Els territoris cromosòmics en l'evolució dels primats

En els humans, el DNA s'empaqueta formant territoris cromosòmics. Se sap que succeeix el mateix en altres espècies d'animals, com ara alguns primats, però es desconeix si aquests territoris ocupen la mateixa posició que en humans o si aquesta posició respon als mateixos paràmetres. Un grup d'investigadores de la UAB ha dut a terme un estudi cromosòmic comparatiu per esbrinar-ho.En los humanos, el ADN se empaqueta formando territorioscromosómicos. Se sabe que sucede lo mismo en otras especies deanimales, como por ejemplo algunos primates, pero se desconoce siestos territorios ocupan la misma posición que en humanos o si estaposición responde a los mismos parámetros. Un grupo de investigadorasde la UAB ha llevado a cabo un estudio cromosómico comparativo paraaveriguarlo

In-situ hydration studies of ye’elemite at early ages for understanding eco-cement performances'

Póster; ALBA User Meeting and VI AUSE Conferenc

Animación: medio de Reflexión y Re-Creación de realidades Im-posibles

[EN] The relationship between animation and virtual reality goes beyond applying techniques or softwares, which help to produce video games, commercials o movies. Most studies of virtual reality found in abstracts conferences or scientific journals, where animation is part of, like International Journal of Computer Graphics & Animation, rely on technology; leaving aside the potential that animation offers as unlimited media to work creativity; thanks to its plasticity, it makes the impossible, possible. From Animated LAB, the UPV, the education science and artistic creation, we want to expose: how animation is a media of reflection by which we can learn to reobserve and perceive the outside world to imagine new ones. We create and recreate fictions, which our brain produces as realities that can provoke the greatest joys or the worst nightmares. We work from audiovisual production, understanding how the human brain when is related to perception, synesthesia and creating images and stories. Thus, we connect animation to cognitive and affective neuroscience, encouraging the use of storytelling to reflect on situations that move us. We understand virtual reality as the abstract creation through which we learn to be aware of our reality and emotions as well as to partially open the door to the unconscious. Therefore, it is important to look into the effects of the use of animation as a method of mediation, as it can help in cognitive therapies and improve the quality of our lives. The reality is constructed by our perception: Images generate incredible worlds, placing the brink between fiction and reality; we may find as many virtual realities as many minds can generate them, on and off the screen.[ES] La relación entre animación y realidad virtual va más allá de la aplicación de técnicas o softwares, que ayudan a producir video juegos, comerciales o películas. La mayoría de estudios sobre realidad virtual que encontramos en resúmenes de conferencias o revistas científicas, de las que la animación forma parte, como International Journal of Computer Graphics & Animation, se basan en la tecnología; dejando a un lado el potencial que la animación ofrece como medio ilimitado de trabajar la creatividad; donde gracias a su plasticidad, plasma lo imposible como posible. Desde el Animated LAB, la UPV, las ciencias de la educación y la creación artística, queremos exponer: cómo la animación es un medio de reflexión por el que podemos aprender a Reobservar y percibir el mundo exterior para imaginar otros nuevos. Creamos y REG creamos ficciones, que nuestro cerebro produce como realidades, que pueden provocarnos las mayores alegrías o peores pesadillas. Trabajamos a partir de producciones audiovisuales, entendiendo el funcionamiento del cerebro humano en lo que respecta a percepción, sinestesia y creación de imágenes e historias. De este modo, relacionamos la animación con la neurociencia cognitiva y afectiva, fomentando el uso de storytelling para reflexionar sobre situaciones que nos conmueven. Partimos del entendimiento de la realidad virtual como la creación abstracta a través de la que aprendemos a ser conscientes de nuestra realidad y emociones, así como a entreabrir las puertas a lo inconsciente. Por ello, es importante profundizar en los efectos del uso de la animación como método de mediación, ya que puede ayudar en terapias cognitivas y mejorar la calidad de nuestras vidas. La realidad se construye a través de nuestra percepción: las imágenes generan mundos (in)creíbles, situándonos al borde del abismo entre ficción y realidad, quizá encontremos tantas realidades virtuales como mentes que las generen, fuera y dentro de la pantalla.Carpe, I.; Garcia Rams, MS. (2015). Animación: medio de Reflexión y Re-Creación de realidades Im-posibles. En II CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL DE INVESTIGACIÓN EN ARTE VISUALES. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 171-180. https://doi.org/10.4995/ANIAV2015.1249OCS17118

Bringing Life To Illustration & Illustrating The World In Movement Through Visual Literacy

