Age structure of a lizard along an elevational gradient reveals nonlinear lifespan patterns with altitude

We thank the personnel from the Espacio Natural de Sierra Nevada for their constant support. We are also grateful to Concepción Herna´ndez, from the Centre of Scientific Instrumentation at the University of Granada, for her help with the freezing microtome. We are also in debt to Humbert Salvadó (University of Barcelona) for allowing us to use the microscope. Comments from 3 anonymous referees greatly improved the manuscript.Lifespan is one of the main components of life history. Shorter lifespans can be expected in marginal habitats. However, in the case of ectotherms, lifespan typically increases with altitude, even though temperature—one of the main factors to determine ectotherms’ life history—declines with elevation. This pattern can be explained by the fact that a shorter activity time favors survival. In this study, we analyzed how lifespan and other life-history traits of the lizard Psammodromus algirus vary along a 2,200m elevational gradient in Sierra Nevada (SE Spain). Populations at intermediate altitudes (1,200–1,700 m), corresponding to the optimal habitat for this species, had the shortest lifespans, whereas populations inhabiting marginal habitats (at both low and at high altitudes) lived longest. Therefore, this lizard did not follow the typical pattern of ectotherms, as it also lived longer at the lower limit of its distribution, nor did it show a longer lifespan in areas with optimal habitats. These results might be explained by a complex combination of different gradients along the mountain, namely that activity time decreases with altitude whereas food availability increases. This could explain why lifespan was maximum at both high (limited activity time) and low (limited food availability) altitudes, resulting in similar lifespans in areas with contrasting environmental conditions. Our findings also indicated that reproductive investment and body condition increase with elevation, suggesting that alpine populations are locally adapted.Junta de AndalucíaParque Nacional de Sierra Nevada (referencias GMN / GyB / JMIF y ENSN / JSG / JEGT / MCF

Aloinjertos y autoinjertos de ligamento cruzado anterior de la rodilla: estudio experimental en el perro

Hemos realizado un trabajo de cirugía experimental en perros, en el que comparamos el comportamiento de los autoinjertos frescos de ligamento cruzado anterior de la rodilla (LCA), con lo aloinjertos crioconservados. Con la ayuda de una guía y trefinas, se extrae el LCA con sus inserciones, unido a un taco óseo en cada extremo. Los autoinjertos se reimplantan tras unos minutos en suero fisiológico. Los aloinjertos son sometidos a congelación y, almacenamiento a —80 °C y descongelación rápida, antes de su implantación. Se realiza una fijación de los tacos óseos con tornillos de esponjosa de 6,5 mm, lo que nos permite prescindir de la inmovilización. Los animales se sacrifican a las 3, 6, 12, 24 y 36 semanas, realizando estudio vascular con técnica de transparencia de tejidos de Spalteholz y estudios histológicos. Se demuestra que ambos injertos sufren los mismos procesos biológicos de reparación. Células mesenquimales indiferenciadas y brotes capilares del receptor, invaden los componentes del injerto; se produce una diferenciación polarizada a osteoblastos en el hueso y a fibroblastos en el ligamento, que por mecanismo de sustitución por yuxtaposición, restauran un LCA similar al normal, bien vascularizado. Esta remodelación llega a las zonas profundas, en los autoinjertos a las 12 semanas y en los aloinjertos a las 24 semanas. A las 36 semanas, ambos injertos están maduros. No ha habido rechazo inmunológico. En nuestra opinión el aloinjerto de LCA, con hueso en sus extremos, puede ser el sustituto ideal para las roturas de LCA.Experimental surgery was performed on the dog to compare the behavior of fresh autografts with freeze-stored allografts of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). In both cases, drill holes were made at the ACL insertion sites with a cannulated bit and the ligament with a plug of bone attached to each end was extracted with the aid of a guide wire. Prior to implantation, autografts were inmersed in a saline solution for a few minutes. Allografts deeply frozen to -80 °C with liquid nitrogen were quickly thawed before surgery. At implantation, the bone plugs at the ends of the ligament were firmly anchored with 6,5 mm. cancellous bone screws, so inmobilization of the animals was not necessary. Animals were killed at 3, 6, 12, 24 and 36 week after surgery. To study graft vascularity the tissue transparency technique developed by Spalteholz was employed. Both type of grafts underwent the same biological reconstruction process. Indifferentiated mesenchymal cells and capillar buds from the host tissues invaded the implant. Through a mechanism of creeping substitution induced by fibroblastic and osteoblastic differentiation, the grafts gradually took the apparence of normal, well-vascularized ACL. The remodeling process reached the innermost zones of the autografts in 12 weeks and the allografts in 24 weeks. Both type of groups showed a normal mature appearance 36 weeks after surgery. There were no signs of inmunological rejection. In our opinion, the ideal substitution for repair of ACL injurie could be an allograft of the same ligament, removed with bone attached to each end

