Sugar Beet Pulp as Raw Material for the Production of Bioplastics

The production of bioplastics from renewable materials has gained interest in recent years, due to the large accumulation of non-degradable plastic produced in the environment. Here, sugar beet pulp (SBP) is evaluated as a potential raw material for the production of bioplastics such as polylactic acid (PLA) and polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs). SBP is a by-product obtained in the sugar industry after sugar extraction from sugar beet, and it is mainly used for animal feed. It has a varied composition consisting mainly of cellulose, hemicellulose and pectin. Thus, it has been used to produce different value-added products such as methane, hydrogen, pectin, simple sugars, ethanol, lactic acid and succinic acid. This review focuses on the different bioprocesses involved in the production of lactic acid and PHAs, both precursors of bioplastics, from sugars derived from SBP. The review, therefore, describes the pretreatments applied to SBP, the conditions most frequently used for the enzymatic hydrolysis of SBP as well as the fermentation processes to obtain LA and PHAs

Ten years of marine current measurements in Espartel Sill, Strait of Gibraltar

Almost ten year of Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) observations collected at the westernmost sill (Espartel sill) of the Strait of Gibraltar by a monitoring station, first installed in year 2004, have been carefully processed to provide the most updated estimation of the outflow of Mediterranean water through the Strait. A comprehensive quality control of the factors affecting the uncertainty of the measurements has been carried out and a great care has been paid to infer the current at the bottom layer, where direct observations are lacking. The mean outflow in the southern channel of the sill section, where the monitoring station is installed, has been estimated as 0.82 Sv (1 Sv = 1x10^6 m^3/s), with an average contribution of the eddy fluxes of 0.04 Sv. This figure is an overestimation, as the vertical profile at the mooring site was assumed valid for the whole section, thus ignoring the lateral friction. On the other hand, it only gives the flow through the south channel and disregards the fraction flowing through shallower north part. Both drawbacks have been addressed by investigating the crossstrait structure of the outflow from hindcasts produced by the MITgcm numerical model, which was run in a highresolution domain covering the Gulf of Cádiz and Alboran Sea basins. An overall rectifying factor of 1.039 was found satisfactory to correct the first estimate, so that the final mean outflow computed from this dataset is 0.85 Sv, which is complemented with an uncertainty of ±0.03 Sv based on the interannual variability of the series. The time analysis of the series shows an outflow seasonality of around the 8% of the mean value, with maximum outflow in early spring.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

La incidència de l'oferta de serveis educatius públics i privats en la vulnerabilitat i l'exclusió social: el cas de la ciutat de València.

El paper de l'educació en la prevenció de la vulnerabilitat i l'exclusió social és un tema recurrent que han tractat nombrosos autors. En canvi, la relació entre l'exclusió educativa i el territori no ha sigut un tema tan investigat. A més de la qualitat educativa, no és menys important l'existència d'una oferta escolar per a tots els nivells, fàcilment accessible per al jove que desitge millorar les seues possibilitats d'ascens social i les seues perspectives laborals

Análisis de la marcha en adolescentes obesos y no obesos mediante el sistema óptico de captura y análisis de movimiento humano VICON

