Ontogenetic changes in DNA and RNA content of laboratory-reared Prochilodus lineatus larvae: use of RNA/DNA ratios as indicators of nutritional condition

The aims of the present study were to describe the ontogenetic performance of DNA and RNA content, as well as to assess the nutritional condition of Prochilodus lineatus larvae reared under different feeding treatments. The experiment consisted of two parts, the first 6-14 days after hatching (DAH) and the second 15-21 DAH. In the first part of the experiment, larvae were kept under one of two feeding treatments: fed or starved. During the second part of the experiment, larvae were kept under one of four treatments: fed, fed until 14 DAH and later starved, starved until 14 DAH and fed later or starved. It is of note that the size and weight reached of larvae that were starved during early development and later received food were higher than those of than larvae in the other feeding treatments. In addition, instantaneous growth rates were higher and nutritional condition was better in larvae that were initially starved and fed later. The availability of food following a period of starvation seems to trigger larval metabolism and cellular division. Consequently, we recommend maintaining appropriate food provision in the aquaculture of P. lineatus larvae, especially in advanced developmental stages. We verified that RNA/DNA ratio is affected by the feeding condition and that it is sensitive enough to promptly reflect changes in feeding conditions of P. lineatus larvae. Thus, the RNA/DNA ratio could be used to assess nutritional condition of both wild and cultured P. lineatus larvae.Fil: Diaz, Marina Vera. Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones y Desarrollo Pesquero; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata; ArgentinaFil: Gómez, M. I.. Dirección de Pesca Continental; ArgentinaFil: Sánchez, S.. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias. Instituto de Ictiología del Nordeste; ArgentinaFil: Fuentes, Carlos Mariano. Dirección de Pesca Continental; Argentin

Are large innovative firms more efficient?

One of the characteristics of the Spanish economy is the high percentage of small and medium-sized firms. Size is one of the factors that condition the managerial organization of the firms and their efficiency and productivity. Moreover size has been found a highly significant variable in explaining differences in firm’s innovative activities and the returns of R&D expenditures, and it is a well-established connection between productivity and innovative activities. This paper analyses the relationship between innovative activities and size and their effect over firms’ technical efficiency and then over their productivity. We also take into account other variables that could affect the relationship between productivity and innovative activities: industrial sector, market structure, or firms’ financial conditions. The analysis could help to design political economic measures to encourage small firms’ innovation and then contribute to improve their competitiveness. We use a micro panel data set of Spanish manufacturing firms, during the period 2004–2009, to simultaneously estimate a stochastic frontier production function and the inefficiency determinants. The data source is published in the Spanish Industrial Survey on Business Strategies (Encuesta sobre Estrategias Empresariales, ESEE), collected by the Fundación SEPI. Our preliminary results show that innovative firms are more efficient than non-innovative firms; and that small and medium-sized firms’ tent to be more efficient than large firms are

Las representaciones de las amenazas a la biodiversidad en el cine de animación: implicaciones para su enseñanza en la Educación Primaria

La crisis de biodiversidad por la que atraviesa el planeta forma parte de la crisis global social, económica y ambiental en la que estamos inmersos. La pérdida de biodiversidad tiene efectos no solo sobre las especies, también sobre los ecosistemas y los servicios ecosistémicos de los que dependemos. Por ello es necesario adoptar medidas para detener esta grave pérdida. La educación puede ser una vía complementaria a la gestión y la conservación, pero se requieren estrategias innovadoras para incorporar ciertos contenidos socioambientales al aula. El cine animado puede llevar contenidos y valores proambientales a la escuela. Para determinar si este tipo de cine puede mostrar las graves amenazas que pesan sobre la biodiversidad se plantea la presente investigación. Por ello se realiza una selección de películas de animación y mediante un análisis de contenido se obtienen resultados que indican que, en la muestra analizada se encuentran representados, aunque con distintas frecuencias, todos los grandes problemas que tiene la biodiversidad. Esto nos invita a pensar que el uso de este tipo de cine, previa selección adecuada, puede introducir estos importantes conceptos en el aula y contribuir a la adquisición de contenidos y valores proambientales.The biodiversity crisis that the planet is going through is part of the global social, economic and envi-ronmental crisis in which we are immersed. Biodiversity loss has effects not only on species, but also on the ecosystems and ecosystem services on which we depend. It is necessary to take measures to stop this serious loss. Education can be a complementary way to those of management and conservation, but in-novative strategies are required to incorporate certain socio-environmental content into the classroom. Animated cinema can bring pro-environmental content and values to school. The present research is proposed to determine if this type of cinema can show the serious threats of biodiversity. For this reason, a number of animated films is selected. A content analysis is carried out and the results indicate that, in the analyzed sample, all the great problems that biodiversity has are represented, although in different frequencies. This invites us to think that the use of this type of cinema, after appropriate selection, can introduce these important concepts in the classroom and contribute to the acquisition of pro-environmental content and values

Estimation of absorption line indices of early-type galaxies using colours

Context. Absorption line indices are widely used to determine the stellar population parameters such as age and metallicity of galaxies, but it is not easy to obtain the line indices of some distant galaxies that have colours available. Aims. This paper investigates the correlations between absorption line indices and colours. Methods. A few statistical fitting methods are mainly used, via both the observational data of Sloan Digital Sky Survey and a widely used theoretical stellar population model. Results. Some correlations between widely used absorption line indices and ugriz colours are found from both observational data of early-type galaxies and a theoretical simple stellar population model. In particular, good correlations between colours and widely used absorption line indices such as Dn(4000), HgammaA, HgammaF, HdeltaA, Mg1, Mg2, and Mgb, are shown in this paper. Conclusions. Some important absorption line indices of early-type galaxies can be estimated from their colours using correlations between absorption line indices and colours. For example, age-sensitive absorption line indices can be estimated from (u-r) or (g-r) colours and metallicity-sensitive ones from (u - z) or (g - z). This is useful for studying the stellar populations of distant galaxies, especially for statistical investigations.Comment: 9 pages, 21 figures, will be shown in A&

Sensitisation to Act 2d in patientsallergic to Alternaria alternanta: an epiphenomenom without clinical significance?

