Metales pesados en especies cinegéticas de caza mayor: estudio epidemiológico y riesgo alimentario

1. - Introducción o motivación de la tesis. Las especies cinegéticas son un eslabón importante en la transferencia de contaminantes ambientales, incluidos los metales pesados, desde el medio natural donde viven. Con el tiempo pueden acumular parte de estos contaminantes y representar, a largo plazo, un riesgo potencial para la salud pública como consecuencia del consumo de su carne y productos cárnicos (Andrée y cols. 2010), lo que supone, actualmente, una gran preocupación para las autoridades sanitarias competentes. Por la falta de datos, la preocupación por la seguridad alimentaria y la salud pública y el papel que España, y más concretamente Andalucía, representan desde el punto de vista cinegético, este trabajo de investigación se ha planteado como objetivos: estudiar la presencia de metales pesados en especies cinegéticas de caza mayor (ciervo y jabalí); estimar la influencia de factores de riesgo determinantes en la acumulación de metales en estas especies cinegéticas, y valorar el riesgo sanitario para la salud pública que supone el consumo de este tipo de carne, específicamente entre los cazadores y su entorno familiar. 2.- Contenido de la investigación. Se muestrearon 101 ciervos y 107 jabalíes procedente de animales abatidos en cacerías organizadas en 21 acotados de cuatro áreas geográficas diferenciadas de Sierra Morena (Córdoba) donde la caza mayor adquiere una gran importancia (Alto Guadalquivir; Pedroches; Alto Guadiato y Vega del Guadalquivir). Los animales fueron diferenciados por sexos y edades en base a características morfológicas y dentarias indicados por Sáenz de Buruaga y cols., (2001)...1. Introduction or motivation of the thesis. The hunting species are an important link in the transfer of environmental pollutants, included the heavy metals, from the natural way where they live. With the time they can accumulate part of these pollutants and represent, in the long term, a potential risk for the public health as consequence of the consumption of his meat and meat products (Andrée and cols. 2010), which supposes, nowadays, a great worry for the sanitary competent authorities. For the lack of information, the worry for the safety of the food and the public health, and the relevancy that Spain, and more concretely Andalusia, they represent from the hunting point of view, this work of investigation has appeared as aims: to study the presence of heavy metals in big game hunting species (deer and wild boar); to estimate the influence of determinant risk factors of metal accumulation in these species, and to value the risk for the public health that supposes the consumption of this type of meat, specifically between the hunters and his familiar environment. 2.-Content of the investigation. 101 deer and 107 wild boars were sampled from animals brought down in hunts organized in four geographical areas separated from Sierra Morena (Cordova) where the big game hunting acquires a great importance (Alto Guadalquivir; Pedroches; Alto Guadiato y Vega del Guadalquivir). The animals were differentiated by sexes and ages on the basis of morphologic and teeth characteristics indicated by Sáenz de Buruaga and cols., (2001)..

Value Chain: From iDMU to Shopfloor Documentation of Aeronautical Assemblies

Competition in the aerospace manufacturing companies has led them to continuously improve the efficiency of their processes from the conceptual phase to the start of production and during operation phase, providing services to clients. PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) is an end-to-end business solution which aims to provide an environment of information about the product and related processes available to the whole enterprise throughout the product’s lifecycle. Airbus designs and industrializes aircrafts using Concurrent Engineering methods since decades. The introduction of new PLM methods, procedures and tools, and the need to improve processes efficiency and reduce time-to-market, led Airbus to pursue the Collaborative Engineering method. Processes efficiency is also impacted by the variety of systems existing within Airbus. Interoperability rises as a solution to eliminate inefficiencies due to information exchange and transformations and it also provides a way to discover and reuse existing information. The ARIADNE project (Value chain: from iDMU to shopfloor documentation of aeronautical assemblies) was launched to support the industrialization process of an aerostructure by implementing the industrial Digital Mock-Up (iDMU) concept in a Collaborative Engineering framework. Interoperability becomes an important research workpackage in ARIADNE to exploit and reuse the information contained in the iDMU and to create the shop floor documentation. This paper presents the context, the conceptual approach, the methodology adopted and preliminary results of the project

Architecture, design and source code comparison of ns-2 and ns-3 network simulators

Ns-2 and its successor ns-3 are discrete-event simulators. Ns- 3 is still under development, but offers some interesting characteristics for developers while ns-2 still has a big user base. This paper remarks current differences between both tools from developers point of view. Leaving performance and resources consumption aside, technical issues described in the present paper might help to choose one or another alternative depending of simulation and project management requirements.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2006-15617-C03-03Junta de Andalucía P06-TIC-229

