El sol del navegante

El mundo naval está muy presente en la vida de Jørn Utzon desde su infancia, no sólo por haber nacido en un país de gran cultura naval como Dinamarca, sino porque vivió desde dentro la profesión de su padre como diseñador de barcos. Su atención al horizonte y el sol es inevitable como navegante que también fue. El sol como elemento del lugar, y al que hasta ahora no se había prestado la importancia que tiene en su obra, es un elemento trascendente en sus casas. El presente artículo profundiza en esta relación entre Jørn Utzon y el sol, a través de su vocación de navegante.The naval world was present in Utzon’s life from his childhood, not only for being born in a country in which the most distant point from the coast is sixty kilometres away and in which almost every family has a boat to sail at leisure time, but also because he lived so close to his father’s engineering profession, and the shipyard boisterous atmosphere. The way he pays attention to sun and horizon is inevitable as the sailor he was. This is the reason why Utzon looks curiously to the place in a broad way, looking for relations between place and architecture. Architecture was one of his passions, maybe the most powerful, but only one more. Architecture channelled the other concerns about navigation, nature, cosmos... His well known travels around the world to Mexico, USA, Morocco, Middle East and Japan, contribute to his knowledge about the importance of the place in architecture, as well as knowing cultures adaptation mechanism to the specific environment, for instance this is the case of Morocco desert cities: “ But all the building complexes that have really inspired me –the desert cities in Morocco, for example– have been pushed into position in relation to the place, and in relation to the sun. Then they take on the character that the old cities or Greek temples have” Jørn Utzon. The sun as a place element, that hasn’t been researched the Utzon’s projects, is a transcendent element in his houses. His two houses in Spain, and several built in Denmark, are oriented in an accurate way in relation to the sun. This paper explores the relationship between Jørn Utzon and the sun, through his vocation as a sailor

