Effect of diet on live weight and egg weight of backyard hens during the rainy season

The objective was to determine the effect of diet on live weight (LW) and egg weight (EW) of backyard hens (BH) during the rainy season in the Bajío region of the state of Michoacán, Mexico. Seventeen municipalities were sampled, where 101 BH (six hens/municipality) were captured and weighed and 101 eggs (six eggs/municipality) were harvested and weighed. The crops of the captured hens were removed Post-sacrifice, the organic content/crop (OCC) was classified and weighed by components, to later perform chemical compositional analysis. Data were analysed using generalised linear models and the differences between municipalities were obtained by the method of least squares means. The weight of the OCC (36.4 ± 22.4 g) was affected by the municipality (P<0.001), but not by the LW of the BH (P>0.05). Commercial feed (8.1 ± 6.0 g), grains: maize and sorghum (13.9 ± 13.5 g) kitchen waste (1.5 ± 2.9 g), herbaceous (0.6 ± 0.9 g) and insects (0.3 ± 0.7 g) were found in the crop. According to the commercial feed (COF) component, two feeding systems (FS) were identified: traditional FS, without COF and nontraditional FS, with COF. The diets of both FS were similar (P>0.05) in nutritional composition and do not meet the nutritional requirements of the hens. The LW (1.567 ± 0.316 kg) and EW (51.3 ± 1.0 g) of the BH cannot be completely attributed to the diet consumed during the rainy season

Six sigma, absorptive capacity and organisational learning orientation

"This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Production Research, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00207543.2010.543175."The importance of the Six Sigma methodology in industry is growing constantly. However, there are few empirical studies that analyze the advantages of this methodology and its positive effects on organizational performance. The purpose of this paper is to extend understanding of the success of Six Sigma quality management initiatives by investigating the effects of Six Sigma teamwork and process management on absorptive capacity. It also seeks to understand the relation between absorptive capacity and organizational learning as two sources of sustainable competitive advantage. The information used comes from a larger study, the data for which were collected from a random sample of 237 European firms. Of these 237 organizations, 58 are Six Sigma organizations. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses. The main findings show that Six Sigma teamwork and process management positively affect the development of absorptive capacity. A positive and significant relationship is also observed between absorptive capacity and organizational learning orientation. The findings of this study justify Six Sigma implementation in firms. This study provides us with an in-depth understanding of some structural elements that characterize the Six Sigma methodology, enabling us to provide an explanation for its success

Group intervention to promote healthy habits in the workplace: IPHASAL Program

Artículo original[ES] Introducción: Las enfermedades cardiovasculares constituyen un grave problema de salud pública. El ámbito la boral es óptimo para intervenir sobre los factores de riesgo cardiovascular. El objetivo es evaluar una intervención grupal de promoción de hábitos saludables (programa IPHASAL) mediante apoyo entre iguales en el ámbito laboral. Método: En el programa participaron 325 trabajadores de 13 empresas con factores de riesgo cardiovascular (hiper tensión, tabaquismo, exceso de peso, inactividad física). Antes y después del programa se midió peso y altura, ten sión arterial y se pasó un cuestionario sobre hábitos de salud. El programa consistía en asistir a talleres formativos y sesiones grupales en las que los participantes compartían experiencias, conocimientos y progresos sobre hábitos saludables. El resultado se midió con el Índice Fuster BEWAT (IFB), calculado con la puntuación de 5 variables: ten sión arterial, ejercicio, peso, alimentación y tabaco.Resultados: Los participantes sin criterios de exclusión en el proyecto fueron 273. El 79% asistió a 3 o más talleres y el 73,9% acudió a 3 o más sesiones. Todos los parámetros del IFB mejoraron significativamente tras el programa, siendo el mayor incremento en la actividad física y el menor en el tabaquismo. El IFB total aumentó un 17,4% (1,5 puntos), siendo superior el aumento en mujeres (19,6%) que en hombres (14,0%) y en el grupo más joven (21,6%). Conclusiones: La intervención grupal IPHASAL es aplicable al ámbito laboral y contribuye a mejorar el perfil de riesgo cardiovascular, ayudando a los trabajadores a potenciar el cambio hacia estilos de vida.[EN] Introduction: Cardiovascular disease is a major public health problem. The workplace is an optimal setting to intervene on cardiovascular risk factors. The aim is to evaluate a group intervention to promote healthy habits (IPHASAL program) through peer support in the workplace.Method: The program involved 325 workers in 13 companies with cardiovascular risk factors (hypertension, smoking, overweight, physical inactivity). Before and after the program, weight and height, blood pressure were measured and a questionnaire on health habits was administered. The program consisted of training workshops and group sessions in which participants shared experiences, knowledge and progress on healthy habits. The outcome was measured with the Fuster BEWAT Index (FBI), calculated with the score of 5 variables under study: blood pressure, exercise, weight, diet and smoking. Results: Participants without exclusion criteria in the project were 273. 79% attended 3 or more workshops and 73.9% attended 3 or more sessions. All FBI parameters improved significantly after the program, with the largest increase in physical activity and the smallest increase in smoking. Total FBI increased by 17.4% (1.5 points), with a higher increase in women (19.6%) than in men (14.0%) and in the youngest group (21.6%). Conclusions: The IPHASAL group program is applicable to the workplace and contributes to improving the cardiovascular risk profile, helping workers to promote change towards healthy lifestyles.N

