1,338 research outputs found

    Peñafiel : memoria histórica, premiada con primer accésit en el certamen literario celebrado en Valladolid el 29 de setiembre de 1879

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    Copia digital. Valladolid : Junta de Castilla y León. Consejería de Cultura y Turismo, 2009-201

    Coastal upwelling and downwelling forcing of circulation in a semi-enclosed bay: Ria de Vigo

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    Semi-enclosed bays in upwelling regions are exposed to forcing related to winds, currents and buoyancy over the shelf. The influence of this external forcing is moderated by factors such as connectivity to the open ocean, shelter by surrounding topography, dimensions of the bay, and freshwater outflows. Such bays, preferred locations for ports, mariculture, marine industry, recreational activities and coastal settlement, present a range of characteristics, understanding of which is necessary to their rational management. Observations in such a semi-enclosed bay, the Ria de Vigo in Spain, are used to characterize the influence of upwelling and downwelling pulses on its circulation. In this location, near the northern limit of the Iberian upwelling system, upwelling events dominate during a short summer season and downwelling events the rest of the year. The ria response to the external forcing is central to nutrient supply and resultant plankton productivity that supports its high level of cultured mussel production. Intensive field studies in September 2006 and June 2007 captured a downwelling event and an upwelling event, respectively. Data from eight current profiler moorings and boat-based MiniBat/ADCP surveys provided an unprecedented quasi-synoptic view of the distribution of water masses and circulation patterns in any ria. In the outer ria, circulation was dominated by the introduction of wind-driven alongshore flow from the external continental shelf through the ria entrances and its interaction with the topography. In the middle ria, circulation was primarily related to the upwelling/downwelling cycle, with a cool, salty and dense lower layer penetrating to the inner ria during upwelling over the shelf. A warmer, lower salinity and less dense surface layer of coastal waters flowed inward during downwelling. Without external forcing, the inner ria responded primarily to tides and buoyancy changes related to land runoff. Under both upwelling and downwelling conditions, the flushing of the ria involved shelf responses to wind pulses. Their persistence for a few days was sufficient to allow waters from the continental shelf to penetrate the innermost ria. Longer term observations supported by numerical modeling are required to confirm the generality of such flushing events in the ria and determine their typical frequency, while comparative studies should explore how these scenarios fit into the range of conditions experienced in other semi-enclosed bays

    Parallel Modelling Paradigm in Multimedia Applications: Mapping and Scheduling onto a Multi-Processor System-on-Chip Platform

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    Multi-processor systems have appeared as a promising alternative to face the difficulties of creating even faster uni-processor systems using latest technologies. Emerg-ing design paradigms such as Multiprocessor System-on-a-Chip (MpSoC) offer high levels of performance and flex-ibility and at the same time promise low-cost, reliable and power-efficient implementations. However, the design com-plexity of such systems have increased tremendously. One source of the complexity stems from highly parallel het-erogeneous nature of the underlying hardware architecture, which poses many challenges for mapping of an applica-tion to the architecture. This motivates the development of a unified programming paradigm that facilitates the map-ping by hiding the architectural complexity and exposing the parallel resources of the architecture. To enable de-sign reuse, such a programming paradigm has to support a smooth translation of sequentially-coded software algo-rithms into their parallel implementations. In this paper we address the parallelization of sequential multimedia appli-cations written in C/C++ for their mapping and schedul-ing onto a flexible MpSoC platform. We show that using our approach an architecture-independent multi-threaded model of a MPEG–2 video decoder algorithm can be ob-tained with only few modifications to an existing sequential implementation of the algorithm. 1

    A time-domain fourth-order-convergent numerical algorithm to integrate black hole perturbations in the extreme-mass-ratio limit

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    We obtain a fourth order accurate numerical algorithm to integrate the Zerilli and Regge-Wheeler wave equations, describing perturbations of nonrotating black holes, with source terms due to an orbiting particle. Those source terms contain the Dirac's delta and its first derivative. We also re-derive the source of the Zerilli and Regge-Wheeler equations for more convenient definitions of the waveforms, that allow direct metric reconstruction (in the Regge-Wheeler gauge).Comment: 30 pages, 12 figure

    Evaluation of passive samplers as a monitoring tool for early warning of Dinophysis toxins in shellfish

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    From June 2006 to January 2007 passive samplers (solid phase adsorbing toxin tracking, SPATT) were tested as a monitoring tool with weekly monitoring of phytoplankton and toxin content (liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry, LC-MS) in picked cells of Dinophysis and plankton concentrates. Successive blooms of Dinophysis acuminata, D. acuta and D. caudata in 2006 caused a long mussel harvesting closure (4.5 months) in the Galician Rías (NW Spain) and a record (up to 9246 ng·g resin-week−1) accumulation of toxins in SPATT discs. Best fit of a toxin accumulation model was between toxin accumulation in SPATT and the product of cell densities by a constant value, for each species of Dinophysis, of toxin content (average) in picked cells. Detection of Dinophysis populations provided earlier warning of oncoming diarrhetic shellfish poisoning (DSP) outbreaks than the SPATT, which at times overestimated the expected toxin levels in shellfish because: (i) SPATT accumulated toxins did not include biotransformation and depuration loss terms and (ii) accumulation of toxins not available to mussels continued for weeks after Dinophysis cells were undetectable and mussels were toxin-free. SPATT may be a valuable environmental monitoring and research tool for toxin dynamics, in particular in areas with no aquaculture, but does not provide a practical gain for early warning of DSP outbreaks

