Experimentación con detectores gaseosos en una cámara de proyección temporal (TPC)

En este trabajo se propone el estudio de una cámara Compton con detectores de carga Micromegas como una innovadora alternativa para la detección de radioisótopos en medicina nuclear y se realizan una serie de simulaciones del experimento NEXT\=/MM para comprobar su validez. El estudio se llevará a cabo analizando la información que proporcionan los eventos que produzcan tres deposiciones. Para obtenerlos se implementa y utiliza un algoritmo de \textit{tracking} para eventos de tres deposiciones, que permite obtener la trayectoria de un fotón a partir de la energía y posición de dichas deposiciones, basándose en la comparación de los ángulos de incidencia Compton con los obtenidos geométricamente en las diversas trayectorias, cuyo resultado es el ángulo de dispersión Compton que ha sufrido el fotón en la primera de las deposiciones, resultando por tanto en un cono de posibles puntos de emisión. Cada uno de los eventos genera un cono, de manera que podemos obtener la posición de la fuente conociendo el punto en el que se cortan todos los conos. Se introduce también un método de proyección de los eventos al plano de emisión y se estudian y analizan los resultados de una serie de simulaciones, incluyendo la influencia de factores como son la presión y la adición de gases que reducen la influencia de la difusión de los electrones en la cámara. Por último, al tratarse de un primer contacto con este tipo de estudios y no haberse encontrado resultados especialmente buenos, se exponen diversos modos de mejorar la calidad de la detección, resolución y reducción de exposición del paciente

Modelizado de componentes en micro - redes AC

Los sistemas eléctricos actuales están experimentando cambios importantes relacionados con su estructura y su forma de operación. De manera similar a aquello que ocurre en los sistemas de potencia, los sistemas de distribución a media y baja tensión, encargados de suministrar la energía al usuario final, son objeto de análisis debido a que tienen posibilidades de integrar recursos energéticos distribuidos tales como generación y almacenamiento de energía a pequeña escala. Adicionalmente, el análisis del comportamiento de la carga también es un tema relevante, gracias a que el usuario final tiene un papel activo en la gestión de la energía eléctrica. Esto lo redefine como un prosumidor (proveedor-consumidor). La integración de recursos energéticos distribuidos y la participación del prosumidor en un entorno liberalizado de mercado, como en el caso colombiano, representan un gran desafío en el análisis de estas nuevas redes. Así mismo, los retos se deben asumir por investigadores y por las personas encargadas de planear, administrar, gestionar y operar los sistemas de distribución local. Como consecuencia de lo expuesto, los sistemas de distribución se asocian actualmente con términos como «redes eléctricas inteligentes» o «micro-redes», y cada día se encuentran más artículos relacionados con estos temas en las principales revistas técnicas. este libro responde a la necesidad de disponer de un modelo de cada uno de los elementos que conforman estos nuevos sistemas y del sistema eléctrico en su conjunto. Esta recopilación, propuesta y análisis de los modelos, permitirán el posterior desarrollo de estudios de control, protección y operación en micro-redes eléctricas. El documento está organizado en cinco capítulos que contienen desde una una contextualización inicial de las micro-redes, hasta la presentación de algunos de los principales elementos que las componen (generación distribuida, líneas, sistemas de almacenamiento y cargas)

Metabolomic Phenotype of Hepatic Steatosis and Fibrosis in Mexican Children Living with Obesity

