The role of hand-assisted laparoscopy in urology: a critical appraisal

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72982/1/j.1464-410X.2004.05558.x.pd

Location and associated carbon storage of erosional escarpments of seagrass Posidonia mats

Seagrasses of the genus Posidonia can form an irregular seascape due to erosional processes exposing thick walls of organic matter-rich soils. However, little is known about the location and characteristics of these particular formations. Here we provide comprehensive estimates of organic carbon (Corg) storage in Posidonia oceanica and Posidonia australis meadows, while providing insight into their location and mechanisms of formation, and highlighting future research directions. Erosional reef escarpments are restricted to shallow highly productive P. oceanica meadows from the Mediterranean Sea and P. australis meadows from the Indian Ocean, and sustain the existence of Corg-rich deposits in surrounding meadows. The thickness of the mat escarpments can reach up to 3 m and their length can vary from few to hundreds of meters. Mechanisms of formation appear to differ among sites, from naturally-induced escarpments by wave action and/or tidal flow to human-induced escarpments by dredging activities. The inter-twined remains of seagrass shoots within the sediment matrix consolidate the sandy substrate and hold the exposed Posidonia mat escarpments together, maintaining a semi-rigid structure. This phenomenon is unusual but of exceptional importance in marine biogeochemical cycles, revealing the largest Corg sinks among seagrasses worldwide (ranging from 15 to 176 kg Corg m−2 in 2 m-thick mats accumulated at 2–249 g Corg m−2 yr−1 over 300–3000 yr)

Brazilian immigration in Spain: features, singularities and influence of historical ties

The article presents the main features and specifications of recent Brazilian immigration in Spain in relation to some dimensions of their migratory path: the reasons for the choice of migration destination, entry strategies and regulation in the country, the process of adaptation in the host society and the labor insertion in the Spanish context; in addition to describe the socio-demographic profile of the Brazilian population in Spain. The study is based on primary data obtained through in-depth interviews in the society of origin and the destination, as well as statistical data. The research results highlight, among others, relations between the migratory processes of the past and present, between Brazil and Spain.187

Estudio del yeísmo en el español de Barcelona a partir de materiales de PRESEEA

En enero de 2006, el equipo de investigación sociolingüística de la Universidad de Barcelona, integrado por profesores y doctorandos del Departamento de Filología Hispánica, se incorporó al Proyecto para el Estudio Sociolingüístico del Español de España y de América (PRESEEA), vinculado a la Asociación de Lingüística y Filología de América Latina (ALFAL), y que tiene como coordinador general a Francisco Moreno Fernández, Catedrático de Lengua Española de la Universidad de Alcalá. Dicho proyecto se organiza en una red internacional de equipos de investigación cuyo objetivo central es el de reunir un ingente corpus oral, sociolingüísticamente representativo, de un gran número de ciudades pertenecientes al mundo hispánico. La primera fase del proyecto, que se presentó en 1996, abarca hasta el año 2010 (Moreno Fernández 2006).1 Para el estudio de Barcelona, en el seno del grupo PRESEEA – BARCELONA – ES diseñamos una plantilla que contempla una representación de 108 informantes (los cuales deben haber nacido en la ciudad, haber llegado a ella antes de cumplir los diez años o llevar viviendo en el lugar más de veinte), distribuidos en tres variables de preestratificación: sexo, edad y nivel de instrucción. A este perfil general añadimos la variable ‘lengua primera’ (catalán / español), vista la repercusión que alcanza la convivencia de las dos lenguas en la ciudad (Torres 2007). En las páginas que siguen, nos proponemos abordar el avance real del yeísmo en la Ciudad Condal a partir de unas muestras seleccionadas de los datos de PRESEEABARCELONA- ES. El trabajo, que básicamente es de carácter fonético y presenta un análisis acústico centrado en aspectos frecuenciales, de duración y de intensidad de las muestras mencionadas, pretende ser un primer acercamiento al estadio en el que se encuentra el fenómeno en esta área específica

