2,186 research outputs found

    Análisis sedimentológico de facies de rampa externa: la Formación Agrio (Cretácico inferior), en el sector central de la Cuenca Neuquina, Argentina

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    Microfacies of distal marine deposits of the Lower Cretaceous Agrio Formation – Pilmatué and Agua de la Mula members – in the Neuquén basin has been analyzed taken into account field data, whole-rock phase-minerals and clay mineralogy with X-ray diffraction, organic components and optical and electron microscopy. Depositional and diagenetic fabrics are compared for the lowermost part of both members. Two facies associations were distinguished that correspond to two depositional settings: distal outer ramp (FA-1); and, proximal outer ramp (FA-2). FA-1 is composed of sediments mainly deposited by suspension settling with calcareous microfossils partially preserved as fecal pellets and organo-minerallic aggregates related to high bioproductivity in the water column. Conversely, FA-2 is dominated by extrabasinal components with illite-rich clay- to silt-si - zed particle aggregates. Storm-influenced processes have a main role in sediment transportation and accumulation as well as controlling oxygenation pulses of the bottom waters. In addition, burial diagenesis was evaluated taking into account thermal maturity of organics together with diagenetic textures such as growth of authigenic minerals and mechanical and chemical compaction features. Due to clay mineral assemblages are mainly detrital in origin the possible effects of burial diagenesis on them cannot be directly evaluated

    Pegylated lipid nanocapsules with improved drug encapsulation and controlled release properties

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    Drugs with poor lipid and water solubility are some of the most challenging to formulate in nanocarriers, typically resulting in low encapsulation efficiencies and uncontrolled release profiles. PEGylated nano- capsules (PEG-NC) are known for their amenability to diverse modifications that allow the formation of domains with different physicochemical properties, an interesting feature to address a drug encapsulation problem. We explored this problem by encapsulating in PEG-NC the promising anticancer drug candidate F10320GD1, used herein as a model for compounds with such characteristics. The nanocarriers were pre- pared from Miglyol®, lecithin and PEG-sterate through a solvent displacement technique. The resulting system was a homogeneous suspension of particles with size around 200 nm. F10320GD1 encapsulation was found to be very poor (<15%) if PEG-NC were prepared using water as continuous phase; but we were able to improve this value to 85% by fixing the pH of the continuous phase to 9. Interestingly, this modification also improved the controlled release properties and the chemical stability of the formulation during storage. These differences in pharmaceutical properties together with physicochemical data sug- gest that the pH of the continuous phase used for PEG-NC preparation can modify drug allocation, from the external shell towards the inner lipid core of the nanocapsules. Finally, we tested the bioactivity of the drug-loaded PEG-NC in several tumor cell lines, and also in endothelial cells. The results indicated that drug encapsulation led to an improvement on drug cytotoxicity in tumor cells, but not in non-tumor en- dothelial cells. Altogether, the data confirms that PEG-NC show adequate delivery properties for F10320GD1, and underlines its possible utility as an anticancer therapy.The authors would like to acknowledge financial support from CENIT-NANOFAR XS53 project, FAES Farma S.A. (Spain), Xunta de Galicia (Competitive Reference Ref. GRC2014/043, FEDER Funds) and the European Commission FP7 EraNet — EuroNanoMed Program-Instituto Carlos III (Lymphotarg pro- yect, Ref. PS09/02670). MGF was a recipient of an Isidro Parga Pondal contract

    PoS tagging and Named Entitiy Recognition in a Big Data environment

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    Este artículo describe una suite de módulos lingüísticos para el castellano, basado en una arquitectura en tuberías, que incluye tareas de análisis morfosintáctico así como de reconocimiento y clasificación de entidades nombradas. Se han aplicado técnicas de paralelización en un entorno Big Data para conseguir que la suite de módulos sea más eficiente y escalable y, de este modo, reducir de forma significativa los tiempos de cómputo con los que poder abordar problemas a la escala de la Web. Los módulos han sido desarrollados con técnicas básicas para facilitar su integración en entornos distribuidos, con un rendimiento próximo al estado del arte.This article describes a suite of linguistic modules for the Spanish language based on a pipeline architecture, which contains tasks for PoS tagging and Named Entity Recognition and Classification (NERC). We have applied run-time parallelization techniques in a Big Data environment in order to make the suite of modules more efficient and scalable, and thereby to reduce computation time in a significant way. Therefore, we can address problems at Web scale. The linguistic modules have been developed using basic NLP techniques in order to easily integrate them in distributed computing environments. The qualitative performance of the modules is close the state of the art.Este trabajo ha sido subvencionado con cargo a los proyectos HPCPLN - Ref:EM13/041 (Programa Emergentes, Xunta de Galicia), Celtic - Ref:2012-CE138 y Plastic - Ref:2013-CE298 (Programa Feder-Innterconecta)

    Polar decomposition of Mueller matrices for 2D-structured surfaces

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    In this research, the Polar Decomposition (PD) has been applied to the Mueller matrices (MMs) of the light scattered by linear ribs of rectangular profile on a flat substrate. Although photo-lithographic technique produces a silicon surface, metallic character is acquired by sputtering with gold some of the samples. With a dual rotating compensator polarimeter the MMs are obtained by Fourier Transform analysis. The samples have been numerically modeled by using both FDTD and Extinction Theorem (ET) and MMs have been computed from the results. The scattering depends strongly on the geometry and composition of the ribs, and this sensitivity is noticed for instance in M11 element. But information offered by PD parameters is shown to be more apprehensible, like the substrate-induced depolarization or the retardance associated to the rib width.This research has been supported by the Ministry of Education of Spain under project FIS2007-60158 and by USAITCA through R&D 1390-PH-01

