Prepulse inhibition modulation by contextual conditioning of dopaminergic activity

When a neutral stimulus is repeatedly paired with a drug, an association is established between them that can induce two different responses: either an opponent response that counteracts the effect of the drug, or a response thatis similar to thatinduced by the drug. In this paper, we focus on the analysis ofthe associations that can be established between the contextual cues and the administration of dopamine agonists or antagonists. Our hypothesis suggests that repeated administration of drugs that modulate dopaminergic activity in the presence of a specific context leads to the establishment of an association that subsequently results in a conditioned response to the context that is similar to that induced by the drug. To test this hypothesis, we conducted two experiments that revealed that contextual cues acquired the property to modulate pre-pulse inhibition by prior pairings of such context with the dopamine antagonist haloperidol (Experiment 1), and with the dopamine agonist d-amphetamine (Experiment 2). The implications of these results are discussed both at a theoretical level, and attending to the possibilities that could involve the use of context cues for the therapeutic administration of dopaminergic drugs.Junta de Andalucía SEJ-02618Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación de España PSI2012-3207

Startle response and prepulse inhibition modulation by positive- and negative-induced affect

The startle response, a set of reflex behaviours intended to prepare the organism to face a potentially threatening stimulus, can be modulated by several factors as, for example, changes in affective state, or previous presentation of a weak stimulus (a phenomenon termed Pre-Pulse Inhibition [PPI]). In this paper we analyse whether the induction of positive or negative affective states in the participants modulates the startle response and the PPI phenomenon. The results revealed a decrease of the startle response and an increase of the PPI effect when registered while the participants were exposed to pleasant images (Experiment 1), and an increase of the startle response and of the PPI effect when they were exposed to a video-clip of unpleasant content (Experiment 2). These data are interpreted considering that changes in affective states correlate with changes in the startle reflex intensity, but changes in PPI might be the result of an attentional processMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad de España PSI2012-32077Junta de Andalucía SEJ-0261

Auditoria : Auditoria Informatica de Sistemas en la Empresa OFICAM periodo 2014

El presente trabajo, describe la Auditoría Informática de los Sistemas de Tecnología e Información, realizada a “OFICAM”. Utilizando COBIT, una herramienta desarrollada para ayudar a los administradores de negocios a entender y administrar los riesgos asociados con la implementación de nuevas tecnologías digitales. Las buenas prácticas de COBIT están enfocadas en el ambiente de control óptimo que debe tener una empresa para de esta manera lograr una alineación efectiva entre TI y los objetivos de negocio. El fin de esta revisión técnica es identificar debilidades y emitir recomendaciones que permitan minimizar riesgos. Para llevar a cabo la presente Auditoría, se realizaron las siguientes actividades: Entregar un listado de requerimientos a la entidad a ser auditada. Revisar la documentación entregada al Equipo de Auditoría. Se formularon preguntas, con el fin de aclarar ciertos puntos de la documentación. Se elaboraron encuestas al personal de la entidad. En base a los resultados obtenidos, se llevaron a cabo las entrevistas que constituye un método de auditoría personalizada, para profundizar en la indagación. Tomando como base las encuestas y las entrevistas, se elaboraron las pruebas sustantivas (checklist) y se recopilaron evidencias. De acuerdo a los resultados obtenidos en las encuestas, entrevistas y pruebas sustantivas y, alineando todos estos resultados con cada objetivo de control, que propone COBIT, se presentaron las observaciones y recomendaciones emitidas en un informe a la Gerencia

