Best Selling Books by Carlos Ruiz

Some plants may thrive in polluted environments, accumulating high concentrations of metal/loids in their organs. This study investigates for the first time the bioaccumulation and translocation of metal/loids in Typha domingensis spontaneously grown in extremely Fe-rich substrates (38-44% of Fe2O3) from different components of an acid mine drainage disperse alkaline substrate passive treatment. Most metal/loids were predominantly accumulated in the roots over the aerial parts of the plant, with concentrations of 0.66-9.5% of Fe, 0.02%-0.18% of Al, 55-2589 mg/kg of Mg, 51-116 mg/kg of Zn, 17-173 mg/kg of Cu, and 5.2-50 mg/kg of Pb. Bioconcentration factors were mostly below 1 for metal/loids in the studied aneas (e.g., 0.03-0.47 for Cu, 0.10-0.73 for Zn, 0.04-0.28 for As, 0.07-0.55 for Pb, 0.27-055 for Cd, 0.24-0.80 for Ni), which evidences T.domingensis behaves as an excluder species in these substrates. Translocation factors were below 1 for most elements (e.g., 0.01-0.42 for As, 0.06-0.50 for Pb, 0.24-0.65 for Cd, and 0.10-0.56 for Sb), except for Mn, Ni and in some cases for Tl, Cu and Zn, which indicates limited transfer of metals between plant tissues. Mineralogical and geochemical substrate properties are pointed out as the main factors responsible for the lower bioconcentration and translocation of potentially toxic elements. In addition, the oxidizing conditions existent in the pore water-root system may also limit the mobility of metals from Fe oxides and hydroxysulfates, the main component of the substrate. The formation of a Fe plaque inside the roots may also limit the transfer of metals to the aerial parts. The spontaneous occurrence of T.domingensis in the substrates of the acid mine drainage passive treatments is an environmental indicator of the efficiency of the system and could be used as a complementary polishing step, given the strong tolerance of this plants to high concentrations of metal/loids.

This thesis is an autobiographical photographic project. Its purpose is to enhance the reader''s understanding of the interests and vicissitudes that motivated the author to undertake this project. It consists of a display of sixteen color images presented on wooden pedestals that are suspended from a wall. The author wishes to convey his feelings about his Puerto Rican/Spanish heritage and nationality via this project.

Up to 85% of the world population suffers from low back pain, a clinical condition often related to the intervertebral disc (IVD) degeneration (31). Altered disc cell nutrition affects cell viability and can generate catabolic cascades that degrade the extracellular matrix (ECM). Also, a major degenerative biochemical change in the disc is the proteoglycan (PG) loss, which affects the osmotic pressure and hydration that is critical for cell nutrition. However, the relationship between biochemical degradation and nutrition along degeneration is unclear. The effect of cartilage endplates (CEP) tissue changes through known composition data remains unknown as well. Experiments have limited capacity in the study of multiple IVD interactions, while theoretical models are promising tools to this aim. Thus, this PhD thesis used computer models to study the relationship between disc degeneration and cell nutrition, and focuses on indirect mechanotransduction phenomena that occur in the IVD. Porohyperelastic IVD finite element models, including all tissues, were used. Such models consider the role of solid-fluid interaction within the IVD. In Chapter 3 a convergence study was performed to access the stability of local predictions under fast load rates. In Chapter 4 the models were updated by adding the viscoelastic collagen fibres of the annulus fibrosus (AF) and the osmotic pressure of the nucleus pulposus (NP). They were coupled to a transport-cell viability model, and a design of experiment (DOE) was used to study the effect of disc composition on cell nutrition. In Chapter 5 the transport model was modified to allow PG updates, depending on PG half-life and PG production related to predicted oxygen pressure. In Chapter 6, a composition-dependent permeability formulation was created for the CEP to focus on the impact of CEP degradation. Three days of diurnal load cycle were simulated for all transport-cell viability simulations. Solute concentrations were evaluated along the mid-sagittal plane path. Chapter 3 showed that unrealistic spatial oscillations in the fluid velocity predictions were due to material discontinuities. Previous stabilization strategies did not eliminate the oscillations. However, the creation of a material transition zone combined with local refinement reduced them by 91%. The model obtained warranted the stability of local calculations for long lasting loads. Chapter 4 results revealed that none of DOE combinations affected the cell viability, and that water reductions altered the most disc nutrition. Moreover, NP degeneration might affect the AF nutrition, possibly explaining the tears found in grade III discs. In Chapter 5, IVD nutrition affected the PG content, which seemed to simulate natural ageing. Also, PG loss altered disc mechanical behaviour but neither cell viability nor nutrition. However, the inclusion of NP dehydration reduced solute levels, which might activate catabolic processes. Chapter 6 showed that CEP permeability would increase with 31. Also, CEP degeneration alone produced NP dehydration under compression, which affected disc nutrition. The results suggested that the CEP might play a key role in 31. Interestingly, cell death was predicted when CEP degeneration was combined to AF and NP degeneration, questioning the paradigm that CEP calcification might be responsible for cell death along 31. This PhD thesis identified different paths related to 31. On one hand, NP dehydration and PG loss reduced glucose at the inner AF, weakening the latter due to inflammation and enzyme activation. Meanwhile, nutrition regulated the PG content, which can explain natural ageing but probably not accelerated degeneration processes. However, CEP degeneration caused NP dehydration, and the combined degeneration of all disc tissues activated the cell death. All these simulated events are important to understand 31 and might promote the development of new experimental explorations and treatment strategies.

