Biosafety test for plant growth-promoting bacteria: proposed environmental and human safety index (EHSI) protocol

Plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) colonize plants and enhance their growth by different mechanisms. Some of these microorganisms may represent a potential threat to human, animal or plant health; however, their use might be approved in parts of Europe if they have been recommended as plant growth enhancers. The current regulatory framework has resulted in a fragmented, contradictory system, and there is an urgent need to establish harmonized protocols for the predictability, efficiency, consistency and especially the safety of PGPB for human and animal health and for the environment. In response to current efforts to update biosafety policies and provide alternative methods to replace the use of vertebrate animals, we propose a panel of tests and an evaluation system to reliably determine the biosafety of bacterial strains used as PGPB. Based on the results of different tests, we propose a scoring system to evaluate the safety of candidates for PGPB within the limitations of the assays used.Peer reviewe

A 3D-1D cardiac-vascular computational feedbacked model

A first version of a cardiovascular coupled model is presented. The modelling tools are Alya, the BSC tool for biomechanical simulations; and ADAN55, the LNCC model of the arterial blood flow. The former solves the heartbeat by Finite Element Method (FEM). The latter is a 1D model of the arterial blood flow in a 55-branched geometry. Previous generations of the involved models had fixed boundary conditions. With this novel tool a feedbacked cardiac-vascular model is obtained, offering more physiological boundary conditions and providing further insight in the cardiac-systemic interactions

Integració dels sistemes de classificació de les roques: eina d'aprenentatge transversal per al foment d'equips docents en l'àmbit de la Geologia.

As a response to the need to implement a comprehensive tool for the classification of rocks, an interdisciplinary and interuniversity teaching team formed by teachers and students has been constituted. The team develops teaching actions to improve the university learning on petrology and mineralogy. Such actions will have positive repercussions to undergraduates and postgraduates students as well as to secondary and baccalaureate teachers, and to other professional not directly related to teaching. Moreover, with the implementation of such tool will clearly promote the self-learning of students by means of a uniform and common system of classification of rocks aimed to all types of public

Conocimientos sobre el uso de soluciones parenterales en profesionales de la salud del municipio Boyeros

El conocimiento del uso de soluciones parenterales, sus fundamentos fisiológicos yaplicación es importante; por ello, diseñamos un instrumento evaluativo paraexplorarlo. El examen fue distribuido entre médicos y enfermeros trabajadores deBoyeros divididos en dos grupos: núm.1: Master o maestrantes en UrgenciasMédicas y núm. 2 los que no lo eran. Se recogieron, 14 exámenes del grupo 1 y 14del grupo 2. Para las 5 preguntas y nota final, no hubo diferencias significativasentre grupos. Dos examinados del grupo 2 suspendieron. La pregunta de másdificultad fue la que explora conocimientos básicos; y la de mejores resultados lareferida a conocimientos sobre el manejo práctico de esas soluciones. Resultaestimulante encontrar que no existen grandes dificultades en el manejo práctico de las soluciones, evidenciando buena capacidad de desempeño de nuestrosprofesionales en situaciones concretas, como expresión de su formaciónfundamentada en la educación en el trabajo.Palabras claves: Soluciones parenterales, líquidos corporales, osmolalidad,ósmosis

ESTADO DEL ARTE DE IPTV Y CONSIDERACIONES TÉCNICAS PARA SU MIGRACIÓN A IPV6 EN COLOMBIA

El artículo tiene como objetivos centrales hacer una revisión del estado del arte de IPTV (Televisión a través de IP) y una propuesta para la implementación de esta tecnología en Colombia sobre una red IPv6. La convergencia de las teleco-municaciones ha dado origen a aplicaciones IP que permiten acceso a contenidos audiovisuales digitalizados a través de re-des que hacen uso de dicho protocolo. Se abordanestudios ac-tuales que tratan características fundamentales de televisión sobre la red de datos,  como el funcionamiento, la arquitectura, los estándares en los que se basa, propuestas para evaluar las políticas de calidad de servicio y por ultimo consideraciones técnicas para su implementación en una red IPv6

Classification of 3D Point Clouds Using Color Vegetation Indices for Precision Viticulture and Digitizing Applications

Remote sensing applied in the digital transformation of agriculture and, more particularly, in precision viticulture offers methods to map field spatial variability to support site-specific management strategies; these can be based on crop canopy characteristics such as the row height or vegetation cover fraction, requiring accurate three-dimensional (3D) information. To derive canopy information, a set of dense 3D point clouds was generated using photogrammetric techniques on images acquired by an RGB sensor onboard an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in two testing vineyards on two different dates. In addition to the geometry, each point also stores information from the RGB color model, which was used to discriminate between vegetation and bare soil. To the best of our knowledge, the new methodology herein presented consisting of linking point clouds with their spectral information had not previously been applied to automatically estimate vine height. Therefore, the novelty of this work is based on the application of color vegetation indices in point clouds for the automatic detection and classification of points representing vegetation and the later ability to determine the height of vines using as a reference the heights of the points classified as soil. Results from on-ground measurements of the heights of individual grapevines were compared with the estimated heights from the UAV point cloud, showing high determination coefficients (R² > 0.87) and low root-mean-square error (0.070 m). This methodology offers new capabilities for the use of RGB sensors onboard UAV platforms as a tool for precision viticulture and digitizing applications

Antibodies to endothelial cells in Behçet's disease: cell-binding heterogeneity and association with clinical activity

