Restauración y conservación del Museo de la Revolución

El Museo de la Revolución, antiguo Palacio Presidencial comenzó a construirse a principios del siglo XX. Con un estilo ecléctico que mezcla diferentes elementos de la arquitectura alemana, francesa y española, emerge frente a la bahía de La Habana. La edificación está catalogada de alto valor patrimonial, tanto por su historia como por sus elementos arquitectónicos, pero debido al paso del tiempo y presentar cierto grado de deterioro, se decide por la máxima dirección del estado cubano, darle un tratamiento de conservación y restauración, con el objetivo de enaltecer y preservar sus valores. Las primeras intervenciones comenzaron en 2005 y actualmente se ejecutan los trabajos de restauración utilizando materiales compatibles con la estructura, respetando todos los elementos de valor y adecuando los espacios a las nuevas tecnologías empleadas, necesarias para el buen funcionamiento de las salas museológicas, zonas administrativas y públicas

The Cyclically Seasonal Drosophila subobscura Inversion O Originated From Fragile Genomic Sites and Relocated Immunity and Metabolic Genes

Chromosome inversions are important contributors to standing genetic variation in Drosophila subobscura. Presently, the species is experiencing a rapid replacement of high-latitude by low-latitude inversions associated with global warming. Yet not all low-latitude inversions are correlated with the ongoing warming trend. This is particularly unexpected in the case of O because it shows a regular seasonal cycle that peaks in summer and rose with a heatwave. The inconsistent behavior of O across components of the ambient temperature suggests that is causally more complex than simply due to temperature alone. In order to understand the dynamics of O, high-quality genomic data are needed to determine both the breakpoints and the genetic content. To fill this gap, here we generated a PacBio long read-based chromosome-scale genome assembly, from a highly homozygous line made isogenic for an O chromosome. Then we isolated the complete continuous sequence of O by conserved synteny analysis with the available reference genome. Main findings include the following: (i) the assembled O inversion stretches 9.936 Mb, containing > 1,000 annotated genes; (ii) O had a complex origin, involving multiple breaks associated with non-B DNA-forming motifs, formation of a microinversion, and ectopic repair in trans with the two homologous chromosomes; (iii) the O breakpoints carry a pre-inversion record of fragility, including a sequence insertion, and transposition with later inverted duplication of an Attacin immunity gene; and (iv) the O inversion relocated the major insulin signaling forkhead box subgroup O (foxo) gene in tight linkage with its antagonistic regulatory partner serine/threonine-protein kinase B (Akt1) and disrupted concerted evolution of the two inverted Attacin duplicates, reattaching them to dFOXO metabolic enhancers. Our findings suggest that O exerts antagonistic pleiotropic effects on reproduction and immunity, setting a framework to understand its relationship with climate change. Furthermore, they are relevant for fragility in genome rearrangement evolution and for current views on the contribution of breakage versus repair in shaping inversion-breakpoint junctions

Erratic overdispersion of three molecular clocks: GPDH, SOD, and XDH

The neutrality theory predicts that the rate of neutral molecular evolution is constant over time, and thus that there is a molecular clock for timing evolutionary events. It has been observed that the variance of the rate of evolution is generally larger than expected according to the neutrality theory, which has raised the question of how reliable the molecular clock is or, indeed, whether there is a molecular clock at all. We have carried out an extensive investigation of three proteins, glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GPDH), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and xanthine dehydrogenase (XDH). We have observed that (i) the three proteins evolve erratically through time and across lineages and (ii) the erratic patterns of acceleration and deceleration differ from locus to locus, so that one locus may evolve faster in one than another lineage, whereas the opposite may be the case for another locus. The observations are inconsistent with the predictions made by various subsidiary hypotheses proposed to account for the overdispersion of the molecular clock.F.R.-T. has received support from the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (Contrato Temporal de Investigación) and Grant AGL2000- 1073 from the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología to A. Ballester. Research was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant GM42397 (to F.J.A.).Peer Reviewe

Analyzing the differences between reads and contigs when performing a taxonomic assignment comparison in metagenomics

Metagenomics is an inherently complex field in which one of the primary goals is to determine the compositional organisms present in an environmental sample. Thereby, diverse tools have been developed that are based on the similarity search results obtained from comparing a set of sequences against a database. However, to achieve this goal there still are affairs to solve such as dealing with genomic variants and detecting repeated sequences that could belong to different species in a mixture of uneven and unknown representation of organisms in a sample. Hence, the question of whether analyzing a sample with reads provides further understanding of the metagenome than with contigs arises. The assembly yields larger genomic fragments but bears the risk of producing chimeric contigs. On the other hand, reads are shorter and therefore their statistical significance is harder to asses, but there is a larger number of them. Consequently, we have developed a workflow to assess and compare the quality of each of these alternatives. Synthetic read datasets beloging to previously identified organisms are generated in order to validate the results. Afterwards, we assemble these into a set of contigs and perform a taxonomic analysis on both datasets. The tools we have developed demonstrate that analyzing with reads provide a more trustworthy representation of the species in a sample than contigs especially in cases that present a high genomic variability.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Workflows and service discovery: a mobile device approach

Bioinformatics has moved from command-line standalone programs to web-service based environments. Such trend has resulted in an enormous amount of online resources which can be hard to find and identify, let alone execute and exploit. Furthermore, these resources are aimed -in general- to solve specific tasks. Usually, this tasks need to be combined in order to achieve the desired results. In this line, finding the appropriate set of tools to build up a workflow to solve a problem with the services available in a repository is itself a complex exercise. Issues such as services discovering, composition and representation appear. On the technological side, mobile devices have experienced an incredible growth in the number of users and technical capabilities. Starting from this reality, in the present paper, we propose a solution for service discovering and workflow generation while distinct approaches of representing workflows in a mobile environment are reviewed and discussed. As a proof of concept, a specific use case has been developed: we have embedded an expanded version of our Magallanes search engine into mORCA, our mobile client for bioinformatics. Such composition delivers a powerful and ubiquitous solution that provides the user with a handy tool for not only generate and represent workflows, but also services, data types, operations and service types discoveryUniversidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Crecimiento de goldish, Carassius auratus, y lechuga, Lactuca sativa, en sistema acuapónico en condiciones de invernadero.

Se evaluó el crecimiento de Carassius auratus “goldfish” y Lactuca sativa “lechuga” en sistema acuapónico grow bed en 178 días. Para el cultivo se utilizó una cubeta de 420 L, dos camas de 1m2 con 20 cm de grava, dos bombas de 1200 L/h, un aireador de 4 L/min y dos sifones. Se empleó 70 ejemplares de C. auratus, alimentados tres veces al día con Truchina al 42%, con una tasa de alimentación del 5%; asimismo para los tres experimentos de L. sativa se emplearon densidades de 12, 15 y 18 lechugas/m2 respectivamente.  Quincenalmente se registraron datos de peso y longitud para los peces y de las lechugas. Se colectó información diaria de temperatura ambiente y del agua, semanalmente se midió el pH, nitritos, nitratos, amonio-amoniaco y dureza de carbonatos. Además la tasa de crecimiento absoluto y relativo (TCA y TCR) fue de 4,95 g y 6,54 cm en los goldfish y para las lechugas, los pesos en el primer experimento fue 62,09 y 63,34 g, el segundo experimento con 94,88 y 110,44 g y el tercer experimento fue 92,96 y 102,46 g. El crecimiento de los peces fue lento, esto posiblemente a la influencia de la temperatura ambiente y al pH; para L. sativa, el mayor crecimiento se obtuvo en la segunda cosecha. Sin embargo, con el análisis de varianza (ANAVA) no se encontró diferencias en el crecimiento en las camas de las lechugas. Palabras clave: Crecimiento, Carassius auratus, Lactuca sativa, sistema acuapónico

Implicancias del nuevo marco legal sobre los roles de la institución educativa, los gobiernos regionales, locales y el Ministerio de Educación

Informe final de consultoríaPresentar los nudos y contradicciones en la distribución de roles y competencias en el marco de los ejes principales del sistema educativo, y como evalúa las implicancias de una estrategia adecuada de transferencia que refleja la diversidad del contexto y que permita avizorar algunas tareas primordiales para el logro de mejores resultados

Comunicación de la ciencia, la tecnología y la innovación: elementos para una conceptualización democratizadora

Se valoran tendencias sobre la conceptualización de la comunicación de la ciencia, la tecnología y la innovación, en un estudio teórico, cualitativo, desde la interpretación hermenéutica. Se muestran enfoques y conceptos que intentan explicar este tipo de comunicación y reflejan la fragmentación del pensamiento acerca de este fenómeno, lo cual se explica por su carácter emergente. El objetivo general es analizar algunos enfoques y conceptos sobre la comunicación de la ciencia, la tecnología y la innovación, dado el carácter polisémico de este concepto emergente. Se comparte con Jorge Huergo (2001) el abordaje de la comunicación, no entendida solamente en su dimensión mediática, sino como proceso que se hace comprensible en relación con la cultura, y por ello, se trata de la construcción de significados compartidos. Se identifica en el trabajo la diferencia en cuanto a la comunicación de la ciencia de la tecnología y la innovación, asumida como divulgación de la ciencia; la concepción que la relaciona con los niveles de comunicación propuestos por Martín Serrano, y permite ubicarla en el nivel mediático, y finalmente, se analiza la concepción dialógica y democrática concebida en el modelo de Freyre (1973), al cual se adhieren las autoras.Ibero-American Science and Technology Education Consortiu

Towards improving the sustainability of bioplastics: Process modelling and life cycle assessment of two separation routes for 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid

Within the framework of an economy excessively dependent on fossil resources, the concept of sustainable development, aimed at obtaining environmentally friendly consumer goods, has given rise to the development of biorefineries. These facilities are based on the production of biofuels and platform chemicals from the most abundant raw material on the planet: biomass. The use of biomass such as wood or lignocellulosic residues makes it possible to seize opportunities offered by the implementation of renewable feedstocks, which in many cases can be embedded within the perspective of circular economy, through the exploitation of residual fractions. Among the multiple basic chemicals that can be obtained from biomass, 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA) has a great potential, as it is the precursor of poly(ethylene furanoate) (PEF) polymer, which is considered a feasible substitute for poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET). The purpose of this study is the simulation and environmental analysis of two separation routes for FDCA production with the objective of identifying the environmental hotspots at an early stage of the process design. The present study addresses the modelling of FDCA production from hydroxymethyl furfural (HMF) by heterogeneous catalysis using commercial Aspen Plus® V9 software. Two different downstream separation options resulting in purified FDCA were simulated: crystallization (Scenario A) and distillation (Scenario B). The estimation of the mass and energy balances were considered in the development of the data inventories required to conduct Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA-assisted decision making identifies the conceptual configuration that would eventually lead to the least environmental burden. In the case of Scenario A, the stage with the highest environmental burden was the reaction unit, due to the use of HMF. In Scenario B, on the other hand, the separation stages contributed most to the impact due to their high energy demand. The combination of process simulation and LCA allowed acquiring a detailed vision of the process, through the analysis of the sensitivity of the environmental profile to different process parameters. The operating pressure in flash and distillation units for both scenarios affects plant operation by influencing total energy consumption and FDCA production. The sensitivity of environmental outcomes to these parameters was also studied, resulting in small variations. Thus, the results of this assessment provide strategic information of the early decision-making process on potential configurations for industrial-scale FDCA productionThis research was supported by EnzOx2 BBI JU-Project [grant agreement No 720297]. The authors belong to the Galician Competitive Research Group GRC ED431C 2017/29 and to the CRETUS Strategic Partnership [ED431E 2018/01]. All these programs are co-funded by FEDER (EU)S