Association between vent pecking and fluctuating asymmetry in hens

Ponencia publicada en ITEA, vol.104El objetivo del presente estudio fue el análisis de la relación entre la incidencia del picaje en cloaca y la asimetría fluctuante en gallinas. En el experimento (140 gallinas) se midió la asimetría fluctuante de varios caracteres (longitud del dedo medio, longitud de la pata, longitud del ala, longitud de la barbilla y anchura de la pata) en gallinas de 20 semanas de edad de cinco razas de gallinas españolas (Andaluza Azul, Castellana Codorniz, Cara-Blanca Española, Vasca Roja Barrada y Leonesa Parda) y Leghorn Blanca que mostraban o no picaje en cloaca. Hubo diferencias significativas entre ambos grupos de gallinas en asimetría fluctuante relativa de la longitud del dedo medio (P < 0.05) y la asimetría fluctuante combinada de los cinco caracteres que se midieron (P < 0.08), la asimetría fluctuante relativa de las gallinas victimas de picaje en cloaca resultó ser mayor que la de aquellas que no estaban picadas. Las gallinas con la cloaca picada resultaron por tanto, más asimétricas que las gallinas control (sin la cloaca picada). Los resultados fueron consistentes en todas las razas e indicaron que el picaje en la cloaca afecta negativamente al bienestar de las gallinas.The purpose of the present study was to analyze the relationship between incidence of vent pecking, fluctuating asymmetry in chickens. The experiment (140 birds in three different replicates) measured the fluctuating asymmetry of several traits (middle toe length, leg length, wing length, wattle length, and leg width) in 20-week-old pullets of five Spanish breeds of chickens (Blue Andaluza, Quail Castellana, White-faced Spanish, Red-barred Vasca, and Birchen Leonesa), and a White Leghorn population, with and without evidence of suffering from vent pecking. The number of birds per breed was 20, 24, 12, 20, 18, and 46, respectively. There was a significant difference between vent pecked and non-vent pecked birds on the relative fluctuating asymmetry of middle toe length (P<0.05), the relative fluctuating asymmetry of birds who suffered from vent pecking being larger. The combined relative fluctuating asymmetry of the five traits approached levels of statistical significance (P=0.08). Thus, vent pecked birds were more asymmetrical than non-vent pecked birds, having increased relative fluctuating asymmetry. Differences were consistent across the breeds. Results indicate that vent pecking is associated with measures of stress like fluctuating asymmetr

A continuous deployment-based approach for the collaborative creation, maintenance, testing and deployment of CityGML models

Georeferenced 3D models are an increasingly common choice to store and display urban data in many application areas. CityGML is an open and standardized data model, and exchange format that provides common semantics for 3D city entities and their relations and one of the most common options for this kind of information. Currently, creating and maintaining CityGML models is costly and difficult. This is in part because both the creation of the geometries and the semantic annotation can be complex processes that require at least some manual work. In fact, many publicly available CityGML models have errors. This paper proposes a method to facilitate the regular maintenance of correct city models in CityGML. This method is based on the continuous deployment strategy and tools used in software development, but adapted to the problem of creating, maintaining and deploying CityGML models, even when several people are working on them at the same time. The method requires designing and implementing CityGML deployment pipelines. These pipelines are automatic implementations of the process of building, testing and deploying CityGML models. These pipelines must be run by the maintainers of the models when they make changes that are intended to be shared with others. The pipelines execute increasingly complex automatic tests in order to detect errors as soon as possible, and can even automate the deployment step, where the CityGML models are made available to their end users. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of this method, and as an example of its application, a CityGML deployment pipeline has been developed for an example scenario where three actors maintain the same city model. This scenario is representative of the kind of problems that this method intends to solve, and it is based on real work in progress. The main benefits of this method are the automation of model testing, every change to the model is tested in a repeatable way; the automation of the model deployment, every change to the model can reach its end users as fast as possible; the systematic approach to integrating changes made by different people working together on the models, including the possibility of keeping parallel versions with a common core; an automatic record of every change made to the models (who did what and when) and the possibility of undoing some of those changes at any time

Symmetric decompositions of cost variation

In this paper a number of symmetric, empirically implementable decompositions of the cost variation (in difference and ratio form) of a production unit are developed. The components distinguished are price level change, technical efficiency change, allocative efficiency change, technological change, scale of activity change, and price structure change. Given data from a (balanced) panel of production units, all the necessary ingredients for the computation of the various decompositions can be obtained by using linear programming techniques (DEA). An application is provided

GPU-based processing of Hartmann-Shack images for accurate and high-speed ocular wavefront sensing

