A late Pleistocene glaciolacustrine record was studied at Fagnano Lake (54°35´S, 67°20´W), central Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, southernmost South America. Two profiles from the Río Valdéz outcrop were collected for isotopic, geochemical, sedimentological, and geophysical analyses. The sedimentological characteristics, such as rhythmites, presence of dropstones, absence of fossil record, and scarce presence of organic matter, suggest deposition in an ice-contact lake, possibly dammed by the Fagnano paleoglacier. Organic matter of C3 plant origin suggests certain cold and wet conditions. A chronology of the late Pleistocene outcrop was obtained from five 14C ages resulting in an age-depth model. The time span covered 49.01 cal ka BP to 32.14 cal ka BP. Based on the thickness of the deposit and the calculated average sedimentation rate, the glacial environment could have been present in the study area prior to the last glacial maximum, in agreement with the Inútil-San Sebastián paleoglacier. Both glaciers flowed from the same mountain ice sheet in the Darwin Cordillera, which makes it possible to infer a different behavior of this ice cap from those of the Patagonian Andes, perhaps forced by different atmospheric dynamics and proximity to the wet and cold subantarctic air masses.

Microwave radars can be used to monitor the internal structure of the snowpack, delivering real-time and non-destructive measurements. Recently, the working principle of an innovative radar architecture able to identify some of the most important snowpack parameters, without external aids, has been demonstrated. A key point of this new architecture is the use of two independent receiving antennas, and one transmitting antenna. This paper presents a comparison between two different implementations, either based on one physical antenna miming two receiving antennas, or based directly on two physical receiving antennas. The different advantages and disadvantages of both solutions are discussed, highlighting the superior accuracy achieved by the implementation based on two physical receiving antennas. Then, this paper also presents the field results achieved by this type of radar architecture, on the grounds of a 5-day experimental campaign that took place in winter 2019 in the Italian Alps on dry snow. The comparison between the radar measurements and the ground truth (manual snowpit analysis, in terms of snowpack depth, dielectric constant, bulk density, and snow water equivalent) is provided. Overall, a root mean square error of around 3.5 cm, 0.05, 27 kg/m3, and 2.5 cm is achieved, respectively.

The irrelevance of ideology is perhaps one of the most strongly held views shared by the historians of the Late Republic. As indicated by Matthias Gelzer in 1912, in those final years of the Roman Republic, ‘political struggles were fought out by the nobiles at the head of their dependents’. In his opinion, this was nothing more than a power struggle, in which slogans or ideas were merely propaganda, without any real value. In 1931, analysing the political proposals of Cicero, Gelzer's disciple Hermann Strasburger rejected the existence of political parties, as, in his opinion, terms such as optimates or populares were merely propagandistic mottos and pure wordplay. As a result, it became widely believed that the civil war between Caesar and Pompey was nothing more than a struggle between dignitates, that is, a confrontation for leadership between ambitious politicians who were not prepared to compromise. More recently, in 1994, Luigi Loreto considered the conflict between Caesar and Pompey to be aimed at seizing power, unlike ‘ideological’ wars, where the aim was to maintain or instate a specific type of social or political order.

Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease are progressive nervous system disorders that affect physical and cognitive capacities of individuals, including memory loss, motion impairment, or problem-solving dysfunctions. Leisure activities are associated with reducing the risk of dementia and are preventive policies for delaying the cognitive impairment in later stages of those neurodegenerative diseases. Electronic games related to cognitive abilities are an easy and inexpensive alternative for stimulating brain activity in this kind of patients. The previous research demonstrated the acceptance of these activities in the environment of Connected TV when playing at home and in daily care centers. Interaction in Connected TV applications has its own particularities that influence the design of the interface, including the viewing distance, the type of interaction through a remote control or other techniques, the size of the screen, or the collectiveness of consumption. Iterative testing with patients of these groups revealed how the physical characteristics and cognitive impairment of these concrete end-users affect the human–computer interaction, offering guidelines and recommendations in good practices for the Smart TV interface design. On the other hand, data analytics extracted from the interaction and evolution of the game offer important information enabling the creation of estimation prediction models about the cognitive state of the patient.

