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The safety of groundwater has been a great concern for irrigation and drinking purposes in recent decades due to the increasing impacts of anthropogenic activities. There are several standards to evaluate the groundwater quality for different utilization purposes. In this paper, 804 samples covering the entire Ordos Basin across five provinces were used to evaluate the irrigation suitability and human health risks. The results showed that the sequence of cationic concentration was Na+ > Ca2+ > Mg2+ > K+ > NH4 +, and the anion concentration was HCO3 − > SO4 2− > Cl− > NO3 − > F− > NO2 −. For drinking purposes, TDS, Na+, SO4 2−, F−, TH and NO3 − exceed seriously the regulated standard in the study area. For irrigating purposes, 80% of the water in the study area belongs to “good water” according to the evaluation of salinity and alkalinity. Saline water which is not suitable for irrigation accounts for about 9%. High health risks of fluoride ions are mainly observed to the samples representing the western part of the study area, while the health risks of nitrates spread throughout the study area. Health risk is not only related to location, but also varies with age, and it is found that children suffer more threats than adults.

Resumen Mas de 30 anos despues de su descubrimiento, la infeccion por Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) sigue siendo la causa mas frecuente de enfermedades gastricas y duodenales. H. pylori es la causa principal de la gastritis cronica, la ulcera peptica, el linfoma MALT gastrico y el adenocarcinoma gastrico. Recientemente se han publicado varios consensos sobre el manejo de la infeccion por H. pylori. Las lineas generales del consenso espanol, del de Toronto y el Maastricht V del 2016 son similares, pero las recomendaciones concretas pueden variar notablemente. Ademas, las recomendaciones de alguno de estos consensos resultan francamente complejas. El presente documento de posicionamiento de la Societat Catalana de Digestologia es una actualizacion de las recomendaciones basadas en la evidencia sobre el manejo y tratamiento de la infeccion por H. pylori. Este documento pretende revisar esta informacion para hacer unas recomendaciones para la practica clinica habitual sencillas, concretas y que sean de facil aplicacion en nuestro medio.

Groundwater is a prominent resource of drinking and domestic water in the world. In this context, a feasible water resources management plan necessitates acceptable predictions of groundwater table depth fluctuations, which can help ensure the sustainable use of a watershed’s aquifers for urban and rural water supply. Due to the difficulties of identifying non-linear model structure and estimating the associated parameters, in this study radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) and GM (1, 1) models are used for the prediction of monthly groundwater level fluctuations in the city of Longyan, Fujian Province (South China). The monthly groundwater level data monitored from January 2003 to December 2011 are used in both models. The error criteria are estimated using the coefficient of determination (R 2), mean absolute error (E) and root mean squared error (RMSE). The results show that both the models can forecast the groundwater level with fairly high accuracy, but the RBFN network model can be a promising tool to simulate and forecast groundwater level since it has a relatively smaller RMSE and MAE.

Ordos Basin is located in an arid and semi-arid region of northwestern China, which is the most important energy source bases in China. Salawusu Formation (Q3 s) is one of the most important aquifer systems of Ordos Basin, which is adjacent to Jurassic coalfield areas. A large-scale exploitation of Jurassic coal resources over ten years results in series of influences to the coal minerals, such as exposed to the oxidation process and dissolution into the groundwater due to the precipitation infiltration. Therefore, how these processes impact groundwater quality is of great concerns. In this paper, the descriptive statistical method, Piper trilinear diagram, ratios of major ions and canonical correspondence analysis are employed to investigate the hydrochemical evolution, determine the possible sources of pollution processes, and assess the controls on groundwater compositions using the monitored data in 2004 and 2014 (before and after large-scale coal mining). Results showed that long-term exploration of coal resources do not result in serious groundwater pollution. The hydrochemical types changed from HCO 3 − - CO 3 2 − facies to SO 4 2 − -Cl facies during 10 years. Groundwater hardness, nitrate and sulfate pollution were identified in 2014, which was most likely caused by agricultural activities.

