Master in Water Engineering a “semi-attendance” University-specific degree with international participation

The Water Engineering Master Course is a university-specific degree at the University of Seville which nowadays can be coursed in two different modalities: “on line” and “semi-attendance”. Its first edition took place at 2000 and since then, the average of graduated students has been of 40 students per course. The semi-attendance mode offers the possibility of being followed in an on-line way from November to June. A Moodle platform provides all the documentation that is required to attend every module, at the end of each one some online questionnaires are also uploaded in order to evaluate the students. Only one of the 10 mandatory modules which make up the course have to be attended in a classroom mode. It takes place during 15 days in July and allows the students to come into contact with the lecturers, professionals of the sector and their own mates as well. During this period both, teachers and students, are lodged in the same residence and all of them have the chance of interchanging experiences in a full teaching-learning process, solving doubts and improving their skills thanks to specific courses, specially designed in function of the lack of knowledge which has been detected during de previous modules, o even, the suggestions received directly from students. Most of the students come from Hispanic countries and in less amount from African and European countries. Actually every July about 80 students and teachers from 25 different countries around the world, meet in Seville to attend this Master. The classes are given in Spanish with translator support if it’s necessary. Different environments, problematic and conditioning factors are studied and a large kind of solutions in water cycle are designed during these days. The requirements to elaborate the final master project are mainly that this one can be used to resolve a real local problem in the student’s origin place and moreover the student can obtain better marks if he/she finds financing to carry it out. In the last 8 years a useful module named “Tools for design” has been included in the program of the Master in order to enable the student in IT, specifically spreadsheets, cad, software for budgeting and measurement, topography and decision support systems. Students who graduate are able to evaluate the most proper technology from a social, technic and economic point of view, as well as, select the most efficient alternatives in order to achieve a sustainable development

Naturalization: a new concept developed and carried out in the subject “Environmental Technology” of degree in Industrial Engineering

Environmental Technology is a 6 credits transversal subject included in the curriculum of all the degrees in Industrial Engineering at the Higher Polytechnic School of the University of Seville. In the last 5 academic courses, the students of this matter have been working with the concept of “Naturalization”. In the different topics which are studied in this subject, they have to apply the naturalization of the systems in order to use natural resources for improving processes. The Naturalization implies improvements in energetic efficiency, development of green spaces and CO2 capture and can be applied the majority of the industrial and urban activities. Some of the most meaningful results that our students have researched are: i) Naturalization of a large pond in a business park in Jaen (Spain) performing its layout and eventually implementing it, using plants to improve water quality and stones for fix them and to give support for bacterial biofilms. The students have improved their skills not only in the increase of new knowledge but in the ability of work in groups and carry out a real project under different points of view. ii) Project of naturalization of a neighbourhood in Seville, based on the increase of green spaces, with vegetal species which are able to capture electromagnetic radiations and CO2 emissions as well. iii) Naturalization of the margins of one lagoon in a park in Seville, transforming the precast panelled walls in breakwater bed of stones planted with bank river plants in order to improve the water quality and the landscape

Improving the learning process in the subject of basic maritime training using GPS and Google Earth as useful tools

Spanish universities are in a period of change to adapt the structure of university courses to the requirements of the new European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The main objective of the EHEA is to improve the international competitiveness of the universities of the European Union. The university community must jointly establish good practices and values that guarantee the quality of higher education. The adaptation of the university degrees to the new framework of the EHEA, demands that all Andalusian universities improve their quality by means of the substitution of excessively theoretical education by an active education, based on a more practical training and on the use of new technologies, with the participation of the students in the learning process also being of special interest. Engineering or technical degrees have always been characterised by a large number of failures. To carry this process forward, Spanish universities must try to apply communication and information technologies (ICTs) in university teaching, with the purpose of improving learning. The combined use of GPS navigation receivers whose data can be integrated into GE allows their use in navigation, thereby allowing GE and GPS to be used as a basic electronic chart and gyrocompass, to plan and program the course of a vessel with excellent precision in real time

Providing 3D video services: the challenge from 2D to 3DTV quality of experience

Recently, three-dimensional (3D) video has decisively burst onto the entertainment industry scene, and has arrived in households even before the standardization process has been completed. 3D television (3DTV) adoption and deployment can be seen as a major leap in television history, similar to previous transitions from black and white (B&W) to color, from analog to digital television (TV), and from standard definition to high definition. In this paper, we analyze current 3D video technology trends in order to define a taxonomy of the availability and possible introduction of 3D-based services. We also propose an audiovisual network services architecture which provides a smooth transition from two-dimensional (2D) to 3DTV in an Internet Protocol (IP)-based scenario. Based on subjective assessment tests, we also analyze those factors which will influence the quality of experience in those 3D video services, focusing on effects of both coding and transmission errors. In addition, examples of the application of the architecture and results of assessment tests are provided

