Supporting eradication of maternal child malnutrition in developing countries: a case from Nicaragua scenario.

World Health Organization actively stresses the importance of health, nutrition and well-being of the mother to foster children development. This issue is critical in the rural areas of developing countries where monitoring of health status of children is hardly performed since population suffers from a lack of access to health care. The aim of this research is to design, implement and deploy an e-health information and communication system to support health care in 26 rural communities of Cusmapa, Nicaragua. The final solution consists of an hybrid WiMAX/WiFi architecture that provides good quality communications through VoIP taking advantage of low cost WiFi mobile devices. Thus, a WiMAX base station was installed in the health center to provide a radio link with the rural health post "El Carrizo" sited 7,4 km. in line of sight. This service makes possible personal broadband voice and data communication facilities with the health center based on WiFi enabled devices such as laptops and cellular phones without communications cost. A free software PBX was installed at "San José de Cusmapa" health care site to enable communications for physicians, nurses and a technician through mobile telephones with IEEE 802.11 b/g protocol and SIP provided by the project. Additionally, the rural health post staff (midwives, brigade) received two mobile phones with these same features. In a complementary way, the deployed health information system is ready to analyze the distribution of maternal-child population at risk and the distribution of diseases on a geographical baseline. The system works with four information layers: fertile women, children, people with disabilities and diseases. Thus, authorized staff can obtain reports about prenatal monitoring tasks, status of the communities, malnutrition, and immunization control. Data need to be updated by health care staff in order to timely detect the source of problem to implement measures addressed to alleviate and improve health status population permanently. Ongoing research is focused on a mobile platform that collects and automatically updates in the information system, the height and weight of the children locally gathered in the remote communities. This research is being granted by the program Millennium Rural Communities of the Technical University of Madrid.

Internet-Based Supervisory Teleoperation of a Virtual Humanoid Robot

This paper describes the approach used by the Sarbot-Team for controlling the Atlas humanoid robot during the DARPA Virtual Robotics Challenge that took place in June 2013. Herein we present a proposal for overcoming the restrictions on performance caused by limited bandwidth, high latency and the effects of signal degradation induced by beyond line of sight (BLOS) conditions, RF interference, and other related circumstances. Experimental evaluation confirmed the effectiveness of our approach and present an alternative for coping with constrained communication conditions during the control of humanoid robot deployed at unattended areas.

Protamine-Cre recombinase transgenes efficiently recombine target sequences in the male germ line of mice, but not in embryonic stem cells

The production of subtle or conditional mutations in mice through the combined use of site-specific and homologous recombination has become an increasingly widespread experimental paradigm in mammalian genetics. Embryonic stem cells containing recombinase transgenes that were expressed in the male germ line, but not in other tissues or in the embryonic stem cells themselves, would substantially simplify the production of such alleles. Here we show that transgenes comprised of the mouse protamine 1 promoter and the Cre recombinase coding sequence mediate the efficient recombination of a Cre target transgene in the male germ line, but not in other tissues. Embryonic stem cell lines generated from one of these transgenic strains were transfected with targeting vectors that included loxP-flanked selectable markers, and homologously recombined alleles containing the marker and functional loxP sites were isolated. These results establish the potential of the system for substantially reducing the time, effort, and resources required to produce homologously recombined alleles in mice that have been secondarily rearranged by a site-specific recombinase.

Influence of Precursor Availability on Alkaloid Accumulation by Transgenic Cell Line of Catharanthus roseus1

We have used a transgenic cell line of Catharanthus roseus (L.) G. Don to study the relative importance of the supply of biosynthetic precursors for the synthesis of terpenoid indole alkaloids. Line S10 carries a recombinant, constitutively overexpressed version of the endogenous strictosidine synthase (Str) gene. Various concentrations and combinations of the substrate tryptamine and of loganin, the immediate precursor of secologanin, were added to suspension cultures of S10. Our results indicate that high rates of tryptamine synthesis can take place under conditions of low tryptophan decarboxylase activity, and that high rates of strictosidine synthesis are possible in the presence of a small tryptamine pool. It appears that the utilization of tryptamine for alkaloid biosynthesis enhances metabolic flux through the indole pathway. However, a deficiency in the supply of either the iridoid or the indole precursor can limit flux through the step catalyzed by strictosidine synthase. Precursor utilization for the synthesis of strictosidine depends on the availability of the cosubstrate; the relative abundance of these precursors is a cell-line-specific trait that reflects the metabolic status of the cultures.

