Wind loads analysis at the anchorages of the Talavera de la Reina cable stayed bridge

This paper describes wind tunnel tests performed on wind tunnel models of the Talavera de la Reina cable stayed bridge. The work describes the aeroelastic model construction and it is focused on the evaluation and analysis of the mean and peak wind loads at the tower foundation and the cable anchorages since these data can be very useful by the bridge manufacturer as a support for the bridge design. The work is part of a complete wind tunnel study carried out to analyze the aeroelastic stability of the bridge

The Effect of a Nature-Based Environmental Education Program on Children's Environmental Attitudes and Behaviors: A Randomized Experiment with Primary Schools

The evidence about the effects of nature-based instruction on pro-environmentalism is uncompelling, mainly due to a lack of controlled experiments. This hinders causal claims and the provision of intervention guidelines. We present an experiment examining the impact of a nature-based environmental education (NBEE) program included in the school curriculum on children's environmental attitudes (EA) and behaviors (EB). Children who followed the program through traditional instruction were used as a control group. Seven Spanish primary schools participated in the program and school classes were randomly assigned to the NBEE program (experimental group, N= 516) or the environmental education (EE) through traditional instruction (control group, N= 218). Our results indicate that children's EA increased more in the NBEE group than in the control group. On average, EB remained virtually the same in both groups of children across time. In light of our findings, we encourage the promotion of a nature-based pedagogy in formal education to enhance children's environmental attitudes

The Physiopathology of T- Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia: Focus on Molecular Aspects

T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia/lymphoma is an aggressive hematological neoplasm whose classification is still based on immunophenotypic findings. Frontline treatment encompass high intensity combination chemotherapy with good overall survival; however, relapsing/refractory patients have very limited options. In the last years, the understanding of molecular physiopathology of this disease, lead to the identification of a subset of patients with peculiar genetic profile, namely \u201cearly T-cell precursors\u201d lymphoblastic leukemia, characterized by dismal outcome and indication to frontline allogeneic bone marrow transplant. In general, the most common mutations occur in the NOTCH1/FBXW7 pathway (60% of adult patients), with a positive prognostic impact. Other pathogenic steps encompass transcriptional deregulation of oncogenes/oncosuppressors, cell cycle deregulation, kinase signaling (including IL7R-JAK-STAT pathway, PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway, RAS/MAPK signaling pathway, ABL1 signaling pathway), epigenetic deregulation, ribosomal dysfunction, and altered expression of oncogenic miRNAs or long non-coding RNA. The insight in the genomic landscape of the disease paves the way to the use of novel targeted drugs that might improve the outcome, particularly in relapse/refractory patients. In this review, we analyse available literature on T-ALL pathogenesis, focusing on molecular aspects of clinical, prognostic, and therapeutic significance

Phase transition and critical behaviour of the d=3 Gross-Neveu model

A second order phase transition for the three dimensional Gross-Neveu model is established for one fermion species N=1. This transition breaks a paritylike discrete symmetry. It constitutes its peculiar universality class with critical exponent \nu = 0.63 and scalar and fermionic anomalous dimension \eta_\sigma = 0.31 and \eta_\psi = 0.11, respectively. We also compute critical exponents for other N. Our results are based on exact renormalization group equations.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure; v4 corresponds to the published articl

Soil organic matter humification under different tillage managements evaluated by Laser Induced Fluorescence (LIF) and C/N ratio

AbstractIn this work is presented the use of the C/N ratio and the Laser Induced Fluorescence (LIF) spectroscopy for determining the humification of soil organic matter (SOM) in an Oxisol under three different long-term tillage managements (no-tillage (NT), reduced tillage (RT) and conventional tillage (CT)). Humification of SOM was evaluated in the soil and its fractions (clay<2μm, silt 2–20μm, sand 20–1000μm). The obtained results show that lower SOM humification was observed in soil under NT, mainly at the surface (0–5cm). In CT, SOM humification values maintained constant for all investigated depths (0–5, 5–10, 10–15 and 15–20cm). Also, clay was the soil fraction that exhibited the lesser humification of SOM. Based on the obtained results it can be said that NT favors the accumulation of SOM on its surface, increasing aggregate stability and presenting samples with lower humification indexes. These results indicate a larger availability of nutrients for the plants in this management

Characterization of oil shale residue and rejects from irati formation by electron paramagnetic resonance

In this study, sedimentary organic matter of oil shale rejects, calschist, shale fine and the so called retorted shale from Irati formation was characterized. EPR was used to analyse the samples regarding loss of signal in g = 2.003 associated to the organic free radical with the calcined samples and washing with hydrogen peroxide. The radical signal was detected in all samples, however, for the calschist and shale fine samples another signal was identified at g = 2.000 which disappeared when the sample was heated at 400 ºC. Hydrogen peroxide washing was also performed and it was noted that after washing the signal appeared around g = 2.000 for all samples, including retorted shale, which might be due to the quartz E1 defect

