Social Preferences for Management of Rural Forests in the Iberian Atlantic Region

This article presents results from an experiment into attribute perception and relevant levels for management of woodland and mountain areas typical of the Iberian Peninsula's Atlantic region. The aim, which the authors argue has been robustly reached, was to identify those aspects of forestry policy clearly perceived by citizens. This is useful for defining enlargement of areas protected under Natura 2000 Network. Results show clear preference for an increase in woodland to over half the current surface area, with replanting of traditional trees, in woodlands of low density and trees of different age and, preferably in irregular shaped plots.Landscape preference, Visual quality, Non-market goods, Preference models, Economic valuation, Landscape Management, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Platform Workers in Europe Evidence from the COLLEEM Survey

The recent surge of digital labour platforms has led to new forms of work organisation and tasks distribution across the workforce. This has raised several questions about the functioning and the benefits deriving from the reorganisation of work that those platforms entail and the associated risks. The European Commission assessed online platforms in a May 2016 communication, focusing on both their innovation opportunities and regulatory challenges. In June 2016 the Commission also adopted its European Agenda for the Collaborative Economy, which clarified the concept and provided some guidance on the employment status of platform workers and the EU definition of worker. The European Pillar of Social Rights aims to address some of the policy challenges associated to new forms of employment, including platform work. As accompanying initiatives, the Commission presented in December 2017 a proposal for a new Directive on transparent and predictable working conditions, and in March 2018 a proposal for a Council Recommendation on access to social protection for workers and the self-employed. A crucial issue in designing the policy response to the emergence of digital labour platforms is the lack of reliable evidence. In 2017, the JRC conducted the COLLEEM pilot survey , an initial attempt to provide quantitative evidence on platform work, responding to calls by the European Council and the European Parliament. The survey provides a basis for an initial estimation of platform work in 14 Member States . How many platform workers are there in Europe? The COLLEEM survey contains a direct measure of service provision via platforms by the respondents in 14 EU Member States. It asks whether the respondent has ever gained income from different online sources, among which there are two corresponding to labour service platforms: "providing services via online platforms, where you and the client are matched digitally, payment is conducted digitally via the platform and the work is location-independent, web-based" and "providing services via online platforms, where you and the client are matched digitally, and the payment is conducted digitally via the platform, but work is performed on-location". Estimates indicate that on average 10% of the adult population has ever used online platforms for the provision of some type of labour services. However, less than 8% do this kind of work with some frequency, and less than 6% spend a significant amount of time on it (at least 10 hours per week) or earn a significant amount of income (at least 25% of the total). Main platform workers are defined as those who earn 50% or more of their income via platforms and/or work via platforms more than 20 hours a week. They account for about 2% of the adult population on average. There are significant differences across countries: the UK has the highest incidence of platform work. Other countries with high relative values are Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Italy. By contrast, Finland, Sweden, France, Hungary and Slovakia show very low values compared to the rest. Who are the platform workers? The typical European platform worker is a young male, educated to a degree level. The proportion of women decreases as the intensity of platform work increases. There is, however, substantial heterogeneity across countries. The fact that most platform workers are highly educated is not surprising given that to be able to provide services via platform one needs to be a savvy internet user, and internet use tends to be correlated with higher education. Despite conventional wisdom, a typical platform worker is likely to have a family and kids. Furthermore, regardless of age, platform workers tend to have fewer years of labour market experience than the average worker. Employment status of platform workers The employment status of platform workers is a controversial issue and one of the most relevant from a policy perspective. Estimates from the COLLEEM survey reveal that when asked about their current employment situation, 75.7 % of the platform workers claimed to be an employee (68.1%) or self-employed (7.6%). A first possibility is that platform workers also have a regular job as employees or self-employed (in a more traditional sense) and are therefore covered by standard employment legislation. A second possibility is that platform workers are not really sure of their employment status and may see themselves as employees, only because they provide a certain type of service with regularity through the same platform. This is surprising because in most cases the providers of labour services via platforms are formally independent contractors rather than employees, but it also reflects the uncertainty surrounding this issue in policy and even legal debates around Europe. In short, the labour market status of platform workers remains unclear, even to themselves. Interviewed platform workers declared themselves to be self-employed (as main or side job) in 54% of the cases, while a large minority (38 %) claim to be an employee. What types of services are provided and coordinated via labour platforms? Labour services provided by digital labour platforms can be broadly distinguished as services performed digitally (i.e. micro tasks, clerical and data entry, etc.) or services performed on-location (i.e. transport, delivery, housekeeping, etc.). On average half of the overall platform workers perform both digital and on-location services. According to the level of skills required by different services we can distinguish between: i) professional services (high skills); ii) non-professionals services (medium skills) and iii) on-location services (low skills). The majority of platform workers provide more than one type of services, and are active on two or more platforms, often combining high- and low skilled activities, suggesting that some platform workers may be reducing income risk (and possibly increasing variety in work). The most common labour service provided is 'online clerical and data entry'. However, the largest proportion of platform workers provides professional services. Gender also influences the type of services provided: 'software development' and 'transport' are the most male dominated services. By contrast, 'translation' and 'on-location services' are the mostly female dominated ones. The market for digital services is global and this may lead to some specialisation on services provided for some countries. The majority of the services do not show much variety across countries; however some country patterns could be identified. Slovakia and Croatia appear to specialise in services that require a low-medium level of education. Romania is amongst the top countries for the provision of non-professionals services The Netherlands mostly provides services that require high digital skills such as software and interactive. One third of platform workers have a mismatch between the lower-skilled tasks they perform and their high level of education/skills. What are the motivations and conditions of platform work? Flexibility and autonomy are frequently mentioned motivations for platform work, but these results should be interpreted cautiously: the lack of alternatives is also mentioned as an important motive for working on platforms. The conditions of platform work are more polarised than those of regular workers. Working conditions for platform workers appear to be flexible, but also intense. Platform work can be arduous and, for some workers, involving long hours. Key policy implications The implications of digital labour platforms for work and employment are ambivalent. On the one hand, they can lower the entry barriers to the labour market, facilitate work participation through better matching procedures and ease the working conditions of specific groups (i.e. workers with strong family responsibilities, people with disabilities or health conditions, youth, people not in education, employment or training – NEETs -, older workers, long-term unemployed, people with a migrant background). On the other hand, digital labour platforms typically rely on a workforce of independent contractors whose conditions of employment, representation and social protection are at best unclear, at worst clearly unfavourable. The status of platform workers is probably the most complex policy issue at stake. The actual nature of the employment relationship is nebulous in most cases. This is particularly problematic because employment status is key for access to social security, training entitlements and coverage by legislation on working conditions. Therefore the need for a clarification of the employment status of platform workers appears obvious. The findings presented in this report suggest an emerging phenomenon of increasing importance but still modest in size. If platform work remains significant but small in the future, a two-pronged policy response is likely to suffice, focusing on (i) fully grasping its job creation and innovation opportunities and (ii) adjusting existing labour market institutions and welfare systems to the new reality and mitigating its potentially negative consequences for working careers and working conditions. Examples of this are the proposal for a directive on transparent and predictable working conditions, and the proposal for a Council Recommendation on access to social protection for workers and the self-employed in the social fairness package adopted by the Commission on 13 March 2018 as well as the targeted legislative measures adopted by some countries. However, if platform work continues to grow in size and importance to become a more significant reality in our labour markets, or if some of the key features of platform work spread across other forms of employment as already seem to be happening in some cases, policy interventions may need to be of a more ambitious nature. Indeed, a scenario of general "platformisation" of labour markets and working conditions would require a profound rethinking of labour market institutions and welfare systems. Furthermore, a scenario in which there would be a significant increase in the provision of digitally performed platform work - people providing professional and non-professional labour services from their own places of origin - might lead to more opportunities for people to provide professional and non-professional labour services from their own places of origin – on-location services excluded - through a digital single market. A serious challenge in this scenario is the increased exposure of workers to global competition. From the regulatory point of view, the categories catering for the specificities of platform workers might be in need for a review. In a labour market with more unstable working careers, a wider use of schemes based on personal accounts for workers' entitlements might be required. From the social protection point of view, progress towards insurance models not based on employment status could be necessary.JRC.B.4-Human Capital and Employmen

