Alberto Sols Biomedical Research Institute
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Adsorption of modified polystyrene nanoplastics on biomass-derived activated carbons: A study of ball mill activation
No full textThis study focuses on synthesizing activated carbons using lignin and sawdust as precursors, with FeCl3 employed as an activating agent, aimed at adsorbing of modified polystyrene nanoparticles. The impact of ball milling during the impregnation process was evaluated, revealing that the best results were obtained with a milling time of 10 min. This method resulted in activated carbons with enhanced porosity compared to those synthesized without milling. However, extending the milling time adversely affected the performance, likely due to heat generated by friction in the ball mill, which caused excessive dehydration and impeded the proper carbonization process. The activated carbons demonstrating the best performance were L-10 (derived from lignin) with a BET surface area of 1258 m2 g−1, and S-10 (derived from sawdust) with 1072 m2 g−1. The materials exhibited high adsorption capacities of 70.08 and 65.77 mg g−1 for polystyrene nanoparticles (PSNPs) with L-10 and S-10 carbons, respectively. These results align with the higher surface areas of the adsorbent materials, emphasizing the crucial role of porosity in adsorption efficiency. Notably, the pore sizes of the activated carbons were smaller than the diameter of the PSNPs, minimizing diffusion effects and concentrating adsorption activity on the external surfaces. In addition, the adsorption process was governed by electrostatic interactions, with additional contributions from π-π interactions between the aromatic structures of the activated carbon and the benzene rings of the polystyrene. When examining polystyrene nanoparticles modified with amino and carboxyl groups, L-10 and S-10 exhibited higher affinity for amine-functionalized polystyrene while showing repulsion toward carboxyl-functionalized polystyreneThe authors acknowledge the Spanish State Research Agency and FSE for financial support through the project TED2021-129948B-I00. The authors thank the Research Support Services of the Instituto de Ciencias de Materiales de Madrid (ICMM) and the Universidad de Zaragoza (UNIZAR) for the FTIR analyses and SEM images, respectively
Transformative actions for sociolinguistic equity: Mobilizing students' agency at university
No full textThis paper explores the concept of agency for social transformation and its mobilization through a participatory action research project developed with students from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in Spain. The research, which was longitudinal and employed ethnographic and participatory approaches, was based on critical pedagogy to raise awareness about the role of language in reproducing social inequalities. The students who participated mobilized agency through projects that addressed the lack of social recognition and unequal access to resources and rights due to linguistic hierarchies, intercultural differences, and discrimination. These efforts culminated in the students/researchers’ effective implementation of concrete actions to address these inequalities, including doing posters, workshops, support programs, discussion groups, and proposals for public institutions. In this article, we identify key factors that enabled students/researchers to develop concrete transformative actions to tackle sociolinguistic inequalities, such as students’ social positioning, available resources, the scaffolding provided by the researchers/facilitators, and the crucial role of accompaniment. These dynamics co-constructed three dimensions of agency—reflexive, critical, and distributed—whose interweaving defines this agency as transformative. Finally, we examine the project’s impact, both on a personal and collective level for the students/researchers and researchers/facilitators, as well as its effects on the contexts where the various actions were implementedThe funding was provided by Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (PID2019-105676RB-C41/AEI/https://doi.org/10.13039/501100011033
Opinion dynamics in bounded confidence models with manipulative agents: Moving the Overton window
No full textThis paper focuses on the opinion dynamics under the influence of manipulative agents. This
type of agents is characterized by the fact that their opinions follow a trajectory that does not
respond to the dynamics of the model, although it does influence the rest of the normal agents.
Simulation has been implemented to study how one manipulative group modifies the natural
dynamics of some opinion models of bounded confidence. It is studied what strategies based
on the number of manipulative agents and their common opinion trajectory can be carried
out by a manipulative group to influence normal agents and attract them to their opinions. In
certain weighted models, some effects are observed in which normal agents move in the opposite
direction to the manipulator group. Moreover, the conditions which ensure the influence of
a manipulative group on a group of normal agents over time are also established for the
Hegselmann–Krause mode
Geopolitical discourses in Turkey’s partisan media during the Syrian war. A framing approach on the siege of Kobane
No full textFrom K-pop to Chinese Video Games: Exploring the Interplay of Soft Power Between South Korea and China: China Horizons podcast
No full textEn este episodio nos adentramos en el fascinante mundo de la influencia cultural y el soft power. ¿Cómo moldean las exportaciones culturales de Corea del Sur —como el K-pop, los K-dramas y los esports— las dinámicas regionales? ¿Y cómo está China aprovechando sus propias industrias culturales, desde el cine hasta los videojuegos, para proyectar influencia dentro y fuera de sus fronteras? Acompáñanos mientras exploramos:
El auge de la cultura pop surcoreana como fenómeno global.
Las estrategias en evolución de China en industrias culturales y soft power.
Tensiones, colaboraciones y competencia entre ambos países.
