Exploring Ableism through Teacher Identity and Empowerment: Teaching about Disability through a Campus Common Reader

This study was conducted to find how teacher candidates at a southwestern regional university understood ableism and empowerment based on their reading and interaction with the campus common reader. This work was important to help future teachers form healthy instructional practices that are inclusive of all students, regardless of ability in their future classrooms. The findings of this study showed evidence that this reading experience was transformative in helping teacher candidates form a teacher identity that was not only inclusive and welcoming of all, but also empowering

Functional, immunological and three-dimensional analysis of chemically synthesisedsporozoite peptides as components of a fully-effective antimalarial vaccine

Our ongoing search for a fully-effective vaccine against the Plasmodium falciparum parasite (causing the most lethal form ofhuman malaria) has been focused on identifying and characterising proteins' amino acid sequences (high activity binding peptides orHABPs) involved in parasite invasion of red blood cells (RBC) by the merozoite and hepatocytes by the sporozoite. Many such merozoiteHABPs have been recognised and molecularly and structurally characterised; however, native HABPs are immunologically silentsince they do not induce any immune response or protection against P. falciparum malaria infection and they have to be structurallymodified to allow them to fit perfectly into immune system molecules.A deeply structural analysis of these conserved merozoite HABPs and their modified analogues has led to rules or principles becomingrecognised for constructing a logical and rational methodology for a minimal subunit-based, multi-epitope, multi-stage, chemicallysynthesisedvaccine. The same in-depth analysis of the most relevant sporozoite proteins involved in sporozoite cell-traversal and hepatocyteinvasion as well as the hepatic stage is shown here.Specifically modifying these HABPs has resulted in a new set of potential pre-erythrocyte targets which are able to induce high, longlastingantibody titres in Aotus monkeys, against their corresponding recombinant proteins and the complete parasite native molecules.This review shows how these rules may be applied against the first stage of parasite invasion (i.e. the sporozoite) to mount the first line ofdefence against the malarial parasite, which may indeed be the most effective one. Our results strongly support including some of thesemodified sporozoite HABPs in combination with the previously-described modified merozoite HABPs for obtaining the aforementionedfully-protective, multiepitope, multi-stage, minimal subunit-based, chemically-synthesized, antimalarial vaccine. © 2011 Bentham Science Publishers

Maniobrabilidad de buques: pruebas a escala real del Buque Patrullero de Apoyo Fluvial de la Armada de Colombia

Methodology and results of full scale maneuvering trials for Riverine Support Patrol Vessel “RSPV”, built by COTECMAR for the Colombian Navy are presented. This ship is equipped with a “Pump – Jet” propulsion system and the hull corresponds to a wide-hull with a high Beam – Draft ratio (B/T=9.5). Tests were based on the results of simulation of turning diameters obtained from TRIBON M3˝ design software, applying techniques of Design of Experiments “DOE”, to rationalize the number of runs in different conditions of water depth, ship speed, and rudder angle. Results validate the excellent performance of this class of ship and show that turning diameter and other maneuvering characteristics improve with decreasing water depth.En el presente trabajo se presenta la metodología y los resultados de las pruebas de maniobrabilidad a escala real del Buque Patrullero de Apoyo Fluvial Pesado “PAF-P”, construido por COTECMAR para la Armada Nacional de Colombia. El buque está equipado con un sistema de propulsión de bomba de agua tipo “Pump – Jet” y su casco corresponde a un casco con una relación Manga – Calado muy alta (B/T = 9.5). Las pruebas se basaron en los resultados de simulación de círculos evolutivos obtenidos en el software de Diseño TRIBON M3©, aplicando técnicas de Diseño de Experimentos “DOE”, para racionalizar el número de corridas en diferentes condiciones de profundidad, velocidad y ángulo de timón. Los resultados validan el excelente desempeño de esta clase de buques y muestran que el diámetro de giro y otras características de maniobrabilidad mejoran con la disminución de la profundidad

