Solución estratégica para elevar eficiencia productiva del reemplazo Siboney de Cuba

In order to study the determining factors of productive efficiency of milk replacement at Loma de Candelaria´s productive farm, 7 units were chosen, making them coincide with those where the Siboney de Cuba developing females traffics from the artificial breeding until their first delivery. In every unit was carried out a diagnose instrument in correspondence to BUNT methodology, that they allowed to characterize which considered the variables which characterized the behaviour of the technological process of the zootechnical flow of the herd object of the research, Contingency´s analysis was carried out, which allowed to discriminate the most influencing factors in the productive process, and it was also analyzed the pro-quo forces as to conform a DAFO matrix for the females developing flow. As a result, it was found that herd´s productivity rates is conditioned by two major factors which explain more than 70 per cent of the total variance: they are the agro-technical activities and feeding throughout growing stages; besides the fact that in the organization the work with the female for replacement is found in the reorientation quadrant, with an adaptative position. As a conclusion, the main difficulties in every stage where the Siboney de Cuba female designated for replacement in the productive Unit, can be reverted since the reformulation of work objectives in order to improve the amount and quality of the grasses and forages, as well as the manipulation and quality of the feeding balance supported in the systematic and progressive introduction of science, innovation and technological findings applied to the productive process as such.Para estudiar los factores que determinan la eficiencia productiva del reemplazo lechero en la Unidad Empresarial de Base "Loma de Candelaria", se eligieron las 7 unidades por donde transitan las hembras en desarrollo Siboney de Cuba, desde la etapa de cría artificial hasta el primer parto. Se aplicó en cada unidad, instrumento de diagnóstico conforme metodología BUNT, la que contenía las variables, que permitieron caracterizar el comportamiento de los procesos tecnológicos del flujo zootécnico del rebaño estudiado. Se empleó análisis de contingencia, que permitió discriminar los factores que más influyen en el comportamiento productivo, y se realizó además, tipificación de fuerzas pro y contra que sirvieron para conformar una matriz DAFO del flujo de la hembra en desarrollo. Se encontró que la productividad de los rebaños, está condicionada por dos factores que explican más del 70 % de la varianza total: la actividad de agrotecnia y la alimentación por etapas; además de que en la organización, el trabajo con el reemplazo se encuentra en el cuadrante de reorientación, con una posición adaptativa. Se concluyó que las principales dificultades en cada etapa por las que transita la hembra de reemplazo, pueden revertirse a partir de la formulación de objetivos de trabajo en función de mejorar la disponibilidad y calidad de los pastos y forrajes, así como el manejo y calidad de los balances alimentarios apoyados en la introducción sistemática y acelerada de los resultados de la ciencia, la innovación y la tecnología en los procesos productivos

Modifying the magnetic response of magnetotactic bacteria: incorporation of Gd and Tb ions into the magnetosome structure

Magnetotactic bacteria Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense MSR-1 biosynthesise chains of cube-octahedral magnetosomes, which are 40 nm magnetite high quality (Fe3O4) nanoparticles. The magnetic properties of these crystalline magnetite nanoparticles, which can be modified by the addition of other elements into the magnetosome structure (doping), are of prime interest in a plethora of applications, those related to cancer therapy being some of the most promising ones. Although previous studies have focused on transition metal elements, rare earth (RE) elements are very interesting as doping agents, both from a fundamental point of view (e.g. significant differences in ionic sizes) and for the potential applications, especially in biomedicine (e.g. magnetic resonance imaging and luminescence). In this work, we have investigated the impact of Gd and Tb on the magnetic properties of magnetosomes by using different complementary techniques. X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, and X-ray absorption near edge spectroscopy analyses have revealed that a small amount of RE ions, similar to 3-4%, incorporate into the Fe3O4 structure as Gd3+ and Tb3+ ions. The experimental magnetic characterisation has shown a clear Verwey transition for the RE-doped bacteria, located at T similar to 100 K, which is slightly below the one corresponding to the undoped ones (106 K). However, we report a decrease in the coercivity and remanence of the RE-doped bacteria. Simulations based on the Stoner-Wohlfarth model have allowed us to associate these changes in the magnetic response with a reduction of the magnetocrystalline (K-C) and, especially, the uniaxial (K-uni) anisotropies below the Verwey transition. In this way, K-uni reaches a value of 23 and 26 kJ m(-3) for the Gd- and Tb-doped bacteria, respectively, whilst a value of 37 kJ m(-3) is obtained for the undoped bacteria.This work was supported in part by the Spanish MCIN/AEI under Projects MAT2017-83631-C3-R and PID2020-115704RB-C33. The work of Elizabeth M. Jefremovas was supported by the "Concepci ' on Arenal Grant" awarded by Gobierno de Cantabria and Universidad de Cantabria. The work of Lourdes Marcano was supported by the Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Basque Government under Grant POS-2019-2-0017. The authors would like to thank "Nanotechnology in translational hyperthermia" (HIPERNANO)-RED2018-102626-T. We thank the ALBA (CLAESS beamline) synchrotron radiation facilities and staff for the allocation of beamtime and assistance during the experiments

