Improved wear performance of ultra high molecular weight polyethylene coated with hydrogenated diamond like carbon

Hydrogenated diamond like carbon (DLCH) thin films were deposited on medical grade ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) by radio frequency plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The DLCH coating thicknesses ranged from 250 to 700. nm. The substrates were disks made of UHMWPEs typically used for soft components in artificial joints, namely virgin GUR 1050 and highly crosslinked (gamma irradiated in air to 100. kGy) UHMWPEs. Mechanical and tribological properties under bovine serum lubrication at body temperature were assessed on coated and uncoated polyethylenes by means of nano-hardness and ball-on-disk tests, respectively. Morphological features of the worn surfaces were obtained by confocal microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. This study confirms an increase in surface hardness and good wear resistance for coated materials after 24. h of sliding test compared to uncoated polyethylene. These results point out that to coat UHMWPE with DLCH films could be a potential method to reduce backside wear in total hip and knee arthroplasties.Ministerio de Ciencia y Educación MAT2006-12603- C02-01, CSD2008-0002

Preface. Palaeodiversity and Palaeoecology of Iberian Ecosystems. New insights into the Phanaerozoic biotas from Spain and Portugal

Preface. Palaeodiversity and Palaeoecology of Iberian Ecosystems. New insights into the Phanaerozoic biotas from Spain and Portuga

Sports Teaching, Traditional Games, and Understanding in Physical Education: A Tale of Two Stories

Unlike Dickens’s novel, this is not a tale of light and darkness, order and chaos, good and evil…It is, though, a story worth to be told about two standpoints about games and sports, teaching and research, physical education simply put, that have pursued similar interests on parallel tracks for too long, despite their apparent closeness and shared cultural grounds. The objective of this conceptual analysis is to try and reconcile two perspectives, namely motor praxeology and teaching games for understanding (TGfU), born in the last third of the XX century in France and England with the intention to rethink the foundations of physical education (PE) and sports teaching. Pierre Parlebas, from the French side of the English Channel, claimed in 1967 that sports make part of PE, that team sports must be considered from a specific, sociomotor point of view, and that motor conducts (i.e., the significative organisation of motor behaviour), not sports techniques, are the corner-stone of PE and sports coaching. In the early 1980s, from the English side of La Manche, Almond, Thorpe, and Bunker made a plea for a shift in the way to teach games (sporting collective duels mostly), deeply concerned by the negative impact of the traditional technics-centred approach on motivation, competence and attained level of the least able in school situations. Our conclusion is that TGfU, or game-based approaches to sports coaching and teaching, can take great advantage of the motor-praxeological rationale for three reasons: firstly, because concepts like understanding, game sense and action principles are operatively, semiotically linked to the reality of the playing process; secondly, because the inner structures of the games that constrain players and guide their motor conducts, permit to integrate games in the general system of sporting games, no matter their level of institutionalisation; finally, because any motor intervention process is better thought of and more systematically developed upon the operational concepts of internal logic and expected practical effects of game playing. This time, Paris could be the place to go to in search of solutions, not the city to run away from in hope of consolation.

QUIJOTE Scientific Results. II. Polarisation Measurements of the Microwave Emission in the Galactic molecular complexes W43 and W47 and supernova remnant W44

We present Q-U-I JOint TEnerife (QUIJOTE) intensity and polarisation maps at 10-20 GHz covering a region along the Galactic plane 24<l<45 deg, |b|<8 deg. These maps result from 210 h of data, have a sensitivity in polarisation of ~40 muK/beam and an angular resolution of ~1 deg. Our intensity data are crucial to confirm the presence of anomalous microwave emission (AME) towards the two molecular complexes W43 (22 sigma) and W47 (8 sigma). We also detect at high significance (6 sigma) AME associated with W44, the first clear detection of this emission towards a SNR. The new QUIJOTE polarisation data, in combination with WMAP, are essential to: i) Determine the spectral index of the synchrotron emission in W44, beta_sync =-0.62 +/-0.03, in good agreement with the value inferred from the intensity spectrum once a free-free component is included in the fit. ii) Trace the change in the polarisation angle associated with Faraday rotation in the direction of W44 with rotation measure -404 +/- 49 rad/m2. And iii) set upper limits on the polarisation of W43 of Pi_AME <0.39 per cent (95 per cent C.L.) from QUIJOTE 17~GHz, and <0.22 per cent from WMAP 41 GHz data, which are the most stringent constraints ever obtained on the polarisation fraction of the AME. For typical physical conditions (grain temperature and magnetic field strengths), and in the case of perfect alignment between the grains and the magnetic field, the models of electric or magnetic dipole emissions predict higher polarisation fractions.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA

Costs Associated with Malaria in Pregnancy in the Brazilian Amazon, a Low Endemic Area Where Plasmodium vivax Predominates.

