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Despite the ecological importance of leopard seals (Hydrurga leptonyx) as apex marine predators, little is known about their reproductive biology. To address this paucity, we reviewed leopard seal birth and pup records and applied a standardised age-class classification system to differentiate between births/newborns (offspring ≤ 14 days old) and pups (> 14 days but terra firma. The northernmost published leopard seal birth records occurred in New Zealand whilst the northernmost published leopard seal pup records occurred in Australia. This study contradicts the long-standing hypothesis that leopard seals only give birth on Antarctic pack ice, and instead, here we indicate that 84.2% and 57.4% of collated leopard seal birth and pup records, respectively, occur outside of Antarctica. Our records illustrate the importance of northern regions as part of the leopard seal’s range. We emphasise the need to conduct research focused on the reproductive biology of this keystone species throughout its range and that future management of leopard seal populations should also consider their northern range.

Introduction Virtual reality (VR) is a technology that allows us to replace our real environment with one created with digital media. This technology is increasingly used in the training of healthcare professionals, and previous studies show that the involvement and motivation of students who participate in activities that use VR increases compared to those who undergo training with the traditional methodology. The main aim of the study is to evaluate the learning curve of the students using a VR environment, to evaluate the satisfaction with the training activity and the cost, and to compare them with training that uses role-playing methodology. Methodology Two-arm community-based randomised trial. The control arm will base the training on the usual role-playing methodology. The second arm or intervention arm will base the Basic Life Support (BLS) training on a VR programme. Results Statistically significant differences are observed in the percentage of correct answers in favour of the group that used VR as a learning methodology in the test taken at the end of the course. These differences disappear when comparing the results of the test performed at six months. The satisfaction rating of the role-playing training activity has a score of 9.37 out of a total of 10 and satisfaction with the VR methodology has a score of 9.72. The cost analysis shows that the cost of training a student by role-playing is 32.5 euros and, if trained by VR, it is 41.6 euros. Conclusions VR is a tool that allows the consolidation of a greater amount of knowledge in the short term and can be used for situations such as pandemics, where traditional formats are not available. In relation to student satisfaction with the training activity, the rating in both groups is very high and the differences are minimal. The results will be directly applicable to the decision making of BLS training in Central Catalonia in relation to the scheduling of training activities that use the VR methodology in an uncertain environment.

Objective There are scarce data on the mortality after hip fracture surgery for patients treated in the most recent years. The objective of this study was to analyze whether the overall initiatives introduced over the last decade for elderly patients with hip fractures had a positive impact on the 1-year mortality. Methods Patients treated during 2010–2012 were compared with patients treated during 2018–2020 for all-cause 1-year mortality. Variables influencing mortality were collected based on the literature, including demographic, comorbidity, cognitive status, and preinjury physical function. Crude mortalities were compared between periods, as well as with the expected mortality in the general population adjusted for age, gender, and year of surgery using the standardized mortality ratio (SMR). A multivariate model was used to identify mortality risk factors. Results 591 patients older than 65 years were treated during 2010–2012 and 642 patients during 2018–2020. The mean age increased significantly between periods (78.9 vs. 82.6 years, respectively, p = 0.001) in both genders, together with an increase in comorbidity (p = 0.014). The in-hospital mortality risk had no significant difference between periods (2.5 vs. 2.0%, p = 0.339), but the 30-day mortality risk (8.3 vs. 5.5%, p = 0.031) and 1-year mortality risk (16.1 vs. 11.9%, p = 0.023) declined significantly. However, 1-year mortality in 2020 had an excess of 1.33 in SMR. Age older than 80 years, male gender, and Charlson comorbidity index > 2 were significant predictors of 1-year mortality. Conclusion The important evolution achieved in the last decade for the management of patients with hip fracture surgery has led to a significant decline in 1-year mortality, but the 1-year mortality remains significantly higher compared to the general population of similar age and gender.

