Miguel Villena Sánchez-Valero y la memoria del Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales

3 páginas.-- Necrológica.Peer reviewe

Environmental flow management: an analysis applied to the Ebro River Basin

Environmental flows (EF) define the quantity, timing and quality of river flows needed to preserve freshwater ecosystems while assuring the continuity of human use. Insofar as they reduce water availability and condition agricultural and industrial uses, EF represent a constraint, but they also hold out new opportunities for development. This study focuses on the final stretch of the Ebro River (Spain) and on the competing environmental uses of water (the Ebro Delta is a biosphere reserve) and economic uses (irrigation and electricity generating). Environmental flows in the Ebro Delta are currently managed only from the Mequinenza dam and reservoir in eastern Aragon, and the resulting outflows have more than once driven the level of the reservoir down to critical environmental levels in recent years. In general, this management policy has also caused a range of negative environmental and economic impacts in the area. However, other alternatives exist, which could foster both more cooperative and equitable flow allocations, and the development and sustainability of the Ebro Basin. To this end, we develop a water management model to simulate scarcity scenarios and measure the associated environmental flow default rates assuming current productive uses. Our findings confirm that it is not possible to guarantee EFs in the delta without reservoir-based water management so as to ensure the compatibility of EFs with the irrigation and hydroelectric activities. Moreover, the existence of more equitable and cooperative water management options would reduce water pressures on Mequinenza dam and so help fulfill the subsidized irrigation commitments established in Aragonese Lower Ebro Plan

Water and socioeconomic dependencies: a multiregional model

River basins often extend over several regions connected by both water flows and socioeconomic factors. Therefore, water policy and diverse hydrological scenarios can affect socioeconomic variables in other parts of a river basin. This paper proposes a tool combining hydro-economic and input–output models to analyze the socioeconomic impacts of different hydrologic scenarios from a multiregional standpoint. To this end, we have built a monthly-basis hydro-economic model to fit a multiregional input–output table to estimate direct and indirect impacts on value added and employment, bringing together data on water flow and regional demand, sector-based economic analysis and macroeconomic impacts. In a given hydrological scenario, the hydro-economic model determines the output of irrigated farmland in each region and the value added generated by each crop. These data are then processed using the multiregional input–output model to determine socio-economic impacts in each of the regions forming the river basin. This methodology allows evaluation of different water policies, providing a tool for policymakers to estimate socio-economic impacts. Finally, we apply this methodology in two scenarios reflecting the opportunity costs of diverse hydrological scenarios in terms of value added and employment terms to demonstrate its excellent analytic capacity. Graphic abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.]

Zeolite based microconcentrators for volatile organic compounds sensing at trace-level: fabrication and performance

A novel 6-step microfabrication process is proposed in this work to prepare microfluidic devices with integrated zeolite layers. In particular, microfabricated preconcentrators designed for volatile organic compounds (VOC) sensing applications are fully described. The main novelty of this work is the integration of the pure siliceous MFI type zeolite (silicalite-1) polycrystalline layer, i.e. 4.0¿¿±¿¿0.5 µm thick, as active phase, within the microfabrication process just before the anodic bonding step. Following this new procedure, Si microdevices with an excellent distribution of the adsorbent material, integrated resistive heaters and Pyrex caps have been obtained. Firstly, the microconcentrator performance has been assessed by means of the normal hexane breakthrough curves as a function of sampling and desorption flowrates, temperature and micropreconcentrator design. In a step further, the best preconcentrator device has been tested in combination with downstream Si based microcantilevers deployed as VOC detectors. Thus, a preliminar evaluation of the improvement on detection sensitivity by silicalite-1 based microconcentrators is presented

La colección de Paleontología de Vertebrados del Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (CSIC)

Since remote times, fossil vertebrates have played a significant part in the collections of the Spanish Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, both in attracting the attention of the public and in the context of research into paleobiodiversity. The research tradition of the Museum’s personnel in Vertebrate Paleontology has built up a reference collection of information on the mammals of the Spanish Neogene. There are important fossils from almost a thousand different localities, some of them of worldwide relevancy. The collection is available for direct study in the Museum’s laboratories as well as through virtual conferences (www), and also being used in temporary exhibitions organized by the Museum itself or by other institutions.Desde tiempos remotos, los vertebrados fósiles han formado parte significativa de las colecciones del Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, tanto en la captación de la atención del público como en el contexto de la investigación sobre la paleobiodiversidad. La tradición investigadora del personal del Museo en Paleontología de Vertebrados ha originado una colección de referencia para el conocimiento de los mamíferos del Neógeno español. En total, se conservan importantes fósiles de casi un millar de localidades diferentes, algunas de ellas de relevancia mundial. La colección está disponible tanto para su estudio directo en el propio Museo como a través de consultas virtuales (www) y también pueden utilizarse sus fondos en exposiciones temporales organizadas por el propio Museo o bien por otras instituciones

Cu-BTC Functional Microdevices as Smart Tools for Capture and Preconcentration of Nerve Agents

