Biogeographical Analyses and Applications : The Study of Plant Distribution Patterns in West Africa

Studies and applications in biogeography aim at understanding the causes and determinants of past, current, and future diversity distribution patterns. In this context, niche models are currently important tools. They make use of species georeferenced locations and sets of environmental variables to determine the potential suitable habitats of species. The derived results are applied for the conservation of biodiversity but their reliability strongly relies on the quality of the spatial information contained in biological databases. Biodiversity conservation effectiveness strongly depends on the identification of congruent areas for a set of diversity indicators. For example, congruent areas of high species richness for different biological groups. In the first part of this thesis a methodological framework is developed to evaluate the quality of biological databases. As a case example, a database of vascular plants in Benin, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso is analysed. It consists of a total of 4,587 species collected in 2,931 different localities. Main criteria to evaluate database quality are the spatial configuration of collection localities, their spatial and environmental bias, and their floristic inventory completeness. It was shown that collection localities are unevenly distributed, forming strong clustered patterns and concentrated in the vicinity to cities, the coast, rivers, roads and protected areas. Collection localities represent only a narrow range of the environmental conditions in the study area. A gap selection index was created integrating density of collection localities, environmental bias and inventory completeness to represent those areas in need of more information and to guide future research activities. According to the gap selection index, only the Sahelian zone and surroundings of Comin-Yanga city in Burkina Faso, areas close to the coast and in the border with Liberia in Ivory Coast, and the region of the eastern Guinean forest in Benin are good represented. Different niche models strategies are tested to compare model performance between commonly used approaches, and those that seek to minimize the influence of spatial bias present in the occurrence records. The maximum entropy technique (i.e., Maxent) is used to model species ranges based on biased occurrence records and three types of environmental background information sets. These are random locations (’random background’), the locations of all collection localities except those of the target species (’target background’), and random locations weighed as a function of the gap selection index (’index background’). In average, target background based models perform better than random and index background based models. A visual examination confirms that only target background based models are able to correct for spatial bias. Species richness patterns are estimated to qualitatively describe spatial variations as a result of the three approaches employed Richness patterns strongly vary across the three approaches, but those based on target background models are more accurate to the known positive north-south richness gradient in the study area. In the second part of this thesis, the most comprehensive databases of vascular plants, amphibians and bats in West Africa are used to estimate geographical patterns of species richness and the range size rarity index (as a surrogate of species richness and endemism) at a half degree resolution. The relationship between abiotic factors and these two aspects of diversity are examined through the use of spatial auto-regressive techniques, indicating that elevation heterogeneity and temperature are the main determinants of variation in species richness and range size rarity patterns of the three taxa. Pair-wise correlation comparisons between the three groups for species richness and the range size rarity showed generally high and significant correlations (i.e. > 0.9). However, weak and even negative corelations were found when the comparison was applied at small geographical extents. Hotspots of the range size rarity index for the three groups together occupy 9.3% (i.e. 583.7 km) of the study area. 39.2% of this area is still covered by natural vegetation and 8.5% is covered by protected areas. The main finding of this thesis is that despite the large amount of information available to carry out research in biogeography, analysis and application should not be done without an objective and sound analysis of data quality. Only in this way sources of error and uncertainty can be identified, and proper modeling techniques can be applied. These are crucial steps that need to be followed before drawing conclusions and making decisions for the conservation of biodiversity

Análisis espacial medioambiental de la mortalidad en el municipio de Madrid.

The first purpose of this study is to compare mortality indicators in the 21 districts of Madrid for 1987-88 and 1995-96 periods. Mortality indicator used Aceptado: 15/V/2001. * Departamento de Ecología Humana y Población. Universidad Complutense de Madrid. 353 Jaime Martín Moreno, et al. Análisis espacial medioambiental de la mortalidad... were the comparative mortality figure with the direct method. The second purpose is to identify differences in mortality between districts in function of certain socioeconomic factors. Socioeconomic indicators were the rate of unemployed, rate of people without studies, rate of people with high studies, rate of unskilled workers and the rate of managerial workers. The statistical correlation between socioeconomic indicators and mortality indicators was studied by Spearman's rank correlation coefficient. This study has detected significant differences in mortality between the 21 districts of Madrid and high correlation between mortality and socioeconomic indicators.El primer objetivo del estudio es comparar la mortalidad en los 21 distritos de Madrid para los periodos 1987-88 y 1995-96. El indicador de mortalidad utilizado fue la tasa comparativa de mortalidad mediante el método directo. El segundo objetivo es identificar diferencias en mortalidad entre distritos en función de ciertos factores socioeconómicos. Los factores socioeconómicos que se han tenido en cuenta son la tasa de desempleo, la tasa de personas sin estudios, tasa de personas con estudios universitarios, tasa de trabajadores no cualificados y tasa de trabajadores dentro de la categoría de directivos. Se ha utilizado el coeficiente de correlación de Spearman. En el estudio se han detectado importantes diferencias de mortalidad entre los 21 distritos de Madrid, observándose una fuerte correlación entre la mortalidad y los indicadores socioeconómicos utilizados

