Tipología de las zonas regables de la demarcación hidrográfica del Guadalquivir

La agricultura de regadío en la Demarcación Hidrográfica del Guadalquivir (DHG) ha sufrido un importante proceso de cambio en las últimas dos décadas, caracterizado fundamentalmente por la irrupción del olivar y la modernización de las zonas regables. Ello ha resultado en un aumento de la superficie regada, que prácticamente se ha doblado hasta sobrepasar ampliamente las 800.000 ha, y en el consecuente incremento de la demanda de agua. Estos cambios, entre otros, no han hecho sino enriquecer la variedad de sistemas agrarios de regadío que conviven en la DHG y que pueden presentar características diferenciales. Este contexto de cambio justifica la necesidad de actualizar el conocimiento de estos sistemas. En consecuencia, en el presente trabajo se propone una tipología de las zonas regables de la DHG. Para ello se ha utilizado el Inventario de Regadíos de 2008, empleándose como unidad básica de agrupación las unidades de agregación de recintos (UAs), que componen dicho inventario, y como variables de agrupación, las variables estructurales y de distribución de cultivos de estas unidades. De esta forma, se ha obtenido una tipología que muestra cinco grupos internamente homogéneos y diferentes entre sí, y que capta a su vez la esencia del proceso de cambio mencionado. Por consiguiente, esta tipología se revela como una herramienta útil para su empleo en análisis dirigidos al apoyo de toma de decisiones, básicamente relativas a políticas públicas (tanto hidrológica como agraria), encaminados hacia una mejor gobernanza del regadío en la DHG

Unraveling determinants of inferred and stated attribute non-attendance: effects on farmers’ willingness to accept to join agri-environmental schemes

Attribute non-attendance (ANA) has received very little attention in the context of willingness to accept (WTA), although an increasing number of studies analyze the preferences of ecosystem service providers towards incentive-based schemes. We add to the understanding of ANA behavior by analyzing stated and inferred ANA in a choice experiment investigating farmers’ WTA for participating in agri-environmental schemes (AES) in southern Spain. We use mixed logit models, following Hess and Hensher (2010) for the inferred ANA approach. Evidence is found of ANA behavior for both stated and inferred approaches, with models accounting for ANA clearly outperforming those that do not account for it; however, we produce no conclusive results as to which ANA approach is best. WTA estimates are only moderately affected, which to some extent is consistent with the low level of non-attendance found for the monetary attribute. Stated and inferred approaches show very similar WTA estimates. Additionally, we investigate sources of observed heterogeneity related to ANA behavior by using a sequence of bivariate probit models for each attribute. Overall, our results hint at a positive relationship between ease of scheme adoption and non-attendance to attributes. However, further research is still needed in this field

Evaluating the soft error sensitivity of a GPU-based SoC for matrixmultiplication

System-on-Chip (SoC) devices can be composed of low-power multicore processors combined with a small graphics accelerator (or GPU) which offers a trade-off between computational capacity and low-power consumption. In this work we use the LLFI-GPU fault injection tool on one of these devices to compare the sensitivity to soft errors of two different CUDA versions of matrix multiplication benchmark. Specifically, we perform fault injection campaigns on a Jetson TK1 development kit, a board equipped with a SoC including an NVIDIA ”Kepler“ Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). We evaluate the effect of modifying the size of the problem and also the thread-block size on the behaviour of the algorithms. Our results show that the block version of the matrix multiplication benchmark that leverages the shared memory of the GPU is not only faster than the element-wise version, but it is also much more resilient to soft errors. We also use the cuda-gdb debugger to analyze the main causes of the crashes in the code due to soft errors. Our experiments show that most of the errors are due to accesses to invalid positions of the different memories of the GPU, which causes that the block version suffers a higher percentage of this kind of errors

The design of agri-environmental schemes: Farmers’ preferences in southern Spain

Paper accepted to be published in Land Use Policy (ISSN: 0264-8377)Agri-environmental schemes (AES) play a key role in promoting the production of environmental public goods by European Union agriculture. Although extensive literature has analyzed AES, some important issues remain understudied. This paper performs an ex-ante assessment of AES in permanent cropping, analyzing several issues that have received little attention from researchers, such as ecological focus areas (EFA) and collective participation. For this purpose, a choice experiment was used to assess farmers’ preferences toward AES in a case study of olive groves in southern Spain. Results show high heterogeneity among farmers, with different classes being identified, from potential participants to non-participants. As regards EFA, almost half of the farmers would be willing to accept it for low monetary incentives (€8-9/ha per additional 1% of the farmland devoted to EFA) while the rest would do it for moderate-to-high monetary incentives (€41-151/ha per additional 1% of EFA). However, for a high share of EFA (e.g., 5-7%) higher incentives would presumably be required due to the intrinsic spatial restrictions of olive groves. With regard to collective participation, we find that it is unlikely that farmers would participate collectively with the incentive of the up-to-30% EU-wide bonus. These results are relevant for policy-making now when new AES are being designed for the next programming period 2014-2020.This research is co-financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competitiveness (MINECO) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the project MERCAGUA (AGL2013-48080-C2-1-R)

Spatial analysis of demand for sparsely-located ecosystem services using alternative index approaches

