12 research outputs found

    Evolution and emergence of plant viruses

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    [EN] Viruses are common agents of plant infectious diseases. During last decades, worldwide agriculture production has been compromised by a series of epidemics caused by new viruses that spilled over from reservoir species or by new variants of classic viruses that show new pathogenic and epidemiological properties. Virus emergence has been generally associated with ecological change or with intensive agronomical practices. However, the complete picture is much more complex since the viral populations constantly evolve and adapt to their new hosts and vectors. This chapter puts emergence of plant viruses into the framework of evolutionary ecology, genetics, and epidemiology. We will stress that viral emergence begins with the stochastic transmission of preexisting genetic variants from the reservoir to the new host, whose fate depends on their fitness on each hosts, followed by adaptation to new hosts or vectors, and finalizes with an efficient epidemiological spread.We acknowledge the financial support from the Spanish Dirección General de Investigación Científica y Técnica grants BFU2012-30805 (S. F. E.) and AGL2008-02458 (F. G. A.)Elena Fito, SF.; Fraile, A.; García-Arena, F. (2014). Evolution and emergence of plant viruses. Advances in Virus Research. (88):161-191. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-800098-4.00003-9S1611918

    Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

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    Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

    Dynamic Control of a Novel Planar Cable-Driven Parallel Robot with a Large Wrench Feasible Workspace

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    Cable-Driven Parallel Robots (CDPRs) are special manipulators where rigid links are replaced with cables. The use of cables offers several advantages over the conventional rigid manipulators, one of the most interesting being their ability to cover large workspaces since cables are easily winded. However, this workspace coverage has its limitations due to the maximum permissible cable tensions, i.e., tension limitations cause a decrease in the Wrench Feasible Workspace (WFW) of these robots. To solve this issue, a novel design based in the addition of passive carriages to the robot frame of three degrees-of-freedom (3DOF) fully-constrained CDPRs is used. The novelty of the design allows reducing the variation in the cable directions and forces increasing the robot WFW; nevertheless, it presents a low stiffness along the x direction. This paper presents the dynamic model of the novel proposal together with a new dynamic control technique, which rejects the vibrations caused by the stiffness loss while ensuring an accurate trajectory tracking. The simulation results show that the controlled system presents a larger WFW than the conventional scheme of the CDPR, maintaining a good performance in the trajectory tracking of the end-effector. The novel proposal presented here can be applied in multiple planar applications

    Dynamic Control of a Novel Planar Cable-Driven Parallel Robot with a Large Wrench Feasible Workspace

    No full text
    Cable-Driven Parallel Robots (CDPRs) are special manipulators where rigid links are replaced with cables. The use of cables offers several advantages over the conventional rigid manipulators, one of the most interesting being their ability to cover large workspaces since cables are easily winded. However, this workspace coverage has its limitations due to the maximum permissible cable tensions, i.e., tension limitations cause a decrease in the Wrench Feasible Workspace (WFW) of these robots. To solve this issue, a novel design based in the addition of passive carriages to the robot frame of three degrees-of-freedom (3DOF) fully-constrained CDPRs is used. The novelty of the design allows reducing the variation in the cable directions and forces increasing the robot WFW; nevertheless, it presents a low stiffness along the x direction. This paper presents the dynamic model of the novel proposal together with a new dynamic control technique, which rejects the vibrations caused by the stiffness loss while ensuring an accurate trajectory tracking. The simulation results show that the controlled system presents a larger WFW than the conventional scheme of the CDPR, maintaining a good performance in the trajectory tracking of the end-effector. The novel proposal presented here can be applied in multiple planar applications

