How Fiber Surface Topography Affects Interactions between Cells and Electrospun Scaffolds: A Systematic Review

Electrospun scaffolds have a 3D fibrous structure that attempts to imitate the extracellular matrix in order to be able to host cells. It has been reported in the literature that controlling fiber surface topography produces varying results regarding cell–scaffold interactions. This review analyzes the relevant literature concerning in vitro studies to provide a better understanding of the effect that controlling fiber surface topography has on cell–scaffold interactions. A systematic approach following PRISMA, GRADE, PICO, and other standard methodological frameworks for systematic reviews was used. Different topographic interventions and their effects on cell–scaffold interactions were analyzed. Results indicate that nanopores and roughness on fiber surfaces seem to improve proliferation and adhesion of cells. The quality of the evidence is different for each studied cell–scaffold interaction, and for each studied morphological attribute. The evidence points to improvements in cell–scaffold interactions on most morphologically complex fiber surfaces. The discussion includes an in-depth evaluation of the indirectness of the evidence, as well as the potentially involved publication bias. Insights and suggestions about dose-dependency relationship, as well as the effect on particular cell and polymer types, are presented. It is concluded that topographical alterations to the fiber surface should be further studied, since results so far are promising.

Immersive virtual reality versus webcam in an online language course

This paper investigates the differences between Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) and the webcam (WBC) in the context of a Spanish distance-learning course. Two specific objectives were set: (1) to determine the existence of a relationship of dependence between the device used and the oral interaction, and (2) to analyse the existence of a dependency relationship between the device utilised and the perception of copresence. To that end, online courses and semi-structured interviews were conducted. Regarding the first objective, there is a higher chance of speaking exchanges between student-tutor and tutor-student when using WBC. As for the second objective, we did not have sufficient feedback to determine whether the perception of copresence varies depending on the two profiles. However, the analysis indicates that non-verbal communication was essential for IVR volunteers to experience copresence. The conclusions suggest that the IVR could be more appropriate than WBC for socio-constructivist and communicative teaching pedagogies2.

Incidencia de la agrupación de los jugadores en el diseño de las tareas de entrenamiento en balonmano (Impact of players' grouping on the design of handball training tasks)

El ciclo de calidad de la intervención del entrenador implica conocer como es el proceso de planificación y su aplicación práctica, para posteriormente proceder a su análisis y evaluación. El principal objetivo de esta investigación fue caracterizar el proceso de entrenamiento que realiza un equipo amateur masculino de balonmano y la relación que existe entre la variable Situación de Juego con en el resto de las variables que conforman el entrenamiento. Para ello, las situaciones de juego se agruparon en situaciones sin oposición, situaciones individuales, situaciones reducidas de igualdad numérica, situaciones reducidas de superioridad numérica y juego completo. Se analizaron un total de 141 tareas de entrenamientos y se codificaron a través del instrumento Sistema Integral para el Análisis de las Tareas de Entrenamiento. Se realizó un análisis descriptivo de las Variables Pedagógicas y de Carga Externa para posteriormente estudiar la relación entre estas variables con la variable independiente Situación de Juego. Para ello, se utilizaron las pruebas estadísticas Chi2 para la relación de dependencia y V de Cramer para calcular el nivel de asociación a través de los Residuos Tipificados Corregidos. El análisis confirma que el entrenador emplea situaciones reducidas y se muestran diferencias en todas las variables analizadas en función del Tipo de Situación de Juego. Una mayor variedad en el empleo de las diferentes variables que definen una tarea facilita y fomenta el desarrollo pedagógico y físico del jugador del balonmano que repercute en el resultado final en competición. Abstract. The quality cycle of the coach's intervention implies knowing what the planning process and its implementation are like, in order to subsequently proceed to its analysis and evaluation. The purpose of this research was to describe the training process carried out by a male amateur handball team and how the Game Situation variable influences the rest of the variables that make up the training. To do this, the game situations were grouped into Unopposed Situations, Individual Situations, Small Sided Games of Numerical Equality, Small Sided Games of Numerical Superiority and Full Games. A total of 141 training tasks were analyzed and coded using the Integral Analysis System of Training Tasks. A descriptive analysis of the Pedagogical and External Load Variables was carried out to later study the relationship between these variables with the independent variable Game Situation. For this, the Chi2 statistical tests for the dependency relationship and Cramer's V were used to calculate the level of association through the Corrected Typified Residuals. The analysis confirms that the coach uses reduced situations and differences are shown in all the variables analyzed depending on the Type of Game Situation. A greater variety in the use of the different variables that define a task facilitates and encourages the pedagogical and physical development of the handball player, which affects the final result in competition.

