Manufacturing of Orthopedic Plates and Screws for the Internal Fixation of Bone Fractures

Metal implants are widely used worldwide for the fixation of fractured bones. Orthopedic plates and screws are used by doctors to restore the bone to its natural position and propitiate healing. These medical devices can be expensive and are not produced in Ecuador...Implantes metálicos se usan comúnmente en todo el mundo para remediar fracturas óseas. Médicos traumatólogos y cirujanos utilizan placas y tornillos ortopédicos para regresar el hueso a su posición natural y fomentar la sanación. Estos elementos de uso médico pueden ser muy costosos y no se fabrican en Ecuador..

Une Culture de la Paix complexe et conflictuelle. La recherche d’équilibres dynamiques

La idea de Cultura de Paz se apoya en la necesidad de una cultura con capacidad de orientar e implementar un mundo más pacífico. Al mismo tiempo es promovida como un medio de gestión de la conflictividad, y particularmente como antídoto de la violencia. Este trabajo profundiza en los significados de la Cultura de Paz, entendida como todas aquellas acciones que promocionen los mayores equilibrios posibles. Nos detenemos, en primer lugar, en los aspectos más destacables de la Declaración de Naciones Unidas sobre Cultura de Paz para, a continuación, relacionarla con los enfoques de la complejidad, la conflictividad y el equilibrio dinámico. Finalmente relacionamos la Cultura de Paz con todas aquellas acciones que favorecen la gestión pacífica de los conflictos, haciendo crecer su presencia pública y política.L'idée de Culture de la Paix est fondée sur la nécessité d'une culture capable d'orienter et de mettre en marche un monde plus pacifique. Elle est, en même temps, promue comme un moyen por gérer la conflictivité et, surtout, comme un antidote de la violence. Ce travail constitue un approfondissement dans les signifiés de la Culture de la Paix en tant qu'ensemble d'actions visant à promouvoir le maximum d'équilibres. On s'occupe, d'abord, des aspects les plus remarquables de la Déclaration des Nations Unies à propos de la Culture de la Paix; ensuite, on la met en rapport avec la complexité, la conflictivité et l'équilibre dynamique; finalement, on essaie d'analyser les rapports que la Culture de la Paix entretient avec toutes les actions qui envisagent la résolution pacifique des conflits et qui sont de plus en plus présents dans les domaines publics et politiques

Plausible Biological Interactions of Low- and Non-Calorie Sweeteners with the Intestinal Microbiota: An Update of Recent Studies

Julio Plaza-Díaz is part of the “UGR Plan Propio de Investigación 2016” and the “Excellence actions: Unit of Excellence on Exercise and Health (UCEES), University of Granada”. Francisco J. Ruiz-Ojeda and Belén Pastor-Villaescusa are supported by a grant to postdoctoral researchers at foreign universities and research centers from the “Fundación Alfonso Martín-Escudero”, Madrid, Spain. We are grateful to Belen Vazquez-Gonzalez for assistance with the illustration service.Sweeteners that are a hundred thousand times sweeter than sucrose are being consumed as sugar substitutes. The effects of sweeteners on gut microbiota composition have not been completely elucidated yet, and numerous gaps related to the effects of nonnutritive sweeteners (NNS) on health still remain. The NNS aspartame and acesulfame-K do not interact with the colonic microbiota, and, as a result, potentially expected shifts in the gut microbiota are relatively limited, although acesulfame-K intake increases Firmicutes and depletes Akkermansia muciniphila populations. On the other hand, saccharin and sucralose provoke changes in the gut microbiota populations, while no health effects, either positive or negative, have been described; hence, further studies are needed to clarify these observations. Steviol glycosides might directly interact with the intestinal microbiota and need bacteria for their metabolization, thus they could potentially alter the bacterial population. Finally, the effects of polyols, which are sugar alcohols that can reach the colonic microbiota, are not completely understood; polyols have some prebiotics properties, with laxative effects, especially in patients with inflammatory bowel syndrome. In this review, we aimed to update the current evidence about sweeteners’ effects on and their plausible biological interactions with the gut microbiota

Using genetic programming to evolve action selection rules in traversal-based automated software testing: results obtained with the TESTAR tool