©2019. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This document is the Accepted version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Future Generation Computer Systems. To access the final edited and published work see https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2018.09.010Hartmann–Shack aberrometry is a widely used technique in the field of visual optics but, high-speed and accurate processing of Hartmann–Shack images can be a computationally expensive/resource intensive task. While some advancements have been made in achieving high-performance processing units, they have not been specifically designed for processing Hartmann–Shack images of the human eye with Graphics Processing Units. In this work, we present the first full-Graphics Processing Unit implementation of a Hartmann–Shacksensor algorithm aimed at accurately measuring ocular aberrations at a high speed from high-resolution spot pattern images. The proposed algorithm, called PaPyCS (Parallel Pyramidal Centroid Search), is inherently parallel and performs a very robust centroid search to avoid image noise and other artifacts. This is a field where the use of Graphics Processing Units have not been exploited despite the fact that they can boost Adaptive Optics systems and related closed-loop approaches. Our proposed implementation achieves processing speeds of 380 frames per second for high resolution (1280x1280 pixels) images, in addition to showing a high resilience to system and image artifacts that appear in Hartmann–Shack images from human eyes: more than 98% of the Hartmann–Shack images, with aberrations of up to 4m Root Mean Square for a 5.12mm pupil diameter, were measured with less than 0.05m Root Mean Square Error, which is basically negligible for ocular aberrations

Effective GDNF brain delivery using microspheres-A promising strategy for Parkinson&#039;s disease

Glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) has shown promise in the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders of basal ganglia origin such us Parkinson\u27s disease (PD). In this study, we investigated the neurorestorative effect of controlled GDNF delivery using biodegradable microspheres in an animal model with partial dopaminergic lesion. Microspheres were loaded with N-glycosylated recombinant GDNF and prepared using the Total Recirculation One-Machine System (TROMS). GDNF-loaded microparticles were unilaterally injected into the rat striatum by stereotaxic surgery two weeks after a unilateral partial 6-OHDA nigrostriatal lesion. Animals were tested for amphetamine-induced rotational asymmetry at different times and were sacrificed two months after microsphere implantation for immunohistochemical analysis. The putative presence of serum IgG antibodies against rat glycosylated GDNF was analyzed for addressing safety issues. The results demonstrated that GDNF-loaded microspheres, improved the rotational behavior induced by amphetamine of the GDNF-treated animals together with an increase in the density of TH positive fibers at the striatal level. The developed GDNF-loaded microparticles proved to be suitable to release biologically active GDNF over up to 5 weeks in vivo. Furthermore, none of the animals developed antibodies against GDNF demonstrating the safety of glycosylated GDNF use

EVALUATION OF THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF GRID-CONNECTED PHOTOVOLTAIC SOLAR ENERGY IN WINERIES

The objective of this study was to analyze the cost-effectiveness of photovoltaic (PV) solar energy in wineries. The factors analysed were solar radiation, cost of PV installation, prices in the public electricity grid, size of the winery, power of installed panels, influence of the decreased consumption during weekends, and seasonality in the consumption. The study has been based on the European TESLA project, in which 39 energy audits were carried out in wineries in four European countries. A winery of 30,000 hL/year was characterized as a representative winery. The results showed that seasonality was key in the profitability of the system for self-consumption, related to the optimum power to be installed of PV. It was recommended to install, as an optimal PV power, the stable electrical power that is demanded in the daytime period. Optimizing the installed power of PV panels in the representative winery, the percentage of electrical energy consumption covered by photovoltaic energy varied between 16% and 22%. The percentage of the cost of electric energy covered varied between 18% and 24%, with payback values between 18 years (3.1 peak sun hours of solar radiation -PSH) and 10 years (5.6 peak sun hours of solar radiation - PSH). All the factors involved were analyzed

Optical phonons, crystal-field transitions, and europium luminescence-excitation processes in Eu2BaCoO5: Experiment and theory

The Europium compound Eu2BaCoO5 has been studied by means of Raman and x-ray-absorption spectroscopies. The eigenfunctions and frequencies of the optical normal modes have been calculated from an adequate potential showing good accordance with the observed phonons. In addition to Raman-allowed normal modes, several infrared and luminescence bands are observed between 10 and 300 K. The temperature dependence of these processes has allowed us to determine the complex interrelation between these two kinds of elementary excitations. A broad luminescence band (at 2.3 eV) is tentatively attributed to electronic transitions between Co2+ 3d crystal-field levels in the gap of the material. The mixing of these quasiatomic levels with apical oxygen orbitals, along the very short Co-O(2) bonds in the chains, can be the reason for the simultaneous enhancement of the intensities of the luminescence band and of the apical oxygen infrared modes through a resonant electron-phonon coupling. From the dependence of the phonon frequencies and the analysis of the extended x-ray-absorption fine structure spectra with the temperature it can be concluded that on decreasing the temperature the a axis becomes shorter, while the other two axes remain nearly unchanged. The emission spectrum in the visible range has been observed and interpreted in the frame of the crystal-field theory. We have studied the dependence of the intensity of the electronic transitions between 4f levels of the europium ions with the temperature and the energy of the exciting light. From the behavior of the Eu3+ luminescence peaks it has been possible to determine the processes of excitation and emission, which are shown to involve lattice phonons. The crystal-field parameters of the Eu3+ ions have been calculated from the energies of the lower terms of the ionComisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología PB 92, 114- C04-04 y MAT93-79

