Neutralization Susceptibility of African Swine Fever Virus Is Dependent on the Phospholipid Composition of Viral Particles

AbstractIn this study we have investigated the generation of African swine fever (ASF) virus variants resistant to neutralizing antibodies after cell culture propagation. All highly passaged ASF viruses analyzed were resistant to neutralization by antisera from convalescent pigs or antibodies generated against individual viral proteins which neutralized low-passage viruses. A molecular analysis of neutralizable and nonneutralizable virus isolates by sequencing of the genes encoding for neutralizing proteins revealed that the absence of neutralization of high-passage viruses is not due to antigenic variability of critical epitopes. A comparative analysis of phospholipid composition of viral membranes between low- and high-passage viruses revealed differences in the relative amount of phosphatidylinositol in these two groups of viruses, independent of the cells in which the viruses were grown. Further purification of low- and high-passage viruses by Percoll sedimentation showed differences in the phospholipid composition identical to those found with the partially purified viruses and confirmed the susceptibility of these viruses to neutralization. The incorporation of phosphatidylinositol into membranes of high-passage viruses rendered a similar neutralization susceptibility to low-passage viruses, in which this is a major phospholipid. In contrast, other phospholipids did not interfere with high-passage virus neutralization, suggesting that phosphatidylinositol is essential for a correct epitope presentation to neutralizing antibodies. Additionally, the removal of phosphatidylinositol from a low-passage virus by a specific lipase transformed this virus from neutralizable to nonneutralizable. These data constitute clear evidence of the importance of the lipid composition of the viral membranes for the protein recognition by antibodies and may account in part for the past difficulties in reproducibly demonstrating ASF virus-neutralizing antibodies by using high-passage viruses

H.264/AVC inter prediction on accelerator-based multi-core systems

The AVC video coding standard adopts variable block sizes for inter frame coding to increase compression efficiency, among other new features. As a consequence of this, an AVC encoder has to employ a complex mode decision technique that requires high computational complexity. Several techniques aimed at accelerating the inter prediction process have been proposed in the literature in recent years. Recently, with the emergence of many-core processors or accelerators, a new way of supporting inter frame prediction has presented itself. In this paper, we present a step forward in the implementation of an AVC inter prediction algorithm in a graphics processing unit, using Compute Unified Device Architecture. The results show a negligible drop in rate distortion with a time reduction, on average, of over 98.8 % compared with full search and fast full search, and of over 80 % compared with UMHexagonS search

Estudio de la series sísmicas ocurridas en 2010 en la costa almeriense

En este trabajo se presenta un análisis de las series sísmicas registradas durante los meses de julio y noviembre de 2010 en el sector noreste del mar de Alborán, cerca de Almería. La primera serie consta de, al menos, 180 terremotos registrados entre el 4 de julio y el 15 de Noviembre de 2010, con un terremoto principal de Mw =4.3 ocurrido el 5 de Julio y sentido en Almería con intensidad EMS IV. Esta serie está caracterizada por tener una fuerte alineación con dirección NW, que contrasta con la de los grandes sistemas de fallas de la zona (falla de Carboneras). La segunda serie consta de más de 27 terremotos y se extiende del 2 al 15 de Noviembre, con un sismo principal de magnitud Mw =4.1 ocurrido el día 4 de ese mes. Esta segunda serie se sitúa a unos 35 km al Este de la primera, siendo menos numerosa que ésta pero mucho más próxima a las poblaciones del Poniente Almeriense y alcanzando mayores intensidades (intensidad máxima EMS = V). El objetivo de este estudio es analizar en detalle ambas series sísmicas, examinado la distribución geográfica de los sismos que las componen, su distribución temporal y su posible interrelación con series sísmicas pasadas. Finalmente se tratará de identificar, con los conocimientos de la tectónica de la zona, la posible fuente sísmica generadora, así como analizar posibles efectos de disparo entre eventos por medio de modelizaciones de esfuerzos de Coulomb

Sobre cómo representar y parametrizar la Peligrosidad, la Vulnerabilidad y el Daño para transmitir los resultados de un estudio de riesgo sísmico a escala regional/ On the representation and parameterization of Seismic Hazard, Vulnerability and Damag

This work presents different issues related to seismic risk assessment and styles of comunicating partial and final results on maps for remarkably distinct people, such as scientists, preparedness and response officers and general public. The convenience of making different classifications and representations of building vulnerability types, seismic hazard parameters and damage estimates in function of the final user of the results is highlighted. Results of recent risk assessment study of Murcia (south eastern Spain) carried out by the authors are used for illustration

Evaluación del riesgo sísmico con técnicas de información geográfica. Aplicación en Navarra

