¿Educamos para la igualdad?

El motivo de estas líneas es la reflexión sobre los derechos de las personas a ser educadas sin cortapisas, especialmente cuando algo tan puramente accidental como el sexo, se convierte en un factor determinante de su aprendizaje. Desde el principio de la vida del ser humano los mayores se encargan de encorsetar su comportamiento bajo parámetros de masculinidad o de feminidad. La consciencia de esta realidad ha motivado el presente análisis sobre la implicación de familia y de la escuela en la transmisión de estereotipos de género. De estos dos núcleos de socialización y educación depende la adquisición individual de valores de respeto y tolerancia a la diversidad que permita la necesaria transformación social.These lines attempt a reflection about the rights of all persons to be educated without restrictions, especially when something as purely accidental as gender becomes a determining factor in their learning. Since the beginning of human life, adults have taken it upon themselves to restrict children's behavior according to certain parameters of masculinity or femininity. The observation of this reality has motivated the present analysis concerned with the role of family and school in the transmission of gender-based stereotypes. School and family are the two agencies of socialization and education responsible of the personal acquisition of the values of respect and tolerance towards diversity that would permita necessary social transformation

Contributing to VRPN with a new server for haptic devices (ext. version)

This article is an extended version of the poster paper: Cuevas-Rodriguez, M., Gonzalez-Toledo D., Molina-Tanco, L., Reyes-Lecuona A., 2015, November. “Contributing to VRPN with a new server for haptic devices”. In Proceedings of the ACM symposium on Virtual reality software and technology. ACM.http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2821592.2821639VRPN is a middleware to access Virtual Reality peripherals. VRPN standard distribution supports Geomagic® (formerly Phantom) haptic devices through the now superseded GHOST library. This paper presents VRPN OpenHaptics Server, a contribution to VRPN library that fully reimplements VRPN support of Geomagic Haptic Devices. The implementation is based on the OpenHaptics v3.0 HLAPI layer, which supports all Geomagic Haptic Devices. We present the architecture of the contributed server, a detailed description of the offered API and an analysis of its performance in a set of example scenarios.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Total and Free Fatty Acids Analysis in Milk and Dairy Fat

Dairy fat is one of the most complex natural fats because of its fatty acid (FA) composition. Ruminant dairy fat contains more than 400 different FA varying in carbon chain length, and degree, position and configuration of unsaturation. The following article reviews the different methods available to analyze FA (both total and free) in milk and dairy products. The most widely used methodology for separating and analyzing dairy FA is gas chromatography, coupled to a flame ionization detector (CG-FID). Alternatively, gas chromatography coupled to a mass spectrometer (GC-MS) is also used. After lipid extraction, total FA (TFA) are commonly converted into their methyl esters (fatty acid methyl esters, FAME) prior to chromatographic analysis. In contrast, free FA (FFA) can be analyzed after conversion to FAME or directly as FFA after extraction from the product. One of the key questions when analyzing FAME from TFA is the selection of a proper column for separating them, which depends mainly on the objective of the analysis. Quantification is best achieved by the internal standard method. Recently, near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), Raman spectroscopy (RS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) have been reported as promising techniques to analyze FA in milk and dairy products

Optimized Design of Hot Water Storage in Solar Thermal Cooling Facilities

Solar thermal installations can provide a significant contribution to the energy needs of cooling demand of single family buildings. Unfortunately oversizing facility elements is not uncommon. Most of the design flaws concern collector field or auxiliary elements, such as backup boilers or electric resistances inside storage devices. This leads to lower than expected facility COP and SCOP, but also higher cost. Customer dissatisfaction is the result. This paper presents a numerical model of the multiple purpose solar thermal facility installed at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) using the TRNSYS® tool. The solar cooling facility (http://termica.uc3m.es/solar.htm) is completely monitored for its performance characterization in the production of AC, DHW and heating. Operational data for various summer seasons have been recorded, simultaneously with 7 meteorological variables. The experimental facility includes a single effect BrLi absorption chiller working at part load under summer season. TRNSYS is a completely feasible platform for simulating solar facilities and is commonly used by researchers and planners, for its simplicity and ease manipulation. This simulation tool contains general solar cooling elements found in most experimental facilities and has been kept as simple as possible. The model developed aims at analyzing facility elements in order to resize collector field and storage volumes. Furthermore it allows studying different configurations of the facility and the control schemes. These configurations include different hot water storage capacities within the facility allowing comparing with the facility without any kind of storage excepting its own thermal inertia. The simulation has been validated with instantaneous and seasonal experimental data for different summer seasons including 2003, 2004 and 2005. Simulation results show that there is a hot storage tank capacity that optimizes the facility in terms of COP, SCOP and total cold produced. Even with no storage at all, the facility still improves its behavior from current operating conditions. Simulation and experimental results are compared and an optimum configuration of the facility is proposed.Universidad Carlos III de Madrid - ITEA Research GroupPublicad

