Food in the fight against cardiovascular disease

Motivation: Stroke is the second cause of death in Spain, affecting 120,000 people every year and therefore causing great impact at an individual, family and social level. However, 90% of cases can be prevented. There is currently no clear specific pharmacological treatment for the primary prevention of ICTUS, as a consequence the fight against this disease focuses on controlling modifiable risk factors and triggering causes through healthy lifestyle habits. The main objective of this work is to develop software capable of calculating the cardiovascular risk for a person between 40 and 65 years old, based on the parameters used at the doctor’s office for the same purpose, as well as evaluating the level of knowledge of the disease amongst the population.Methods: For the development of the software a System-On-Chip (SOC), whose programming language is based on C++, has been used. In addition, the application is based on the SCORE cardiovascular risk table for low-risk countries such as Spain. Finally, in order to assess the level of knowledge of the disease, surveys have been carried out within interviewees aged approximately between 13 and 65 using Google forms.Results: A portable prototype called ALIC v.0 has been designed and built to calculate cardiovascular risk by entering the necessary parameters such as sex, smoking habit, age, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. In addition, it makes nutritional and healthy habit recommendations according to the patient's profile. Regarding the survey, more than 250 people have been surveyed, most of them being between 13 and 30 years old and having a high degree of education.Conclusions: ALIC v.0 is a pioneering prototype capable of calculating cardiovascular risk and whose programming is easy to adapt with the aim of allowing its future and continuous improvement. The portability of ALIC makes its use at the doctor's office or in the patient's own home possible, thing which is useful in order to keep track of the patient by sending the data to the doctor. Concerning the survey, almost all of the respondents think that they don’t have enough information about ICTUS but they consider it to be a disease of great concern and with serious aftereffects, which has a high mortality rate

Aplication of LED technology for food quality control

Motivation: Currently, there are numerous chemical methods to analyze compounds, however, these involve a large investment and highly qualified personnel. In this work, Light Emission Diode has been used as a cheap and simple method to easily detect, the existence of: a) cheese whey in different representative samples of water b) rice syrup in different types of commercial honeys.Methods: Six different colour LEDs (orange, pink, ultraviolet, blue, green and white) were used in this research as a light source to measure the emission spectra of water and honey samples. The water and honey samples were prepared adding known concentrations of cheese whey( from 1% to 20%, 1800 samples) and rice syrup (1%-8%, 480 samples), to waters from five different rivers and reservoirs in Madrid; and to five different honeys, respectively. The phenomenon measured with this technology is fluorescence. The emited fluorescence is measured at a right angle from the light source, using a fiber spectrometer. The output of the spectrometer is collected in a computer. It is necessary to apply a linear regression model to obtain the concentration from the intensity values.This information is taken from a fluorescence emission spectrum.Results: In the whey emission spectra (for each LED), the increase in cheese whey concentrations were seen by an increase in its intensity. The honey spectra have different profiles as well as intensities for each honey, so the difference in syrup concentration is also detected by an intensity increase.In addition, the analysis of the measurements has obtained an efficiency of approximately 90%.Conclusions: It has been demonstrated that LED technology can be a potencial and important first approach to determine contaminants or adulterants in water and honey samples. It is also a cheap and user-friendly technique which could be useful in the food quality control sector

Acinic cell carcinoma of the parotid gland with four morphological features

Acinic cell carcinoma arising in salivary glands is a rare tumor, accounting for 2% to 5% of the primary neoplasms of the parotid gland. When these tumors are well-differentiated, the neoplasia has innocuous aspect, due to the similarity to normal parotid tissue. This makes the diagnosis difficult. Initially the malignancy of this tumor was uncertain; however, recent studies have declared it as malignant. The female / male ratio is 3:2. The nodule usually presents as solitary and well defined shape. Several authors have used different terms to describe histomorphological patterns of these tumors. Four descriptive categories (solid, microcystic, papillary-cystic and follicular) are useful for pathologists. Here we report a case of a 49 yr old man with a left parotid nodule of 5 cm. Parotidectomy was performed at the Hospital Universitario Miguel Servet, in Zaragoza (Spain). The microscopy showed a tumor with acinic semblance, having the four morphologic patterns previously described. The morphological and immunohistochemical study was consistent with the diagnosis of acinic cell carcinoma

The space density distribution of galaxies in the absolute magnitude - rotation velocity plane: a volume-complete Tully-Fisher relation from CALIFA stellar kinematics

