11037 research outputs found
Sort by
Esteiros subterráneos na Ría de Vigo: fontes agochadas de solutos cara as augas costeiras
No full textThe indiscriminate use of fertilizers in agriculture, together with industrial and urban sewage, are the origin of the widespread contamination of groundwaters with nitrate and other solutes. In the aquifers with a hydraulic connection with the coastal waters, nutrients are released via submarine groundwater discharge (SGD), which can alter the composition of coastal ecosystems and the services provided to humans. In SGD exit zones, groundwater and seawater meet underground, creating the so-called subterranean estuaries (STEs). STEs have high biogeochemical reactivity that can significantly amplify or reduce solute concentrations transported by SGD prior to discharge. This ability is especially important in the Ría de Vigo, where bivalve culture and extraction are dependent on the good environmental status of coastal waters. Moreover, climate change compromises the STEs, thus altering their ecosystemic services. The main objective of this PhD thesis is to evaluate the ecosystem services provided by STEs of the Ria de Vigo through the study of its biogeochemical reactivity and microbial community.El uso indiscriminado de fertilizantes en agricultura, junto a los vertidos industriales y urbanos, son la causa de la generalizada contaminación de las aguas subterráneas por nitratos y otros solutos. En los acuíferos con conexión hidráulica con las aguas costeras, la descarga de estos nutrientes en forma de agua subterránea submarina (SGD) puede alterar el estado de los ecosistemas marinos y los servicios que prestan a las comunidades humanas. En las zonas de salida de la SGD, las aguas subterráneas y marinas se encuentran en el subsuelo, formando estuarios subterráneos (STEs). Estos STEs son ambientes de elevada reactividad biogeoquímica con capacidad de amplificar o reducir las concentraciones de los solutos transportados por las aguas subterráneas. Esta capacidad es especialmente importante en zonas como la Ría de Vigo, donde la extracción y cultivo de bivalvos son completamente dependientes del buen estado de las aguas costeras. Además, los efectos del cambio climático ponen en riesgo los STEs, alterando los servicios ecosistémicos que prestan. Esta tesis doctoral tiene como objetivo la evaluación de los servicios ofrecidos por los STEs de la Ría de Vigo a través del estudio de su reactividad biogeoquímica y comunidad microbiana.O uso indiscriminado de fertilizantes na agricultura, xunto aos verquidos industrais e urbanos, ten derivado na contaminación xeneralizada das augas subterráneas por nitratos e outros solutos. Nos acuíferos con conexión hidráulica coas augas costeiras, a descarga destes nutrientes en forma de auga subterránea submarina (SGD) pode alterar o estado dos ecosistemas mariños e os servizos que prestan ás comunidades humanas. Nas zonas de saída da SGD, as augas subterráneas e mariñas encóntranse no subsolo formando esteiros subterráneos (STEs). Os STEs son ambientes de elevada reactividade bioxeoquímica tendo a capacidade de amplificar ou reducir as concentracións dos solutos transportados polas augas subterráneas. Esta capacidade é especialmente importante en zonas como a Ría de Vigo, onde a extracción e o cultivo de bivalvos son completamente dependentes do bo estado das augas costeiras. Ademais, os efectos do cambio climático poñen en risco os STEs, alterando os servizos ecosistémicos que prestan. Esta tese de doutoramento ten como obxetivo a avaliación dos servizos que prestan os STEs na Ría de Vigo a través do estudo da súa reactividade bioxeoquímica e comunidade microbiana.Irish Research CouncilMinisterio para la Transición Ecológica y el Reto Demográfico | Ref. 2595/2020Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. TED2021-130020B-C21Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. PID2023-153274NB-100Axencia Galega de Innovación | Ref. IN606A-2021/022Ministerio de Universidades | Ref. FPU20/0470
Long-term remission following antithyroid drug withdrawal in patients with Graves’ hyperthyroidism: parameters with prognostic value
No full textObjective To assess the predictive value of some clinical and biochemical parameters, and of the +49 A/G polymorphism of
the CTLA-4 gene, for long-term remission following the withdrawal of antithyroid drugs before starting antithyroid drug
therapy.
Study design Observational, prospective and longitudinal study.
Methods Seventy-two patients (11 of whom were men) with newly diagnosed Graves’ hyperthyroidism who had been
attended consecutively at a University Clinic in a population with sufficient iodine intake were included in the study.
