3,512 research outputs found

    Chance-constrained model predictive control applied to inventory management in hospitalary pharmacy

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    Trabajo presentado a la 2nd KES International Conference on Innovation in Medicine and Healthcare (InMed-14), celebrada en San Sebastian (España) del 9 al 11 de julio de 2014.This extended abstract addresses the preliminary results of applying uncertainty handling strategies and advanced control techniques to the inventary management of hospitality pharmacy. Inventory management is one of the main tasks that a pharmacy department has to carry out in a hospital. It is a complex problem because it requires to establish a tradeoff between contradictory optimization criteria. The final goal of the proposed research is to update the inventory management system of hospitals such that it is possible to reduce the average inventory while maintaining preestablished clinical guarantees.The authors would like to acknowledge Junta de Andalucía (Pharmacontrol Project, P12- TIC-2400), for funding this work.Peer Reviewe

    Transforming YouTube into a valid source of knowledge for Anatomy students

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    [EN] YouTube is a free and easily accessible tool, with growing importance in the teaching field due to the content of the videos and their interaction options through comments, responses and insertion in social networks. However, some limitations can reduce the value of this tool in University teaching if institutional control is not carried out. Our project consists of the search for experiences based on learning Anatomy on YouTube to be able to incorporate this tool in our department. Almost all researchers found that most of students use YouTube as a source of anatomical knowledge, despite limitations and criticism based on ethical and privacy issues, the video experience itself, the YouTube search algorithm, lack of quality control, advertising purposes or excessive video offer. Researchers experienced that most of the available videos had a poor quality and many mistakes, so professors must be involved in the search and selection of the best appropriate videos. We conclude that YouTube can be used as a source of knowledge for anatomical learning. However it is necessary to inform students of the inconveniences and risks, and make a critical selection by the professors of the videos that best fit in the teaching program.Alegre-Martínez, A.; Martínez-Martínez, MI.; Alfonso-Sánchez, JL. (2020). Transforming YouTube into a valid source of knowledge for Anatomy students. En 6th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'20). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. (30-05-2020):293-300. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAd20.2020.11044OCS29330030-05-202

    Lactic acid bacteria isolated from poultry protect the intestinal epithelial cells of chickens from in vitro wheat germ agglutinin-induced cytotoxicity

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    Poultry fed on wheat-based diets regularly ingest wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) that has toxic effects in vitro on intestinal epithelial cells (IEC) obtained from 14-d-old broilers. Cytotoxicity and the potential role of 14 intestinal bacterial strains in the removal of bound lectins in epithelial cell cultures were investigated. Cytotoxicity was dependent on time and lectin concentration; the lethal dose (LD50) was 8.36 µg/ml for IEC exposed for 2 h to WGA. Complementary sugars to WGA were detected on the surface of one Enterococcus and 9 Lactobacillus strains isolated from poultry. These strains were evaluated as a lectin removal tool for cytotoxicity prevention. Incubation of lactic acid bacteria with WGA before IEC–lectin interaction caused a substantial reduction in the percentage of cell deaths. The protection was attributed to the amount of lectin bound to the bacterial surfaces and was strain-dependent. L. salivarius LET 201 and L. reuteri LET 210 were more efficient than the other lactic acid bacteria assayed. These results provide a basis for the development of probiotic supplements or cell-wall preparations of selected lactic acid bacteria intended to avoid harmful effects of a natural constituent of the grain in wheat-based diets.Fil: Babot, Jaime Daniel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucuman. Centro de Referencia Para Lactobacilos; ArgentinaFil: Argañaraz Martínez, Fernando Eloy. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucuman. Centro de Referencia Para Lactobacilos; ArgentinaFil: Lorenzo Pisarello, Maria Jose. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucuman. Centro de Referencia Para Lactobacilos; ArgentinaFil: Apella, Maria Cristina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucuman. Centro de Referencia Para Lactobacilos; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán; ArgentinaFil: Perez Chaia, Adriana Beatriz. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucuman. Centro de Referencia Para Lactobacilos; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán; Argentin

