Thesauri Design to improve access to Cartographic Heritage in the context of the Spatial Data Infrastructures

Tecnologías de la Información Geográfica, ontologías, Información Geográfica, interoperabilidad. The access of historians and document management specialists to documentary funds and old cartography is at times arduous due to the scattering of maps throughout different map libraries. Thus, it would be of interest to be able to access all available information remotely, following the Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) guidelines. DIGMAP is a cooperative project between six European countries that proposes to develop a solution for indexing, searching and browsing, through a thesaurus, in the European collections of digitized historical maps. It will be possible to match them with the geographic areas covered by each map in the collection and to find it on them, based on standard and open data models. These results will be useful for local digital map libraries, especially if it is of historical – cultural importance, or as interoperable components for wider and distributed systems. This project takes advantage of thesauri technologies to develop three major subsystems: On one hand, the gazetteer for managing and providing access to multilingual information relating to geographic features like geographic coordinates, names of places or areas and historical events related with the geographic points, places or areas (with dates or time intervals); The authority file to maintain and provide easy access to the author’s information and identification and disambiguating from similar and duplicate authors; and on the other hand, the map services for providing access to map information in raster and vector formats. The paper presents an early overview on the DIGMAP project, particularly focusing on the multilingual Thesauri aspects with the aim of providing solutions for the cartographic heritage framework, applying the main Spatial Data Infrastructures guidelines. ISO 19112 (Spatial Reference by Geographic Identifiers) will also be considered and its geographic identifiers issues

Assisting dependent people at home through autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles

This work describes a proposal of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (AUAVs) for home assistance of dependent people. AUAVs will monitor and recognize human activities during flight to improve their quality of life. However, before bringing such AUAV assistance to real homes, several challenges must be faced to make them viable and practical. Some challenges are technical and some others are related to human factors. In particular, several technical aspects are described for AUAV assistance: (1) flight control, based on our active disturbance rejection control algorithm, (2) flight planning (navigation in obstacle environments), and, (3) processing signals, acquired both from flight-control and monitoring sensors. From the assisted person’s viewpoint, our research focuses on three cues: (1) the user’s perception about AUAV assistance, (2) the influence on human acceptance of AUAV appearance and behavior at home, and (3) the human-robot interaction between assistant AUAV and assisted person. Finally, virtual reality environments are proposed to carry out preliminary tests and user acceptance evaluations.This work has been partially supported by Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Agencia Estatal de Investigaci´on (AEI) / European Regional Development Fund (FEDER, UE) under DPI2016-80894-R grant, and by CIBERSAM of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III. Lidia M. Belmonte holds FPU014/05283 scholarship from Spanish Ministerio de Educaci´on y Formación Profesional

Long-term monitoring of an amphibian community after a climate change- and infectious disease-driven species extirpation

Infectious disease and climate change are considered major threats to biodiversity and act as drivers behind the global amphibian decline. This is to a large extent based on short term studies that are designed to detect the immediate and strongest biodiversity responses to a threatening process. What few long term studies are available, although typically focussed on single species, report outcomes that often diverge significantly from the short term species responses. Here we report the results of an 18 year survey of an amphibian community exposed to both climate warming and the emergence of lethal chytridiomycosis. Our study shows that the impacts of infectious disease is ongoing but restricted to two out of nine species that form the community, despite the fact all species can become infected with the fungus. Climate warming appears to be affecting four out of the nine species, but the response of three of these is an increase in abundance. Our study supports a decreasing role of infectious disease on the community, and an increasing and currently positive effect of climate warming. We caution that if the warming trends continue, the net positive effect will turn negative as amphibian breeding habitat becomes unavailable as water bodies dry, a pattern that already may be underway

Placental thrombosis in acute phase abortions during experimental Toxoplasma gondii infection in sheep

43 p.After oral administration of ewes during mid gestation with 2000 freshly prepared sporulated oocysts of T. gondii isolate M4, abortions occurred between days 7 and 11 in 91.6% of pregnant and infected ewes. Afterwards, a further infection was carried out at late gestation in another group of sheep with 500 sporulated oocysts. Abortions happened again between days 9 and 11 post infection (pi) in 58.3% of the infected ewes. Classically, abortions in natural and experimental ovine toxoplasmosis usually occur one month after infection. Few experimental studies have reported the so-called acute phase abortions as early as 7 to 14 days after oral inoculation of oocysts, and pyrexia was proposed to be responsible for abortion, although the underline mechanism was not elucidated. In the present study, all placentas analysed from ewes suffering acute phase abortions showed infarcts and thrombosis in the caruncullar villi of the placentomes and ischemic lesions (periventricular leukomalacia) in the brain of some foetuses. The parasite was identified by PCR in samples from some placentomes of only one sheep, and no antigen was detected by immunohistochemical labelling. These findings suggest that the vascular lesions found in the placenta, and the consequent hypoxic damage to the foetus, could be associated to the occurrence of acute phase abortions. Although the pathogenesis of these lesions remains to be determined, the infectious dose or virulence of the isolate may play a role in their developmentS