Gestión y Aplicación de Metadatos Asociados al Tráfico Multimedia en Videoconferencia 3D

En los terminales multimedia de nueva generación se están incorporando cada vez más funcionalidades capaces de generar información adicional que enriquece la comunicación audiovisual en sí misma. Esta nueva información adicional, metainformación o metadatos, deberán poder ser gestionados y transmitidos de forma independiente pero sincronizados con el propio flujo multimedia. En este trabajo se presenta una arquitectura que permite resolver el problema identificado y que ha sido implementada con éxito en el proyecto CENIT VISION, dando soporte a diversos servicios de valor añadido asociados a una Videoconferencia 3D inmersiva: interacción con el usuario, grabación de sesiones, gestión de calidad, etc. La misma solución también tiene aplicación en otros entornos del sector multimedia como publicidad personalizada para IPTV, y de otros, como videovigilancia

Carbon–GO Composites with Preferential Water versus Ethanol Uptake

The elimination of small amounts of water from alcohols is by no means a trivial issue in many practical applications like, for instance, the dehumidification of biocombustibles. The use of carbonaceous materials as sorbents has been far less explored than that of other materials because their hydrophobic character has typically limited their water uptake. Herein, we designed a synthetic process based on the use of eutectic mixtures that allowed the homogeneous dispersion of graphene oxide (GO) in the liquid containing the carbon precursor, e.g., furfuryl alcohol. Thus, after polymerization and a subsequent carbonization process, we were able to obtain porous carbon–GO composites where the combination of pore diameter and surface hydrophilicity provided a remarkable capacity for water uptake but extremely low methanol and ethanol uptake along the entire range of relative pressures evaluated in this work. Both the neat water uptake and the uptake difference between water and either methanol or ethanol of our carbon–GO composites were similar or eventually better than the uptake previously reported for other materials, also exhibiting preferential water-to-alcohol adsorption, e.g., porous coordination polymers, metal–organic frameworks, polyoxometalates, and covalent two-dimensional nanosheets embedded in a polymer matrix. Moreover, water versus alcohol uptake was particularly remarkable at low partial pressures in our carbon–GO composites.This work was supported by MINECO/FEDER (Project Numbers MAT2015-68639-R, MAT2016-80285-P, and RTI2018-097728-B-I00). L.Z.G. acknowledges the Chinese Scholarship Council for a PhD research fellowship (CSC No. 201608330266). C.C.-C. acknowledges UA for a research contract

Lat-1 and glut-1 carrier expression and its prognostic value in gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors

Cancer cells develop mechanisms that increase nutrient uptake, including key nutrient carriers, such as amino acid transporter 1 (LAT-1) and glucose transporter 1 (GLUT-1), regulated by the oxygen-sensing Von Hippel Lindau-hypoxia-inducible factor (VHL-HIF) transcriptional pathway. We aimed to analyze these metabolic players in gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (GEP-NET) and correlate them with tumor malignancy and progression. LAT-1, GLUT-1, and pVHL expression was analyzed in 116 GEP-NETs and 48 peritumoral tissue samples by immunohistochemistry. LAT-1 was stably silenced using specific shRNA in the human NET BON cell line. LAT-1 expression was significantly increased in tumor tissue compared to non-tumor tissue in both gastrointestinal (67% vs. 44%) and pancreatic NETs (54% vs. 31%). Similarly, GLUT-1 was substantially elevated in gastrointestinal (74% vs. 19%) and pancreatic (58% vs. 4%) NETs. In contrast, pVHL expression was decreased (85% vs. 58%) in pancreatic NETs. Tumors with metastases at diagnosis displayed increased LAT-1 and GLUT-1 and decreased pVHL expression (p < 0.001). In accordance with these data, silencing LAT-1 curtailed cell proliferation in BON cells. These findings suggest that specific mechanisms that increase nutrient uptake, such as LAT-1 and GLUT-1, are increased in GEP-NETs, whereas pVHL is decreased. These markers might be related to the proliferation and metastatic capacity of these tumors.This work was supported by the following grants: Proyectos de Investigación en Salud (FIS) PIE13-0041, PI16-02091 and PI19-00584 (funded by Instituto de Salud Carlos III), TIRONET2-CM, B2017/BMD-3724 (funded by Comunidad de Madrid), GETNE G1707 and GCI1901 (funded by Grupo Español de Tumores Neuroendocrinos y Endocrinos) and cofinanced by FEDER funds to M.M. Proyectos de Investigación en Salud (FIS) PI19/01316-FEDER (funded by Instituto de Salud Carlos III), given to J.C.T. Grants from the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (SAF2016-76815 and SAF2017-90794-REDT), and Fundació La Marato de TV3 (534/C/2016) ceded to J.A