    Asimetría fluctuante como un indicador de estrés ambiental en pequeños mamíferos

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    La estabilidad del desarrollo de un organismo se refleja en la capacidad que posee de producir una forma “ideal” bajo un conjunto particular de condiciones. Las estructuras bilaterales en organismos con simetría bilateral ofrecen una simetría precisa sobre la cual se pueden comparar desviaciones. La herramienta más utilizada para estimar la estabilidad del desarrollo es la asimetría fluctuante, la cual considera las pequeñas desviaciones aleatorias que ocurren entre los lados derecho e izquierdo de rasgos bilaterales, y es la única asimetría adecuada como indicador de estrés ambiental/genético. Resumimos cuatro décadas de estudios en donde la asimetría fluctuante fue utilizada para evaluar el efecto de estrés ambiental sobre pequeños mamíferos. Este grupo de especies ha sido ampliamente utilizado en estudios ecológicos para inferir perturbaciones ambientales debido a sus variadas características. Se seleccionaron 27 artículos compilados con Google Académico, utilizando “asimetría fluctuante” y “pequeños mamíferos” como palabras claves, escritas en inglés y con objetivos ecológicos. Centramos nuestro análisis en los enfoques utilizados para evaluar la asimetría fluctuante (medidas lineales o morfometría geométrica), el factor de estrés (natural o antropogénico), la región donde se desarrolló el estudio, el número de rasgos utilizado en los estudios y las fuentes de datos (muestras de pellets de lechuza, colecciones científicas y capturas directa de animales). La revisión muestra la importancia de incluir la asimetría fluctuante en estudios ecológicos como un indicador biológico confiable, económico y rápido del efecto del estrés ambiental sobre los mamíferos.The developmental stability of an organism is reflected in its ability to produce an ‘ideal’ form under a particular set of conditions. Bilateral structures in bilaterally symmetrical organisms offer a precise symmetry against which departures may be compared. The tool mostly used to estimate the development stability is fluctuating asymmetry, which considers small random deviations that occur between the left and right sides of a bilateral trait. Fluctuating asymmetry is considered as the only form of asymmetry that can serve as a useful indicator of environmental/genetic stress. We summarized four decades of studies where fluctuating asymmetry was used to assess the effects of environmental stress in small mammals. This group of species has been widely used in ecological studies to infer environmental disturbances because of its wide range of characteristics. We selected 27 articles that were compiled with Google Scholar (Mountain View, CA) using “fluctuating asymmetry” and “small mammals” as key words, written in English and with ecological objectives. We focused our analyses on the approaches used to evaluate fluctuating asymmetry (linear measurements or geometric morphometrics), the stress factor (natural or anthropogenic), the region where the study was developed, the number of traits used in the studies and the data sources, including measures obtained from samples of barn owl pellets, scientific collections and captured animals. The review shows the importance of including fluctuating asymmetry in ecological studies as a reliable, cheap and fast biological indicator of the effect of environmental stress on mammals.Fil: Coda, José Antonio. Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicoquímicas y Naturales. Departamento de Ciencias Naturales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Martínez, Juan José. Universidad Nacional de Jujuy. Instituto de Ecorregiones Andinas. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Salta. Instituto de Ecorregiones Andinas; ArgentinaFil: Steinmann, Andrea Rosa. Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicoquímicas y Naturales. Departamento de Ciencias Naturales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Priotto, Jose Waldemar. Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicoquímicas y Naturales. Departamento de Ciencias Naturales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Gomez, Maria Daniela. Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicoquímicas y Naturales. Departamento de Ciencias Naturales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

    Malic enzyme, an “old-new player” in age at maturity in Atlantic salmon

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    Financiado para publicación en acceso aberto: Universidade de Vigo/CISUGTraditional genetic markers based on allozyme variation had indicated that in Atlantic salmon the genetic variation found for the locus coding for mMEP-2* could be adaptive, with the variation being related to river water temperature, growth, and maturation. More recently, SNP panels used to search for genes related to maturation in Atlantic salmon identified several genes, including the vgll3 gene related to early maturation. However, none of the analyses performed found an association between maturation and the already known locus coding for mMEP-2*. Recently, a method has been developed to characterize the different alleles of the locus coding for mMEP-2* using molecular techniques. In this work we use this method to study the salmon population of the Bidasoa River, located in the Iberian Peninsula, which is the limit of distribution of the species. We found a relationship between the presence of SNP G, equivalent to the 125* allele, and early maturation of Atlantic salmon in both males and females. It is possible that the relationship between the different alleles of this locus and maturation is not direct but is produced by differential growth during the juvenile and/or adult phase. It is also plausible that this association is exclusive to the salmon populations of the Iberian Peninsula.Xunta de Galicia | Ref. ED431C 2020/0

    Efficient Embedded Decoding of Neural Network Language Models in a Machine Translation System

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    [EN] Neural Network Language Models (NNLMs) are a successful approach to Natural Language Processing tasks, such as Machine Translation. We introduce in this work a Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) system which fully integrates NNLMs in the decoding stage, breaking the traditional approach based on n-best list rescoring. The neural net models (both language models (LMs) and translation models) are fully coupled in the decoding stage, allowing to more strongly influence the translation quality. Computational issues were solved by using a novel idea based on memorization and smoothing of the softmax constants to avoid their computation, which introduces a trade-off between LM quality and computational cost. These ideas were studied in a machine translation task with different combinations of neural networks used both as translation models and as target LMs, comparing phrase-based and N-gram-based systems, showing that the integrated approach seems more promising for N-gram-based systems, even with nonfull-quality NNLMs.This work was partially supported by the Spanish MINECO and FEDER found under project TIN2017-85854-C4-2-R.Zamora Martínez, FJ.; Castro-Bleda, MJ. (2018). Efficient Embedded Decoding of Neural Network Language Models in a Machine Translation System. International Journal of Neural Systems. 28(9). https://doi.org/10.1142/S0129065718500077S28

    El Valor Monetario de la Vida Estadística en España a través de las Preferencias Declaradas

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    En este trabajo estimamos el Valor Monetario de una Vida Estadística en España a partir de preferencias declaradas por la población general. El contexto de valoración elegido es el de los accidentes de tráfico. La metodología empleada es la Valoración Contingente. En la encuesta realizada se intentaron comunicar correctamente los riesgos mediante el recurso a ayudas visuales. Los valores obtenidos (no inferiores a 2,7 millones de euros) son similares a otras estimaciones efectuadas en Europa, si bien un aspecto de la consistencia de estos resultados (cuasi-proporcionalidad) sólo se verifica parcialmente. Investigaciones futuras deberán emplear estrategias alternativas a la aquí utilizada con la finalidad de intentar incrementar la consistencia de los valores obtenidos. El procedimiento “encadenado” ideado por Carthy et al. (1999) puede ser un instrumento adecuado para ese objetivo.Valor de la vida, preferencias declaradas, accidentes de tráfico, valoración contingente, comunicación de riesgos.
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