Una propuesta para la estimación de costes de computación en la nube en etapas tempranas de diseño

Una de las soluciones más habituales en el despliegue de aplicaciones web es utilizar una infraestructura de computación en la nube o cloud computing. Este tipo de infraestructuras suelen proporcionar un alto nivel de disponibilidad que además junto a la escalabilidad de estos sistemas favorece el uso intensivo de grandes volúmenes de datos y un gran número de usuarios concurrentes. Estos factores son variables clave a considerar que determinarán el rendimiento de la aplicación y supondrán necesitar una infraestructura más o menos potente. Sin embargo, no suele ser hasta la fase de pruebas cuando se tiene una estimación de los costes computacionales de las operaciones que realiza la aplicación. Estos costes frecuentemente no satisfacen los requisitos iniciales del proyecto, o incluso conducen a un incumplimiento del dinero previsto para su mantenimiento en una infraestructura más potente, que sea capaz de satisfacer las necesidades del sistema en unos tiempos de respuesta razonables. Si en la etapa de diseño del sistema se conociese una estimación de estos costes operacionales, sería posible reorientar la arquitectura del sistema en otra más eficiente, que evitase diseños que son computacionalmente muy costosos. Al mismo tiempo se podría prever cuáles serán los cuellos de botella de la aplicación y qué configuraciones son las más adecuadas en el modelo de dominio para que estos costes al desplegar la aplicación en una plataforma en la nube sean lo más bajos posible. Ese es el objetivo principal de este trabajo, elaborar un marco teórico a partir del análisis de los costes computacionales en diversos diseños arquitectónicos que permita anticipar dichos costes para otros proyectos software y también determinar posibles buenas prácticas en etapas tempranas de desarrollo para una plataforma determinada.Grado en Ingeniería Informática en Ingeniería del Software. Universidad de Extremadur

Biological characteristics of the Trypanosoma cruzi Arequipa strain make it a good model for Chagas disease drug discovery

Trypanosoma cruzi, the causative agent of Chagas disease (CD), is a genuine parasite with tremendous genetic diversity and a complex life cycle. Scientists have studied this disease for more than 100 years, and CD drug discovery has been a mainstay due to the absence of an effective treatment. Technical advances in several areas have contributed to a better understanding of the complex biology and life cycle of this parasite, with the aim of designing the ideal profile of both drug and therapeutic options to treat CD. Here, we present the T. cruzi Arequipa strain (MHOM/Pe/2011/Arequipa) as an interesting model for CD drug discovery. We characterized acutephase parasitaemia and chronic-phase tropism in BALB/c mice and determined the in vitro and in vivo benznidazole susceptibility profile of the different morphological forms of this strain. The tropism of this strain makes it an interesting model for the screening of new compounds with a potential anti-Chagas profile for the treatment of this disease.Alfonso Martin Escudero Foundation Junta de Andalucia A-CTS-383-UGR1

Exostosis versus osteocondroma: importance of the differential diagnosis

The appearance, more and more common in the daily office of injuries similar to dematological pathologies as bony, are easily confusing with subungueal exostosis, provides to the podiatrist the necessity to remain alert with any bone anormality. Nevertheless the difficulty is at the time of making a differential diagnosis and the impossibility to treat this pathology with other methods differents from the surgery, makes very important the criterion of any specialized professionals which are involved as part of the multidiscipline team, with the podiatrist, to treat this pathology.The appearance, more and more common in the daily office of injuries similar to dematological pathologies as bony, are easily confusing with subungueal exostosis, provides to the podiatrist the necessity to remain alert with any bone anormality. Nevertheless the difficulty is at the time of making a differential diagnosis and the impossibility to treat this pathology with other methods differents from the surgery, makes very important the criterion of any specialized professionals which are involved as part of the multidiscipline team, with the podiatrist, to treat this pathology

Postpartum Depression in Fathers: A Systematic Review

[EN] Background/Objectives: Postpartum depression is usually defined as a major depressive episode that occurs shortly after childbirth. This condition is most commonly found in females; however, paternal postpartum depression has begun to attract more research attention. This study aims to identify different instruments for measuring this mental health problem and to detect risk factors as well as the main sources of resilience in paternal postpartum depression. Methods: A literature review was conducted following the PRISMA method. Results: After analyzing 10 articles, it was determined that the Edinburgh Postpartum Depression Scale is the most widely used instrument for the diagnosis of postpartum depression in the female population, and after several studies, it has already been validated for the male sex. After several studies were analyzed to highlight the main risk factors for paternal postpartum depression, it was established that the most influential factor is male gender role stress. These findings highlight the traditional role of fathers today. Most health professionals see the mother as the priority. Conclusions: Paternal depression is a major problem for mothers and fathers today, as well as for the newborn. As time goes on, there is a growing need to incorporate fathers into current and future mental health programs to be able to provide the necessary support.S

“Cuadrados y rectángulos”, experiencia de creación de un juego de Geometría para Educación Primaria

En este trabajo se describe el proceso llevado a cabo en la creación de un juego educativo geométrico para Educación Primaria. Concretamente, “Cuadrados y rectángulos” es un juego de estrategia diseñado en su versión básica para un aula de 2º de Primaria, que se basa en la formación de dichas figuras a partir de triángulos. En los anexos se encuentra el material necesario para su reproducción. Además, se ofrece una propuesta didáctica para su implementación y se analiza la puesta en práctica del juego en un aula de 24 alumnos. Junto a todo ello, se realiza una revisión bibliográfica respecto a las ventajas que ofrecen los juegos educativos en el proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje, especialmente en lo relativo a las Matemáticas. Igualmente, se incluye una fundamentación de los pasos seguidos en el diseño de la actividad, justificando su importancia. De esta forma, se pretende ofrecer al lector recursos para crear o adaptar su propio juego, apoyados en una experiencia práctica a modo de ejemplo.<br /