Exclusion criteria: patients under the age of 18, pregnant women and non-Caucasian patients. All subjects were treated
following a well-defined protocol. Long-term remission was calculated at 12 and 36 months following withdrawal of the
antithyroid drug.
Results Thirty-six of the 72 study subjects experienced a remission of at least 12 months following withdrawal of methimazole, with no differences according to their age or sex. A comparison made between the remission rates seen in both
groups yielded significant differences regarding the presence of Graves’ orbitopathy, the duration of the treatment with
methimazole and the absence of the CTLA-4 G/G genotype. In the univariate and multivariate analyses performed, only
lower frequencies of Graves’ orbitopathy and an absence of the CTLA-4 G/G genotype were considered independent
predictors of long-term remission.
Conclusions The absence of Graves’ orbitopathy and of the CTLA-4 G/G genotype are independent predictors of long-term
remission following a first course of antithyroid drug
Un mortero itálico sellado de la Cibdá de Armea (Allariz)
Get PDF[Inicio] Durante la campaña de excavación de
2022 se identificó en el yacimiento galaico-romano de Armea un fragmento de
borde y pared de un mortero de producción itálica. Este fragmento presentaba en
el borde el sello [P]RIMIGEN^I[V].
El yacimiento galaico romano de Armea
se encuentra en la provincia de Ourense,
dentro del conjunto arqueo-histórico
de Arme-Santa Mariña de Augas Santas
(Allariz) (Fig. 1). Las excavaciones arqueológicas de los últimos años se han
centrado en la finca llamada “A Atalaia”.
Francisco Conde Valvís comenzó los trabajos en la década de los 50, que fueron retomadas en 2011. Desde 2014, la
Universidad de Vigo interviene anualmente en Armea gracias a convenios de
colaboración con el ayuntamiento de
Allariz, la Diputación de Ourense y la
Xunta de Galicia (Fernández Fernández y
Pérez Losada 2017; Fernández Fernández
et alii 2021). Hoy en día, se han sacado
a la luz tres domus dispuestas a ambos
lados de varias calles pavimentadas. [...
Transferencia cruzada en el control motor en tareas visuomotoras. Revisión sistemática
No full textIntroduction: The term “cross-education” describes the perfomance improvement, both in motor control and strength, of a limb after training the opposite. Despite its current interest, there is no consensus on many concepts of the transfer of a visuomotor skill. The aim of the present research was to review the current literature on the phenomenon of cross-education in visuomotor skills in order to determine the magnitude of transference and its relationships with the context of the intervention. Results: A literature search was conducted during December 2019 in the databases Pubmed, CINAHL, MEDLINE, Web of Science, SPORTdiscus and Scopus. The descriptors “Motor ability” and “Motor skill” were used, in addition to the keywords “Motor control”, “skill”, “Task”, “cross over effect”, “cross exercise”, “contralateral learning”, “inter limb transfer “,” cross transfer “,” cross education “. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 19 articles were obtained for analysis. Of these articles, 12 are RCTs, 4 crossover clinical trial, 2 are non-randomized trials and only 1 lacks a control group. Most of the articles consist of a short-term intervention. Only 5 studies are of a duration of between 4 and 6 weeks. Conclusion: the cross-education phenomenon occurs in visuomotor skills. However, the magnitude of transference and its relation to the amount of learning of the trained member seems to be very variable depending on the context of the intervention. Likewise, the scarce consensus and the methodological differences in the studies make it difficult to draw firm conclusions about the effects of the context on the transference.Introducción: El término cross-education describe la mejora de rendimiento, tanto en control motor como en fuerza, de un
miembro tras el entrenamiento del contrario. A pesar de su actual interés, no existe consenso en muchos conceptos de la
transferencia de una habilidad visuomotora.
Objetivo: El objetivo del presente estudio fue revisar la literatura actual sobre el fenómeno cross-education en habilidades
visuomotoras para determinar la magnitud de transferencia y sus relaciones con el contexto de la intervención.