Cu-based metal-organic framework (MOF) microdevices are applied in sampling and preconcentration of nerve agents (NAs) diluted in gaseous streams. An in situ electrochemical-assisted synthesis of a Cu-benzene-1, 3, 5-tricarboxylate (BTC) thick film is carried out to functionalize a Cu-modified glass substrate. This simple, rapid, reproducible, and easy-to-integrate MOF synthesis approach enables the microfabrication of functional micro-preconcentrators with a large Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area (above 2000 cm2) and an active pore volume (above 90 nL) for the efficient adsorption of nerve agent molecules along the microfluidic channel 2.5 cm in length. The equilibrium adsorption capacity of the bulk material has been characterized through thermogravimetric analysis after exposure to controlled atmospheres of a sarin gas surrogate, dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP), in both dry and humid conditions (30% RH at 293 K). Breakthrough tests at the ppm level (162 mg/m3) reveal equilibrium adsorption capacities up to 691 mg/g. The preconcentration performance of such µ-devices when dealing with highly diluted surrogate atmosphere, i.e., 520 ppbV (2.6 mg/m3) at 298 K, leads to preconcentration coefficients up to 171 for sample volume up to 600 STP cm3. We demonstrate the potentialities of Cu-BTC micro-preconcentrators as smart first responder tools for "on-field" detection of nerve agents in the gas phase at relevant conditions

SAFE: Scale Aware Feature Encoder for Scene Text Recognition

In this paper, we address the problem of having characters with different scales in scene text recognition. We propose a novel scale aware feature encoder (SAFE) that is designed specifically for encoding characters with different scales. SAFE is composed of a multi-scale convolutional encoder and a scale attention network. The multi-scale convolutional encoder targets at extracting character features under multiple scales, and the scale attention network is responsible for selecting features from the most relevant scale(s). SAFE has two main advantages over the traditional single-CNN encoder used in current state-of-the-art text recognizers. First, it explicitly tackles the scale problem by extracting scale-invariant features from the characters. This allows the recognizer to put more effort in handling other challenges in scene text recognition, like those caused by view distortion and poor image quality. Second, it can transfer the learning of feature encoding across different character scales. This is particularly important when the training set has a very unbalanced distribution of character scales, as training with such a dataset will make the encoder biased towards extracting features from the predominant scale. To evaluate the effectiveness of SAFE, we design a simple text recognizer named scale-spatial attention network (S-SAN) that employs SAFE as its feature encoder, and carry out experiments on six public benchmarks. Experimental results demonstrate that S-SAN can achieve state-of-the-art (or, in some cases, extremely competitive) performance without any post-processing.Comment: ACCV201

Cancer screening in Spain

Objective: To describe the current status of breast, colorectal and cervical cancer screening in Spain. Methodology: The situation was analysed on the basis of data drawn from surveys conducted in each autonomous region (Comunidad Autónoma). Results: Currently, breast cancer screening coverage is 100%. In 2007, overall participation was 67.0% with an adherence of 91.2%. The detection rate was 3.4 per thousand, 15.1% intraductal and 30% invasive <1 cm in diameter, with 65% showing axilary node negative. Colorectal cancer screening had been implemented in six regions (4.5% of the target population). Participation ranged from 17.2% to 42.3%, with positive test percentages ranging from 1.7 per thousand (guaiac) to 9.5% (immunological). The invasive cancer detection rate was 1.7 per thousand (guaiac) and 3.4 per thousand (immunological). In most cases, cervical cancer screening was undertaken opportunistically, with an estimated coverage of 69.0%. Conclusions: In Spain, cancer screening is being conducted in accordance with national and international recommendations. The fact that screening programmes are operated as a network has led to a high degree of consensus as to the methodology and information systems to be used to enable joint evaluation

Induction of humoral immune response to multiple recombinant Rhipicephalus appendiculatus antigens and their effect on tick feeding success and pathogen transmission

BACKGROUND: Rhipicephalus appendiculatus is the primary vector of Theileria parva, the etiological agent of East Coast fever (ECF), a devastating disease of cattle in sub-Saharan Africa. We hypothesized that a vaccine targeting tick proteins that are involved in attachment and feeding might affect feeding success and possibly reduce tick-borne transmission of T. parva. Here we report the evaluation of a multivalent vaccine cocktail of tick antigens for their ability to reduce R. appendiculatus feeding success and possibly reduce tick-transmission of T. parva in a natural host-tick-parasite challenge model. METHODS: Cattle were inoculated with a multivalent antigen cocktail containing recombinant tick protective antigen subolesin as well as two additional R. appendiculatus saliva antigens: the cement protein TRP64, and three different histamine binding proteins. The cocktail also contained the T. parva sporozoite antigen p67C. The effect of vaccination on the feeding success of nymphal and adult R. appendiculatus ticks was evaluated together with the effect on transmission of T. parva using a tick challenge model. RESULTS: To our knowledge, this is the first evaluation of the anti-tick effects of these antigens in the natural host-tick-parasite combination. In spite of evidence of strong immune responses to all of the antigens in the cocktail, vaccination with this combination of tick and parasite antigens did not appear to effect tick feeding success or reduce transmission of T. parva. CONCLUSION: The results of this study highlight the importance of early evaluation of anti-tick vaccine candidates in biologically relevant challenge systems using the natural tick-host-parasite combination