Library of Selenocyanate and Diselenide Derivatives as In Vivo Antichagasic Compounds Targeting Trypanosoma Cruzi Mitochondrion

Chagas disease is usually caused by tropical infection with the insect-transmitted protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi. Currently, Chagas disease is a major public health concern worldwide due to globalization, and there are no treatments neither vaccines because of the long-term nature of the disease and its complex pathology. Current treatments are limited to two obsolete drugs, benznidazole and nifurtimox, which lead to serious drawbacks. Taking into account the urgent need for strict research efforts to find new therapies, here, we describe the in vitro and in vivo trypanocidal activity of a library of selected forty-eight selenocyanate and diselenide derivatives that exhibited leishmanicidal properties. The inclusion of selenium, an essential trace element, was due to the wellknown extensive pharmacological activities for selenium compounds including parasitic diseases as T. cruzi. Here we present compound 8 as a potential compound that exhibits a better profile than benznidazole both in vitro and in vivo. It shows a fast-acting behaviour that could be attributed to its mode of action: it acts in a mitochondrion-dependent manner, causing cell death by bioenergetic collapse. This finding provides a step forward for the development of a new antichagasic agent.Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad, grant number CSD2010–00065 and CTQ2017–90852-REDCConserjería de Economía, Conocimiento, Empresas y Universidad de la Junta de Andalucia, grant number A-CTS-383-UGR18Institute of Tropical Health of University of Navarre (ISTUN)Caixa FoundationRoviralta and UbesolAlfonso Martín Escudero Foundatio

Chitosan-based bioactive formulations for the control of powdery mildew in viticulture

Grapevine is highly susceptible to fungal diseases, whose incidence and severity increase due to climate change. The present work focuses on the assessment of eight combinations of natural products with chitosan oligomers with fungicidal capacity that may be effective in the integrated control of powdery mildew, in compliance with Article 14 of the European Directive 2009/128/EC. Their efficacy was evaluated in field conditions against natural infections, in a plot with high disease pressure during a growing season (assaying both foliar or root application), and against overwintering inoculums (chasmothecia) through in vitro tests. In addition, their possible biostimulant capacities were evaluated based on harvest yields. Treatments based on chitosan oligomers in combination with secondary metabolites of Streptomyces spp. and chitosan oligomers combined with hydrolyzed gluten showed the best results in terms of disease control. Given the high efficacy of these formulations, comparable to that of conventional antifungals, they constitute an interesting alternative for the control of this disease whose treatment can, in some cases, represent almost half of the production costs

Identification of Aryl Polyamines Derivatives as Anti-Trypanosoma cruzi Agents Targeting Iron Superoxide Dismutase

Chagas disease (CD) is a tropical and potentially fatal infection caused by Trypanosoma cruzi. Although CD was limited to Latin America as a silent disease, CD has become widespread as a result of globalization. Currently, 6–8 million people are infected worldwide, and no effective treatment is available. Here, we identify new effective agents against T. cruzi. In short, 16 aryl polyamines were screened in vitro against different T. cruzi strains, and lead compounds were evaluated in vivo after oral administration in both the acute and chronic infections. The mode of action was also evaluated at the energetic level, and its high activity profile could be ascribed to a mitochondria-dependent bioenergetic collapse and redox stress by inhibition of the Fe-SOD enzyme. We present compound 15 as a potential compound that provides a step forward for the development of new agents to combat CD.Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad (CONSOLIDER CSD2010–00065 and CTQ2017–90852-REDC)MINECO and FEDER funds from the EU (Projects PID2019-110751RB-I00, RED2018-102331-T and Unidad de Excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000919-M)Alfonso Martín Escudero Foundatio

Unsupervised Common Spatial Patterns

The common spatial pattern (CSP) method is a dimensionality reduction technique widely used in brain-computer interface (BCI) systems. In the two-class CSP problem, training data are linearly projected onto direc tions maximizing or minimizing the variance ratio between the two classes. The present contribution proves that kurto sis maximization performs CSP in an unsupervised manner, i.e., with no need for labeled data, when the classes follow Gaussian or elliptically symmetric distributions. Numerical analyses on synthetic and real data validate these findings in various experimental conditions, and demonstrate the interest of the proposed unsupervised approach.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España) TEC2017-82807-

EEG signal processing in mi-bci applications with improved covariance matrix estimators

Article number 8688582n brain–computer interfaces (BCIs), the typical models of the EEG observations usually lead to a poor estimation of the trial covariance matrices, given the high non-stationarity of the EEG sources. We propose the application of two techniques that significantly improve the accuracy of these estimations and can be combined with a wide range of motor imagery BCI (MI-BCI) methods. The first one scales the observations in such a way that implicitly normalizes the common temporal strength of the source activities. When the scaling applies independently to the trials of the observations, the procedure justifies and improves the classical preprocessing for the EEG data. In addition, when the scaling is instantaneous and inde pendent for each sample, the procedure particularizes to Tyler’s method in statistics for obtaining a distribution free estimate of scattering. In this case, the proposal pro vides an original interpretation of this existing method as a technique that pursuits an implicit instantaneous power-normalization of the underlying source processes. The second technique applies to the classifier and improves its performance through a convenient regularization of the features covariance matrix. Experimental tests reveal that a combination of the proposed techniques with the state-of-the-art algorithms for motor-imagery classification provides a significant improvement in the classification results.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad ( España) TEC2017-82807-