    Systematic calculations of reactions with exotic and stable nuclei to establish a unified theoretical approach

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    We report on systematical optical model (OM) and continuum discretized coupled channel (CDCC) calculations applied to describe the elastic scattering angular distributions of exotic and stable nuclei projectiles on heavy targets. Our optical potential (OP) is composed of the nuclear microscopic double folding São Paulo potential (SPP), derived from the nonlocal nature of the interaction, and the Coulomb dipole polarization (CDP) potential, derived from the semiclassical theory of Coulomb excitation. The OP is compared to the trivial equivalent local potential (TELP), extracted from CDCC calculations. The OM and CDCC predictions corroborate each other and account for important differences in the nuclei reaction mechanisms, which are directly related to their structural properties. Thus, OM and CDCC establish a common basis for analyzing or even predicting exotic and stable nuclei reactions.Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades de España. PGC2018-096994-B-C21Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad de España y el Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) FIS2017-88410-PPrograma de investigación e innovación Horizonte 2020 de la Unión Europea ,No. 654002Fondos SID 2019 (Investimento Strategico di Dipartimento, Universittí degli Studi di Padova, Italia) CASA_SID19_0

    Scattering of 9Li on 208Pb at energies around the coulomb barrier

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    5th International Conference FUSION11In order to study the dynamics of 11Li and 9Li beams in a strong electric field at energies around the Coulomb barrier, we measured at the ISACII-TRIUMF Facility the angular distribution of elastic and inelastic scattering of 11Li+208Pb at 24.2 and 29.7 MeV and 9Li+208Pb at 24, 29.5 and 33 MeV laboratory energies. We present here the first determination of the angular distribution of the cross section of 9Li+208Pb. The results are compared with theoretical calculations using the double-folding São Paulo Potential (SPP) for the real part and a for the imaginary part a Woods-Saxon potential. A good overall agreement is obtainedConsejo Interinstitucional de Ciencia y Tecnología FPA2009-07387Consejo Interinstitucional de Ciencia y Tecnología FPA2009-08848Consejo Interinstitucional de Ciencia y Tecnología FPA2010-22131-C02-01Consejo Interinstitucional de Ciencia y Tecnología FPA2009-0765

    Interaction of 8 He with 208Pb at near-barrier energies: 4 He and 6 He production

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    Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness-FPA-2010-22131-CO2-01 (FINURA) y FPA2013-47327-C2-1-RMinistry of Science and Higher Education of Poland-N202 033637National Science Centre of Poland-2013/08/M/ST2/00257 (LEA-COPIGAL) y 2014/14/M/ST2/00738 (COPIN-INFN Collaboration)European Science Foundation-EUI2009-04163432 (EUROGENESIS

    An overview process analysis of the aromatic-aliphatic separation by liquid–liquid extraction with ionic liquids

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    There is a lack of knowledge on comprehensive studies when dealing with ionic liquids and extraction processes. In this work, the computational COSMO-based/Aspen multiscale methodology is applied to perform a comprehensive process analysis over a wide set of 100 common ILs after properly validating against all reliable data published, in the representative field of the aromatic/aliphatic separation. The analysis describes: i) the evolution from extractive properties to extractor behavior; ii) the influence of the rigor of the model -binary (n-heptane + toluene) or multicomponent (pyrolysis gasoline) and the process description, namely extractor or complete process with recycling streams; iii) the role of the IL at commercial specifications; iv) the role of the separation train. Main results highlight: i) leading role of mass-based distribution ratio to reduce energy consumption to assess a commercial recovery; ii) selecting an IL with a minimum selectivity required within the more efficient separation train to achieve specifications at the lower energy consumption. Therefore, this work presented a clear guide to properly select the IL extractive properties at process scale and commercial specifications, together with the development of an efficient separation train, as the best approac

    A new potential nano-oncological therapy based on polyamino acid nanocapsules

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    A critical objective in cancer therapy is to reduce the systemic toxicity through the modification of the biodistribution of anticancer drugs. Herein, we disclose a new biodegradable nanocarrier, polyglutamic acid (PGA) nanocapsules, and present the in vivo pharmacokinetics/toxicity proof-of-concept for the anticancer drug plitidepsin. These novel nanocapsules were prepared using a modified solvent displacement technique where the polyamino acid was electrostatically deposited onto the lipid core. The nanocapsules exhibited an average size of 200 nm, a negative zeta potential and a great capacity for the encapsulation of plitidepsin (encapsulation efficiency above 90%). In addition, the nanocapsules could be freeze-dried and showed an adequate stability profile upon storage. Finally, the in vivo proof-of-concept studies performed in mice indicated that the encapsulation provided the drug with a prolonged blood circulation and a significantly reduced toxicity. In fact, the maximum tolerated dose of the nanoencapsulated drug was more than 3 times that of the reference formulation (Cremophor® EL plitidepsin solution). Overall, beyond the value of this specific formulation, the work reported here represents the evidence of the potential of polyamino acid nanocapsules in nano-oncological therapyThe authors would like to acknowledge financial support from CENIT-NANOFAR XS53 project, PharmaMar, Spain, the Ministry of Sciences and Innovation ((CTQ2009-10963), the Xunta de Galicia (Competitive Reference Groups-FEDER funds Ref. 2010/18, and CN2011/037) and the European Commission FP7 EraNet — EuroNanoMed Program-Instituto Carlos III (Lymphotarg proyect, Ref. PS09/02670). Giovanna Lollo has a fellowship from the Ministry of Education of Spain. Marcos Garcia Fuentes acknowledges an Isidro Parga Pondal Fellowship from Xunta de GaliciaS
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