Comparative Study of the Oxidative Degradation of Different 4-Aminobenzene Sulfonamides in Aqueous Solution by Sulfite Activation in the Presence of Fe(0), Fe(II), Fe(III) or Fe(VI)

This study is focused on advanced oxidation technologies (AOTs) using the combined effect of Fe(0–VI)/sulfite systems, that produce mainly SO4 radicals, to remove di erent 4-aminobenzene sulfonamides (SAs), namely sulfamethazine, sulfadiazine, sulfamethizole, from aqueous solutions. Results obtained showed that neither sulfite nor iron alone is able to degrade SAs; however, the combined effect depends on the oxidation state of iron species whose effectiveness to activate sulfite to promote the degradation of SAs increased following this order: Fe(III) < Fe(II) < Fe(0) < Fe(VI). Using Fe(VI)/sulfite, the complete removal of SAs was obtained in 5 min largely surpassing the effectiveness of the other three systems. The sulfonamides’ removal percentage was markedly influenced by sulfite concentration and dissolved oxygen, which improved the generation of oxidant radicals. Response surface methodology was applied, and a quadratic polynomial model was obtained, which allowed us to determine the percentage of SAs degradation as a function of both the iron species and sulfite concentrations. The study of the influence of the water matrix on these AOTs revealed an inhibition of SAs’ removal percentage when using ground water. This is probably due to the presence of different anions, such as HCO3 -, Cl-, and SO4 2- in relatively high concentrations. According to the byproducts identified, the proposed degradation pathways include hydroxylation, SO2 extrusion, and different bond-cleavage processes. Cytotoxicity of degradation byproducts, using MTS assay with HEK 293 and J774 cell lines for the first time, did not show an inhibition in cell proliferation, sustaining the safety of the process.This research was funded by both Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain, grant number CTQ2016-80978-C2-1-R, and CONACyT (Mexico), grant number 407494

Conocimientos puestos en juego por futuros profesores de matemáticas cuando justifican la selección de tareas

En algunos planes de formación de profesores, el profesor aprende a manejar herramientas conceptuales y metodológicas para elaborar propuestas docentes. En este artículo, identificamos los tres tipos de conocimiento que los futuros profesores que participaron en un plan de formación de ese tipo utilizaron cuando justificaron su propuesta docente: uno relacionado con las herramientas, otro con elementos transversales del plan de formación y un tercer tipo de conocimiento ajeno al plan de formación. Constatamos que el conocimiento relacionado con las herramientas es dominante, se entremezcla con los otros dos tipos de conocimiento y se enuncia de forma ajena a la propia matemática

Argumentos que utilizan los futuros profesores cuando seleccionan tareas matemáticas

En algunos planes de formación de profesores de matemáticas se proporciona al profesor herramientas conceptuales y metodológicas, que llamaremos organizadores del currículo, para que analice y seleccione tareas matemáticas. En este artículo, analizamos los argumentos que emplean futuros profesores en un plan de formación de ese tipo cuando seleccionan tareas. Encontramos que sus argumentos hacen referencia a tres tipos de conocimiento: uno directamente relacionado con los organizadores, otro relacionado con elementos transversales incluidos en el plan de formación y un tercero ajeno al plan. Analizando esta clasificación, encontramos que hay un desarrollo muy desigual de los distintos organizadores, que los argumentos relacionados con los organizadores son dominantes pero se entremezclan con los demás y que, aún cuando se refieren a tareas matemáticas concretas, con frecuencia se enuncian en términos generales ajenos a la tarea analizada

Estornino negro – Sturnus unicolor Temminck, 1820

Aves - Orden Passeriformes - Familia Sturnidae en la Enciclopedia Virtual de Vertebrados Españoles, http://www.vertebradosibericos.org/. Versiones anteriores: 20-06-2003; 9-02-2007; 7-03-2008; 28-10-2011; 14-11-2011A comprehensive review of the natural history of the Spotless Starling Sturnus unicolor in Spain.Peer reviewe

A Comprehensive Method for Fractionating Soil Organic Matter Not Protected and Protected from Decomposition by Physical and Chemical Mechanisms