The nuclear jet and counterjet region of the radio galaxy Cygnus A.

Very-long-baseline interferometry images of the nuclear region of the radio galaxy Cygnus A reveal a pronounced "core" and a knotty jet and counterjet. The knots are moving away from the core at apparent speeds which are subluminal for h = 1 [h = H0/100 km.s-1.Mpc-1;1 parsec (pc) = 3.09 x 10(16)m] and about c for h = 0.5. The jet is aligned with the outer, kiloparsec-scale jet to within 2 degrees. The counterjet has a total flux density at 5 GHz of about one-fifth of that of the jet. In the context of the twin relativistic jet model for active galactic nuclei, the jet in Cygnus A is oriented at an angle to our line of sight of 35-80 degrees and 55-85 degrees, and the intrinsic velocity of the jet fluid is 0.4-0.6c and 0.6-1c for h = 1 and h = 0.5, respectively.

The imprint of the crustal magnetic field on the thermal spectra and pulse profiles of isolated neutron stars

Isolated neutron stars (NSs) show a bewildering variety of astrophysical manifestations, presumably shaped by the magnetic field strength and topology at birth. Here, using state-of-the-art calculations of the coupled magnetic and thermal evolution of NSs, we compute the thermal spectra and pulse profiles expected for a variety of initial magnetic field configurations. In particular, we contrast models with purely poloidal magnetic fields to models dominated by a strong internal toroidal component. We find that, while the former displays double-peaked profiles and very low pulsed fractions, in the latter, the anisotropy in the surface temperature produced by the toroidal field often results in a single pulse profile, with pulsed fractions that can exceed the 50–60 per cent level even for perfectly isotropic local emission. We further use our theoretical results to generate simulated ‘observed’ spectra, and show that blackbody (BB) fits result in inferred radii that can be significantly smaller than the actual NS radius, even as low as ∼1–2 km for old NSs with strong internal toroidal fields and a high absorption column density along their line of sight. We compute the size of the inferred BB radius for a few representative magnetic field configurations, NS ages and magnitudes of the column density. Our theoretical results are of direct relevance to the interpretation of X-ray observations of isolated NSs, as well as to the constraints on the equation of state of dense matter through radius measurements.

A third cluster of red supergiants in the vicinity of the massive cluster RSGC3

Context. Recent studies have shown that the area around the massive, obscured cluster RSGC3 may harbour several clusters of red supergiants. Aims. We analyse a clump of photometrically selected red supergiant candidates 20′ south of RSGC3 in order to confirm the existence of another of these clusters. Methods. Using medium-resolution infrared spectroscopy around 2.27 μm, we derived spectral types and velocities along the line of sight for the selected candidates, confirming their nature and possible association. Results. We find a compact clump of eight red supergiants and four other candidates at some distance, all of them spectroscopically confirmed red supergiants. The majority of these objects must form an open cluster, which we name Alicante 10. Because of the high reddening and strong field contamination, the cluster sequence is not clearly seen in 2MASS or GPS-UKIDSS. From the observed sources, we derive E(J − KS) = 2.6 and d ≈ 6 kpc. Conclusions. Although the cluster is smaller than RSGC3, it has an initial mass in excess of 10 000 M⊙, and it seems to be part of the RSGC3 complex. With the new members this association already has 35 spectroscopically confirmed red supergiants, confirming its place as one of the most active sites of recent stellar formation in the Galaxy.