1,182 research outputs found
Depopulation in Spain and violation of occupational rights
This article aims at revealing the impacts of depopulation in terms of the violation of the occupational rights of people who live in rural areas, away from large urban centres. The starting point is an overview of the inequalities that emerge in neglected rural areas in the European Union, followed by an analysis of the Spanish context with ageing as a salient factor. Then, the influence of rural territories on occupation is assessed, discussing the violation of occupational rights. Finally, there is a description of different macro and micro actions to address some of the occupational injustices in rural areas and to favour equality in the exercise of occupational rights from the standpoint of occupational science
Quantum Entanglement and fixed point Hopf bifurcation
We present the qualitative differences in the phase transitions of the
mono-mode Dicke model in its integrable and chaotic versions. We show that a
first order phase transition occurs in the integrable case whereas a second
order in the chaotic one. This difference is also reflected in the classical
limit: for the integrable case the stable fixed point in phase space suffers a
bifurcation of Hopf type whereas for the second one a pitchfork type
bifurcation has been reported
Detection, size characterization and quantification of silver nanoparticles in consumer products by particle collision coulometry
Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) are widely used in industrial and consumer products owing to its antimicrobial nature and multiple applications. Consequently, their release into the environment is becoming a big concern because of their negative impacts on living organisms. In this work, AgNPs were detected at a potential of + 0.70 V vs. Ag/AgCl reference electrode, characterized, and quantified in consumer products by particle collision coulometry (PCC). The electrochemical results were compared with those measured with electron microscopy and single-particle inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The theoretical and practical peculiarities of the application of PCC technique in the characterization of AgNPs were studied. Reproducible size distributions of the AgNPs were measured in a range 10–100 nm diameters. A power allometric function model was found between the frequency of the AgNPs collisions onto the electrode surface and the number concentration of nanoparticles up to a silver concentration of 1010 L-1 (ca. 25 ng L-1 for 10 nm AgNPs). A linear relationship between the number of collisions and the number concentration of silver nanoparticles was observed up to 5 × 107 L-1. The PCC method was applied to the quantification and size determination of the AgNPs in three-silver containing consumer products (a natural antibiotic and two food supplements). The mean of the size distributions (of the order 10–20 nm diameters) agrees with those measured by electron microscopy. Graphical abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.]
Analysis of a sample of type 2 diabetic patients with obesity or overweight and at cardiovascular risk: A cross sectional study in Spain
Background: The multifactorial control of diabetes relies on interventions that provide patients with the best knowledge and resources available. The objective of this research was to analyze the clinical characteristics of a sample of people with type 2 diabetes at high cardiovascular risk, and establish possible links between disease control, family history and lifestyle, to improve the quality of interventions. Family history, lifestyle habits,
blood pressure, anthropometric data and laboratory tests were analyzed in this descriptive and comparative cross-sectional study.
Results: All patients had a pathological body mass index (BMI), and in those patients with a family history of diabetes, the disease was more serious and onset was earlier. Overall, 70.9% were taking drugs for arterial blood pressure management, with mean values within recommended limits; 87.1% were taking antihyperlipidemic drugs and had mean values for blood lipids within reference range; 93.5% were receiving oral antidiabetic drugs and/or insulin and had blood glucose and glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) values higher than recommended limit; and 87% were taking antiplatelet drugs and had fibrinogen and ultrasensitive C-reactive protein higher than the normal range. High HbA1c values were found in a high proportion of our sample who were not following a tailored diet (84.2%), and better BMIs were associated with moderate physical activity. Coexistence of somatic disorders (97.4% of the sample with musculoskeletal diseases) could lead to the lack of physical activity.
Conclusions: This sample of patients with type 2 diabetes and at high cardiovascular risk, had acceptable metabolic control, facilitated by drug therapy. Family history of diabetes was associated with earlier disease onset and worse disease progression. Patients who were not following a tailored diet had worse HbA1c values compared with those who were. Individuals who practiced moderate physical activity in line with international recommendations for weight maintenance had the best BMI values, but the high prevalence of comorbidities could adversely affect exercise habits. Appropriate use of medication, dietary advice, and tailored physiotherapy physical activity suitable for people with comorbidities should be included in multifactorial treatment strategies for these patients, particularly in the presence of a family history of diabetes
Local observables for entanglement witnesses
We present an explicit construction of entanglement witnesses for depolarized
states in arbitrary finite dimension. For infinite dimension we generalize the
construction to twin-beams perturbed by Gaussian noises in the phase and in the
amplitude of the field. We show that entanglement detection for all these
families of states requires only three local measurements. The explicit form of
the corresponding set of local observables (quorom) needed for entanglement
witness is derived.Comment: minor corrections, title change
An EST-based analysis identifies new genes and reveals distinctive gene expression features of Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora
Background: Coffee is one of the world’s most important crops; it is consumed worldwide and plays a significant
role in the economy of producing countries. Coffea arabica and C. canephora are responsible for 70 and 30% of
commercial production, respectively. C. arabica is an allotetraploid from a recent hybridization of the diploid
species, C. canephora and C. eugenioides. C. arabica has lower genetic diversity and results in a higher quality
beverage than C. canephora. Research initiatives have been launched to produce genomic and transcriptomic data
about Coffea spp. as a strategy to improve breeding efficiency.