Worker’s physical fatigue classification using neural networks

Physical fatigue is not only an indication of the user’s physical condition and/or need for sleep or rest, but can also be a significant symptom of various diseases. This fatigue affects the performance of workers in jobs that involve some continuous physical activity, and is the cause of a large proportion of accidents at work. The physical fatigue is commonly measured by the perceived exertion (RPE). Many previous studies have attempted to continuously monitor workers in order to detect the level of fatigue and prevent these accidents, but most have used invasive sensors that are difficult to place and prevent the worker from performing their tasks correctly. Other works use activity measurement sensors such as accelerometers, but the large amount of information obtained is difficult to analyse in order to extract the characteristics of each fatigue state. In this work, we use a dataset that contains data from inertial sensors of several workers performing various activities during their working day, labelled every 10 min based on their level of fatigue using questionnaires and the Borg fatigue scale. Applying Machine Learning techniques, we design, develop and test a system based on a neural network capable of classifying the variation of fatigue caused by the physical activity collected every 10 min; for this purpose, a feature extraction is performed after the time decomposition done with the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). The results show that the proposed system has an accuracy higher than 92% for all the cases, being viable for its application in the proposed scenario.European Commission (EC). Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER)Consejería de Economía, Conocimiento, Empresas y Universidad (Junta de Andalucía) US-126371

Analysis of source code metrics from ns-2 and ns-3 network simulators

Ns-2 and its successor ns-3 are discrete-event simulators which are closely related to each other as they share common background, concepts and similar aims. Ns-3 is still under development, but it offers some interesting characteristics for developers while ns-2 still has a large user base. While other studies have compared different network simulators, focusing on performance measurements, in this paper we adopted a different approach by focusing on technical characteristics and using software metrics to obtain useful conclusions. We chose ns-2 and ns-3 for our case study because of the popularity of the former in research and the increasing use of the latter. This reflects the current situation where ns-3 has emerged as a viable alternative to ns-2 due to its features and design. The paper assesses the current state of both projects and their respective evolution supported by the measurements obtained from a broad set of software metrics. By considering other qualitative characteristics we obtained a summary of technical features of both simulators including, architectural design, software dependencies or documentation policies.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TEC2009-10639-C04-0

Smart Footwear Insole for Recognition of Foot Pronation and Supination Using Neural Networks

Abnormal foot postures during gait are common sources of pain and pathologies of the lower limbs. Measurements of foot plantar pressures in both dynamic and static conditions can detect these abnormal foot postures and prevent possible pathologies. In this work, a plantar pressure measurement system is developed to identify areas with higher or lower pressure load. This system is composed of an embedded system placed in the insole and a user application. The instrumented insole consists of a low-power microcontroller, seven pressure sensors and a low-energy bluetooth module. The user application receives and shows the insole pressure information in real-time and, finally, provides information about the foot posture. In order to identify the different pressure states and obtain the final information of the study with greater accuracy, a Deep Learning neural network system has been integrated into the user application. The neural network can be trained using a stored dataset in order to obtain the classification results in real-time. Results prove that this system provides an accuracy over 90% using a training dataset of 3000+ steps from 6 different users.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2016-77785-

Comparative Effects of Organic and Conventional Cropping Systems on Trace Elements Contents in Vegetable Brassicaceae: Risk Assessment

Genotypes selected from 3 plant species (Brassica rapa, Eruca vesicaria and Sinapis alba) belonging to the Brassicaceae family were chosen to compare the concentrations of 9 inorganic elements (Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Ni, Mn, Pb and Zn) in these varieties, that were grown under both conventional and organic conditions during two agricultural seasons (2018/2019 and 2019/2020) on two different experimental farms (Farm I and Farm II). We found that, together with agriculture practices, the inorganic element concentrations in Brassicas depended on many other factors, including soil characteristics. However, there were no conclusive results indicating a lower heavy metal content or a higher nutritionally beneficial trace elements content in vegetables grown under organic agriculture. Finally, a probabilistic assessment (@Risk) derived from the consumption of 150–200 g of these vegetables showed that organic Brassicas fulfill in comparison with the conventional ones, similar Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) percentages for Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn and Zn. Regarding heavy metals (Cd, Ni and Pb), we only found slight differences (mainly in the case of Pb) in the Tolerable Intakes (TI) between both cropping systems

La carne de caza es segura

El riesgo toxicológico por plomo derivado del consumo de carnes de caza es tolerable, recomendándose potenciar el consumo de este tipo de carnes por la población general

Application-transparent integration of simulation tools in a WSN development environment

The use of simulation tools in the development of new Wireless Sensor Networks protocols and applications should be accompanied by minimisation of redundant code and work, making it possible to seamlessly run the same code on simulated and real platforms. This work proposes an architecture for a WSN testing platform that integrates simulation tools in an application-transparent way. The platform will be focused on testing the WSN sink node and providing it with both real and simulated data. The novelty of this approach lies in the use of a flexible network simulation tool not focused on a specific network technology, and the use of generic hardware and open source tools.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TEC2009-10639-C04-0