Francisco Javier Ordóñez Muñoz

Inheritance of chromosome-length polymorphisms in the phytopathogenic ascomycete Botryotinia fuckeliana (anam. Botrytis cinerea )

The electrophoretic karyotype (EK) of 24 strains of Botryotinia fuckeliana was resolved to determine the extent of chromosomal polymorphism among them. Based on EK variation, nine different profiles with a number of bands ranging from 5 to 8 were found. Those profiles were not related to the origins of the strains, hosts, or year of isolation. Inheritance of chromosomal bands was studied by analyzing the EK of the progeny from crosses between sexually compatible B. fuckeliana strains that had different karyotype. The EKs of 44 monoascospore strains showed 12 new EK profiles, suggesting that chromosomal rearrangements generated after meiotic recombination provides EK variability in this fungus. Also, we report here that the degree of EK variability indicates that sexual reproduction under natural conditions might be quite important in the life cycle of B. fuckeliana. Hybridization analysis showed that, in most strains, the rDNA is located in both a-chromosomal band of high molecular weight and different size depending on the strain and a band of low molecular weight, revealing evidence for chromosome rearrangements in this plant pathogen.

A home-based treadmill training reduced epicardial and abdominal fat in postmenopausal women with metabolic syndrome

INTRODUCTION The current study was designed to determine the effect of home-based treadmill training on epicardial and abdominal adipose tissue in postmenopausal women with metabolic syndrome (MS). A secondary objective was to identify significant correlations between imaging and conventional anthropometric parameters. MATERIAL AND METHODS Sixty postmenopausal women with MS volunteered for the current trial. Thirty were randomly assigned to perform a supervised home-based 16-week treadmill training program, 3 sessions/week, consisting of a warm-up, 30-40 min treadmill exercise (increasing 5-minutes each 4-weeks) at a work intensity of 60-75% of peak heart rate (increasing 5% each 4-weeks) and cooling-down. Epicardial fat thickness (EFT) was assessed by echocardiography. Abdominal fat mass in the lumbar regions L1-L4 and L4-L5 was determined by dual X-ray absorptiometry. RESULTS Epicardial fat thickness and abdominal fat percentages were significantly improved after the completion of the training program. Another striking feature of the current study was the moderate correlation that was found between EFT and waist circumference (WC). CONCLUSION Home-based treadmill training reduced epicardial and abdominal fat in postmenopausal women with MS. A secondary finding was that a moderate correlation was found between EFT and WC. While current investigations are promising, future studies are still required to consolidate this approach in clinical application.

Study on fungicide resistance of botrytis cinerea isolates from diseased strawberry plants

Southwestern Spain is one of the main areas for strawberry culture in the world. Large losses are due to grey mould caused by Botrytis cinerea, a plant pathogen that affects a wide variety of crops. Resistance to synthetic fungicides is one of the more important problems that hamper control of grey mould on strawberry. We have characterized the relative response to benzimidazole (benomyl and carbendazaim) and dicarboximide (vinclozolin) among 36 isolates of B. cinerea obtained from different plots in six counties of the province of Huelva during a 2-year period. Three phenotypes with resistance to benzimidazole were detected: (i) BenR1 having phenotype resistant (R) to benomyl and high-resistant (HR) to carbendazim; (ii) BenR2 with phenotype HR to both benomyl and carbendazim; and (iii) BenR3 with phenotype HR to benomyl and R to carbendazim. Strains were either resistant or sensitive to the dicarboximide vinclozolin (DicR or DicS, respectively), but high-resistance to this fungicide (DicHR strains) was not found. The low fitness of the DicHR mutants and the possibility of heterokaryosis indicated by the number of nuclei within fungal conidia indicates that DicHR mutants might not become established in field populations in southwestern Spain.

Electric customer classification using Nopfield recurrent ANN

In retail power markets precise information related to electric customers is of relevant interest. For efficient tariff design and pricing it is required accurate classification and segmentation of electric customers. In this paper, it is proposed a methodology for clustering electric customers based on a recurrent Hopfield Artificial Neural Network (H-ANN). In order to reduce the size of the input set of the clustering algorithm several filtering techniques are used. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is measured using characterization indexes. Results in a set of distribution customers are presented to demonstrate de efficiency of the approach.

Somatotipo, Masa Grasa y Muscular del Escalador Deportivo Español de Elite

Una adecuada morfologia y composicion corporal es una condicion necesaria para obtener buenos resultados en el deporte de competicion y una variable fundamental en el control del rendimiento deportivo. El objetivo del presente trabajo fue describir la masa grasa, la masa muscular y la morfologia corporal de 11 escaladores deportivos de elite espanoles, en base a metodos antropometricos para la composicion corporal (ecuaciones de Faulkner, Carter y Durnin & Womersley) y el somatotipo (Heath & Carter) y de bioimpedancia electrica para la masa muscular (ecuaciones de Janssen & Kyle). Un analisis de la varianza (ANOVA) fue aplicado para determinar las diferencias entre las diferentes formulas de calculo del porcentaje de grasa. El porcentaje de grasa obtenido a partir de las ecuacion de Durnin & Womersley fue significativamente superior respecto al obtenido con la ecuacion de Carter en hombres (7,51% v/s 5,42%) y al de Faulkner en mujeres (14,40% v/s 12,58%; p<0,05). La masa muscular esqueletica fue superior en los hombres (45,52%) que en las mujeres (34,28%). Del somatotipo destaco el alto componente mesomorfico y la baja endomorfia en varones (1,34 - 5,22 - 3,05) y el morfotipo ectomesomorfo en mujeres (1,65 - 3,35 - 3,71). Los resultados del presente estudio pueden considerarse como valores de referencia en base al alto nivel deportivo de los sujetos estudiados.