Towards a fair comparison of statistical and dynamical downscaling in the framework of the EURO-CORDEX initiative

Both statistical and dynamical downscaling methods are well established techniques to bridge the gap between the coarse information produced by global circulation models and the regional-to-local scales required by the climate change Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (IAV) communities. A number of studies have analyzed the relative merits of each technique by inter-comparing their performance in reproducing the observed climate, as given by a number of climatic indices (e.g. mean values, percentiles, spells). However, in this paper we stress that fair comparisons should be based on indices that are not affected by the calibration towards the observed climate used for some of the methods. We focus on precipitation (over continental Spain) and consider the output of eight Regional Climate Models (RCMs) from the EURO-CORDEX initiative at 0.44? resolution and five Statistical Downscaling Methods (SDMs) ?analog resampling, weather typing and generalized linear models? trained using the Spain044 observational gridded dataset on exactly the same RCM grid. The performance of these models is inter-compared in terms of several standard indices ?mean precipitation, 90th percentile on wet days, maximum precipitation amount and maximum number of consecutive dry days? taking into account the parameters involved in the SDM training phase. It is shown, that not only the directly affected indices should be carefully analyzed, but also those indirectly influenced (e.g. percentile-based indices for precipitation) which are more difficult to identify. We also analyze how simple transformations (e.g. linear scaling) could be applied to the outputs of the uncalibrated methods in order to put SDMs and RCMs on equal footing, and thus perform a fairer comparison.We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Regional Climate, and theWorking Group on CoupledModelling, former coordinating body of CORDEX and responsible panel for CMIP5. We also thank the climate modeling groups (listed in Table 1 of this paper) for producing and making available their model output. We also acknowledge the Earth System Grid Federation infrastructure and AEMET and University of Cantabria for the Spain02 dataset (available at http: //www.meteo.unican.es/en/datasets/spain02). All the statistical downscaling experiments have been computed using theMeteoLab software (http://www.meteo.unican.es/software/meteolab), which is an open-source Matlab toolbox for statistical downscaling. This work has been partially supported by CORWES (CGL2010-22158-C02) and EXTREMBLES (CGL2010-21869) projects funded by the Spanish R&D programme. AC thanks the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for the funding provided within the FPI programme (BES-2011-047612 and EEBB-I-13-06354), JMG acknowledges the support from the SPECS project (FP7-ENV-2012-308378) and JF is grateful to the EUPORIAS project (FP7-ENV-2012-308291). We also thank three anonymous referees for their useful comments that helped to improve the original manuscript

Robust projections of Fire Weather Index in the Mediterranean using statistical downscaling

The effect of climate change on wildfires constitutes a serious concern in fire-prone regions with complex fire behavior such as the Mediterranean. The coarse resolution of future climate projections produced by General Circulation Models (GCMs) prevents their direct use in local climate change studies. Statistical downscaling techniques bridge this gap using empirical models that link the synoptic-scale variables from GCMs to the local variables of interest (using e.g. data from meteorological stations). In this paper, we investigate the application of statistical downscaling methods in the context of wildfire research, focusing in the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI), one of the most popular fire danger indices. We target on the Iberian Peninsula and Greece and use historical observations of the FWI meteorological drivers (temperature, humidity, wind and precipitation) in several local stations. In particular, we analyze the performance of the analog method, which is a convenient first choice for this problem since it guarantees physical and spatial consistency of the downscaled variables, regardless of their different statistical properties. First we validate the method in perfect model conditions using ERA-Interim reanalysis data. Overall, not all variables are downscaled with the same accuracy, with the poorest results (with spatially averaged daily correlations below 0.5) obtained for wind, followed by precipitation. Consequently, those FWI components mostly relying on those parameters exhibit the poorest results. However, those deficiencies are compensated in the resulting FWI values due to the overall high performance of temperature and relative humidity. Then, we check the suitability of the method to downscale control projections (20C3M scenario) from a single GCM (the ECHAM5 model) and compute the downscaled future fire danger projections for the transient A1B scenario. In order to detect problems due to non-stationarities related to climate change, we compare the results with those obtained with a Regional Climate Model (RCM) driven by the same GCM. Although both statistical and dynamical projections exhibit a similar pattern of risk increment in the first half of the 21st century, they diverge during the second half of the century. As a conclusion, we advocate caution in the use of projections for this last period, regardless of the regionalization technique applied.We are grateful to the Spanish Meteorological Agency (AEMET) and to the Hellenic National Meteorological Service (HNMS) for providing the observational data used in this study. We would also like to thank Erik van Meijgaard from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute for making available ENSEMBLES RACMO2 climate model output verifying at 12:00 UTC and to the Max Planck Institute for providing the appropriate data for the ECHAM5 model used in this work. This work was partly funded by European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreements 243888 (FUME Project) and from Spanish Ministry MICINN under grant EXTREMBLES (CGL2010-21869). We thank tw

