Simulació de la gestió del laboratori amb un LIMS

Un LIMS (laboratory information management system) és una eina informàtica usada per gestionar la informació generada en un laboratori seguint criteris de qualitat. En aquest article es presenta i es discuteix la implementació d'un LIMS amb finalitats educatives en l'àmbit de la química. L'experiència es realitza en el marc d'un projecte que ha inclòs l'elaboració de material docent per treballar a l'aula amb alumnes del cicle formatiu de grau superior de laboratori d'anàlisi i control de qualitat. El projecte en qüestió forma part dels projectes d'innovació en la formació professional concedits pel Ministeri d'Educació i Ciència.A LIMS (laboratory information management system) is a tool used to manage the information generated in a laboratory following quality criteria. This paper presents and discusses the implementation of a LIMS for educational purposes in the field of chemistry. The experience takes place within the framework of a project that included the development of teaching materials for the classroom to work with students of higher vocational training courses of laboratory analysis and quality control. The project in question is part of the innovation projects in vocational training awarded by the Ministry of Education and Science

Jaume Serra Hunter i la història de la filosofia

No hi ha abstract

Fabrication of 3D electrodes for biosensor applications

Alzheimer’s Disease is one of the most common forms of dementia, affecting millions of people worldwide. Although incurable, an easy and effective form of diagnosis is still missing. Thus, this work aims to develop an electrochemical biosensor for the early detection of Alzheimer's disease, by recognizing the peptide Aβ-42, a biomarker associated with visible differences in the brain tissue and responsible for the formation of senile plaques. The intended sensing devices use a bottom-up designing approach, having paper as substrate. Paper is one of the most promising materials in the current flexible electronics industry, for being eco-friendly, cheap, abundant and offering biocompatible, easy and fast construction procedures. The biosensors produced herein use pencil and printed carbon electrodes, allied with laser writing techniques. The electrical circuits are designed either on a conductive carbon ink or a 9B pencil tracks, printed or draw directly on the substrate. The recognition is done by a molecularly imprinted polymer, created on the electrode’s surface by electropolymerizing a mixture of the analyte (Aβ-42) and a monomer (O-Phenylenediamine). This pro-cess forms a conductive polymer with recognition sites displaying affinity for the selected biomarker. The parameters involved in the electropolymerization were optimized, by imprinting the peptide on the sensing layer, growing the polymer around the Aβ-42 peptide and removing it later by incubating in suitable enzyme and acid solutions. The performance of the biosensor was evaluated by electroanalytical techniques. The analytical features of the biosensor were further evaluated by electroanalytical techniques. For this purpose, the analytical response was tested with standard solutions ranging from 0.1 ng/mL to 1μg/mL of Aβ-42 in PBS buffer and Cormay Serum. The response was found of analytical interest, considering that healthy individuals show normal values of ~23.3 pg/mL. Overall, the developed biosensor offered numerous benefits, such as being a low cost, having reusa-bility features, with a reproducible and fast response, which may have a strong impact in the early de-tection of Alzheimer disease

Understanding the relevance of national culture in international business research: a quantitative analysis

This review is a comprehensive quantitative analysis of the International Business literature whose focus is on national culture. The analysis relies on a broad range of bibliometric techniques as productivity rankings, citation analysis (individual and cumulative), study of collaborative research patterns, and analysis of the knowledge base. It provides insights on (I) faculty and institutional research productivity and performance; (II) articles, institutions, and scholars’ influence in the contents of the field and its research agenda; and (III) national and international collaborative research trends. The study also explores the body of literature that has exerted the greatest impact on the researched set of selected articles.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Individual pension information: Recommendations for the case of Spain based on the experiences of other countries

The aim of this paper is to establish some basic guidelines to help draft the information letter sent to individual contributors should it be decided to use this model in the Spanish public pension system. With this end in mind and basing our work on the experiences of the most advanced countries in the field and the pioneering papers by Jackson (2005), Larsson et al. (2008) and Sunden (2009), we look into the concept of “individual pension information” and identify its most relevant characteristics. We then give a detailed description of two models, those in the United States and Sweden, and in particular look at how they are structured, what aspects could be improved and what their limitations are. Finally we make some recommendations of special interest for designing the model for Spain

Symposium review: Decomposing efficiency of milk production and maximizing profit

The dairy industry has focused on maximizing milk yield, as it is believed that this maximizes profit mainly through dilution of maintenance costs. Efficiency of milk production has received, until recently, considerably less attention. The most common method to determine biological efficiency of milk production is feed efficiency (FE), which is defined as the amount of milk produced relative to the amount of nutrients consumed. Economic efficiency is best measured as income over feed cost or gross margin obtained from feed investments. Feed efficiency is affected by a myriad of factors, but overall they could be clustered as follows: (1) physiological status of the cow (e.g., age, state of lactation, health, level of production, environmental conditions), (2) digestive function (e.g., feeding behavior, passage rate, rumen fermentation, rumen and hindgut microbiome), (3) metabolic partitioning (e.g., homeorhesis, insulin sensitivity, hormonal profile), (4) genetics (ultimately dictating the 2 previous aspects), and (5) nutrition (e.g., ration formulation, nutrient balance). Over the years, energy requirements for maintenance seem to have progressively increased, but efficiency of overall nutrient use for milk production has also increased due to dilution of nutrient requirements for maintenance. However, empirical evidence from the literature suggests that marginal increases in milk require progressively greater marginal increases in nutrient supply. Thus, the dilution of maintenance requirements associated with increases in production is partially overcome by a progressive diminishing marginal biological response to incremental energy and protein supplies. Because FE follows the law of diminishing returns, and because marginal feed costs increase progressively with milk production, profits associated with improving milk yield might, in some cases, be considerably lower than expected.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Four Wheelchair-User Architects

It certainly seems like a fortuitous accident that four wheelchair users have ended up studying at the same school of architecture, at almost the same time. Maybe it is even the same kind of twisted fate that has confined us to a wheelchair in the first place, as none of us was born in it. With different ages, backgrounds, interests and sets of difficulties to master, we committed ourselves to initiate careers in architecture several years ago. Accessibility issues, especially in terms of mobility, have (always) been an intrinsic and fundamental part of our approach to academic projects, and they will most certainly continue to maintain a strong presence in our professional lives. This book reflects a set of principles and motivations that fuel our daily concerns. First and foremost, it is our desire to introduce people to a wide range of viewpoints, other ways of perceiving the environment in general, and architecture in particular. Furthermore, we aspire to break nonsensical stereotypes, particularly those that claim everything dealing with accessibility and universal design is ugly or sad, or that it only exists to assist a ridiculously small chunk of the population that is (un)fortunately affected by some kind of affliction. In terms of academic training, we’d like to voice our concern that very little is being done to approach architecture through anything other than a pure ocularcentric bias that precludes other basic concepts. If anything, architecture is created by means of and for the entire human body. Finally, it is also our wish to present our final theses projects, not because they are particularly extraordinary or look especially nice, but because they were conceived in a unique way: they were created with a view to fostering the closest possible relationship between user and designer

Simulating intracellular calcium dynamics

Calcium concentration in the myocytes is crucial in cardiac excitation-contraction coupling (the conversion of an electrical stimulus to a mechanical contraction of the heart cells). This part of the intricate process can be studied by simulating the calcium dynamics. In this project we consider a model that combines stochastic transitions among different states of channels and deterministic calcium dynamics and perform some computer simulations employing MATLAB. Then, we examine whether the model makes correspondence with empirical results taken from the Cellular Physiology Laboratory of the Cardiovascular Research Center (CSIC-ICCC)2014/201