The space density distribution of galaxies in the absolute magnitude - rotation velocity plane: a volume-complete Tully-Fisher relation from CALIFA stellar kinematicsComment: Accepted to A&

DETERMINACION DE ACEITES DE OLIVA MONOVARIETALES EN UNA MEZCLA TERNARIA

Introducción: Cada aceite de oliva virgen extra posee un espectro característico de absorbancia de UV-Visible y fluorescencia, lo que permite su identificación en mezclas de variedades. Es por ello que en este estudio se prepararan mezclas binarias con incrementos de 5% en volumen y una mezcla ternaria con incrementos de 10% en volumen, de aceites de oliva virgen extra de distinta variedad. Estas muestras se someten a análisis espectroscópicos con el objetivo de diseñar modelos lineales.Métodos: La absorbancia en UV-Visible se basa en la medida de la cantidad de luz que es absorbida por la muestra. El registro del espectro se realiza entre 200 y 800 nm [1]. La fluorescencia es una técnica que determina la cantidad de energía que desprenden las moléculas tras ser excitadas por una fuente de luz. Se emplean como fuente un diodo LED y un láser de continuo, ambos con λexc = 400nm [2].Resultados:  Los espectros obtenidos mediante análisis de absorbancia de UV-Visible y fluorescencia de aceites de oliva virgen extra monovarietales y mezclas binarias de ellos se pueden diferenciar. En cambio, al analizar la mezcla ternaria se tratan los resultados de forma diferente según la técnica espectroscópica.Los espectros de absorbancia UV-Visible se pueden comparar, puesto que esta técnica no es destructiva. De este modo, Se diseña un modelo lineal para cada aceite monovarietal de la mezcla a partir del área bajo la curva (AUC) de las principales bandas que aparecen en los espectros, donde AUC1: 631-703nm, AUC2: 593-630nm, AUC3: 527-551nm, y AUC4: 473-526nm. El error de los modelos en la determinación de la composición es menor del 5% en las tres variedades de AOVE.El empleo de la técnica de fluorescencia se descarta tras comprobar que los aceites se degradan y las medidas no son reproducibles.  Conclusiones: Esta técnica permite la determinación de mezclas de distintos tipos de variedades de aceite de oliva virgen extra con un único y sencillo ensayo sin necesidad de preparación de la muestra, gasto de reactivos, ni personal cualificado, permitiendo su uso in situ en almazaras o comercios

Fossil Groups Origins III. Characterization of the sample and observational properties of fossil systems

(Abridged) Fossil systems are group- or cluster-sized objects whose luminosity is dominated by a very massive central galaxy. In the current cold dark matter scenario, these objects formed hierarchically at an early epoch of the Universe and then slowly evolved until present day. That is the reason why they are called {\it fossils}. We started an extensive observational program to characterize a sample of 34 fossil group candidates spanning a broad range of physical properties. Deep $r-$band images were taken for each candidate and optical spectroscopic observations were obtained for $\sim$ 1200 galaxies. This new dataset was completed with SDSS DR7 archival data to obtain robust cluster membership and global properties of each fossil group candidate. For each system, we recomputed the magnitude gaps between the two brightest galaxies ($\Delta m_{12}$) and the first and fourth ranked galaxies ($\Delta m_{14}$) within 0.5 $R_{{\rm 200}}$. We consider fossil systems those with $\Delta m_{12} \ge 2$ mag or $\Delta m_{14} \ge 2.5$ mag within the errors. We find that 15 candidates turned out to be fossil systems. Their observational properties agree with those of non-fossil systems. Both follow the same correlations, but fossils are always extreme cases. In particular, they host the brightest central galaxies and the fraction of total galaxy light enclosed in the central galaxy is larger in fossil than in non-fossil systems. Finally, we confirm the existence of genuine fossil clusters. Combining our results with others in the literature, we favor the merging scenario in which fossil systems formed due to mergers of $L^\ast$ galaxies. The large magnitude gap is a consequence of the extreme merger ratio within fossil systems and therefore it is an evolutionary effect. Moreover, we suggest that at least one candidate in our sample could represent a transitional fossil stage.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in A&