Resultados: Se realizó una búsqueda bibliográfica durante diciembre de 2019 en las bases de datos Pubmed, CINAHL,
MEDLINE, Web of Science, SPORTdiscus y Scopus. Se emplearon los descriptores “Motor ability” y “Motor skill”, además de las
palabras clave “Motor control”, “skill”, “Task”, “cross over effect”, “cross exercise”, “contralateral learning”, “inter limb transfer”, “cross
transfer”, “cross education”. Tras la aplicación de los criterios de inclusión y de exclusión, se obtuvo un total de 19 artículos
para realizar el análisis. De estos artículos, 12 son ECA, 4 ensayos clínicos cruzados, 2 son ensayos no aleatorizados y solo 1
carece de grupo control. La mayoría de artículos constan de una intervención a corto plazo. Tan solo 5 estudios son de una
duración de entre 4 y 6 semanas.
Conclusión: El fenómeno cross-education ocurre en habilidades de tipo visuomotor. Sin embargo, la magnitud de transferencia
y su relación con la cantidad de aprendizaje del miembro entrenado parecen muy variables dependiendo del contexto de
la intervención. Asimismo, el escaso consenso y las diferencias metodológicas de los estudios dificultan extraer conclusiones
contundentes acerca de los efectos del contexto sobre la transferencia
Unsupervised machine learning for clustering and analyzing InSAR-derived ground deformation: insights from X- and C-band
Get PDFNew approach for interpreting Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) results with unsupervised machine learning on variables and time series. The study compares Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) results from X-band (PAZ-X) and C-band (Sentinel-1) satellite images over a Portuguese region. Validation with GNSS data demonstrates high precision, with average Euclidean Distances (ED) of 2.8 mm (X-band) and 3.6 mm (C-band). Despite having fewer images (25 vs. 30), X-band achieves higher scatter density (1,126 scatterers/km²) compared to C-band (678 scatterers/km²). InSAR reduced dimensionality and independent variables are clustered using K-means, DBSCAN, and OPTICS algorithms. Time-series are clustered using partitioning and hierarchical methods based on ED and Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) measures. The clusters obtained were interpreted and a refinement mode is implemented based on inter-algorithm consistency to enhance cluster reliability. For evaluation and application results are compared with land-use maps. The findings indicate that Sentinel-1 exhibits higher complexity (15% lower consistency with land-use map) compared to PAZ-X. Moreover, the refinement mode improves target identification for both datasets, increasing classification accuracy by 5% and 7% for PAZ-X and Sentinel-1, respectively. The methodology enhances geohazard monitoring generating alert index maps for specific elements with applicability in urban planning, infrastructure stability and natural hazard mitigation.Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. TED2021-130183B-I00Xunta de Galicia | Ref. ED431C 2024/30INTERREG Spain-Portugal (POCTEP) 2021−202
Generation of realistic synthetic cable images to train deep learning segmentation models
Get PDFSemantic segmentation is one of the most important and studied problems in machine vision, which has been solved with high accuracy by many deep learning models. However, all these models present a significant drawback, they require large and diverse datasets to be trained. Gathering and annotating all these images manually would be extremely time-consuming, hence, numerous researchers have proposed approaches to facilitate or automate the process. Nevertheless, when the objects to be segmented are deformable, such as cables, the automation of this process becomes more challenging, as the dataset needs to represent their high diversity of shapes while keeping a high level of realism, and none of the existing solutions have been able to address it effectively. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel methodology to automatically generate highly realistic synthetic datasets of cables for training deep learning models in image segmentation tasks. This methodology utilizes Blender to create photo-realistic cable scenes and a Python pipeline to introduce random variations and natural deformations. To prove its performance, a dataset composed of 25000 synthetic cable images and their corresponding masks was generated and used to train six popular deep learning segmentation models. These models were then utilized to segment real cable images achieving outstanding results (over 70% IoU and 80% Dice coefficient for all the models). Both the methodology and the generated dataset are publicly available in the project’s repository
Cybersecurity threat detection based on a UEBA framework using Deep Autoencoders
Get PDFThe increasing sophistication of cyberattacks, especially insider and process-related
anomalies, poses a major challenge to enterprises, as traditional rule-based or shallow anomaly
detection systems often fail to capture complex behavioral patterns. User and Entity Behavior
Analytics (UEBA) is a broad branch of data analytics that attempts to build a normal behavioral
profile in order to detect anomalous events. Among the techniques used to detect anomalies, deep
autoencoders constituted one of the most promising deep learning models on UEBA tasks, allowing
explainable detection of security incidents that could lead to the leak of personal data, hijacking of