[EN] “If a picture is worth a thousand words” as Arthur Brisbane, journalist of the New York Times said in 1911, Fig.1 How many words would equal the hundreds of frames contained in an animation? Illustration and animation are complex visual expressions, rich in nuances, which have strong links that increasingly intermingle thanks to new technologies and applications that the transmedia world allows. Through visual literacy, with still on moving images, we learn to see, to feel and re-think by playing with images, full of emotions. Thanks to the emerging CrossMedia, Transmedia and Multiplatform; together with books, video games and digital applications; where, it´s doesn´t seem so different: Illustrating the animated world as animating the world that we illustrate.[ES] Arthur Brisbane, editor de The New York Times, aconsejó hacer uso de la imagen ya que vale más que mil palabras, Fig. 1. Su apreciación extrapolada al contexto del cine de animación nos hace cuestionar a cuántas palabras equivaldrían los cientos de fotogramas que contiene una animación. La ilustración y la animación son expresiones visuales complejas y ricas en matices, donde el espectador personaliza o encarna estados de ánimo y pensamiento de gran valor en la apreciación del arte y el ámbito educativo, desde el cual enfocamos este artículo. Queremos revalorizar cómo la alfabetización visual proporciona en la actualidad, unos fuertes vínculos entre animación e ilustración, por los que se construyen y convergen hacia una narración de historias interactivas, disipando sus fronteras gracias a los nuevos softwares y plataformas digitales. El lenguaje visual de la imagen, fija o en movimiento, nos enseña a ver, a sentir y a re-pensar la realidad, jugando con representaciones cargadas de mensajes y emociones. Gracias a los emergentes CrossMedia, Transmedia y Multiplataforma; junto a libros, juegos y aplicaciones digitales donde, no resulta tan diferente: Ilustrar el mundo animado, como animar el mundo que ilustramos.Carpe, I.; Garcia Rams, MS. (2015). Animando la ilustración e ilustrando el mundo en movimiento a través de visual literacy. En ILUSTRAFIC 2015. 2º CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL DE ARTE, ILUSTRACIÓN Y CULTURA. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 240-249. https://doi.org/10.4995/ILUSTRAFIC/ILUSTRAFIC2015/462OCS24024

Hydration mechanisms of two polymorphs of synthetic ye'elimite

Ye'elimite is the main phase in calcium sulfoaluminate cements and also a key phase in sulfobelite cements. However, its hydrationmechanismis not well understood. Here we reported newdata on the hydration behavior of ye'elimite using synchrotron and laboratory powder diffraction coupled to the Rietveld methodology. Both internal and external standard methodologies have been used to determine the overall amorphous contents. We have addressed the standard variables: water-to-ye'elimite ratio and additional sulfate sources of different solubilities. Moreover, we report a deep study of the role of the polymorphism of pure ye'elimites. The hydration behavior of orthorhombic stoichiometric and pseudo-cubic solid-solution ye'elimites is discussed. In the absence of additional sulfate sources, stoichiometric-ye'elimite reacts slower than solid-solution-ye'elimite, and AFm-type phases are the main hydrated crystalline phases, as expected. Moreover, solid-solution-ye'elimite produces higher amounts of ettringite than stoichiometric-ye'elimite. However, in the presence of additional sulfates, stoichiometric-ye'elimite reacts faster than solid-solution-ye'elimite.This work has been supported by Junta de Andalucía through P11-FQM-7517 research grant and by Spanish MINECO through MAT2010-16213 research grant, which is co-funded by FEDER. ALBA synchrotron is thanked for providing synchrotron beamtime at BL04-MSPD beamline

Halpha Kinematics of S4G Spiral Galaxies - III. Inner rotation curves

We present a detailed study of the shape of the innermost part of the rotation curves of a sample of 29 nearby spiral galaxies, based on high angular and spectral resolution kinematic Halpha Fabry-Perot observations. In particular, we quantify the steepness of the rotation curve by measuring its slope dRvc(0). We explore the relationship between the inner slope and several galaxy parameters, such as stellar mass, maximum rotational velocity, central surface brightness ({\mu}0), bar strength and bulge-to-total ratio. Even with our limited dynamical range, we find a trend for low-mass galaxies to exhibit shallower rotation curve inner slopes than high-mass galaxies, whereas steep inner slopes are found exclusively in high-mass galaxies. This trend may arise from the relationship between the total stellar mass and the mass of the bulge, which are correlated among them. We find a correlation between the inner slope of the rotation curve and the morphological T-type, complementary to the scaling relation between dRvc(0) and {\mu}0 previously reported in the literature. Although we find that the inner slope increases with the Fourier amplitude A2 and decreases with the bar torque Qb, this may arise from the presence of the bulge implicit in both A2 and Qb. As previously noted in the literature, the more compact the mass in the central parts of a galaxy (more concretely, the presence of a bulge), the steeper the inner slopes. We conclude that the baryonic matter dominates the dynamics in the central parts of our sample galaxies.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