Gene Expression Integration into Pathway Modules Reveals a Pan-Cancer Metabolic Landscape

BIO2014-57291-R and SAF2017-88908-R from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivenessgrant PI15/00854 from the FIS“Plataforma de Recursos Biomoleculares y Bioinformáticos” PT17/0009/0006 from the ISCIII, cofunded with European Regional Development FundsFP7-PEOPLE-2012-ITN MLPM2012EU H2020-INFRADEV-1-2015-1 ELIXIR-EXCELERAT

Corrosion of aluminium metal in OPC- and CAC-based cement matrices

Corrosion of aluminium metal in ordinary Portland cement (OPC) based pastes produces hydrogen gas and expansive reaction products causing problems for the encapsulation of aluminium containing nuclear wastes. Although corrosion of aluminium in cements has been long known, the extent of aluminium corrosion in the cement matrices and effects of such reaction on the cement phases are not well established. The present study investigates the corrosion reaction of aluminium in OPC, OPC-blast furnace slag (BFS) and calcium aluminate cement (CAC) based systems. The total amount of aluminium able to corrode in an OPC and 4:1 BFS:OPC system was determined, and the correlation between the amount of calcium hydroxide in the system and the reaction of aluminium obtained. It was also shown that a CAC-based system could offer a potential matrix to incorporate aluminium metal with a further reduction of pH by introduction of phosphate, producing a calcium phosphate cement

DevOps and its Philosophy : Education Matters!

DevOps processes comply with principles and offer practices with main objective to support efficiently the evolution of IT systems. To be efficient a DevOps process relies on a set of integrated tools. DevOps is among the first competencies together with Agile method required by the industry. As a new approach it is necessary to develop and offer to the academy and to the industry training programs to prepare our engineers in the best possible way. In this chapter we present the main aspects of the educational effort made in the recent years to educate to the concepts and values of the DevOps philosophy. This includes principles, practices, tools and architectures, primarily the microservices architectural style, which shares many aspects of DevOps approaches especially the modularity and flexibility which enables continuous change and delivery. Two experiences have been made, one at academic level as a master program course and the other, as an industrial training. Based on those two experiences, we provide a comparative analysis and some proposals in order to develop and improve DevOps education for the future

Virus variants with differences in the P1 protein coexist in a Plum pox virus population and display particular host-dependent pathogenicity features