Colgajo de vasto lateral de pedículo distal para cobertura de lesiones complejas de rodilla

El tratamiento de las heridas complejas articulares se muestra siempre complicado, el abordaje razonable conjunto por traumatólogos y cirujanos plásticos mejora el resultado clínico, funcional y estético. Presentamos el caso de un paciente politraumatizado con pérdida de sustancia a nivel de la rodilla secundaria a artritis séptica, necrosis de patela y exposición de cóndilos femorales que fue tratado mediante colgajo muscular de vastus lateralis de pedículo distal. El vastus lateralis permite la cobertura eficiente de l articulación expuesta sin afectar la extensión de la rodilla y dejando mínima secuela estética.The treatment of the joint complex wounds is difficult. A good clinic, functional and aesthetic outcome is possible when multidisciplinary approach by orthopaedics and plastic surgeons is carried out. We report a case of a patient with multiple fractures who presents a severe loss of soft tissue at the knee. This lesion was due to a septic arthritis with patellar necrosis and condillar exposition. The treatment was made by a distally pedicled vastus lateralis muscular flap. This flap lets efficient coverage for the exposed joint as well as the integrity of the extensión knee function without aesthetic seque

Expresión y purificación de GDNF para su microencapsulación y aplicación en la enfermedad de Parkinson

La enfermedad de Parkinosn (EP) es un proceso neurodegenerativo del sistema nervioso central que afecta a las neuronas de dopamina de la sustancia negra, núcleo mesoencefálico del control motor. La perdida en el cerebro de este neurotransmisor vital causa los síntomas de la enfermedad. La EP afecta actualmente a 200 de cada 100.000 personas y a 2 de cada 100 entre los mayores de 60 años. En España hay unos 110.000 enfermos. Además, hoy por hoy no se conoce nada que pueda prevenir o curar la enfermedad, ni existe ninguna prueba de laboratorio que permita diagnosticarla. Recentiemente se ha demostrado que el GDNF, factor neurotrófico derivado de las células gliales, es capaz de proteger las neuronas dopaminérgicas e incluso inducir la regeneración del tejido dopaminérgico dañado in vivo. El objetivo del trabajo fue diseñar y desarrolar un método de expresión y purificación de GDNF bioactivo para su posterior microencapsulación y aplicación en la enfermedad de Parkison. El sistema escogido para expresar el GDNF fue el sistema de células eucariotas de mamífero. El vector utilizado para la producción del GDNF en células eucariotas fue el pDEST26 (Tecnología Gateway de Invitrogen). Como sistema de expresión de GDNF se utilizaron las líneas celulares eucariota BHK, 293 y COS 7. Estas células fueron cultivadas en medio D-MEM (Invitrogen) complementado con un 10% de suero fetal bovino (FBS) y Penicilina/Streptomicina (100u/ml) (Invitrogen). La transfección se realizó con Lipofectamine Plus (Invitrogen). Se analizó la expresión de GDNF a nivel de mRNA mediante PCR y a nivel de proteína mediante Western Blot del medio condicionado. Los clones positivos se crecieron en botellas de cultivo de 850 cm2 (Corning) y se realizaron ciclos de recolección del medio. Cada ciclo fue analizado por SDS-PAGE y Western Blot. Para evaluar la actividad de la proteína se ha desarrollado un ensayo de actividad en el que se demuestra la diferenciación morfológica de células PC-12 inducida por GDNF. La presencia de los receptores GFRa1 y RET, necesarios para que el GDNF ejerza su acción, fue determinada por PCR. Las conclusiones obtenidas de este estudio son la obtención de GDNF recombinante a partir de un sistema de expresión en células eucariotas, el desarrollo de un protocolo para su posterior purificación y la obtención de GDNF recombinante biológicamente activo

The Pseudotransannular Ring Opening of 1-Aminocyclohept-4-ene-derived Epoxides in the Synthesis of Tropane Alkaloids: Total Synthesis of (±)-Ferrugine

We have optimized a synthetic approach to (±)-Ferrugine in 8 steps starting from 5-aminocyclohept-1-ene and using the Brønsted acid-catalyzed pseudotransannular ring-opening of the epoxide derived from this cycloheptene as the key step for the construction of the 8-azabicyclo[3.2.1]octane central core. While attempting the enantioselective synthesis of this natural product from enantiopure 2-hydroxy-8-azabicyclo[3.2.1]octane we have found that this compound shows a pronounced tendency to racemize via an achiral symmetric aziridinium intermediate. This racemization side process has been studied in detail using both experimental and computational methods