Las personas que sufren de obesidad durante la niñez y/o adolescencia, tienen mayor probabilidad de padecer esta enfermedad cuando alcanzan la edad adulta. Es por ello que la obesidad se define como una enfermedad crónica. La obesidad provoca limitaciones funcionales que afectan sobre todo a las extremidades inferiores, pudiendo influir negativamente a la biomecánica de las actividades de la vida diaria de una persona que sufre de obesidad, siendo capaz de producirle lesiones. La principal actividad que se realiza en la vida diaria es la locomoción. Además, debido a que una de las estrategias que se les propone como tratamiento a estas personas para reducir su peso y, de esta manera, poder prevenirles posteriores problemas, es caminar, esto puede acentuar las lesiones o provocar otras nuevas. La locomoción implica un complicado proceso biomecánico, lo que justifica la realización de estudios de la marcha. Por ello, y con el objetivo de proporcionar una comprensión más clara de los problemas de movimiento que presentan tanto niños como adultos con obesidad, es de gran ayuda considerar las características de la marcha que muestran estas personas, así como las diferencias respecto a las personas de peso normal. Además, estos estudios podrían ofrecer algunos beneficios en cuanto a la reducción de factores de riesgo, mejorando los regímenes de entrenamiento, la rehabilitación y los programas de prevención de lesiones. La obesidad se puede prevenir en cierta medida puesto que, aunque es en gran parte resultado de la genética de la persona, sí se puede controlar el aumento de peso, modificando principalmente sus hábitos de vida, incitando a las personas desde la niñez a la práctica de deporte de forma regular, entre otras cosas. Objetivos: Los objetivos principales de este trabajo fin de máster (TFM) se exponen a continuación: - Analizar los parametros témporo-espaciales de la marcha en un grupo de adolescentes con obesidad, comparando las variables analogas con un grupo control. - Analizar la cinemática angular del miembro inferior tanto en el mantenimiento de la postura en bipedestacion como durante la marcha, en un grupo de adolescentes con obesidad, comparando las variables analogas con un grupo control. Fases del estudio: En el presente trabajo se va a realizar un estudio piloto de la marcha en adolescentes que sufren obesidad, con las fases siguientes: - Revisión del estado del arte en relacion a la obesidad y la marcha en personas obesas. - Justicación del estudio. Objetivos. - Presentación de los sujetos que participaron en el estudio. - Explicación del funcionamiento del sistema Vicon. - Pasos para la captura de la marcha y obtencion de las variables a analizar - Análisis estadísticos. - Computación de la repetibilidad de las pruebas de marcha para ambos grupos de estudio. - Computación de la simetría entre miembros inferiores durante la marcha. - Comparación de los parámetros de la marcha entre generos, en ambos grupos de estudio. - Comprobación de la validez del grupo control como referencia. - Comparación de los parámetros de la marcha, entre adolescentes obesos y no obesos. -Cálculo de los valores medios y desviaciones estándar de las características descriptivas y parámetros támporo-espaciales para todos los participantes. -Cálculo de los valores medios y desviaciones estándar de los parámetros angulares obtenidos durante la fase de apoyo y representacián gráfica de la trayectoria angular durante dicha fase. Todo ello para la pelvis, cadera, rodilla y tobillo en los tres planos anatomicos de referencia (sagital, frontal y transverso). -Comparación de los parámetros de la marcha, entre adolescentes obesos y no obesos. - Análisis de los resultados obtenidos. Prácticas: Durante la realización del TFM se llevarán a cabo unas prácticas en la empresa Podoactiva ubicada en el Parque Tecnológico de Walqa (Huesca). Dichas prácticas consistirán principalmente en la realización de estudios biomecánicos de la pisada o de la marcha. Estos estudios se realizarán con el objetivo de prevenir lesiones musculares y osteoarticulares o para evaluar la pisada/marcha antes y después de realizar los tratamientos de las patologías. El estudio del apoyo plantar es importante debido a que la forma de pisar puede provocar a largo plazo multitud de lesiones. De forma que el uso de un calzado inadecuado junto con una alimentación incorrecta puede derivar en distintos tipos de dolencias

Conversion of Exhausted Sugar Beet Pulp into Fermentable Sugars from a Biorefinery Approach

In this study, the production of a hydrolysate rich in fermentable sugars, which could be used as a generic microbial culture medium, was carried out by using exhausted sugar beet pulp pellets (ESBPPs) as raw material. For this purpose, the hydrolysis was performed through the direct addition of the fermented ESBPPs obtained by fungal solid-state fermentation (SSF) as an enzyme source. By directly using this fermented solid, the stages for enzyme extraction and purification were avoided. The effects of temperature, fermented to fresh solid ratio, supplementation of fermented ESBPP with commercial cellulase, and the use of high-solid fed-batch enzymatic hydrolysis were studied to obtain the maximum reducing sugar (RS) concentration and productivity. The highest RS concentration and productivity, 127.3 g.L-1 and 24.3 g.L-1.h(-1) respectively, were obtained at 50 degrees C and with an initial supplementation of 2.17 U of Celluclast (R) per gram of dried solid in fed-batch mode. This process was carried out with a liquid to solid ratio of 4.3 mL.g(-1) solid, by adding 15 g of fermented solid and 13.75 g of fresh solid at the beginning of the hydrolysis, and then the same amount of fresh solid 3 times every 2.5 h. By this procedure, ESBPP can be used to produce a generic microbial feedstock, which contains a high concentration of monosaccharides

On the origin of the seasonal and interannual T-S variability of the inflow through the Strait of Gibraltar