BACKGROUND: Information on costs associated with malaria in pregnancy (MiP) in low transmission areas where Plasmodium vivax predominates is so far missing. This study estimates health system and patient costs of MiP in the Brazilian Amazon. METHODS/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Between January 2011 and March 2012 patient costs for the treatment of MiP were collected through an exit survey at a tertiary referral hospital and at a primary health care centre in the Manaus metropolitan area, Amazonas state. Pregnant and post-partum women diagnosed with malaria were interviewed after an outpatient consultation or at discharge after admission. Seventy-three interviews were included in the analysis. Ninety-six percent of episodes were due to P. vivax and 4% to Plasmodium falciparum. In 2010, the total median costs from the patient perspective were estimated at US $45.91 and US$216.29 for an outpatient consultation and an admission, respectively. When multiple P. vivax infections during the same pregnancy were considered, patient costs increased up to US $335.85, representing the costs of an admission plus an outpatient consultation. Provider direct and overhead cost data were obtained from several sources. The provider cost associated with an outpatient case, which includes several consultations at the tertiary hospital was US$103.51 for a P. vivax malaria episode and US $83.59 for a P. falciparum malaria episode. The cost of an inpatient day and average admission of 3 days was US$118.51 and US $355.53, respectively. Total provider costs for the diagnosis and treatment of all malaria cases reported in pregnant women in Manaus in 2010 (N = 364) were US$17,038.50, of which 92.4% (US$ 15,741.14) due to P. vivax infection. CONCLUSION: Despite being an area of low risk malaria transmission, MiP is responsible for a significant economic burden in Manaus. Especially when multiple infections are considered, costs associated with P. vivax are higher than costs associated with P. falciparum. The information generated may help health policy decisions for the current control and future elimination of malaria in the area

Continuous dynamic assimilation of the inner region data in hydrodynamics modelling: optimization approach

In meteorological and oceanological studies the classical approach for finding the numerical solution of the regional model consists in formulating and solving a Cauchy-Dirichlet problem. The boundary conditions are obtained by linear interpolation of coarse-grid data provided by a global model. Errors in boundary conditions due to interpolation may cause large deviations from the correct regional solution. The methods developed to reduce these errors deal with continuous dynamic assimilation of known global data available inside the regional domain. One of the approaches of this assimilation procedure performs a nudging of large-scale components of regional model solution to large-scale global data components by introducing relaxation forcing terms into the regional model equations. As a result, the obtained solution is not a valid numerical solution to the original regional model. Another approach is the use a four-dimensional variational data assimilation procedure which is free from the above-mentioned shortcoming. In this work we formulate the joint problem of finding the regional model solution and data assimilation as a PDE-constrained optimization problem. Three simple model examples (ODE Burgers equation, Rossby-Oboukhov equation, Korteweg-de Vries equation) are considered in this paper. Numerical experiments indicate that the optimization approach can significantly improve the precision of the regional solution

In-season training periodization of professional soccer players

The aim of this study was to quantify the seasonal perceived respiratory and muscular training loads (i.e., sRPEres-TL and sRPEmus-TL) completed by elite-oriented young professional soccer players. Twenty four players (20.3 +/- 2.0 years) belonging to the same reserve team of a Spanish La Liga club participated in this study. Only the players that were available to train for a whole week with the team and also to play the weekly game were considered: Starters, players that participated in the match for at least 45 min and NonStarters, players that did not participate or played less than 45 minutes in the match. The competitive period was analysed after the division into 5x6-8 week blocks and 35x1 week microcycles. Data were also analysed with respect to number of days before the immediate match. Weekly TL variation across the in-season blocks was trivial-small for both groups except between Block 2 and Block 3 (ES= moderate). Substantial TL differences (ES= small-very likely) were found between training days, the TL pattern being a progressive increase up to MD-3 followed by a decrease until MD-1. Except for the match, sRPEres-/sRPEmus-TL was very similar between Starters and Non-Starters. In summary, perceived TL across the season displayed limited variation. Coaches periodized training contents to attain the highest weekly TL 72 hours before the match to progressively unload the players between MD-3 and the match day. The data revealed that the TL arising from the weekly game was solely responsible for the observed higher weekly TL of Starters in comparison with Non-Starters

Caracterización de las ganaderías de vacuno de carne en la zona de la Cooperativa Andaluza Ganadera del Valle de los Pedroches

publishedTomo I. Sección: Sistemas Ganaderos - Economía y Gestión. Sesión: Vacuno carne

Characterisation of electrical power systems based on electrical curves and their properties

[Abstract]: Due to the proliferation of renewable energy systems, the study of voltage and frequency stability is a crucial aspect. Recently, this problem has been approached from a purely geometrical point of view with interesting results. The present work investigates the properties of the so-called electrical curves described by arbitrary voltage or current vectors in Euclidean spaces. Through the invariants of these curves, certain indices can be constructed to detect abnormal operation or irregular characteristics in electrical power systems. Different scenarios and examples have been solved in this work to support the proposed theory