Effect of the ridge position ratio on the thermal environment of the Chinese solar greenhouse

This paper clarified the mechanism of the south and north roofs' effect on the thermal environment of the Chinese solar greenhouse (CSG), using a new parameter: ridge position ratio (RPR), which can describe the dynamic dependency relationship between the south and north roofs. A mathematical model was established using a method of combining computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation with experiments, then the model was used to further analyse the effect of RPR on the thermal environment of the CSG. The experimental greenhouse was simulated as an empty building to obtain results independently from these factors including crop and ventilation conditions. The results showed that the occurrence time of the maximum air temperature will be delayed when RPR increases to 0.3 during the daytime. As RPR increases, the heat storage layer of the soil gradually becomes thinner, but the north wall remains unchanged. RPR has a relatively small effect on the minimum temperature of each greenhouse part during the night. Mathematical models of the relationships between RPR, the solar energy that entered the greenhouse and the released heat energy of the enclosure structures were established, respectively. This paper can provide theoretical guidance for the structural design of the CSG.

RGB-D Human Action Recognition of Deep Feature Enhancement and Fusion Using Two-Stream ConvNet

Action recognition is an important research direction of computer vision, whose performance based on video images is easily affected by factors such as background and light, while deep video images can better reduce interference and improve recognition accuracy. Therefore, this paper makes full use of video and deep skeleton data and proposes an RGB-D action recognition based two-stream network (SV-GCN), which can be described as a two-stream architecture that works with two different data. Proposed Nonlocal-stgcn (S-Stream) based on skeleton data, by adding nonlocal to obtain dependency relationship between a wider range of joints, to provide more rich skeleton point features for the model, proposed a video based Dilated-slowfastnet (V-Stream), which replaces traditional random sampling layer with dilated convolutional layers, which can make better use of depth the feature; finally, two stream information is fused to realize action recognition. The experimental results on NTU-RGB+D dataset show that proposed method significantly improves recognition accuracy and is superior to st-gcn and Slowfastnet in both CS and CV.

Antropología periférica

Desde Estonia, un país situado en la periferia de Europa (y donde la Antropología tiene una tradición limitada), el artículo analiza lo que significa ser ‘periférico’ dentro de la antropología europea: ¿Hablamos de relevancia, capacitación, tipo de colaboraciones, restricciones disciplinarias, relación de dependencia, mecanismos de in/visibilidad, reputación científica o de financiación? El artículo concluye con una nota positiva, indicando que los márgenes globales del conocimiento también se pueden convertir en centros de producción teórica a su manera, sea como plataforma de experimentación o como hub regional. También indica que hay una forma distinta de reflexividad en las periferias, más vernácula y experimental. From Estonia, a country located on the periphery of Europe (and where Anthropology has a limited tradition, the article analyzes what it means to be ‘peripheral’ within European anthropology: Are we talking about relevance, training, type of collaborations, disciplinary restrictions, dependency relationship, mechanisms of in/visibility, scientific reputation or funding? The article concludes on a positive note, stating that the global peripheries of knowledge can also become centers of knowledge production in their own way, either as a platform for experimentation or as a regional hub. Also that there is a different form of reflexivity in the peripheries, more vernacular and experimental.

Corporate, operational, and information systems strategies: Alignment and firm performance

This study investigates the effect of the alignment between corporate, operational, and information systems strategies and firm performance. Data were collected from the application of 138 questionnaires to large utility companies in the Australian electricity sector. In the analysis, modeling using structural equations was used to establish the dependency relationship between the variables. The results suggest that aligning operational and information systems strategies can improve firm performance. Likewise, no direct effect of corporate strategy on the firm performance was found.

From Monolithic Systems to Microservices: A Comparative Study of Performance

Currently, organizations face the need to create scalable applications in an agile way that impacts new forms of production and business organization. The traditional monolithic architecture no longer meets the needs of scalability and rapid development. The efficiency and optimization of human and technological resources prevail; this is why companies must adopt new technologies and business strategies. However, the implementation of microservices still encounters several challenges, such as the consumption of time and computational resources, scalability, orchestration, organization problems, and several further technical complications. Although there are procedures that facilitate the migration from a monolithic architecture to micro-services, none of them accurately quantifies performance differences. The current study aims primarily to analyze some related work that evaluated both architectures. Furthermore, we assess the performance and relationship between different variables of an application that runs in a monolithic structure compared to one of the micro-services. With this, the state-of-the-art review was initially conducted, which confirms the interest of the industry. Subsequently, two different scenarios were evaluated: the first one comprises a web application based on a monolithic architecture that operates on a virtual server with KVM, and the second one demonstrates the same web application based on a microservice architecture, but it runs in containers. Both situations were exposed to stress tests of similar characteristics and with the same hardware resources. For their validation, we applied the non-parametric regression mathematical model to explain the dependency relationship between the performance variables. The results provided a quantitative technical interpretation with precision and reliability, which can be applied to similar issues.