We investigated whether pre-treatment with statins is associated with surrogate markers of amyloid and hypertensive angiopathies in patients who need to start long-term oral anticoagulation therapy. A prospective multicenter study of patients naive for oral anticoagulants, who had an acute cardioembolic stroke. MRI was performed at admission to evaluate microbleeds, leukoaraiosis and superficial siderosis. We collected data on the specific statin compound, the dose and the statin intensity. We performed bivariate analyses and a logistic regression to investigate variables associated with microbleeds. We studied 470 patients (age 77.5 +/- 6.4 years, 43.7% were men), and 193 (41.1%) of them received prior treatment with a statin. Microbleeds were detected in 140 (29.8%), leukoaraiosis in 388 (82.5%) and superficial siderosis in 20 (4.3%) patients. The presence of microbleeds, leukoaraiosis or superficial siderosis was not related to pretreatment with statins. Microbleeds were more frequent in patients with prior intracerebral hemorrhage (OR 9.7, 95% CI 1.06-90.9) and in those pre-treated antiplatelets (OR 1.66, 95% CI 1.09-2.53). Prior treatment with statins was not associated with markers of bleeding-prone cerebral angiopathies in patients with cardioembolic stroke. Therefore, previous statin treatment should not influence the decision to initiate or withhold oral anticoagulation if these neuroimaging markers are detected., This study was funded by the Spanish Ministery of Health - Instituto Carlos III, Redes Tematicas de Investigacion Cooperativa (INVICTUS PLUS RD16/0019/0010) and Fondo de Investigaciones Sanitarias FI12/00296. The study also received funding from FEDER (Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional). The study was done with the aid of the Stroke Project, Cerebrovascular Diseases Group of the Spanish Neurological Society.

Under ongoing climate change and increasing anthropogenic activity, which continuously challenge ecosystem resilience, an in-depth understanding of ecological processes is urgently needed. Lakes, as providers of numerous ecosystem services, face multiple stressors that threaten their functioning. Harmful cyanobacterial blooms are a persistent problem resulting from nutrient pollution and climate-change induced stressors, like poor transparency, increased water temperature and enhanced stratification. Consistency in data collection and analysis methods is necessary to achieve fully comparable datasets and for statistical validity, avoiding issues linked to disparate data sources. The European Multi Lake Survey (EMLS) in summer 2015 was an initiative among scientists from 27 countries to collect and analyse lake physical, chemical and biological variables in a fully standardized manner. This database includes in-situ lake variables along with nutrient, pigment and cyanotoxin data of 369 lakes in Europe, which were centrally analysed in dedicated laboratories. Publishing the EMLS methods and dataset might inspire similar initiatives to study across large geographic areas that will contribute to better understanding lake responses in a changing environment., The authors acknowledge COST Action ES 1105 “CYANOCOST – Cyanobacterial blooms and toxins in water resources: Occurrence impacts and management” and COST Action ES 1201 “NETLAKE – Networking Lake Observatories in Europe” for contributing to this study through networking and knowledge sharing with European experts in the field. Evanthia Mantzouki was supported by a grant from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) to Bas Ibelings and by supplementary funding from University of Geneva. We thank Wendy Beekman for the nutrient analysis and the University of Wageningen for covering the costs of this analysis from the personal funding of dr. Miquel Lürling. We thank Pieter Slot for assisting with the pigment analysis and the University of Amsterdam for covering the costs of the analysis through funding from the group of Prof. Jef Huisman and dr. Petra Visser (IBED). We would like to thank the Environmental Data Initiative for covering the cost of archiving the EMLS dataset. We would like to thank the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Dept. of Experimental Limnology and the Aquatic Microbial Ecology Group for logistic and technical support of J. Fonvielle and H.-P. Grossart; and the Leibniz Association for financial support. The collection of data for Lough Erne and Lough Neagh were funded by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, Northern Ireland.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The role of juxtacortical lesions in brain volume loss in multiple sclerosis has not been fully clarified. The aim of this study was to explore the role of juxtacortical lesions on cortical atrophy and to investigate whether the presence of juxtacortical lesions is related to local cortical thinning in the early stages of MS. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 131 patients with clinically isolated syndrome or with relapsing-remitting MS were scanned on a 3T system. Patients with clinically isolated syndrome were classified into 3 groups based on the presence and topography of brain lesions: no lesions (n = 24), only non–juxtacortical lesions (n = 33), and juxtacortical lesions and non–juxtacortical lesions (n = 34). Patients with relapsing-remitting MS were classified into 2 groups: only non–juxtacortical lesions (n = 10) and with non–juxtacortical lesions and juxtacortical lesions (n = 30). A juxtacortical lesion probability map was generated, and cortical thickness was measured by using FreeSurfer. RESULTS: Juxtacortical lesion volume in relapsing-remitting MS was double that of patients with clinically isolated syndrome. The insula showed the highest density of juxtacortical lesions, followed by the temporal, parietal, frontal, and occipital lobes. Patients with relapsing-remitting MS with juxtacortical lesions showed significantly thinner cortices overall and in the parietal and temporal lobes compared with those with clinically isolated syndrome with normal brain MR imaging. The volume of subcortical structures (thalamus, pallidum, putamen, and accumbens) was significantly decreased in relapsing-remitting MS with juxtacortical lesions compared with clinically isolated syndrome with normal brain MR imaging. The spatial distribution of juxtacortical lesions was not found to overlap with areas of cortical thinning. CONCLUSIONS: Cortical thinning and subcortical gray matter volume loss in patients with a clinically isolated syndrome or relapsing-remitting MS was related to the presence of juxtacortical lesions, though the cortical areas with the most marked thinning did not correspond to those with the largest number of juxtacortical lesions.