Background and Objectives: Metabolic-dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease or MASLD is the main cause of chronic liver diseases in children, and it is estimated to affect 35% of children living with obesity. This study aimed to identify metabolic phenotypes associated with two advanced stages of MASLD (hepatic steatosis and hepatic steatosis plus fibrosis) in Mexican children with obesity. Materials and Methods: This is a cross-sectional analysis derived from a randomized clinical trial conducted in children and adolescents with obesity aged 8 to 16 years. Anthropometric and biochemical data were measured, and targeted metabolomic analyses were carried out using mass spectrometry. Liver steatosis and fibrosis were estimated using transient elastography (Fibroscan® Echosens, Paris, France). Three groups were studied: a non-MASLD group, an MASLD group, and a group for MASLD + fibrosis. A partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) was performed to identify the discrimination between the study groups and to visualize the differences between their heatmaps; also, Variable Importance Projection (VIP) plots were graphed. A VIP score of \u3e1.5 was considered to establish the importance of metabolites and biochemical parameters that characterized each group. Logistic regression models were constructed considering VIP scores of \u3e1.5, and the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were estimated to evaluate different combinations of variables. Results: The metabolic MASLD phenotype was associated with increased concentrations of ALT and decreased arginine, glycine, and acylcarnitine (AC) AC5:1, while MASLD + fibrosis, an advanced stage of MASLD, was associated with a phenotype characterized by increased concentrations of ALT, proline, and alanine and a decreased Matsuda Index. Conclusions: The metabolic MASLD phenotype changes as this metabolic dysfunction progresses. Understanding metabolic disturbances in MASLD would allow for early identification and the development of intervention strategies focused on limiting the progression of liver damage in children and adolescents

Measuring High Speed Trains Passenger's comfort

[EN] High Speed Trains Passenger¿s comfort is one of the key aspects for railway operators, that have the client as the center of their activities. ALSTOM, with the purpose of considering these needs, has developed, together with IBV, a tool for diagnose the comfort of their vehicles based on experimental studies.[ES] El confort de los pasajeros de alta velocidad es uno de los aspectos de mayor interés de los operadores ferroviarios que tienen al cliente como centro de sus actividades. ALSTOM, con la finalidad de tener en cuenta estas necesidades ha desarrollado, en colaboración con el Instituto de Biomecánica (IBV), una herramienta de diagnóstico del confort de sus vehículos basada en estudios experimentales.Mateo Martínez, B.; Solaz Sanahuja, JS.; Pujol, C.; Altesa Cabanas, J.; Signes Pérez, E.; Garcés Pérez, L.; Fayos Sancho, J.... (2013). Medir el confort en trenes de alta velocidad. Revista de biomecánica. 60:4-6. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/38683S466

The CCR2+ Monocyte Subsets Increase in Obese Boys but Not Girls with Abnormally High Carotid Intima-Media Thickness: A Pilot Study

The differential contribution of monocyte subsets expressing the C-C chemokine receptor 2 (CCR2) to subclinical atherosclerosis in girls and boys is unclear. In this pilot study, we compared classical, intermediate, and nonclassical monocyte subsets expressing CCR2 in 33 obese children of both sexes aged 8 to 16 divided by carotid intima-media thickness (IMT), considering values above the 75th percentile (p75) as abnormally high IMT. Obesity was defined as body mass index above the 95th percentile according to age and sex. Flow cytometry analyses revealed that boys but not girls with IMT ≥ p75 displayed increased CCR2+ cell percentage and CCR2 expression in the three monocyte subsets, compared to boys with IMT \u3c p75. The CCR2+ cell percentage and CCR2 expression in the three monocyte subsets significantly correlated with increased IMT and insulin resistance in boys but not girls, where the CCR2+ nonclassical monocyte percentage had the strongest associations (r = 0.73 and r = 0.72, respectively). The role of CCR2+ monocyte subpopulations in identifying an abnormally high IMT shows a marked sexual dimorphism, where boys seem to be at higher subclinical atherosclerosis risk than girls. View Full-Tex

MLLP-VRAIN Spanish ASR Systems for the Albayzín-RTVE 2020 Speech-to-Text Challenge: Extension