The objective of this work was to describe a method for isolating meaningful and measurable soil organic matter (SOM) pools that differ in the mechanisms by which they are protected from decomposition. The proposed method is appropriate for soil C stabilization and sequestration studies. Unlike previous fractionation schemes, this procedure allows free SOM located between aggregates (unprotected C pool) and SOM occluded within both macroaggregates and microaggregates (C weakly and strongly protected by physical mechanisms, respectively) to be recovered separately, freed from the soil mineral matrix and the mineral-associated SOM pool (C pool protected by chemical mechanisms) and thus well suited to advanced chemical characterization by 13C-NMR. Briefly, free SOM is isolated by an initial density separation. Stable macroaggregates are broken up into stable microaggregates and intra-macroaggregate SOM, which is then separated by density. Finally, intra-microaggregate SOM is isolated from mineral-associated SOM by a third density separation after ultrasonic disruption. The SOM dissolved during the fractionation procedure is also recovered. Results obtained on soil samples with contrasting textures suggested that clay content induces a decrease of the proportion of free organic C and an increase of mineral-associated organic C content. Free SOM is characterized by a marked presence of undecayed organic material and biologically labile substances, such as carbohydrates and proteins. In contrast, SOM occluded within aggregates, especially within microaggregates, represents a more decomposed fraction, relatively enriched in unsubstituted-aliphatic material, most probably lipid biopolymers

Solar Degradation of Sulfamethazine Using rGO/Bi Composite Photocatalysts

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness and by FEDER (CTQ2016-80978-C2−1-R), and the authors thank to Dr. Isabel Guerra Tschuschke for the technical advice during the VP-SEM study at the CIC-UGR.Heterogeneous photocatalysts for water decontamination were obtained by the optimized synthesis of bismuth-functionalized reduced graphene oxide (rGO/Bi) using the Hummer method and microwave treatment. Sulfamethazine (SMZ) was used as model pollutant to evaluate the photocatalytic efficacy. Photocatalysts were characterized by VP-SEM, HRTEM, XDR, XPS, RAMAN, and FTIR analyses, which confirmed the effective reduction of GO to rGO and the presence of bismuth as a crystalline phase of Bi2O3 polydispersed on the surface. Their performance was influenced by the rGO/Bi ratio, microwave temperature, and treatment time. The as-obtained 5%rGO/Bi composite had the highest photocatalytic activity for SMZ degradation under visible light irradiation (λ > 400 nm), achieving 100% degradation after only 2 h of treatment. The degradation yield decreased with higher percentages of rGO. Accordingly, the rGO/Bi catalysts efficiently removed SMZ, showing a high photocatalytic activity, and remained unchanged after three treatment cycles; furthermore, cytotoxicity tests demonstrated the nontoxicity of the aqueous medium after SMZ degradation. These findings support the potential value of these novel composites as photocatalysts to selectively remove pollutants in water treatment plants.Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness CTQ2016-80978-C2-1-REuropean Union (EU) CTQ2016-80978-C2-1-

The Effect of Lifestyle Intervention on Pregnancy and Birth Outcomes on Obese Infertile Women : a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Obesity has been associated with negative effects on natural fertility and poor prognosis when assisted reproductive technologies (ART) are performed. Patients attending for fertility treatments are often advised to optimize their weights to improve the outcomes. There is lack of enough information on how weight-loss would be effective for improving fertility in women who are overweight or obese. We conducted a systematic review to evaluate whether weight-loss achieved by lifestyle program improves natural or assisted reproduction in obese infertile women. We searched CENTRAL, MEDLINE, and EMBASE up to March 2018. Two reviews were selected as randomised trials assessing a lifestyle intervention in women with obesity before receiving treatments for infertility and appraised their risk of bias. We extracted data on pregnancy, birth, and miscarriage rates as the primary outcomes and pooled effect estimates using a random effects model. The primary outcome was the live birth rate. We reported summary measures as the relative risk (RR), 95% confidence interval (CI), and percentage of heterogeneity (I2). We included eight randomised trials with 1175 women. Lifestyle programmes, improved pregnancy rates (RR: 1.43, CI: 95% 1.02 to 2.01; I2=60%; 8 RCTs; N=1098) but had no impact on live births (RR: 1.39, CI: 95% 0.90 to 2.14; I2=64%; 7RCTs; N=1034). Our findings suggest that women participating in lifestyle interventions had an increased risk of miscarriage (RR: 1.50, CI: 95% 1.04 to 2.16; I2=0; 6RCTs; N=543). We rated the quality of evidence for these outcomes as the moderate-to-low. Lifestyle interventions slightly increased the pregnancy rate, while it would be uncertain whether it can improve the live birth. Lifestyle interventions can increase the risk of miscarriage. More research is needed to further explore lifestyle interventions on reproductive outcomes in obese infertile women. Instituto de Salud Carlos II

