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•UV filters levels in beach waters of Gran Canaria Island have been monitored.•Highest levels were obtained for BP-3, BMDBM and OC UV filters.•First time that DHHB levels are reported ...in coastal waters.•Higher UV-filters levels were found in “semi-enclosed” beaches compared to open beaches.•A preliminary risk assessment approach was applied for BP-3, 4-MBC and EHMC.
Due to the growing concern about human health effects of ultraviolet (UV) radiation, the use of UV filters has increased in recent decades. Unfortunately, some common UV filters are bioaccumulated in aquatic organisms and show a potential for estrogenic activity. The aim of the present study is to determine the presence of some UV filters in the coastal waters of six beaches around Gran Canaria Island as consequence of recreational seaside activities. Eight commonly used UV filters: benzophenone-3 (BP-3), octocrylene (OC), octyl-dimethyl-PABA (OD-PABA), ethylhexyl methoxy cinnamate (EHMC), homosalate (HMS), butyl methoxydibenzoyl methane (BMDBM), 4-methylbenzylidene camphor (4-MBC) and diethylamino hydroxybenzoyl hexyl benzoate (DHHB), were monitored and, with the exception of OD-PABA, all were detected in the samples collected. 99% of the samples showed some UV filters and concentration levels reached up to 3316.7ng/L for BP-3. Environmental risk assessment (ERA) approach showed risk quotients (RQ) higher than 10, which means that there is a significant potential for adverse effects, for 4-MBC and EHMC for those samples with highest levels of UV filters.
Excess weight and obesity have high prevalence rates globally and are associated with significant morbidity and mortality rates. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth emerged as an ...effective tool for promoting healthy behaviours in the management of chronic conditions. This study employed a three-month quasi-experimental design with pre- and post-intervention measurements, assessing the progress of 82 adults assigned either to an intervention group (IG) or a control group (CG). A total of 66 participants completed the study, with 33 in each group. The IG had access to a telehealth-based platform providing educational content on healthy lifestyle habits and were followed up both in-person and remotely. The CG were monitored as usual, i.e., at their primary care nurses’ discretion. The IG exhibited a statistically significant reduction in weight, BMI, and abdominal circumference, along with improved adherence to a heart-healthy diet, specifically the Mediterranean diet, and higher levels of physical activity. The nurse-led intervention (Care4US+), utilising telehealth from primary care, has proven effective in enhancing healthy behaviours and reducing cardiovascular risk factors.
Ultraluminous x-ray sources (ULXs) in nearby galaxies shine brighter than any x-ray source in our Galaxy. ULXs are usually modeled as stellar-mass black holes (BHs) accreting at very high rates or ...intermediate-mass BHs. We present observations showing that NGC 5907 ULX is instead an x-ray accreting neutron star (NS) with a spin period evolving from 1.43 seconds in 2003 to 1.13 seconds in 2014. It has an isotropic peak luminosity of ~ 1000 times the Eddington limit for a NS at 17.1 megaparsec. Standard accretion models fail to explain its luminosity, even assuming beamed emission, but a strong multipolar magnetic field can describe its properties. These findings suggest that other extreme ULXs (x-ray luminosity ≥ 1041 erg second−1) might harbor NSs.
Several bioassays have been carried out to analyze the toxicity and biodegradability of several imidazolium ionic liquids (ILs) in aqueous phase. The synthetized compounds consist of an imidazolium ...cation with two alkyl substituents in positions 3 (R
1) and 1 (R
2) and a counter-ion. The alkyl substituent R
1 has been fixed as a methyl group and the effect of the alkyl chain length (C
1–C
8) of the other substituent (R
2) has been tested. Moreover, the influence of diverse counter-ions A
− (Cl
−, PF
6, XSO
4
−) has been analyzed. Acute toxicity and EC
50 values of each compound in the aqueous solution have been determined by using the Microtox
® standard procedure. Biodegradability of IL has been determined by measuring BOD
5 of aqueous samples containing IL and/or
d-glucose and the IL residual content and/or
d-glucose concentration after this assay. The viability of the microorganisms used in the BOD
5 has been related to the ATP in the samples, measured by a bioluminescence assay. All the ILs tested were not biodegradable in the considered conditions. Besides, it was found that the shorter the chain length of side chain R
2, the lower the toxic effect is. On the contrary, the anion has a little effect on the IL toxicity.
