Age of plant influences the effect of salinity in yield and mineral content of ice plant

The use of salinity-tolerant plants represents a response to the problem of the expansion of salinized soils, making coastal and salt-affected areas productive. Furthermore, limited fresh water resources may increasingly constrain the use of low-quality irrigation water. Therefore, intensified use of halotolerant crop plants will be necessary. Mesembryanthemum crystallinum is a salinity-tolerant plant widely distributed and currently with a great gastronomic interest because is considered a functional food. The objective of this work was to evaluate the differential effect of a moderate salinity treatment imposed in ice plants of 40 or 55 days after transplanting. Thus, M. crystallinum of 40 and 55 days were grown under 0 and 100 mM NaCl during two weeks. The results showed that the effect of salinity depended of the age of plants. Growth parameters as shoot biomass or shoot height decreased in plants of 40 days after transplanting (DAT) subjected to salinity while no differences were found in 55 DAT plants. Also, salinity improved important yield parameters as leaf fresh mass and area when the treatment was applied in 55 DAT plants and caused higher SLA and chlorophylls content in both groups of plants. Ice plant can be intentionally cultivated 55 DAT under moderate salinity conditions to enhance crop yield which could contribute to a more extensive use of its edible leaves as functional and alternative food

Implementación de la producción de lechuga glacial (Mesembryanthemum crystallinum L.) bajo condiciones semicontroladas

Ice plant (Mesembryanthemum crystallinum L.) is regarded as a drought and saline stress-tolerant plant with many biological properties, and especially valued in gourmet cuisine. The objective of this work was to find an optimum plant cultivation mode to produce edible parts under greenhouse conditions. Three soilless media were evaluated: peat, vermiculite and hydroponic culture. Peat pot culture yielded reduced biomass. Vermiculite and hydroponics, however, led optimum M. crystallinum growth. Plants grown in vermiculite and irrigated with nutrient solution presented a significantly higher yield. In fact, vermiculite-grown plants presented enhanced leaf area and leaf fresh weight as well as high foliar N, Mg, Mn, Fe, Na, chlorophyll and carotenoid concentrations. To conclude, greater succulence and Na concentration in edible parts of the vermiculite-grown glacier lettuce can offer consumers a more interesting taste, consistency and improved nutrient contents.La lechuga glacial (Mesembryanthemum crystallinum L.) muestra tolerancia a los estreses salino e hídrico, y posee diversas actividades biológicas que han permitido su revalorización como planta comestible en la alta cocina. El objetivo del presente trabajo fue evaluar el óptimo modo de cultivo para la producción de hojas de M. crystallinum bajo condiciones de invernadero. Para ello, se compararon tres formas de cultivo sin suelo: turba, vermiculita y cultivo hidropónico. El crecimiento en maceta con turba no resultó ser adecuado para la lechuga glacial, provocando una baja producción de biomasa. Sin embargo, tanto el cultivo en vermiculita como hidropónico permitieron un óptimo crecimiento de M. crystallinum, mostrando una producción significativamente superior las plantas crecidas en vermiculita mediante riego con solución nutritiva. La lechuga glacial desarrollada en vermiculita incrementó su área y materia fresca foliar, junto con elevadas concentraciones de N, Mg, Mn, Fe, Na, clorofilas y carotenoides en hojas. Además, el aumento de la suculencia y la concentración de Na en las partes comestibles de las plantas cultivadas en vermiculita pueden ofrecer un sabor, consistencia y contenido en nutrientes de mayor interés para el consumidor.This work was financed by the Valencian Community, Spain (GV/2018/068)

Only low saline conditions benefited yield and quality of iceplant grown in pot culture

Mesembryanthemum crystallinum L. or iceplant is an annual facultative halophyte adapted to extreme environmental conditions, as salinity. This characteristic has special importance in the Mediterranean region, where the drought conditions entail the most important problems of soil and water salinity. Furthermore, there is currently a great gastronomic interest for this plant due to its soft texture, fresh and salty taste, high content of water and beneficial compounds for health. Therefore, the objective of this work was to establish the optimal salt growth conditions for pot cultivation of iceplant in greenhouse. Thus, the effect of different salinity levels (0, 100, 200 and 300 mM NaCl) under controlled conditions was evaluated. Severe salinity treatments reduced crop production. However, results showed that the 100 mM NaCl treatment benefited plant growth. This treatment showed greater leaf fresh weight and area, pigment content and maintained its root and shoot biomass similar to control values. In addition, compared to control plants, salinity increased the specific leaf area and leaf relative water content, reduced leaf starch and K concentrations. Therefore, results confirm that iceplant pot culture can be strategically perform under low salinity conditions with an enhancement or maintenance of crop yield and quality.This work was financed by the Valencian Community – Spain (GV/2018/068)

Eutanasia en la clínica de pequeños animales : una visión ética contrastada : análisis y consideraciones éticas y legales en la eutanasia de pequeños animales /

Treball presentat a l'assignatura de Deontologia i Veterinària Legal (21223

Modelo para análisis y conceptualización de sistemas inteligentes para control de procesos industriales en tiempo real