Un pequeño grano de arena

Segundo Premio Categoría Junior del Certame

Aspectos bioéticos de la evaluación de proyectos de investigación con células madre en España

La investigación con células madre humanas de pluripotencia inducida (iPS) plantea nuevos retos para los Estados y para los agentes implicados en investigación biomédica orientada a la terapia celular y la medicina regenerativa. Desde una concepción de la bioética práctica asociada a la función crítica que los comités de ética en investigación biomédica ejercen en los Estados, se analizan las cuestiones no resueltas en la evaluación de los proyectos de investigación que utilizan células iPS en España. El principal problema objeto de tratamiento es, a nuestro parecer, la equívoca equiparación que se efectúa entre células madre de origen embrionario y células iPS obtenidas de muestras biológicas de células adultas, tanto en la normativa vigente como por parte de los comités de ética encargados de la evaluación y control. De esta forma, el trabajo integra las bases científicas en investigación con células iPS y las implicaciones éticas, sociales y políticas aparejadas. En especial, se estudia la respuesta jurídica para entender cómo la bioética en acción que aquí se propugna permite una respuesta, si es preciso identificar debilidades e introducir mejoras y plantear propuestas para una correcta evaluación de este tipo de investigaciones. Consideramos que la visión crítica que ofrece este trabajo es fundamental para aportar elementos de debate a la reflexión bioética sobre las nuevas tendencias en investigación biomédica en la actualidad.Research on human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) raises new challenges for governments and for those biomedical researchers involved in cell therapy and regenerative medicine. Taking as a starting point a conception of bioethics as linked to the critical role of ethics committees in biomedical research, this article examines unresolved issues in the evaluation of research projects using iPS in Spain. We believe that the main problem is that both existing legislation and ethics review boards that evaluate and monitor this research misleadingly identify stem cells obtained from embryos and iPS derived from adult cells obtained from biological samples of human origin. This paper examines the scientific basis on iPS cell research and its ethical, social and political implications. We focus specifically on the legal response to some of these issues, in order to show that the kind of bioethics in action that we defend can provide answers, help us identify weaknesses in existing legislation and can promote a richer discussion and better approaches to achieve to assess this specific type of research. We consider that the critical insight provided by our work is crucial to encourage debate on bioethical reflection on emerging trends in biomedical research toda

Unresolved issues in the evaluation of research projects involving induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS)

El presente trabajo identifica los problemas y analiza los conflictos que se plantean en la evaluación de los proyectos de investigación que involucran la obtención y el uso de células madre humanas de pluripotencia inducida (iPS) en España. La regulación actual conlleva problemas de interpretación, remisiones normativas innecesarias, inseguridad y dilaciones indebidas. Una situación que puede revertir en un inadecuado control y seguimiento e, incluso, cierta parálisis de la investigación en medicina regenerativa y terapia celular, por la que hoy, no obstante, se apuesta. El análisis de la normativa vigente y de la reflexión bioética que la acompaña, permite concluir que la evaluación de la investigación con iPS no puede ser asimilada a la investigación con células madre embrionarias humanas (hESC). En este contexto, se propone que los correspondientes Comités de Ética de la Investigación evalúen la investigación con células iPS y que sea la Comisión de Garantías para la Donación y Utilización de Células y Tejidos Humanos quien revise tal evaluación. Asimismo, se hace necesaria una efectiva articulación del Registro de Proyectos de Investigación para que sea accesible. Finalmente, se propone un modelo de Protocolo de verificación o checklist para la revisión de proyectos de investigación biomédica que involucren células madre iPS

