A Proposal for the Restoration of the Islamic Towers in the Segura de la Sierra Valley. Significance and Values of this Cultural Landscape

Due to the strategic position of Segura de la Sierra valley (Jaén, Spain) during the 12th and 13th centuries, there were built several defensive fortresses both by Muslims and Christians. As a result, there are still remains of a well-preserved medieval tower system using rammed-earth technology, with more than sixteen towers, often with a fortified enclosure, that represents a magnificent heritage. An exhaustive analysis has been carried out in order to do a scientific restoration of some of them. The research methodology has considered different phases in the stages that should be followed in the guardianship of a historical cultural asset: documenta-tion/investigation, conservation/restoration and dissemination, with the development of a patent. The historical significance and cultural references of these towers with their territory, and the interest of the discoveries obtained due to the research made and the restoration project of some of them, are the principal contributions of this paper.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Serotype distribution of remaining pneumococcal meningitis in the mature PCV10/13 period : Findings from the PSERENADE Project

Funding Information: The PSERENADE project is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as part of the World Health Organization Pneumococcal Vaccines Technical Coordination Project, grant number INV-010429/OPP1189065. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 by the authors.Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) introduction has reduced pneumococcal meningitis incidence. The Pneumococcal Serotype Replacement and Distribution Estimation (PSERENADE) project described the serotype distribution of remaining pneumococcal meningitis in countries using PCV10/13 for least 5-7 years with primary series uptake above 70%. The distribution was estimated using a multinomial Dirichlet regression model, stratified by PCV product and age. In PCV10-using sites (N = 8; cases = 1141), PCV10 types caused 5% of cases <5 years of age and 15% among ≥5 years; the top serotypes were 19A, 6C, and 3, together causing 42% of cases <5 years and 37% ≥5 years. In PCV13-using sites (N = 32; cases = 4503), PCV13 types caused 14% in <5 and 26% in ≥5 years; 4% and 13%, respectively, were serotype 3. Among the top serotypes are five (15BC, 8, 12F, 10A, and 22F) included in higher-valency PCVs under evaluation. Other top serotypes (24F, 23B, and 23A) are not in any known investigational product. In countries with mature vaccination programs, the proportion of pneumococcal meningitis caused by vaccine-in-use serotypes is lower (≤26% across all ages) than pre-PCV (≥70% in children). Higher-valency PCVs under evaluation target over half of remaining pneumococcal meningitis cases, but questions remain regarding generalizability to the African meningitis belt where additional data are needed.publishersversionPeer reviewe

Crosslinking of rigid poly(vinyl chloride)

Various formulations for the crosslinking of rigid poly(vinyl chloride) have been investigated including three different thermal stabilisers: a tin maleate; an octyl thio tin stabiliser; and a tribasic lead sulphate. The possibility of using aminosilanes and peroxides as crosslinking agents was considered and the additives used in the formulations were bis(-trimethoxysilylpropyl)amine, a blend of trimethylol propane trimethacrylate and amorphous silica, and 1,1-di-t-butylperoxy-3,3,5-trimethyl cyclohexane incorporating 40% peroxide. It was shown that rigid poly(vinyl chloride) can be crosslinked using both aminosilane and peroxide systems and the optimum level of the aminosilane was found to be 2 phr while significant property improvements were achieved with only 0·5 phr peroxide. The effects of the various thermal stabilisers and crosslinking additives are presented and discussed

Synthesis and biological activity of a new class of antitumor cyclopeptides based on the solomonamides

Solomonamides A (1) and B (2) are novel natural products recently isolated from the marine sponge Theonella swinhoei [1]. Preliminary structural studies revealed an unprecedented cyclic peptide type structure. Interestingly, solomonamide A exhibits anti-inflammatory activity, showing potent reduction (60%) of inflammation at a very low concentration of 100 µg/kg in animal models. However, the scarcity of these compounds from their natural sources has been a drawback for further pharmacological assays. In fact, the anti-inflammatory activity of solomonamide B was not evaluated due to the limited amounts. This difficulty to access large amounts of these compounds makes quite difficult to gain insight into their biological profiles and mechanism of action and justifies the chemical synthesis of this new class of cyclic peptides. As a consequence, the solomonamides have been the subject of several synthetic efforts [2] notably by the Reddy group who has recently reported the first total synthesis of solomonamide B based on a intramolecular Heck reaction, which led to a revision of the initially proposed structure for 2 [3].Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Surface magnetism in ZnO/Co3O4 mixtures

We recently reported the observation of room temperature ferromagnetism in mixtures of ZnO and Co3O4 despite the diamagnetic and antiferromagnetic character of these oxides respectively. Here we present a detailed study on the electronic structure of this material in order to account for this unexpected ferromagnetism. Electrostatic interactions between both oxides lead to a dispersion of Co3O4 particles over the surface of ZnO larger ones. As a consequence, the reduction of Co+3 to Co2+ at the particle surface takes place as evidenced by XAS measurements and optical spectrocopy. This reduction allows to xplain the observed ferromagnetic signal within the well established theories of magnetism.Comment: Accepted in Journal of Applied Physic

A Comprehensive Review of Control Strategies and Optimization Methods for Individual and Community Microgrids

© 2022 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Community Microgrid offers effective energy harvesting from distributed energy resources and efficient energy consumption by employing an energy management system (EMS). Therefore, the collaborative microgrids are essentially required to apply an EMS, underlying an operative control strategy in order to provide an efficient system. An EMS is apt to optimize the operation of microgrids from several points of view. Optimal production planning, optimal demand-side management, fuel and emission constraints, the revenue of trading spinning and non-spinning reserve capacity can effectively be managed by EMS. Consequently, the importance of optimization is explicit in microgrid applications. In this paper, the most common control strategies in the microgrid community with potential pros and cons are analyzed. Moreover, a comprehensive review of single objective and multi-objective optimization methods is performed by considering the practical and technical constraints, uncertainty, and intermittency of renewable energies sources. The Pareto-optimal solution as the most popular multi-objective optimization approach is investigated for the advanced optimization algorithms. Eventually, feature selection and neural network-based clustering algorithms in order to analyze the Pareto-optimal set are introduced.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MICINN)–Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI), and by the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF), a way of making Europe, under Grant PGC2018-098946-B-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Accelerated inbreeding depression suggests synergistic epistasis for deleterious mutations in Drosophila melanogaster

Epistasis may have important consequences for a number of issues in quantitative genetics and evolutionary biology. In particular, synergistic epistasis for deleterious alleles is relevant to the mutation load paradox and the evolution of sex and recombination. Some studies have shown evidence of synergistic epistasis for spontaneous or induced deleterious mutations appearing in mutation-accumulation experiments. However, many newly arising mutations may not actually be segregating in natural populations because of the erasing action of natural selection. A demonstration of synergistic epistasis for naturally segregating alleles can be achieved by means of inbreeding depression studies, as deleterious recessive allelic effects are exposed in inbred lines. Nevertheless, evidence of epistasis from these studies is scarce and controversial. In this paper, we report the results of two independent inbreeding experiments carried out with two different populations of Drosophila melanogaster. The results show a consistent accelerated inbreeding depression for fitness, suggesting synergistic epistasis among deleterious alleles. We also performed computer simulations assuming different possible models of epistasis and mutational parameters for fitness, finding some of them to be compatible with the results observed. Our results suggest that synergistic epistasis for deleterious mutations not only occurs among newly arisen spontaneous or induced mutations, but also among segregating alleles in natural populationsXunta de Galicia | Ref. ED431C 2016-037Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad | Ref. CGL2016-75904-C2-1-