Effect of stress and attention on startle response and prepulse inhibition

The startle reflex magnitude can be modulated when a weak stimulus is presented before the onset of the startle stimulus, a phenomenon termed prepulse inhibition (PPI). Previous research has demonstrated that emotional processes can modulate PPI and startle intensity, but the available evidence is inconclusive. In order to obtain additional evidence in this domain, we conducted two experiments intended to analyze the effect of induced stress and attentional load on PPI and startle magnitude. Specifically, in Experiment 1 we used a between subject strategy to evaluate the effect on startle response and PPI magnitude of performing a difficult task intended to induce stress in the participants, as compared to a group exposed to a control task. In Experiment 2 we evaluated the effect of diverting attention from the acoustic stimulus on startle and PPI intensity. The results seem to indicate that induced stress can reduce PPI, and that startle reflex intensity is reduced when attention is directed away from the auditory stimulus that induces the reflex.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad PSI2012-32077Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad PSI2015-64965-P/MINECO-FEDE

Metabolic channeling of phe for lignin biosynthesis in maritime pine

Phenylalanine (Phe) is the main precursor of phenylpropanoids biosynthesis in plants. This vast family of Phe-derived compounds can represent more than 30% of captured photosynthetic carbon, playing essential roles in plants such as cell wall components, defense molecules, pigments and flavors. In addition to its physiological importance, phenylpropanoids and particularly lignin, a component of wood, are targets in plant biotechnology. The arogenate pathway has been proposed as the main pathway for Phe biosynthesis in plants (Maeda et al., 2010). The final step in Phe biosynthesis, catalyzed by the enzyme arogenate dehydratase (ADT), has been considered as a key regulatory point in Phe biosynthesis, due to its key branch position in the pathway, the multiple isoenzymes identified in plants and the existence of a feedback inhibition mechanism by Phe. So far, the regulatory mechanisms underlying ADT genes expression have been poorly characterized, although a strong regulation of the Phe metabolic flux should be expected depending on its alternative use for protein biosynthesis versus phenylpropanoid biosynthesis. This second fate involves a massive carbon flux compared to the first one. Here we report our current research activities in the transcriptional regulation of ADT genes by MYB transcription factors in Pinus pinaster. The conifers channels massive amounts of photosynthetic carbon for phenylpropanoid biosynthesis during wood formation. We have identified the complete ADT gene family in maritime pine (El-Azaz et al., 2016) and a set of ADT isoforms specifically related with the lignification process. The potential control of transcription factors previously reported as key regulators in pine wood formation (Craven-Bartle et al., 2013) will be presented.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Protocol composition frameworks and modular group communication:models, algorithms and architectures