Real-Time and Low-Cost Sensing Technique Based on Photonic Bandgap Structures

This paper was published in OPTICS LETTERS and is made available as an electronic reprint with the permission of OSA. The paper can be found at the following URL on the OSA website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/OL.36.002707. Systematic or multiple reproduction or distribution to multiple locations via electronic or other means is prohibited and is subject to penalties under law[EN] A technique for the development of low-cost and high-sensitivity photonic biosensing devices is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. In this technique, a photonic bandgap structure is used as transducer, but its readout is performed by simply using a broadband source, an optical filter, and a power meter, without the need of obtaining the transmission spectrum of the structure; thus, a really low-cost system and real-time results are achieved. Experimental results show that it is possible to detect very low refractive index variations, achieving a detection limit below 2 x 10(-6) refractive index units using this low-cost measuring technique. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America[This work was funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (MICINN) under contracts TEC2008-06333, JCI-009-5805, and TEC2008-05490. Support by the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia through program PAID-06-09 and the Conselleria d'Educacio through program GV-2010-031 is acknowledged.García Castelló, J.; Toccafondo, V.; Pérez Millán, P.; Sánchez Losilla, N.; Cruz, JL.; Andres, MV.; García-Rupérez, J. (2011). Real-Time and Low-Cost Sensing Technique Based on Photonic Bandgap Structures. Optics Letters. 36(14):2707-2709. https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.36.002707S270727093614Fan, X., White, I. M., Shopova, S. I., Zhu, H., Suter, J. D., & Sun, Y. (2008). Sensitive optical biosensors for unlabeled targets: A review. 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IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, 16(3), 654-661. doi:10.1109/jstqe.2009.2032510Xu, D.-X., Vachon, M., Densmore, A., Ma, R., Delâge, A., Janz, S., … Schmid, J. H. (2010). Label-free biosensor array based on silicon-on-insulator ring resonators addressed using a WDM approach. Optics Letters, 35(16), 2771. doi:10.1364/ol.35.002771Skivesen, N., Têtu, A., Kristensen, M., Kjems, J., Frandsen, L. H., & Borel, P. I. (2007). Photonic-crystal waveguide biosensor. Optics Express, 15(6), 3169. doi:10.1364/oe.15.003169Lee, M. R., & Fauchet, P. M. (2007). Nanoscale microcavity sensor for single particle detection. Optics Letters, 32(22), 3284. doi:10.1364/ol.32.003284García-Rupérez, J., Toccafondo, V., Bañuls, M. J., Castelló, J. G., Griol, A., Peransi-Llopis, S., & Maquieira, Á. (2010). Label-free antibody detection using band edge fringes in SOI planar photonic crystal waveguides in the slow-light regime. Optics Express, 18(23), 24276. doi:10.1364/oe.18.024276Toccafondo, V., García-Rupérez, J., Bañuls, M. J., Griol, A., Castelló, J. G., Peransi-Llopis, S., & Maquieira, A. (2010). Single-strand DNA detection using a planar photonic-crystal-waveguide-based sensor. Optics Letters, 35(21), 3673. doi:10.1364/ol.35.003673Luff, B. J., Wilson, R., Schiffrin, D. J., Harris, R. D., & Wilkinson, J. S. (1996). Integrated-optical directional coupler biosensor. Optics Letters, 21(8), 618. doi:10.1364/ol.21.000618Sepúlveda, B., Río, J. S. del, Moreno, M., Blanco, F. J., Mayora, K., Domínguez, C., & Lechuga, L. M. (2006). Optical biosensor microsystems based on the integration of highly sensitive Mach–Zehnder interferometer devices. Journal of Optics A: Pure and Applied Optics, 8(7), S561-S566. doi:10.1088/1464-4258/8/7/s41Densmore, A., Vachon, M., Xu, D.-X., Janz, S., Ma, R., Li, Y.-H., … Schmid, J. H. (2009). Silicon photonic wire biosensor array for multiplexed real-time and label-free molecular detection. Optics Letters, 34(23), 3598. doi:10.1364/ol.34.003598Povinelli, M. L., Johnson, S. G., & Joannopoulos, J. D. (2005). Slow-light, band-edge waveguides for tunable time delays. Optics Express, 13(18), 7145. doi:10.1364/opex.13.007145Garcia, J., Sanchis, P., Martinez, A., & Marti, J. (2008). 1D periodic structures for slow-wave induced non-linearity enhancement. Optics Express, 16(5), 3146. doi:10.1364/oe.16.003146Pérez-Millán, P., Torres-Peiró, S., Cruz, J. L., & Andrés, M. V. (2008). Fabrication of chirped fiber Bragg gratings by simple combination of stretching movements. Optical Fiber Technology, 14(1), 49-53. doi:10.1016/j.yofte.2007.07.00

Procedimiento de preparado de rodajas de berenjena frita con posterior congelación

Referencia OEPM: P9001681.-- Fecha de solicitud: 18/06/1990.-- Titular: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC).El procedimiento de preparado de rodajas de berenjena frita con posterior congelación describe la obtención a partir de berenjena de un producto no perecedero mediante el tratamiento de fritura, congelación y conservación al estado congelado. Con la fritura se consigue evitar el pardeamiento enzimático. Este procedimiento es aplicable al mercado del producto vegetal al estado congelado y la utilización de un cocinado previo (fritura) del producto vegetal antes de su congelación.Peer reviewe

Osteomielitis subaguda en paciente con diabetes mellitus complicada

La osteomielitis subaguda es una infección hematógena del hueso definida como una forma de osteomielitis no supurativa esclerosante que habitualmente pasa desapercibida en estadios precoces dada su clínica insidiosa caracterizada por buen estado del paciente, así como una historia de dolor de larga evolución.Presentamos un caso de osteomielitis subaguda que, por la edad de presentación, la patología asociada del paciente y la localización de la misma, debe hacer replantearnos las distintas opciones de tratamiento asumiendo las posibles complicaciones y fracasos.Subacute osteomyelitis is a haematogenous infection of bone defined as a non-suppurative, sclerosing form of osteomyelitis which usually escapes detection in its early stages because of its insidious clinical features (good general condition of the patient and a long-lasting history of pain). We report one case of subacute osteomyelitis which, because of its location, the age at presentation and the patient's associated pathology should prompt consideration of the various therapeutic options and assumption of the possible complications and therapeutic failures

Cardiovascular risk biomarkers and metabolically unhealthy status in prepubertal children: Comparison of definitions