[EN] Subisolates segregated from an M-type Plum pox virus (PPV) isolate, PPV-PS, differ widely in pathogenicity despite their high degree of sequence similarity. A single amino acid substitution, K109E, in the helper component proteinase (HCPro) protein of PPV caused a significant enhancement of symptom severity in herbaceous hosts, and notably modified virus infectivity in peach seedlings. The presence of this substitution in certain subisolates that induced mild symptoms in herbaceous hosts and did not infect peach seedlings suggested the existence of uncharacterized attenuating factors in these subisolates. In this study, we show that two amino acid changes in the P1 protein are specifically associated with the mild pathogenicity exhibited by some PS subisolates. Site-directed mutagenesis studies demonstrated that both substitutions, W29R and V139E, but especially W29R, resulted in lower levels of virus accumulation and symptom severity in a woody host, Prunus persica. Furthermore, when W29R and V139E mutations were expressed concomitantly, PPV infectivity was completely abolished in this host. In contrast, the V139E substitution, but not W29R, was found to be responsible for symptom attenuation in herbaceous hosts. Deep sequencing analysis demonstrated that the W29R and V139E heterogeneities already existed in the original PPV-PS isolate before its segregation in different subisolates by local lesion cloning. These results highlight the potential complexity of potyviral populations and the relevance of the P1 protein of potyviruses in pathogenesis and viral adaptation to the host.We wish to thank Elvira Dominguez for technical assistance. This work was supported by grants BIO2010-18541 from the Spanish Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia (MEC), SAL/0185/2006 from Comunidad de Madrid and KBBE-204429 from the European Union. B. 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Molecular Biology and Evolution, 18(6), 987-994. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a003900Jridi, C., Martin, J.-F., Marie-Jeanne, V., Labonne, G., & Blanc, S. (2006). Distinct Viral Populations Differentiate and Evolve Independently in a Single Perennial Host Plant. Journal of Virology, 80(5), 2349-2357. doi:10.1128/jvi.80.5.2349-2357.2006Li, H., & Durbin, R. (2010). Fast and accurate long-read alignment with Burrows–Wheeler transform. Bioinformatics, 26(5), 589-595. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btp698López-Moya, J. J., & Garcı́a, J. A. (2000). Construction of a stable and highly infectious intron-containing cDNA clone of plum pox potyvirus and its use to infect plants by particle bombardment. Virus Research, 68(2), 99-107. doi:10.1016/s0168-1702(00)00161-1Moxon, S., Schwach, F., Dalmay, T., MacLean, D., Studholme, D. J., & Moulton, V. (2008). A toolkit for analysing large-scale plant small RNA datasets. Bioinformatics, 24(19), 2252-2253. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btn428Nakahara, K. S., Shimada, R., Choi, S.-H., Yamamoto, H., Shao, J., & Uyeda, I. (2010). Involvement of the P1 Cistron in Overcoming eIF4E-Mediated Recessive Resistance Against Clover yellow vein virus in Pea. Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions®, 23(11), 1460-1469. doi:10.1094/mpmi-11-09-0277Ohshima, K., Akaishi, S., Kajiyama, H., Koga, R., & Gibbs, A. J. (2009). Evolutionary trajectory of turnip mosaic virus populations adapting to a new host. Journal of General Virology, 91(3), 788-801. doi:10.1099/vir.0.016055-0Pruss, G., Ge, X., Shi, X. M., Carrington, J. C., & Bowman Vance, V. (1997). Plant viral synergism: the potyviral genome encodes a broad-range pathogenicity enhancer that transactivates replication of heterologous viruses. The Plant Cell, 9(6), 859-868. doi:10.1105/tpc.9.6.859Rajamäki, M.-L., Kelloniemi, J., Alminaite, A., Kekarainen, T., Rabenstein, F., & Valkonen, J. P. T. (2005). 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The impact of a major cluster merger on galaxy evolution in MACS\,J0025.4-1225

We present results of an extensive morphological, spectroscopic, and photometric study of the galaxy population of MACS J0025.4$-$1225 (z=0.586), a major cluster merger with clear segregation of dark and luminous matter, to examine the impact of mergers on galaxy evolution. Based on 436 galaxy spectra obtained with Keck DEIMOS, we identified 212 cluster members within 4 Mpc of the cluster centre, and classified them using three spectroscopic types; we find 111 absorption-line, 90 emission-line (including 23 e(a) and 11 e(b)), and 6 E+A galaxies. The fraction of absorption(emission)-line galaxies is a monotonically increasing(decreasing) function of both projected galaxy density and radial distance to the cluster center. More importantly, the 6 observed E+A cluster members are all located between the dark-matter peaks of the cluster and within ~0.3Mpc radius of the X-ray flux peak, unlike the E+A galaxies in other intermediate-redshift clusters which are usually found to avoid the core region. In addition, we use Hubble Space Telescope imaging to classify cluster members according to morphological type. We find the global fraction of spiral and lenticular galaxies in MACS J0025 to be among the highest observed to date in clusters at z>0.5. The observed E+A galaxies are found to be of lenticular type with Sersic indices of ~2, boosting the local fraction of S0 to 70 per cent between the dark-matter peaks. Combing the results of our analysis of the spatial distribution, morphology, and spectroscopic features of the galaxy population, we propose that the starburst phase of these E+A galaxies was both initiated and terminated during the first core-passage about 0.5--1Gyr ago, and that their morphology has already been transformed into S0 due to ram pressure and/or tidal forces near the cluster core. By contrast, ongoing starbursts are observed predominantly in infalling galaxies, and thus appears to be unrelated to the cluster merger.Comment: 18 pages, 17 figures, accepted by MNRA