Multiagent System Applied to the Modeling and Simulation of Pedestrian Traffic in Counterflow

An agent-based model to simulate a pedestrian crowd in a corridor is presented. Pedestrian crowd models are valuable tools to gain insight into the behavior of human crowds in both, everyday and crisis situations. The main contribution of this work is the definition of a pedestrian crowd model by applying ideas from the field of the kinetic theory of living systems on the one hand, and ideas from the field of computational agents on the other hand. Such combination supported a quantitative characterization of the performance of our agents, a neglected issue in agent-based models, through well-known kinetic parameters. Fundamental diagrams of flow and activity are presented for both, groups of homogeneous pedestrians, and groups of heterogeneous pedestrians in terms of their willingness to reach their goals.Agent-Based Modeling, Pedestrian Crowd, Activity Measurement

Are we close to defining a metabolomic signature of human obesity? A systematic review of metabolomics studies

BPV is supported by a grant to postdoctoral researchers at foreign universities and research centers from the Alfonso Martín Escudero Foundation, Spain.Introduction Obesity is a disorder characterized by a disproportionate increase in body weight in relation to height, mainly due to the accumulation of fat, and is considered a pandemic of the present century by many international health institutions. It is associated with several non-communicable chronic diseases, namely, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), cardiovascular diseases (CVD), and cancer. Metabolomics is a useful tool to evaluate changes in metabolites due to being overweight and obesity at the body fluid and cellular levels and to ascertain metabolic changes in metabolically unhealthy overweight and obese individuals (MUHO) compared to metabolically healthy individuals (MHO). Objectives We aimed to conduct a systematic review (SR) of human studies focused on identifying metabolomic signatures in obese individuals and obesity-related metabolic alterations, such as inflammation or oxidative stress. Methods We reviewed the literature to identify studies investigating the metabolomics profile of human obesity and that were published up to May 7th, 2019 in SCOPUS and PubMed through an SR. The quality of reporting was evaluated using an adapted of QUADOMICS. Results Thirty-three articles were included and classified according to four types of approaches. (i) studying the metabolic signature of obesity, (ii) studying the differential responses of obese and non-obese subjects to dietary challenges (iii) studies that used metabolomics to predict weight loss and aimed to assess the effects of weight loss interventions on the metabolomics profiles of overweight or obese human subjects (iv) articles that studied the effects of specific dietary patterns or dietary compounds on obesity-related metabolic alterations in humans. Conclusion The present SR provides state-of-the-art information about the use of metabolomics as an approach to understanding the dynamics of metabolic processes involved in human obesity and emphasizes metabolic signatures related to obesity phenotypes.ODRH has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-COFUND) under grant agreement n° 609020 - Scientia Fellows

Numerical stability of a fixed point iterative method to determine patterns of turbulent flow in a rectangular cavity with different aspect ratios

2D isothermal viscous incompressible flows are presented from the Navier- Stokes equations in the Stream function-vorticity formulation and in the velocity-vorticity formulation. The simulation is made using a numerical method based on a fixed point it- erative process to solve the nonlinear elliptic system that results after time discretization. The iterative process leads us to the solution of uncoupled, well-conditioned, symmetric linear elliptic problems from which efficient solvers exist regardless of the space discretiza- tion. The experiments take place on the lid driven cavity problem for Reynolds numbers up to Re = 10000 and different aspect ratios A (A=ratio of the height to the width) A = 1 and A /= 1 such aAs = 1/2, till A = 3. It appears that with velocity and vorticity variables is more difficult to solve this kind of flows, at least with a numerical procedure similar to the one applied in stream function and vorticity variables to solve an analogous nonlinear elliptic system. To obtain such flows is not an easy task, especially with the velocity-vorticity formulation. We report here results for moderate Reynolds numbers (Re 10000), although with them enough effectiveness is achieved to be able to vary the aspect ratio of the cavity A, which causes the flow to be more unstable. Con- tribution in this work is to consider rectangular cavities of drag, which can impact on isothermal turbulent flow patterns. Another contribution is to include a wide region of the Reynolds number as well as different aspect ratios where we tested stability of the numerical scheme

The Metabolic Impact of Two Different Parenteral Nutrition Lipid Emulsions in Children after Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation: A Lipidomics Investigation

This research was funded by the "Salud Investiga Modalidad Joven 2010" award from the Junta de Andalucia, Spain and CIBERobn.Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) involves the infusion of either bone marrow or blood cells preceded by toxic chemotherapy. However, there is little knowledge about the clinical benefits of parenteral nutrition (PN) in patients receiving high-dose chemotherapy during HSCT. We investigated the lipidomic profile of plasma and the targeted fatty acid profiles of plasma and erythrocytes in children after HSCT using PN with either a fish oil-based lipid emulsion or a classic soybean oil emulsion. An untargeted liquid chromatography high-resolution mass spectrometry platform connected with a novel in silico annotation algorithm was utilized to determine the most relevant chemical subclasses affected. In addition, we explored the interrelation between the lipidomics profile in plasma, the targeted fatty acid profile in plasma and erythrocytes, several biomarkers of inflammation, and antioxidant defense using an innovative data integration analysis based on Latent Components. We observed that the fish oil-based lipid emulsion had an impact in several lipid subclasses, mainly glycerophosphocholines (PC), glycerophosphoserines (PS), glycerophosphoethanolamines (PE), oxidized PE (O-PE), 1-alkyl,2-acyl PS, lysophosphatidylethanolamines (LPE), oxidized PS (O-PS) and dicarboxylic acids. In contrast, the classic soybean oil emulsion did not. Several connections across the different blocks of data were found and aid in interpreting the impact of the lipid emulsions on metabolic health.Junta de Andalucia European CommissionCIBERob

ANÁLISIS JURÍDICO DEL ARBITRAJE MERCANTIL EN MÉXICO.