    The action of obestatin in skeletal muscle repair: stem cell expansion, muscle growth, and microenvironment remodeling

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    The development of therapeutic strategies for skeletal muscle diseases, such as physical injuries and myopathies, depends on the knowledge of regulatory signals that control the myogenic process. The obestatin/GPR39 system operates as an autocrine signal in the regulation of skeletal myogenesis. Using a mouse model of skeletal muscle regeneration after injury and several cellular strategies, we explored the potential use of obestatin as a therapeutic agent for the treatment of trauma-induced muscle injuries. Our results evidenced that the overexpression of the preproghrelin, and thus obestatin, and GPR39 in skeletal muscle increased regeneration after muscle injury. More importantly, the intramuscular injection of obestatin significantly enhanced muscle regeneration by simulating satellite stem cell expansion as well as myofiber hypertrophy through a kinase hierarchy. Added to the myogenic action, the obestatin administration resulted in an increased expression of VEGF/VEGFR2 and the consequent microvascularization, with no effect on collagen deposition in skeletal muscle. Furthermore, the potential inhibition of myostatin during obestatin treatment might contribute to its myogenic action improving muscle growth and regeneration. Taken together, our data demonstrate successful improvement of muscle regeneration, indicating obestatin is a potential therapeutic agent for skeletal muscle injury and would benefit other myopathies related to muscle regeneration

    Bloom dynamics and life cycle strategies of two toxic dinoflagellates in a coastal upwelling system (NW Iberian Peninsula)

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    A study of Gymnodinium catenatum and Alexandrium minutum blooms on the Galician coast was conducted from 2005 to 2007 in order to increase knowledge of the mechanisms governing recurrent blooms of these species. Considerable differences in their bloom dynamics were observed. G. catenatum blooms occurred in autumn and winter, following the pattern previously reported in the literature: they began offshore and were advected to the Galician rias when a relaxation of the coastal upwelling occurred. On the other hand, A. minutum blooms developed inside embayments in spring and summer during the upwelling season and were associated with water stability and stratification. Both the vegetative population and the cyst distribution of A. minutum were related to less saline water from freshwater river outputs, which supports a saline-gradient relationship postulated herein for this species. Dinoflagellates may produce both long-term double-walled cysts (resting) and short-term pellicle cysts. Resting cyst deposition and distribution in sediments showed that seeding occurred during the blooms of both species. However, the relationship between the cyst distribution in the sediments in Baiona Bay and the intensity and occurrence of G. catenatum blooms, suggests that the latter are not directly related to resting cyst germination. Moreover, the results presented in the present study point to other difference between the two species, such as the detection of pellicle cysts only for A. minutum. Finally we discuss how the life cycle strategies of these two species may help to explain the different mechanisms of bloom formation reported herein.Versión del editor2,277

    Hardware implementation of a true random number generator integrating a hexagonal boron nitride memristor with a commercial microcontroller

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    The development of the internet-of-things requires cheap, light, small and reliable true random number generator (TRNG) circuits to encrypt the data-generated by objects or humans-before transmitting them. However, all current solutions consume too much power and require a relatively large battery, hindering the integration of TRNG circuits on most objects. Here we fabricated a TRNG circuit by exploiting stable random telegraph noise (RTN) current signals produced by memristors made of two-dimensional (2D) multi-layered hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) grown by chemical vapor deposition and coupled with inkjet-printed Ag electrodes. When biased at small constant voltages (<= 70 mV), the Ag/h-BN/Ag memristors exhibit RTN signals with very low power consumption (similar to 5.25 nW) and a relatively high current on/off ratio (similar to 2) for long periods (>1 hour). We constructed TRNG circuits connecting an h-BN memristor to a small, light and cheap commercial microcontroller, producing a highly-stochastic, high-throughput signal (up to 7.8 Mbit s(-1)) even if the RTN at the input gets interrupted for long times up to 20 s, and if the stochasticity of the RTN signal is reduced. Our study presents the first full hardware implementation of 2D-material-based TRNGs, enabled by the unique stability and figures of merit of the RTN signals in h-BN based memristors

    Exploring the conditions leading to an exceptional early bloom of Dinophysis acuminata in northwest Spain during 2012

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    In a conceptual model proposed before, the onset of the upwelling season and availability of Mesodinium rubrum prey are essential conditions for the initiation of Dinophysis acuminata blooms in the Galician Rías Baixas (NW Spain). Distribution of sexual cysts from the previous year in the top sediment layer is an important parameter in forecasting models of cyst-forming species (e.g. Alexandrium spp.). But the existence of sexual cysts of Dinophysis spp. has not been confirmed, Dinophysis planozygotes can divide and produce vegetative cells directly, and it is possible that species of this genus do not rely on sexual cysts but on some kind of overwintering planktonic form as a seeding mechanism. Here we examine winter conditions—persistence or absence of overwintering cells of Dinophysis within the rías and the adjacent shelf and time of initiation of the upwelling season—from observations in the last 20 years. Our ultimate goal was to explain the abundance and early initiation in April 2012 of an extraordinary bloom of D. acuminata, in what appeared to be a mesoscale event affecting other regions in Western Europe. The dynamics of D. acuminata populations appeared tightly coupled to the upwelling season. Our results suggest that anomalous upwelling patterns (predominance of upwelling in winter) combined with the presence of overwintering (inoculum) cells lead to early initiation of the Dinophysis acuminata growth seasonEn prens
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