The informal collection, storage, and commercialization of Valuable Solid Waste (VSW) performed by waste pickers is a complex and dynamic socioeconomic phenomenon. In developing countries, the waste ...pickers play a major role as suppliers to companies dedicated to the commercialization of VSW, thus contributing to mitigate the environmental impact of the municipal solid waste management (MSWM) systems. This research work presents the logistic and geographical structure of the informal collection, commercialization, and national and international recycling of VSW recovered from a medium size city in Mexico. The life cycle assessment methodology is used to determine the environmental impact that recycling VSW from informal collection has on the MSWM system. The functional unit is defined as the management of one ton of municipal solid waste. The functional unit displays a climate change index of 1090 kg CO2 eq, while the recycled VSW has the potential to mitigate it by −116.5 kg CO2 eq. The marginalization index is a way to assess the socioeconomic condition of the waste pickers. This index shows that the waste pickers suffer high marginalization, despite the fact that they contribute with 72% of the total collection of VSW.
•The LCA of a Mexican municipality's solid waste management system was developed.•The informal collection accounts for 72% of the recovery of valuable solid waste.•The informal collection, recycling and export of valuable solid waste was studied.•The LCA structure was modified to evaluate foreign sales of valuable solid waste.•The social impact on waste pickers was evaluated via a marginalization index.
Physical content of quadratic gravity Alvarez, Enrique; Anero, Jesus; Gonzalez-Martin, Sergio ...
The European physical journal. C, Particles and fields,
10/2018, Letnik:
78, Številka:
10
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
We have recently undergone an analysis of gravitational theories as defined in first order formalism, where the metric and the connection are treated as independent fields. The physical meaning of ...the connection field has historically been somewhat elusive. In this paper, a complete spin analysis of the torsionless connection field is performed, and its consequences are explored. The main properties of a hypothetical consistent truncation of the theory are discussed as well.
Conformal invariance versus Weyl invariance Alvarez, Enrique; Anero, Jesus; Santos-Garcia, Raquel
The European physical journal. C, Particles and fields,
02/2020, Letnik:
80, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The most general Lagrangian describing spin 2 particles in flat spacetime and containing operators up to (mass) dimension 6 is carefully analyzed, determining the precise conditions for it to be ...invariant under linearized (transverse) diffeomorphisms, linearized Weyl rescalings, and conformal transformations.
Expressions of school violence in adolescence Castedo, Antonio Lopez; Garcia, David Alvarez; Alonso, Jose Dominguez ...
Psicothema,
11/2018, Letnik:
30, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Research on school violence, which disserves the quality of the process of teaching and learning in schools, has increased in recent decades. The aims of this study were to identify the most ...prevalent types of school violence in Compulsory Secondary Education (CSE) according to the opinion of students, and to analyse differences in gender, school year, and the academic performance of the student informants.
The CUVE3-CSE questionnaire was applied to 4,943 CSE students (average age: 14.04; SD: 1.38) who are studying at 33 public and private schools.
showed the predominance of classroom disruption and student-to-student verbal violence, as well as differences in the level of perceived violence according to the variables analysed (gender, school year and academic performance).
The study underscores the wide-ranging typology of violence at schools, and its everyday occurrence in classrooms, which highlight the need for improving our understanding in order to enhance the efficacy of prevention and intervention programs.
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•History and biology of poxviruses and their application as vaccines against smallpox, monkeypox, emerging viral diseases and HIV-1.•Implications of the 2022 monkeypox epidemic and ...prophylactic and therapeutic measures to control virus dissemination.•Preclinical and clinical evaluation of MVA and NYVAC poxviral strains expressing viral antigens of emerging viral diseases and HIV-1.•Different approaches to improve the immunogenicity and efficacy of poxvirus-based vaccine candidates.