1st European Workshop on AppRoaches to MObiquiTous Resilience May 08, 2012-May 11, 2012 Sibiu, Romania. You can view more information about this proceeding and all of ACM�s other published conference proceedings from the ACM Digital Library: http://www.acm.org/dl.

Las inversiones cromosómicas son variantes estructurales donde un segmento de ADN cambia su orientación. Las inversiones cromosómicas reducen la recombinación homóloga y producen diferentes haplotipos en los cromosomas estándar e invertidos. Como resultado, influyen en la adaptación y la selección y desempeñan un papel en la susceptibilidad a las enfermedades humanas. Las inversiones se pueden estudiar con métodos experimentales y bioinformáticos. Los datos de SNP array se pueden usar para determinar genotipos de inversión mediante el uso de diferencias de haplotipos entre cromosomas invertidos y estándares. Sin embargo, estos métodos no están optimizados para grandes cohortes (con miles de individuos, como dbGaP o UK Biobank). Además, los métodos actuales solo pueden genotipar las inversiones con dos haplotipos y la clasificación es difícil de armonizar entre cohortes. Finalmente, se conoce que las inversiones cromosómicas afectan la expresión génica y la metilación del ADN. Sin embargo, no existen métodos precisos para evaluar globalmente el efecto de las inversiones en la expresión génica local o la metilación del ADN. El objetivo principal de esta tesis es desarrollar nuevos métodos robustos y escalables así como herramientas bionformáticas para estudiar los efectos fenotípicos y funcionales de las inversiones cromosómicas, superando las limitaciones existentes. Con este fin, he desarrollado un nuevo método para genotipar las inversiones cromosómicas que se puede usar en grandes cohortes, con inversiones con múltiples haplotipos y que utiliza haplotipos de referencia que permite el análisis conjunto de múltiples cohortes. En segundo lugar, he implementado un método multivariante basado en el análisis de la redundancia para estudiar los efectos de las inversiones cromosómicas en la metilación del ADN y la expresión génica locales. A continuación, he aplicado ambos métodos para estudiar el papel de las inversiones cromosómicas en dos grupos de enfermedades complejas: trastornos del neurodesarrollo y cáncer. Finalmente, he desarrollado un nuevo método para estudiar cómo las inversiones cromosómicas afectan los patrones de recombinación. Este método es aplicable a cualquier región genómica que contenga subpoblaciones con diferentes patrones de recombinación, lo que permite asociar estas subpoblaciones a rasgos fenotípicos.

