Universidad Central "Marta Abreu" de las Villas (UCLV)

The Caryophyllales constitute a major lineage of flowering plants with approximately 12500 species in 39 families. A taxonomic backbone at the genus level is provided that reflects the current state of knowledge and accepts 749 genera for the order. A detailed review of the literature of the past two decades shows that enormous progress has been made in understanding overall phylogenetic relationships in Caryophyllales. The process of re-circumscribing families in order to be monophyletic appears to be largely complete and has led to the recognition of eight new families (Anacampserotaceae, Kewaceae, Limeaceae, Lophiocarpaceae, Macarthuriaceae, Microteaceae, Montiaceae and Talinaceae), while the phylogenetic evaluation of generic concepts is still well underway. As a result of this, the number of genera has increased by more than ten percent in comparison to the last complete treatments in the Families and genera of vascular plants” series. A checklist with all currently accepted genus names in Caryophyllales, as well as nomenclatural references, type names and synonymy is presented. Notes indicate how extensively the respective genera have been studied in a phylogenetic context. The most diverse families at the generic level are Cactaceae and Aizoaceae, but 28 families comprise only one to six genera. This synopsis represents a first step towards the aim of creating a global synthesis of the species diversity in the angiosperm order Caryophyllales integrating the work of numerous specialists around the world.

This paper aims at assessing the return on investment and carbon mitigation potentials of five investment alternatives for the Cuban cement industry in a long-term horizon appraisal (15 years). Anticipated growing demand for cement, constrained supply and an urgent need for optimisation of limited capital while preserving the environment, are background facts leading to the present study. This research explores the beneficial contribution of a new available technology, LC3 cement, resulting from the combination of clinker, calcined clay and limestone, with a capacity of replacing up to 50% of clinker in cement. Global Warming Potential (GWP) is calculated with Life Cycle Assessment method and the economic investment's payback is assessed through Return on Capital Employed (ROCE) approach. Main outcomes show that projected demand could be satisfied either by adding new cement plants-at a high environmental impact and unprofitable performance- or by introducing LC3 strategy. The latter choice allows boosting both the return on investment and the production capacity while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions up to 20-23% compared to business-as-usual practice. Overall profitability for the industry is estimated to overcome BAU scenario by 8-10% points by 2025, if LC3 were adopted. Increasing the production of conventional blended cements instead brings only marginal economic benefits without supporting the needed increase in production capacity. The conducted study also shows that, in spite of the extra capital cost required for the calcination of kaolinite clay, LC3 drops production costs in the range of 15-25% compared to conventional solutions.

Abstract The use of calcined clays as supplementary cementitious materials provides the opportunity to significantly reduce the cement industry’s carbon burden; however, use at a global scale requires a deep understanding of the extraction and processing of the clays to be used, which will uncover routes to optimise their reactivity. This will enable increased usage of calcined clays as cement replacements, further improving the sustainability of concretes produced with them. Existing technologies can be adopted to produce calcined clays at an industrial scale in many regions around the world. This paper, produced by RILEM TC 282-CCL on calcined clays as supplementary cementitious materials (working group 2), focuses on the production of calcined clays, presents an overview of clay mining, and assesses the current state of the art in clay calcination technology, covering the most relevant aspects from the clay deposit to the factory gate. The energetics and associated carbon footprint of the calcination process are also discussed, and an outlook on clay calcination is presented, discussing the technological advancements required to fulfil future global demand for this material in sustainable infrastructure development.

Crude polysaccharide extracts were obtained from aqueous extracts of the microalgae Chlorella stigmatophora and Phaeodactylum tricornutum. The crude extracts were fractionated by ion-exchange chromatography on DEAE-cellulose columns. The molecular weights of the polysaccharides in each fraction were estimated by gel filtration on Sephacryl columns. The crude polysaccharide extracts of both microalgae showed anti-inflammatory activity in the carrageenan-induced paw edema test. In assays of effects on the delayed hyper-sensitivity response, and on phagocytic activity assayed in vivo and in vitro, the C. stigmatophora extract showed immunosuppressant effects, while the P. tricornutum extract showed immunostimulatory effects.