Elucidating the role of shape anisotropy infaceted magnetic nanoparticles using biogenicmagnetosomes as a model

Shape anisotropy is of primary importance to understand the magnetic behavior of nanoparticles, but a rigorous analysis in polyhedral morphologies is missing. In this work, a model based on finite element techniques has been developed to calculate the shape anisotropy energy landscape for cubic, octahedral, and truncated-octahedral morphologies. In all cases, a cubic shape anisotropy is found that evolves to quasi-uniaxial anisotropy when the nanoparticle is elongated >= 2%. This model is tested on magnetosomes, similar to 45 nm truncated octahedral magnetite nanoparticles forming a chain inside Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense MSR-1 bacteria. This chain presents a slightly bent helical configuration due to a 20 degrees tilting of the magnetic moment of each magnetosome out of chain axis. Electron cryotomography images reveal that these magnetosomes are not ideal truncated-octahedrons but present approximate to 7.5% extrusion of one of the {001} square faces and approximate to 10% extrusion of an adjacent {111} hexagonal face. Our model shows that this deformation gives rise to a quasi-uniaxial shape anisotropy, a result of the combination of a uniaxial (Ksh-u = 7 kJm(-3)) and a cubic (Ksh-c = 1.5 kJ m(-3)) contribution, which is responsible for the 20 degrees tilting of the magnetic moment. Finally, our results have allowed us to accurately reproduce, within the framework of the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert model, the experimental AC loops measured for these magnetotactic bacteria.Spanish Government is acknowledged for funding under the project number MAT2017-83631-C3. Basque Government is acknowledged for funding under the project number IT124519. HRTEM images were obtained in the Laboratorio de Microscopias Avanzadas at Instituto de Nanociencia de Aragon -Universidad de Zaragoza (LMA-INA). Authors acknowledge the LMA-INA for offering access to their instruments and expertise. Authors thank Prof. J. A. Garcia and I. Rodrigo for providing AC hysteresis loops

The COVID-19 Sentinel Schools Network of Catalonia (CSSNC) project: Associated factors to prevalence and incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in educational settings during the 2020–2021 academic year

COVID-19; Medical risk factors; Virus testingCOVID-19; Factors de risc mèdics; Test de virusCOVID-19; Factores de riesgo médicos; Test de virusThe Sentinel Schools project was designed to monitor and evaluate the epidemiology of COVID-19 in Catalonia, gathering evidence for health and education policies to inform the development of health protocols and public health interventions to control of SARS-CoV-2 infection in schools. The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence and incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections and to identify their determinants among students and staff during February to June in the academic year 2020–2021. We performed two complementary studies, a cross-sectional and a longitudinal component, using a questionnaire to collect nominal data and testing for SARS-CoV-2 detection. We describe the results and perform a univariate and multivariate analysis. The initial crude seroprevalence was 14.8% (95% CI: 13.1–16.5) and 22% (95% CI: 18.3–25.8) for students and staff respectively, and the active infection prevalence was 0.7% (95% CI: 0.3–1) and 1.1% (95% CI: 0.1–2). The overall incidence for persons at risk was 2.73 per 100 person-month and 2.89 and 2.34 per 100 person-month for students and staff, respectively. Socioeconomic, self-reported knowledge, risk perceptions and contact pattern variables were positively associated with the outcome while sanitary measure compliance was negatively associated, the same significance trend was observed in multivariate analysis. In the longitudinal component, epidemiological close contact with SARS-CoV-2 infection was a risk factor for SARS-CoV-2 infection while the highest socioeconomic status level was protective as was compliance with sanitary measures. The small number of active cases detected in these schools suggests a low transmission among children in school and the efficacy of public health measures implemented, at least in the epidemiological scenario of the study period. The major contribution of this study was to provide results and evidence that help analyze the transmission dynamic of SARS-CoV-2 and evaluate the associations between sanitary protocols implemented, and measures to avoid SARS-CoV-2 spread in schools

Forecasting Electricity Prices and their volatilities using Unobserved Components.

