Detection of Relevant Heavy Metal Concentrations in Human Placental Tissue: Relationship between the Concentrations of Hg, As, Pb and Cd and the Diet of the Pregnant Woman

Heavy metals can cross the placental barrier and reach the fetal compartment, threatening fetal development. Pregnant women can acquire these through food, drinking water, toxic habits or simply by breathing polluted air. The placenta has been described as a biomarker of maternal and fetal exposure to different toxic elements. Objectives: The main objective of this study was to test the possible existence of heavy metal deposits (Pb, As, Cd and Hg) in the placentas of women who gave birth at term in our setting, analyzing the influence of daily life and dietary habits. Methods: We studied 103 placentas, obtained by consecutive sampling, of women that delivered in the Regional Maternity Hospital of Malaga between March and June, 2021. As, Cd and Pb concentrations were analyzed using mass spectrometry techniques. Hg concentration was studied according to US EPA method 7473. Women also answered a questionnaire with epidemiological variables. Results: Detectable concentrations were found in 14.56% [As], 44.6% [Cd], 81.5% [Pb] and 100% [Hg]. [Pb] and [As] correlated significantly (Spearman’s Rho of 0.91 and <0.001), as did [Hg] and [Cd] (Spearman’s Rho 0.256, p < 0.004). The [Pb] and [AS] concentrations were significantly higher in cases of tap water consumption. [Hg] concentrations predicted the birth weight of female newbornsThis research received no external funding. This article is part of Soledad Molina-Mesa’s doctoral thesis. Partial funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málag

Exploring the relationship between financial literacy and risk-taking propensity in Spanish undergraduates

Financial literacy has aroused significant academic, professional, and institutional interest due to the increasingly complex financial environment in which individual decisions involve greater risk than in the past. However, previous evidence is contradictory about the influence that financial literacy exerts on an individual’s risk-taking propensity, possibly motivated by two fundamental reasons: (1) they incompletely measure financial literacy only through financial knowledge (i.e., evidence shows that financial literacy is a multidimensional construct composed of financial knowledge, attitude, and behaviour); (2) they analyse individuals that are very diverse in terms of their composition, ignoring the heterogeneity that exists in society and making it difficult to obtain consistent conclusions for the different population segments. Therefore, this article applies covariance-based structural equation models to a sample of 568 university students from three different Spanish universities to test the impact of financial literacy, considered multidimensional, on undergraduates’ risk-taking propensity. Our results show that: (1) financial knowledge directly and positively influences risk-taking propensity; (2) financial behaviour directly and positively influences risk-taking propensity; (3) financial attitude indirectly and positively influences risk-taking propensity through financial behaviour. These findings are relevant for both researchers and education policymakers since they evidence the mechanism that explains the relationship between financial literacy and undergraduates’ risk-taking propensity.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

El impacto de la educación financiera sobre la propensión a tomar riesgos en universitarios

La educación financiera (financial literacy en inglés) ha generado un especial interés en las últimas décadas entre las diferentes organizaciones internacionales, entes públicos, investigadores y la ciudadanía en general, por su importante implicación a nivel personal y social. Estudios previos han tratado de examinar la influencia de la educación financiera sobre el comportamiento financiero de los individuos; no obstante, tal y como reclaman notorios investigadores, son aún insuficientes los trabajos que explican el papel de la educación financiera en las anomalías del comportamiento relacionadas con sesgos psicológicos en la toma de decisiones financieras, especialmente en aquellos aspectos intrínsecamente relacionados con la personalidad del individuo, como su propensión a tomar riesgos. En un intento por abordar esta cuestión, la evidencia empírica existente ha arrojado resultados opuestos, lo que podría venir motivado por la medición incompleta de la educación financiera únicamente a través de una de sus tres dimensiones. Además de lo anterior, gran parte de las investigaciones han analizado individuos muy heterogéneos en cuanto a su formación y edad, lo que dificulta aún más la obtención de conclusiones consistentes para los diferentes segmentos de la población. En un contexto como el actual, en el que las decisiones financieras deben tomarse cada vez a una edad más temprana, el estudio de la educación financiera se hace especialmente necesario en adolescentes y estudiantes por su implicación en la planificación y el bienestar financiero, entre otros. Sin embargo, son escasos los trabajos que centran este análisis en estudiantes universitarios. De esta forma, y mediante aplicación de PLS-SEM, este estudio trata de esclarecer el impacto que ejerce la educación financiera a través de sus tres dimensiones (conocimiento, actitud y comportamiento financiero) sobre la propensión a tomar riesgos de 600 universitarios de tres universidades españolas diferentes.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Road safety evaluation through automatic extraction of road horizontal alignments from Mobile LiDAR System and inductive reasoning based on a decision tree

