Diseño de silo experimental para el estudio de sistemas de protección frente a las explosiones de polvo

El objetivo principal de este trabajo es el diseño de un silo experimental concebido para el ensayo de explosiones de polvo venteadas. Este equipo permitirá avanzar en el conocimiento de todas las variables que intervienen en el fenómeno de la explosión y del venteo; y también avanzar en el diseño de dispositivos de protección más eficaces. Gracias a su diseño modular se pretende disponer de una herramienta abierta a multitud de posibilidades de ensayo, pudiendo variar factores con gran influencia en el desarrollo de la explosión, como el área de venteo, el volumen del silo y su relación altura/diámetro (L/D)

Towards Cultural Humility: Theorising Cultural Competence as Institutionalised Whiteness

Cross-cultural competence became a buzzword in the 1990s in the English-speaking world, particularly in professional settings, as practitioners were increasingly working with people from culturally diverse backgrounds and wanted to do so sensitively. It is a term that has often been used as descriptor for a set of strategies, policies, and training programs to demonstrate that organisations and professions are ‘dealing’ with cultural diversity. Discursively, the emphasis on competence has led to a transference of a set of skills that enable those who undergo its programmatic delivery to state that they are culturally competent. This often means that culture in the term is transformed into a substitutable absence; that is, it dissolves into relative insignificance as mastery is the central aim. In this there is a power relation; moreover, aspects of that power are racialised. In this paper we contend that cultural competence, as it has come to be used in the Western world, by extension in the professions, and here we focus more specifically on the profession of Social Work, has resulted in a discourse that seeks to neutralise racialised power by deflecting it, and thereby retaining its power. It does this through the quick resolution of a tension posed by the bringing together of the two terms, one of which represents complexity – culture – and the other its ready resolution

Improving the acquisition of English language competencies with international workgroups of university finance students

[EN] This paper discusses a teaching innovation project that integrates technological communication advances with the small group methodology to improve the English competency of university students of finance. This is a fundamental competency for studies in finance considering the increasingly international framework of financial business and the increasingly required mobility of human resources in all types of financial careers. This methodology requires the cooperation of a foreign university to help students understand the practical implications of using English when applying the theoretical concepts and methodologies studied in class in an international professional setting. As a first approach, we implement and assess the implementation of this methodology and its impact on students’ learning process in an elective module offered in an official degree in finance in Spain.Tascon, M.; Castro, P.; Castaño, F. (2017). Improving the acquisition of English language competencies with international workgroups of university finance students. En Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Higher Education Advances. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 667-678. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD17.2017.534466767

A hypoperfusion context may aid to interpret hyperlactatemia in sepsis-3 septic shock patients: a proof-of-concept study

__Background:__ Persistent hyperlactatemia is particularly difficult to interpret in septic shock. Besides hypoperfusion, adrenergic-driven lactate production and impaired lactate clearance are important contributors. However, clinical recognition of different sources of hyperlactatemia is unfortunately not a common practice and patients are treated with the same strategy despite the risk of over-resuscitation in some. Indeed, pursuing additional resuscitation in non-hypoperfusion-related cases might lead to the toxicity of fluid overload and vasoactive drugs. We hypothesized that two different clinical patterns can be recognized in septic shock patients through a multimodal perfusion monitoring. Hyperlactatemic patients with a hypoperfusion context probably represent a more severe acute circulatory dysfunction, and the absence of a hypoperfusion context is eventually associated with a good outcome. We performed a retrospective analysis of a database of septic shock patients with persistent hyperlactatemia after initial resuscitation. __Results:__ We defined hypoperfusion context by the presence of a ScvO2 < 70%, or a P(cv-a)CO2 ≥6 mmHg, or a CRT ≥4 s together with hyperlactatemia. Ninety patients were included, of whom seventy exhibited a hypoperfusion-related pattern and 20 did not. Although lactate values were comparable at baseline (4.8 ± 2.8 vs. 4.7 ± 3.7 mmol/L), patients with a hypoperfusion context exhibited a more severe circulatory dysfunction with higher vasopressor requirements, and a trend to longer mechanical ventilation days, ICU stay, and more rescue therapies. Only one of the 20 hyperlactatemic patients without a hypoperfusion context died (5%) compared to 11 of the 70 with hypoperfusion-related hyperlactatemia (16%). __Conclusions:__ Two different clinical patterns among hyperlactatemic septic shock patients may be identified according to hypoperfusion context. Patients with hyperlactatemia plus low ScvO2, or high P(cv-a)CO2, or high CRT values exhibited a more severe circulatory dysfunction. This provides a starting point to launch further prospective studies to confirm if this approach can lead to a more selective resuscitation strategy

