Strengthening financial innovations in energy supply projects for rural exploitations in developing countries

Sustainable energy supply models are needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals established by the United Nations for 2015. On the other hand, sustainability of agricultural exploitations in rural areas is a pre-requisite to achieve the objective of halving the proportion of people that lives in poverty, and productivity of such exploitations is closely related to energy supply. This article analyses the results of a survey of experts, suggesting that there may be good chances to innovate in the financing of agricultural electrification projects in developing countries. The experts’ opinion suggests that new sources of financing could be mobilised and oriented towards the promotion of sustainable initiatives in developing countries. Financial mechanisms should be adapted to the characteristics of decentralised systems of energy production with renewable sources or with mixed technologies, in order to overcome the barriers derived from the high initial price of the applications, and to the specific conditions of the agricultural sector. The participation of funds from the beneficiaries and the incorporation of the beneficiaries in the initial phases of project organisation would allow for the development of productive solutions with a higher potential to generate resources and to articulate sustainable proposals. r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

The ubiquitous royal collections museum. VR? Real Virtuality

[EN] A picture of the upper hall of the Royal Collections Museum gives rise to an interesting reflection on what is virtual and what is real. With the setting of the winter sun, the orange reflections come through the openings and suggest it could be the work of a conceptual artist. Two exhibitions: “Without beginning / without end” by Ignasi Aballi and “Meeting” by James Turrell are compared with the “virtual concrete hall (sala de hormigón virtual) to find out whether such unreal work could be considered architecture and if it could hold the keys of the 21st century paradigm.[ES] Una fotografía de la sala superior del Museo de las Colecciones Reales da pie a una curiosa disertación acerca de lo virtual y lo real. El reflejo anaranjado que emula el hormigón cuando el sol de poniente se filtra en invierno a través de los vanos, sugiere la hipótesis de ser obra de un artista conceptual contemporáneo. Dos exposiciones: “Sin principio sin final” de Ignasi Aballí y “Meeting” de James Turrell son confrontadas con la “sala de hormigón virtual” del museo para averiguar si dicha obra no-real puede ser considerada arquitectura, y si el museo pertenece o no al s. XXI.Cantero García-Moncó, M. (2017). El museo ubicuo de las colecciones reales. ¿VR? Virtualidad Real. EN BLANCO. Revista de Arquitectura. 9(22):98-102. doi:10.4995/eb.2017.7089.SWORD98102922ABALLÍ, Ignasi y FERNANDES, Joao. Sin principio/sin final. Catalogue. Madrid: MNCARS Department of Publishing Activities, 2015. ISBN: 978-84-8026-529-4.Hernández SÁNCHEZ, Domingo. La ironía estética: estética romántica y arte moderno. Salamanca: Ed. Universidad de Salamanca, 2003. ISBN 9788478007523.Rodríguez IBÁÑEZ, Margarita. De cómo la Red ha cambiado el arte. Madrid: Trea, 2012. 334 p. ISBN: 978-84-9704-633-6.WAJCMAN, Gérard. El objeto del siglo. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu, 2001. ISBN: 978950518712

An estimate of necessary effort in the development of software projects

International Workshop on Intelligent Technologies for Software Engineering (WITSE'04). 19th IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (Linz, Austria, September 20th - 25th, 2004)The estimated of the effort in the development of software projects has already been studied in the field of software engineering. For this purpose different ways of measurement such as Unes of code and function points, generally addressed to relate software size with project cost (effort) have been used. In this work we are presenting a research project that deals with this field, us'mg machine learning techniques to predict the software project cost. Several public set of data are used. The analysed sets of data only relate the effort invested in the development of software projects and the size of the resultant code. For this reason, we can say that the data used are poor. Despite that, the results obtained are good, because they improve the ones obtained in previous analyses. In order to get results closer to reality we should find data sets of a bigger size that take into account more variables, thus offering more possibilities to obtain solutions in a more efficient way.Publicad

Monitoring resistance of Cydia pomonella (L.) Spanish field populations to new chemical insecticides and the mechanisms involved

BACKGROUND: A widespread resistance of Cydia pomonella to organophosphates was demonstrated in populations from the Spanish Ebro Valley area that showed high levels of enzymatic detoxification. To determine the efficacy of new insecticides, neonate larvae bioassays were carried out on twenty field codling moth populations collected from three different Spanish apple production areas. Synergist bioassays were performed to detect the enzymatic mechanisms involved. RESULTS: The least active ingredients were methoxyfenozide, with 100% of the populations showing significantly lower mortality than the susceptible strain, and lambda-cyhalothrin, with very high resistant ratios (872.0 for the most resistant field population). Approximately 50% of the populations were resistant or tolerant to thiacloprid. By contrast, tebufenozide was very effective in all the field populations, as was chlorpyrifos-ethyl despite its widespread use during the last few years. Indoxacarb, spinosad and chlorantraniliprole also provided high efficacy, as did emamectin and spinetoram, which are not yet registered in Spain. CONCLUSION: The resistant Spanish codling moth populations can be controlled using new reduced-risk insecticides. The use of synergists showed the importance of the concentration applied and the difficulty of interpreting the results in field populations that show multiple resistance to different active ingredients.The authors would like to express their sincere thanks to the fruit growers who gave us access to their orchards and to the grower advisors of the areas (plant defense area technicians), who helped identify the best orchards for the assays, and Mònica Pérez for her technical help. This study was partially supported by grants AGL2013-49164 and AGL2016-77373 of the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation and by the CERCA Programme / Generalitat de Catalunya

Anti-Trypanosoma cruzi action of a new benzofuran derivative based on amiodarone structure

Chagas disease is a neglected tropical affection caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. There is no current effective treatment since the only two available drugs have a limited efficacy and produce side effects. Thus, investigation efforts have been directed to the identification of new drug leads. In this context, Ca2+ regulating mechanisms have been postulated as targets for antiparasitic compounds, since they present paramount differences when compared to host cells. Amiodarone is an antiarrhythmic with demonstrated trypanocidal activity acting through the disruption of the parasite intracellular Ca2+ homeostasis. We now report the effect of a benzofuran derivative based on the structure of amiodarone on T. cruzi. This derivative was able to inhibit the growth of epimastigotes in culture and of amastigotes inside infected cells, the clinically relevant phase. We also show that this compound, similarly to amiodarone, disrupts Ca2+ homeostasis in T. cruzi epimastigotes, via two organelles involved in the intracellular Ca2+ regulation and the bioenergetics of the parasite. We demonstrate that the benzofuran derivative was able to totally collapse the membrane potential of the unique giant mitochondrion of the parasite and simultaneously produced the alkalinization of the acidocalcisomes. Both effects are evidenced by a large increase in the intracellular Ca2+ concentration of T. cruzi.Fil: Pinto Martinez, Andrea. instituto de Estudios Avanzados; VenezuelaFil: Hernández Rodríguez, Vanessa. instituto de Estudios Avanzados; VenezuelaFil: Rodríguez Durán, Jessica Jenireth. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; Argentina. instituto de Estudios Avanzados; VenezuelaFil: Hejchman, Elżbieta. Medical University of Warsaw; PoloniaFil: Benaim, Gustavo. Universidad Central de Venezuela; Venezuel

Conocimiento profesional del profesor de ciencias al abordar cuestiones sociocientíficas : un estudio de caso de un grupo de investigación en la interacción universidad-escuela

El Conocimiento Profesional del Profesor (CPP) como conocimiento personal es un elemento fundante que permite la promoción de políticas de formación y desarrollo profesional de los profesores, especialmente cuando se desea a través de los mismos reivindicar el trabajo docente, fomentar el trabajo en equipo, restablecer la interacción universidad–escuela, incentivar el rol del docente como investigador e intelectual reflexivo, favorecer la formación ciudadana y el pensamiento crítico. El presente trabajo muestra los resultados de un proyecto de formación de docentes de diferentes áreas, de un colegio de educación nocturna interesados en el abordaje de cuestiones sociocientíficas (CSC) y la consolidación de un pequeño grupo de investigación (PGI) de docentes en un trabajo colaborativo entre la universidad y la escuela posibilitando al maestro un CPP deseable