More than 30 years after its discovery, Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection remains the most common cause of gastric and duodenal diseases. H. pylori is the leading cause of chronic gastritis, peptic ulcer, gastric MALT lymphoma and gastric adenocarcinoma. Several consensuses have recently been published on the management of H. pylori infection. The general guidelines of the Spanish consensus, the Toronto Consensus and the Maastricht V Consensus of 2016 are similar but concrete recommendations can vary significantly. In addition, the recommendations of some of these consensuses are decidedly complex. This position paper from the Catalan Society of Digestology is an update of evidence-based recommendations on the management and treatment of H. pylori infection. The aim of this document is to review this information in order to make recommendations for routine clinical practice that are simple, specific and easily applied to our setting.

Soil and water conservation ecological compensation can be simply defined as a monetary payment to offset the environmental loss. An illustration is given in this study describing the payment compensation to water resource conservation and soil losses in Erlongshan reservoir catchment, China. A semi-distributed hydrological SWAT model was applied to establish compensation standard considering six scenarios of land use changes by combined application of remote sensing and geographic information systems. Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) method is applied to evaluate the function of soil and water conservation, of which marginal opportunity cost and market value methods have been explored calculate the cost and benefit of water and soil conservation ecological function from provider and beneficiaries. Finally the ecological compensation of soil and water conservation for different land-use scenarios is calculated incorporating benefit apportion coefficient. The results provide an economically evaluated and market-oriented standard for the study of eco-compensation of environmental services and will be of great benefit to the implementation of soil and water conservation at a mesoscale catchment scale.

During the 1990s, groundwater overexploitation has resulted in seawater intrusion in the coastal aquifer of the Shenzhen city, China. Although water supply facilities have been improved and alleviated seawater intrusion in recent years, groundwater overexploitation is still of great concern in some local areas. In this work we present a three-dimensional density-dependent numerical model developed with the FEFLOW code, which is aimed at simulating the extent of seawater intrusion while including tidal effects and different groundwater pumping scenarios. Model calibration, using waterheads and reported chloride concentration, has been performed based on the data from 14 boreholes, which were monitored from May 2008 to December 2009. A fairly good fitness between the observed and computed values was obtained by a manual trial-and-error method. Model prediction has been carried out forward 3 years with the calibrated model taking into account high, medium and low tide levels and different groundwater exploitation schemes. The model results show that tide-induced seawater intrusion significantly affects the groundwater levels and concentrations near the estuarine of the Dasha river, which implies that an important hydraulic connection exists between this river and groundwater, even considering that some anti-seepage measures were taken in the river bed. Two pumping scenarios were considered in the calibrated model in order to predict the future changes in the water levels and chloride concentration. The numerical results reveal a decreased tendency of seawater intrusion if groundwater exploitation does not reach an upper bound of about 1.32 × 104 m3/d. The model results provide also insights for controlling seawater intrusion in such coastal aquifer systems.

The development of open Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies, such as the Fab@Home system, has emerged as a freeform approach capable of producing complex three-dimensional objects with a broad variety of materials. The main objective of this work is to analyze and optimize the manufacturing capacity of this system when producing 3D edible objects. A new heated syringe deposition tool was developed and several process parameters were optimized to adapt this technology to consumers needs. The results revealed in this study show the potential of this system to produce customized edible objects without qualified personnel knowledge, therefore saving manufacturing costs compared to traditional technologies.

We report the case of a young man with chronic hepatitis B infection of probable perinatal acquisition who was diagnosed with hepatocellular carcinoma at a very early stage (BCLC 0) with a highly favorable prognosis. However, the tumor progressed rapidly and the patient died within months. Currently, there are few data that could help to identify cases likely to show rapid progression and which could prompt initiation of aggressive therapies that might prevent or control such progression.