A novel graph theoretical invariant based on the spectral moments of the edge adjacency matrix (E) is proposed. Spectral moments of the E matrix are used to describe seven physical properties of alkanes. All the regression models found are very significant from the statistical point of view. The spectral moments are expressed as linear combinations of the different structural fragments of the molecular graph. The use of the substructural approach for the description of seven physical properties of alkanes is also proved. The results obtained are interpreted in term of structural features of molecules.

Sugarcane bagasse pretreated with dilute-acid was submitted to an organosolv ethanol process with NaOH under different operational conditions (pretreatment time, temperature, and ethanol concentration) aiming to maximize the glucose yield in the subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis stage. The different pretreatment conditions resulted in variations in the chemical composition of the solid residue as well as in the glucose recovered by enzymatic hydrolysis. All the studied variables presented significant (p < 0.05) influence on the process. The optimum organosolv pretreatment conditions consisted in using 30% (v/v) ethanol at 195 ◦C, during 60 min. Enzymatic hydrolysis of the residue then obtained produced 18.1 g/l glucose, correspondent to a yield of 29.1 g glucose/ 100 g sugarcane bagasse. The scale-up of this process, by performing the acid pretreatment in a 10-l semi-pilot reactor fed with direct steam, was successfully performed, being obtained a glucose yield similar to that found when the acid pretreatment was performed in autoclave.

We perform a detailed dynamical analysis of the teleparallel dark energy scenario, which is based on the teleparallel equivalent of General Relativity, in which one adds a canonical scalar field, allowing also for a nonminimal coupling with gravity. We find that the universe can result in the quintessence-like, dark-energy-dominated solution, or to the stiff dark-energy late-time attractor, similarly to standard quintessence. However, teleparallel dark energy possesses an additional late-time solution, in which dark energy behaves like a cosmological constant, independently of the specific values of the model parameters. Finally, during the evolution the dark energy equation-of-state parameter can be either above or below -1, offering a good description for its observed dynamical behavior and its stabilization close to the cosmological-constant value. © 2012 IOP Publishing Ltd and Sissa Medialab srl.

A novel substructural approach to structure−property and structure−activity relationships studies is proposed. The method is based on the computation of spectral moments of the edge-weighted adjacency matrix. In the present work, bond distances are used as bond weights in the diagonal entries of edge matrix. Spectral moments of the edge-weighted adjacency matrix are expressed in terms of structural fragments present in molecules via algebraic expressions. Boiling points of 58 alkyl halides were well described by the present approach, and this property was expressed as a linear combination of structural fragments of the studied molecules. QSAR applications of the novel approach are explored by studying the antifungal activity of benzyl alcohols. An equation expressing contributions of each substituent in benzyl alcohols to the antifungal activity is obtained. The methodology proposed here permits the rational design of novel compounds with improved activity, which is illustrated for benzyl alcohol derivatives.

EDITORIAL article Front. Psychol., 22 January 2015Sec. Eating Behavior https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00021

AIM: The threats of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have caused fears worldwide. The Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S) was recently developed to assess the fear of COVID-19. Although many studies found that the FCV-19S is psychometrically sound, it is unclear whether the FCV-19S is invariant across countries. The present study aimed to examine the measurement invariance of the FCV-19S across eleven countries. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. METHODS: Using data collected from prior research on Bangladesh (N = 8,550), United Kingdom (N = 344), Brazil (N = 1,843), Taiwan (N = 539), Italy (N = 249), New Zealand (N = 317), Iran (N = 717), Cuba (N = 772), Pakistan (N = 937), Japan (N = 1,079) and France (N = 316), comprising a total 15,663 participants, the present study used the multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Rasch differential item functioning (DIF) to examine the measurement invariance of the FCV-19S across country, gender and age (children aged below 18 years, young to middle-aged adults aged between 18 and 60 years, and older people aged above 60 years). RESULTS: The unidimensional structure of the FCV-19S was confirmed. Multigroup CFA showed that FCV-19S was partially invariant across country and fully invariant across gender and age. DIF findings were consistent with the findings from multigroup CFA. Many DIF items were displayed for country, few DIF items were displayed for age, and no DIF items were displayed for gender. CONCLUSION: Based on the results of the present study, the FCV-19S is a good psychometric instrument to assess fear of COVID-19 during the pandemic period. Moreover, the use of FCV-19S is supported in at least ten countries with satisfactory psychometric properties.