It is noticeable that our society is increasingly relying on computer systems. Nowadays, computer networks can be found at places where it would have been unthinkable a few decades ago, supporting in some cases critical applications on which human lives may depend. Although this growing reliance on networked systems is generally perceived as technological progress, one should bear in mind that such systems are constantly growing in size and complexity, to such an extent that assuring their correct operation is sometimes a challenging task. Hence, dependability of distributed systems has become a crucial issue, and is responsible for an important body of research over the last years. No matter how much effort we put on ensuring our distributed system's correctness, we will be unable to prevent crashes. Therefore, designing distributed systems to tolerate rather than prevent such crashes is a reasonable approach. This is the purpose of fault-tolerance. Among all techniques that provide fault tolerance, replication is the only one that allows the system to mask process crashes. The intuition behind replication is simple: instead of having one instance of a service, we run several of them. If one of the replicas crashes, the rest can take over so that the crash does not prevent the system from delivering the expected service. A replicated service needs to keep all its replicas consistent, and group communication protocols provide abstractions to preserve such consistency. Group communication toolkits have been present since the late 80s. At the beginning, they were monolithic and later on they became modular. Modular group communication toolkits are composed of a set of off-the-shelf protocol modules that can be tailored to the application's needs. Composing protocols requires to set up basic rules that define how modules are composed and interact. Sometimes, these rules are devised exclusively for a particular protocol suite, but it is more sensible to agree on a carefully chosen set of rules and reuse them: this is the essence of protocol composition frameworks. There is a great diversity of protocol composition frameworks at present, and none is commonly considered the best. Furthermore, any attempt to defend a framework as being the best finds strong opposition with plenty of arguments pointing out its drawbacks. Given the complexity of current group communication toolkits and their configurability requirements, we believe that research on modular group communication and protocol composition frameworks must go hand-in-hand. The main goal of this thesis is to advance the state of the art in these two fields jointly and demonstrate how protocols can benefit from frameworks, as well as frameworks can benefit from protocols. The thesis is structured in three parts. Part I focuses on issues related to protocol composition frameworks. Part II is devoted to modular group communication. Finally, Part III presents our modular group communication prototype: Fortika. Part III combines the results of the two previous parts, thereby acting as the convergence point. At the beginning of Part I, we propose four perspectives to describe and compare frameworks on which we base our research on protocol frameworks. These perspectives are: composition model (how the composition looks like), interaction model (how the components interact), concurrency model (how concurrency is managed within the framework), and interaction with the environment (how the framework communicates with the outside world). We compare Appia and Cactus, two relevant protocol composition frameworks with a very different design. Overall, we cannot tell which framework is better. However, a thorough comparison using the four perspectives mentioned above showed that Appia is better in certain aspects, while Cactus is better in other aspects. Concurrency control to avoid race conditions and deadlocks should be ensured by the protocol framework. However this is not always the case. We survey the concurrency model of eight protocol composition frameworks and propose new features to improve concurrency management. Events are the basic mechanism that protocol modules use to communicate with each other. Most protocol composition frameworks include events at the core of their interaction model. However, events are seemingly not as good as one may expect. We point out the drawbacks of events and propose an alternative interaction scheme that uses message headers instead of events: the header-driven model. Part II starts by discussing common features of traditional group communication toolkits and the problems they entail. Then, a new modular group communication architecture is presented. It is less complex, more powerful, and more responsive to failures than traditional architectures. Crash-recovery is a model where crashed processes can be restarted and continue where they were executing just before they crashed. This requires to log the state to disk periodically. We argue that current specifications of atomic broadcast (an important group communication primitive) are not satisfactory. We propose a novel specification that intends to overcome the problems we spotted in existing specifications. Additionally, we come up with two implementations of our atomic broadcast specification and compare their performance. Fortika is the main prototype of the thesis, and the subject of Part III. Fortika is a group communication toolkit written in Java that can use third-party frameworks like Cactus or Appia for composition. Fortika was the testbed for architectures, models and algorithms proposed in the thesis. Finally, we performed software-based fault injection on Fortika to assess its fault-tolerance. The results were valuable to improve the design of Fortika

The role of expertise in Public Policy of Equality in Spain

El artículo discute el papel del conocimiento experto en materia de igualdad en España y surelación con el poder. Parte de un planteamiento teórico sobre el papel delconocimiento experto en el campo político (y en las políticas de igualdad enconcreto), para analizar dos cuestiones centrales. En primer lugar se ocupa delos agentes y las dinámicas del conocimiento experto sobre igualdad en España,abordando sus orígenes, las limitaciones de las comunidades epistémicas degénero y las características de los principales agentes expertos externos a laadministración (académicas y consultoras). En segundo lugar se analizan lasnociones de igualdad presentes en este conocimiento experto, utilizando técnicascualitativas (entrevista y grupo de discusión) para recoger el discurso deacadémicas y consultoras. Para concluir con una reflexión sobre la relaciónentre saber y poder en el ámbito de la igualdad en nuestro contexto, valorandola capacidad que tiene la comunidad de expertas para influir en los núcleos yprocesos del poder.This article discusses expert knowledge on gender equality in Spain. The analysis, in the first place, explains State intervention on gender equality in Spain from a historical perspective with a specific focus on the role of expert knowledge in this process; in the second place, the paper traces differences in expert narratives in relation to the meaning of equality; lastly, it assesses the influence of expert communities on shaping power configurations, with a comprehensive definition of impact that goes beyond the discussion of women’s issues. The article draws on qualitative methodologies (interviews and focus groups) to portray the views of expert women both in Academia and in the private sector; theoretically, a typology of expert knowledge is defended together with a discussion of the conflictive ways in which these types intersect with one another