Electro discharge machining process (EDM) is frequently used when machining of high complex and accurate features is required. Indeed, it is specially recommended for hard materials and micro-machined features. However, due to the process nature, there is still incomprehension on process parameters influence at the final quality features, ending up by lower productivity and quality ratios. On the other hand, fashioning and re-shaping of required electrodes for each feature are time consuming phases and the number of stored electrodes is very high. Therefore, in order to increase the global EDM process productivity, quality and flexibility, standardized simple electrode shapes, capable to machine different features, must be found. This study presents the influence of the main EDM process parameters and different tool geometries on basic process performance measures. A set of designed experiments with varying parameters such as pulsed current, open voltage, pulse time and pulse pause time are carried out in H13 steel using different geometries of copper electrodes. In addition, material removal rate , surface roughness and different dimensional and geometrical micro-accuracies are analyzed through statistical methods. Results help to select appropriate EDM process parameters to machine parts depending on product requirements.

Resumen La unidad de atencion continuada y hospital de dia permite el manejo ambulatorio de los pacientes con una enfermedad digestiva. Objetivo Disminuir los ingresos hospitalarios y el numero de pacientes con una enfermedad digestiva que acude a urgencias. Material y metodos Los pacientes se atienden segun dos niveles asistenciales: a) atencion continuada, en que se visitan de forma urgente los pacientes con una descompensacion aguda de su enfermedad digestiva, y b) atencion programada, en que se realizan procedimientos que por su complejidad requieren personal de enfermeria, sin ser necesario el ingreso hospitalario. Resultados En el periodo comprendido entre 1995 y 2005 se ha pasado de realizar 118 visitas en atencion continuada en 1995 a 784 en 2005. En atencion programada las paracentesis han aumentado de 237 en 1995 a 687 en 2006 y las infusiones de hierro intravenoso de 111 en 2004 a 519 en 2006. El numero de ingresos hospitalarios paso inicialmente de 605 en 1995 a 430 en 2000, para posteriormente aumentar. El numero de pacientes con una enfermedad digestiva que acudio a urgencias disminuyo un 75% estos anos. Conclusiones La unidad de atencion continuada y hospital de dia permite una disminucion inicial del numero de ingresos en el area de hospitalizacion convencional y en el porcentaje de pacientes con patologia digestiva que acuden a urgencias.

Purpose – Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand the relationships between the processing parameters and the geometric form of the produced single tracks, in order to control dimensional quality in future experimentations. The quality of the deposited single track and layer is of prime importance in the selective laser melting (SLM) process, as it affects the product quality in terms of dimensional precision and product performance. Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, a vertical milling machining center equipped with an Ytterbium-fiber laser was used in the SLM experimentation to form single cobalt-chromium-molybdenum (CoCrMo) tracks. The different geometric features and the influence of the scanning parameters on these morphologic characteristics were studied statistically by means of ANOVA. Findings – Evidently, track height (h1) inaccuracy reduced in layer thicknesses between 100 and 200 μm. The re-melt depth (h2) was determined by the energy parameters, with laser power of 325-350 W and scanning speed (SS) of 66.6-83.3 mm/s being the most favorable parameters to obtain the required anchoring. Moreover, a contact angle of 117° was proposed as optimal, as it permitted an adequate overlapping region and a full densification, and, finally, an SS of 50 mm/s and a layer thickness of 250 were suggested for its development. Originality/value – The comprehension of the phenomena inherent to the process is related to the single track geometrical characteristics, which allow the definition of an optimal value for each factor for a further proposal of processing conditions that can finally derive a higher precision, wetting, density and mechanical properties.

Selective laser melting (SLM) is an advanced manufacturing technology based on layer by layer building to produce solid parts from metallic powder (Kruth et al., CIRP Ann Manuf Technol 56:730-760, 2007). Commercial SLM machines are configured to use specific parameters to process different metallic powder grades. This paper proposes a methodology that makes it possible to analyze the effect of energy density on the formation of single tracks from CoCrMo powder, using a noncommercial machine to select process parameters with open source technology. Full factorial experimental work was carried out to produce single tracks under different combinations of process parameters. A major application of this research work is to develop more flexible machine configurations applicable to different materials This work was carried out, in part, with the support of grants from the European Commission project IREBID (FP7-PEOPLE-2009-IRSES-247476) and the Spanish Science and Innovation Minister project TECNIPLAD (DPI2009-09852)

Rapid manufacturing is an advanced manufacturing technology based on layer-by-layer manufacturing to produce a part. This paper presents experimental work carried out to investigate the effects of scan speed, layer thickness, and building direction on the following part features: dimensional error, surface roughness, and mechanical properties for DMLS with DS H20 powder and SLM with CL 20 powder (1.4404/AISI 316L). Findings were evaluated using ANOVA analysis. According to the experimental results, build direction has a significant effect on part quality, in terms of dimensional error and surface roughness. For the SLM process, the build direction has no influence on mechanical properties. Results of this research support industry estimating part quality and mechanical properties before the production of parts with additive manufacturing, using iron-based powders.