The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is a group of genes comprising one of the most important components of the vertebrate immune system. Consequently, there has been much interest in characterising MHC variation and its relationship with fitness in a variety of species. Due to the exceptional polymorphism of MHC genes, careful PCR primer design is crucial for capturing all of the allelic variation present in a given species. We therefore developed intronic primers to amplify the full-length 267 bp protein-coding sequence of the MHC class II DQB exon 2 in the Antarctic fur seal. We then characterised patterns of MHC variation among mother–offspring pairs from two breeding colonies and detected 19 alleles among 771 clone sequences from 56 individuals. The distribution of alleles within and among individuals was consistent with a single-copy, classical DQB locus showing Mendelian inheritance. Amino acid similarity at the MHC was significantly associated with genome-wide relatedness, but no relationship was found between MHC heterozygosity and genome-wide heterozygosity. Finally, allelic diversity was several times higher than reported by a previous study based on partial exon sequences. This difference appears to be related to allele-specific amplification bias, implying that primer design can strongly impact the inference of MHC diversity.

Generalized Kelvin–Voigt and Maxwell models using Prony series are some of the most well-known models to characterize the behavior of polymers. The simulation software for viscoelastic materials generally implement only some material models. Therefore, for the practice of the engineer, it is very useful to have formulas that establish the equivalence between different models. Although the existence of these relationships is a well-established fact, moving from one model to another involves a relatively long process. This article presents a development of the relationships between generalized Kelvin–Voigt and Maxwell models using the aforementioned series and their respective relaxation and creep coefficients for one and two summations. The relationship between the singular points (maximums, minimums and inflexion points) is also included.

In this work, the swelling of pH- and temperature-sensitive [poly(2-(diethylamino) ethyl) methacrylate]-based nanogels has been analyzed with the help of coarse-grained simulations employed in the last decade for polyelectrolyte gels. This computational approach, which is based on particle-particle interactions between polymer units, constitutes an alternative to thermodynamic formalisms. Polymer-polymer hydrophobic forces are accounted for in the model through a solvent-mediated interaction potential whose depth increases with temperature. This model qualitatively captures the swelling behavior of such nanogels when their degree of protonation varies from 0 to 1 without requiring changes in the potential parameters. In addition, our study quantitatively reveals that [poly(2-(diethylamino) ethyl) methacrylate]-based particles are more hydrophobic than those based on poly(N-isopropylacrylamide).

This study aimed at evaluating the use of polypropylene fabrics in weaned pig facilities (5–10 weeks of age) during the winter period to improve thermal environment and energy saving for heating. Two experiments were conducted to validate the effects of fabrics (F) compared to control (C) in three 2-week periods using natural ventilation (assay 1, 2013) and forced ventilation (assay 2, 2014). Air temperature was greater in F than in C compartments in both years, particularly during the first 2-week periods (2 °C of mean difference). Natural ventilation was not enough to maintain relative humidity levels below 70 % at the end of the postweaning period (9–10 weeks of age) in both groups (F and C), whereas forced ventilation allowed controlling daily mean relative humidity levels

Background: US is a simple, reproducible and economic technique for vascular evaluation. New technologies using radiofrequency and multidimensional Doppler plus computer development allow to evaluate parameters like shear stress, Flow profile and vascular remodeling no invasively. Objective: To compare the “regional” carotid evaluation with the accepted parameters of vascular disease like remodeling, arterial stiffness and endothelial function in hypertensive patients. Methods: We evaluated 43 consecutive patients (18 healthy referent, 12 controlled HTN y 6 non controlled HTN) derived for NIVE (IMT, Plaques, PWV c-f and Endothelial Function) (“systemic parameters”) and using a new US machine Resona 7® with radiofrequency and multidimensional Doppler (VFlow) we obtained “regional parameters” of the common carotid artery like remodeling, arterial stiffness, wall shear stress and hemodynamic data like instantaneous speed and flow and speed gradient. The protocol was approved by LEC. Results: All the systemic parameters (IMT, %Plaques, PWV c-f and Endothelial Function) were significantly abnormal (p < 0.05) independently of BP control. The regional parameters and the regional hemodynamics showed an abnormal tendency without statistical significance. Correlation, regression and concordance tests showed that these parameters are concordant but not interchangeable. Conclusion: The systemic and regional parameters where altered in hypertensive patients indicating the presence of associated vascular disease, independently of BP control. However, they were not interchangeable. These findings are limited due to the sample size and heterogeneity to yield a clinical application. Maybe, this pattern of regional vascular abnormalities, clearly different in hypertensives, could open a new field of investigation of vascular disease in hypertension.