Analysis of KLF transcription factor family gene variants in type 2 diabetes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Krüppel-like factor (<it>KLF</it>) family consists of transcription factors that can activate or repress different genes implicated in processes such as differentiation, development, and cell cycle progression. Moreover, several of these proteins have been implicated in glucose homeostasis, making them candidate genes for involvement in type 2 diabetes (T2D).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Variants of nine <it>KLF </it>genes were genotyped in T2D cases and controls and analysed in a two-stage study. The first case-control set included 365 T2D patients with a strong family history of T2D and 363 normoglycemic individuals and the second set, 750 T2D patients and 741 normoglycemic individuals, all of French origin. The SNPs of six <it>KLF </it>genes were genotyped by Taqman^®SNP Genotyping Assays. The other three <it>KLF </it>genes (KLF2, -15 and -16) were screened and the identified frequent variants of these genes were analysed in the case-control studies.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Three of the 28 SNPs showed a trend to be associated with T2D in our first case-control set (P < 0.10). These SNPs, located in the <it>KLF2, KLF4 </it>and <it>KLF5 </it>gene were then analysed in our second replication set, but analysis of this set and the combined analysis of the three variants in all 2,219 individuals did not show an association with T2D in this French population. As the <it>KLF2</it>, -15 and -16 variants were representative for the genetic variability in these genes, we conclude they do not contribute to genetic susceptibility for T2D.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>It is unlikely that variants in different members of the <it>KLF </it>gene family play a major role in T2D in the French population.</p

A Trivers-Willard Effect in Contemporary Humans: Male-Biased Sex Ratios among Billionaires

BACKGROUND: Natural selection should favour the ability of mothers to adjust the sex ratio of offspring in relation to the offspring's potential reproductive success. In polygynous species, mothers in good condition would be advantaged by giving birth to more sons. While studies on mammals in general provide support for the hypothesis, studies on humans provide particularly inconsistent results, possibly because the assumptions of the model do not apply. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here, we take a subset of humans in very good condition: the Forbe's billionaire list. First, we test if the assumptions of the model apply, and show that mothers leave more grandchildren through their sons than through their daughters. We then show that billionaires have 60% sons, which is significantly different from the general population, consistent with our hypothesis. However, women who themselves are billionaires have fewer sons than women having children with billionaires, suggesting that maternal testosterone does not explain the observed variation. Furthermore, paternal masculinity as indexed by achievement, could not explain the variation, since there was no variation in sex ratio between self-made or inherited billionaires. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Humans in the highest economic bracket leave more grandchildren through sons than through daughters. Therefore, adaptive variation in sex ratios is expected, and human mothers in the highest economic bracket do give birth to more sons, suggesting similar sex ratio manipulation as seen in other mammals

Use of the internet as a source of health information by Spanish adolescents

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Internet is a fundamental part of the daily life of adolescents, they consider it as a safe and confidential source of information on health matters. The aims is to describe the experience of Spanish adolescents searching for health information on the Internet.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross-sectional study of 811 school-age adolescents in Granada was carried out. An adapted and piloted questionnaire was used which was controlled by trained personnel. Sociodemographic and health variables were included together with those concerning the conditions governing access to and use of information and communication technologies (ICT).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>811 adolescents were surveyed (99.38% response rate), mean age was 17 years old. Of these, 88% used the Internet; 57.5% used it on a daily or weekly basis and 38.7% used it occasionally. Nearly half the sample group (55.7%) stated that they used the Internet to search for health-related information. The main problems reported in the search for e-health were the ignorance of good web pages (54.8%) and the lack of confidence or search skills (23.2%).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>In conclusion, it seems plausible to claim that websites designed and managed by health services should have a predominant position among interventions specifically addressed to young people.</p

Early Geometrical Thinking in the Environment of Patterns, Mosaics and Isometries

This book discusses the learning and teaching of geometry, with a special focus on kindergarten and primary education. It examines important new trends and developments in research and practice, and emphasizes theoretical, empirical and developmental issues. Further, it discusses various topics, including curriculum studies and implementation, spatial abilities and geometric reasoning, as well as the psychological roots of geometrical thinking and teacher preparation in geometry education. It considers these issues from historical, epistemological, cognitive semiotic and educational points of view in the context of students' difficulties and the design of teaching and curricula