Stabilization of Polymeric Nanofibers Layers for Use as Real-Time and In-Flow Photonic Sensors

In order to increase the sensitivity of a sensor, the relationship between its volume and the surface available to be functionalized is of great importance. Accordingly, porous materials are becoming very relevant, because they have a notable surface-to-volume ratio. Moreover, they offer the possibility to infiltrate the target substances on them. Among other porous structures, polymeric nanofibers (NFs) layers fabricated by electrospinning have emerged as a very promising alternative to low-cost and easy-to-produce high-performance photonic sensors. However, experimental results show a spectrum drift when performing sensing measurements in real-time. That drift is responsible for a significant error when trying to determine the refractive index variation for a target solution, and, because of that, for the detection of the presence of certain analytes. In order to avoid that problem, different chemical and thermal treatments were studied. The best results were obtained for thermal steps at 190 °C during times between 3 and 5 h. As a result, spectrum drifts lower than 5 pm/min and sensitivities of 518 nm/refractive index unit (RIU) in the visible range of the spectrum were achieved in different electrospun NFs sensors.This work was supported by the Spanish government through the project TEC2015-63838-C3-1-ROPTONANOSENS and from the Basque government through the project KK-2019/00101 -µ4INDUSTR

Desarrollo de la noción de distribución binomial en estudiantes de bachillerato con apoyo de tecnología

El presente trabajo explora la evolución de la noción de distribución binomial B(2, ½) en 46 estudiantes de bachillerato en México, antes y después del uso de tecnología, en particular, al desarrollar actividades guiadas y de reflexión con un software educativo de estadística (Fathom). El análisis de tipo cualitativo se apoya en la taxonomía SOLO (Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome) con la que se construyen jerarquías de comprensión de esta noción, con relación a una tarea de predicción y otra de distribución de probabilidad, a saber, preestructural, uniestructural, multiestructural y relacional. Dentro de los resultados obtenidos tenemos que el uso del software apoya el cambio de esta noción, antes de la exploración con la computadora ubica a gran parte de los estudiantes en el nivel uniestructural, donde se identifica que éstos recuperan información de la forma que guarda dicha distribución y de sus probabilidades teóricas, dejando de lado un elemento fundamental de pensamiento estadístico, la variabilidad. Sin embargo, mientras los estudiantes exploran con el software, la idea de la variabilidad emerge apoyada en su dinamismo, aportando en ellos la experimentación inmediata del fenómeno explorado. No obstante, siguen presentes nociones del conocimiento teórico aprendido en los cursos tradicionales de estadística

Label-Free Optical Biosensing Using Low-Cost Electrospun Polymeric Nanofibers

Polymeric nanofiber matrices are promising structures to develop biosensing devices due to their easy and affordable large-scale fabrication and their high surface-to-volume ratio. In this work, the suitability of a polyamide 6 nanofiber matrix for the development of a label-free and real-time Fabry–Pérot cavity-based optical biosensor was studied. For such aim, in-flow biofunctionalization of nanofibers with antibodies, bound through a protein A/G layer, and specific biodetection of 10 µg/mL bovine serum albumin (BSA) were carried out. Both processes were successfully monitored via reflectivity measurements in real-time without labels and their reproducibility was demonstrated when different polymeric nanofiber matrices from the same electrospinning batch were employed as transducers. These results demonstrate not only the suitability of correctly biofunctionalized polyamide 6 nanofiber matrices to be employed for real-time and label-free specific biodetection purposes, but also the potential of electrospinning technique to create affordable and easy-to-fabricate at large scale optical transducers with a reproducible performance.This research was supported by a co-financed action by the European Union through the operational program of the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) of the Valencian Community 2014–2020, the Generalitat Valenciana through the PROMETEO project AVANTI/2019/123 and the grant PPC/2020/037, the Spanish government through the project TEC2015-63838-C3-OPTONANOSENS, Universitat Politècnica de València through grant PAID-01-17, and by the Basque government through the project µ4Industry, KK-2019/00101, from the ELKARTEK Program

