Tectonic-palaeoenvironmental forcing of clay-mineral assemblages in nonmarine settings: the Oligocene-Miocene As Pontes Basin (Spain)

Two small, alluvial-lacustrine subbasins developed during the early restraining overstep stages of the Oligocene-Miocene As Pontes strike-slip Basin (NW Spain). Later, the basin evolved into a restraining bend stage and an alluvial-swamp-dominated depositional framework developed. The palaeobiological record demonstrates that the Oligocene-Miocene palaeoclimate in NW Spain was subtropical, warm and humid to subhumid

Professor Josep Castells i Guardiola (1925-2018), in memoriam

Montserrat Heras i Ciril Jimeno, editors de la REVISTA DE LA SOCIETAT CATALANA DE QUÍMIC

Students’ viewpoint on engineering subjects taught in English

The European Educational Institutions have the challenge and the commitment to enhance multilingual competence and teaching curricular subjects in a foreign language is seen as one of the most promising alternatives. In that context, professors teaching different engineering subjects at the School of Engineering of the UPC at Manresa (EPSEM) have been involved in projects aiming at analyzing the current linguistic situation and developing some on-line open access materials using CLIL as a strategy. They formed the u-Linguatech Research Group on Multilingual Communication in Science and Technology in order to provide such resources in an effective and efficient way. In this paper, we focus on students’ perception of the improvement of their multilingual competence throughout their Engineering degree, by means of subjects taught in English by non-native speakers. Data about the English level of current students are taken into account. We also describe the use of the above resources to improve the quality of subjects learning related to Chemical Engineering curricula

Fatty Acids and Metabolomic Composition of Follicular Fluid Collected from Environments Associated with Good and Poor Oocyte Competence in Goats

In goats, embryo oocyte competence is affected by follicle size, regardless of the age of the females. In previous studies, we found differences in blastocyst development between oocytes coming of small ( 3 mm) in prepubertal (1-2 month-old) goats. Oocyte competence and follicular fluid (FF) composition changes throughout follicle growth. The aim of this study was to analyze the fatty acids (FAs) composition and metabolomic profiles of FF recovered from small and large follicles of prepubertal goats and follicles of adult goats. FAs were analyzed by chromatography and metabolites by 1H-nuclear magnetic resonance (1H-NMR) spectrometry. The results showed important differences between adult and prepubertal follicles: a) the presence of α,β-glucose in adult and no detection in prepubertal; b) lactate, -N-(CH3)3 groups and inositol were higher in prepubertal; c) the percentage of linolenic acid, total saturated fatty acids and n-3 PUFAs were higher in adults; and d) the percentage of linoleic acid, total MUFAs, PUFAs, n-6 PUFAs and n-6 PUFAs:n-3 PUFAs ratio were higher in prepubertal goats. No significant differences were found in the follicle size of prepubertal goats, despite the differences in oocyte competence for in vitro embryo production