Results: Assembling the expressed sequence tags (ESTs) of C. arabica and C. canephora produced by the
Brazilian Coffee Genome Project and the Nestlé-Cornell Consortium revealed 32,007 clusters of C. arabica and
16,665 clusters of C. canephora. We detected different GC3 profiles between these species that are related to
their genome structure and mating system. BLAST analysis revealed similarities between coffee and grape (Vitis
vinifera) genes. Using KA/KS analysis, we identified coffee genes under purifying and positive selection. Protein
domain and gene ontology analyses suggested differences between Coffea spp. data, mainly in relation to
complex sugar synthases and nucleotide binding proteins. OrthoMCL was used to identify specific and prevalent
coffee protein families when compared to five other plant species. Among the interesting families annotated
are new cystatins, glycine-rich proteins and RALF-like peptides. Hierarchical clustering was used to
independently group C. arabica and C. canephora expression clusters according to expression data extracted
from EST libraries, resulting in the identification of differentially expressed genes. Based on these results, we
emphasize gene annotation and discuss plant defenses, abiotic stress and cup quality-related functional
categories.
Conclusion: We present the first comprehensive genome-wide transcript profile study of C. arabica and C.
canephora, which can be freely assessed by the scientific community at http://www.lge.ibi.unicamp.br/
coffea. Our data reveal the presence of species-specific/prevalent genes in coffee that may help to explain
particular characteristics of these two crops. The identification of differentially expressed transcripts offers a
starting point for the correlation between gene expression profiles and Coffea spp. developmental traits,
providing valuable insights for coffee breeding and biotechnology, especially concerning sugar metabolism
and stress tolerance
Entanglement Sharing in the Two-Atom Tavis-Cummings Model
Individual members of an ensemble of identical systems coupled to a common
probe can become entangled with one another, even when they do not interact
directly. We investigate how this type of multipartite entanglement is
generated in the context of a system consisting of two two-level atoms
resonantly coupled to a single mode of the electromagnetic field. The dynamical
evolution is studied in terms of the entanglements in the different bipartite
partitions of the system, as quantified by the I-tangle. We also propose a
generalization of the so-called residual tangle that quantifies the inherent
three-body correlations in our tripartite system. This enables us to completely
characterize the phenomenon of entanglement sharing in the case of the two-atom
Tavis-Cummings model, a system of both theoretical and experimental interest.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PRA, v3 contains corrections to
small error
Many body physics from a quantum information perspective
The quantum information approach to many body physics has been very
successful in giving new insight and novel numerical methods. In these lecture
notes we take a vertical view of the subject, starting from general concepts
and at each step delving into applications or consequences of a particular
topic. We first review some general quantum information concepts like
entanglement and entanglement measures, which leads us to entanglement area
laws. We then continue with one of the most famous examples of area-law abiding
states: matrix product states, and tensor product states in general. Of these,
we choose one example (classical superposition states) to introduce recent
developments on a novel quantum many body approach: quantum kinetic Ising
models. We conclude with a brief outlook of the field.Comment: Lectures from the Les Houches School on "Modern theories of
correlated electron systems". Improved version new references adde
Faithful Squashed Entanglement
Squashed entanglement is a measure for the entanglement of bipartite quantum
states. In this paper we present a lower bound for squashed entanglement in
terms of a distance to the set of separable states. This implies that squashed
entanglement is faithful, that is, strictly positive if and only if the state
is entangled. We derive the bound on squashed entanglement from a bound on
quantum conditional mutual information, which is used to define squashed
entanglement and corresponds to the amount by which strong subadditivity of von
Neumann entropy fails to be saturated. Our result therefore sheds light on the
structure of states that almost satisfy strong subadditivity with equality. The
proof is based on two recent results from quantum information theory: the
operational interpretation of the quantum mutual information as the optimal
rate for state redistribution and the interpretation of the regularised
relative entropy of entanglement as an error exponent in hypothesis testing.
The distance to the set of separable states is measured by the one-way LOCC
norm, an operationally-motivated norm giving the optimal probability of
distinguishing two bipartite quantum states, each shared by two parties, using
any protocol formed by local quantum operations and one-directional classical
communication between the parties. A similar result for the Frobenius or
Euclidean norm follows immediately. The result has two applications in
complexity theory. The first is a quasipolynomial-time algorithm solving the
weak membership problem for the set of separable states in one-way LOCC or
Euclidean norm. The second concerns quantum Merlin-Arthur games. Here we show
that multiple provers are not more powerful than a single prover when the
verifier is restricted to one-way LOCC operations thereby providing a new
characterisation of the complexity class QMA.Comment: 24 pages, 1 figure, 1 table. Due to an error in the published
version, claims have been weakened from the LOCC norm to the one-way LOCC
nor
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