Lo que este juego de influencias revela sobre política, identidad y poder en Asia OrientalIn this episode, we dive into the fascinating world of cultural influence and soft power. How do South Korea’s global cultural exports—like K-pop, K-dramas, and esports—shape regional dynamics? And how is China leveraging its own cultural industries, from cinema to video games, to project influence at home and abroad? Join us as we explore:
The rise of South Korea’s pop culture as a global phenomenon.
China’s evolving strategies in cultural industries and soft power.
Tensions, collaborations, and competition between the two countries.
What this interplay reveals about politics, identity, and influence in East AsiaThis research is a result of the project “China Horizons: Dealing with a Resurgent China” (DWARC) (grant no. 101061700) funded under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programm
Entropy, Irreversibility, and Time-Series Deep Learning of Kinematic and Kinetic Data for Gait Classification in Children with Cerebral Palsy, Idiopathic Toe Walking, and Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia
No full textThe use of gait analysis to differentiate among paediatric populations with neurological and developmental conditions such as idiopathic toe walking (ITW), cerebral palsy (CP), and hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) remains challenging due to the insufficient precision of current diagnostic approaches, leading in some cases to misdiagnosis. Existing methods often isolate the analysis of gait variables, overlooking the whole complexity of biomechanical patterns and variations in motor control strategies. While previous studies have explored the use of statistical physics principles for the analysis of impaired gait patterns, gaps remain in integrating both kinematic and kinetic information or benchmarking these approaches against Deep Learning models. This study evaluates the robustness of statistical physics metrics in differentiating between normal and abnormal gait patterns and quantifies how the data source affects model performance. The analysis was conducted using gait data sets from two research institutions in Madrid and Dublin, with a total of 81 children with ITW, 300 with CP, 20 with HSP, and 127 typically developing children as controls. From each kinematic and kinetic time series, Shannon’s entropy, permutation entropy, weighted permutation entropy, and time irreversibility metrics were derived and used with Random Forest models. The classification accuracy of these features was compared to a ResNet Deep Learning model. Further analyses explored the effects of inter-laboratory comparisons and the spatiotemporal resolution of time series on classification performance and evaluated the impact of age and walking speed with linear mixed models. The results revealed that statistical physics metrics were able to differentiate among impaired gait patterns, achieving classification scores comparable to ResNet. The effects of walking speed and age on gait predictability and temporal organisation were observed as disease-specific patterns. However, performance differences across laboratories limit the generalisation of the trained models. These findings highlight the value of statistical physics metrics in the classification of children with different toe walking conditions and point towards the need of multimetric integration to improve diagnostic accuracy and gain a more comprehensive understanding of gait disordersThis research study was funded by Escuela Universitaria de Fisioterapia ONCE-UAM and TACTIC project—FORTALECE ISCIII grant No. FORT23/00034 and grant CNS2023-144775
funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 by “European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR”. This project also received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European
Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 851255). This work was partially supported by María de Maeztu project CEX2021-001164-M funded by
MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and FEDER, EU. This research study was supported by a grant for an international stay within the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid travel grants program for
participation in International Research Conference
Isospin symmetry breaking in the Kr 71 and Br 71 mirror system
No full text“Artículo escrito por un elevado número de autores. Solo se referencia el que aparece en primer lugar, el nombre del grupo de colaboración, si hubiere, y los autores pertenecientes a la UAM”Isospin symmetry is a fundamental concept in nuclear physics. Even though isospin symmetry is partially broken, it holds approximately for most nuclear systems, which makes exceptions very interesting from the nuclear structure perspective. In this framework, it is expected that the spins and parities of the ground states of mirror nuclei should be the same, in particular for the simplest systems where a proton is exchanged with a neutron or vice versa. In this Letter, we present evidence that this assumption is broken in the mirror pair Br71 and Kr71 system. Our conclusions are based on a high-statistics β decay study of Kr71 and on state-of-the-art shell model calculations. In our work, we also found evidence of a new state in Se70, populated in the β-delayed proton emission process which can be interpreted as the long sought coexisting 0+ stateThis work was supported by the Spanish MICINN grants FPA2014-52823-C2-1-P, FPA2017-83946-C2-1-P (MCIU/AEI/FEDER); Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación grants PID2019-104714GBC21, PID2022-138297NB-C21; Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa CEX2023-001292-S grant funded by MCIU/AEI; Junta para la Ampliación de Estudios Programme (CSIC JAE-Doc contract) co-financed by FSE, grant CEX2020-001007-S funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and PID2021-127890NB-I00, by NKFIH (K147010), JSPS KAKENHI