El arbitraje como un método alternativo de solución de controversias se ha convertido en una medida para la impartición de justicia en México, dando por finalizados aquellos juicios de carácter mercantil, laboral y todo aquel que dependa de un contrato o tenga pretensiones económicas que puedan ser resueltos por esta vía en un tiempo más simplificado en relación con los juicios ordinarios. Al iniciarse los juicios en la actualidad se ha ordenado a los Jueces encargados de resolver las disputas dando prioridad para llegar a una solución amistosa sobre el conflicto, esto promueve que los procedimientos legales sean resueltos en el menor tiempo posible sin realizar todas las diligencias establecidas por la ley. Por otra parte el arbitraje promueve ciertas ventajas respecto a los juicios ordinarios, de las cuales puede mencionarse el ahorro de tiempos para su ejecución y los costos de operación. En ocasiones las personas suelen desistirse de los procedimientos legales debido a que los procedimientos legales suelen ser aplazados por la diversa carga de trabajo de los servidores públicos. Otro aspecto positivo del arbitraje es la confianza y la profesionalización con la que los responsables de realizar el procedimiento arbitral se conducen al ejecutar sus actividades, debido a lo anterior la necesidad de recalcar la labor de las organizaciones privadas operan con cierta ética y moralidad respecto a las instituciones establecidas por la ley, superando aquellas expectativas de las personas quienes acuden a este medio alternativo para solucionar sus controversias. Dentro de esta investigación se pretende analizar el caso Grupo Radio Centro S.A de C.V. vs InfoRed S.A de C.V. el cual al resolverse presenta algunas inconsistencias durante su ejecución, por ello debe estudiarse a fondo para perfeccionar las leyes que rigen el arbitraje en México con el motivo de efectuar el cumplimiento de los laudos

Two Different Formulations for Solving the Navier-Stokes Equations with Moderate and High Reynolds Numbers

In this work, we discuss the numerical solution of the Taylor vortex and the lid-driven cavity problems. Both problems are solved using the Stream function-vorticity formulation of the Navier-Stokes equations in 2D. Results are obtained using a fixed point iterative method and working with matrixes A and B resulting from the discretization of the Laplacian and the advective term, respectively. We solved both problems with Reynolds numbers in the range of 3200 ≤ Re ≤ 7500. Results are also obtained using the velocity-vorticity formulation of the Navier-Stokes equations. In this case, we are using only the fixed point iterative method. We present results for the lid-driven cavity problem and for the Stream function-vorticity formulation with Reynolds numbers in the range of 3200 ≤ Re ≤ 7500. As the Reynolds number increases, the time and the space step size have to be refined. We show results for 3200 ≤ Re ≤ 20,000. The numerical scheme with the velocity-vorticity formulation uses a smaller step size for both time and space. Results are not as good as with the Stream function-vorticity formulation, although the way the scheme behaves gives us another point of view on the behavior of fluids under different numerical schemes and different formulation

Fish Skin and Gill Mucus: A Source of Metabolites for Non-Invasive Health Monitoring and Research

Mucous membranes such as the gill and skin mucosa in fish protect them against a multitude of environmental factors. At the same time, changes in the molecular composition of mucus may provide valuable information about the interaction of the fish with their environment, as well as their health and welfare. In this study, the metabolite profiles of the plasma, skin and gill mucus of freshwater Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) were compared using liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS). Several normalization procedures aimed to reduce unwanted variation in the untargeted data were tested. In addition, the basal metabolism of skin and gills, and the impact of the anesthetic benzocaine for euthanisation were studied. For targeted metabolomics, the commercial AbsoluteIDQ p400 HR kit was used to evaluate the potential differences in metabolic composition in epidermal mucus as compared to the plasma. The targeted metabolomics data showed a high level of correlation between different types of biological fluids from the same individual, indicating that mucus metabolite composition could be used for fish health monitoring and research

Linking host morphology and symbiont performance in octocorals

Octocorals represent an important group in reef communities throughout the tropical seas and, like scleractinian corals, they can be found in symbiosis with the dinoflagellate Symbiodinium. However, while there is extensive research on this symbiosis and its benefits in scleractinians, research on octocorals has focused so far mainly on the host without addressing their symbiosis. Here, we characterized and compared the photophysiological features of nine Caribbean octocoral species with different colony morphologies (sea fan, plumes, whips and rods) and related key morphological features with their respective symbiont photobiology. Colony features (branch shape and thickness), as well as micromorphological features (polyp size, density), were found to be significantly correlated with symbiont performance. Sea fans and plumes, with thinner branches and smaller polyps, favor higher metabolic rates, compared to sea rods with thicker branches and larger polyps. Daily integrated photosynthesis to respiration ratios > 1 indicated that the autotrophic contribution to organisms’ energy demands was important in all species, but especially in sea whips. This information represents an important step towards a better understanding of octocoral physiology and its relationship to host morphology, and might also explain to some extent species distribution and susceptibility to environmental stress