[EN] This paper describes the automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems built by the MLLP-VRAIN research group of Universitat Politècnica de València for the Albayzín-RTVE 2020 Speech-to-Text Challenge, and includes an extension of the work consisting of building and evaluating equivalent systems under the closed data conditions from the 2018 challenge. The primary system (p-streaming_1500ms_nlt) was a hybrid ASR system using streaming one-pass decoding with a context window of 1.5 seconds. This system achieved 16.0% WER on the test-2020 set. We also submitted three contrastive systems. From these, we highlight the system c2-streaming_600ms_t which, following a similar configuration as the primary system with a smaller context window of 0.6 s, scored 16.9% WER points on the same test set, with a measured empirical latency of 0.81 ± 0.09 s (mean ± stdev). That is, we obtained state-of-the-art latencies for high-quality automatic live captioning with a small WER degradation of 6% relative. As an extension, the equivalent closed-condition systems obtained 23.3% WER and 23.5% WER, respectively. When evaluated with an unconstrained language model, we obtained 19.9% WER and 20.4% WER; i.e., not far behind the top-performing systems with only 5% of the full acoustic data and with the extra ability of being streaming-capable. Indeed, all of these streaming systems could be put into production environments for automatic captioning of live media streams.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreements no. 761758 (X5Gon) and 952215 (TAILOR), and Erasmus+ Education programme under grant agreement no. 20-226-093604-SCH (EXPERT); the Government of Spain's grant RTI2018-094879-B-I00 (Multisub) funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 & "ERDF A way of making Europe", and FPU scholarships FPU14/03981 and FPU18/04135; the Generalitat Valenciana's research project Classroom Activity Recognition (ref. PROMETEO/2019/111), and predoctoral research scholarship ACIF/2017/055; and the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia's PAID-01-17 R&D support programme.Baquero-Arnal, P.; Jorge-Cano, J.; Giménez Pastor, A.; Iranzo-Sánchez, J.; Pérez-González De Martos, AM.; Garcés Díaz-Munío, G.; Silvestre Cerdà, JA.... (2022). MLLP-VRAIN Spanish ASR Systems for the Albayzín-RTVE 2020 Speech-to-Text Challenge: Extension. Applied Sciences. 12(2):1-14. https://doi.org/10.3390/app1202080411412

Circulating tumor cells for the staging of patients with newly diagnosed transplant-eligible multiple myeloma

[Purpose]: Patients with multiple myeloma (MM) may show patchy bone marrow (BM) infiltration and extramedullary disease. Notwithstanding, quantification of plasma cells (PCs) continues to be performed in BM since the clinical translation of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) remains undefined. [Patients and methods]: CTCs were measured in peripheral blood (PB) of 374 patients with newly diagnosed MM enrolled in the GEM2012MENOS65 and GEM2014MAIN trials. Treatment included bortezomib, lenalidomide, and dexamethasone induction followed by autologous transplant, consolidation, and maintenance. Next-generation flow cytometry was used to evaluate CTCs in PB at diagnosis and measurable residual disease (MRD) in BM throughout treatment. [Results]: CTCs were detected in 92% (344 of 374) of patients with newly diagnosed MM. The correlation between the percentages of CTCs and BM PCs was modest. Increasing logarithmic percentages of CTCs were associated with inferior progression-free survival (PFS). A cutoff of 0.01% CTCs showed an independent prognostic value (hazard ratio: 2.02; 95% CI, 1.3 to 3.1; P = .001) in multivariable PFS analysis including the International Staging System, lactate dehydrogenase levels, and cytogenetics. The combination of the four prognostic factors significantly improved risk stratification. Outcomes according to the percentage of CTCs and depth of response to treatment showed that patients with undetectable CTCs had exceptional PFS regardless of complete remission and MRD status. In all other cases with detectable CTCs, only achieving MRD negativity (and not complete remission) demonstrated a statistically significant increase in PFS. [Conclusion]: Evaluation of CTCs in PB outperformed quantification of BM PCs. The detection of ≥ 0.01% CTCs could be a new risk factor in novel staging systems for patients with transplant-eligible MM.Supported by grants from the Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red—Área de Oncología—del Instituto de Salud Carlos III (CIBERONC; CB16/12/00369, CB16/12/00400, and CB16/12/00284); Instituto de Salud Carlos III/Subdirección General de Investigación Sanitaria (FIS No. PI19/01451, PI20/00048, and PI21/01816); the Cancer Research UK (C355/A26819); FCAECC and AIRC under the Accelerator Award Program (EDITOR); the ISCIII and FEDER foundations (AC17/00101) together with FCAECC for iMMunocell Transcan-2; the European Research Council (ERC) 2015 Starting Grant (MYELOMANEXT/680200); the CRIS Cancer Foundation (PR_EX_2020-02), the Leukemia Lymphoma Society, the Black Swan Research Initiative of the International Myeloma Foundation; and the Riney Family Multiple Myeloma Research Program Fund