A total of 158 almond accessions representative of the diversity of almond across the five continents were included for analysis using 17 microsatellite polymorphic markers. Genetic relationships among genotypes were estimated using cluster analysis, allowing their differentiation in two main groups, one with the domesticated almond cultivars and selections and the other with all wild Prunus species close to almond. The unweighted pair group method average tree drawn from this analysis classified the genotypes according to their geographical origin, confirming the particular evolution of different almond ecotypes. Structure analysis showed a strong subpopulation structure and linkage disequilibrium decaying with increasing genetic linkage distance. Analysis of molecular variance confirmed that most of the genetic variability was within populations. Therefore the connection structure between the different populations and the possible bottlenecks in the expansion of almond cultivars could be established.

Phrenic nerve pacing is a method of respiratory support that can replace mechanical ventilation in high-level cervical spinal cord injury patients with diaphragmatic paralysis. Our objective was to evaluate survival and long-term quality of life in patients with external respiratory support by PNP vs volumetric respirator in patients with severe respiratory insufficiency due to a high-level spinal cord injury. This is a retrospective review study of a prospectively collected database for evaluate the survival and a questionnaire for quality of life has been collected face-to-face or by telephone at present. Cervical SCI patients with permanent respiratory support (PNP or MV). Long-term evaluation of a cohort of PNP-supported patients. We performed a comparison between these patients and volumetric respirator-supported patients. For survival analysis, we used the Kaplan–Meier method and Cox proportional hazards model. The health-related quality of life was assessed with SF-36 questionnaire, a general HRQL evaluation. One hundred twenty six patients on permanent respiratory support were evaluated during the study period. Of these, 38 were on PNP and 88 were mechanically ventilated. Paced patients were younger and had a longer survival, but in a multivariate analysis adjusted for age using a multiple logistic correlation we found that length of survival was greater for PNP patients. In terms of HRQL, the PNP-supported patients showed better results in terms of social functioning. PNP is a stable and effective method of long-term respiratory support in this type of patients (SCI patients dependent on external respiratory support). In these patients it improves the length of survival and some social issues by quality of life when compared with patients under MV.

The free/open-source software philosophy has been embraced by many machine translation (MT) researchers and developers, as demonstrated by the fact that over the last few years a number of free/open-source MT systems and resources have been released.1 Furthermore, there have been conferences and workshops focused on free/open-source developments for MT such as the six MT Marathons already organized,2 the two editions of the International Workshop on Free/Open-Source Rule-Based MT held in November 20093 and January 2011,4 the seminal OSMaTran workshop on Open-Source MT held on September 2005 at the Tenth MT Summit,5 or the open-source-themed 3rd Workshop on Example-Based MT held in November 2009.6 Free software may be freely distributed and used without restrictions for any purpose; in addition, it can also be modified to suit a new purpose and the modified versions may also be freely distributed. For modifications to be possible, access to the source is necessary, hence the alternative name of open-source software. Freedom and access to the source are articulated as special cases of copyright, using licences. The

Apertium is a free/open-source platform for rule-based machine translation. It is being widely used to build machine translation systems for a variety of language pairs, especially in those cases (mainly with related-language pairs) where shallow transfer suffices to produce good quality translations, although it has also proven useful in assimilation scenarios with more distant pairs involved. This article summarises the Apertium platform: the translation engine, the encoding of linguistic data, and the tools developed around the platform. The present limitations of the platform and the challenges posed for the coming years are also discussed. Finally, evaluation results for some of the most active language pairs are presented. An appendix describes Apertium as a free/open-source project.

Black-browed albatrosses Thalassarche melanophris are currently classified as globally endangered. The most important populations of this species are believed to be declining due to, amongst other factors, unsustainable levels of incidental mortality in fishing gear. However, detailed demographic data are lacking for several critical populations, including the largest of all, nesting in the Falkland Islands. Here, we present data from the first Falkland Islands detailed demographic study (at New Island) and show that, from 2003 to 2009, the mean adult survival probability was 0.942 (95% CI: 0.930–0.952). Nesting frequency of adults is amongst the highest recorded for Thalassarche albatrosses and breeding success (0.564 chicks per egg) is within normal values. The nesting population in the intensively studied plots experienced an increase of 4% per year from 2004 to 2009. These results indicate that the Falklands population may not be as threatened as previously supposed, although studies from more sites and a longer time series are needed to confirm or refute this. The high survival rates may partly reflect recent efforts to mitigate bycatch made by the Falkland Islands and other fisheries in the region. The reinforcement of such initiatives may be critical to buffer the black-browed albatross population against ecosystem shifts and natural disasters (such as harmful algal blooms) that will likely become more frequent with ongoing global changes.