This study is focused on the effects of spatial discounting and substitute sites on the demand for ecosystem services (ES) provided by scattered agroecosystems. New ways of modelling these two effects are proposed, relying on area-based and density-based indexes. Data from discrete choice experiments are used, based on a case study of Andalusian olive groves (southern Spain). The results show that model fit is significantly improved by the introduction of these spatial indexes, with the best outcome found for the area-based index combined with the inverse of the distance. Results provide evidence of substantial spatial heterogeneity depending on the ES (carbon sequestration, soil conservation and biodiversity), indicating different economic jurisdiction

Pharmacophore-Based Virtual Screening to Discover New Active Compounds for Human Choline Kinase a1

Choline kinase (CK) catalyses the transfer of the ATP gamma-phosphate to choline to generate phosphocholine and ADP in the presence of magnesium leading to the synthesis of phosphatidylcholine. Of the three isoforms of CK described in humans, only the a isoforms (HsCK alpha) are strongly associated with cancer and have been validated as drug targets to treat this disease. Over the years, a large number of Hemicholinium-3 (HC-3)-based HsCK alpha biscationic inhibitors have been developed though the relevant common features important for the biological function have not been defined. Here, selecting a large number of previous HC-3-based inhibitors, we discover through computational studies a pharmacophore model formed by five moieties that are included in the 1-benzyl-4-(N-methylaniline) pyridinium fragment. Using a pharmacophore-guided virtual screening, we then identified 6 molecules that showed binding affinities in the low mM range to HsCK alpha 1. Finally, protein crystallization studies suggested that one of these molecules is bound to the choline and ATP-binding sites. In conclusion, we have developed a pharmacophore model that not only allowed us to dissect the structural important features of the previous HC-3 derivatives, but also enabled the identification of novel chemical tools with good ligand efficiencies to investigate the biological functions of HsCK alpha 1

Melatonin and its brain metabolite N1‐acetyl‐5‐methoxykynuramine prevent mitochondrial nitric oxide synthase induction in parkinsonian mice

Producción CientíficaMelatonin prevents mitochondrial failure in models of sepsis through its ability to inhibit the expression and activity of both cytosolic (iNOS) and mitochondrial (i-mtNOS) inducible nitric oxide synthases. Because Parkinson's disease (PD), like sepsis, is associated with iNOS induction, we assessed the existence of changes in iNOS/i-mtNOS and their relation with mitochondrial dysfunction in the MPTP model of PD, which also displays increased iNOS expression. We also evaluated the role of melatonin (aMT) and its brain metabolite, N(1)-acetyl-5-methoxykynuramine (AMK), in preventing i-mtNOS induction and mitochondrial failure in this model of PD. Mitochondria from substantia nigra (SN) and, to a lesser extent, from striatum (ST) showed a significant increase in i-mtNOS activity, nitrite levels, oxidative stress, and complex I inhibition after MPTP treatment. MPTP-induced i-mtNOS was probably related to mitochondrial failure, because its prevention by aMT and AMK reduced oxidative/nitrosative stress and restored complex I activity. These findings represent the first experimental evidence of a potential role for i-mtNOS in the mitochondrial failure of PD and support a novel mechanism in the neuroprotective effects of aMT and AMK

Phenylpyrrole derivatives as neural and inducible nitric oxide synthase (nNOS and iNOS) inhibitors

Producción CientíficaWe have previously described a series of 3-phenyl-4,5-dihydro-1H-pyrazole derivatives as moderately potent nNOS inhibitors. As a follow up of these studies, several new 5-phenyl-1H-pyrrole-2-carboxamide derivatives have been synthesized, and their biological evaluation as in vitro inhibitors of both neural and inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase (nNOS and iNOS) is described. Some of these compounds show good iNOS/nNOS selectivity and the more potent compounds 5-(2-aminophenyl)-1H-pyrrole-2-carboxilic acid methylamide (QFF205) and cyclopentylamide (QFF212) have been tested as regulators of the in vivo nNOS and iNOS activity. Both compounds prevented the increment of the inducible NOS activity in both cytosol (iNOS) and mitochondria (i-mtNOS) observed in the MPTP model of Parkinson's disease

Los nuevos retos de la industria farmacéutica

Diverse challenges of the modern pharmaceutical industry are analysed in this papero High competitiveness in the pharmaceutical sector and new regulations dictated by the different governments or organizations in charge of watching over public health have generated the need to devise new ways in the discovery of new drugs. On one hand, the rational drug design has acquired a leading role and on the other, the development of robotics has prompted the development of combinatorial chemistry and high production screening. The pharmaceutical industry of the future must be more dynamic and innovating. One of the observed phenomena has been the merging of a number of pharmaceutical fusions faced to the necessity of reducing production costs.En este trabajo se analizan los distintos retos de la industria farmacéutica moderna. La elevada competitividad del sector farmacéutico y las nuevas regulaciones dictadas por los diferentes gobiernos u organismos encargados de velar por la salud pública han generado la necesidad de idear nuevas vías en el descubrimiento de nuevos medicamentos. Por una parte, el diseño racional de fármacos ha adquirido un enorme protagonismo y, por otra, el desarrollo de la robótica han potenciado el desarrollo de la química combinatoria y del tamizado de alta producción. La futura industria farmacéutica debe ser más dinámica e innovadora. Uno de sus fenómenos observados ha sido el elevado número de fusiones de empresas farmacéuticas, ante la necesidad de reducir los costes de los productos