Characterization of Microbial Shifts during the Production and Ripening of Raw Ewe Milk-Derived Idiazabal Cheese by High-Throughput Sequencing

first_page settings Open AccessArticle Characterization of Microbial Shifts during the Production and Ripening of Raw Ewe Milk-Derived Idiazabal Cheese by High-Throughput Sequencing by Gorka Santamarina-García * [ORCID] , Igor Hernández [ORCID] , Gustavo Amores [ORCID] and Mailo Virto * [ORCID] Lactiker Research Group, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Paseo de la Universidad 7, 01006 Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain * Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed. Academic Editor: Huizhong Chen Biology 2022, 11(5), 769; https://doi.org/10.3390/biology11050769 Received: 13 April 2022 / Revised: 5 May 2022 / Accepted: 11 May 2022 / Published: 18 May 2022 Download PDF Browse Figures Citation Export Simple Summary Idiazabal is a traditional cheese produced from raw ewe milk in the Basque Country (Southwestern Europe). The sensory properties of raw milk cheeses have been attributed, among other factors, to microbial shifts that occur during the production and ripening processes. In this study, we used high-throughput sequencing technologies to investigate the microbiota of Latxa ewe raw milk and the dynamics during cheese production and ripening processes. The microbiota of raw milk was composed of lactic acid bacteria (LAB), environmental bacteria and non-desirable bacteria. Throughout the cheese making and ripening processes, the growth of LAB was promoted, whereas that of non-desirable and environmental bacteria was inhibited. Moreover, some genera not reported previously in raw ewe milk were detected and clear differences were observed in the bacterial composition of raw milk and cheese among producers, in relation to LAB and environmental or non-desirable bacteria, some of which could be attributed to the production of flavour related compounds. Abstract In this study, we used high-throughput sequencing technologies (sequencing of V3–V4 hypervariable regions of 16S rRNA gene) to investigate for the first time the microbiota of Latxa ewe raw milk and the bacterial shifts that occur during the production and ripening of Idiazabal cheese. Results revealed several bacterial genera not reported previously in raw ewe milk and cheese, such as Buttiauxella and Obesumbacterium. Both the cheese making and ripening processes had a significant impact on bacterial communities. Overall, the growth of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) (Lactococcus, Lactobacillus, Leuconostoc, Enterococcus, Streptococcus and Carnobacterium) was promoted, whereas that of non-desirable and environmental bacteria was inhibited (such as Pseudomonas and Clostridium). However, considerable differences were observed among producers. It is noteworthy that the starter LAB (Lactococcus) predominated up to 30 or 60 days of ripening and then, the growth of non-starter LAB (Lactobacillus, Leuconostoc, Enterococcus and Streptococcus) was promoted. Moreover, in some cases, bacteria related to the production of volatile compounds (such as Hafnia, Brevibacterium and Psychrobacter) also showed notable abundance during the first few weeks of ripening. Overall, the results of this study enhance our understanding of microbial shifts that occur during the production and ripening of a raw ewe milk-derived cheese (Idiazabal), and could indicate that the practices adopted by producers have a great impact on the microbiota and final quality of this cheese.This research was funded by the Basque Government, grant to Research Groups number IT944-16. G. Santamarina-García received a predoctoral grant from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)

Antibiotics in Dairy Production: Where Is the Problem?

Antibiotics have long been used for the prevention and treatment of common diseases and for prophylactic purposes in dairy animals. However, in recent decades it has become a matter of concern due to the widespread belief that there has been an abuse or misuse of these drugs in animals and that this misuse has led to the presence of residues in derived foods, such as milk and dairy products. Therefore, this review aims to compile the scientific literature published to date on the presence of antibiotic residues in these products worldwide. The focus is on the reasons that lead to their presence in food, on the potential problems caused by residues in the characteristics of dairy products and in their manufacturing process, on the development and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and on the effects that both residues and resistant bacteria can cause on human and environmental health.he research group was funded by The University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) (grant COLAB20/14) and by the Basque Government, grant to Research Groups number IT944-16. G. Santamarina-García received a predoctoral grant from the University of the Basque Country