hydrographr: An R package for scalable hydrographic data processing

1. Freshwater ecosystems are considered biodiversity hotspots, but assessing the spatial distribution of species remains challenging. One major obstacle lies in the complex geospatial processing of large amounts of data, such as stream network, sub-catchment and basin data, that are necessary for addressing the longitudinal connectivity among water bodies. Workflows thus need to be scalable, especially when working across large spatial extents and at high spatial resolution. This in turn requires advanced command-line GIS skills and programming language integration, which often poses a challenge for freshwater researchers. 2. To address this challenge, we developed the package hydrographr that provides scalable hydrographic data processing in R. The package contains functions for downloading data of the high-resolution Hydrography90m dataset, processing, reading and extracting information, as well as assessing network distances and connectivity. While the functions are, by default, tailored toward the Hydrography90m data, they can also be generalised toward other data and purposes, such as efficient cropping and merging of raster and vector data, point-raster extraction, raster reclassification and data aggregation. The package depends on the open-source software GDAL/OGR, GRASS-GIS and the AWK programming language in the Linux environment, allowing a seamless language integration. Since the data is processed outside R, hydrographr allows creating scalable geo-processing workflows. 3. We illustrate the hydrographr functions using two workflows that focus on (i) a freshwater species distribution modelling approach, and (ii) assessing stream connectivity given the fragmentation by dams. We also provide a detailed guide for the initial installation of the required software. Windows users need to first enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) feature, and can then follow the same software installation as Linux users. hydrographr is maintained on GitHub at https://github.com/glowabio/hydrographr. 4. hydrographr provides a set of key functions for processing freshwater geospatial data. We expect that the package will support the freshwater-related research communities given the easy-to-use wrapper functions that allow capitalizing on powerful open-source command-line software, which may otherwise require a steep learning curve. Users can thus perform large-scale freshwater-specific longitudinal connectivity and network analyses across large geographic extents while staying within the R environment

Bank Financing Opportunities for Mipymes in Chihuahua City From 2018 To 2022

Objetivo: detectar las oportunidades de financiamiento bancario para las MIPyMES en Chihuahua del 2018 al 2022. Planteamiento del problema: El centralismo en decisiones por parte de la Banca, la mayor sensibilización al riesgo en otorgamiento de crédito, el exceso de requisitos (en algunos casos) por parte de las Instituciones Bancarias, así como el temor, escepticismo, desinterés y escasa cultura financiera (anteponiendo el interés meramente Fiscal) por parte de los empresarios y sus respectivos asesores. Metodología: El diseño metodológico para este estudio fue mixto, de tipo aplicado, alcance descriptivo, modo de campo con apoyo bibliográfico, diseño no experimental transaccional, método inductivo-deductivo, la población de este estudio fueron las MIPyMES de nueve colonias de las zonas centro, norte y sur de chihuahua, determinándose por muestreo probabilístico y selección aleatoria 196 empresarios. Resultados: Dentro de los resultados más relevantes se pudo determinar que las principales causas para que los empresarios no adquieran un financiamiento es que las MIPyMES que desean contar con acceso a crédito bancario no cuentan con la información financiera y contable, el historial crediticio, la actividad y la antigüedad de las empresas.Objective: To detect bank financing opportunities for MIPyMES in Chihuahua from 2018 to 2022. Statement of the problem: The centralism in decisions on the part of the Bank, the greater awareness of the risk in granting credit, the excess of requirements (in some cases) by the Banking Institutions, as well as the fear, skepticism, disinterest and lack of financial culture (putting the purely Fiscal interest first) on the part of the businessmen and their respective advisors. Methodology: The methodological design for this study was mixed, applied, descriptive scope, field mode with bibliographic support, non-experimental transactional design, inductive-deductive method, the population of this study were the MIPyMEs of nine colonies in the central, northern and southern areas of Chihuahua, determining by probability sampling and random selection 196 entrepreneurs. Results: Among the most relevant results, it was determined that the main causes for entrepreneurs not to acquire financing is that MIPyMES that want to have access to bank credit do not have the financial and accounting information, credit history, activity and age of the companies