Although one member of the poxvirus family, variola virus, has caused one of the most devastating human infections worldwide, smallpox, the knowledge gained over the last 30 years on the molecular, virological and immunological mechanisms of these viruses has allowed the use of members of this family as vectors for the generation of recombinant vaccines against numerous pathogens. In this review, we cover different aspects of the history and biology of poxviruses with emphasis on their application as vaccines, from first- to fourth-generation, against smallpox, monkeypox, emerging viral diseases highlighted by the World Health Organization (COVID-19, Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, Ebola and Marburg virus diseases, Lassa fever, Middle East respiratory syndrome and severe acute respiratory syndrome, Nipah and other henipaviral diseases, Rift Valley fever and Zika), as well as against one of the most concerning prevalent virus, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, the causative agent of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. We discuss the implications in human health of the 2022 monkeypox epidemic affecting many countries, and the rapid prophylactic and therapeutic measures adopted to control virus dissemination within the human population. We also describe the preclinical and clinical evaluation of the Modified Vaccinia virus Ankara and New York vaccinia virus poxviral strains expressing heterologous antigens from the viral diseases listed above. Finally, we report different approaches to improve the immunogenicity and efficacy of poxvirus-based vaccine candidates, such as deletion of immunomodulatory genes, insertion of host-range genes and enhanced transcription of foreign genes through modified viral promoters. Some future prospects are also highlighted.
In peri-urban regions, the establishment of new forest patches can be affected by specific community assembly rules driving species extinction debts and colonization credits. This might result in ...species surpluses or deficits and shifts in species composition along forest establishment, whose association with human-driven landscape transformation remains largely unknown. We have compared plant assemblages in peri-urban Mediterranean forests of contrasting history (
recent vs. preexisting;
post-
vs.
pre-1956) according to species’ habitat requirements (
forest
,
scrub-grassland
,
synanthropic
or
other)
and dispersal mode (
vertebrate- vs. non-vertebrate
), while considering site and landscape characteristics. Species richness and cover were mostly associated to site characteristics, but also to forest connectivity and history. Connectivity increased total species cover, forest species richness and both richness and cover of vertebrate-dispersed species, while reducing non-forest species richness and synanthropic species cover. Regarding forest history, recent stands showed higher total and non-forest species richness, higher scrub-grassland species cover and lower cover of vertebrate-dispersed species than preexisting forests. Thus, recent stands exhibit a species surplus due to the extinction debt of scrub-grassland species and the transient abundance of synanthropic species, despite the observed colonization credit of vertebrate-dispersed species. These results emphasize the importance of forest connectivity when managing plant species assemblage in peri-urban forest patches but also highlight the need to consider recent history of habitat patches to manage time lags in biodiversity change in human-transformed landscapes.
Quasi-local energy and compactification Alvarez, Enrique; Anero, Jesus; del Bosch, Guillermo Milans ...
The journal of high energy physics,
06/2018, Letnik:
2018, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
A
bstract
Based on the quasi-local energy definition of Brown and York, we compute the integral of the trace of the extrinsic curvature over a codimension-2 hypersurface. In particular, we study the ...difference between the uncompactified Minkowski spacetime and the toroidal Kaluza-Klein compactification. For the latter, we find that this quantity interpolates between zero and the value for the uncompactified spacetime, as the size of the compact dimension increases. Thus, the quasi-local energy is able to discriminate between the two spacetimes.
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is highly responsive to neoadjuvant polychemotherapy regimens including anthracyclines, taxanes, and, more recently, carboplatin. However, there is inadequate ...information on the individual contribution of each of these agents to the global activity of the combinations, and the use of combinations of up to four of these drugs is associated with relevant toxicity. Identifying single-drug activity in the clinical neoadjuvant setting is challenging. We developed patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) from several chemotherapy-naïve TNBC samples to assess the antitumor activity of single drugs and combinations of drugs. PDXs were established from chemotherapy-naïve TNBC samples. Nine TNBC PDX models (all of which corresponded to a basal-like phenotype according to the PAM50 classifier) were treated with carboplatin, docetaxel, and doxorubicin and the combination of docetaxel and carboplatin. Only one of nine PDX models showed sensitivity to doxorubicin, while eight of nine PDX models showed sensitivity to docetaxel and carboplatin as single agents. The 3 PDX models derived from patients with gBRCA-1 or gPALB2 mutations were very sensitive to carboplatin single agent. All 6 PDX models from patients without hereditary germ-line mutations showed increased sensitivity to the combination of docetaxel and carboplatin. In the present study, docetaxel and carboplatin single agents were active drugs against basal-like TNBC, while doxorubicin monotherapy showed low activity. The combination of docetaxel and carboplatin was more effective than the drugs used as single agents, except in the PDX from patients with gBRCA1/PALB2 mutations.