of Japan (Grant No. 25247045, 20H05648, 22H04946), the STFC (UK) through Grant No. ST/P005314/, the PROMETEO 2019/007 and CIPROM/2022/9 projects. This work was supported by Generalitat Valenciana (CISEJI/2022/25), Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y
Universidades (CAS22/00114 and CNS2023-144871). A. A. acknowledges partial support of the JSPS Invitational Fellowships for Research in Japan (ID: L1955) P. S. acknowledges support from MCI/AEI/FEDER,UE (Spain) under grant PID2022-136992NB-I0
Certainty in holistic thinking and responses to contradiction: Dialectical proverbs, counter-attitudinal change and ambivalence
No full textThe data that support the finding of this study are openly available in Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/yhgre/?view_only=fe3a1ed7f79e476b99bd0480d9fa5221The present research examined whether consideration of individuals' certainty in their holism can enhance the ability of this individual difference to predict how they respond to contradiction-relevant outcomes. Across four studies, participants first completed a standardized measure of holistic-analytic thinking. Then, they rated how certain they were in their responses to the holism scale or were experimentally induced to feel high or low certainty. Next, participants were exposed to dialectical proverbs (Study 1a and 1b), to a counter-attitudinal change induction (Study 2), or to a paradigm of attitudinal ambivalence (Study 3). Results revealed that participants with higher certainty in their holistic thinking exhibited higher preference for dialectical proverbs (Study 1a and 1b), changed their attitude less following a counter-attitudinal task (Study 2) and showed weaker correspondence between objective and subjective ambivalence (Study 3). Beyond examining new domains and discovering novel findings, the present work was designed to be the first to show moderation of previously identified effects in the domain of holistic thinking and responses to contradictionThis paper was funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER, UE Grants No PID2022-139380NA-I00 (granted to David Santos) and PID2020-116651GB-C31 (granted to Pablo Briñol
Insults, threats, and curses on the battlefield. Reprimands between allies in the Iliad
No full textAlgunas arengas de la Ilíada, caracterizadas por la acumulación de insultos,
amenazas y maldiciones, admiten un análisis como macro actos de habla de reprimenda. Estos
macro actos de habla presentan una estructura y unas estrategias lingüísticas semejantes. La
descortesía de estas reprimendas está normalizada y, por tanto, resulta aceptable tanto para
el hablante como para el interlocutor. Se trata de una descortesía institucional que se sirve
de la humillación del interlocutor como recurso para reafirmar en él los valores del ejército al
que perteneceIn the Iliad, certain harangues characterized by the accumulation of insults, threats and
curses, can be analyzed as macro-speech acts of reprimand. These macro-speech acts show both a
similar structure and similar linguistic strategies. The impoliteness of these reprimands is normalized
and thus acceptable to both speaker and interlocutor. It is an institutional impoliteness that uses the
humiliation of the interlocutor as a mean of reaffirming the values of the army to which he belongs.
Keywords: Iliad; speech acts of rebuke; reprimands; impoliteness; institutional impolitenessEste trabajo ha sido realizado en el marco del proyecto “Actos de habla indirectos e interacción en Griego
Antiguo” (PID2021-122489NB-100
Structural heart transcatheter interventions in orthotopic cardiac transplant and left ventricular assist devices recipients: A nationwide study
No full textArtículo escrito por un elevado número de autores, solo se referencian el que aparece en primer lugar, el nombre del grupo de colaboración, si le hubiere, y los autores pertenecientes a la UAMBackground
The current incidence and outcomes of structural transcatheter procedures in heart transplant (HTx) recipients and left-ventricular assist devices (LVAD) carriers is unknown.
Aims: To provide insights on structural transcatheter procedures performed across HTx and LVAD patients in Spain.
Methods
Multicenter, ambispective, observational nationwide registry.
Results
Until May/2023, 36 percutaneous structural interventions were performed (78% for HTx and 22% for LVAD) widely varying among centers (0%–1.4% and 0%–25%, respectively). Percutaneous mitral transcatheter edge-to-edge (TEER) was the most common (n = 12, 33.3%), followed by trancatheter aortic valve replacement (n = 11, 30.5%), and tricuspid procedures (n = 9, 25%).
Mitral TEER resulted in mild residual mitral regurgitation in all but one case, mean gradient was <5 mmHg in 75% of them at 1-year, with no mortality and 8.3% re-admission rate. Tricuspid TEER resulted in 100% none/mild residual regurgitation with a 1-year mortality and readmission rates of 22% and 28.5%, respectively. Finally, trancatheter aortic valve replacement procedures (n = 8 in LVADs due to aortic regurgitation and n = 3 in HTx), were successful in all cases with one prosthesis degeneration leading to severe aortic regurgitation at 1-year, 18.2% mortality rate and no re-admissions.
Globally, major bleeding rates were 7.9% and 12.5%, thromboembolic events 3.7% and 12.5%, readmissions 37% and 25%, and mortality 22% and 25%, in HTx and LVADs respectively. No death was related to the implanted transcatheter device.
Conclusions
Most centers with HTx/LVAD programs perform structural percutaneous procedures but with very inconsistent incidence. They were associated with good safety and efficacy, but larger studies are required to provide formal recommendations.The project obtained a competitive grant from Gerencia Regional de Salud de Castilla y León (GRS 2663/A/22