Exercise and manual therapy for diabetic peripheral neuropathy: a systematic review

Background: Diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) is one of the most common complications of diabetes mellitus (DM). Control of hyperglycaemia as well as surgical decompression are effective treatments for these patients. However, surgery is not indicated for all candidates. Manual therapy and physical exercise have been shown to be effective for peripheral neuropathies, and exercise for DM. The aim is to review the effectiveness of manual therapy and/or exercise in patients with DPN. (2) Methods: Randomised controlled clinical trials comparing the effects of manual therapy and/or exercise on pain, function and/or balance were selected. The search strategy was performed in PubMed, PEDro, Scopus, Cochrane and Web of Science databases. The PRISMA statement was followed. (3) Results: A total of 656 articles were registered, and 29 were selected. There was little consensus on DPN criteria selection. Aerobic, strength and balance exercises are beneficial for DPN. Sessions of 30–60 min, three times per week for 8 weeks seems to be the most used dose. Manual therapy is effective in the short term. A combination of both modalities was more beneficial than alone in one study. (4) Conclusions: Exercise and manual therapy are beneficial for patients with DPN. More studies should be carried out for analysing the potential effect of combining manual therapy and exercise

Nutrition-related content on instagram in the united states of america: analytical cross-sectional study

Background: The Internet is today the largest platform for food distribution, and there are concerns about the impact that digital marketing has in the field of nutrition by promoting non-evidence-based recommendations. The purpose of this study was to describe the user profile that draws on Instagram to follow nutrition-related content versus not, and to analyze the frequency and type of content of the information provided by nutritional influencers. Methods: A cross-sectional study involving randomly selected United States residents having an Instagram account was performed. Participants completed an anonymous online survey link. Results: From 898 respondents, 78.7% were women, and 75.6% were Millennials. Scientific evidence present in the posts was 14.3%. Influencers promoted a product or a brand in more than 90% of posts. Women followed more nutrition-related content than men (p < 0.001). Millennials, followed by Generation-Z, followed more nutrition-related content (p < 0.001). There were no significant relationships between the following status of nutrition-related content with BMI, type of job, household income, education degree, or smoking habits. Conclusions: Women and Millennials followed more nutrition-related content. Scientific evidence was scarce and commercial interest in the network was evident. The vast majority of the posts were not based on scientific evidence and instead promoted a product/supplement

Galaxy clusters and groups in the ALHAMBRA Survey

We present a catalogue of 348 galaxy clusters and groups with $0.2<z<1.2$ selected in the 2.78 $deg^2$ ALHAMBRA Survey. The high precision of our photometric redshifts, close to $1\%$, and the wide spread of the seven ALHAMBRA pointings ensure that this catalogue has better mass sensitivity and is less affected by cosmic variance than comparable samples. The detection has been carried out with the Bayesian Cluster Finder (BCF), whose performance has been checked in ALHAMBRA-like light-cone mock catalogues. Great care has been taken to ensure that the observable properties of the mocks photometry accurately correspond to those of real catalogues. From our simulations, we expect to detect galaxy clusters and groups with both $70\%$ completeness and purity down to dark matter halo masses of $M_h\sim3\times10^{13}\rm M_{\odot}$ for $z<0.85$. Cluster redshifts are expected to be recovered with $\sim0.6\%$ precision for $z<1$. We also expect to measure cluster masses with $\sigma_{M_h|M^*_{CL}}\sim0.25-0.35\, dex$ precision down to $\sim3\times10^{13}\rm M_{\odot}$, masses which are $50\%$ smaller than those reached by similar work. We have compared these detections with previous optical, spectroscopic and X-rays work, finding an excellent agreement with the rates reported from the simulations. We have also explored the overall properties of these detections such as the presence of a colour-magnitude relation, the evolution of the photometric blue fraction and the clustering of these sources in the different ALHAMBRA fields. Despite the small numbers, we observe tentative evidence that, for a fixed stellar mass, the environment is playing a crucial role at lower redshifts (z$<$0.5).Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Catalogues and figures available online and under the following link: http://bascaso.net46.net/ALHAMBRA_clusters.htm