Validating a theory of planned behavior questionnaire to measure entrepreneurial intentions

The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB, Ajzen, 1991) has been widely employed to predict entrepreneurial intentions. The TPB offers a coherent and generally applicable theoretical framework, which enables us to understand and predict entrepreneurial intentions by taking into account not only personal but also social factors (Krueger et al., 2000). This study presents the validation of an Entrepreneurial Intention Questionnaire (EIQ) in a sample of more than three thousand Spanish university graduates. The EIQ comprises four subscales: attitudes towards entrepreneurship, subjective norms, self-efficacy, and entrepreneurial intention. Unlike other questionnaires used in the field (Autio, Keeley, Klofsten, Parker & Hay, 2001; Krueger, Reilly & Carsrud, 2000; Liñán & Chen, 2009), EIQ follows Ajzen’s (Ajzen, 2002) methodological recommendations on how to construct a TPB questionnaire using composite measures of attitudes and subjective norms. Structural equation modeling (SEM) confirmed that the EIQ has a high reliability and predictive validity for Spanish university graduates’ entrepreneurial intentions.Junta de Andalucía. Consejería de Innovación, Ciencia y Empresas P08-SEJ-0354

Implementation of synthetic fast-ion loss detector and imaging heavy ion beam probe diagnostics in the 3D hybrid kinetic-MHD code MEGA

A synthetic fast-ion loss (FIL) detector and an imaging Heavy Ion Beam Probe (i-HIBP) have been implemented in the 3D hybrid kinetic-magnetohydrodynamic code MEGA. First synthetic measurements from these two diagnostics have been obtained for neutral beam injection-driven Alfvén Eigenmode (AE) simulated with MEGA. The synthetic FILs show a strong correlation with the AE amplitude. This correlation is observed in the phase-space, represented in coordinates (P, E), being toroidal canonical momentum and energy, respectively. FILs and the energy exchange diagrams of the confined population are connected with lines of constant E, a linear combination of E and P. First i-HIBP synthetic signals also have been computed for the simulated AE, showing displacements in the strike line of the order of ∼1 mm, above the expected resolution in the i-HIBP scintillator of ∼100 μm.This work received funding from the European Starting Grant (ERC) from project 3D-FIREFLUC and from the Spanish Ministry of Science under Grant No. FPU19/02267. This work has been carried out within the framework of the EUROfusion Consortium and has received funding from the Euratom research and training programme 2014-2018 and 2019-2020 under grant agreement No 633053. The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission

Evolución tecnológica del hardware de vídeo y las GPU en los ordenadores personales

En este artículo se ofrece una revisión de los hitos más importantes en la evolución del hardware gráfico. La comunicación entre los ordenadores y las personas ha ido avanzando a lo largo del tiempo, alcanzando la interactividad con la aparición de los sistemas de tiempo compartido a principios de la década de los 60 del siglo pasado. Los ordenadores personales, cuya expansión se inició casi dos décadas después, adoptaron desde un inicio la visualización de información en una pantalla como medio principal de comunicación con el usuario. El hardware a cargo de esa tarea ha ido evolucionando paulatinamente hasta, en la actualidad, convertirse en parte indispensable de la arquitectura del computador, hasta tal punto que una gran parte de los ordenadores portátiles y de sobremesa incorporan el hardware gráfico en el mismo circuito integrado que aloja al microprocesador.This article provides a review of the most important milestones in the evolution of graphics hardware. Communication between computers and people has been advancing over time, reaching interactivity with the emergence of timesharing systems in the early 1960s. Personal computers, whose expansion began almost two decades later, used the visualization of information on a screen as the main means of communication with the user from the very beginning. The hardware in charge of this task has gradually evolved to become an indispensable part of the computer architecture, to such an extent that a large part of laptops and desktop computers incorporate the graphic hardware into the same integrated circuit that houses the microprocessor.Universidad de Granada: Departamento de Arquitectura y Tecnología de Computadores; Vicerrectorado para la Garantía de la Calidad

Implementation of synthetic fast-ion loss detector and imaging heavy ion beam probe diagnostics in the 3D hybrid kinetic-MHD code MEGA