Several coastal plains of the Elba Island (Marina di Campo, Portoferraio, Schiopparello, Mola, Porto Azzurro and Barbarossa plains) in Tuscany (Italy) were studied to determine the causes of decline in groundwater quality, using major ion chemistry to establish the causes of groundwater salinization. The study demonstrates that salinization of coastal plain alluvial aquifers is not simply linked to seawater intrusion but is also intimately related to inflows from adjacent aquifers. Ionic ratios, correlation graphs and distribution value maps were employed as the means to understand the hydrochemistry of the study areas. The Mg/Cl ratio in particular can be considered a good tracer to distinguish the main salinization processes that control groundwater chemistry. Seawater intrusion only partly determines the chemistry of some groundwaters, which generally belong to a chloride facies where the salinity is derived principally from freshwater-seawater mixing and the participation of cation exchange. Proceeding inland groundwater quality seems to be principally determined by the inflow of Mg, Ca-HCO(3) or Ca, Na-HCO(3) waters formed from the weathering of silicate minerals in adjoining aquifers. Hydrolysis of these minerals is of prime importance in controlling groundwater chemistry in adjacent alluvial plains. The lateral recharge flows introduce water with a different chemical composition and this variable of freshwater recharge changes the hydrochemistry as a result of mixing between two or more waters types. This situation is further complicated when seawater and base exchange reactions participate, due to seawater intrusion.

A gravimetric method to determine heavy fractions of total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) in soils is reported. The method was adapted and calibrated by modifying previous standard methods published, incorporating energy and cost savings where possible. Artificially contaminated soils with different organic matter content, and aged in stationary mode for a period of 8 months were used for calibration. Insufficient solvent evaporation was identified as the most prevalent and largest positive interference in the gravimetric detection. To overcome this, while minimizing the need for heating, a combination of three 10-min rotary evaporator steps and 30 min of vacuum in a desiccator were applied, for a total solvent volume of 60 ml. Hexane was chosen as the extraction solvent and a 40–60 min treatment in an ultrasound bath of 260 W was found suitable to extract 80–95% of TPH extracted by the Soxhlet method. Finally, the use of silica gel for cleanup of co-extracted natural organic matter was found unnecessary, because of the low amounts co-extracted for soils with up to 5% organic carbon, and because the chemical nature of the co-extracted organic matter prevents its selective adsorption to silica.

The Castellon Plain alluvial aquifer, Spain, is intensively exploited to meet the demand for agricultural irrigation and industrial water supply. The geochemistry of its groundwater shows complex salinization in the northern and southern parts of the aquifer, with significant pollution from human origin in the central portion. Boron content and B isotope geochemistry are useful for distinguishing between various sources of pollution and their relative importance in different parts of this aquifer. Boron concentrations in the groundwater vary between 0.01 and 0.85 mg/L. In the more saline groundwaters, found at the northern and southern ends of the study area, the presence of B is linked to inputs from seawater and water with a calcium-magnesium sulphate facies, which feed the aquifer and clearly influence the chemistry of its waters. Evidence of B adsorption processes in some samples is shown by the low B/Cl ratios and the high values of δ11B. In the central portion of the aquifer, the high B/Cl ratios and the strongly negative δ11B are related to pollution of human origin.

