Guía de técnicas de restauración de suelos degradados en viticultura

Guidelines for soil functionality restoration in degraded areas of vineyard (spanish language

Characterization of some olive oil quality aspects by nirs analysis of its fatty acids and triglycerides

The development of new rapid techniques to characterize aspects of the quality of olive oils is of great interest, specially when they do not depend on the use of solvents and reagents. Two main areas of application of these techniques are 1) determining the varietal origin and 2) olive oil authentication against fraudulent mixtures of plant oils. In this work we have developed predictive models based on spectroscopy Vis/NIR that allow analysis of the composition of fatty acids (FAMES) in olive oil and accurately estimating their triglyceride composition. Strategies for developing fraud detection techniques on olive oils, based on the Vis/NIR analysis of their triglycerides composition and 'Equivalent Number of Carbon' (ECN), are being studied.Peer Reviewe

Effects of Zinc Oxide Nanoparticle Exposure on Human Glial Cells and Zebrafish Embryos

Zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) are among the most widely used nanomaterials. They have multiple applications in cosmetics, textiles, paints, electronics and, recently, also in biomedicine. This extensive use of ZnO NPs notably increases the probability that both humans and wildlife are subjected to undesirable effects. Despite being among the most studied NPs from a toxicological point of view, much remains unknown about their ecotoxicological effects or how they may affect specific cell types, such as cells of the central nervous system. The main objective of this work was to investigate the effects of ZnO NPs on human glial cells and zebrafish embryo development and to explore the role of the released Zn2+ ions in these effects. The effects on cell viability on human A172 glial cells were assessed with an MTT assay and morphological analysis. The potential acute and developmental toxicity was assessed employing zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryos. To determine the role of Zn2+ ions in the in vitro and in vivo observed effects, we measured their release from ZnO NPs with flame atomic absorption spectrometry. Then, cells and zebrafish embryos were treated with a water-soluble salt (zinc sulfate) at concentrations that equal the number of Zn2+ ions released by the tested concentrations of ZnO NPs. Exposure to ZnO NPs induced morphological alterations and a significant decrease in cell viability depending on the concentration and duration of treatment, even after removing the overestimation due to NP interference. Although there were no signs of acute toxicity in zebrafish embryos, a decrease in hatching was detected after exposure to the highest ZnO NP concentrations tested. The ability of ZnO NPs to release Zn2+ ions into the medium in a concentration-dependent manner was confirmed. Zn2+ ions did not seem entirely responsible for the effects observed in the glial cells, but they were likely responsible for the decrease in zebrafish hatching rate. The results obtained in this work contribute to the knowledge of the toxicological potential of ZnO NPs.This research was funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation: MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 (grant PID2020-114908GA-I00), Xunta de Galicia (ED431B 2022/16 and ED481A 2019/003 to A.A-G.), CICA-Disrupting Project 2021SEM-B2, and Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport (BEAGAL18/00142 to V.V.)

A flexible and fast PyTorch toolkit for simulating training and inference on analog crossbar arrays

We introduce the IBM Analog Hardware Acceleration Kit, a new and first of a kind open source toolkit to simulate analog crossbar arrays in a convenient fashion from within PyTorch (freely available at https://github.com/IBM/aihwkit). The toolkit is under active development and is centered around the concept of an "analog tile" which captures the computations performed on a crossbar array. Analog tiles are building blocks that can be used to extend existing network modules with analog components and compose arbitrary artificial neural networks (ANNs) using the flexibility of the PyTorch framework. Analog tiles can be conveniently configured to emulate a plethora of different analog hardware characteristics and their non-idealities, such as device-to-device and cycle-to-cycle variations, resistive device response curves, and weight and output noise. Additionally, the toolkit makes it possible to design custom unit cell configurations and to use advanced analog optimization algorithms such as Tiki-Taka. Moreover, the backward and update behavior can be set to "ideal" to enable hardware-aware training features for chips that target inference acceleration only. To evaluate the inference accuracy of such chips over time, we provide statistical programming noise and drift models calibrated on phase-change memory hardware. Our new toolkit is fully GPU accelerated and can be used to conveniently estimate the impact of material properties and non-idealities of future analog technology on the accuracy for arbitrary ANNs.Comment: Submitted to AICAS202

Marcadores de la calidad y la genuinidad de aceites de sacha inchi extra virgen comerciales

