Biomasa aérea en ecosistemas de Prosopis pallida (Humb. and Bonpl. ex Willd.) H. B. K. usando imágenes Landsat 7 ETM+

The significance of field work in remote sensing studies when applied to large areas has often been underestimated. The combination of specific forest inventories for the estimation of aboveground biomass in large dry tropical forest areas with remote sensor data has scarcely been explored to date. In this work, a systematic, stratified forest inventory involving 100 × 100 m square plots in an area of Peruvian Prosopis pallida dry forest, roughly one million hectares in size in the Piura province (Peru) has been compiled. The inventory encompassed the principal silvicultural variables defining the ecosystem studied, which were used in allometric equations for the different species, genera and plant associations in the area in order to estimate the amount of aboveground biomass present in each plot. Field data were related to a Landsat 7 ETM+ image by using six different vegetation indices derived from an image mosaic for the area. Two regression equations (relating the amount of aboveground phytomass to the different vegetation indices) provided reasonably acceptable phytomass predictions for the type of ecosystem concerned (R2 between 0.72 and 0.52).La importancia del trabajo de campo en estudios de teledetección radica en la necesidad de proveer una validación a los valores de reflectividad incluidos en los datos de los sensores remotos. La diversidad ecológica del medio forestal y la evaluación de grandes superficies de difícil acceso hacen de la combinación del inventario forestal y de la teledetección una herramienta compleja y útil en el análisis del medio terrestre. El presente trabajo muestra la aplicación de un inventario sistemático estratificado sobre un millón de hectáreas de bosque tropical seco de Prosopis pallida en el Departamento de Piura (Perú) en la validación de diferentes tipos de clasificación realizadas sobre dicho ecosistema mediante el uso de imágenes Landsat ETM+. El inventario recoge las principales variables del ecosistema y de los individuos, tomadas en parcelas de 1 hectárea, que posteriormente fueron relacionadas con los valores de reflectividad de las imágenes mediante el uso de índices de vegetación. Se hallaron ecuaciones de regresión entre valores de fracción de suelo cubierto y cinco índices de vegetación, obteniéndose resultados con R2 de hasta 72 %. Los niveles de significación hallados mediante el uso de los índices NDVI y EVI permiten una estimación razonable del estado del bosque seco de Prosopis pallida del Departamento de Piura de una forma económica, fácil de repetir en el tiempo y aplicable a zonas que difícilmente pueden ser evaluadas mediante inventarios convencionales

Iridium-and Palladium-Based Catalysts in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Transition metal catalysts play a vital role in a wide range of industrial organic processes. The large-scale production of chemicals relying on catalyzed organic reactions represents a sustainable approach to supply society with end products for many daily life applications. Homogeneous (mainly for academic uses) and heterogeneous (crucial in industrial processes) metal-based catalysts have been developed for a plethora of organic reactions. The search for more sustainable strategies has led to the development of a countless number of metal-supported catalysts, nanosystems, and electrochemical and photochemical catalysts. In this work, although a vast number of transition metals can be used in this context, special attention is devoted to Ir-and Pd-based catalysts in the industrial manufacture of pharmaceutical drugs. Pd is by far the most widely used and versatile catalyst not only in academia but also in industry. Moreover, Ir-based complexes have emerged as attractive catalysts, particularly in asymmetric hydrogenation reactions. Ir-and Pd-based asymmetric reductions, aminations, cross-coupling reactions, and C–H activation are covered herein in the production of biologically active compounds or precursors; adaptation to bulk conditions is particularly highlighted.Gobierno de Canarias SD-19/02Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación PID2020-116460RB-I00, 10.13039/50110001103

Offender's Narratives on Criminal Desistance While Serving a Prison Sentence

This study analyzes the early desistance narratives of a sample of 44 male offenders, between 20 and 50 years old, incarcerated in Spain for serious crimes. In particular, two types of the inmates’ stories are evaluated: 1) their narratives of personal change toward a non-criminal life (identity change, perceived self-efficacy and willingness for desistance); 2) their perceptions on those transitional or facilitator factors for desistance available to them (new learning, support and social bonding). Participants’ accounts show how many subjects, despite being still in prison, claim to have experienced favorable changes and have different facilitating factors to abandon their previous criminal life. Despite this, such early narratives of withdrawal are not exempt from ambivalences and contradictions, both between subjects and within subjects. The process of desistance and their contradictions was interpreted, in accordance with the reviewed literature, as a long journey which is often traversed in a circular and zigzagging manner. Finally, it has been discussed how the correctional system should play a major role in facilitating the personal changes and the social support necessary for the ex-offenders’ journey to desistance to be successful

Generation of artificial neural networks models in anticancer study

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have several applications; one of them is the prediction of biological activity. Here, ANNs were applied to a set of 32 compounds with anticancer activity assayed experimentally against two cancer cell lines (A2780 and T-47D). Using training and test sets, the obtained correlation coefficients between experimental and calculated values of activity, for A2780, were 0.804 and 0.829, respectively, and for T-47D, we got 0.820 for the training set and 0.927 for the test set. Com paring multiple linear regression and ANN models, the latter were better suited in establishing relationships between compounds’ structure and their anticancer activity.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Capacidad condrogénica de injertos libres de periostio en la reparación de defectos del cartílago articular: estudio experimental en conejos