The liberalization of electricity markets more than ten years ago in the vast majority of developed countries has introduced the need of modelling and forecasting electricity prices and volatilities, both in the short and long term. Thus, there is a need of providing methodology that is able to deal with the most important features of electricity price series, which are well known for presenting not only structure in conditional mean but also time-varying conditional variances. In this work we propose a new model, which allows to extract conditionally heteroskedastic common factors from the vector of electricity prices. These common factors are jointly estimated as well as their relationship with the original vector of series, and the dynamics affecting both their conditional mean and variance. The estimation of the model is carried out under the state-space formulation. The new model proposed is applied to extract seasonal common dynamic factors as well as common volatility factors for electricity prices and the estimation results are used to forecast electricity prices and their volatilities in the Spanish zone of the Iberian Market. Several simplified/alternative models are also considered as benchmarks to illustrate that the proposed approach is superior to all of them in terms of explanatory and predictive power

Hepatitis E virus genotype 3 microbiological surveillance by the Spanish Reference Laboratory: geographic distribution and phylogenetic analysis of subtypes from 2009 to 2019

Background: Hepatitis E virus genotype 3 (HEV-3) is widely distributed throughout Europe, with incidence of infections increasing in many countries. Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have reported the distribution of HEV-3 subtypes in cohorts of patients with hepatic disease. Aim: To describe the distribution of the HEV-3 subtypes in Spain at national and autonomous community (AC) levels between 2009 and 2019. The study was also extended to Andorra. Methods: Of 5,197 samples received by the National Reference Laboratory during the study, 409 were HEV-RNA-positive. Among these, 294 (71.9%) were further typed based on an ORF2 sequence fragment, or, for a subset of 74, based on the full-coding genome sequence. Results: HEV-3 was detected in 291 samples. The dominant subtype in Spain was HEV-3f (88.3%; 257/291), which occurred in all ACs, with no change in detection level over time. Within this subtype, three subclusters were characterised: HEV-3f-B, HEV-3f-A1 and HEV-3f-A2. The second most common HEV subtype was the recently described HEV-3m (7%; 21/291), with two subclusters identified: HEV-3m-A, which has been known since 2010, and HEV-3m-B, since 2014. The third most encountered subtype was HEV-3c (4.1%; 12/291), with a frequency not increasing over time, unlike observations in some European countries. Conclusion: The importance of the surveillance of HEV-3 subtype and subcluster circulation is yet to be assessed. This surveillance together with the comprehensive epidemiological characterisation of clinical cases, could support the identification of sources of transmission and the establishment of control measures nationally and internationally.CIBERESP contract for the first author.S

SHARDS: A global view of the star formation activity at z~0.84 and z~1.23

In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of star-forming galaxies (SFGs) at intermediate redshifts (z~1). We combine the ultra-deep optical spectro-photometric data from the Survey for High-z Absorption Red and Dead Sources (SHARDS) with deep UV-to-FIR observations in the GOODS-N field. Exploiting two of the 25 SHARDS medium-band filters, F687W17 and F823W17, we select [OII] emission line galaxies at z~0.84 and z~1.23 and characterize their physical properties. Their rest-frame equivalent widths (EW$_{\mathrm{rf}}$([OII])), line fluxes, luminosities, star formation rates (SFRs) and dust attenuation properties are investigated. The evolution of the EW$_{\mathrm{rf}}$([OII]) closely follows the SFR density evolution of the universe, with a trend of EW$_{\mathrm{rf}}$([OII])$\propto$(1+z)$^3$ up to redshift z~1, followed by a possible flattening. The SF properties of the galaxies selected on the basis of their [OII] emission are compared with complementary samples of SFGs selected by their MIR and FIR emission, and also with a general mass-selected sample of galaxies at the same redshifts. We demonstrate observationally that the UVJ diagram (or, similarly, a cut in the specific SFR) is only partially able to distinguish the quiescent galaxies from the SFGs. The SFR-M$_*$ relation is investigated for the different samples, yelding a logarithmic slope ~1, in good agreement with previous results. The dust attenuations derived from different SFR indicators (UV(1600), UV(2800), [OII], IR) are compared and show clear trends with respect to both the stellar mass and total SFR, with more massive and highly star-forming galaxies being affected by stronger dust attenuation.Comment: Replaced to match the accepted version (24 pages, 1 table, 17 figures). Published in ApJ, 812, 155 (2015): http://stacks.iop.org/0004-637X/812/15

