3,748 research outputs found
Biopesticide activity from drimanic compounds to control tomato pathogens
Indexación: Scopus.Tomato crops can be affected by several infectious diseases produced by bacteria, fungi, and oomycetes. Four phytopathogens are of special concern because of the major economic losses they generate worldwide in tomato production; Clavibacter michiganensis subsp. michiganensis and Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato, causative agents behind two highly destructive diseases, bacterial canker and bacterial speck, respectively; fungus Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici that causes Fusarium Wilt, which strongly affects tomato crops; and finally, Phytophthora spp., which affect both potato and tomato crops. Polygodial (1), drimenol (2), isonordrimenone (3), and nordrimenone (4) were studied against these four phytopathogenic microorganisms. Among them, compound 1, obtained from Drimys winteri Forst, and synthetic compound 4 are shown here to have potent activity. Most promisingly, the results showed that compounds 1 and 4 affect Clavibacter michiganensis growth at minimal inhibitory concentrations (MIC) values of 16 and 32 μg/mL, respectively, and high antimycotic activity against Fusarium oxysporum and Phytophthora spp. with MIC of 64 μg/mL. The results of the present study suggest novel treatment alternatives with drimane compounds against bacterial and fungal plant pathogens. © 2018 by the authors.https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/23/8/205
The Kagome Antiferromagnet with Defects: Satisfaction, Frustration, and Spin Folding in a Random Spin System
It is shown that site disorder induces noncoplanar states, competing with the
thermal selection of coplanar states, in the nearest neighbor, classical kagome
Heisenberg antiferromagnet (AFM). For weak disorder, it is found that the
ground state energy is the sum of energies of separately satisfied triangles of
spins. This implies that disorder does not induce conventional spin glass
behavior. A transformation is presented, mapping ground state spin
configurations onto a folded triangular sheet (a new kind of ``spin origami'')
which has conformations similar to those of tethered membranes.Comment: REVTEX, 11 pages + 3 pictures upon reques
Estudio y desarrollo de primitivas motoras para manipulación con manos robóticas antropomórfas
En la última década se ha construido un
considerable número de manos robóticas
antropomorfas. Sin embargo, muy pocos estudios se
han llevado a cabo en relación con la destreza o
habilidad de dichas manos. En este trabajo se
presentan una serie de estudios relacionados con
la manipulación de precisión por parte de manos
robóticas antropomorfas. Se entiende manipulación
de precisión al control cinemático de la posición
del objeto agarrado, utilizando únicamente los
contactos de las puntas de los dedos con el objeto.
La aproximación utilizada, define un conjunto de
primitivas de manipulación básicas que la mano
puede llevar a cabo. Estas funciones primitivas son
flexibles ya que incluyen una serie de parámetros
asociados a la geometrÃa y tamaño de los objetos a
manipular y además, permiten su implementación
partiendo de distintas topologÃas de agarre
iniciales. En este trabajo también se describe como
estas primitivas se pueden emplear de forma
secuencial para dar lugar a tareas de manipulación
más complejas. Los estudios se han realizado
sobre una mano robótica antropomorfa virtual,
diseñada con técnicas CAD descritas en el artÃculo.Este trabajo ha sido financiado por el proyecto
SYNERAGH (SYstem Neuroscience and
Engineeering Research for Athropomorphic
Grasping and Handling) BRITE-EURAM BE –
4505
Active commuting is associated with a lower risk of obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome in Chilean adults
Background:
There is limited evidence on how active commuting is associated with health benefits in developing countries. The aim of this study therefore was to investigate the associations between active commuting and markers of adiposity and cardiometabolic risk in the Chilean adult population.
Methods:
In total, 5157 participants from the Chilean National Health Survey 2009–10 were included in this cross-sectional study. Active commuting was measured using the Global Physical Activity Questionnaire (GPAQ v2). Body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) were measured and used to define obesity and central obesity. Type 2 diabetes (T2D) and metabolic syndrome were determined using WHO and updated ATPIII-NCEP criteria, respectively.
Results:
The main finding of this study is that a 30 min increase in active commuting is associated with lower odds for BMI > 25.0 kg m−2 (0.93 [95% CI: 0.88–0.98, P = 0.010]). Similarly, the odds for central obesity was 0.87 [0.82–0.92, P < 0.0001]. Similar associations were found for T2D (0.81 [0.75–0.88], P < 0.0001) and metabolic syndrome (OR: 0.86 [0.80–0.92], P < 0.0001).
Conclusion:
Our findings show that active commuting is associated with lower adiposity and a healthier metabolic profile including lower risk for obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome
VRDMG: Vocal Restoration via Diffusion Posterior Sampling with Multiple Guidance
Restoring degraded music signals is essential to enhance audio quality for
downstream music manipulation. Recent diffusion-based music restoration methods
have demonstrated impressive performance, and among them, diffusion posterior
sampling (DPS) stands out given its intrinsic properties, making it versatile
across various restoration tasks. In this paper, we identify that there are
potential issues which will degrade current DPS-based methods' performance and
introduce the way to mitigate the issues inspired by diverse diffusion guidance
techniques including the RePaint (RP) strategy and the Pseudoinverse-Guided
Diffusion Models (GDM). We demonstrate our methods for the vocal
declipping and bandwidth extension tasks under various levels of distortion and
cutoff frequency, respectively. In both tasks, our methods outperform the
current DPS-based music restoration benchmarks. We refer to
\url{http://carlosholivan.github.io/demos/audio-restoration-2023.html} for
examples of the restored audio samples
Psychosocial stress and inflammation driving tryptophan breakdown in children and adolescents : a cross-sectional analysis of two cohorts
Background: Tryptophan breakdown is an important mechanism in several diseases e.g. inflammation and stress induced inflammation have been associated with the development of depression via enhanced tryptophan breakdown. Depression is a major public health problem which commonly starts during adolescence, thus identifying underlying mechanisms during early life is crucial in prevention. The aim of this work was to verify whether independent and interacting associations of psychosocial stress and inflammation on tryptophan breakdown already exist in children and adolescents as a vulnerable age group.
Methods: Two cross-sectional population-based samples of children/adolescents (8-18 y) were available: 315 from the European HELENA study and 164 from the Belgian ChiBS study. In fasting serum samples, tryptophan, kynurenine, kynurenic acid, C-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin (IL)-6, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha, interferon (IFN)-gamma, soluble vascular adhesion molecule 1 (sVCAM1) and soluble intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (sICAM1) were measured. Psychological stress was measured by stress reports (subjective) and cortisol (objective - awakening salivary cortisol or hair cortisol). Linear regressions with stress or inflammation as predictor were adjusted for age, sex, body mass index, puberty, socio-economic status and country.
Results: In both cohorts, inflammation as measured by higher levels of CRP, sVCAM1 and sICAM1 was associated with kynurenine/tryptophan ratio and thus enhanced tryptophan breakdown (beta: 0.145-0.429). Psychological stress was only associated with tryptophan breakdown in the presence of higher inflammatory levels (TNF-alpha in both populations).
Conclusions: Inflammatory levels were replicable key in enhancing tryptophan breakdown along the kynurenine pathway, even at young age and in a non-clinical sample. The stress-inflammation interaction indicated that only the stress exposures inducing higher inflammatory levels (or in an already existing inflammatory status) were associated with more tryptophan breakdown. This data further contributes to our understanding of pathways to disease development, and may help identifying those more likely to develop stress or inflammation-related illnesses
Joint effect of physical activity and sedentary behaviour on cardiovascular risk factors in Chilean adults
Background:
To investigate the associations between combined categories of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and sedentary behaviour (SB) with markers of adiposity and cardiovascular risk in adults.
Methods:
Overall, 5040 participants (mean age 46.4 years and 59.3% women) from the cross-sectional Chilean National Health Survey 2009–2010 were included in this study. MVPA and SB were measured using the Global Physical Activity questionnaire. Four categories were computed using MVPA- and SB-specific cut-offs (‘High-SB & Active’, ‘Low-SB & Active’, ‘High-SB & Inactive’ and ‘Low-SB & Inactive’).
Results:
Compared to the reference group (‘High-SB & Inactive’), those in ‘High-SB & Active’ and ‘Low-SB & Active’ were less likely to have an obese BMI (OR: 0.67 [0.54; 0.85], P = 0.0001 and 0.74 [0.59; 0.92] P = 0.0007, respectively) and less likely to have metabolic syndrome (OR: 0.63 [0.49; 0.82], P < 0.0001 and 0.72 [0.57; 0.91], P = 0.007), central obesity (OR: 0.79 [0.65; 0.96], P = 0.016 and 0.71 [0.59; 0.84], P < 0.0001), diabetes (OR: 0.45 [0.35; 0.59], P < 0.0001 and 0.44 [0.34; 0.56], P < 0.0001) and hypertension (OR: 0.52 [0.43; 0.63], P < 0.0001 and 0.60 [0.50; 0.72], P < 0.0001), respectively.
Conclusions:
Being physically active and spending less time in SBs was associated with lower adiposity and improvements in cardiovascular risk factors
MMC-based topology for grid connection of wind generators with phase and arm power balancing
Producción CientÃficaA new topology of a wind farm wherein the wind generators are integrated into the structure of a modular multilevel converter (MMC) is presented. It allows connecting a group of small/medium size wind turbines to the grid, replacing all the grid side converters of the wind generators by the MMC. The different power generated by each wind generator causes power imbalances that can lead to circulating currents; this paper addresses this problem by analyzing it in a simple way. The analysis shows that power differences between phases are naturally balanced by the DC component of circulating current, without the need to use a specific regulator. However, the power differences between the arms result in a high 50 Hz circulating current. This paper presents the design of a new regulator that corrects these power imbalances by generating a phase difference between the upper and lower arm voltages resulting in an optimal 50 Hz circulating current. The operation of the MMC-based wind farm topology has been tested when all the turbines generate the same power and when they generate significantly different powers. Numerical and real-time simulation results show that the proposed regulator keeps the powers of the MMC phases and arms balanced
Crecimiento y metabolismo de Fischerella TB22 en medio de cultivo BG11
Los microorganismos fijadores de nitrógeno de vida libre, abarcan una gama morfológica que va desde los organismos unicelulares como las bacterias y algunas cianobacterias, hasta multicelulares, filamentosas, por ello es importante conocer cómo se comportan y se puede saber haciendo una curva de crecimiento microbiano. Para este estudio se prepararon 4 fotobioreactores de columna burbujeada con inoculo de Fischerella TB22, se pusieron en aireación constante con 12 horas luz y 12 horas obscuridad durante 40 dÃas con diferentes tratamientos de ajuste de volumen del medio de cultivo y ajuste del pH. El objetivo de este trabajo fue evaluar el crecimiento en biomasa por peso seco, densidad óptica, pH y amonio de Fischerella sp. en medio de cultivo BG11 durante 12 dÃas. Las variables que se midieron de la curva de crecimiento de las cianobacterias, siguieron el patrón de una curva tÃpica de crecimiento microbiano
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