Background and aims: The early onset of cardio-metabolic abnormalities, known as metabolically unhealthy (MU) status, is highly associated with obesity and cardiovascular disease (CVD), as well as with increased morbidity and mortality later in life. Given the lack of a consensus MU classification for prepubertal children, we aimed to compare available MU definitions in terms of their association with CVD risk biomarkers. Methods and results: A total of 930 prepubertal children (622 with overweight/obesity, 462 males) aged 5–10.9 years were recruited, anthropometric measures were taken and biomarkers were analyzed. Children were classified using eight MU definitions based on different cut-offs for blood pressure, triacylglycerides, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, glucose and homeostasis model assessment for insulin resistance (HOMA-IR). MU prevalence in children with overweight/obesity ranged between 30% and 60% across definitions. Plasma concentrations of resistin, leptin, myeloperoxidase (MPO) and total plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 (tPAI-1) were higher, and those of adiponectin were lower, in MU compared to MH children with overweight/obesity. Linear regression analyses confirmed the contribution of MPO and tPAI-1 concentrations to MU status, with most significant results derived from definitions that use age and sex-specific criteria and that account for HOMA-IR. Conclusion: Plasma concentrations of MPO and tPAI-1 are increased in prepubertal MU children irrespective of having normal-weight or overweight/obesity. Inclusion of age and sex-specific cut-offs for cardio-metabolic components as well as insulin resistance criteria increases the quality of MU definitions as seen by their stronger association with CVD biomarkers concentrations

Assessment of the use of technical software by the students in the context of mechanical engineering

[EN] In the framework of the European Higher Education area, university teaching has focused in recent years on adapting Master's and Bachelor's degrees to the demands of the professional sector. To do this, the training and development of the generic and specific skills recommended for the incorporation of students into the job market have been priority objectives in the approach to study plans. However, there is no consensus on the methodologies for evaluating these skills, especially regarding how to separate the acquisition and / or improvement of the skills from the specific knowledge and skills of the subjects. Due to the lack of time, teaching staff seek methodologies that do not involve additional tests for the evaluation of competences, which would increase the number of tests to a non-realistic number with the corresponding assessment duties for the professors. In order to make a contribution in this regard, this work presents an approach for evaluating the ability to handle specific software applied to problems in the area of mechanical engineering. This work proposes a methodology for acquiring the required skills and an evaluation system to grade the degree of expertise in the manipulation of the software. In our University, this skill is called the Specific Instrumental Skill, which measures the ability of the students for using the tools in engineering, like, in this case, the use of software to run structural numerical simulations as ANSYS®. The methodology proposed is based on an a priori training. This training is based on 2 hours weekly sessions where the students should solve, in groups of 2 or 3 students, a set of labs with the help of the professor. The students do not need to deliver any report to the professor since the objective of the sessions is the training of the students. Therefore, the pressure over the student is low and the professor avoid to mark a high number of student¿s reports, allowing him to focus only on the learning process of the students and not on the evaluation during the training sessions. These labs increase the difficulty along a number of sessions. The last session consists in an exam in which the students must solve a lab similar to those already solved during the training sessions. This time, each student will work individually without the help of the professor and with a control of the time. Finally, the performance of the methodology is checked by a cross-test for the same students who are part of the group of students of another subject (control subject) where the same tool (ANSYS®) is used. The collected data showed that the students following this methodology acquire the sufficient expertise for handling the software and their skills outperform those of the students of the control subject who did not follow the proposed methodology. As a conclusion, the methodology proposed in this work guarantees a good level of expertise for the students, as shown by the results. Since the results in the final lab exam and the results of the cross-test coincides, the use of the final test exam could be interpreted as a good indicator of the degree of expertise in the use of the software. Additionally, the proposed methodology reduces the work load for the professor as it only requires assessing 1 report per student (instead of several reports for each group of 2 or 3 students in each of the session) while ensuring the authorship of the report.Authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Vicerrectorado de Estudios, Calidad y Acreditación and the Vicerrectorado de Recursos Digitales y Documentación of the Universitat Politècnica de València (project PIME B/19-20/165) and the Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación of the Universitat Politècnica de València (EICE INTEGRAL).Nadal, E.; Rupérez Moreno, MJ.; Giner Navarro, J.; Rovira, A.; Ródenas, JJ.; Martínez Casas, J.; Pedrosa, AM. (2020). Assessment of the use of technical software by the students in the context of mechanical engineering. IATED Academy. 3344-3348. https://doi.org/10.21125/iceri.2020.0756S3344334

