Structure of Plant Communities in a Pastoral System in Northern Spain

Six grassland communities on different soil types in northern Spain were analysed for species life-form and growth form composition, diversity, height and above-ground biomass in relation to grazing. Hemicryptophytic life-form was the most characteristic form. The grasslands on calcareous soils showed the greatest diversity values and the lowest peak above-ground biomass. Grasses were more abundant in siliceous soils than in calcareous soils, but in all communities the group other families was dominant

BBIPED: BCAM-Baltogar Industrial Platform for Engineering Design

Currently, commercial software for computational fluid dynamics offers a good set of features to deal with traditional designs. Within a competitive market industrial innovation is a key factor that must be faced by companies. However, the design of solutions to deal with industrial challenges cannot be done within commercial software due to the lack of flexibility. Open source initiatives are a good option but the learning curve is high, specially for industrial engineers profiles. In this paper, we present the BBIPED platform which has been designed to deal with turbomachinery applications in a simple and friendly way. The main goal is to keep the platform as simpler as possible providing the enough flexibility to include out-of-the-box solutions to cope with industrial challenges. BBIPED platform provides links with currently existing remarkable open source initiatives altogether with our own developments. Particularly, it is remarkable a first approach for automatic mesh generation based on geometry parametrization solution, and the provision of novel techniques to deal with multiple rotating frame (MRF): Multizone MRF an Virtual MRF. Case tests were designed to test the solutions and to assess and validate the results against commercial suites with promising results

Chemical abundances in bright giants of the globular cluster M62 (NGC 6266)

With the exception of Terzan 5, all the Galactic globular clusters that possess significant metallicity spreads, such as omega Cen and M22, are preferentially the more luminous clusters with extended horizontal branches. Here we present radial velocities and chemical abundances for seven bright giants in the globular cluster M62, a previously little-studied cluster. With M_V = -9.18, M62 is the ninth most luminous Galactic globular cluster and has an extended horizontal branch. Within our sample, we find (i) no evidence for a dispersion in metallicity, [Fe/H], beyond the measurement uncertainties, (ii) star-to-star abundance variations for C, O, Na and Al with the usual correlations between these elements as seen in other globular clusters, and (iii) a global enrichment for the elements Zr, Ba and La at the level [X/Fe] = +0.4 dex. For elements heavier than La, the abundance ratios are consistent with the scaled-solar $r$-process distribution. Below La, the abundances are anomalous when compared to the scaled-solar s-process or r-process distributions. For these elements, the abundance signature in M62 is in agreement with predictions of the s-process from fast-rotating massive stars, although the high [Rb/Y] ratio we measure may be a challenge to this scenario.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA

PTMcode v2: a resource for functional associations of post-translational modifications within and between proteins

The post-translational regulation of proteins is mainly driven by two molecular events, their modification by several types of moieties and their interaction with other proteins. These two processes are interdependent and together are responsible for the function of the protein in a particular cell state. Several databases focus on the prediction and compilation of protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and no less on the collection and analysis of protein post-translational modifications (PTMs), however, there are no resources that concentrate on describing the regulatory role of PTMs in PPIs. We developed several methods based on residue co-evolution and proximity to predict the functional associations of pairs of PTMs that we apply to modifications in the same protein and between two interacting proteins. In order to make data available for understudied organisms, PTMcode v2 (http://ptmcode.embl.de) includes a new strategy to propagate PTMs from validated modified sites through orthologous proteins. The second release of PTMcode covers 19 eukaryotic species from which we collected more than 300 000 experimentally verified PTMs (>1 300 000 propagated) of 69 types extracting the post-translational regulation of >100 000 proteins and >100 000 interactions. In total, we report 8 million associations of PTMs regulating single proteins and over 9.4 million interplays tuning PPIs

Les darreres campanyes d'excavació al jaciment de la Primera Edat del Ferro de Sant Jaume-Mas d'en Serrà (Alcanar, Montsià)

Els treballs de recerca al poblat de la Primera Edat del Ferro de Sant Jaume-Mas d'en Serrà(Alcanar,Montsià) pel GRAP(Grup de Recerques en Arqueologia Protohistòrica), de la Universitat de Barcelona, s'han desenvolupat fins ara al llarg d'un total de cinc campanyes d'excavació arqueològica, entre els anys 1997 i 2001.Tot i que la intensitat dels treballs ha estat irregular i intermitent degut principalment als baixos pressupostos disponibles per a realitzar les actuacions, els resultats obtinguts fins al moment han estat certament espectaculars. Ens trobem davant d'un poblat de la Primera Edat del Ferro conservat pràcticament de forma íntegra, amb una qualitat del registre arqueològic molt allunyada, entre d'altres aspectes per la densitat del nombre de troballes i per la integritat de les estructures documentades, del que estem acostumats a documentar en el nostre país pel que fa a jaciments coetanis. Presentem en aquest treball una visió de conjunt del gran volum d'informació que fins al moment ha proporcionat l'estudi d'aquest important assentament de la comarca del Montsià

A Study of the Near-Ultraviolet Spectrum of Vega

UV, optical, and near-IR spectra of Vega have been combined to test our understanding of stellar atmospheric opacities, and to examine the possibility of constraining chemical abundances from low-resolution UV fluxes. We have carried out a detailed analysis assuming Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium (LTE) to identify the most important contributors to the UV continuous opacity: H, H$^{-}$, C I, and Si II. Our analysis also assumes that Vega is spherically symmetric and its atmosphere is well described with the plane parallel approximation. Comparing observations and computed fluxes we have been able to discriminate between two different flux scales that have been proposed, the IUE-INES and the HST scales, favoring the latter. The effective temperature and angular diameter derived from the analysis of observed optical and near-UV spectra are in very good agreement with previous determinations based on different techniques. The silicon abundance is poorly constrained by the UV observations of the continuum and strong lines, but the situation is more favorable for carbon and the abundances inferred from the UV continuum and optical absorption lines are in good agreement. Some spectral intervals in the UV spectrum of Vega that the calculations do not reproduce well are likely affected by deviations from LTE, but we conclude that our understanding of UV atmospheric opacities is fairly complete for early A-type stars.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, to be published in Ap