This work tackles the study of the quality and authenticity of oils labeled and commercialized as extra virgin sacha inchi oil. Major and minor components as triglycerides, fatty acid methyl esters, tocopherols, sterols and hydrocarbons are determined as well as other physicochemical parameters (density, viscosity, acidity and peroxide value). The results showed that some of the commercialized oils do not fulfill the basic requirement established in the regulation such as the content of α-linolenic acid, higher than 44.7 or 55.0% in the cases of P. volubilis and P. huayllabambana, respectively. The calculated stigmasterol/campesterol ratio for genuine sacha inchi oils should be around 4, however not all commercial oils analyzed comply with this requirement. The presence of the flavons sesamin and sesamolin indicates the addition of compounds from sesame oils. Finally, some of the commercial oils showed to contain trans fatty acids although this was not accompanied by the sterene hydrocarbon presence.En este trabajo se aborda el estudio de la calidad y la genuinidad de los aceites etiquetados y comercializados como sacha inchi extra virgen. Se estudian los componentes mayoritarios como los triglicéridos y los ésteres metílicos de ácidos grasos, componentes menores insaponificables (tocoferoles, esteroles e hidrocarburos) así como otros parámetros fisicoquímicos (densidad, viscosidad, acidez, peróxidos y estabilidad). Los resultados mostraron que algunos de los aceites comercializados no cumplían con el requisito básico establecido en la normativa de tener un contenido en α-linolénico superior a 44,7 o 55,0% determinado para P. volubilis o P. huayllabambana respectivamente. La relación estigmasterol/campesterol medida en aceites de sacha inchi genuinos es de alrededor de 4, y no todos los aceites comerciales analizados cumplían con este requisito. La presencia de las flavonas sesamina y sesamolina indica la adición de compuestos procedentes de aceites de sésamo. Por último, algunos de los aceites comerciales estudiados, contenían ácidos grasos trans aunque no se detectó en ellos la presencia de hidrocarburos esteroideos

Large-scale evaluation of shotgun triacylglycerol profiling for the fast detection of olive oil adulteration

Fast and effective analytical screening tools providing new suitable authenticity markers and applicable to a large number of samples are required to efficiently control the global olive oil (OO) production, and allow the rapid detection of low levels of adulterants even with fatty acid composition similar to OO. The present study aims to develop authentication models for the comprehensive detection of illegal blends of OO with adulterants including different types of high linoleic (HL) and high oleic (HO) vegetable oils at low concentrations (2–10%) based on shotgun triacylglycerol (TAG) profile obtained by Flow Injection Analysis-Heated Electrospray Ionisation-High Resolution Mass Spectrometry (FIA-HESI-HRMS) at a large-scale experimental design. The sample set covers a large natural variability of both OO and adulterants, resulting in more than one thousand samples analysed. A combined PLS-DA binary modelling based on shotgun TAG profiling proved to be a fit for purpose screening tool in terms of efficiency and applicability. The external validation resulted in the correct classification of the 86.8% of the adulterated samples (diagnostic sensitivity = 0.87), and the 81.1% of the genuine samples (diagnostic specificity = 0.81), with an 85.1% overall correct classification (efficiency = 0.85)

Occurrence of organotin compounds in waters of the spanish coast under the European Water Framework Directive

Organotin compounds (OTCs), such as tributyltin (TBT), are persistent organic pollutants that are present in water samples (surface water, river water, sea water, waste water, etc.) because of anthropogenic activities (antifouling agents in ship paints, biocides in polymers, etc.). The toxicity and endocrine disruption potential of these chemicals have been demonstrated even at very low levels (<1 ng L−1) (Devos et al. 2012). Due to the extensive presence of OTCs in all environmental media as well as their adverse effects on human health and biota, quantitative and qualitative determination of those com-pounds in complex environmental matrices has become a matter of great concern, mainly butyl and phenyl-substituted. Also, these compounds are included in the list of priority substances according to the EU Directive 2013/39/EU amending Directives 2000/60/EC and 2008/105/EC as regards priority substances in the field of water policy. This directive specifies annual average environmental quality standard (AA-EQS) of 0.2 ng L−1 TBT and a maximum allowable environmental quality standard (MAC-EQS) of 1.5 ng L−1 TBT for all surface waters. Samples were collected in two semiconfined coastal areas, one of them an area with high industrial and port activities (Ría de Vigo) and the other one with high touristic and agricultural activity (Mar Menor).The sampling campaigns were performed in spring and autumn of 2015. The levels of MBT, DBT, TBT, MPhT, DPhT and TPhT in the seawater samples were analyzed by HS-SPME-GC–QqQMS/ MS method (Moscoso-Pérez et al. 2015). MPhT, DPhT and TPhT were not detected in any sample at levels higher than LOQ. For butylated compounds, MBT, DBT and TBT were detected in 100% of the analyzed samples in the Mar Menor. In the Vigo estuary, MBT has been detected in 83.3% of the samples, the DBT in 75% and the TBT in 88%. The TBT is present in 92% of the total of 39 analyzed samples, being detected in 100% of the samples of the Mar Menor and in 88% of the samples of the Ría de Vigo. These levels are similar than those detected in other locations, and lower than the detected in ports near the coast of Gijón characterized by a great maritime traffic (Centineo et al. 2004).Program of Consolidation and Structuring of Units of Competitive Investigation of the University System of Galicia (Xunta de Galicia) potentially cofinanced by ERDF in the frame of the operative Program of Galicia 2007-2013 (reference: GRC2013-047) and by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (IMPACTA, project reference: CTM2013-48194-C3-2-R, and ARPA-ACUA, project reference: CTM2016-77945-C3-3-R)

