Multifunctional device for bicycles

This paper aims at designing a "Multifunctional device composed of load support and anti-theft lock for standard bicycles". A previous study has been developed in order to justify and validate the final design of the unmet needs of people in their daily lives, with an emphasis on satisfying those that imply specific savings, whether economic, energy or time. As a result, the use of bicycles as a means of transport in Spain is promoted taking as a frame of reference countries such as the Netherlands or France. This means economic and energy savings (by replacing the car) and an improvement in people's health and quality of life. Following the steps of the design methodology, once the need was detected, an information search was carried out in order to identify and prioritize the design specifications that meet the demands of potential customers. For this reason, various sources were used, The boost to use bicycles has allowed to establish a set of measurements and specifications in the design of the device with a double functionality, the transport of merchandise and an anti-theft system. In addition to meeting the needs of the client, the design must comply with a set of reference regulations both, at the level of security devices and the transport of merchandise at retail. The result of the work has given rise to patent application with prior examination at a national level, in a first phase, and subsequently, at an international level.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

The multikinase inhibitor RXDX-105 is effective against neuroblastoma in vitro and in vivo.

Neuroblastoma is the most common extracranial solid tumor of childhood and accounts for 15% of all pediatric cancer-related deaths. New therapies are needed to improve outcomes for children with high-risk and relapsed tumors. Inhibitors of the RET kinase and the RAS-MAPK pathway have previously been shown to be effective against neuroblastoma, suggesting that combined inhibition may have increased efficacy. RXDX-105 is a small molecule inhibitor of multiple kinases, including the RET and BRAF kinases. We found that treatment of neuroblastoma cells with RXDX-105 resulted in a significant decrease in cell viability and proliferation in vitro and in tumor growth and tumor vascularity in vivo. Treatment with RXDX-105 inhibited RET phosphorylation and phosphorylation of the MEK and ERK kinases in neuroblastoma cells and xenograft tumors, and RXDX-105 treatment induced both apoptosis and cell cycle arrest. RXDX-105 also showed enhanced efficacy in combination with 13-cis-retinoic acid, which is currently a component of maintenance therapy for children with high-risk neuroblastoma. Our results demonstrate that RXDX-105 shows promise as a novel therapeutic agent for children with high-risk and relapsed neuroblastoma

The future of drones and their public acceptance

© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Any emergent technology in history has raised an initial rejection by part of the society. Added to the several problems that the non-mature technology may have, the lack of any previous experience about side effects and the human’s psychological fear to the unknown play an important influence in its acceptance. As drones bring up high social and economical expectations due to their capabilities and bussiness applications, the social acceptance is key to the complete development of drone technology's potential. Experts believe that social acceptance is ruled by a balance between beneficial usages and inconvenient issues regarding the technology. This balance in the aeronautical sector is also conditioned by the strict safety policies and regulations of the airspace and the current airspace users. To analyse this balance situation in actual and future environments, regarding drone technology, different use cases will be presented. These use cases have been proposed and analysed by different stakeholders from the U-space community network, a network of airspace and drone stakeholders who participated in the context of the SESAR CORUS project.\par The purpose of this paper is to analyse some of these use cases by obtaining responses from different stakeholders point of view using a survey in order to see how economical, safety and political aspects are balanced in each one of the cases. From the survey responses we will perform an analysis by means of three different acceptance indicators, one for each aspect commented. Main results and conclusions point out that the economical indicator is, in general, positive, especially for the low cost payload use cases. In contrast the economical indicator is close to neutral for city transport and airports use cases, which leads to propose some economical promotion action may be needed to make them a reality. For the safety indicator we observe that they are close to negative values as use case complexity increases. Thus we can conclude that some of the proposed missions start affecting the current levels of safety. Finally, the political indicator is mostly neutral, with some positive trends for scenarios related with inspection tasks or done in non-populated areas.We thank our colleagues from the SESAR CORUS initia-tive: the project partners developping the use cases and theconcept of operation; and the U-space community network,who provided insight and expertise that greatly assisted theresearch. We also thank all our colleagues from the ICARUSResearch group (UPC) for the assistance with the surveys andfor the comments that greatly improved the manuscript.This work has been partially funded by the Ministry ofScience, Innovation and Universities of Spain under grantnumber TRA2016-77012-R and by the SESAR Joint Under-taking under the European Unions Horizon 2020 research andinnovation programme under grant agreement RIA-763551.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

An unmanned aircraft system to detect a radiological point source using RIMA software architecture

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs), together with the miniaturisation of computers, sensors, and electronics, offer new remote sensing applications. However, there is a lack of hardware and software support to effectively develop the potential of UASs in different remote sensing applications, such as the detection of radioactive sources. This paper presents the design, development and validation of a UAS for the detection of an uncontrolled and point radioactive source. The article describes a flexible and reusable software architecture for detecting the radioactive source (NaTcO 4 , containing 99m Tc) with a gamma-ray Cadmium Zinc Telluride (CZT) spectrometer as a proof of concept. The UAS is equipped with multichannel air-ground communications to perform missions beyond line of sight and onboard computation to process samples in real time and thus react to any anomaly detected during the mission. An ad hoc ground control station (GCS) has also been developed for the correct interpretation of the radioactive samples taken by the UAS. Radiological spectra plots, contour mapping and waterfall plots are some of the elements used in the ad hoc GCS. The article shows the results obtained in a flight campaign performing different flights at different altitudes and speeds over the radiological source, demonstrating the viability of the system.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Use of Waste-Derived Biochar to Remove Copper from Aqueous Solution in a Continuous-Flow System