In the last few years, the introduction of microarrays in the diagnosis of type I allergy is allowing the clinicians to have a much more accurate picture of their allergenic profile. However, the simultaneous measurement of specific IgE to multiple molecules can show unexpected sensitisations, without knowing their clinical relevance. For instance, we have been observing a high prevalence (74%) of sensitisation to Act d 2 (the thaumatin of kiwifruit) in patients sensitised to Alt a 1 (major allergen of Alternaria alternata) with a confirmed allergy to this mould. The aim of the present study was to clarify if there was any clinical relevance in this finding

Scattering images from autocorrelation functions of P-wave seismic velocity images : the case of Tenerife Island (Canary Islands, Spain)

We thank Edoardo Del Pezzo for the valuable idea of this paper and suggestions regarding the methodology. J. Prudencio is partially supported by NSF1521855 Hazard SEES project. This paper has been partially supported by the Spanish project KNOWAVES (TEC2015-68752-R (MINECO/FEDER)), the European project MED-SUV funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program for research, technological development and demonstration under Grant Agreement No 308665, and by the Regional project ‘Grupo de Investigación en Geofísica y Sismología de la Junta de Andalucía, RNM104’.Peer reviewedPostprin

Testing postcombustion CO2 capture with CaO in a 1.7 MWt pilot facility

AbstractCalcium looping, CaL, is a new and rapidly developing technology that makes use of CaO as a high temperature regenerable sorbent of CO2. Previous theoretical and lab scale studies have shown that this technology could lead to a substantial reduction in the cost of CO2 capture and energy penalties because heat can be effectively recovered from this high temperature solid looping system. We report in this paper on the first results from a pilot plant designed to demonstrate the viability of postcombustion capture of CO2 using CaL under conditions comparable to those expected in a large scale plant. The pilot includes two interconnected circulating fluidized bed reactors of 15 m height: a CO2 absorber (carbonator) able to treat up to 2400kg/h (equivalent to about 1.7 MWth), and an oxy-fired CFB calciner with a firing power between 1-3 MWth. CO2 capture efficiencies over 90% have been experimentally observed, including continuous operation with highly cycled solids in the system (i.e. with modest CO2 carrying capacities). SO2 capture is shown to be extremely high, with concentrations of SO2 well below 10 ppmv at the exit of the carbonator. Closure of carbon and sulfur balances is satisfactory. These results should be valuable base for model validation and scaling up purposes in future stages of the EU FP7 “CaOling” project, under which this investigation has been carried out

Using transition metal tetraphosphonates as precursor of phosphorus-containing electrocatalysts

Coordination polymers (CPs) are widely studied due to their applicability in many fields. Among them, metal phosphonates (MPs) are attractive materials due to their versatile structural diversity and functionality, with interesting properties as proton conductors and electrocatalyst precursors. In this work, we report the synthesis and crystal structures of several MPs derived from the combination of hexamethylenediamine-N,N,N’,N’-tetrakis(methylenephosphonic acid) (HDTMP) with different transition metals (M2+= Mn, Fe, Co, and Ni). The resulting solids, M[(HO3PCH2)2N(CH2)6N(CH2PO3H)2]·2H2O, show pillared-layered structures with capabilities of ammonia adsorption (Co2+ and Ni2+ derivatives). The ammonia-containing solids are crystalline, with a composition M[(HO3PCH2)2N(CH2)6N(CH2PO3H)2(H2O)2](NH3)4(H2O)12. The catalytic activities toward Oxygen Evolution Reaction (OER), Oxygen Reduction Reaction (ORR) and Hydrogen Evolution Reaction (HER) of the corresponding (5% H2-Ar)-pyrolyzed materials, as well as the crystal structure of non-pyrolyzed precursor solids, will be discussed.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Olive classification according to external damage using image analysis.

The external appearance of an olive’s skin is the most decisive factor in determining its quality as a fruit. This work tries to establish a hierarchical model based on the features extracted from images of olives reflecting their external defects. Seven commercial categories of olives, established by product experts, were used: undamaged olives, mussel-scale or ‘serpeta’, hail-damaged or ‘granizo’, mill or ‘rehús’, wrinkled olive or ‘agostado’, purple olive and undefined-damage or ‘molestado’. The original images were processed using segmentation, colour parameters and morphological features of the defects and the whole fruits. The application of three consecutive discriminant analyses resulted in the correct classification of 97% and 75% of olives during calibration and validation, respectively. However the correct classification percentages vary greatly depending on the categories, ranging 80–100% during calibration and 38– 100% during validation

Performance of parallel FDTD method for shared- and distributed-memory architectures: Application tobioelectromagnetics

This work provides an in-depth computational performance study of the parallel finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. The parallelization is done at various levels including: shared- (OpenMP) and distributed- (MPI) memory paradigms and vectorization on three different architectures: Intel's Knights Landing, Skylake and ARM's Cavium ThunderX2. This study contributes to prove, in a systematic manner, the well-established claim within the Computational Electromagnetic community, that the main factor limiting FDTD performance, in realistic problems, is the memory bandwidth. Consequently a memory bandwidth threshold can be assessed depending on the problem size in order to attain optimal performance. Finally, the results of this study have been used to optimize the workload balancing of simulation of a bioelectromagnetic problem consisting in the exposure of a human model to a reverberation chamber-like environment