systems, or access to sensitive business information. In this study, we introduced the first
implementation of an explainable UEBA-based anomaly detection framework that leveraged deep
autoencoders in combination with Doc2Vec, a neural network-based approach that learns the
distributed representation of documents, to process both numerical and textual features. Additionally,
based on the theoretical foundations of neural networks, we offered a novel proof demonstrating the
equivalence of two widely used definitions for fully-connected neural networks. The experimental
results demonstrated the proposed framework’s capability to detect real and synthetic anomalies
effectively generated from real attack data, showing that the models provided not only correct
identification of anomalies but also explainable results that enabled the reconstruction of the possible
origin of the anomaly. Compared to existing UEBA and anomaly detection approaches, the novelty of
our framework lied in combining explainable multimodal feature processing with formal
mathematical guarantees. Our findings suggested that the proposed UEBA framework can be
seamlessly integrated into enterprise environments.Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. PID2020-118101GB-I0
Phytoremediating a copper mine soil with Brassica juncea L., compost and biochar
No full textThe soils at a depleted copper mine in Touro (Galicia, Spain) are chemically degraded. In order to determine the effect of amendments and vegetation on the chemical characteristics of a mine soil and on the plant uptake of metals, a greenhouse experiment was carried out for 3 months. A settling pond soil was amended with different percentages of a compost and biochar mixture and vegetated with Brassica juncea L. The results showed that the untreated settling pond soil was polluted by Cu. Amendments and planting mustards decreased the pseudototal concentration of this metal, reduced the extreme soil acidity and increased the soil concentrations of C and TN. Both treatments also decreased the CaCl2-extractable Co, Cu and Ni concentrations. However, the amendments increased the pseudototal concentration of Zn in the soil, provided by the compost that was used. The results also showed that mustards extracted Ni efficiently from soils, suggesting that B. juncea L. is a good phytoextractor of Ni in mine soils.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación | Ref. CGL2009-0784
Application of a decision-making tool for ranking wellness tourism destinations
Get PDFOne of the tourism industry’s segments with the strongest growth rates today is health tourism. Health tourism includes two subgroups: medical tourism (traveling outside one’s country of residence for the purpose of receiving medical care, such as surgery and health services) and wellness tourism (travel to specific locations for health promotion in a preventive way). The economic strength and sustainable growth of nations can both benefit from health tourism. This study applies a methodology to quantify the potential of Portuguese wellness tourism (thermal spas in Northern Portugal) using a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) tool, namely the preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluations (PROMETHEE) and geometrical analysis for interactive aid (GAIA), to achieve a robust evaluation and ranking the alternatives. Therefore, in this study, the aim is to rank ten thermal spas in Northern Portugal in terms of fifteen indicators, mostly related to digital services, containing the tourism data obtained between 2020 and 2022. The suggested approach offers trustworthy and reliable outcomes for any qualitative or quantitative criteria to assess thermal spas, which is crucial for consumers, businesses, and even governments. The results showed that PROMETHEE and GAIA can be implemented as an effective method in wellness tourism destinations evaluation.IACOBUSFundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia | Ref. UIDB/05422/202
Administración de justicia y su accesibilidad por personas vulnerables
No full textEl presente trabajo trata de presentar las ventajas que ofrece la mediación para resolver los conflictos que enfrentan las personas con discapacidad y sus familias. Es fundamental fomentar un espíritu de cooperación para transformar la frustración y el dolor en satisfacción, reconociendo sus derechos y promoviendo su participación social y accesibilidad en la toma de decisiones. La
mediación se basa en la negociación, y su éxito depende tanto del proceso de mediación como del perfil del mediador, quien facilita acuerdos entre las partes en disputa. El objetivo es que todas las partes satisfagan sus intereses y establezcan una nueva relación para el futuro.This paper seeks to present the advantages of mediation in resolving conflicts faced by people with disabilities and their families. It is essential to foster a spirit of cooperation in order to transform frustration and pain into satisfaction, recognising their rights and promoting their social participation and accessibility in decision-making. Mediation is based on negotiation, and its success
depends on both the mediation process and the profile of the mediator, who facilitates agreements between the disputing parties. The aim is for all parties to satisfy their interests and establish a new relationship for the future