Despite their interest and threat status, the number of whales in world's oceans remains highly uncertain. Whales detection is normally carried out from costly sighting surveys, acoustic surveys or through high-resolution images. Since deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are achieving great performance in several computer vision tasks, here we propose a robust and generalizable CNN-based system for automatically detecting and counting whales in satellite and aerial images based on open data and tools. In particular, we designed a two-step whale counting approach, where the first CNN finds the input images with whale presence, and the second CNN locates and counts each whale in those images. A test of the system on Google Earth images in ten global whale-watching hotspots achieved a performance (F1-measure) of 81% in detecting and 94% in counting whales. Combining these two steps increased accuracy by 36% compared to a baseline detection model alone. Applying this cost-effective method worldwide could contribute to the assessment of whale populations to guide conservation actions. Free and global access to high-resolution imagery for conservation purposes would boost this process.

Room-temperature ionic liquids (ILs) are considered green chemicals that may replace volatile organic solvents currently used by industry. However, toxicological effects of ILs are not well known. In this study, we describe the cytotoxicity of selected imidazolium-derived ILs in Caco-2 cells, prototypical human epithelial cells. The most toxic IL was 1-decyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride ([C10mim][Cl]), whereas the least toxic was 1,3-dimethylimidazolium methyl sulfate ([C1mim][MSO4]). Using the toxicological experimental data obtained we developed a Quantitative Structure–Activity Relationship (QSAR) study using the Topological Sub-Structural Molecular Design (TOPS-MODE) approach. The model found showed excellent statistical parameters and from their interpretation, we arrived to some important conclusions such as: For 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride derivatives, a correlation between the R2 alkyl chain length and toxicity was observable. A positive contribution of p-chloro substituent in benzyl ring is detected among 1-methylarylimidazolium chloride derivatives. Regarding the contribution of the anion, anion chloride presents a positive contribution to toxicity whereas for compounds [C1mim][MSO4] and [C1eim][ESO4], a negative fragment contribution can be detected in anion methyl or ethyl sulfate. The EC50 values determined for the ILs analysed in this study in Caco-2 cells are lower than the data reported in the literature on the toxicity of classical solvents assessed with cell lines. In conclusion, our results indicate that the possible cytotoxic effect of ILs should be considered in the design and overall evaluation of these compounds. Nevertheless, any toxicity evaluation of ILs should take their bioavailability into account, which will be affected by their low volatility, compared to conventional solvents.

The topological index ε recently proposed by one of the authors [E. Estrada, J . Chem . Inf . Comput . Sci . 1995, 35, 31−33] is shown to be identical to the connectivity index of the line graph of the molecular graph. This observation makes it possible to conceive a whole class of novel, line-graph-based topological indices. The Wiener index provides an exception: in the case of acyclic molecules, the Wiener index of the molecular graph and the Weiner index of the line graph differ by a constant.

In this Letter we investigate the evolution of a class of cosmologies fueled by quintom dark energy and dark matter. Quintom dark energy is a hybrid of quintessence and phantom which involves the participation of two real scalar fields playing the roles of those two types of dark energy. In that framework we examine, from a dynamical systems perspective, the possibility that those fields are coupled among them by considering an exponential potential with an interesting functional dependence similar but not identical to others studied before. The model we consider represents a counterexample to the typical behavior of quintom models with exponential potentials because it admits either tracking attractors (w=0), or phantom attractors (w<−1).

A pharmacological study of hydrosoluble and liposoluble extracts of the marine microalgae Chlorella stigmatophora and Phaeodactylum tricornutum indicated that hydrosoluble components of both species show significant antiinflammatory, analgesic and free radical scavenging activity. These activities were not detected in the liposoluble fractions.