Biogas production from seaweed biomass : a biorefinery approach

As the demand for energy is increasing worldwide, many countries are becoming\ud increasingly dependent on fossil fuel consumption, leading to a rapid increase in carbon\ud dioxide and reduction of petroleum reserves.\ud Alternative and viable options to replace fossil fuels, improve energy security and\ud reduce greenhouse emissions have been proposed worldwide. Marine macroalgae\ud (seaweed) has emerged as an alternative feedstock for the production of a myriad of\ud renewable fuels, such as biogas. The implementation of the anaerobic digestion (AD)\ud process of seaweed requires optimisation before commercialisation is feasible. This\ud PhD study, therefore, aimed to establish a seaweed-based biorefinery approach to\ud produce biogas as main commodity.\ud The study initially focused on exposing two seaweed species common in Irish waters\ud (Laminaria digitata and Saccharina latissima) to chemical, mechanical, enzymatic and\ud physical pretreatment methods in order to enhance the release of macromolecules\ud (lipids, protein, total carbohydrate and reducing sugars) and, ultimately, increase biodigestibility\ud to produce biogas.\ud Results showed that, among all chemical pretreatment conditions tested in this study,\ud dilute acid hydrolysis (4% HNO3 at 130ºC for 2 hrs) had the greatest effect in releasing\ud macromolecules from L. digitata and S. latissima. The environmentally friendly\ud pretreatments (freezer milling, oxalic acid and the enzymatic product Cellulase)\ud improved the recovery of reducing sugars.\ud The two seaweed species were subjected to AD to investigate their suitability to\ud generate biogas as source of renewable energy in 120 ml and 1.0 L size reactors.\ud Pretreatments inhibited the anaerobic digestion (AD) process and only a 6% increase in\ud biogas production was obtained when the biomass was subjected to a combination of\ud 2.0% citric acid and Cellulase.\ud For an economically viable digester operation, digester temperature setting is one of the\ud most critical factors. Reactors incubated at a mesophilic temperature were more\ud 5\ud effective for biogas and methane production efficiency than either thermophilic or\ud psychrophilic digesters during the AD of L. digitata\ud The AD of different seaweed species commonly found in Irish and the Northern\ud Atlantic Ocean was compared in order to evaluate their potential to produce biogas. The\ud lowest concentration of biogas was achieved from the AD of Fucus serratus. S.\ud latissima, Saccorhiza polyschides and L. digitata produced the highest biogas yields,\ud making the three species prospective candidates for the production of biogas as a\ud renewable source of energy.\ud The seaweed-based biorefinery model integrates the AD of by-products from the\ud biodiesel (glycerol) and the livestock industry (bovine slurry) to produce biogas. The\ud anaerobic co-digestion of these waste streams with either L. digitata or S. latissima\ud increased biogas and methane yields when compared to AD of the seaweed alone.\ud Results show that the process could be a promising approach to integrating these byproducts\ud in order to generate biogas.\ud During experiments to investigate the scaling up of the process, in 10 L pilot plants, 217\ud and 305 ml g/VS of methane were produced from the anaerobic digestion of L. digitata\ud and S. latissima, respectively. The low volatile solid destruction, high alkalinity and\ud accumulation of H2S caused a reduction in methane production. The organic residue\ud (digestate) generated after the AD of L. digitata was shown to be a source of biofertiliser\ud that can be used to enhance the growth rate of two biofuel crops, ryegrass and\ud sunflower.\ud The results obtained from this study provided essential data to support the scale-up of\ud anaerobic digestion of seaweed in order to generate biogas as a source of renewable\ud energy. A seaweed-based biorefinery approach achieved the extraction of\ud macromolecules, the co-digestion of waste products, production of biogas and digestate\ud re-use as source of fertiliser

Well-defined regions of the Plasmodium falciparum reticulocyte binding protein homologue 4 mediate interaction with red blood cell membrane

Two widely studied parasite protein families are considered attractive targets for developing a fully effective antimalarial vaccine: the erythrocyte binding antigen (EBA) family defining a sialic acid-dependent invasion pathway, and reticulocyte-binding homologue (RH) proteins associated with sialic acid-independent red blood cell (RBC) invasion. In this study, the micronemal invasive PfRH4 protein was finely mapped using 20-mer-long synthetic peptides spanning the entire protein length to identify protein regions that establish high affinity interactions with human RBCs. Twenty conserved, mainly ?-helical high-activity binding peptides (HABPs) with nanomolar dissociation constants and recognizing 32, 25, 22, and 20 kDaRBCmembrane molecules in a chymotrypsin and/or trypsin-sensitive manner were identified in this protein. Anti-PfRH4 rabbit sera and PfRH4 HABPs inhibited merozoite invasion in vitro, therefore suggesting the implication of these HABPs in Plasmodium falciparum invasion and supporting their inclusion in further structural and immunological studies to design potential components of a minimal subunit-based, multiantigenic, chemically synthesized antimalarial vaccine. ©2009 American Chemical Society

Colombian fruit and vegetables recognition using convolutional neural networks and transfer learning