KinMutRF: a random forest classifier of sequence variants in the human protein kinase superfamily

Background: The association between aberrant signal processing by protein kinases and human diseases such as cancer was established long time ago. However, understanding the link between sequence variants in the protein kinase superfamily and the mechanistic complex traits at the molecular level remains challenging: cells tolerate most genomic alterations and only a minor fraction disrupt molecular function sufficiently and drive disease. Results: KinMutRF is a novel random-forest method to automatically identify pathogenic variants in human kinases. Twenty six decision trees implemented as a random forest ponder a battery of features that characterize the variants: a) at the gene level, including membership to a Kinbase group and Gene Ontology terms; b) at the PFAM domain level; and c) at the residue level, the types of amino acids involved, changes in biochemical properties, functional annotations from UniProt, Phospho.ELM and FireDB. KinMutRF identifies disease-associated variants satisfactorily (Acc: 0.88, Prec:0.82, Rec:0.75, F-score:0.78, MCC:0.68) when trained and cross-validated with the 3689 human kinase variants from UniProt that have been annotated as neutral or pathogenic. All unclassified variants were excluded from the training set. Furthermore, KinMutRF is discussed with respect to two independent kinase-specific sets of mutations no included in the training and testing, Kin-Driver (643 variants) and Pon-BTK (1495 variants). Moreover, we provide predictions for the 848 protein kinase variants in UniProt that remained unclassified. A public implementation of KinMutRF, including documentation and examples, is available online (http://kinmut2.bioinfo.cnio.es). The source code for local installation is released under a GPL version 3 license, and can be downloaded from https://github.com/Rbbt-Workflows/KinMut2. Conclusions: KinMutRF is capable of classifying kinase variation with good performance. Predictions by KinMutRF compare favorably in a benchmark with other state-of-the-art methods (i.e. SIFT, Polyphen-2, MutationAssesor, MutationTaster, LRT, CADD, FATHMM, and VEST). Kinase-specific features rank as the most elucidatory in terms of information gain and are likely the improvement in prediction performance. This advocates for the development of family-specific classifiers able to exploit the discriminatory power of features unique to individual protein families