Conventional tests with written information used for the evaluation of sign language (SL) comprehension introduce distortions due to the translation process. This fact affects the results and conclusions drawn and, for that reason, it is necessary to design and implement the same language interpreter-independent evaluation tools. Novel web technologies facilitate the design of web interfaces that support online, multiple-choice questionnaires, while exploiting the storage of tracking data as a source of information about user interaction. This paper proposes an online, multiple-choice sign language questionnaire based on an intuitive methodology. It helps users to complete tests and automatically generates accurate, statistical results using the information and data obtained in the process. The proposed system presents SL videos and enables user interaction, fulfilling the requirements that SL interpretation is not able to cover. The questionnaire feeds a remote database with the user answers and powers the automatic creation of data for analytics. Several metrics, including time elapsed, are used to assess the usability of the SL questionnaire, defining the goals of the predictive models. These predictions are based on machine learning models, with the demographic data of the user as features for estimating the usability of the system. This questionnaire reduces costs and time in terms of interpreter dedication, as well as widening the amount of data collected while employing user native language. The validity of this tool was demonstrated in two different use cases.

Universal access on equal terms to audiovisual content is a key point for the full inclusion of people with disabilities in activities of daily life. As a real challenge for the current Information Society, it has been detected but not achieved in an efficient way, due to the fact that current access solutions are mainly based in the traditional television standard and other not automated high-cost solutions. The arrival of new technologies within the hybrid television environment together with the application of different artificial intelligence techniques over the content will assure the deployment of innovative solutions for enhancing the user experience for all. In this paper, a set of different tools for image enhancement based on the combination between deep learning and computer vision algorithms will be presented. These tools will provide automatic descriptive information of the media content based on face detection for magnification and character identification. The fusion of this information will be finally used to provide a customizable description of the visual information with the aim of improving the accessibility level of the content, allowing an efficient and reduced cost solution for all.

The Egyptian Vulture Neophron percnopterus was once an abundant species in the Cabo Verde Islands. Since the 1960s though, and especially during the 1980–1990s, it consistently declined to near extinction. Evidence collected indicates a remnant population of about a dozen pairs or less, scattered through the desert rangelands of only three islands. Extensive enquiry work revealed that this likely resulted from the concomitant effects of the rise in unnatural mortality due to the formerly widespread and long-lasting use of dangerous pesticides and the (still on-going) poisoning of stray dogs and other nuisance animals, and a decrease in food resources associated with factors linked with development, such as urbanisation, rural abandonment and better sanitation. Avoiding imminent extinction calls for emergency action against current threats to the remaining vultures, such as poisoning and electrocution, but also potential causes of impaired fecundity such as hazardous pesticides and shortage of food resources.

Earlier activities on health technology assessment (HTA) started in Spain around 1984, with the creation of a National Advisory Board on HTA, and the development of national and regional HTA organizations in the early 1990s. In 2012, the Spanish Health Ministry established the Spanish Network for Health Technology Assessment of the National Health System (RedETS); funded at national level and including all public HTA organizations at national and regional levels. RedETSis focused on the assessment of nondrug health technologies to inform the revision (approval and funding or disinvestment) of the Benefit Portfolio of the Spanish NHS. In parallel with European Network for Health Technology Assessment (EUnetHTA), RedETS has been setting-up and sharing common procedures and methodological guidelines to ensure effective cooperation and mutual recognition of the scientific and technical production in HTA. The output of RedETS is fifty to sixty annual reports, including the production of full HTA reports, Clinical Practice Guidelines, methodological guidance reports, relative effectiveness assessments, tools to support shared decision making between patients and healthcare professionals, and monitoring studies. The HTA assessments requested by the Regional Health Authorities are the biggest component of the annual RedETS working plan. These assessment needs are identified according to a yearly process and prioritized by a Commission composed of representatives from all Spanish regions with the aid of the PRITEC tool. The objectives of this study are to report and update the normative and organizational state of HTA in Spain; describing noteworthy advances witnessed over the past 10 years, as well as discussing existing challenges.

