The effect of a reduction of nitrogen and phosphorus to eutrophic and mesotrophic conditions towards silver nanoparticle (AgNP) on freshwater green algae species

We investigated the sensitivity of algae towards silver nanoparticles with OECD test medium and lower nutrient concentrations under standard test conditions to improve comparability and to exclude any other confounding factor aside nutrient levels. Two unicellular freshwater microalgae Desmodesmus subspicatus and Raphidocelis subcapitata were chosen due to their status as standard test organisms for the algae growth inhibition test and the response to changes in nutrient supply was compared. The original medium was used as the reference (standard). For the other four media, the amount of either nitrogen or phosphorus in the medium was lowered from half (50%) to one-fourth (25 %) of that of the OECD guideline, resulting in the following media: 50% N, 25% N, 50% P and 25% P medium. As test substance, the OECD reference material NM-300K was used. For this reason, the characterization of AgNP was done using DLS and Absorption spectra (UV/vis). Actual silver concentrations and ionic silver concentrations were measured at the highest test concentration used (100 µg Ag L-1) in R. subcapitata treatments only to reduce the number of samples. All tests were run according to the OECD guideline 201 with sterilized 50 mL cell culture flask. Each medium was tested using the test conditions for culturing with 3 replicates. Test concentrations for both algae species were 0, 25, 50 and 100 µg Ag L-1 for OECD, 50% P and 25% P while for both N reductions, the silver concentrations were 0, 10, 25 and 100 µg Ag L-1. Samples for determining the algal density were taken at every 24 h.

Organizaciones regionales y diversidad cultural: la diplomacia de la Unión Europea con el Mercosur entre la sombra de Hollywood y la acción intergubernamental

El objetivo de este artículo es doble: por un lado explorar la habilidad de la Unión Europea para llevar a cabo una política audiovisual dirigida al Mercosur y promover las normas de la Convención sobre la diversidad de las expresiones culturales; por otro, analizar el impacto del modelo de política audiovisual de la UE en el desarrollo de la cooperación audiovisual con el Mercosur y centrarse en los principales vectores que configuran el paisaje audiovisual del Mercosur. El texto pretende destacar cómo y por qué la UE persigue una política audiovisual con esa región, cuáles son los propósitos y los límites de actuación. En este sentido, se preocupa por entender cómo la diplomacia audiovisual de la UE interactúa con otros actores, como las acciones gubernamentales llevadas a cabo desde la propia UE y el Mercosur, así como las prácticas del sector privado (Hollywwod y los grandes conglomerados de medios).

Estereotipos masculinos y femeninos en los zoologismos fraseológicos españoles y checos

El trabajo pretende mostrar los estereotipos de hombre y mujer en la sociedad occidental según los estudios de género para, más tarde, comprobar si dichos estereotipos se reflejan en la fraseología checa y española relativa a animales, es decir, en los zoologismos. El análisis se sustenta en las teorías de la lingüística cognitiva acerca de la metáfora conceptual y del lenguaje figurado convencional. Las conclusiones muestran una clara discriminación de ambos géneros en el lenguaje, siendo el femenino más afectado que el masculino.

Of Marx and Makers: an Historical Perspective on Generative Justice

In Marxist frameworks “distributive justice” depends on extracting value through a centralized state. Many new social movements—peer to peer economy, maker activism, community agriculture, queer ecology, etc.—take the opposite approach, keeping value in its unalienated form and allowing it to freely circulate from the bottom up. Unlike Marxism, there is no general theory for bottom-up, unalienated value circulation. This paper examines the concept of “generative justice” through an historical contrast between Marx’s writings and the indigenous cultures that he drew upon. Marx erroneously concluded that while indigenous cultures had unalienated forms of production, only centralized value extraction could allow the productivity needed for a high quality of life. To the contrary, indigenous cultures now provide a robust model for the “gift economy” that underpins open source technological production, agroecology, and restorative approaches to civil rights. Expanding Marx’s concept of unalienated labor value to include unalienated ecological (nonhuman) value, as well as the domain of freedom in speech, sexual orientation, spirituality and other forms of “expressive” value, we arrive at an historically informed perspective for generative justice. 