Suscetibilidade da Bacia do Rio Bengalas a deslizamentos de terra

Landslides have frequently occurred in last years, due to the disorderly grownth of the cities and the occupation of risk areas by the poor population, causing social, environmental and economic impacts. Urban areas in expansion move to geologically unstable areas and topographically inclined, such as the Basin of River Bengalas, located in the city of Nova Friburgo, mountainous region of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This article aims to present the model survey to assess the susceptibility of the Basin of River Bengalas to landslides, which in january 2011, with the occurrence of heavy rains, caused landslides that impacted in the death of 429 people in city of Nova Friburgo. For the case study, several investigations have been made related to the areas of the basin, such as slope, soil conditions, lithology, land use and cover, vertical and horizontal curvatures. With this study it was possible to understand how the natural and anthropics elements of the basin are related to the local dynamics of the disasters regarding to their interferences in the induction of landslides, thus enabling improved public management of the Municipality regarding the use and division of land, from the identification of areas Basin of River Bengalas susceptible to landslides

Predictive ability of the Mini Nutritional Assessment Short Form (MNA-SF) in a free-living elderly population: a cross-sectional study

[EN] Background. Various scales have been used to perform a quick and first level nutritional assessment, and the MNA is one of the most used and recommended by experts in the elderly in all areas. This scale has a short form, the MNA-SF, revised and validated in 2009, which has two versions: the BMI-MNA-SF contains the first six items of the full scale including Body Mass Index while the CC-MNA-SF includes Calf Circumference instead of BMI. Objective. To evaluate the predictive ability for nutritional status of the two versions of the MNA-SF against the MNA in free-living elderly in the province of Valencia. Methods. Cross-sectional study of 660 free-living elderly in the province of Valencia selected in 12 community centres using stratified sampling by blocks. Inclusion criteria: being aged 65 or over, living at home, having functional autonomy, residing in the province of study for more than one year, regularly attending community centres and voluntarily wanting to take part. Results. Of the 660 subjects studied, 319 were men (48.3%) and 341 (51.7%) women with a mean age of 74.3 years (SD = 6.6). In terms of nutritional assessment, using the BMI-MNA-SF and the CC-MNA-SF we found that 26.5% and 26.2% were at risk of malnutrition and 0.9% and 1.5% were malnourished respectively. With the full MNA, 23.3% were at risk of malnutrition. Spearman's rank correlation coefficients indicate a high association between the full MNA score and the MNA-SFs scores (BMI-MNA-SF: rho = 0.78 p < 0.001; CC-MNA-SF: rho = 0.78 p < 0.001). In addition we obtained a very high correlation between the two MNA-SFs (rho = 0.96 p < 0.001). We evaluated the agreement between the full MNA and the MNA-SFs classification in three nutritional categories (normal nutritional status, risk of malnutrition, malnutrition) with Cohen's kappa coefficients (BMI-MNA-SF: kappa = 0.54 p < 0.001; CC-MNA-SF: kappa = 0.52 p < 0.001). These values indicate moderate agreement with the full MNA. There is very good agreement between the BMI-MNA-SF and CC-MNA-SF (rho = 0.88 p < 0.001). In order to determine the ability of both MNA-SFs to identify subjects not requiring any nutritional intervention, we considered the dichotomised categorisation of the full MNA and the MNA-SFs as "normal nutritional status'' vs. "malnutrition and risk of malnutrition'' Areas under the ROC curves using MNA as the gold standard indicate moderately high prognostic accuracy (BMI-MNA-SF: AUC = 0.88 p < 0.001; CC-MNA-SF: AUC = 0.87 p < 0.001). Both versions of the MNA-SF showed similar sensitivity, specificity and diagnostic effectiveness (BMI-MNA-SF: 73.4%, 86.6%, 83.5%; CC-MNA-SF 73.4%, 86.2%, 83.2%). Conclusions. In its two versions the MNA-SF presents useful predictive ability against the MNA. The advantage of the CC-MNA-SF is that using it requires fewer resources and less time in primary care, although always the characteristics of the population must take into account to make the right decision based on the MNA-SF scales.Montejano Lozoya, R.; Martínez Alzamora, MN.; Clemente Marín, G.; Guirao-Goris, SJ.; Ferrer Diego, RM. (2017). Predictive ability of the Mini Nutritional Assessment Short Form (MNA-SF) in a free-living elderly population: a cross-sectional study. PeerJ. 5(e3345):1-17. doi:10.7717/peerj.3345S1175e334

Almost all trees are almost graceful

The Graceful Tree Conjecture of Rosa from 1967 asserts that the vertices of each tree T of order n can be injectively labeled by using the numbers {1,2,…,n} in such a way that the absolute differences induced on the edges are pairwise distinct. We prove the following relaxation of the conjecture for each γ>0 and for all n>n 0(γ). Suppose that (i) the maximum degree of T is bounded by (Formula presented.)), and (ii) the vertex labels are chosen from the set {1,2,…,⌈(1+γ)n⌉}. Then there is an injective labeling of V(T) such that the absolute differences on the edges are pairwise distinct. In particular, asymptotically almost all trees on n vertices admit such a labeling. The proof proceeds by showing that a certain very natural randomized algorithm produces a desired labeling with high probability