El SIG-RISNA es un sistema de información geográfica desarrollado en el marco de un proyecto de evaluación del riesgo sísmico en la Comunidad Foral de Navarra, Proyecto RISNA. El objetivo general del mismo es hacer una evaluación, de carácter científicotécnica, que sirva de base para desarrollar el Plan Especial de Emergencia de la región y para la identificación de municipios de especial riesgo de cara a su posterior estudio local. Para esta evaluación, se combinan diferentes factores influyentes en el riesgo sísmico, tales como la peligrosidad sísmica, las características geotécnicas del suelo y la vulnerabilidad de estructuras de la región. Todas estas variables se integran en la estimación del riesgo por medio un SIG, que constituye una herramienta de trabajo de gran utilidad, ya que facilita la interoperabilidad de los datos haciendo más manejable el gran volumen de información requerida y los numerosos procesos que intervienen en el cálculo. En este artículo de describirán las características y el esqueleto del SIG-RISNA, incluyendo los datos de partida necesarios y los procesos y análisis realizados para la consecución del mismo. El resultado de este estudio comprende un gran conjunto de variables que dan una visión global del riesgo sísmico en la región, como son la distribución de daños para diferentes tipologías, el daño medio y el número de edificaciones que quedarían inhabitables ante el movimiento esperado, entre otros. Estos resultados están destinados a la interpretación y toma de decisiones, de personal no especializado (técnicos y gestores de Protección Civil), hacia la gestión de la emergencia. Por este motivo, una transmisión comprensible de los resultados de forma que puedan ser correctamente interpretados se considera un apartado de especial importancia dentro del estudio. En este contexto se desarrolló el visualizador Web VISORRISNA, una aplicación Web que contiene todos los resultados del estudio expuestos por medio de un conjunto de capas de información temática y con un acceso múltiple a la correspondiente base de datos. Esta herramienta también fue diseñada para que los usuarios finales pudieran establecer diferentes niveles de actuación considerando el daño esperado en cada municipio, mediante un módulo específico creado con dicha finalidad

Design and Synthesis of N-Doped Carbons as Efficient Metal-Free Catalysts in the Hydrogenation of 1-Chloro-4-Nitrobenzene

Metal-free catalysts based on nitrogen-doped porous carbons were designed and synthesized from mixtures of melamine as nitrogen and carbon sources and calcium citrate as carbon source and porogen system. Considering the physicochemical and textural properties of the prepared carbons, a melamine/citrate ratio of 2:1 was selected to study the effect of the pyrolysis temperature. It was observed that a minimum pyrolysis temperature of 750 ◦C is required to obtain a carbonaceous structure. However, although there is a decrease in the nitrogen amount at higher pyrolysis temperatures, a gradual development of the porosity is produced from 750 ◦C to 850 ◦C. Above that temperature, a deterioration of the carbon porous structure is produced. All the prepared carbon materials, with no need for a further activation treatment, were active in the hydrogenation reaction of 1-chloro-4-nitrobenzene. A full degree of conversion was reached with the most active catalysts obtained from 2:1 melamine/citrate mixtures pyrolyzed at 850 ◦C and 900 ◦C, which exhibited a suitable compromise between the N-doping level and developed mesoporosity that facilitates the access of the reactants to the catalytic sites. What is more, all the materials showed 100% selectivity for the hydrogenation of the nitro group to form the corresponding chloro-aniline.Financial support from the Ministry of Science and Innovation (Spain, PID2019-108453GB-C21) and Generalitat Valenciana (Spain, CIPROM/2021/022) is gratefully acknowledged

N-Doped Activated Carbons from Polypyrrole – Effect of Steam Activation Conditions

Polypyrrole (PPy) has been prepared by oxidative polymerization of pyrrole and used as a raw material for the preparation of N-doped activated carbons. Thus, PPy has been pyrolyzed at 900 °C and then activated with steam under different activation conditions (time and temperature). This has allowed for the preparation of activated carbons with different porosity development and nitrogen content, as well as distinctive distribution of nitrogen species. It has been observed that the presence of nitrogen functionalities favors water adsorption at low relative pressures but, at relative pressures higher than 0.5 it is determined by the porosity development.Financial support from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Spain, Project PID2019-108453GB-C21) is gratefully acknowledged. Open access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL

Organizational design and quality management. Practical cases from the pharmaceutical industry

