process innovation. The analysis of the typology reveals common features associated with each type of innovation. Thus, the organization that innovates in products is characterised by the development of an innovative capacity where the sources of internal knowledge predominate over external sources. On the other hand, the organization that innovates in processes bases its innovative capacity on internal knowledge and on certain external source

Detection of Changes in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems using Multiresolution Entropy

Projet PROMATHRésumé disponible dans le fichier PD

MICROBIAL PROCESSING OF ORGANIC WASTE STREAMS INTO PHAs AND OTHER HIGH VALUE BIO-PRODUCTS

In the last years, economic and environmental concerns arose for oil shortage and climate change; for these reasons the scientific community focused on possible oil substitutes. In this perspectives, the production of new energy, materials and chemicals of non-fossil origin, could be based on biological resources such as biomasses. The efforts of the microbiology group of DAFNAE are mainly devoted to the exploitation of waste and residual biomasses for the production of high value bio-products such as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), bioethanol and biohydrogen. PHAs are today considered among the most promising substitutes for petrol-based plastics nevertheless their substitution over the conventional plastics is limited by their expensive manufacturing because of the costly raw materials used as carbon sources and the complex downstream phase of PHAs recovery from bacterial cells. Possible solutions could be i) the utilization of cheap wastes of agro-food origin as carbon sources and ii) the simplification of downstream purification processes. To these aims, Cupriavidus necator DSM545, a well-known PHAs accumulator, has been genetically modified in order to acquire the ability of metabolizing lactose from whey (dairy industry) or lipids (from slaughterhouse) and the capacity to produce nuclease to facilitate downstream processes. In the first case, the modified strains resulted able to grow using whey or lipids as carbon sources, accumulating up to 30 and 60% of PHAs, respectively. In the second case, the recombinant C. necator DSM 545 resulted in an effective decrease of viscosity of bacterial cells lysates, thus avoiding the use of costly commercial nucleases for an efficient downstream. Bioethanol is a fuel obtained from renewable resources and it could be a promising alternative to petrol fuels. First generation bioethanol is mainly produced from corn and sugarcane, thus conflicting with food and feed production . On the contrary, bioethanol from residual and lignocellulosic biomass has environmental impact lower than fossil fuels and would not threaten food supplies. Unfortunately, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the yeast used for industrial bioethanol production, is not equipped with suitable hydrolytic activities and thus cannot directly utilize starchy and lignocellulosic wastes as feedstock without the use of commercial enzymes. Recent studies were focused to develop a \u201cConsolidated bioprocessing\u201d (CBP), approach where a single yeast is able to hydrolyse starch and lignocellulose and ferment the resulting sugars into ethanol. . With this purpose, novel and robust S. cerevisiae strains were recently engineered at DAFNAE to secrete efficient cellulases and amylases for the efficient saccharification and fermentation of starchy and cellulosic by-products up to 65 g/L ethanol

Differentiation of hematopoietic stem cell and myeloid populations by ATP is modulated by cytokines

Extracellular nucleotides are emerging as important regulators of inflammation, cell proliferation and differentiation in a variety of tissues, including the hematopoietic system. In this study, the role of ATP was investigated during murine hematopoiesis. ATP was able to reduce the percentage of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), common myeloid progenitors and granulocyte–macrophage progenitors (GMPs), whereas differentiation into megakaryocyte–erythroid progenitors was not affected. In addition, in vivo administration of ATP to mice reduced the number of GMPs, but increased the number of Gr-1+Mac-1+ myeloid cells. ATP also induced an increased proliferation rate and reduced Notch expression in HSCs and impaired HSC-mediated bone marrow reconstitution in sublethally irradiated mice. Moreover, the effects elicited by ATP were inhibited by suramin, a P2 receptor antagonist, and BAPTA, an intracellular Ca2+ chelator. We further investigated whether the presence of cytokines might modulate the observed ATP-induced differentiation. Treatment of cells with cytokines (stem cell factor, interleukin-3 and granulocyte–monocyte colony stimulator factor) before ATP stimulation led to reduced ATP-dependent differentiation in long-term bone marrow cultures, thereby restoring the ability of HSCs to reconstitute hematopoiesis. Thus, our data suggest that ATP induces the differentiation of murine HSCs into the myeloid lineage and that this effect can be modulated by cytokines

Crystal Structure of Crataeva tapia Bark Protein (CrataBL) and Its Effect in Human Prostate Cancer Cell Lines

A protein isolated from the bark of Crataeva tapia (CrataBL) is both a Kunitz-type plant protease inhibitor and a lectin. We have determined the amino acid sequence and three-dimensional structure of CrataBL, as well as characterized its selected biochemical and biological properties. We found two different isoforms of CrataBL isolated from the original source, differing in positions 31 (Pro/Leu); 92 (Ser/Leu); 93 (Ile/Thr); 95 (Arg/Gly) and 97 (Leu/Ser). CrataBL showed relatively weak inhibitory activity against trypsin (K-iapp = 43 mu M) and was more potent against Factor Xa (K-iapp = 8.6 mu M), but was not active against a number of other proteases. We have confirmed that CrataBL contains two glycosylation sites and forms a dimer at high concentration. The high-resolution crystal structures of two different crystal forms of isoform II verified the beta-trefoil fold of CrataBL and have shown the presence of dimers consisting of two almost identical molecules making extensive contacts (similar to 645 angstrom(2)). The structure differs from those of the most closely related proteins by the lack of the N-terminal beta-hairpin. In experiments aimed at investigating the biological properties of CrataBL, we have shown that addition of 40 mM of the protein for 48 h caused maximum growth inhibition in MTT assay (47% of DU145 cells and 43% of PC3 cells). The apoptosis of DU145 and PC3 cell lines was confirmed by flow cytometry using Annexin V/FITC and propidium iodide staining. Treatment with CrataBL resulted in the release of mitochondrial cytochrome c and in the activation of caspase-3 in DU145 and PC3 cells