Tuning the Magnetic Response of Magnetospirillum magneticum by Changing the Culture Medium: A Straightforward Approach to Improve Their Hyperthermia Efficiency

Magnetotactic bacteria Magnetospirillum magneticum AMB-1 have been cultured using three different media: magnetic spirillum growth medium with Wolfe’s mineral solution (MSGM + W), magnetic spirillum growth medium without Wolfe’s mineral solution (MSGM – W), and flask standard medium (FSM). The influence of the culture medium on the structural, morphological, and magnetic characteristics of the magnetosome chains biosynthesized by these bacteria has been investigated by using transmission electron microscopy, X-ray absorption spectroscopy, and X-ray magnetic circular dichroism. All bacteria exhibit similar average size for magnetosomes, 40–45 nm, but FSM bacteria present slightly longer subchains. In MSGM + W bacteria, Co2+ ions present in the medium substitute Fe2+ ions in octahedral positions with a total Co doping around 4–5%. In addition, the magnetic response of these bacteria has been thoroughly studied as functions of both the temperature and the applied magnetic field. While MSGM – W and FSM bacteria exhibit similar magnetic behavior, in the case of MSGM + W, the incorporation of the Co ions affects the magnetic response, in particular suppressing the Verwey (∼105 K) and low temperature (∼40 K) transitions and increasing the coercivity and remanence. Moreover, simulations based on a Stoner–Wolhfarth model have allowed us to reproduce the experimentally obtained magnetization versus magnetic field loops, revealing clear changes in different anisotropy contributions for these bacteria depending on the employed culture medium. Finally, we have related how these magnetic changes affect their heating efficiency by using AC magnetometric measurements. The obtained AC hysteresis loops, measured with an AC magnetic field amplitude of up to 90 mT and a frequency, f, of 149 kHz, reveal the influence of the culture medium on the heating properties of these bacteria: below 35 mT, MSGM – W bacteria are the best heating mediators, but above 60 mT, FSM and MSGM + W bacteria give the best heating results, reaching a maximum heating efficiency or specific absorption rate (SAR) of SAR/f ≈ 12 W g–1 kHz–1.This work was supported by the Spanish MICINN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 under Projects MAT2017-83631-C3-R and PID2020-115704RB-C3, the Basque Government under projects IT-1479-22 and IT-1500-22, and the BBVA Foundation under the Leonardo Fellowships for Researchers and Cultural Creators 2022. We thank the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie for the allocation of synchrotron radiation beamtime and the support of the project CALIPSOplus under the Grant Agreement 730872 from the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation HORIZON 2020. We thank the “Nanotechnology in translational hyperthermia” Network (RED2018-102626-T) funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. Finally, we also thank A. Tato for her help in TEM and hysteresis loops measurements, R. Andrade and J.C. Raposo for technical and human support provided by SGIker (UPV/EHU/FEDER, EU), and A. García Prieto for her helpful comments and continuous support

Feasibility of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) antigen self-testing in school and summer camp attendees

BackgroundSARS-CoV-2 screening is one of the pillars of non-pharmaceutical preventive strategies to early identify and isolate infected individuals and therefore decrease community incidence.MethodsWe assessed the feasibility of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 self-testing with antigen-detecting rapid diagnostic tests in attendees of educational settings.ResultsA total of 305 students (88.15%) and 41 staff (11.85%) from 9 to 56 years old participated in the self-testing procedure and answered the survey at the end of the study. 91.3% (n = 313) did not need help, 96.1% of participants reported the same outcome as the healthcare workers. 94.5% strongly or slightly agree with the statement “I would repeat the experience”.ConclusionThe study demonstrates that self-testing is acceptable and usable in children, adolescents and adults when the epidemiological situation may require a systematic screening of these populations, although supervision by health care or previously trained personnel is recommended for younger age groups

O currículo e o conteúdo do curso OpenGame

O curso sobre educação aberta aqui proposto é composto por 8 módulos baseados em 8 competências. Para cada competência, definimos resultados de aprendizagem. Os módulos são construídos em torno das práticas identificadas e descritas em IO1. Em cada módulo são utilizadas 3 práticas para envolver os formandos. As próprias práticas são transformadas em atividades de aprendizagem, permitindo aos formandos interagir ativamente com ativamente com as atividades de aprendizagem..Projeto OpenGame - Promover a Educação Aberta através da Gamificação - Ref: 2019-1-ES01-KA203-065815info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio