Comportamiento dinámico de puentes en arco con amortiguadores viscosos

En éste trabajo se presenta la respuesta sísmica analítica de dos puentes en arco de gran luz, sometiéndolos a un movimiento simulado que incluye efectos de fuente cercana. Para reducir la respuesta se exploró su comportamiento conectando los dos extremos del tablero con la subestructura por medio de amortiguadores viscosos. Se llevaron a cabo una serie de análisis en el plano de ambos modelos para identificar los amortiguadores óptimos. Los resultados indicaron que el uso de amortiguadores viscosos con comportamiento no lineal, ofrece una solución práctica para reducir la respuesta dinámica de estas estructuras

Tiempo de permanencia en diferentes rangos de intensidad en jugadores de fútbol

The aim was to analyze the percentage of time in different intensity ranges according to the game position. Non-experimental descriptive relational study, with 18 amateur soccer players, aged 20-34 years old. For 71 league games, the percentages of time in moderate and vigorous intensity levels were measured, following standard cut-off points. The results showed differences in the percentage of time when comparing the different game positions. Players who occupied the positions of midfielder, forward and wing-player are those that presented a higher percentage of time in the vigorous level in comparison with those that occupy the defensive positions; being these, central-defenders and lateral-defenders, those that showed a higher percentage of time in moderate intensity in relation to those. Game position is one of the variables that determine the type of physical effort made by the footballer in competition.El objetivo fue analizar el porcentaje de tiempo en diferentes rangos de intensidad según la posición de juego. Estudio no experimental descriptivo relacional,con 18 futbolistas amateurs, de 20-34 años de edad. Durante 71 partidos de liga, se midieron los porcentajes de tiempo en los niveles de intensidad moderada y vigorosa, siguiendo puntos de corte estándar. Los resultados mostraron diferencias en el porcentaje de tiempo al comparar las distintas posiciones de juego. Los jugadores que ocupaban las posiciones de centrocampista, delantero y extremo son los que presentaron un mayor porcentaje de tiempo en el nivel vigoroso en comparación con los que ocupan las posiciones defensivas; siendo estos, los defensas centrales y defensas laterales, los que mostraron un mayor porcentaje de tiempo en moderada intensidad en relación a aquellos. La posición de juego es una de las variables que condicionan el tipo de esfuerzo físico realizado por el futbolista en competición

BIOMODE : Biomechanical Modeling of Deglutition.

Deglutition or swallowing is the process in which, coordinate motion of several muscles transport the food bolus, from the oral cavity to the low esophageal sphincter. This process is composed by several stages such as food bolus preparation, propulsion, pharyngeal and esophageal stages. In general, any physiological or pathological affection to this coordinated process is known as dysphagia, and it is associated with stroke survivors, Parkinson, multiple sclerosis, and in general aged related diseases. Dysphagia severely affects the life quality of the patient and can cause death, mainly to the effects of food bolus aspiration (aspiration pneumonia). This research was done in collaboration with GIPSA-LAB, who work under the macro project “eSwallHoome”, funded by the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (FANR) The research has as the main objective to study and explain the mechanisms of breathing and swallowing via in vivo, in vitro and in simulacra approaches. The project Biomechanical modeling of deglutition (Biomode) is focused on modeling the behavior of food bolus during the swallowing process. This project aimed to contribute to the understanding of the physical phenomena underlying swallowing. Particularly, this project developed tongue’s elastic models and simplified models related with the interaction of a liquid, Newtonian food bolus and the oral cavity during the oral propulsion stage. The approach of the study was both experimental and computational. The highlights of the project included: 1. Mechanical models of tongue’s motion and deformation based on hyperelastic muscle’s properties. 2. Numerical tools for the simulation of large displacement models coupled with nonlinear elastic materials that would potentially describe the fluid structure interaction during oral propulsion stage and also compare the results with experimental data taken from a simplified bench and 3. Generation of simplified dimensionless models of oral propulsion stage based on the interaction between a Newtonian fluid food bolus and the physiological accurate tongue’s dynamics, responsible for oral propulsion. During the project, GIPSA-Lab/TIMC-IMAG laboratories from Grenoble and Nicolas Hermant from Universidad del Valle, developed a full 3D nonlinear elastic model using finite element method and high displacement models of human tongue biomechanics. Also, a basic fluid structure interaction with Newtonian fluid and a nonlinear latex membrane with high displacement model was implemented in ANSYS® Workbench. Finally, two novel simplified dimensionless models for estimation of fluid/tongue interaction load as function of flow regime and fluid food bolus properties were proposed

Deciphering the Role and Signaling Pathways of PKCα in Luminal A Breast Cancer Cells.