Resumen En la actualidad, las plantas de procesos industriales hacen uso de los Sistemas de Control Distribuido como consecuencia de la evolución de la denominada Teoría de Control. Estos sistemas consisten en una estructura piramidal con distintos niveles de control (instrumentación, Control Básico, Control Avanzado, etc.). Para el correcto funcionamiento e integración de estos niveles de control, y apoyándose en ellos, se encuentra el Control Supervisor en la parte más alta de la pirámide. Este es actualmente desempeñado por el personal de la planta. La operación diaria y los parámetros estratégicos fundamentales tales como la productividad, calidad o seguridad, dependen totalmente de las actuaciones llevadas a cabo mediante esta tarea inteligente. Por ello, en los últimos años se ha focalizado el desarrollo informático en la construcción de sistemas para ayuda al personal de la planta en sus decisiones y actuaciones. En particular, y debido principalmente tanto a la naturaleza de la información existente (conocimiento heurístico, modelos cualitativos/cuantitativos, etc.) como al tipo de tareas que deben desempeñar estos sistemas, las técnicas de Inteligencia Artificial han cobrado gran protagonismo en la ayuda y asistencia al Control Inteligente. Sin embargo, la gran mayoría de las aproximaciones basadas en Inteligencia Artificial que se han implementado como complemento o sustitución de las actuaciones de control realizadas por humanos, presentan varias carencias. En primer lugar, abordan el problema desde el punto de vista de la técnica que utilizan, intentando adaptar ésta al problema, lo que supone en definitiva no aportar soluciones reales. En segundo lugar, presentan una visión parcial de la situación global. En este sentido, el Control Inteligente es efectivo debido a la estructura jerárquica humana establecida en las plantas. Esta estructura, que está compuesta por las capas estratégica, táctica y operational, según la definición presentada en este trabajo, se mantienen gracias a la clara separación de las tareas acometidas y del tipo de situaciones resueltas por cada uno de sus componentes. Las aplicaciones informáticas actuales normalmente abordan una sola de estas capas de control sin tener en cuenta las relaciones o los efectos producidos por las demás. Finalmente, los sistemas desarrollados no son generales. Se han realizado para resolver un conjunto de problemas específicos de una planta industrial determinada, sin aportar una solución genérica ni definir una aproximación metodológica asociada, que permita guiar futuros desarrollos. Con el fin de ofrecer una alternativa eficaz a las carencias mencionadas anteriormente, este trabajo propone un modelo para análisis y diseño de sistemas inteligentes para control de procesos industriales. Este modelo consta, en primer lugar, de un Marco Conceptual que aporta los conceptos y herramientas necesarias para la formalización de las tareas realizadas en las capas inteligentes de la jerarquía de control. En segundo lugar, propone un Procedimiento que se apoya en las bases ofrecidas por el Marco Conceptual cuyo fin es proporcionar un método general para la construcción de sistemas inteligentes para control de procesos industriales mediante la integración de distintas técnicas heterogéneas de Inteligencia Artificial. Este método cubre las fases de definición, análisis, adquisición del conocimiento, conceptualización y representación del mismo durante el desarrollo del sistema. Abstract As a consequence of continuing improvements in the Control Theory, industrial processing plants today are increasingly designing and installing distributed control systems. These systems have a pyramidical structure with distinct regimes of control at each level (instrumentation, basic control, advanced control, etc.). A supervisor control at the apex of the pyramid is responsible for the correct functioning and integration of lower tiers. The supervisory control is currently carried through by human personnel and thus the daily operation of the plant and the achievement of strategic objectives (such as levels of production, quality or safety) ultimately still depends on the actions and decisions of the plant staff. As a result, over the last few years, interest in information science has focussed on the construction of intelligent control systems that assist in the decision-making process and enable control actions to be initiated and carried out smoothly. Due to the nature of the data (heuristic knowledge, quantitative/qualitative models, etc.) and the tasks to be performed, the techniques of Artificial Intelligence have been especially favoured in the field. However, the majority of approaches based on Artificial Intelligence show characteristic deficiencies as complements to human partners in the control structure. Firstly, they tend to address the problem from the perspective of a preferred technique, trying to adapt the problem to fit. This has led to a lack of solutions to the real problems. Secondly, each typically embraces only a partial view of the situation. On this reckoning, intelligent control may currently only be effective because of the human component in the established control hierarchies. However, a hierarchical control structure composed of strategic, tactical and operational layers (according to the nomenclature presented in this thesis) is maintained because of the clear clustering of plant-specific tasks and problems into one or another of these classifications. But, thirdly, present-day artificial intelligence-based control systems usually have a coverage limited to just one of these layers and do not take into account dependencies and effects produced in the others. Finally, the systems that have been developed are not generic and do not follow any identifiable design methodology. They have typically been constructed to solve a specific set of problems in a specific plant and do not contribute a generic framework or methodological approach on which the development of succeeding systems may be based. This thesis sets out a model for the analysis and design of intelligent systems for industrial process control and aims at offering an effective solution to the deficiencies of current-day control systems mentioned above. The model consists of a core Conceptual Model plus a design Procedure. The conceptual model defines the concepts and tools that formalize and process the tasks to be carried out by the intelligent layers in a control hierarchy. The procedure, which is based on the conceptual model, provides a general method for constructing intelligent systems for process control via the integration of heterogeneous artificial intelligence technologies. The method covers the phases of definition, analysis, knowledge acquisition, conceptualization and knowledge representation that are recognized to take place during the development of a system