A new methodology for the in vivo estimation of the elastic constants that characterize the patient-specific biomechanical behavior of the human cornea

This work presents a methodology for the in vivo characterization of the complete biomechanical behavior of the human cornea of each patient. Specifically, the elastic constants of a hyperelastic, second-order Ogden model were estimated for 24 corneas corresponding to 12 patients. The finite element method was applied to simulate the deformation of human corneas due to non-contact tonometry, and an iterative search controlled by a genetic heuristic was used to estimate the elastic parameters that most closely approximates the simulated deformation to the real one. The results from a synthetic experiment showed that these parameters can be estimated with an error of about 5%. The results of 24 in vivo corneas showed an overlap of about 90% between simulation and real deformed cornea and a modified Hausdorff distance of 25 mu m, which indicates the great accuracy of the proposed methodology. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This project has been partially funded by MECD (reference AP2009-2414) and MINECO (INNPACTO, IPT-2012-0495-300000).Lago, MA.; Rupérez Moreno, MJ.; Martínez Martínez, F.; Monserrat Aranda, C.; Larra, E.; Gueell, JL.; Peris-Martinez, C. (2015). A new methodology for the in vivo estimation of the elastic constants that characterize the patient-specific biomechanical behavior of the human cornea. Journal of Biomechanics. 48(1):38-43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbiomech.2014.11.009S384348

Dietary patterns and their association with body composition and cardiometabolic markers in children and adolescents: Genobox cohort

Diet is a key factor for obesity development; however, limited data are available on dietary cluster analysis in children with obesity. We aimed to assess the associations between dietary patterns and obesity and several cardiometabolic markers. Anthropometry, bioelectrical impedance, blood pressure and plasma biomarkers of oxidative stress, inflammation and endothelial damage were determined in 674 Caucasian children, aged 5–16, with normal or excess weight. Using a food frequency questionnaire and cluster analysis, two consistent dietary patterns were shown, labeled as health conscious (HC) and sweet and processed (SP). The HC pattern included a greater proportion of participants with overweight/obesity than the SP cluster (80.1% vs. 63.8%). However, children with obesity within the HC cluster, showed less abdominal fat, through waist to hip (0.93 vs. 0.94) and waist to height (0.61 vs. 0.63) indexes (p < 0.01). Univariate general models showed several additional differences in cardiometabolic risk biomarkers in the global and stratified analyses, with a healthier profile being observed mainly in the HC cluster. However, multivariate models questioned these findings and pointed out the need for further studies in this field. Anyhow, our findings support the benefits of a healthy diet and highlight the importance of dietary patterns in the cardiometabolic risk assessment of children with overweight/obesity, beyond weight control

Implications of zoonotic and vector-borne parasites to free-roaming cats in central Spain

Cats are definitive hosts and reservoirs for several parasites, some of which are responsible for serious zoonotic diseases. We conducted a case-control study of data from a trap-neuter-return (TNR) programme (years 2014-2017) designed to examine the prevalence of zoonotic parasites in free-roaming cats living in urban areas of central Spain. In the animal population tested (n = 263), we detected a 29.2% prevalence of endoparasites, including high rates of cestodes (12.9%) and Toxocara cati (11.7%). While faecal samples showed no Toxoplasma gondii oocysts, the seroprevalence of T. gondii infection was 24.2%. Antibodies to Leishmania infantum were detected in 4.8% of the animals, though all skin and blood samples analyzed were PCR negative for this parasite. Ectoparasites (ticks and fleas) were found in 4.6% of the cat population, and 10.6% of the cats were detected with Otodectes cynotis. Finally, 6.3% and 7.9% cats tested positive for feline leukaemia virus and feline immunodeficiency virus, respectively. Our study provides useful information for animal-welfare and public-health, as the parasites detected can affect native wild animals through predation, competition and disease transmission. Our detection of zoonotic parasites such as L. infantum, T. gondii, T. cati, Giardia duodenalis and several ectoparasites prompts an urgent need for health control measures in stray cats.S