Actividades curriculares en necesidades educativas especiales de sujetos disléxicos

años con dificultades en la lectura. La intervención tuvo lugar en el centro escolar durante las sesiones  de audición y lenguaje. Se le ha realizado una evaluación inicial en la que se determinó la necesidad de aplicar un programa en el que se trabajase la conciencia fonológica y la discriminación visual espacial. 

Covalently Labeled Fluorescent Exosomes for In Vitro and In Vivo Applications.

The vertiginous increase in the use of extracellular vesicles and especially exosomes for therapeutic applications highlights the necessity of advanced techniques for gaining a deeper knowledge of their pharmacological properties. Herein, we report a novel chemical approach for the robust attachment of commercial fluorescent dyes to the exosome surface with covalent binding. The applicability of the methodology was tested on milk and cancer cell-derived exosomes (from U87 and B16F10 cancer cells). We demonstrated that fluorescent labeling did not modify the original physicochemical properties of exosomes. We tested this nanoprobe in cell cultures and healthy mice to validate its use for in vitro and in vivo applications. We confirmed that these fluorescently labeled exosomes could be successfully visualized with optical imaging.This study was supported by the Comunidad de Madrid, projects: “Y2018/NMT-4949 (NanoLiver-CM)” and “S2017/BMD-3867 (RENIM-CM)”; it was also co-funded by the European Structural and Investment Fund. The CNIC is supported by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MCIN), and the Pro CNIC Foundation, and it is a Severo Ochoa Center of Excellence (SEV-2015-0505). JV was supported by grants from Instituto de Salud Carlos III (PI18/01833), co-funded by European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and from Comunidad de Madrid, project “S2017/BMD2737 (ExoHep-CM)”, co-funded by European Structural and Investment Fund. A. Santos-Coquillat is grateful for the financial support from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Instituto de Salud Carlos III Sara Borrell Fellowship grant CD19/00136.S

Genealogy of human capital governance

The psychological studies of organizations, about human capital, have shown that this factor increases to the extent that the environmental demands are intensified, but it is the intellectual trait that acquires the greatest value when considered as the main intangible asset. of an organization. In this way, the objective of this paper was to expose the theoretical, conceptual and empirical frameworks related to human capital to establish discussion scenarios related to the value chain of an organization based on its intangible assets. A documentary study was carried out with a non-probabilistic selection of sources indexed to repositories such as Dialne , Latindex, Publindex, Redalyc and Scielo , considering the year of publication and relationship between the concepts of organization and human capital. There are lines of research around empathy, trust, commitment, satisfaction and happiness as inherent factors of human capital as an intellectual asset of an organization

Cuantificación de la disponibilidad de agua en la región criadora de la provincia de La Pampa

Se cuantificó el problema del agua para el ganado de cría en la región criadora de la provincia de La Pampa. La insuficiente disponibilidad de agua afecta 3221 establecimientos (944900 e.v. y 2.38 millones de ha.). La mala calidad afecta a 1550 establecimientos (236300 e.v. y 3.59 millones de ha.). La superficie productiva a más de 2500 metros de una fuente de agua totalizó 6.79 millones de ha., involucrando 2440 establecimientos y 893.000 e.v. Con la mitad de la superficie provincial afectada por la inaccesibilidad al agua y un 40 por ciento del rodeo de cría afectado por el problema del agua es fácil comprender lo difícil de romper la barrera de 60 % de destete histórico provincial.EEA AnguilFil: Fil: Vázquez, Pablo. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Anguil; ArgentinaFil: Rojas, Maria del Carmen. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Anguil; ArgentinaFil: Fernandez, Ezequiel Alejandro. Servicio Nacional de Sanidad y calidad Agroalimenmtaria. (SENASA); ArgentinaFil: Gonzalez, Ana Clara. Universidad Nacional de La Pampa. Facultad de Agronomía; Argentin