During several years of the last decade, the hydrological properties of the Atlantic inflow through the Strait of Gibraltar were monitored at a station located over the Moroccan continental shelf south of Camarinal sill. The station, deployed and maintained by the Centre Oceanologique de Marseille in collaboration with SHOMAR (Morocco) was part of the HydroChanges monitoring network sponsored by the CIESM1 and collected a good quality set hydrological observations at 80 m depth from 2003 to the end of 2008, when the scientific equipment was lost. In an interesting paper, Millot (2007) analyzed the time subseries spanning from 2003 to early 2007 and showed an indisputable seasonal signal in the Atlantic inflow and a trend of the salinity of the Atlantic water that was flowing toward the Mediterranean Sea at the depth of the station. Since the inflowing water comes from the Gulf of Cadiz, any signal detected in the inflow must be present in that area, a fact that has inspired the present work, which makes use of different experimental (ARGO Global Marine Atlas, Altimetry, QuickScat winds, and the whole time series at Camarinal), re-analysis (NCEP-NCAR) and numerical (ECCO model) data to address the topic. The seasonal local signals of temperature and salinity in the Gulf of Cadiz, both of them neatly depicted in the analyzed data, show up different origins. The temperature oscillation is accounted for by the surface heat flux to a very great extent (more than 80%), while the salinity signal is not sensitive to any surface flux at all, but to advective fluxes. ARGO Global MarineI Atlas and ECCO model data strongly suggests that the seasonal fluctuations of the position and extension of the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre are driving the seasonal salinity signal observed in the Gulf of Cadiz, which is later advected into the Mediterranean Sea through the Strait of Gibraltar. The important conclusion to be drawn is that the interannual variations of the seasonal fluctuations of the Gyre will generate short-term trends of the seawater properties observed in the Gulf of Cadiz (intra–decadal variability) and, hence, in the Strait. Actually, the ECCO database indicates that such a short-term trend of the Gyre position to be displaced to the east took place during the same years as the salinity trend in the inflow reported by Millot (2007). Thus the salinification mentioned by this author would have its origin in the large scale dynamics of the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre, since the more to the east the Gyre reaches, the easier will be to find saltier water in the Gulf of Cadiz. To this regard it is worth noting that the trend of the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre to be displaced to the east stopped in year 2007, which coincides with the end of the short-term trend that was being detected by the monitoring station. Millot’s analyses embraced the period from February 2003 to February 2007, which ended before the trend changed, and he could not envisage that change. As far as the salinity of the inflow is a fundamental ingredient of the thermohaline circulation of the Mediterranean Sea, the understanding of the mechanism that causes the interannual variability of the seasonal pattern of the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre would be critical for studies of the interannual variability of the Mediterranean Sea circulation. The issue is currently under study although large scale wind field in the North Atlantic is the most likely candidate.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Valorisation of fungal hydrolysates of exhausted sugar beet pulp for lactic acid production

BACKGROUND Exhausted sugar beet pulp pellets (ESBPP) were used as raw material for lactic acid (LA) fermentation. The enzymatic hydrolysis of ESBPP was performed with the solid obtained after the fungal solid-state fermentation of ESBPP as a source of hydrolytic enzymes. Subsequently, a medium rich in glucose and arabinose was obtained, which was used to produce LA by fermentation. For LA production, two Lactobacillus strains were assayed and the effects of the supplementation of the hydrolysate with a nitrogen source and the mode of pH regulation of the fermentation were investigated. Moreover, a kinetic model for LA fermentation by Lactobacillus plantarum of ESBPP hydrolysates was developed. RESULTS L. plantarum produced a LA concentration 34% higher than that produced by L. casei. The highest LA concentration (30 g L−1) was obtained with L. plantarum when the hydrolysate was supplemented with 5 g L−1 yeast extract and the pH was controlled with CaCO3. The concentration of acetic acid differed depending on the concentration of CaCO3 added, producing its maximum value with 27 g L−1 CaCO3. The proposed kinetic model was able to predict the evolution of substrates and products depending on the variation of the pH in the hydrolysate, according to the amount of CaCO3 added. CONCLUSIONS ESBPP can be valorised to produce LA. A pure LA stream or a mixture of LA and acetic acid, depending on the pH control method of the fermentation, can be produced. Thus, this control is of great interest depending on the destination of the effluent

revisión sistemática de literatura

El desorden neurocognitivo asociado al VIH, se encuentra a menudo en la infección del VIH a pesar del uso de una terapia antiretroviral potente. Éste se clasifica en diferentes subtipos como lo es insuficiencia neurocognitiva leve y asintomática (ANI), el trastorno neurocognitivo menor (MND), hasta llegar a la demencia asociada al VIH (HAND), su estado más severo. Según ONUSIDA, 35 millones de personas que viven con VIH en todo el mundo, tienen riesgo de desarrollar HAND. La prevalencia de los HAND según varios estudios está entre el 20% al 50% a pesar de la HAART

Meckel’s diverticulum as a cause of intestinal obstruction

El divertículo de Meckel es la anomalía congénita más frecuente del tracto gastrointestinal. Ocurre como resultado de una degeneración fibrosa del final umbilical del conducto onfalomesentérico. Normalmente su diagnóstico es incidental, pero aproximadamente en un tercio de los casos produce síntomas debidos a complicación. Una de ellas, es la obstrucción de intestino delgado, que constituye la segunda forma más frecuente de presentación, por lo que el conocimiento de la embriología, anatomía, presentación clínica y sus hallazgos por imagen es de gran importancia para poder realizar un tratamiento quirúrgico adecuado.Meckel’s diverticulum is the commonest congenital anomaly of the gastrointestinal tract. It occurs due to fibrous degeneration of the umbilical end of the omphalomesenteric duct. Its diagnosis is usually incidental, but in approximately a third of cases, it produces symptoms due to complications. One of them is small bowel obstruction, which is the second most frequent form of presentation, so the knowledge of embryology, anatomy, clinical presentation and its imaging findings are important in order to perform a correct surgical treatment