New Framework and Metrics for Economic Evaluation of Medical Technology in the Presence of Heterogeneity and Its Application to the Evaluation of Bariatric Surgery

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-07

An overview on how failure analysis contributes to flight safety in the Portuguese Air Force

Failure analysis has been, throughout the years, a fundamental tool used in the aerospace sector, supporting assessments performed by sustainment and design engineers mainly related to failure modes and material suitability. The predicted service life of aircrafts often exceeds 40 years, and the design assured life rarely accounts for all in service loads and in service environmental menaces that aging aircrafts must deal with throughout their service lives. From the most conservative safe-life conceptual design approaches to the most recent on-condition based design approaches, assessing the condition and predicting the failure modes of components and materials are essential for the development of adequate preventive and corrective maintenance actions as well as for the accomplishment and optimization of scheduled maintenance programs of aircrafts. Moreover, as the operational conditions of aircrafts may vary significantly from operator to operator (especially in military aircraft), it is necessary to access if the defined maintenance programs are adequate to guarantee the continuous reliability and safe usage of the aircrafts, preventing catastrophic failures which bear significant maintenance and repair costs, and that may lead to the loss of human lives. Thus being, failure analysis and material investigations performed as part of aircraft accidents and incidents investigations arise as powerful tools of the utmost importance for safety assurance and cost reduction within the aeronautical and aerospace sectors. The Portuguese Air Force (PRTAF) has operated different aircrafts throughout its long existence, and in some cases, has operated a particular type of aircraft for more than 30 years, gathering a great amount of expertise in: assessing failure modes of the aircrafts materials; conducting aircrafts accidents and incidents investigations (sometimes with the participation of the aircraft manufacturers and/or other operators); and in the development of design and repair solutions for in-service related problems. This paper addresses several studies to support the thesis that failure analysis plays a key role in flight safety improvement within the PRTAF. It presents a short summary of developed

SPINNING NARRATIVES ACROSS POLITICAL DIVIDES: HARNESSING THE CULTURAL POWER OF A STORY WELL-TOLD

This dissertation explores how two American storytellers, considered by many in their to be exemplary in their craft, rely on narrative strategies to communicate to their audiences on divisive political topics in a way that both invokes feelings of pleasure and connection and transcends party identification and ideological divides. Anna Quindlen, through her political columns and op-eds, and Aaron Sorkin, through his television show The West Wing, have won over a politically diverse fan base in spite of the fact that their writing espouses liberal political viewpoints. By telling stories that entertain, first and foremost, Quindlen and Sorkin are able to have a material impact on their audiences on both dry and controversial topics, accomplishing that which 19th Century writer and activist Harriet Farley made her practice: writing in such a way to gain the access necessary to “do good by stealth.” This dissertation will argue that it is their skilled use of storytelling elements, which capitalize on the cultural relationship humans have with storytelling, that enables Quindlen and Sorkin to achieve this. The dissertation asks: How do stories shape the beliefs, perspectives, and cognitive functions of humans? How do stories construct culture and interact with cultural values? What is the media’s role in shaping society? What gives stories their power to unite as a medium? What is the significance of the experience of reading or hearing a well-told story, of how it feels? What are the effects of Quindlen’s and Sorkin’s writing on audience members and the political world at large? What is lost when a simplistic narrative structure is followed? Who is left out and what is overlooked? The literature that informs the answers to these questions will cross over and through several academic disciplines: American Studies, British Cultural Studies, Communication, Folklore, Journalism, Literature, Media Studies, Popular Culture, and Social Psychology. The chapters will also explore scholarship on the subjects of narratology and schema theory.