A synthetic fast-ion loss (FIL) detector and an imaging Heavy Ion Beam Probe (i-HIBP) have been implemented in the 3D hybrid kinetic-magnetohydrodynamic code MEGA. First synthetic measurements from these two diagnostics have been obtained for neutral beam injection-driven Alfvén Eigenmode (AE) simulated with MEGA. The synthetic FILs show a strong correlation with the AE amplitude. This correlation is observed in the phase-space, represented in coordinates (Pϕ, E), being toroidal canonical momentum and energy, respectively. FILs and the energy exchange diagrams of the confined population are connected with lines of constant E′, a linear combination of E and Pϕ. First i-HIBP synthetic signals also have been computed for the simulated AE, showing displacements in the strike line of the order of ∼1 mm, above the expected resolution in the i-HIBP scintillator of ∼100 μm.European Starting Grant (ERC) from project 3D-FIREFLUCSpanish Ministry of Science under Grant No. FPU19/02267EUROfusion Consortium grant agreement No 63305

Visual evoked potentials in offspring born to mothers with overweight, obesity and gestational diabetes

Overweight, obesity, and gestational diabetes (GD) during pregnancy may negatively affect neurodevelopment in the offspring. However, the mechanisms are unclear and objective measures of neurodevelopment in infancy are scarce. We hypothesized that these maternal metabolic pathologies impair cortical visual evoked potentials (cVEPs), a proxy for visual and neuronal maturity. At 3 months of age, visual acuity was significantly poorer in offspring born to GD mothers. At 18 months of age, there were no differences in visual acuity but infants born to GD mothers had significantly longer latencies of cVEPs when measured at 15', and 30' of arc. The group differences at 30' remained significant after confounder adjustment (mean [SD] 121.0 [16.0] vs. 112.6 [7.6] ms in controls, p = 0.007) and the most prolonged latencies were observed in offspring to GD mothers with concurrent overweight (128.9 [26.9] ms, p = 0.002) and obesity (118.5 [5.1] ms, p = 0.020). Infants born to mothers with GD, particularly those with concurrent overweight or obesity, have prolonged latencies of visual evoked potentials at 18 months of age, suggesting that this maternal metabolic profile have a long lasting, non-optimal, effect on infants brain development.This work was supported by Spanish Ministry of Innovation and Science. Junta de AndalucõÂa: Excellence Projects (P06-CTS-02341 [to CC]); Spanish Ministry of Education (Grant no. SB2010- 0025 [to CC]); Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (BFU2012-40254- C03-01 [to CC]); Abbott Laboratories, Granada, Spain; Henning and Johan Throne-Holst's foundation (Post Doc scholarship [to SKB])

GBPA: una plataforma de investigación en el ámbito de la genómica y la bioinformática en Andalucía

La secuenciación de ácidos nucleicos es una metodología utilizada para determinar el orden exacto de nucleótidos en una molécula de ADN o ARN. Uno de los grandes hitos en la secuenciación de ADN fue la obtención, mediante tecnología Sanger (1), de la secuencia de nucleótidos del genoma humano (2). Dicho proyecto finalizó en 2003 después de 13 años de trabajo y con un coste total de 3.000 millones de dólares. Desde entonces, el desarrollo de nuevas tecnologías de secuenciación masiva o Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) ha permitido realizar de forma cada vez más rápida y más económica la secuenciación de ADN o ARN. Las plataformas de NGS realizan, de forma simultánea, la secuenciación de millones de fragmentos de ADN de forma paralela y sus aplicaciones en el campo de las ciencias biológicas, biomedicina y biotecnología es muy amplio: resecuenciación del genoma, secuenciación del genoma "de novo", resecuenciación dirigida a regiones específicas del genoma, identificación de sitios de unión de proteínas al ADN (ChIP-Seq), detección y comparación de niveles de expresión de genes (RNA-Seq), entre otras (3,4). Debido a las fascinantes oportunidades que ofrece las nuevas tecnologías de secuenciación en el ámbito de la biomedicina, en 2010 se creó la Plataforma de Genómica y Bioinformática de Andalucía (GBPA), impulsada por la Consejería de Salud de la Junta de Andalucía y Roche. GBPA es una plataforma estratégica de secuenciación y genómica computacional con infraestructura de última tecnología, concebida como un espacio de investigación para el desarrollo de la excelencia y de ciencia de alta calidad en el campo de la genómica (principalmente NGS) y la bioinformática. Uno de los proyectos más importantes realizados en GBPA es el denominado Proyecto Genoma Médico (Medical Genome Project, MGP)(5), siendo su objetivo principal la identificación de modificaciones en el genoma humano asociadas a enfermedades raras de componente genético mediante el uso de las nuevas tecnologías de secuenciación masiva. Para dicho fin, se han secuenciado y analizado el exoma (6) de más de 700 muestras entre individuos control e individuos pertenecientes a familias con enfermedades hereditarias monogénicas, generando, como valor añadido, una base de datos de variantes genómicas de 300 individuos control de población española no descritas en ninguna base de datos. El proyecto MGP, ha servido para sentar las bases de la medicina genómica y personalizada en el Sistema Andaluz de Salud