Heterogeneous Infectivity and Pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 Variants Beta, Delta and Omicron in Transgenic K18-hACE2 and Wildtype Mice

Altres ajuts: Fundació La Marató de TV3 202126-30-21The emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) may display enhanced transmissibility, more severity and/or immune evasion; however, the pathogenesis of these new VOCs in experimental SARS-CoV-2 models or the potential infection of other animal species is not completely understood. Here we infected K18-hACE2 transgenic mice with B.1, B.1.351/Beta, B.1.617.2/Delta and BA.1.1/Omicron isolates and demonstrated heterogeneous infectivity and pathogenesis. B.1.351/Beta variant was the most pathogenic, while BA.1.1/Omicron led to lower viral RNA in the absence of major visible clinical signs. In parallel, we infected wildtype (WT) mice and confirmed that, contrary to B.1 and B.1.617.2/Delta, B.1.351/Beta and BA.1.1/Omicron can infect them. Infection in WT mice coursed without major clinical signs and viral RNA was transient and undetectable in the lungs by day 7 post-infection. In silico modeling supported these findings by predicting B.1.351/Beta receptor binding domain (RBD) mutations result in an increased affinity for both human and murine ACE2 receptors, while BA.1/Omicron RBD mutations only show increased affinity for murine ACE2

Invasive Fusariosis in Nonneutropenic Patients, Spain, 2000-2015

Invasive fusariosis (IF) is associated with severe neutropenia in patients with concurrent hematologic conditions. We conducted a retrospective observational study to characterize the epidemiology of IF in 18 Spanish hospitals during 2000-2015. In that time, the frequency of IF in nonneutropenic patients increased from 0.08 cases per 100,000 admissions in 2000-2009 to 0.22 cases per 100,000 admissions in 2010-2015. Nonneutropenic IF patients often had nonhematologic conditions, such as chronic cardiac or lung disease, rheumatoid arthritis, history of solid organ transplantation, or localized fusariosis. The 90-day death rate among nonneutropenic patients (28.6%) and patients with resolved neutropenia (38.1%) was similar. However, the death rate among patients with persistent neutropenia (91.3%) was significantly higher. We used a multivariate Cox regression analysis to characterize risk factors for death: persistent neutropenia was the only risk factor for death, regardless of antifungal therapy

The HIV-1 reservoir landscape in persistent elite controllers and transient elite controllers

FUNDING. Instituto de Salud Carlos III (FI17/00186, FI19/00083, MV20/00057, PI18/01532, PI19/01127 and PI22/01796), Gilead Fellowships (GLD22/00147). NIH grants AI155171, AI116228, AI078799, HL134539, DA047034, MH134823, amfAR ARCHE and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.BACKGROUND. Persistent controllers (PCs) maintain antiretroviral-free HIV-1 control indefinitely over time, while transient controllers (TCs) eventually lose virological control. It is essential to characterize the quality of the HIV reservoir in terms of these phenotypes in order to identify the factors that lead to HIV progression and to open new avenues toward an HIV cure. METHODS. The characterization of HIV-1 reservoir from peripheral blood mononuclear cells was performed using next-generation sequencing techniques, such as full-length individual and matched integration site proviral sequencing (FLIP-Seq; MIP-Seq). RESULTS. PCs and TCs, before losing virological control, presented significantly lower total, intact, and defective proviruses compared with those of participants on antiretroviral therapy (ART). No differences were found in total and defective proviruses between PCs and TCs. However, intact provirus levels were lower in PCs compared with TCs; indeed the intact/defective HIV-DNA ratio was significantly higher in TCs. Clonally expanded intact proviruses were found only in PCs and located in centromeric satellite DNA or zinc-finger genes, both associated with heterochromatin features. In contrast, sampled intact proviruses were located in permissive genic euchromatic positions in TCs. CONCLUSIONS. These results suggest the need for, and can give guidance to, the design of future research to identify a distinct proviral landscape that may be associated with the persistent control of HIV-1 without ART.Instituto de Salud Carlos III (FI17/00186, FI19/00083, MV20/00057, PI18/01532, PI19/01127, PI22/01796)Gilead Fellowships (GLD22/00147)NIH grants AI155171, AI116228, AI078799, HL134539, DA047034, MH134823, amfAR ARCHEBill and Melinda Gates Foundatio