Evaluation of Equine Infectious Anemia Virus by the Indirect Enzyme linked Immunosorbent Assay EIA-LAB as Screening Tools in Mexico

El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo la evaluación del desempeño del kit ELISA AIE-LAB, para el diagnóstico de la Anemia infecciosa equina, en el contexto mexicano, comparado con la prueba estándar de oro de inmunodifusión en gel de agar, AGID AIE-LABIOFAM.La anemia infecciosa equina es una enfermedad de distribución mundial que afecta a la familia Equide. Actualmente no se dispone de una vacuna eficaz, por lo que el control de la enfermedad depende de las herramientas de diagnóstico. Para mejorar la eficiencia del programa de diagnóstico en Cuba, el Grupo Empresarial LABIOFAM, desarrolló un ensayo inmuno-enzimático, kit ELISA, para complementar el sistema de diagnóstico que actualmente utiliza el kit de inmunodifusión en gel de agar (AGID). El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo la evaluación del desempeño del kit ELISA AIE-LAB, en el contexto mexicano, comparado con la prueba estándar de oro de inmunodifusión en gel de agar, AGID AIE-LABIOFAM, y kit comercial AGID. La sensibilidad analítica se determinó utilizando diluciones dobles seriadas del suero de control positivo para establecer el rango de anticuerpos detectados en relación con el valor de corte de la placa (OD 0,300). Se realizó un estudio de precisión para evaluar repetibilidad, precisión intermedia y reproducibilidad, estimando la desviación estándar y el coeficiente de variación. Los resultados de precisión fueron satisfactorios y los valores del coeficiente de variación se consideraron adecuados para garantizar una excelente consistencia del ELISA AIE-LAB. El rendimiento diagnóstico del ELISA AIE-LAB se evaluó en relación a la especificidad, sensibilidad y concordancia en comparación con ambas pruebas AGID. La sensibilidad diagnóstica fue del 100% y la especificidad del 97,6%, con muy buen grado de concordancia (Kappa = 0,9). Los resultados sugieren que la prueba ELISA AIE-LAB podría utilizarse en México como sistema de diagnóstico para la detección de anticuerpos específicos contra el virus de la anemia infecciosa equina.Facultad de Medicina Veterinaria y Zootecnia. Financiamiento propio del grupo de investigadores

First complete genome sequence of potato leafroll virus from Argentina

In this study, we determined for the first time the complete genomic sequence of an Argentinian isolate of Potato leafroll virus (PLRV), the type species of the genus Polerovirus. The isolate sequenced came from a Solanum tuberosum plant that had been naturally infected with the virus. Isolate PLRV-AR had a nucleotide sequence identity between 94.4 and 97.3% with several known PLRV isolates worldwide.Inst. de BiotecnologíaFil: Barrios Baron, Maria Pilar. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; ArgentinaFil: Agrofoglio, Yamila Carla. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; ArgentinaFil: Delfosse, Veronica Cecilia. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de San Martín; ArgentinaFil: Nahirñak, Vanesa. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; ArgentinaFil: Gonzalez De Urreta, Martin Salvador. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; ArgentinaFil: Almasia, Natalia Ines. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; ArgentinaFil: Vazquez Rovere, Cecilia. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; ArgentinaFil: Sabio Y Garcia, Julia Verónica. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentin

Association of myostatin, a cytokine released by muscle, with inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis

Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, Fondo de Investigacion en Salud, FIS/IMSS/PROT/MD16/1565Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text Myostatin is a cytokine produced and released by myocytes that might have an outstanding role not only in muscle wasting during cachexia but also in inflammation. Herein we explore the association between myostatin levels and inflammatory parameters in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). One hundred twenty-seven women without rheumatic diseases and 84 women with a diagnosis of RA were assessed in a cross-sectional study. Outcomes reflecting the activity of the arthritis including Disease Activity Score (DAS28-ESR) and impairment in functioning by the Health Assessment Questionnaire-Disability Index were assessed in RA. We obtained Skeletal muscle mass index (SMI), fat-free mass index (FFMI), and fat mass index using dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry. Serum myostatin was determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Myostatin levels were correlated with disease activity and parameters of muscle mass. The SMI was lower and concentration of myostatin was higher in RA patients than in controls (P = .008 and P < .001, respectively). Myostatin significantly positively correlated with C-reactive protein (rho = 0.48, P < .001), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (rho = 0.28, P = .009), and DAS28-ESR (rho = 0.22, P = .04), and negatively correlated with SMI (rho = −0.29, P = .008), (FFMI) (rho = −0.24, P = .027). In the multivariate logistic regression analysis, levels of myostatin remained associated with disease activity in RA (P = .027). In our study, myostatin was associated with disease activity in RA patients, suggesting a mechanistic link between myostatin, muscle wasting and inflammation in RA