Critica jurídica al artículo 47 de la Constitución Española: el derecho a una vivienda digna como referente de la calidad democrática

En este artículo se analiza el derecho a la vivienda del art. 47 de la Constitución Española en nuestro tiempo actual. Una época de crisis económica con gran incidencia en la sociedad civil, la política y en los objetivos que el Estado “social” de Derecho, que proclama nuestra Constitución (art. 1.1), debe satisfacer para la realización efectiva de tan importante derecho. Se trata de un derecho constitucional que carece de eficacia y de absoluta falta de garantías constitucionales. Con el fin de evidenciar la situación de gravedad social y jurídica en la que se encuentra el derecho a la vivienda, en el apartado primero haré referencia a la complejidad y naturaleza transversal del mismo; en el apartado segundo abordaré el análisis normativo del art. 47 en la Carta Magna; En el apartado tercero pondré de manifiesto la estrecha vinculación entre el derecho a la vivienda y la dignidad humana. Para terminar con una serie de conclusiones y recomendaciones de carácter crítico, desde el punto de vista de la teoría jurídica, a fin de mejorar la eficacia de este derecho constitucional

DISEÑO INTEGRAL DE LAS INSTALACIONES ELECTRICAS DE LA PLANTA INDUSTRIAL NORITSU AUTOMOTRIZ S.A.

SISTEMA ELÉCTRICO SISTEMA DE GENERACIÓN SISTEMA DE TRANSPORTE O TRANSMISIÓN SISTEMA DE DISTRIBUCIÓN SISTEMAS DE UTILIZACIÓN INSTALACIONES DE ACOMETIDAS DE BAJA Y MEDIA TENSIÓN CLASIFICACIÓN DE LOS SISTEMAS DE DISTRIBUCIÓN EN FUNCIÓN A LA CONEXION DEL NEUTRO ACOMETIDAS EN BAJA TENSIÓN TIPOS DE ACOMETIDAS ACOMETIDAS DE MEDIA TENSIÓN MATERIALES ELÉCTRICOS EN INSTALACIONES INTERIORES TABLEROS ELÉCTRICOS CONDUCTORES ELÉCTRICOS INTERRUPTORES DE PROTECCIÓN INTERRUPTORES TERMOMAGNÉTICOS DUCTERIA, BANDEJAS Y CANALETAS EMPALMES SISTEMAS DE PUESTA A TIERRA ILUMINACIÓN DE INTERIORES TIPOS DE LUMINARIAS CALCULO DE ILUMINACIÓN NORMATIVIDAD ELÉCTRICA RELACIONADA CON LOS SISTEMAS DE UTILIZACIÓ

Disentangling the effects of context change and context familiarity on Latent Inhibition with a Conditioned Taste Aversion procedure

Contextual specificity of Latent Inhibition (LI) has been demonstrated using an ample range of experimental procedures. Context dependence has not been consistently obtained, however, when LI has been induced using a Conditioned Taste Aversion (CTA) procedure. This paper presents two experiments designed to analyze whether the context plays the same role in LI with a CTA paradigm as compared to other Pavlovian techniques. Experiment 1 compared the effect on LI of a context change between the conditioning and test stages as a function of whether the testing context was new or the animals’ home cage. The results of this experiment showed that using the animals’ home cage as context at testing enhanced the expression of LI. Experiment 2 manipulated context novelty and familiarity beforehand to introduce different context changes. The results indicate that, as compared to the no context change condition, the strength of LI increased when the conditioning context was different from that of preexposure and testing (ABA). Conversely, a context change from preexposure to conditioning/test stages (ABB) disrupted LI, but only when the animals had been pre-familiarized with the new context introduced at conditioning. These results are similar to those obtained with other conditioning procedures different from CTA.Junta de Andalucia SEJ-02618Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación de España PSI2009-7536Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación de España PSI2012-3207