Although corpus-based approaches to machine translation (MT) are growing in interest, they are not applicable when the translation involves less-resourced language pairs for which there are no parallel corpora available; in those cases, the rule-based approach is the only applicable solution. Most rule-based MT systems make use of part-of-speech (PoS) taggers to solve the PoS ambiguities in the source-language texts to translate; those MT systems require accurate PoS taggers to produce reliable translations in the target language (TL). The standard statistical approach to PoS ambiguity resolution (or tagging) uses hidden Markov models (HMM) trained in a supervised way from hand-tagged corpora, an expensive resource not always available, or in an unsupervised way through the Baum-Welch expectation-maximization algorithm; both methods use information only from the language being tagged. However, when tagging is considered as an intermediate task for the translation procedure, that is, when the PoS tagger is to be embedded as a module within an MT system, information from the TL can be (unsupervisedly) used in the training phase to increase the translation quality of the whole MT system. This paper presents a method to train HMM-based PoS taggers to be used in MT; the new method uses not only information from the source language (SL), as general-purpose methods do, but also information from the TL and from the remaining modules of the MT system in which the PoS tagger is to be embedded. We find that the translation quality of the MT system embedding a PoS tagger trained in an unsupervised manner through this new method is clearly better than that of the same MT system embedding a PoS tagger trained through the Baum-Welch algorithm, and comparable to that obtained by embedding a PoS tagger trained in a supervised way from hand-tagged corpora.

We describe an algorithm that allows the incremental addition or removal of unranked ordered trees to a minimal frontier-to-root deterministic finite-state tree automaton (DTA). The algorithm takes a tree t and a minimal DTA A as input; it outputs a minimal DTA A′ which accepts the language L(A) accepted by A incremented (or decremented) with the tree t. The algorithm can be used to efficiently maintain dictionaries which store large collections of trees or tree fragments.

The present study describes the development and validation of a simple sensitive and specific sandwich enzyme immunoassay (EIA) for the quantification of ovine luteinizing hormone (LH) in plasma. Microtitre plates were coated with the capture antibody 518b7 anti-bovine LH. A second peroxidase-labelled anti-ovine LH antibody was used as tracer. A simple 3-step procedure was used for the sample analysis; (1) incubation of standards and samples with the pre-coated antibody plates for 2 h at 37 degrees C; (2) incubation with the peroxidase-labelled antibody for 1 h at room temperature; and (3) colour development with TMB substrate. A linear dose-response curve was obtained in the range 0-10 ng/ml (r2 > 0.99). The detection limit was 0.05 ng/ml, and the intra-assay and inter-assay coefficients of variation were 7% and 11.7%, respectively. The theoretical stability of microplates and reagents was calculated, this being greater than one year. Low or undetectable cross-reactivities were recorded for follicle-stimulating hormone, bovine thyroid-stimulating hormone, equine chorionic gonadotrophin and a gonadotrophin-releasing hormone (GnRH) analogue. The EIA was biologically validated by the determination of plasma LH concentrations of nine Rasa Aragonesa ovariectomized and estradiol-implanted ewes after a double GnRH challenge. In conclusion, this enzyme immunoassay provides an efficient, simple and sensitive method for the routine analysis of ovine LH.

Marine protected areas (MPA) produce a positive effect on fish populations, but this may be difficult to identify due to the high temporal variability of populations. Meta-analysis is an option for analysing data from different sources and sampling designs and it can address problems related to temporal and spatial variability in fish populations. We analysed fish abundance data from visual counts conducted in summer, from 1996 to 2002, in the MPA of Tabarca (Alicante, Spain). The results showed an overall positive effect of protection at the species and family levels. Overall abundance of fishes inside the reserve was, on average, 1.22 times higher than outside the reserve boundaries. Positive effect of protection was found for Boops boops, Diplodus annularis, Diplodus cervinus, Epinephelus marginatus, Epinephelus costae and Epinephelus aenus. Species of Labrids were not affected by protection, except for Thalassoma pavo and Symphodus ocellatus. Meta-analysis of temporal data allows evaluation of the protection MPA provide and is particularly useful when data sources have different experimental designs or sampling programs. The Tabarca MPA has benefited fish populations by increasing their abundance and we suggest that meta-analysis is a complementary tool for the management of MPAs.

Berner & Mattner stellt mit Modular HiL ein leistungsfahiges Testsystem mit dezentraler Systemarchitektur vor, das in einem fruhen Entwicklungsstadium des Steuergerats eingesetzt werden kann. Dank modularem Aufbau ist das System sehr flexibel und kann sowohl fur Komponenten als auch Gesamtsysteme eingesetzt werden.