Haur-gazte literaturako genero estereotipoen eragina Iparraldeko curriculumean

459 p.Doktorego tesi honek euskal haur gazte literaturako estereotipoak aztertzen ditu Queer ikuspegi bateanoinarrituz. Alde batetik euskal testuliburuetako pertsonaiak ikertuak dira, bestalde euskal eleberri corpusbatekoak.Ikerketa mamitzeko, emaitzak, frantses lurraldeko testuliburu eta eleberri batzuekin konparatua da.Helburua genero estereotipoak ez direla euskal kulturari mugatzen baizik eta mendebaldeko kulturanorokortua den ezaugarria dela frogatzea da. En mettant en relation deux corpus littéraires de deux cultures différentes, nous pourrons remarquer quele sexisme est intégré dans notre quotidien et que la culture basque partage ces codes avec le mondecapitaliste. Lan honen helburua, curriculumak bideratzen dituen oinarriak Ipar Euskal Herriko euskarako klaseetanargitzea da. Orduan, euskarako irakasleak, ikasleak eta corpuseko idazleekin elkarrizketak egin dira.Honen bidez, EHGL-ko aktore nagusiak identifikatuak izan dira.Curriculumak bideratzen dituen baloreak sexistak eta estereotipatuak direla azpimarratzeko xedea d

Sensitivity of quinoa cv. ‘Titicaca’ to low salinity conditions

Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Will.) is an annual herbaceous Andean plant. In recent years there is a growing interest on it due to its high quality as food, its wide adaptation to agroecological conditions and resistance to different abiotic stresses. In this work, we evaluate the growth pattern of quinoa plants cv. ‘Titicaca’, subjected to different levels of salinity, focusing on leaf production and nutrient content. In this sense, the results have shown that a high concentration of salinity negatively affects the growth of quinoa plants. In fact, plants grown with 200 mM NaCl reduced the photosynthetic rate and levels of chlorophylls and carotenoids in comparison with the rest of the treatments. Likewise, it has been proven how the progressive increase in salinity has negative effects on transpiration, stomatal conductance and photosynthetic rate, with significant subsequent reductions in shoot biomass, leaf area and nutrient adquisition, but without a decline in leaf dry weight (DW) production. However, the treatment of 200 mM NaCl demonstrated the best results regarding the water-use efficiency, as well as the number of saline glands. According to our results, the quinoa plant cv. ‘Titicaca’ seems to be tolerant to moderate concentrations of salinity (50–100 mM NaCl). This study could serve as a reference on this little known and cultivated species in the Mediterranean region, since it could become an alternative crop in areas with moderate salinity problems.Luna Morcillo was supported by the Spanish MICINN (PTA2019-018094). CEAM Foundation was funded by the Generalitat Valenciana

SIVIM – das Online-Datenbank-System zur Vegetation der iberischen Halbinsel und der Makaronesischen Inseln

SIVIM (Sistema de Información de la Vegetación Ibérica y Macaronésica) is an information system designed for capturing, hosting, editing, analyzing and outputting georeferenced plot data of Iberian and Macaronesian vegetation. It currently hosts 86,000 relevés, mainly from the northern half of the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands, and will grow to 100,000 relevés in the near future. SIVIM has been conceived to offer direct and free on-line access to relevés, tables, as well as to floristic, syntaxonomical and bibliographical records. The system also offers on-line software for edition and analysis of vegetation data. The main characteristics of SIVIM are presented, and its particular technical solutions to typical data banking problems as well as its future objectives are briefly commented.SIVIM ist ein Informationssystem, mit welchem georeferenzierte Daten zur iberischen und makaronesischen Vegetation erfasst, gehostet, editiert, analysiert und ausgegeben werden können. Momentan umfasst das System 86.000 Aufnahmen. In naher Zukunft soll die Anzahl der Aufnahmen auf 100.000 steigen, hauptsächlich durch Daten aus dem Norden der Iberischen Halbinsel und von den Balearen. SIVIM wurde initiiert, um einen direkten, freien Online-Zugang zu Vegetationsaufnahmen, Vegetationstabellen, sowie zu floristischen, syntaxonomischen und bibliographischen Daten anzubieten. Außerdem bietet es Online-Software, um Vegetationsdaten zu editieren und zu analysieren. Dieser Beitrag gibt eine Übersicht über die wesentlichen Eigenschaften von SIVIM und erläutert die implementierten technischen Lösungen typischer Datenbankprobleme sowie die zukünftigen Ziele