A negotiation framework for heterogeneous group recommendation

Over the last years, some remarkable recommender systems for group of users have been developed. When using most of these systems, each group member communicates his/her preferences to the system, which obtains a group profile as the result of an equal weighting of the individual preferences. This way, no member is particularly dissatisfied with the recommendations. However, this is not a realistic situation, given that not all the members in a group act in the same manner. This paper deals with the problem of recommendation for a group of users, where, besides his/her own preferences, each user may have different expectations about the result of the recommendation and may exhibit a different behaviour with respect to the other group members. Moreover, all this information is private and may be revealed under certain circumstances. In this context, we have opted for building a multi-agent system, where an agent acts on behalf of one group member. We have implemented a UserAgent that can be configured in order to exhibit the behaviour desired by the corresponding user. Then, different UserAgents negotiate with the aim of building a group profile that satisfies their particular minimum requirements, while preserving some privacy. Moreover, we have designed a NegotiatorAgent, which governs the negotiation and may act as a mediator in order to facilitate the agreement. Finally, we have performed some experiments that show that this mechanism is able to give a response in this heterogeneous environment.Partial support provided by Consolider Ingenio 2010 CSD2007-00022, Spanish Government Project MICINN TIN2011-27652- C03-01.García García, I.; Sebastiá Tarín, L. (2014). A negotiation framework for heterogeneous group recommendation. Expert Systems with Applications. 41(4):1245-1261. doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2013.07.111S1245126141

X-ray powder diffraction applied to cement related phases: in-situ and high resolution applications

XRPD is a powerful tool for material characterization in general, and for in-situ studies of chemical processes in particular. The use of an intense X-ray source, .i.e. synchrotron X-rays, coupled with fast X-ray detection permits time-resolved diffraction experiments allowing in-situ quantitative phase analysis during the early ages of cement hydration. CSA cements may have variable compositions, but all of them contain ye’elimite (Ca4Al6O12SO4). This phase is also included, ~25 wt%, in sulfobelite cements. Also, another important phase in these cements is tetracalcium aluminoferrite (Ca2AlFeO5). The aim of this work is to better understand the early age hydration of stoichiometric (orthorhombic) and doped (pseudo-cubic) ye’elimite and tetracalcium aluminoferrite phases at early ages in order to understand “eco-cement” performances. Chiefly, we want to determine the hydration kinetic and mechanisms of these phases with different water/cement ratio, with different calcium sulfate sources. This work has allowed establishing kinetics and mechanisms for hydration of ye’elimite samples by in-situ SXRPD with internal standard methodology. Moreover, some pastes were studied by ex-situ LXRPD with the external standard method, G-factor, at 2 and 7 days. Both strategies were able to quantify the amorphous contents, including free water. It is important to highlight that the results obtained by the internal standard method are in agreement with those obtained at later ages showing the consistence of both methodologies to follow hydration reactions with time by diffraction methods. Moreover, the hydration of tetracalcium aluminoferrite and some combinations of this phase with ye’elimite have been studied by in-situ SXRPD in order to understand the dissolution/crystallization processes that take place during those hydration processes. Furthermore, we have measured some hydrated phases by high resolution SXRPD in order to perform a structural study with the objective of revising or obtaining the crystal structure descriptions.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Reproducibility and validity of a food frequency questionnaire designed to assess diet in children aged 4-5 years

Background The food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) is the most efficient and cost-effective method to investigate the relationship between usual diet and disease in epidemiologic studies. Although FFQs have been validated in many adult populations worldwide, the number of valid FFQ in preschool children is very scarce. The aim of this study was to evaluate the reproducibility and validity of a semi-quantitative FFQ designed for children aged 4 to 5 years. Materials and methods In this study, we have included 169 children aged 4–5 years from the INMA project in Valencia, a population-based prospective cohort study of mothers and children in Spain. The 105- items FFQ was administered twice to the parents or care-givers of children over a 9-month period. Reproducibility was explored by comparing intake of nutrients by the FFQs, while validity was examined by comparing the nutrient values from the FFQs with the average nutrient values of three 24 hour dietary recall (24hDR) taken in the period, and also, with the concentration in blood specimens for several vitamins (carotenoids, folate, vitamin B12, vitamin C and α-tocopherol). Pearson correlation coefficients and de-attenuated correlation coefficients were calculated and we also evaluated misclassification by quintile distribution. Results All correlation coefficients for reproducibility for nutrients and major food groups were statistically significant; the average correlation coefficients for daily intake were 0.43 for food groups and 0.41 for nutrients. The average correlation coefficients for validity for daily intakes against 24hDR was r = 0.30, and the average for de-attenuated correlation coefficients was r = 0.44. When evaluating validity against the blood concentration of vitamins, statistically significant correlations were observed for vitamin C (0.35), lycopene (0.31), β-Cryptoxantin (0.40), and vitamin E (0.29); the average of correlation coefficients was r = 0.21. Conclusion Despite some low to moderate correlations for reproducibility and validity, overall this study suggests that the FFQ may be a good method for assessing a wide range of food groups and nutrients intake in children aged 4–5 years.This work was supported by Instituto Salud Carlos III (Red INMA G03/176 CB06/02/ 0041), Ministerio Sanidad y Fondos FEDER (FIS 03/1615; 04/1509; 04/1436; 05/1079; 06/1213; 06/ 0867; 07/0314; 11/01007), Conselleria Sanitat, Generalitat Valenciana (ACOMP/2010/115; 084/ 2010)