Protein kinase C (PKC) comprises a family of highly related serine/threonine protein kinases involved in multiple signaling pathways, which control cell proliferation, survival, and differentiation. The role of PKCα in cancer has been studied for many years. However, it has been impossible to establish whether PKCα acts as an oncogene or a tumor suppressor. Here, we analyzed the importance of PKCα in cellular processes such as proliferation, migration, or apoptosis by inhibiting its gene expression in a luminal A breast cancer cell line (MCF-7). Differential expression analysis and phospho-kinase arrays of PKCα-KD vs. PKCα-WT MCF-7 cells identified an essential set of proteins and oncogenic kinases of the JAK/STAT and PI3K/AKT pathways that were down-regulated, whereas IGF1R, ERK1/2, and p53 were up-regulated. In addition, unexpected genes related to the interferon pathway appeared down-regulated, while PLC, ERBB4, or PDGFA displayed up-regulated. The integration of this information clearly showed us the usefulness of inhibiting a multifunctional kinase-like PKCα in the first step to control the tumor phenotype. Then allowing us to design a possible selection of specific inhibitors for the unexpected up-regulated pathways to further provide a second step of treatment to inhibit the proliferation and migration of MCF-7 cells. The results of this study suggest that PKCα plays an oncogenic role in this type of breast cancer model. In addition, it reveals the signaling mode of PKCα at both gene expression and kinase activation. In this way, a wide range of proteins can implement a new strategy to fine-tune the control of crucial functions in these cells and pave the way for designing targeted cancer therapies.Work in Murcia was supported by grants BFU2017-87222-P (MICINN, Spain-FEDER) to S.C.-G. and J.C.G.-F. and Fundación Séneca Region de Murcia 20885/PI/18 to S.C.-G.S

Características de los celos en un grupo de estudiantes universitarios de la ciudad de Bogotá

El presente estudio es de corte descriptivo – correlacional. Tuvo como objetivo describir el nivel de celos, algunas de sus características y su relación con otras variables como depresión e infidelidad en una muestra de 150 estudiantes universitarios de la ciudad de Bogotá. Se utilizaron los siguientes instrumentos: la escala Interpersonal de Celos (Mathes y Severa, adaptada por Martínez y Rodrí- guez, 1996) y el Inventario de Depresión de Beck. Los resultados indican que los puntajes de celos tienden a distribuirse de manera normal; el10% de la población tiene un puntaje de celos patológicos, mientras que el 4,7 % ha tenido conductas agresivas contra sí mismo, la pareja o el rival. No se evidencian diferencias significativas en el nivel de celos entre hombres y mujeres; sin embargo, la media de los puntajes en hombres tiende a ser mayor. Así mismo, se encontró que las personas que han sido infieles en algún momento de su vida tienden a puntuar más alto en la escala de celos. Los resultados del estudio evidenciaron que existe una correlación negativa entre el tiempo de la relación y el puntaje de celos, lo que indica que a medida que el tiempo de la relación aumenta, el nivel de celos disminuye. Por otro lado, se evidenció que entre más tiempo de la relación, el nivel de depresión disminuye

Segundo Congreso Salesiano de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación para la Sociedad

La segunda edición del Congreso Salesiano de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación para la Sociedad, CITIS, realizado el 2 y 3 de diciembre de 2015 y organizado por la Universidad Politécnica Salesiana (sede Guayaquil), ofreció un espacio idóneo para la presentación, difusión e intercambio de importantes investigaciones (nacionales e internacionales) a los docentes investigadores y a la comunidad universitaria en general. Los trabajos recogidos en estas Memorias Académicas pertenecen a diferentes líneas de investigación del área de la Ingeniería: Telecomunicaciones, Automatización y Control, Procesos Industriales, Sistemas Eléctricos de Potencia, Telemática e Informática Aplicada, áreas de interés en esta segunda edición del CITIS. Cabe destacar que se evidencia la preocupación por la dimensión humana y social mediante el desarrollo responsable de la ciencia y la tecnología. La realización de este Congreso ha puesto en evidencia la importancia y pertinencia de la actividad investigativa que se genera en las universidades (en proyectos desarrollados por los docentes investigadores e, incluso, por los estudiantes de grado y posgrado), así como los altos niveles de compromiso académico y social