OBJECTIVES--To investigate the prevalence and characteristics of antibodies to endothelial cells (aEC) from large vessel and from microvasculature in a group of patients with Behçet's disease (BD) to determine the relationship of these antibodies with clinical and laboratory features of the disease. METHODS--Thirty patients with BD were prospectively and consecutively studied. The aEC were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) using endothelial cells derived from human umbilical vein (large vessel) as well as from retroperitoneal adipose tissue (microvasculature). RESULTS--Fifteen patients (50%) had aEC, either directed to large vessel [8(26%) patients] or microvascular [13(43%) patients] endothelial cells. The percentage of active patients was significantly higher in the aEC-positive group [12(80%) patients] compared with the aEC-negative group [5(33%) patients] (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS--Patients with BD have a high prevalence of aEC when microvascular endothelial cells are used in the assay. These antibodies seem to be a marker of disease activity in this condition, previously considered as negative for autoantibodies

Lyman break and ultraviolet-selected galaxies at z ~ 1 - II. PACS 100μm/160μm FIR detections

In this work, we report the Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) 100 μm/160 μm detections of a sample of 42 GALEX-selected and far-infrared (FIR)-detected Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) at z ~ 1 located in the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) field and analyse their ultraviolet (UV) to FIR properties. The detection of these LBGs in the FIR indicates that they have a dust content high enough so that its emission can be directly detected. According to a spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting with stellar population templates to their UV-to-near-IR observed photometry, PACS-detected LBGs tend to be bigger (Reff ~ 4.1 kpc), more massive [log (M*/M⊙) ~ 10.7], dustier [Es(B - V) ~ 0.40], redder in the UV continuum (β ~ -0.60) and UV-brighter [log (LUV/L⊙) ~ 10.1] than PACSundetected LBGs. PACS-detected LBGs at z ~ 1 are mostly disc-like galaxies and are located over the green valley and red sequence of the colour-magnitude diagram of galaxies at their redshift. By using their UV and IR emission, we find that PACS-detected LBGs tend to be less dusty and have slightly higher total star formation rates (SFRs) than other PACS-detected UV-selected galaxies within the same redshift range. As a consequence of the selection effect due to the depth of the FIR observations employed, all our PACS-detected LBGs have total IR luminosities, LIR, higher than 1011 L⊙ and thus are luminous IR galaxies. However, none of the PACS-detected LBGs are in the ultra-luminous IR galaxy (ULIRG) regime, LIR =1012 L⊙, where the FIR observations are complete. The finding of ULIRGs-LBGs at higher redshifts (z ~ 3) suggests an evolution of the FIR emission of LBGs with cosmic time. In an IRX-β diagram, PACS-detected LBGs at z~1 tend to be located around the relation for local starburst similarly to other UV-selected PACS-detected galaxies at the same redshift. Consequently, the dust-correction factors obtained with theirUVcontinuum slope allowus to determine their total SFR, unlike at higher redshifts. However, the dust attenuation derived from UV to NIR SED fitting overestimates the total SFR for most of our PACS-detected LBGs in an age-dependent way: the overestimation factor is higher in younger galaxies. This is likely due to the typical degeneracy between dust attenuation and age in the SED fitting with synthetic templates and highlights the importance of the FIR measurements in the analysis of star-forming galaxies at intermediate redshifts.Generalitat Valenciana PROMETEO-2008/132NASA Office of Space Science NNX09AF08GEuropean Southern Observatory LP175.A-0839Junta de Andalucía TIC-114, P08-TIC-03531Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad AYA2011- 29517-C03-01, AYA2010-22111-C03-02, AYA2010-1516

A new approach to energy calculation of road accidents against fixed small section elements based on close-range Photogrammetry

This paper presents a new approach for energetic analyses of traffic accidents against fixed road elements using close-range photogrammetry. The main contributions of the developed approach are related to the quality of the 3D photogrammetric models, which enable objective and accurate energetic analyses through the in-house tool CRASHMAP. As a result, security forces can reconstruct the accident in a simple and comprehensive way without requiring spreadsheets or external tools, and thus avoid the subjectivity and imprecisions of the traditional protocol. The tool has already been validated, and is being used by the Local Police of Salamanca (Salamanca, Spain) for the resolution of numerous accidents. In this paper, a real accident of a car against a fixed metallic pole is analysed, and significant discrepancies are obtained between the new approach and the traditional protocol of data acquisition regarding collision speed and absorbed energ

L-Ferritin Binding to Scara5 : A New Iron Traffic Pathway Potentially Implicated in Retinopathy

Iron is essential in the retina because the heme-containing enzyme guanylate cyclase modulates phototransduction in rods and cones. Transferrin endocytosis is the classical pathway for obtaining iron from the blood circulation in the retina. However, the iron storage protein ferritin has been also recently proposed as an iron carrier. In this study, the presence of Scara5 and its binding to L-ferritin was investigated in the retina. Our results showed that Scara5, the specific receptor for L-ferritin, was expressed in mouse and human retinas in many cell types, including endothelial cells. Furthermore, we showed that intravenously injected ferritin crossed the blood retinal barrier through L-ferritin binding to Scara5 in endothelial cells. Thus, suggesting the existence of a new pathway for iron delivery and trafficking in the retina. In a murine model of photoreceptor degeneration, Scara5 was downregulated, pointing out this receptor as a potential player implicated in retinopathy and also as a possible therapeutic target