13 p.Safe roads are a necessity for any society because of the high social costs of traffic accidents. This challenge is addressed by a novel methodology that allows us to evaluate road safety from Mobile LiDAR System data, taking advantage of the road alignment due to its influence on the accident rate. Automation is obtained through an inductive reasoning process based on a decision tree that provides a potential risk assessment. To achieve this, a 3D point cloud is classified by an iterative and incremental algorithm based on a 2.5D and 3D Delaunay triangulation, which apply different algorithms sequentially. Next, an automatic extraction process of road horizontal alignment parameters is developed to obtain geometric consistency indexes, based on a joint triple stability criterion. Likewise, this work aims to provide a powerful and effective preventive and/or predictive tool for road safety inspections. The proposed methodology was implemented on three stretches of Spanish roads, each with different traffic conditions that represent the most common road types. The developed methodology was successfully validated through as-built road projects, which were considered as “ground truth.”S

Energy Estimation of Cosmic Rays with the Engineering Radio Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is part of the Pierre Auger Observatory and is used to detect the radio emission of cosmic-ray air showers. These observations are compared to the data of the surface detector stations of the Observatory, which provide well-calibrated information on the cosmic-ray energies and arrival directions. The response of the radio stations in the 30 to 80 MHz regime has been thoroughly calibrated to enable the reconstruction of the incoming electric field. For the latter, the energy deposit per area is determined from the radio pulses at each observer position and is interpolated using a two-dimensional function that takes into account signal asymmetries due to interference between the geomagnetic and charge-excess emission components. The spatial integral over the signal distribution gives a direct measurement of the energy transferred from the primary cosmic ray into radio emission in the AERA frequency range. We measure 15.8 MeV of radiation energy for a 1 EeV air shower arriving perpendicularly to the geomagnetic field. This radiation energy -- corrected for geometrical effects -- is used as a cosmic-ray energy estimator. Performing an absolute energy calibration against the surface-detector information, we observe that this radio-energy estimator scales quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy as expected for coherent emission. We find an energy resolution of the radio reconstruction of 22% for the data set and 17% for a high-quality subset containing only events with at least five radio stations with signal.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Measurement of the Radiation Energy in the Radio Signal of Extensive Air Showers as a Universal Estimator of Cosmic-Ray Energy

We measure the energy emitted by extensive air showers in the form of radio emission in the frequency range from 30 to 80 MHz. Exploiting the accurate energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory, we obtain a radiation energy of 15.8 \pm 0.7 (stat) \pm 6.7 (sys) MeV for cosmic rays with an energy of 1 EeV arriving perpendicularly to a geomagnetic field of 0.24 G, scaling quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy. A comparison with predictions from state-of-the-art first-principle calculations shows agreement with our measurement. The radiation energy provides direct access to the calorimetric energy in the electromagnetic cascade of extensive air showers. Comparison with our result thus allows the direct calibration of any cosmic-ray radio detector against the well-established energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DOI. Supplemental material in the ancillary file

Measurement of the cosmic ray spectrum above 4×10184{\times}10^{18} eV using inclined events detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory

A measurement of the cosmic-ray spectrum for energies exceeding $4{\times}10^{18}$ eV is presented, which is based on the analysis of showers with zenith angles greater than $60^{\circ}$ detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2013. The measured spectrum confirms a flux suppression at the highest energies. Above $5.3{\times}10^{18}$ eV, the "ankle", the flux can be described by a power law $E^{-\gamma}$ with index $\gamma=2.70 \pm 0.02 \,\text{(stat)} \pm 0.1\,\text{(sys)}$ followed by a smooth suppression region. For the energy ($E_\text{s}$) at which the spectral flux has fallen to one-half of its extrapolated value in the absence of suppression, we find $E_\text{s}=(5.12\pm0.25\,\text{(stat)}^{+1.0}_{-1.2}\,\text{(sys)}){\times}10^{19}$ eV.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Measurement of the top quark-pair production cross section with ATLAS in pp collisions at \sqrt{s}=7\TeV

A measurement of the production cross-section for top quark pairs(\ttbar) in $pp$ collisions at \sqrt{s}=7 \TeV is presented using data recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Events are selected in two different topologies: single lepton (electron $e$ or muon $\mu$) with large missing transverse energy and at least four jets, and dilepton ($ee$, $\mu\mu$ or $e\mu$) with large missing transverse energy and at least two jets. In a data sample of 2.9 pb-1, 37 candidate events are observed in the single-lepton topology and 9 events in the dilepton topology. The corresponding expected backgrounds from non-\ttbar Standard Model processes are estimated using data-driven methods and determined to be $12.2 \pm 3.9$ events and $2.5 \pm 0.6$ events, respectively. The kinematic properties of the selected events are consistent with SM \ttbar production. The inclusive top quark pair production cross-section is measured to be \sigmattbar=145 \pm 31 ^{+42}_{-27} pb where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic. The measurement agrees with perturbative QCD calculations.Comment: 30 pages plus author list (50 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, CERN-PH number and final journal adde