[EN] Traversal-based automated software testing involves testing an application via its graphical user interface (GUI) and thereby taking the user's point of view and executing actions in a human-like manner. These actions are decided on the fly, as the software under test (SUT) is being run, as opposed to being set up in the form of a sequence prior to the testing, a sequence that is then used to exercise the SUT. In practice, random choice is commonly used to decide which action to execute at each state (a procedure commonly referred to as monkey testing), but a number of alternative mechanisms have also been proposed in the literature. Here we propose using genetic programming (GP) to evolve such an action selection strategy, defined as a list of IF-THEN rules. Genetic programming has proved to be suited for evolving all sorts of programs, and rules in particular, provided adequate primitives (functions and terminals) are defined. These primitives must aim to extract the most relevant information from the SUT and the dynamics of the testing process. We introduce a number of such primitives suited to the problem at hand and evaluate their usefulness based on various metrics. We carry out experiments and compare the results with those obtained by random selection and also by Q-learning, a reinforcement learning technique. Three applications are used as Software Under Test (SUT) in the experiments. The analysis shows the potential of GP to evolve action selection strategies.Esparcia Alcázar, AI.; Almenar-Pedrós, F.; Vos, TE.; Rueda Molina, U. (2018). Using genetic programming to evolve action selection rules in traversal-based automated software testing: results obtained with the TESTAR tool. Memetic Computing. 10(3):257-265. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12293-018-0263-8S257265103Aho P, Menz N, Rty T (2013) Dynamic reverse engineering of GUI models for testing. In: Proceedings of 2013 international conference on control, decision and information technologies (CoDIT’13)Aho P, Oliveira R, Algroth E, Vos T (2016) Evolution of automated testing of software systems through graphical user interface. In: Procs. of the 1st international conference on advances in computation, communications and services (ACCSE 2016), Valencia, pp 16–21Alegroth E, Feldt R, Ryrholm L (2014) Visual GUI testing in practice: challenges, problems and limitations. Empir Softw Eng 20:694–744. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-013-9293-5Barr ET, Harman M, McMinn P, Shahbaz M, Yoo S (2015) The oracle problem in software testing: a survey. IEEE Trans Softw Eng 41(5):507–525Bauersfeld S, Vos TEJ (2012) A reinforcement learning approach to automated GUI robustness testing. In: Fast abstracts of the 4th symposium on search-based software engineering (SSBSE 2012), pp 7–12Bauersfeld S, de Rojas A, Vos T (2014) Evaluating rogue user testing in industry: an experience report. In: 2014 IEEE eighth international conference on research challenges in information science (RCIS), pp 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1109/RCIS.2014.6861051Bauersfeld S, Vos TEJ, Condori-Fernández N, Bagnato A, Brosse E (2014) Evaluating the TESTAR tool in an industrial case study. In: 2014 ACM-IEEE international symposium on empirical software engineering and measurement, ESEM 2014, Torino, Italy, September 18–19, 2014, p 4Bauersfeld S, Wappler S, Wegener J (2011) A metaheuristic approach to test sequence generation for applications with a GUI. In: Cohen MB, Ó Cinnéide M (eds) Search based software engineering: third international symposium, SSBSE 2011, Szeged, Hungary, September 10-12, 2011. Proceedings. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 173–187Brameier MF, Banzhaf W (2010) Linear genetic programming, 1st edn. Springer, New YorkChaudhary N, Sangwan O (2016) Metrics for event driven software. Int J Adv Comput Sci Appl 7(1):85–89Esparcia-Alcázar AI, Almenar F, Martínez M, Rueda U, Vos TE (2016) Q-learning strategies for action selection in the TESTAR automated testing tool. In: Proceedings of META 2016 6th international conference on metaheuristics and nature inspired computing, pp 174–180Esparcia-Alcázar AI, Almenar F, Rueda U, Vos TEJ (2017) Evolving rules for action selection in automated testing via genetic programming–a first approach. In: Squillero G, Sim K (eds) Applications of evolutionary computation: 20th European conference, evoapplications 2017, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, April 19–21, 2017, Proceedings, part II. Springer, pp 82–95. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55792-2_6Esparcia-Alcázar AI, Moravec J (2013) Fitness approximation for bot evolution in genetic programming. Soft Comput 17(8):1479–1487. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-012-0965-7He W, Zhao R, Zhu Q (2015) Integrating evolutionary testing with reinforcement learning for automated test generation of object-oriented software. Chin J Electron 24(1):38–45Koza JR (1992) Genetic programming: on the programming of computers by means of natural selection. MIT Press, CambridgeLehman J, Stanley KO (2011) Novelty search and the problem with objectives. In: Riolo R, Vladislavleva E, Moore JH (eds) Genetic programming theory and practice IX, genetic and evolutionary computation. Springer, New York, pp 37–56Memon AM, Soffa ML, Pollack ME (2001) Coverage criteria for GUI testing. In: Proceedings of ESEC/FSE 2001, pp 256–267Rueda U, Vos TEJ, Almenar F, Martínez MO, Esparcia-Alcázar AI (2015) TESTAR: from academic prototype towards an industry-ready tool for automated testing at the user interface level. In: Canos JH, Gonzalez Harbour M (eds) Actas de las XX Jornadas de Ingeniería del Software y Bases de Datos (JISBD 2015), pp 236–245Seesing A, Gross HG (2006) A genetic programming approach to automated test generation for object-oriented software. Int Trans Syst Sci Appl 1(2):127–134Vos TE, Kruse PM, Condori-Fernández N, Bauersfeld S, Wegener J (2015) TESTAR: tool support for test automation at the user interface level. Int J Inf Syst Model Des 6(3):46–83. https://doi.org/10.4018/IJISMD.2015070103Wappler S, Wegener J (2006) Evolutionary unit testing of object-oriented software using strongly-typed genetic programming. In: Proceedings of the 8th annual conference on genetic and evolutionary computation, GECCO’06. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 1925–1932. URL https://doi.org/10.1145/1143997.1144317Watkins C (1989) Learning from delayed rewards. Ph.D. Thesis. Cambridge Universit