Impairment of exogenous lactate clearance in experimental hyperdynamic septic shock is not related to total liver hypoperfusion

Introduction: Although the prognostic value of persistent hyperlactatemia in septic shock is unequivocal, its physiological determinants are controversial. Particularly, the role of impaired hepatic clearance has been underestimated and is only considered relevant in patients with liver ischemia or cirrhosis. Our objectives were to establish whether endotoxemia impairs whole body net lactate clearance, and to explore a potential role for total liver hypoperfusion during the early phase of septic shock. Methods: After anesthesia, 12 sheep were subjected to hemodynamic/perfusion monitoring including hepatic and portal catheterization, and a hepatic ultrasound flow probe. After stabilization (point A), sheep were alternatively assigned to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) (5 mcg/kg bolus followed by 4 mcg/kg/h) or sham for a three-hour study period. After 60 minutes of shock, animals were fluid resuscitated to normalize mean arterial pressure. Repeated series of measurements were performed immediately after fluid resuscitation (point B), and one (point C) and two hours later (point D). Monitoring included systemic and regional hemodynamics, blood gases and lactate measurements, and ex-vivo hepatic mitochondrial respiration at point D. Parallel exogenous lactate and sorbitol clearances were performed at points B and D. Both groups included an intravenous bolus followed by serial blood sampling to draw a curve using the least squares method. Results: Significant hyperlactatemia was already present in LPS as compared to sham animals at point B (4.7 (3.1 to 6.7) versus 1.8 (1.5 to 3.7) mmol/L), increasing to 10.2 (7.8 to 12.3) mmol/L at point D. A significant increase in portal and hepatic lactate levels in LPS animals was also observed. No within-group difference in hepatic DO2, VO2 or O2 extraction, total hepatic blood flow (point D: 915 (773 to 1,046) versus 655 (593 to 1,175) ml/min), mitochondrial respiration, liver enzymes or sorbitol clearance was found. However, there was a highly significant decrease in lactate clearance in LPS animals (point B: 46 (30 to 180) versus 1,212 (743 to 2,116) ml/min, P <0.01; point D: 113 (65 to 322) versus 944 (363 to 1,235) ml/min, P <0.01). Conclusions: Endotoxemia induces an early and severe impairment in lactate clearance that is not related to total liver hypoperfusion

The host immune response to gastrointestinal nematode infection in sheep

non peer reviewedGastrointestinal nematode infection represents a major threat to the health, welfare and productivity of sheep populations worldwide. Infected lambs have a reduced ability to absorb nutrients from the gastrointestinal tract, resulting in morbidity and occasional mortality. The current chemo-dominant approach to nematode control is considered unsustainable due to the increasing incidence of anthelmintic resistance. In addition there is growing consumer demand for food products from animals not subjected to chemical treatment. Future mechanisms of nematode control must rely on alternative, sustainable strategies such as vaccination or selective breeding of resistant animals. Such strategies take advantage of the host's natural immune response to nematodes. The ability to resist gastrointestinal nematode infection is considered to be dependent on the development of a protective acquired immune response; although the precise immune mechanisms involved in initiating this process remain to be fully elucidated. In this paper current knowledge on the innate and acquired host immune response to gastrointestinal nematode infection in sheep and the development of immunity is reviewed.We gratefully acknowledge funding support for the research in our laboratories from the Teagasc Walsh Fellowship Programme, the Allan and Grace Kay Overseas Scholarship and the EC-funded FP7 Programme. We also thank the BBSRC Animal Health Research Club for funding part of this research (grant BB/l004070/1

Logical Implications for Visual Question Answering Consistency

Despite considerable recent progress in Visual Question Answering (VQA) models, inconsistent or contradictory answers continue to cast doubt on their true reasoning capabilities. However, most proposed methods use indirect strategies or strong assumptions on pairs of questions and answers to enforce model consistency. Instead, we propose a novel strategy intended to improve model performance by directly reducing logical inconsistencies. To do this, we introduce a new consistency loss term that can be used by a wide range of the VQA models and which relies on knowing the logical relation between pairs of questions and answers. While such information is typically not available in VQA datasets, we propose to infer these logical relations using a dedicated language model and use these in our proposed consistency loss function. We conduct extensive experiments on the VQA Introspect and DME datasets and show that our method brings improvements to state-of-the-art VQA models while being robust across different architectures and settings