Ante la incapacidad de reparación de las lesiones del cartílago articular, hemos diseñado un modelo experimental, consistente en la realización de una úlcera condral de 8 mm, en la superficie articular de la rótula, en 48 conejos distribuidos en 2 series. Mientras en la serie control (24 conejos) dicha úlcera se dejó a evolución espontánea, en la experimental (24 conejos) fue cubierta con plastia libre de periostio tibial para poder investigar la posibilidad de regeneración del cartílago articular. Los resultados se valoraron macroscópica y microscópicamente a intervalos de 1, 2, 4 y 8 semanas, comprobando la ausencia de regeneración espontánea y el desarrollo de un neocartílago hialino a partir de la plastia de periostio, con lo que se demuestra la capacidad condrogénica de la misma.An animal experimental study was designed in order to repair chondral defects of 8 mm. diameter, performed at the articular surface of the patella in adult rabitts. A total of 48 animals were operated. The control serie consisted of 24 animals in which the defect was not repaired. In other 24 animals, the defect was covered whit a free tibial periosteal praft. Rcsults were evaluated macro and microscopically at 1, 2, 4 and 8 weeks after surgeon. In control cases, there were no spontaneous repair while in case with periosteal implantation, a new trialine cartilage originated in the implanted tissue was observed. These findings demonstrated the chondrogenic capacity of periosteal free grafts for repair of articular surface defects

Fibra de carbono como material de interposición en defectos del cartílago de crecimiento: estudio experimental

El problema que plantean los traumatismos de cartílago de crecimiento, con respecto al tratamiento de los puentes óseos y sus secuelas han motivado la realización del presente trabajo experimental. Se ha pretendido valorar la utilidad de la fibra de carbono como material de interposición en la prevención de la formación de puentes óseos tras una lesión fisária distal femoral provocada quirúrgicamente. Se han utilizado 24 conejos, de ambos sexos, de cuatro semanas de vida y un peso medio de 1.200 g distribuidos en cuatro grupos de seis animales cada uno, según el momento de sacrificio, 1, 2, 4 y 8 semanas. Los animales fueron intervenidos en ambos fémures realizándoles una resección externa de la placa de crecimiento en la extremidad distal. El fémur izquierdo fue considerado como control, y en el fémur derecho se implantó fibra de carbono en el defecto creado. Todos los especímenes fueron estudiados macroscópica, radiológica, e histológicamente, observando que la fibra de carbono utilizada como material de interposición en los defectos de cartílago de crecimiento, actúa como barrera pasiva retrasando la aparición del puente óseo.The problem set forth by the traumatisms of growth cartilage regarding the treatment of the osseus bridges and its sequelas has motivated the carrying out of an experimental model in rabbit. It has been our pretension to evaluate the utility of the carbon fibre as a material of insertion in the prevention of osseous bridges formation after a physeal distal femoral lesion surgically provoked. 24 rabbits, of both sexes, 4 weeks old and with an average weight of 1.200 g have been used for this experiment. These have been distributed into 4 group composed of 6 animals each, taking into account the moment of sacrifice, 1, 2, 4 and 8 weeks. Both femurs of each animals were operated on executing an external resection of the growth plate in distal extremity of the femur. The left femur was taken as control and was left to evolve. A carbon fibre was implanted on the right femur, taken as experimental. All the specimen were studied macroscopically, radiologically and histologically, observing that the carbon fibre used as material of interposition in the defects growth cartilage sets as a passive barrier retarding the appearance of the osseous bridges

An out-of-core method for GPU image mapping on large 3D scenarios of the real world

[Abstract] Image mapping on 3D huge scenarios of the real world is one of the most fundamental and computational expensive processes for the integration of multi-source sensing data. Recent studies focused on the observation and characterization of Earth have been enhanced by the proliferation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and sensors able to capture massive datasets with a high spatial resolution. Despite the advances in manufacturing new cameras and versatile platforms, only a few methods have been developed to characterize the study area by fusing heterogeneous data such as thermal, multispectral or hyperspectral images with high-resolution 3D models. The main reason for this lack of solutions is the challenge to integrate multi-scale datasets and high computational efforts required for image mapping on dense and complex geometric models. In this paper, we propose an efficient pipeline for multi-source image mapping on huge 3D scenarios. Our GPU-based solution significantly reduces the run time and allows us to generate enriched 3D models on-site. The proposed method is out-of-core and it uses available resources of the GPU’s machine to perform two main tasks: (i) image mapping and (ii) occlusion testing. We deploy highly-optimized GPU-kernels for image mapping and detection of self-hidden geometry in the 3D model, as well as a GPU-based parallelization to manage the 3D model considering several spatial partitions according to the GPU capabilities. Our method has been tested on 3D scenarios with different point cloud densities (66M, 271M, 542M) and two sets of multispectral images collected by two drone flights. We focus on launching the proposed method on three platforms: (i) System on a Chip (SoC), (ii) a user-grade laptop and (iii) a PC. The results demonstrate the method’s capabilities in terms of performance and versatility to be computed by commodity hardware. Thus, taking advantage of GPUs, this method opens the door for embedded and edge computing devices for 3D image mapping on large-scale scenarios in near real-time.This work has been partially supported through the research projects TIN2017-84968-R, PID2019-104184RB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and ERDF funds “A way of doing Europe”, as well as by ED431C 2021/30, ED431F 2021/11 funded by Xunta de Galicia and 1381202 by Junta de AndalucíaXunta de Galicia; ED431C 2021/30Xunta de Galicia; ED431F 2021/11Junta de Andalucía; 138120

Morfología polínica del género Pimpinella L. (Apiaceae) en las Islas Canarias, España

XV lnternational A.P.L.E. Symposium of Palynolog