Hearing distributed mass in nanobeam resonators

One-dimensional vibrating nanostructures show remarkable performance in detecting small adherent masses added to a referential configuration. The mass sensing principle is based on measuring the resonant frequency shifts caused by the unknown attached masses. In spite of its important application in several fields, few studies have been devoted to this inverse eigenvalue problem. In this paper we have developed a distributed mass reconstruction method for initially uniform nanobeams based on measurements of the first lower resonant frequencies of the free bending vibration. Two main inverse problems are addressed. In the first problem, the mass variation is determined by using the first lower eigenfrequencies of a supported nanobeam, under the a priori assumption that the mass variation has support contained in half of the axis interval. In the second problem, we show that the a priori assumption can be removed, provided that the spectral input data include an additional set of first lower eigenfrequencies belonging to a second spectrum associated to different end conditions. The nanobeam is modelled using the modified strain gradient elasticity accounting for size effects. The reconstruction is based on an iterative procedure which takes advantage of a closed-form solution when the mass change is small, and shows to be convergent under this assumption and for smooth mass variation. The accuracy of the reconstruction deteriorates in presence of discontinuous mass variation. For these cases, a constrained least-squares optimization filtering shows to be very effective to reduce the spurious oscillations around the target coefficientThe authors from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid wish to acknowledge the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad de España for the financial support under Grants numbers DPI2014-57989-P and PGC2018-098218-B-I00. The authors from University of Udine gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the National Research Project PRIN 2015TT JN95 "Identification and monitoring of complex structural systems". The authors wish to thank the two reviewers and the editor for constructive criticism and, in particular, for suggesting the experimental application reported at the end of Section 2

Generalized continuum model for the analysis of nonlinear vibrations of taut strings with microstructure

Classical continuum models are unable to capture the response of a microstructured solid when the scale effect is relevant. In vibration analysis, this limitation appears when the solid undergoes vibrations of wavelength that approaches the characteristic length of the microstructure. A discrete model may be formulated to account for this effect, but this comes at the expenses of high computational costs. For example, scale effects are relevant in strings employed in sensing applications which often rely on information gathered in the nonlinear dynamic regime. In this work, we study the dynamic behavior of a taut string modeled as a lattice of particles linked to first neighbors by linear springs. We develop an inertia-gradient generalized continuum model of the chain, which undergoes nonlinear vibrations. Unlike the corresponding classical continuum model, enrichment of the kinetic energy density with the characteristic length of the microstructure permits the model to capture short-wavelength vibrations. Comparison of the response predicted by the continuum models highlights that the generalized model provides better estimations of the dynamic response of the considered microstructured string in the nonlinear regime and at short wavelengths.Program during academic year 2017-18. This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad de España (grant numbers DPI2014-57989-P and BES-2015-073720).Publicad

Recovering added mass in nanoresonator sensors from finite axial eigenfrequency data

In this paper we present a method for solving a finite inverse eigenvalue problem arising in the determination of added distributed mass in nanoresonator sensors by measurements of the first N natural frequencies of the free axial vibration under clamped end conditions. The method is based on an iterative procedure that produces an approximation of the unknown mass density as a generalized Fourier partial sum of order N, whose coefficients are calculated from the first N eigenvalues. To avoid trivial non-uniqueness due to the symmetry of the initial configuration of the nanorod, it is assumed that the mass variation has support contained in half of the axis interval. Moreover, the mass variation is supposed to be small with respect to the total mass of the initial nanorod. An extended series of numerical examples shows that the method is efficient and gives excellent results in case of continuous mass variations. The determination of discontinuous coefficients exhibits no negligible oscillations near the discontinuity points, and requires more spectral data to obtain good reconstruction. A proof of local convergence of the iteration algorithm is provided for a family of finite dimensional mass coefficients. Surprisingly enough, in spite of its local character, the identification method performs well even for not necessarily small mass changes. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first quantitative study on the identification of distributed mass attached on nanostructures modelled within generalized continuum mechanics theories by using finite eigenvalue data