The impact of Open Access outside of European Universities

The Open Access movement has encouraged the availability of publicly-funded research papers, data and learning content for barrier-free use of that content without payment by the user. The impact of increasing availability of content to researchers in European universities is understood in terms of easier access to previous research and greater exposure for new research results, bringing benefits to the research community itself. A new culture of informal sharing is evident within the teaching and learning communities and to some extent also within the research community, but as yet the growth in informal sharing has not had a major effect upon the use of formal publication choices. This briefing paper explores the impact of open access upon potential users of research outputs outside the walls of research-led European universities, where the economic value of open access may be even greater than the academic value within universities. The potential impact of open access is understood in many communities but requires a greater volume of open access content to be available for the full potential to be realised. More open access content will become available as the opportunities in open, internet-based digital scholarship are understood. This briefing paper was written in cooperation with SPARC Europe. All links provided in footnotes in this Briefing Paper are to studies available in open access.

The role of musical aptitude in the pronunciation of English vowels among Polish learners of English

It has long been held that people who have musical training or talent acquire L2 pronunciation more successfully than those that do not. Indeed, there have been empirical studies to support this hypothesis (Pastuszek-Lipińska 2003, Fonseca-Mora et al. 2011, Zatorre and Baum 2012). However, in many of such studies, musical abilities in subjects were mostly verified through questionnaires rather than tested in a reliable, empirical manner. Therefore, we run three different musical hearing tests, i.e. pitch perception test, musical memory test, and rhythm perception test (Mandell 2009) to measure the actual musical aptitude in our subjects. The main research question is whether a better musical ear correlates with a higher rate of acquisition of English vowels in Polish EFL learners. Our group consists of 40 Polish university students studying English as their major who learn the British pronunciation model during an intense pronunciation course. 10 male and 30 female subjects with mean age of 20.1 were recorded in a recording studio. The procedure comprised spontaneous conversations, reading passages and reading words in isolation. Vowel measurements were conducted in Praat in all three speech styles and several consonantal contexts. The assumption was that participants who performed better in musical tests would produce vowels that are closer to the Southern British English model. We plotted them onto vowel charts and calculated the Euclidean distances. Preliminary results show that there is potential correlation between specific aspects of musical hearing and different elements of pronunciation. The study is a longitudinal project and will encompass two more years, during which we will repeat the recording procedure twice to measure the participants’ progress in mastering the English pronunciation and comparing it with their musical aptitude.

Microstructural-based approach to the interpretation of clays and transitional soils behaviour

Tese (doutorado)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Tecnologia, Departamento de Engenharia Civil e Ambiental, 2016.

Using a Combination of Phylogenetic Comparative and Paleobotanical Methods to Elucidate Patterns of Lineage Selection in Rosales (Plantae: Anthophyta)

An increasing focus in evolutionary biology is on the interplay between mesoscale ecological and evolutionary processes such as population demographics, habitat tolerance, and especially geographic distribution, as potential drivers responsible for patterns of diversification and extinction over geologic time. However, few studies to date connect organismal processes such as survival and reproduction through mesoscale patterns to long-term macroevolutionary trends. In my dissertation, I investigate how mechanism of seed dispersal, mediated through geographic range size, influences diversification rates in the Rosales (Plantae: Anthophyta). In my first chapter, I validate the phylogenetic comparative methods that I use in my second and third chapters. Available state speciation and extinction (SSE) models assumptions about evolution known to be false through fossil data. I show, however, that as long as net diversification rates remain positive – a condition likely true for the Rosales – these violations of SSE’s assumptions do not cause significantly biased results. With SSE methods validated, my second chapter reconstructs three associations that appear to increase diversification rate for Rosalean genera: (1) herbaceous habit; (2) a three-way interaction combining animal dispersal, high within-genus species richness, and geographic range on multiple continents; (3) a four-way interaction combining woody habit with the other three characteristics of (2). I suggest that the three- and four-way interactions represent colonization ability and resulting extinction resistance in the face of late Cenozoic climate change; however, there are other possibilities as well that I hope to investigate in future research. My third chapter reconstructs the phylogeographic history of the Rosales using both non-fossil-assisted SSE methods as well as fossil-informed traditional phylogeographic analysis. Ancestral state reconstructions indicate that the Rosaceae diversified in North America while the other Rosalean families diversified elsewhere, possibly in Eurasia. SSE is able to successfully identify groups of genera that were likely to have been ancestrally widespread, but has poorer taxonomic resolution than methods that use fossil data. In conclusion, these chapters together suggest several potential causal links between organismal, mesoscale, and geologic scale processes, but further work will be needed to test the hypotheses that I raise here.