A preliminary assessment of conditions for the industrial manufacture of a new cementitious system based on clinker-calcined clay and limestone, developed by the authors, referred as “low carbon cement” is presented. The new cement enables the substitution of more than 50% of the mass of clinker without compromising performance. The paper presents the follow-up of an industrial trial carried out in Cuba to produce 130 tonnes of the new cement at a cement plant. The new material proved to fulfill national standards in applications such as the manufacture of hollow concrete blocks and precast concrete. No major differences either in the rheological or mechanical properties were found when compared with Portland cement. Environmental assessment of the ternary cement was made, which included comparison with other blended cements produced industrially in Cuba. The new cement has proven to contribute to the reduction of above 30% of carbon emissions on cement manufacture.

This work explores the potential of the MARCH-INSIDE methodology to seek a QSAR for MAO-A inhibitors from a heterogeneous series of compounds. A Markov model was used to quickly calculate the molecular electron delocalization, polarizability, refractivity, and n-octanol/water partition coefficients for a series of 1406 active/nonactive compounds. LDA was subsequently used to fit a classification function. The model showed 92.8% and 91.8% global accuracy and predictability in training and validation studies. This QSAR model was validated through a virtual screening of a series of coumarin derivatives. The 15 selected compounds were prepared and evaluated as in vitro MAO-A inhibitors. The theoretical prediction was compared with the experimental results and the model correctly predicted 13 compounds with only two mistakes on compounds with activities very close to the cutoff point established for the model. Consequently, this method represents a useful tool for the "in silico" screening of MAO-A inhibitors.

We perform a detailed phase-space analysis of Horava-Lifshitz cosmology, with and without the detailed-balance condition. Under detailed-balance we find that the universe can reach a bouncing-oscillatory state at late times, in which dark-energy, behaving as a simple cosmological constant, is dominant. In the case where the detailed-balance condition is relaxed, we find that the universe reaches an eternally expanding, dark-energy-dominated solution, with the oscillatory state preserving also a small probability. Although this analysis indicates that Horava-Lifshitz cosmology can be compatible with observations, it does not enlighten the discussion about its possible conceptual and theoretical problems.

The presence of plastic in the environment is generating impacts on all habitats and has become a major global problem in marine megafauna. Macroplastics can cause entanglement, ingestion and loss of suitable habitats. In addition to entanglement problems, there is evidence that plastics are entering the food web through ingestion by marine organisms, which could ultimately be affecting humans. Much of the available information on the impact of plastic in biota is scattered and disconnected due to the use of different methodologies. Here, we review the variety of approaches and protocols followed to assess macro- and microplastic ingestion in marine vertebrates such as sea turtles, cetaceans and fishes in order to offer a global overview of their current status. The analysis of 112 studies indicates the highest plastic ingestion in organisms collected in the Mediterranean and Northeast Indian Ocean with significant differences among plastic types ingested by different groups of animals, including differences in colour and the type of prevalent polymers. In sea turtles, the most prevalent types of plastics are white plastics (66.60%), fibres (54.54%) and LDPE polymer (39.09%); in cetaceans, white macro- and microplastics (38.31%), fibres (79.95%) and PA polymer (49.60%); and in fishes, transparent plastics (45.97%), fibres (66.71%) and polyester polymer (36.20%). Overall, clear fibre microplastics are likely the most predominant types ingested by marine megafauna around the globe.

This paper describes the experiences using remote laboratories for education and research in the field of Control Engineering. The use of remote laboratories for education in subjects of control is increasingly becoming a resorted method by the universities in order to offer a flexible service in schedules with greater and better operation of available resources. Nevertheless, for research activities, remote laboratories are not widely used. The aim of this contribution is thereby to apply the experience of remote laboratories in research applications in order to share complex equipments among different researchers. Some experiments are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of using remote laboratories in research experiments related to robotic system. The results of the implementation of remote experimentations to control a 3-DOF parallel robot by using Distance Laboratory System (SLD) are exposed. The performance of the system is evaluated by the possibilities and functionality of the proposed remote laboratory platform.