The nature of the Cygnus extreme B supergiant 2MASS J20395358+4222505

2MASS J20395358+4222505 is an obscured early B supergiant near the massive OB star association Cygnus OB2. Despite its bright infrared magnitude (Ks = 5.82) it has remained largely ignored because of its dim optical magnitude (B = 16.63, V = 13.68). In a previous paper, we classified it as a highly reddened, potentially extremely luminous, early B-type supergiant. We obtained its spectrum in the U, B and R spectral bands during commissioning observations with the instrument MEGARA at the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS. It displays a particularly strong Hα emission for its spectral type, B1 Ia. The star seems to be in an intermediate phase between supergiant and hypergiant, a group that it will probably join in the near (astronomical) future. We observe a radial velocity difference between individual observations and determine the stellar parameters, obtaining Teff = 24 000 K and log gc = 2.88 ± 0.15. The rotational velocity found is large for a B supergiant, v sin i = 110 ± 25 kms−1⁠. The abundance pattern is consistent with solar, with a mild C underabundance (based on a single line). Assuming that J20395358+4222505 is at the distance of Cyg OB2, we derive the radius from infrared photometry, finding R = 41.2 ± 4.0 R⊙, log(L/L⊙) = 5.71 ± 0.04 and a spectroscopic mass of 46.5 ± 15.0 M⊙. The clumped mass-loss rate (clumping factor 10) is very high for the spectral type, M˙ = 2.4 × 10−6 M⊙ a−1. The high rotational velocity and mass-loss rate place the star at the hot side of the bi-stability jump. Together with the nearly solar CNO abundance pattern, they may also point to evolution in a binary system, J20395358+4222505 being the initial secondary.SS-D and AH acknowledge support from the Spanish Government Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación through grants PGC-2018-091 3741-B-C22 and CEX2019-000920-S and from the Canarian Agency for Research, Innovation and Information Society (ACIISI), of the Canary Islands Government, and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), under grant with reference ProID2020010016. MG and FN acknowledge financial support through Spanish grant PID2019-105552RB-C41 (MINECO/MCIU/AEI/FEDER) and from the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) through the Unidad de Excelencia ‘María de Maeztu’-Centro de Astrobiología (CSIC-INTA) project No. MDM-2017-0737. SRB acknowledges support by the Spanish Government under grants AYA2015-68012-C2-2-P and PGC2018-093741-B-C21/C22 (MICIU/AEI/FEDER, UE). SRA acknowledges funding support from the FONDECYT Iniciación project 11171025 and the FONDECYT Regular project 1201490. JIP acknowledges finantial support from projects Estallidos6 AYA2016-79724-C4 (Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad), Estallidos7 PID2019-107408GB-C44 (Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion), grant P18-FR-2664 (Junta de Andalucía), and grant SEV-2017-0709 ‘Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa Program’ (Spanish Science Ministry). AGP, SP, AG-M, JG and NC acknowledge support from the Spanish MCI through project RTI2018-096188-B-I00

Embryonic development, hatching time and newborn juveniles of Octopus tehuelchus under two culture temperatures

The development of cephalopods early life stages is strongly influenced by environmental variables, especially temperature. Octopus tehuelchus (d'Orbigny, 1834) is an Atlantic Patagonian fishery resource currently being studied as a new species for cultivation; however it is not known how temperature modulates its early life stages. In this work, egg masses were artificially incubated at 13 and 16 °C under controlled aquarium conditions. In each thermal treatment, the stages of embryonic development, embryo morphometry and survival throughout embryogenesis, as well as embryogenesis duration were recorded. After hatching, the morphological description of the juveniles was achieved and survival time in starvation was calculated for both temperatures. At 16 °C the mean embryonic duration was 85 days shorter than at 13 °C. For both thermal treatments, the highest mortalities occurred up to the beginning of organogenesis, and no significant differences in hatching success were observed. The temperature also showed the potential to increase or decrease the juvenile performance at the early post hatching period. This resulted in a significant reduction in size and weight of new born juveniles at 13 °C but also in an average increment of 7 days in their survival in starvation when compared to octopus reared at 16 °C. The chromatophore pattern was similar for both thermal treatments and was characteristic of juveniles of this species. The observed differences seem to show adaptive mechanisms that optimize embryos and juveniles viability under the different environmental temperatures that can be found in the northern Atlantic Patagonian coast. From a practical point of view, our findings are important to define the biological parameters and associated procedures for the cultivation of the early life stages of O. tehuelchus.Fil: Braga, Ramiro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Centro Nacional Patagónico. Instituto de Biología de Organismos Marinos; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia "San Juan Bosco"; ArgentinaFil: Van Der Molen, Silvina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Centro Nacional Patagónico. Instituto de Biología de Organismos Marinos; ArgentinaFil: Pontones, Julian. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Centro Nacional Patagónico. Instituto de Biología de Organismos Marinos; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia "San Juan Bosco"; ArgentinaFil: Ortiz, Nicolás. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Centro Nacional Patagónico. Instituto de Biología de Organismos Marinos; Argentin