Storm Gloria was the 10th named storm in Europe for the 2019–2020 winter season, and it severely affected Spain and France. This powerful storm represents an excellent study case to analyze the ...capabilities of the different ocean model systems available in the Spanish Mediterranean coasts to simulate extreme events, as well as to assess their suitability to enhance preparedness in maritime disasters with high impacts on coastal areas. Five different operational ocean forecasting services able to predict the storm-induced ocean circulation are evaluated. Three of the systems are delivered by the Copernicus Marine Service (hereafter CMEMS): the CMEMS global scale solution (GLO-1/12°), the specific Mediterranean basin scale one (MED-1/24°), and the regional solution for the Atlantic façade (IBI-1/36°), which includes also part of the western Mediterranean. These CMEMS core products are complemented with two higher resolution models focused on more limited areas, which provide operational forecasts for coastal applications: the WMOP system developed at the Balearic Islands Coastal Observing and Forecasting System (SOCIB) with a horizontal resolution of roughly 2 km and the Puertos del Estado (PdE) SAMOA systems with a 350-m resolution that cover the coastal domains of the Spanish Port Authorities of Barcelona, Tarragona, Castellón and Almeria. Both the WMOP and SAMOA models are nested in CMEMS regional systems (MED and IBI, respectively) and constitute good examples of coastal-scale-oriented CMEMS downstream services. The skill of these five ocean models in reproducing the surface dynamics in the area during Gloria is evaluated using met-ocean
in situ
measurements from numerous buoys (moored in coastal and open waters) and coastal meteorological stations as a reference to track the effects of the storm in essential ocean variables such as surface current, water temperature, and salinity throughout January 2020. Furthermore, modeled surface dynamics are validated against hourly surface current fields from the two high-frequency radar systems available in the zone (the SOCIB HF-Radar system covering the eastern part of the Ibiza Channel and the PdE one at Tarragona, which covers the Ebro Delta, one of the coastal areas most impacted by Gloria). The results assess the performance of the dynamical downscaling at two different levels: first, within the own CMEMS service (with their regional products, as enhanced solutions with respect to the global one) and second in the coastal down-streaming service side (with very high-resolution models reaching coastal scales). This multi-model study case focused on Storm Gloria has allowed to identify some strengths and limitations of the systems currently in operations, and it can help outlining future model service upgrades aimed at better forecasting extreme coastal events.
Storm Gloria (January 19–24, 2020) hit the NW Mediterranean Sea with heavy rainfall, strong easterly winds, and very high waves, causing structural damages and 13 fatalities. The low-lying Ebro Delta ...(ED) region was severely inundated, ruining rice fields and seaside promenades. A variety of Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) modeling and observational products were jointly used to examine the fingerprint of Gloria and the response of the upper oceanic layer. According to the results, Gloria can be interpreted as a high-impact once-in-a-decade metocean event where various historical records were beaten. The 99th percentile of several parameters (wind speed, significant wave height, wave period, and surface current velocity), derived from long-term observational time series, was persistently exceeded. The atmospheric surge, albeit not negligible, exerted a secondary role in ED. The ability of a high-frequency radar deployed in this region (HFR-ED) to characterize the striking features of the storm was quantified from both waves and circulation aspects. Consistent radar current observations were subsequently compared against the 5-day-ahead forecast of CMEMS Iberia-Biscay-Ireland (IBI) regional ocean model to determine, from an Eulerian perspective, the strengths and shortcomings in its predictive capabilities. Time-averaged maps of surface circulation, superimposed with fields of Instantaneous Rate of Separation (IROS), were derived to resolve flow features and identify areas of elevated particles dispersion, respectively. The mean and P99 values of IROS almost doubled the historical statistics in the vicinity of the northern Ebro hemidelta. Although IBI predicted moderately well basic features of the storm-induced circulation, results suggests that coastal transport processes, likely modulated by wave-current interactions, were not fully captured. Furthermore, current estimations from other two radar systems, overlooking immediate choke points like the Ibiza Channel and the Strait of Gibraltar, evidenced Gloria’s remote-effect in the anomalous circulation patterns observed, that altered the usual water exchanges between adjacent sub-basins. Finally, three-dimensional outcomes from IBI were used to elucidate the impact of this moving storm at different depth levels. Data analyses illustrated that Gloria caused a large increase in kinetic energy and a significant deepening of the mixed layer depth.
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