    Territorios segregados y (des)Gobernanza Urbana: Nápoles/Madrid/Barcelona

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    El presente documento recoge los resultados de las Jornadas de investigación Territorios segregados y (des) Gobernanza urbana celebradas los días 9 y 10 de octubre 2019 en la Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura organizadas por el Grupo de investigación en Arquitectura, Urbanismo y sostenibilidad (giau+s) de la Universidad Politécncia de Madrid, el Departamento de Urbanística y Ordenación del Territorio (DUyOT), de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid; y el Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerca L.U.P.T. – Laboratorio di Urbanistica e di Pianificazione Territoriale “Raffaele d’Ambrosio” (LUPT) de la Università degli Studi di Napoli, en el marco del Convenio de colaboración cultural y científica entre la Universitá degli Studi di Napoli Federico II y la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid El objetivo de las jornada era la reflexión y puesta en común de diversos trabajos de investigación realizados por los componentes de tres grupos de investigación que trabajan en líneas complementarias desde tres territorios: Barcelona, Madrid y Nápoles, como punto de inicio para establecer una línea de colaboración conjunta sobre los retos a los que se enfrentan las áreas urbanas y los territorios en torno a su gobernanza y gestión, en contextos cada vez más complejos afectados por dinámicas de segregación socio-espacial y vulnerabilidad crecientes. Esta publicación colectiva se enmarca en este proyecto conjunto de puesta en común y difusión de los resultados de las investigaciones de los tres grupos: Grupo de investigación en Arquitectura, Urbanismo y sostenibilidad (giau+s) de la Universidad Politécncia de Madrid, Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerca L.U.P.T. – Laboratorio di Urbanistica e di Pianificazione Territoriale “Raffaele d’Ambrosio” (LUPT) de la Università degli Studi di Napoli y el Grup d'Estudis sobre Energia Territori i Societat (GURB) de la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelon

    Early stage litter decomposition across biomes

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    Through litter decomposition enormous amounts of carbon is emitted to the atmosphere. Numerous large-scale decomposition experiments have been conducted focusing on this fundamental soil process in order to understand the controls on the terrestrial carbon transfer to the atmosphere. However, previous studies were mostly based on site-specific litter and methodologies, adding major uncertainty to syntheses, comparisons and meta-analyses across different experiments and sites. In the TeaComposition initiative, the potential litter decomposition is investigated by using standardized substrates (Rooibos and Green tea) for comparison of litter mass loss at 336 sites (ranging from −9 to +26 °C MAT and from 60 to 3113 mm MAP) across different ecosystems. In this study we tested the effect of climate (temperature and moisture), litter type and land-use on early stage decomposition (3 months) across nine biomes. We show that litter quality was the predominant controlling factor in early stage litter decomposition, which explained about 65% of the variability in litter decomposition at a global scale. The effect of climate, on the other hand, was not litter specific and explained <0.5% of the variation for Green tea and 5% for Rooibos tea, and was of significance only under unfavorable decomposition conditions (i.e. xeric versus mesic environments). When the data were aggregated at the biome scale, climate played a significant role on decomposition of both litter types (explaining 64% of the variation for Green tea and 72% for Rooibos tea). No significant effect of land-use on early stage litter decomposition was noted within the temperate biome. Our results indicate that multiple drivers are affecting early stage litter mass loss with litter quality being dominant. In order to be able to quantify the relative importance of the different drivers over time, long-term studies combined with experimental trials are needed.This work was performed within the TeaComposition initiative, carried out by 190 institutions worldwide. We thank Gabrielle Drozdowski for her help with the packaging and shipping of tea, Zora Wessely and Johannes Spiegel for the creative implementation of the acknowledgement card, Josip Dusper for creative implementation of the graphical abstract, Christine Brendle for the GIS editing, and Marianne Debue for her help with the data cleaning. Further acknowledgements go to Adriana Principe, Melanie Köbel, Pedro Pinho, Thomas Parker, Steve Unger, Jon Gewirtzman and Margot McKleeven for the implementation of the study at their respective sites. We are very grateful to UNILEVER for sponsoring the Lipton tea bags and to the COST action ClimMani for scientific discussions, adoption and support to the idea of TeaComposition as a common metric. The initiative was supported by the following grants: ILTER Initiative Grant, ClimMani Short-Term Scientific Missions Grant (COST action ES1308; COST-STSM-ES1308-36004; COST-STM-ES1308-39006; ES1308-231015-068365), INTERACT (EU H2020 Grant No. 730938), and Austrian Environment Agency (UBA). Franz Zehetner acknowledges the support granted by the Prometeo Project of Ecuador's Secretariat of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation (SENESCYT) as well as Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos Islands (2190). Ana I. Sousa, Ana I. Lillebø and Marta Lopes thanks for the financial support to CESAM (UID/AMB/50017), to FCT/MEC through national funds (PIDDAC), and the co-funding by the FEDER, within the PT2020 Partnership Agreement and Compete 2020. The research was also funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, FCT, through SFRH/BPD/107823/2015 (A.I. Sousa), co-funded by POPH/FSE. Thomas Mozdzer thanks US National Science Foundation NSF DEB-1557009. Helena C. Serrano thanks Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (UID/BIA/00329/2013). Milan Barna acknowledges Scientific Grant Agency VEGA (2/0101/18). Anzar A Khuroo acknowledges financial support under HIMADRI project from SAC-ISRO, India
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