Plasticity in leaf-level water relations of tropical rainforest trees in response to experimental drought.

The tropics are predicted to become warmer and drier, and understanding the sensitivity of tree species to drought is important for characterizing the risk to forests of climate change. This study makes use of a long-term drought experiment in the Amazon rainforest to evaluate the role of leaf-level water relations, leaf anatomy and their plasticity in response to drought in six tree genera. The variables (osmotic potential at full turgor, turgor loss point, capacitance, elastic modulus, relative water content and saturated water content) were compared between seasons and between plots (control and through-fall exclusion) enabling a comparison between short- and long-term plasticity in traits. Leaf anatomical traits were correlated with water relation parameters to determine whether water relations differed among tissues. The key findings were: osmotic adjustment occurred in response to the long-term drought treatment; species resistant to drought stress showed less osmotic adjustment than drought-sensitive species; and water relation traits were correlated with tissue properties, especially the thickness of the abaxial epidermis and the spongy mesophyll. These findings demonstrate that cell-level water relation traits can acclimate to long-term water stress, and highlight the limitations of extrapolating the results of short-term studies to temporal scales associated with climate change.

Inter-University Program for Latino Research: Summer Institute for Latino Public Policy

This flyer promotes a one-week intensive training and orientation to public policy and legislative processes through a series of seminars, workshops, site visits to national organizations and meetings with Congressional representatives. The training was held from June 16-21, 2013.

Effectiveness of non-pharmacological interventions to prevent falls in older people: a systematic overview. The SENATOR Project ONTOP Series

Background: Falls are common events in older people, which cause considerable morbidity and mortality. Non-pharmacological interventions are an important approach to prevent falls. There are a large number of systematic reviews of non-pharmacological interventions, whose evidence needs to be synthesized in order to facilitate evidence-based clinical decision making. Objectives: To systematically examine reviews and meta-analyses that evaluated non-pharmacological interventions to prevent falls in older adults in the community, care facilities and hospitals. Methods: We searched the electronic databases Pubmed, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, PEDRO and TRIP from January 2009 to March 2015, for systematic reviews that included at least one comparative study, evaluating any non-pharmacological intervention, to prevent falls amongst older adults. The quality of the reviews was assessed using AMSTAR and ProFaNE taxonomy was used to organize the interventions. Results: Fifty-nine systematic reviews were identified which consisted of single, multiple and multi-factorial non-pharmacological interventions to prevent falls in older people. The most frequent ProFaNE defined interventions were exercises either alone or combined with other interventions, followed by environment/assistive technology interventions comprising environmental modifications, assistive and protective aids, staff education and vision assessment/correction. Knowledge was the third principle class of interventions as patient education. Exercise and multifactorial interventions were the most effective treatments to reduce falls in older adults, although not all types of exercise were equally effective in all subjects and in all settings. Effective exercise programs combined balance and strength training. Reviews with a higher AMSTAR score were more likely to contain more primary studies, to be updated and to perform meta-analysis. Conclusions: The aim of this overview of reviews of non-pharmacological interventions to prevent falls in older people in different settings, is to support clinicians and other healthcare workers with clinical decision-making by providing a comprehensive perspective of findings.