A
bstract
The generalized Kerr-Schild ansatz (GKSA) is a powerful tool for constructing exact solutions in Double Field Theory (DFT). In this paper we focus in the heterotic formulation of DFT, ...considering up to four-derivative terms in the action principle, while the field content is perturbed by the GKSA. We study the inclusion of the generalized version of the Green-Schwarz mechanism to this setup, in order to reproduce the low energy effective heterotic supergravity upon parametrization. This formalism reproduces higher-derivative heterotic background solutions where the metric tensor and Kalb-Ramond field are perturbed by a pair of null vectors. Next we study higher-derivative contributions to the classical double copy structure. After a suitable identification of the null vectors with a pair of U(1) gauge fields, the dynamics is given by a pair of Maxwell equations plus higher derivative corrections in agreement with the KLT relation.
Skeletal muscle is the largest organ determining whole‐body insulin sensitivity and metabolic homoeostasis. Adaptive changes of skeletal muscle in response to physical activity include adjustments in ...the production and secretion of muscle‐derived bioactive factors, known as myokines, such as myostatin, IL‐4, IL‐6, IL‐7 and IL‐15, myonectin, follistatin‐like 1 or leukaemia inhibitory factor. These myokines not only act locally in the muscle in an autocrine/paracrine manner, but also are released to the bloodstream as endocrine factors to regulate physiological processes in other tissues. Irisin, derived from the cleavage of FNDC5 protein, constitutes a myokine that induces myogenesis and fat browning (switch of white adipocytes to brown fat‐like cells) together with a concomitant increase in energy expenditure. Besides being a target for irisin actions, the adipose tissue also constitutes a production site of FNDC5. Interestingly, irisin secretion from subcutaneous and visceral fat depots is decreased by long‐term exercise training and fasting, suggesting a discordant regulation of FNDC5/irisin in skeletal muscle and adipose tissue. Accordingly, our group has recently reported that the adipokine leptin differentially regulates FNDC5/irisin expression in skeletal muscle and fat, confirming the crosstalk between both tissues. Moreover, irisin secretion and function are regulated by other myokines, such as follistatin or myostatin, as well as by other adipokines, including fibroblast growth factor 21 and leptin. Taken together, myokines have emerged as novel molecular mediators of fat browning and their activity can be modulated by adipokines, confirming the crosstalk between skeletal muscle and adipose tissue to regulate thermogenesis and energy expenditure.
The response of many biomedical systems can be modelled using a linear combination of damped exponential functions. The approximation parameters, based on equally spaced samples, can be obtained ...using Prony's method and its variants (e.g. the matrix pencil method). This paper provides a tutorial on the main polynomial Prony and matrix pencil methods and their implementation in MATLAB and analyses how they perform with synthetic and multifocal visual-evoked potential (mfVEP) signals. This paper briefly describes the theoretical basis of four polynomial Prony approximation methods: classic, least squares (LS), total least squares (TLS) and matrix pencil method (MPM). In each of these cases, implementation uses general MATLAB functions. The features of the various options are tested by approximating a set of synthetic mathematical functions and evaluating filtering performance in the Prony domain when applied to mfVEP signals to improve diagnosis of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS).
The code implemented does not achieve 100%-correct signal approximation and, of the methods tested, LS and MPM perform best. When filtering mfVEP records in the Prony domain, the value of the area under the receiver-operating-characteristic (ROC) curve is 0.7055 compared with 0.6538 obtained with the usual filtering method used for this type of signal (discrete Fourier transform low-pass filter with a cut-off frequency of 35 Hz).
This paper reviews Prony's method in relation to signal filtering and approximation, provides the MATLAB code needed to implement the classic, LS, TLS and MPM methods, and tests their performance in biomedical signal filtering and function approximation. It emphasizes the importance of improving the computational methods used to implement the various methods described above.
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