High Serum Cyclophilin C levels as a risk factor marker for Coronary Artery Disease

Cyclophilins (Cyps) are ubiquitous proteins that belong to the immunophilins family consistently associated with inflammatory and cardiovascular diseases. While levels of CypA have been extensively studied, less data are available for other Cyps. The purpose of this case-control study was to determine the relationship of Cyps (A, B, C and D) with coronary artery disease (CAD) and eight inflammation markers. Serum levels of Cyps, interleukins and metalloproteinases were measured in serum collected from 84 subjects. Participants were divided into two sub-groups based on CAD diagnosis: 40 CAD patients and 44 control volunteers. Serum levels of CypA, CypB and CypC, IL-1β and IL-6 were significantly higher in CAD patients. Bivariate correlation analysis revealed a significant positive correlation between Cyps and several blood and biochemical parameters. When the ability of Cyps levels for CAD diagnosis was evaluated, higher sensitivity and selectivity values were obtained with CypC (c-statistic 0.891, p < 0.001) indicating that it is a good marker of CAD disease, while less conclusive results were obtained with CypA (c-statistic 0.748, p < 0.001) and CypB (c-statistic 0.655, p < 0.014). In addition, significant correlations of traditional CAD risk factors and CypC were observed. In summary, high levels of CypC are a risk factor for CAD and therefore it can be proposed as a new biomarker for this disease.This work could not have been done without the invaluable collaboration of the staff at the Servicio Vixilancia da Saude from Universidad de Santiago de Compostela (Andrea Vidal Dopazo) and at the Cardiology Department, Hospital Universitario Lucus Augusti (Maria Jesús Basanta-Castro, Maria del Carmen Cabarcos Leal, Clara Jimenez-Serrano, Leonor Ortega- Fernández, Maria Jesus Palacios Pool, Sofía Seco-Aldegunde). The research leading to these results has received funding from the following FEDER cofunded-grants. From Conselleria de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria, Xunta de Galicia, 2017 GRC GI-1682 (ED431C 2017/01). From CDTI and Technological Funds, supported by Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, AGL2016-78728-R (AEI/FEDER, UE), ISCIII/PI16/01830, ISCIII/PI16/01816 and RTC-2016-5507-2, ITC-20161072. From European Union POCTEP 0161-Nanoeaters -1-E-1, Interreg AlertoxNet EAPA-317-2016, Interreg Agritox EAPA-998-2018, and H2020 778069-EMERTOX. Sandra Gegunde was supported by a fellowship from FIDIS, Spain

Body Composition Evaluation and Clinical Markers of Cardiometabolic Risk in Patients with Phenylketonuria

Cardiovascular diseases are the main cause of mortality worldwide. Patients with phenylketonuria (PKU) may be at increased cardiovascular risk. This review provides an overview of clinical and metabolic cardiovascular risk factors, explores the connections between body composition (including fat mass and ectopic fat) and cardiovascular risk, and examines various methods for evaluating body composition. It particularly focuses on nutritional ultrasound, given its emerging availability and practical utility in clinical settings. Possible causes of increased cardiometabolic risk in PKU are also explored, including an increased intake of carbohydrates, chronic exposure to amino acids, and characteristics of microbiota. It is important to evaluate cardiovascular risk factors and body composition in patients with PKU. We suggest systematic monitoring of body composition to develop nutritional management and hydration strategies to optimize performance within the limits of nutritional therapy.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Cell walls of the dimorphic fungal pathogens Sporothrix schenckii and Sporothrix brasiliensis exhibit bilaminate structures and sloughing of extensive and intact layers

This work was supported by the Fundação Carlos Chagas de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ), grants E-26/202.974/2015 and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), grants 229755/2013-5, Brazil. LMLB is a senior research fellow of CNPq and Faperj. NG acknowledged support from the Wellcome Trust (Trust (097377, 101873, 200208) and MRC Centre for Medical Mycology (MR/N006364/1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD