Estudi per la certificació energètica de l'edifici TR2 del Campus Terrassa-UPC

Aquest treball que es presenta a continuació és el resultat de l’estudi que s’ha dut a terme al llarg de la primera part de l’any 2016 com a motiu del Treball Final de Grau en Tecnologies Industrials realitzat a l’Escola Tècnica Superior d’Enginyeries Industrial i Aeronàutica de Terrassa. En aquest treball s’estudia la certificació energètica monitoritzada a partir de dades monitoritzades i la certificació energètica mitjançant l’ús del programa CE3 X i a partir de dades constructives i les instal·lacions. Aquest últim es dur a terme mitjançant un mètode exhaustiu i un altre simplificat. Seguidament es durà a terme les certificacions esmentades juntament amb un anàlisis i una comparació dels resultats obtinguts. Aquest estudi es basa en l’edifici TR2 del Campus de Terrassa de la UPC i juntament amb dos altres edificis, TR1 i TR3, formen els edificis de l’Escola Universitària d’Enginyeria Tècnica Industrial de Terrassa

Differential induction of apoptosis, interferon signaling, and phagocytosis in macrophages infected with a panel of attenuated and nonattenuated poxviruses

Due to the essential role macrophages play in antiviral immunity, it is important to understand the intracellular and molecular processes that occur in macrophages following infection with various strains of vaccinia virus, particularly those used as vaccine vectors. Similarities as well as differences were found in macrophages infected with different poxvirus strains, particularly at the level of virus-induced apoptosis and the expression of immunomodulatory genes, as determined by microarray analyses. Interestingly, the attenuated modified vaccinia Ankara virus (MVA) was particularly efficient in triggering apoptosis and beta interferon (IFN- ) secretion and in inducing changes in the expression of genes associated with increased activation of innate immunity, setting it apart from the other five vaccinia virus strains tested. Taken together, these results increase our understanding of how these viruses interact with human macrophages, at the cellular and molecular levels, and suggest mechanisms that may underlie their utility as recombinant vaccine vectorsThis work was supported by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Health, FIS2011-00127 (S.G.) and FISPI11/00350 (E.L.-C), and by the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM)-Banco de Santander (S.G.

Chemodiversity of wild populations of aromatic plants as source of valuable essential oil profiles. A study on Thymus vulgaris L. from Valencia (Spain)

[EN] Chemodiversity of wild populations of aromatic plants is a valuable source of essential oils, whose composition may be suitable for specific purposes according their biological activity. Furthermore, knowing the intrapopulational variability based on individual analysis has allowed characterizing atypical profiles, which can reach high levels of active compounds. Obviously, it requires the treatment of a high number of individual samples. In this work, a methodology to characterize T. vulgaris profiles in an area of recognized biodiversity was proposed and applied. After Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) screening data of 85 individual samples, 7 groups, and 13 individuals were classified. Then, 20 samples were subjected to GC/MS and GC/FID analysis, respectively. These data were subjected to Hierarchical Agglomerative, Discriminant Analysis and ANOVA, which finally highlighted five profiles: (1) based on the camphane skeleton (camphene, camphor and borneol), (2) rich in the oxygenated sesquiterpenic fraction, (3) rich in 1,8-cineole, with appreciable amounts of camphor and borneol (typical chemotype from Eastern Iberian Peninsula), (4) camphor and terpinen-4-ol as major compounds, and (5) linalool chemotype. It should be noted that the percentages of the main compounds in these groups were higher than some of those described in the literature for similar chemotypes. In summary, the preliminary screening by TLC, grouping individuals with similar profiles, allowed establishing a quick first approximation to the chemodiversity of T. vulgaris in the studied area. Furthermore, the analysis of unclassified and potentially atypical individuals has also provided valuable information to establish the final profiles.Llorens Molina, JA.; Vacas, S.; Burgals Royo, E.; Santamarina Siurana, MP.; Verdeguer Sancho, MM. (2020). Chemodiversity of wild populations of aromatic plants as source of valuable essential oil profiles. A study on Thymus vulgaris L. from Valencia (Spain). Natural Volatiles and Essential Oils. 7(3):29-50. https://doi.org/10.37929/nveo.722313S29507

A comparative study of treatment interventions for patellar tendinopathy: a secondary cost-effectiveness analysis

Objective: To compare the cost-effectiveness of three patellar tendinopathy treatments. Design: Secondary (cost-effectiveness) analysis of a blinded, randomised controlled trial, with follow-up at 10 and 22 weeks. Settings: Recruitment was performed in sport clubs. The diagnosis and the intervention were carried out at San Jorge University. Participants: The participants were adults between 18 and 45 years (n = 48) with patellar tendinopathy. Interventions: Participants received percutaneous needle electrolysis, dry needling or sham needling, all of which were combined with eccentric exercise. Main outcome measures: Costs, quality-adjusted life years and incremental cost-effectiveness ratio were calculated for each group. Results: The total cost per session was similar in the three groups: €9.46 for the percutaneous needle electrolysis group; €9.44 for the dry needling group; and €8.96 for the sham group. The percutaneous needle electrolysis group presented better cost-effectiveness in terms of quality-adjusted life years and 96% and 93% probability of being cost-effective compared to the sham and dry needling groups, respectively. Conclusion: Our study shows that percutaneous needle electrolysis has a greater probability of being cost-effective than sham or dry needling treatment

Labdane conjugates protect cardiomyocytes from doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity

The cardiovascular side effects associated with doxorubicin (DOX), a wide spectrum anticancer drug, have limited its clinical application. Therefore, to explore novel strategies with cardioprotective effects, a series of new labdane conjugates were prepared (6a-6c and 8a-8d) from the natural diterpene labdanodiol (1). These hybrid compounds contain anti-inflammatory privileged structures such as naphthalimide, naphthoquinone, and furanonaphthoquinone. Biological activity of these conjugates against DOX-induced cardiotoxicity was tested in vitro and the potential molecular mechanisms of protective effects were explored in H9c2 cardiomyocytes. Three compounds 6c, 8a, and 8b significantly improved cardiomyocyte survival, via inhibition of reactive oxygen species-mediated mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling pathways (extracellular signal-regulated kinase and c-Jun N-terminal kinase) and autophagy mediated by Akt activation. Some structure-activity relationships were outlined, and the best activity was achieved with the labdane-furonaphthoquinone conjugate 8a having an N-cyclohexyl substituent. The findings of this study pave the way for further investigations to obtain more compounds with potential cardioprotective activity.This study was supported by Grant RTI2018‐094356‐BC21 from the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MICIU) to A. E.‐B., I. C., L. G.‐C., and B. H.; Grant PI17/00012 and PI20/00018 from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III to S. H. These projects are also cofunded by the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER). A. A. and S. O.‐R. thank the Cabildo de Tenerife (Agustín de Betancourt Program).S

Validation of an autonomous artificial intelligence-based diagnostic system for holistic maculopathy screening in a routine occupational health checkup context

Acord transformatiu CRUE-CSICPurpose: This study aims to evaluate the ability of an autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) system for detection of the most common central retinal pathologies in fundus photography. Methods: Retrospective diagnostic test evaluation on a raw dataset of 5918 images (2839 individuals) evaluated with non-mydriatic cameras during routine occupational health checkups. Three camera models were employed: Optomed Aurora (field of view - FOV 50º, 88% of the dataset), ZEISS VISUSCOUT 100 (FOV 40º, 9%), and Optomed SmartScope M5 (FOV 40º, 3%). Image acquisition took 2 min per patient. Ground truth for each image of the dataset was determined by 2 masked retina specialists, and disagreements were resolved by a 3rd retina specialist. The specific pathologies considered for evaluation were "diabetic retinopathy" (DR), "Age-related macular degeneration" (AMD), "glaucomatous optic neuropathy" (GON), and "Nevus." Images with maculopathy signs that did not match the described taxonomy were classified as "Other." Results: The combination of algorithms to detect any abnormalities had an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.963 with a sensitivity of 92.9% and a specificity of 86.8%. The algorithms individually obtained are as follows: AMD AUC 0.980 (sensitivity 93.8%; specificity 95.7%), DR AUC 0.950 (sensitivity 81.1%; specificity 94.8%), GON AUC 0.889 (sensitivity 53.6% specificity 95.7%), Nevus AUC 0.931 (sensitivity 86.7%; specificity 90.7%). Conclusion: Our holistic AI approach reaches high diagnostic accuracy at simultaneous detection of DR, AMD, and Nevus. The integration of pathology-specific algorithms permits higher sensitivities with minimal impact on its specificity. It also reduces the risk of missing incidental findings. Deep learning may facilitate wider screenings of eye diseases

UPSCALE: Upscaling Sustainable Collaborative Consumption Using Public Libraries

UPSCALE is an international collaboration of universities, research institutes, public libraries, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that explore the preconditions for and possible upscaling of collaborative consumption using public libraries. UPSCALE runs until autumn 2024, and results will be published continuously in journals dealing with library and information studies, climate research, and sustainability. In this research note, we introduce ongoing research from the UPSCALE research group by presenting several case studies that show how public libraries act as change agents in different ways regarding sustainable development. This might be by facilitating, promoting the lending, and sharing alternative collections in the library or by building collaborations, partnerships, and networks with local community actors, NGOs, and other local and national partners

Transparencia y rendición de cuentas en el sector público mediante las nuevas tecnologías

Es un estudio que analiza el nivel de cumplimiento de la Ley de Transparencia (en lo referente a la divulgación de información económico financiera) por parte de los municipios más poblados de las comunidades de Madrid, Andalucía y Cataluña y evaluar a través de análisis comparativos las posibles similitudes y principales diferencias existentes entre los municipios de dichas comunidades

On the barrier-resilience of arrangements of ray-sensors

Given an arrangement A of n sensors and two points s and t in the plane, the barrier resilience of A with respect to s and t is the minimum number of sensors whose removal permits a path from s to t such that the path does not intersect the coverage region of any sensor in A. When the surveillance domain is the entire plane and sensor coverage regions are unit line segments, even with restricted orientations, the problem of determining the barrier resilience is known to be NP-hard. On the other hand, if sensor coverage regions are arbitrary lines, the problem has a trivial linear time solution. In this paper, we give an O(n2m) time algorithm for computing the barrier resilience when each sensor coverage region is an arbitrary ray, where m is the number of sensor intersections.Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canad

Effect of molasses application alone or combined with trichoderma asperellum T-34 on Meloidogyne spp. management and soil microbial activity in organic production systems

The effect of molasses alone or combined with Trichoderma asperellum T34 Biocontrol® was assessed on Meloidogyne reproduction, disease severity, and density and activity of soil microor- ganisms in pot and field experiments. Firstly, molasses application at 1 mL m−2 was assessed in four different textured soils. Secondly, molasses application at 5, 10, 20, and 40 mL m−2, alone or combined with T34, was assessed in pot and field experiments at 10 mL m−2 in two different textured soils. The application of 1 mL m−2 of molasses was effective in reducing nematode reproduction in the loam textured soil but not in sandy clay loam, sandy loam, or clay loam textured soils. Increasing molasses dosage reduced the tomato dry shoot and fresh root weights, producing phytotoxicity at 40 mL m−2. The disease severity and nematode reproduction were reduced between 23% and 65% and 49% and 99%, respectivelyThe authors thank Departament d’Acció Climàtica, Alimentació i Agenda Rural for supporting the projects to encourage applied research on organic agri-food production (53 05004 2016 and 53 05010 2017). The authors also thank the farmers J. Montmany, F. Berenguer, J. Olivella, J. Magrans, and J. M. Mas for their support in conducting the experimentPostprint (published version