Observational hints of radial migration in disc galaxies from CALIFA

Context. According to numerical simulations, stars are not always kept at their birth galactocentric distances but they have a tendency to migrate. The importance of this radial migration in shaping galactic light distributions is still unclear. However, if radial migration is indeed important, galaxies with different surface brightness (SB) profiles must display differences in their stellar population properties. Aims: We investigate the role of radial migration in the light distribution and radial stellar content by comparing the inner colour, age, and metallicity gradients for galaxies with different SB profiles. We define these inner parts, avoiding the bulge and bar regions and up to around three disc scale lengths (type I, pure exponential) or the break radius (type II, downbending; type III, upbending). Methods: We analysed 214 spiral galaxies from the CALIFA survey covering different SB profiles. We made use of GASP2D and SDSS data to characterise the light distribution and obtain colour profiles of these spiral galaxies. The stellar age and metallicity profiles were computed using a methodology based on full-spectrum fitting techniques (pPXF, GANDALF, and STECKMAP) to the Integral Field Spectroscopic CALIFA data. Results: The distributions of the colour, stellar age, and stellar metallicity gradients in the inner parts for galaxies displaying different SB profiles are unalike as suggested by Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Anderson-Darling tests. We find a trend in which type II galaxies show the steepest profiles of all, type III show the shallowest, and type I display an intermediate behaviour. Conclusions: These results are consistent with a scenario in which radial migration is more efficient for type III galaxies than for type I systems, where type II galaxies present the lowest radial migration efficiency. In such a scenario, radial migration mixes the stellar content, thereby flattening the radial stellar properties and shaping different SB profiles. However, in light of these results we cannot further quantify the importance of radial migration in shaping spiral galaxies, and other processes, such as recent star formation or satellite accretion, might play a role

Physics of ULIRGs with MUSE and ALMA: The PUMA project: I. Properties of the survey and first MUSE data results

Ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) are characterised by extreme starburst (SB) and AGN activity, and are therefore ideal laboratories for studying the outflow phenomena. We have recently started a project called Physics of ULIRGs with MUSE and ALMA (PUMA), which is a survey of 25 nearby (z < 0.165) ULIRGs observed with the integral field spectrograph MUSE and the interferometer ALMA. This sample includes systems with both AGN and SB nuclear activity in the pre- and post-coalescence phases of major mergers. The main goals of the project are to study the prevalence of multi-phase outflows as a function of the galaxy properties, to constrain the driving mechanisms of the outflows (e.g. distinguish between SB and AGN winds), and to identify feedback effects on the host galaxy. In this first paper, we present details on the sample selection, MUSE observations, and derive first data products. MUSE data were analysed to study the dynamical status of each of the 21 ULIRGs observed so far, taking the stellar kinematics and the morphological properties inferred from MUSE narrow-band images into account. We also located the ULIRG nuclei, using near-IR (HST) and mm (ALMA) data, and studied their optical spectra to infer the ionisation state through BPT diagnostics, and outflows in both ionised and neutral gas. We show that the morphological and stellar kinematic classifications are consistent: post-coalescence systems are more likely associated with ordered motions, while interacting (binary) systems are dominated by non-ordered and streaming motions. We also find broad and asymmetric [OIII] and NaID profiles in almost all nuclear spectra, with line widths in the range 300-2000 km/s, possibly associated with AGN- and SB-driven winds. This result reinforces previous findings that indicated that outflows are ubiquitous during the pre- and post-coalescence phases of major mergers.ERC STF

Spiral-like star-forming patterns in CALIFA early-type galaxies

Based on a combined analysis of SDSS imaging and CALIFA integral field spectroscopy data, we report on the detection of faint (24 < {\mu}$_r$ mag/arcsec$^2$ < 26) star-forming spiral-arm-like features in the periphery of three nearby early-type galaxies (ETGs). These features are of considerable interest because they document the still ongoing inside-out growth of some local ETGs and may add valuable observational insight into the origin and evolution of spiral structure in triaxial stellar systems. A characteristic property of the nebular component in the studied ETGs, classified i+, is a two-radial-zone structure, with the inner zone that displays faint (EW(H\alpha)$\simeq$1{\AA}) low-ionization nuclear emission-line region (LINER) properties, and the outer one (3{\AA}<EW(H\alpha)<~20{\AA}) HII-region characteristics. This spatial segregation of nebular emission in two physically distinct concentric zones calls for an examination of aperture effects in studies of type i+ ETGs with single-fiber spectroscopic data.Comment: Accepted to A&A, 5 pages, 1 figur