Crónica sobre solucion de controversias en materia de inversiones extranjeras (enero-diciembre 2016)

Crónica sobre la solución de controversias en materia de inversiones extranjeras (2016), con especial referencia a la práctica de España y de la UE.Este trabajo se enmarca dentro de las actividades de investigación desarrolladas como miembros del proyecto de investigación “La Unión Europea frente a los Estados fracasados de su vecindario: retos y respuestas desde el Derecho internacional” (DER2015-63498-C2-1-P (MINECO/FEDER)

Crónica sobre la solución de controversias en materia de inversiones extranjeras (enero-diciembre 2013)

Esta crónica aborda los principales laudos emitidos durante 2014 en materia de arbitraje de inversión, en especial aquellos que afectan a España y a los países iberamericanos

The Association of Body Mass Index and Body Composition with Pain, Disease Activity, Fatigue, Sleep and Anxiety in Women with Fibromyalgia

The link between fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) and obesity has not been thoroughly investigated. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among body mass index (BMI) and body composition parameters, including fat mass, fat mass percentage, and visceral fat, as well as FMS features, such as tender point count (TPC), pain, disease activity, fatigue, sleep quality, and anxiety, in a population of FMS women and healthy controls. A total of seventy-three women with FMS and seventy-three healthy controls, matched on weight, were included in this cross-sectional study. We used a body composition analyzer to measure fat mass, fat mass percentage, and visceral fat. Tender point count (TPC) was measured by algometry pressure. The disease severity was measured with the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ-R) and self-reported global pain was evaluated with the visual analog scale (VAS). To measure the quality of sleep, fatigue, and anxiety we used the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Questionnaire (PSQI), the Spanish version of the multidimensional fatigue inventory (MFI), and the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), respectively. Of the women in this study, 38.4% and 31.5% were overweight and obese, respectively. Significant differences in FIQ-R.1 (16.82 +/- 6.86 vs. 20.66 +/- 4.71, p = 0.030), FIQ-R.3 (35.20 +/- 89.02 vs. 40.33 +/- 5.60, p = 0.033), and FIQ-R total score (63.87 +/- 19.12 vs. 75.94 +/- 12.25, p = 0.017) among normal-weight and overweight FMS were observed. Linear analysis regression revealed significant associations between FIQ-R.2 ( (95% CI) = 0.336, (0.027, 0.645), p = 0.034), FIQ-R.3 ( (95% CI) = 0.235, (0.017, 0.453), p = 0.035), and FIQ-R total score ( (95% CI) = 0.110, (0.010, 0.209), p = 0.032) and BMI in FMS women after adjusting for age and menopause status. Associations between sleep latency and fat mass percentage in FMS women ( (95% CI) = 1.910, (0.078, 3.742), p = 0.041) and sleep quality and visceral fat in healthy women ( (95% CI) = 2.614, (2.192, 3.036), p = 0.008) adjusted for covariates were also reported. The higher BMI values are associated with poor FIQ-R scores and overweight and obese women with FMS have higher symptom severity. The promotion of an optimal BMI might contribute to ameliorate some of the FMS symptoms

The Use of Functional Electrical Stimulation on the Upper Limb and Interscapular Muscles of Patients with Stroke for the Improvement of Reaching Movements: A Feasibility Study

Introduction: Reaching movements in stroke patients are characterized by decreased amplitudes at the shoulder and elbow joints and greater displacements of the trunk, compared to healthy subjects. The importance of an appropriate and specific contraction of the interscapular and upper limb (UL) muscles is crucial to achieving proper reaching movements. Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is used to activate the paretic muscles using short-duration electrical pulses. Objective: To evaluate whether the application of FES in the UL and interscapular muscles of stroke patients with motor impairments of the UL modifies patients’ reaching patterns, measured using instrumental movement analysis systems. Design: A cross-sectional study was carried out. Setting: The VICON Motion System® was used to conduct motion analysis. Participants: Twenty-one patients with chronic stroke. Intervention: The Compex® electric stimulator was used to provide muscle stimulation during two conditions: a placebo condition and a FES condition. Main outcome measures: We analyzed the joint kinematics (trunk, shoulder, and elbow) from the starting position until the affected hand reached the glass. Results: Participants receiving FES carried out the movement with less trunk flexion, while shoulder flexion elbow extension was increased, compared to placebo conditions. Conclusion: The application of FES to the UL and interscapular muscles of stroke patients with motor impairment of the UL has improved reaching movements.This research has been supported by Spanish Ministry of Science project HYPER PROJECT (CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010) Hybrid Neuroprosthetic and Neurorobotic Devices for Functional Compensation and Rehabilitation of Motor Disorders. HYPER-CSD2009-00067