Non-destructive technologies for fruit and vegetable size determination - a review

Here, we review different methods for non-destructive horticultural produce size determination, focusing on electronic technologies capable of measuring fruit volume. The usefulness of produce size estimation is justified and a comprehensive classification system of the existing electronic techniques to determine dimensional size is proposed. The different systems identified are compared in terms of their versatility, precision and throughput. There is general agreement in considering that online measurement of axes, perimeter and projected area has now been achieved. Nevertheless, rapid and accurate volume determination of irregular-shaped produce, as needed for density sorting, has only become available in the past few years. An important application of density measurement is soluble solids content (SSC) sorting. If the range of SSC in the batch is narrow and a large number of classes are desired, accurate volume determination becomes important. A good alternative for fruit three-dimensional surface reconstruction, from which volume and surface area can be computed, is the combination of height profiles from a range sensor with a two-dimensional object image boundary from a solid-state camera (brightness image) or from the range sensor itself (intensity image). However, one of the most promising technologies in this field is 3-D multispectral scanning, which combines multispectral data with 3-D surface reconstructio

Introducción al análisis de los ciclos de generación termoeléctrica a vapor

La demanda de energía crece en base a los deseos de mayor producción de bienes y servicios, o de mayor confort de los habitantes. La solución que se ha adoptado en nuestro País son la reducción de la demanda (PURE/ PUREE), o el aumento de la oferta (Energía Plus), sin la debida consideración de la eficiencia energética, o sea la obtención de los efectos energéticos con el mínimo consumo de recursos y afectación del medio ambiente. Acorde a los paradigmas actuales, Europa y otros Países Desarrollados han logrado reducir sus consumos a través de los “negajoules”, o ahorros de recursos por eficiencia energética en una magnitud tal que hoy es el principal contribuyente de sus matrices energéticas. No ha sucedido lo mismo aquí, sino que la intensidad energética ha aumentado en los últimos 50 años evidenciando el enorme potencial que existe por el concepto “ahorro de recursos por eficiencia”, y la necesidad de su práctica. Los ciclos de vapor convencionales a condensación son ineficientes, pero pueden ser eficientizados mediante el concepto de integración de procesos “por encima” (ciclo combinado), o “por debajo” (cogeneración), del ciclo, los que se tratan específicamente en otros trabajos de los autores.The energy demand grows with increasing the production of goods and services or to the need for greater comfort of the habitants. Given this, the solutions that have been adopted in our country have been reducing demand (PURE / PUREE Programs), or increasing the supply (Energia Plus Program), without considering the possibility to optimize its use efficiently, ie , obtaining the same effects energy consumption with a minimum of resources and reducing the adverse effects on the environment. According to the current paradigms, Europe and other developed countries have managed to reduce their consumption through the "negajoules", or savings of resources for energy efficiency such that today is the largest contributor to its energy needs. The same thing has not happened here, but the energy intensity has increased over the last 50 years. For this reason it is necessary to highlight the enormous potential that exists for the concept of "saving resource by increasing efficiency," and the benefits it would bring its implementation. Conventional steam condensation cycles are inefficient, but can be optimized through the concept of process integration "above" (combined cycle), or "below" (CHP) of the cycle. Other works of the authors analyze these aspects.Asociación Argentina de Energías Renovables y Medio Ambiente (ASADES