Are tornado-like magnetic structures able to support solar prominence plasma?

Recent high-resolution and high-cadence observations have surprisingly suggested that prominence barbs exhibit apparent rotating motions suggestive of a tornado-like structure. Additional evidence has been provided by Doppler measurements. The observations reveal opposite velocities for both hot and cool plasma on the two sides of a prominence barb. This motion is persistent for several hours and has been interpreted in terms of rotational motion of prominence feet. Several authors suggest that such barb motions are rotating helical structures around a vertical axis similar to tornadoes on Earth. One of the difficulties of such a proposal is how to support cool prominence plasma in almost-vertical structures against gravity. In this work we model analytically a tornado-like structure and try to determine possible mechanisms to support the prominence plasma. We have found that the Lorentz force can indeed support the barb plasma provided the magnetic structure is sufficiently twisted and/or significant poloidal flows are present.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ

Antihypertensive activity of quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) protein hydrolysates

Background: Nowadays, there has been an increase in the number of studies focused on the search for bioactive compounds produced by hydrolytic reactions from natural sources, such as the Quinoa grain, which represents an interesting agro-alimentary source that can have a beneficial influence on health, specifically antihypertensive potential. For this reason, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the antihypertensive activity of the protein hydrolysates obtained of Quinoa, the results of which are important at that time, to consider the incorporation of such peptides in the design of functional foods.Materials and Methods: Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) seeds were ground and the obtained flour was degreased and the protein isolate was obtained by isoelectric precipitation. The protein isolate was enzymatically hydrolyzed with Alcalase® and Flavourzyme® and the antihypertensive effect of peptides against angiotensin converting enzyme was evaluate using a mixture of 50 μL of sample, 50 μL of ACE working solution, 200 μL of substrate working solution and the fluorescence was determined with a microplate fluorometer following these characteristics: λ (excitation) = 355-375 nm; λ (emission) = 400-430 nm.Results: Peptides obtained using Alcalase® (protein content= 72.13%; DH= 31.22%) showed the highest inhibitory activity against the angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE), close to 88%.Conclusion: The Quinoa protein hydrolysates can be considered as a new agri-food source to be incorporated in the elaboration of functional foods with antihypertensive potential.Keywords: Quinoa grain, Protein hydrolysates, Antihypertensive potentia

Germination response to various temperature regimes of four Mediterranean seeder shrubs across a range of altitudes

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Landscape variables influencing forest fires in central Spain

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Analyzing Fuzzy Logic Computations with Fuzzy XPath

Implemented with a fuzzy logic language by using the FLOPER tool developed in our research group, we have recently designed a fuzzy dialect of the popular XPath language for the flexible manipulation of XML documents. In this paper we focus on the ability of Fuzzy XPath for exploring derivation trees generated by FLOPER once they are exported in XML format, which somehow serves as a debugging/analizing tool for discovering the set of fuzzy computed answers for a given goal, performing depth/breadth-first traversals of its associated derivation tree, finding non fully evaluated branches, etc., thus reinforcing the bi-lateral synergies between Fuzzy XPath and FLOPER