Automatic image recognition is a convenient option for labeling and categorizing fruits and vegetables in supermarkets. This paper proposes the design and implementation of an automatic classification system for Colombian fruits, by training a convolutional neural network. A database was created to train and test the system, which consisted of 4980 images, labeled in 22 classes, each corresponding to pictures of the same kind of fruit, trying to reproduce the variability of a real case scenario with occlusions, different positions, rotations, lightings, colors, etc., and the use of bags. On-training data augmentation was used to further increase the robustness of the model. Additionally, transfer learning was implemented by taking the parameters of a pretrained model used for fruit classification as the new initial parameters of the proposed convolutional network, achieving an increase of the classification accuracy compared with the same model when trained with random initial weights. The final classification accuracy of the network was 98.12% which matches the scores achieved on previous works that performed fruit classification on less challenging datasets. Considering top-3 classification we report an accuracy of 99.95%. © 2020 IOP Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved

Clothoid-Based Three-Dimensional Curve for Attitude Planning

Interest in flying robots, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), has grown during last years in both military and civil fields [1, 2]. The same happens to autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) [3]. These vehicles, UAVs and AUVs, offer a wide variety of possible applications and challenges, such as control, guidance or navigation [2, 3]. In this sense, heading and attitude control in UAVs is very important [4], particularly relevant in airplanes (fixed-wing flying vehicles), because they are strongly non-linear, coupled, and tend to be underactuated systems with non-holonomic constraints. Hence, designing a good attitude controller is a difficult task [5, 6, 7, 8, 9], where stability must be taken into account by the controller [10]. Indeed, if the reference is too demanding for the controller or non-achievable because its dynamics is too fast, the vehicle might become unstable. In order to address this issue, autonomous navigation systems usually include a high-level path planner to generate smooth reference trajectories to be followed by the vehicle using a low-level controller. Usually a set of waypoints is given in GPS coordinates, normally from a map, in order to apply a smooth point-to-point control trajectory [11, 12]

El Programa de Investigación en Maíz: objetivos, resultados y proyecciones.

En el presente documento los autores reseñan lo que ha sido el Programa de Maíz en el ICA teniendo en cuenta los objetivos planteados, los resultados y las proyecciones propuestas. Para ello inicialmente, se muestra la importancia del maíz como alimento, el área cultivada, la producción y productividad a nivel nacional basandose en tablas que muestran series históricas desde 1950 hasta 1983 del área en producción y rendimiento en Colombia. Con el objeto de elevar los niveles de productividad de maíz, el ICA elaboró el Plan Nacional de Investigación en el Cultivo de Maíz, el cual hace parte del Plan Nacional de Investigación Agropecuaria del ICA(PLANIA) para 1981 a 1986 los objetivos del primer plan eran: obtener información básica y detectar los factores limitantes en la producción del maíz, determinar el grado de tecnología disponible, establecer prioriddades de investigación y formular los proyectos de investigación para los 5 años siguientes. Se realizaron investigacioes en fitomejoramiento, suelos, fisiología, fitopatología, entomología, recursos de agua y tierra, maquinaria agrícola, procesos agrícolas y todos los factaores socioeconómicos involucrados en el proceso de producción. Los resultados de este plan para 1983 muestran la producción de 73 diferentes tipos mejorados de maíz y el programa ha autorizado la comercialización de 9 genotipos de maíz. Se enumeran las empresas que también se dedican a la multiplicación, distribución y venta de semillas de maíz en Colombia Finalmente se enumeran los proyectos contemplados por el PLANIA en maíz, los cuales son los señalados anteriormente de los que se espera una respuesta efectia a los factores tecnológicos limitantes de la producción del cultivo de maízMaíz-Zea may

Emergence and spread of a new community-genotype methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus clone in Colombia

© 2017 The Author(s). Background: Community-genotype methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CG-MRSA) clones are a global concern due to their resistance and increased virulence and their ability to cause infections both hospitalized patients and healthy people in the community. Here, we characterize 32 isolates of a new CG-MRSA clone. These isolates were identified in four cities in Colombia, South America. Methods: The isolates were recovered from four different epidemiological and prospective studies that were conducted in several regions of Colombia. Molecular characterizations included multilocus sequence typing; pulsed-field gel electrophoresis; SCCmec, agr and spa typing; and whole-genome sequencing. Results: All isolates belonged to ST923 (clonal complex 8), harbouring SCCmec IVa and a spa type t1635 and lacking an arginine catabolism mobile element. The isolates were classified as COL923, were resistant to at least one non-beta-lactam antibiotic, and exhibited high frequencies (>60%) of resistance to macrolides and tetracycline. Using whole-genome sequencing, we found that this new clone harbours novel prophage 3 and beta-island structures and a slightly different pathogenicity island 5. Moreover, isolates belonging to the COL923 clone are grouped in a different clade than USA300 and USA300-LV. Conclusion: Our results show the emergence and spread of the COL923 clone in different cities in Colombia. This clone is resistant to several antibiotics and possesses new structures in its mobile genetic elements