Previous work has demonstrated that coflowering plant species (those that flower simultaneously in the same place) can potentially compete for pollination services. Competition for pollination among plant species can negatively impact their reproductive success. To minimise competition, plants can partition the activity of shared pollinators through releasing their floral resources at different times. Resource partitioning has been studied in several individual plant species, and some guilds of plants (e.g. African acacias), but little is known about temporal changes in resources at a community level. This thesis examines the spatiotemporal changes of floral resources at a community level and its implications for pollinator activity patterns. The temporal patterns of nectar and pollen provision of 70 plant species in two different plots were investigated at Mpala, in north central Kenya between 2004 and 2006. The communities studied showed that seasonal and daily microclimatic fluctuations significantly affect flowering patterns, times of flower opening, dehiscence and nectar production; and consequently the overall amount of pollen mass and nectar volume available at different times. I explored the effects of daily temporal changes in floral resource availability on pollinator activity patterns both in a guild of Malvaceae plant species, and at the community level through pollination webs. Detailed observations of daily patterns of resource provision and floral visitation in six Malvaceae plant species showed that plants can effectively avoid competition through attracting different pollinators, and via resource partition. Examination of daily changes in resource availability and the links portrayed in plant-visitor webs revealed that visitors move from one plant species to another, actively tracking changes in floral resource provision. These results suggest that in combination with physiological limitations imposed to the pollinators by temperature, bottom-up influences are a main force shaping daily pollinator activity patterns at a community level. Competition for pollination can only occur if plant species flower simultaneously and share pollinators within the same geographic area. Competition for pollination has been investigated in at least two African communities, but none of these studies have assessed the geographic spatial scale over which competition among coflowering species might happen. With the aim of measuring the geographic distance that pollinators visiting African acacias fly whilst foraging, I used molecular techniques to conduct paternity analysis as a proxy of how far pollen is carried away from particular trees within a population of Senegalia (Acacia) mellifera. The paternity analysis showed that pollinators move on average a maximum of 60 metres from the sampled trees, and that trees producing more flowers (resources) receive more visits, confirming that if sufficient resources are available pollinators can stay within relatively small geographic areas. Pollen movement only provides a partial measurement of the genetic neighbourhood of individual plants, because genes via seed dispersal can travel longer distances than those encompassed by the pollinators foraging areas. To investigate patterns of genetic variability in S. mellifera, I used microsatellites to conduct landscape genetic analyses including 25 adult populations and 9 seedling populations. Fourteen distinctive genetic clusters separated by four main geographic barriers were identified in the analyses. Significantly higher inbreeding was found in the seedling populations than in the adult populations. I discuss the possibility that this situation has been caused by anthropogenic exploitation and fragmentation of the adult stands.

This title is part of the four-book series "The Tomb of Forgotten Books" These books are like the four entrances to a literary maze, you can reach the heart of it no matter which entrance you start exploring. "The prisoner of the sky" is tells the story of how a mysterious visitor bought an expensive and thus unveil a secret in which may be seen as further complications or relief of a break through.

In recent years, multi-threaded processors have become more and more popular in industry in order to increase the system aggregated performance and per-application performance, overcoming the limitations imposed by the limited instruction-level parallelism, and by power and thermal constraints. Multi-threaded processors are widely used in servers, desktop computers, lap-tops, and mobile devices. However, multi-threaded processors introduce complexities when accounting CPU (computation) capacity (CPU accounting), since the CPU capacity accounted to an application not only depends upon the time that the application is scheduled onto a CPU, but also on the amount of hardware resources it receives during that period. And given that in a multi-threaded processor hardware resources are dynamically shared between applications, the CPU capacity accounted to an application in a multi-threaded processor depends upon the workload in which it executes. This is inconvenient because the CPU accounting of the same application with the same input data set may be accounted significantly different depending upon the workload in which it executes. Deploying systems with accurate CPU accounting mechanisms is necessary to increase fairness among running applications. Moreover, it will allow users to be fairly charged on a shared data center, facilitating server consolidation in future systems. This Thesis analyses the concepts of CPU capacity and CPU accounting for multi-threaded processors. In this study, we demonstrate that current CPU accounting mechanisms are not as accurate as they should be in multi-threaded processors. For this reason, we present two novel CPU accounting mechanisms that improve the accuracy in measuring the CPU capacity for multi-threaded processors with low hardware overhead. We focus our attention on several current multi-threaded processors, including chip multiprocessors and simultaneous multithreading processors. Finally, we analyse the impact of shared resources in multi-threaded processors in operating system CPU scheduler and we propose several schedulers that improve the knowledge of shared hardware resources at the software level.