The problem of calculating a degree of reputation for agents acting as assistants to the members of an electronic community is discussed and a solution presented. Usual reputation mechanisms rely on feedback after interaction between agents. An alternative way to establish reputation is related with the position of each member of a community within the corresponding social network. We propose a method based on this idea, which is also used by well-known ranking algorithms, discuss its properties as well as experimental results and compare them to other reputation mechanisms for electronic communities supported by agents. The method proposed uses only local information in order to extract reputation and it is able to adapt automatically to the topology of the network or graph.

Aim: Alterations of genetic and epigenetic feature can provide important insghts into the natural history of breast cancer. Although DNA methylation analysis is a rapidly developing field, a reproducible epigenetic blood-based assay for diagnosis and follow up of breast cancer has yet to be successfully developed into a routine clinical test. The aim of ths study was to review DNA methylation of promoter methylation of 14.3.3 sigma and ESR1 in circulating DNA of breast cancer patients and to highlight the value of those novel biomarkers in prediction of therapeutic outcom Methods: Plasma was sampled prospectively from 110 patients diagnosed of breast cancer. A PCR quantitative technique was used to analyzed the utility of circulating DNA with CpG island hypermethylation of ESR1, 14.3.3 sigma, APC and Rar Beta genes promoter regions as breast cancer biomarkers Results: The cutt-off points for the genes methylated promoters were established from the ROC curves, selecting values that gave the maximal likelihood ratio. Mean serum values of methylated genes before treatment was for ESR1:0.009 microg/ml, 14.3.3 sigma: 0.047 microg/ml, RarBeta: 0.0001 microg/ml and APC: 0.012 microg/ml. Mean values of methylated genes after treatment was for ESR: 0.003 microg/ml, 14.3.3 sigma: 0.038 microg/ml, RarBeta: 0 microg/ml and APC:0.001microg/ml. In the light of the discriminatory power of the ESR1 and 14.3.3 sigma and the finding that serum levels of methylated gene promoter changed after breast cancer treatment, post treatment modifications in these two promoters were analyzed. We observed lower methylated ESR1, 14.3.3 sigma and APC values after surgery respect pretreatment levels, but without an overall statistically significant difference. With a median follow up of 8 years we found that patients with a significant decrease of sera methylated levels of these genes after surgery had better interval free progression and overall survival respect patients without this observation. Conclusions: These findings cast some doubts on the utility for early cancer diagnosis of highly sensitive techniques to identify hypermethylation os specific gene promoters in DNA extracted from serum. Althought numerous issues remain to be resolved the quantitative measurement of circulating methylated DNA is a promising tool for cancer prognostic assessment. Disclosure: All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.

Some authors have hypothesized that the observed self-synchronized activity in ant colonies provides some adaptive advantages, and, in particular, it has been suggested that task realization may benefit from this ordered temporal pattern of behaviour (Robinson, 1992, Ann. Rev. Entomol, 37, 637–702; Hatcher et al., 1992, Naturwissenschaften, 79, 32–34). In this paper, we use a model of self-synchronized activity (the fluid neural network) to suggest that with self-synchronized patterns of activity a task may be fulfiled more effectively than with non-synchronized activity, at the same average level of activity per individual.

Since the discovery of self-synchronization of activity in ant colonies some authors have argued that this phenomenon lacks any adaptive significance, while others have suggested that there may be some functional behaviors related to these rhythmical patterns of activity. In this paper, we introduce a mobile automata model of task fulfilment in ant colonies with self-synchronized activity, and test if these synchronized patterns provide any advantage when compared with nonsynchronized activity patterns.

The emergence of social conventions in multi-agent systems has been analyzed mainly in settings where every agent may interact either with every other agent or with nearest neighbours, according to some regular underlying topology. In this note we argue that these topologies are too simple if we take into account recent discoveries on real networks. These networks, one of the main examples being the Internet, are what is called complex, that is, either graphs with the small-world property or scale-free graphs. In this note we study the efficiency of the emergence of social conventions in complex networks, that is, how fast conventions are reached. Our main result is that complex graphs make the system much more efficient than regular graphs with the same average number of links per node. Furthermore, we find out that scale-free graphs make the system as efficient as fully connected graphs.