El presente trabajo trata de estudiar cómo se ve afectada la estructura de una organización tras la implantación de un sistema de gestión de la calidad. En un escueto marco teórico, se describen los cambios que se producen en las principales variables de diseño, concretamente, variables referentes al diseño de los puestos (grado de especialización, formalización, formas de control del rendimiento y los resultados, formación y socialización), y variables de diseño de la estructura (criterios de formación de unidades, tamaño de las unidades, dispositivos de enlace y diseño del sistema decisor), tras la implantación de un sistema de Aseguramiento de la Calidad (AC) y un sistema de Gestión de la Calidad Total (GCT). La investigación se completa con el estudio cualitativo de dos casos de empresa del sector farmacéutico: una empresa de gran tamaño correspondiente a un almacén mayorista, y una pequeña empresa correspondiente a las llamadas oficina de farmacia. Los resultados apuntan a que la empresa de mayor tamaño presenta características de diseño organizativo correspondientes al aseguramiento de la calidad. La oficina de farmacia, por el contrario, presenta características correspondientes a gestión de la calidad total.This research attempts to study the effects of introducing a quality management system on the structure of an organization. In a brief theoretical framework, the ensuing changes are described in the main design variables, and in particular, variables that refer to job design (degree of specialization, formalization, forms of performance control and outcomes, training and socialization), and structural design variables (training criteria for units, size of unit, linking mechanisms and the design of the decision-making system), after introducing a Quality Assurance Scheme (QA) and a Total Quality Management Scheme (TQM). The study is completed by a qualitative study of two cases of firms from the pharmaceutical sector: one large firm in the form of a wholesaler and a small firm dealing with pharmacy telephone enquiries. Results indicate that the larger firm shows organizational design characteristics that correspond to quality assurance. The pharmacy office, on the other hand, has characteristics that correspond to total quality management

Semi-supervised incremental learning with few examples for discovering medical association rules

Background: Association Rules are one of the main ways to represent structural patterns underlying raw data. They represent dependencies between sets of observations contained in the data. The associations established by these rules are very useful in the medical domain, for example in the predictive health field. Classic algorithms for association rule mining give rise to huge amounts of possible rules that should be filtered in order to select those most likely to be true. Most of the proposed techniques for these tasks are unsupervised. However, the accuracy provided by unsupervised systems is limited. Conversely, resorting to annotated data for training supervised systems is expensive and time-consuming. The purpose of this research is to design a new semi-supervised algorithm that performs like supervised algorithms but uses an affordable amount of training data. Methods: In this work we propose a new semi-supervised data mining model that combines unsupervised techniques (Fisher's exact test) with limited supervision. Starting with a small seed of annotated data, the model improves results (F-measure) obtained, using a fully supervised system (standard supervised ML algorithms). The idea is based on utilising the agreement between the predictions of the supervised system and those of the unsupervised techniques in a series of iterative steps. Results: The new semi-supervised ML algorithm improves the results of supervised algorithms computed using the F-measure in the task of mining medical association rules, but training with an affordable amount of manually annotated data. Conclusions: Using a small amount of annotated data (which is easily achievable) leads to results similar to those of a supervised system. The proposal may be an important step for the practical development of techniques for mining association rules and generating new valuable scientific medical knowledge.This work has been partially supported by projects DOTT-HEALTH (PID2019-106942RB-C32, MCI/AEI/FEDER, UE). (Design of the study. Analysis and interpretation of data) and EXTRAE II (IMIENS 2019). (Design of the study. Analysis and interpretation of data. HUF corpus manual tagging. Writing of the manuscript), PI18CIII/00004 “Infobanco para uso secundario de datos basado en estándares de tecnología y conocimiento: implementación y evaluación de un infobanco de salud para CoRIS (Info-bank for the secondary use of data based on technology and knowledge standards: implementation and evaluation of a health info-bank for CoRIS) – SmartPITeS” (Data collection and HUF corpus construction), and PI18CIII/00019 - PI18/00890 - PI18/00981 “Arquitectura normalizada de datos clínicos para la generación de infobancos y su uso secundario en investigación: solución tecnológica (Clinical data normalized architecture for the genaration of info-banks and their secondary use in research: technological solution) – CAMAMA 4” (Data collection and HUF corpus construction) from Fondo de Investigación Sanitaria (FIS) Plan Nacional de I+D+i.S

Doped activated carbons obtained from nitrogen and sulfur-containing polymers as metal-free catalysts for application in nitroarenes hydrogenation

Activated carbons doped with nitrogen and/or sulfur have been obtained by pyrolysis followed of steam activation of a sulfur containing polymer (polythiophene) and two nitrogen-containing polymers (polyaniline and polypyrrole). These polymers were synthesized by oxidative chemical polymerization in aqueous media of their corresponding monomers. The influence of the steam activation on the textural properties and surface chemistry of the carbons has been evaluated and their catalytic activity has been determined in the hydrogenation reaction of 1-chloro-4-nitrobenzene. The degree of conversion in the reaction depends on the development of adequate porosity in the activated carbon (which is determined by the activation conditions) together with the presence of heteroatoms that act as active catalytic sites, with S showing considerably greater effectiveness than N. A compromise between an acceptable level of doping with sulfur and an adequate porosity is necessary, which has been achieved in a carbon obtained from polythiophene pyrolyzed at 900 °C and steam activated at 800 °C for 4 h, with a specific surface area of 742 m2/g and S content of 1.71 at%.Financial support from Spain Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2019-108453GB-C21) is gratefully acknowledged