The discharges from industrial processes constitute the main source of copper contamination in aqueous ecosystems. In this study we investigated the capacity of different types of biochar (derived from chicken manure, eucalyptus, corncob, olive mill and pine sawdust) to remove copper from aqueous solution in a continuous-flow system. The flow rate of the system strongly influenced the amount of copper retained. The adsorption to the corncob biochar varied from 5.51 to 3.48 mg Cu g-1 as the flux decreased from 13 to 2.5 mL min-1. The physicochemical characteristics of biochar determine the copper retention capacity and the underlying immobilization mechanisms. Biochars with high inorganic contents retain the largest amounts of copper and may be suitable for using in water treatment systems to remove heavy metals. The copper retention capacity of the biochars ranged between ~1.3 and 26 mg g-1 and varied in the following order: chicken manure > olive mill >> corncob > eucalyptus > sawdust pine

Impact of the foliar application of potassium nanofertilizer on biomass, yield, nitrogen assimilation and photosynthetic activity in green beans

The agricultural areas of the world face problems that create difficulties when producing food and the excessive use of fertilizers is generating a negative environmental impact. An alternative that appears as a solution to this problem is the use of nanofertilizers. Within nanofertilizers an area of opportunity is the application of macronutrients, which report an increase in absorption efficiency of 19% compared to conventional fertilizers. Potassium (K) is one of the three macronutrients most used in agriculture and its deficiency affects key processes in plant development, limiting crop production. However, the number of publications where K is used as a nanofertilizer is limited, despite this, products in this form are already on the market. Therefore, the aim of this research work was to study the effect of the foliar application of K nanofertilizer on biomass, yield, nitrogen assimilation and photosynthetic activity in green beans cv. ‘Strike’. K was applied in the form of a nanofertilizer in doses of 0, 50, 100 and 200 ppm. The biomass accumulation, yield, nitrate reductase enzyme activity, photosynthetic activity and photosynthetic pigments were evaluated. The dose of 100 ppm of K nanofertilizer obtained a higher accumulation of biomass, nitrate reductase activity, photosynthetic activity, SPAD values and total chlorophyll content. While the 200-ppm dose obtained a higher increase in yield. The results obtained suggest that the application of K nanofertilizers benefits the physiological development of plants. However, more studies are required to compare the application of nanofertilizers with traditional fertilizers

On the MIMO Capacity for Distributed System under Composite Rayleigh/Rician Fading and Shadowing

Wireless channels are commonly affected by short-term fading and long-term fading (shadowing). The shadowing effects must be taken into account also when mobility is present in the wireless scenario. Using a composite fading model, the total channel capacity can be studied for a scenario with short-term Rayleigh fading along with shadowing. This work provides quantitative results for these kinds of scenarios with Rayleigh fading and shadowing, considering also multiple-input and multiple-output systems, which have not been previously reported. In addition, the channel capacity has been studied in depth in its relation with the shadowing level, signal to noise ratio, and the number of elements in the multiple-input and multiple-output system. Moreover, the channel performance with shadowing has been compared to the one without it. Furthermore, Rician model with shadowing is studied and its results are reported. In addition, correlated and experimental results are provided. It is identified that the distributed MIMO systems can benefit from shadowing in Rician channels. This advantage has not been reported previously. This type of fading is proposed for massive MIMO by others and our results open the door to emulate massive MIMO on a reverberation chamber.This work has been supported by “Gobierno de Extremadura” with project number IB13113, PYR-2014 GENIL project (PYR-2014-CEB09-0010/MICINN), and CEIbioTIC project (mP_TIC_11)

Epidermólisis bullosa congénita (piel de cristal)

Epidermolysis bullosa is a skin disorder that is genetically transmitted and that is manifested by the appearance of blisters, ulcers and sores on the skin and mucous membranes with the slightest touch or stroke. The diagnosis is not difficult if the doctor has dermatological experience, but its classification is complex and it is necessary to consider the clinical and genetic aspects, as well as the microscopic and laboratory evaluation. Treatment of this disease is also difficult; and necessary steps needs to be taken in order to protect patients and prevent the occurrence of injuries and complications derived from them. This report presents the case of a newborn white male, diagnosed with epidermolysis bullosa, who was treated at the Teaching Hospital of Placetas.La epidermólisis bullosa o ampollar es un trastorno de la piel transmitido genéticamente y que se manifiesta por la aparición de ampollas, úlceras y heridas en la piel y mucosas al más mínimo roce o golpe. Hacer el diagnóstico no es difícil si se tiene experiencia dermatológica, pero su clasificación es compleja y para ella se necesita considerar la clínica, la genética, la microscopia y la evaluación de laboratorio. El tratamiento de esta enfermedad es también difícil y son necesarias ciertas medidas para proteger al paciente y evitar la aparición de lesiones y complicaciones derivadas de ella. En el presente artículo se presenta un recién nacido masculino blanco, con un diagnóstico de epidermólisis bullosa realizado en el Hospital General Docente de Placetas

Diseño de un dispositivo para la prevencion del aumento de temperatura en el motor, complementario a la informacion de los testigos visuales en un automovil (punto alerta)

se presenta el procedimiento para la creación y desarrollo de un accesorio adicional que se complementa a los testigos visuales en un tablero de instrumentos de un vehículo automotor, el cual está encaminado para la medición de datos de temperatura del automotor cumpliendo la función de protección del motor en caso de recalentamiento ó la falta de lubricación