Effect of coumaphos on Rhipicephalus microplus and entomopatho-genic nematodes in cattle production units

Objective: to determine the effect of coumaphos on Rhipicephalus microplus and entomopathogenic nematodes in bovine production units. Design/methodology/approach: Two experiments were carried out: First) tick samples were collected and evaluated, using the Adult Immersion Test (10 ticks per humid chamber), the treatments were applied: 1) Control; 2) Coumaphos 0.1 %; 3) Coumaphos 0.2 %; 4) Coumaphos 0.4 %. An ANOVA was carried out with a completely randomized design (mortality dependent variable and treatment independent variable with four levels) and a multiple comparison of means (Tukey's test). Second experiment) 10 samples of livestock soil where coumaphos is used, which correspond to the Mariano Matamoros ejido, Tamaulipas, and 10 non-livestock soil from the Las Huastecas Experimental Field, were analyzed to determine the presence of entomopathogenic nematodes (EPN). a cross-frequency table between the sampled soils and the Chi-square test. Results: Experiment 1) In counting the tick mortality percentages on the second day after application in group 1) control was 37.5 %, 2) 72.5 %, 3) 80 %, 4) 92.5 %, on day 7 and day 8 there was no difference with 90 % and 100 % mortality. Experiment 2) The soils positive to EPN were 35 % Non-livestock and 25 % Livestock. Limitations on study/implications: it is important to make producers aware of the correct use of chemical products. Findings/conclusions: R. Microplus was susceptible to coumaphos in cattle production units. A greater presence of EPN was found in non-livestock soils, which may be related to the use of chemical products to control parasites

An amino acid substitution found in animals with low susceptibility to prion diseases confers a protective dominant-negative effect in prion-infected transgenic mice

While prion diseases have been described in numerous species, some, including those of the Canidae family, appear to show resistance or reduced susceptibility. A better understanding of the factors underlying prion susceptibility is crucial for the development of effective treatment and control measures. We recently demonstrated resistance to prion infection in mice overexpressing a mutated prion protein (PrP) carrying a specific amino acid substitution characteristic of canids. Here, we show that coexpression of this mutated PrP and wild-type mouse PrP in transgenic mice inoculated with different mouse-adapted prion strains (22 L, ME7, RML, and 301C) significantly increases survival times (by 45 to 113%). These data indicate that this amino acid substitution confers a dominant-negative effect on PrP, attenuating the conversion of PrPC to PrPSc and delaying disease onset without altering the neuropathological properties of the prion strains. Taken together, these findings have important implications for the development of new treatment approaches for prion diseases based on dominant-negative proteins

Las mutaciones dentro de la constitución política de Colombia de 1991

La tesis fue desarrollada ante la necesidad de establecer y determinar cuál es realmente la Constitución Política vigente, a partir de las interpretaciones de la Corte Constitucional. Lo inédito de éste trabajo consiste en identificar las mutaciones que han tenido impacto en los derechos fundamentales y en expresiones que afectan la comunidad jurídica. De lo anterior se concluyó que además de las reformas realizadas por vía de cambios formales como el referendo, y el acto legislativo, la Constitución ha sido también transformada a través de la interpretación realizada por la Corte Constitucional en sus sentencias, que sin cambiar el texto constitucional altera su contenido y alcance de sus disposiciones, encontrando así 15 mutaciones, de las cuales 11 impactan en forma intensa los derechos fundamentales y 4 mutaciones que afectan en forma radical expresiones dentro de la comunidad jurídica.The thesis was developed in light of the need to estabüsh and determine what the current Political Constitution is, based on the interpretations of the Constitutional Court. The unpublished of this work is to identify the mutations that have had an impact on fundamental rights and expressions that affect the legal community. From the above it was concluded that in addition to the reforms made through formal changes such as the referendum, and the legislative act, the Constitution has also been transformed through the interpretaron made by the Constitutional Court in its judgments, which without changing the text Constitutional changes its content and scope of its provisions, finding 15 mutations, of which 11 impact intensely fundamental rights and 4 mutations that radicaliy affect expressions within the legal community.Magíster en Derecho ConstitucionalMaestrí