Masked revelry, the quaffing of large amounts of wine and the sound of flutes … this cavalcade would pass through the streets of Rome every 13th June, even crossing the forum itself. As we will show later on, a connection can be established between this celebration (the Quinquatrus minusculae) and the statue of Marsyas, the acolyte of Dionysus, which stood in the forum and was associated with freedom, wine and charivari. In turn, this connection will open the way for a new interpretation of the multiple meanings of the feast and the satyr in the highly charged political atmosphere of Late Republican Rome. The main aim of this study will be to show, in the third part of this article, how populares politicians tried to exploit the opportunities presented to them by religious festivities and ludi to draw more of the public into their contiones or to obtain a favourable verdict in a political trial.

The rapid spread of glyphosate-resistant sourgrass populations generates concern in the agricultural production sector in Brazil. Nonetheless, there is not much information related to the frequency and dispersion of sourgrass throughout recent years. We investigated the frequency and dispersion of glyphosate-resistant sourgrass populations in Brazilian agricultural regions as part of a larger-scale weed resistance monitoring study. A discriminatory rate of 960 g ae ha−1 of glyphosate was used on plants at the 2- to 3-tiller stage, originating from 2,593 populations of sourgrass sampled in 329 counties in 14 Brazilian states between 2012 and 2015. The dispersion of sourgrass populations originated in western Paraná State, next to the Paraguay border, where the first resistance case was reported. Its dispersion to the central region of Brazil, mainly in soybean-producing areas, is most likely a consequence of agricultural equipment movement and wind-mediated dispersal. Glyphosate-resistant sourgrass populations were found in every geographical region across all Brazilian states tested. These data highlight the importance of an appropriate weed resistance monitoring program to track the evolution and dispersion of resistance to mitigate these issues by focusing efforts regionally and raising awareness among stakeholders in each region.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the most important and prevalent diseases suffered by the elderly. Evidence exists that its onset and severity might be conditioned by antioxidant status. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between antioxidant status and COPD in institutionalised elderly people. In all, 183 elderly people aged >65 years (twenty-one had COPD and 160 healthy controls) were studied. The subjects’ diets were investigated via the use of precise individual weighing for 7 d. Body weight, height, and biceps and triceps skinfold thickness were measured, and body fat (kg) and BMI (kg/m2) were calculated. Serum retinol, α-tocopherol, β-carotene and vitamin C levels were determined. Subjects with COPD ate less fruits than healthy controls (117 (sd 52) v. 192 (sd 161) g/d), their coverage of the recommended intake of vitamin C was smaller (150 (sd 45) v. 191 (sd 88) %; note that both exceeded 100 %) and their diets had a lower antioxidant capacity (6558 (sd 2381) v. 9328 (sd 5367) mmol trolox equivalent/d). Those with COPD had lower serum vitamin C and α-tocopherol concentrations than healthy controls (32·4 (sd 15·3) v. 41·5 (sd 14·8) µmol/l and 12·1 (sd 3·2) v. 13·9 (sd 2·8) µmol/l, respectively). In addition, subjects with α-tocopherol <14·1µmol/l (50th percentile) were at 6·43 times greater risk of having COPD than those subjects with ≥14·1µmol/l (OR 6·43; 95 % CI 1·17, 35·24; P<0·05), taking sex, age, use of tobacco, body fat and vitamin E intake as covariables. Subjects with COPD had diets of poorer antioxidant quality, especially with respect to vitamins C and E, compared with healthy controls.

In species that aggregate for reproduction, the social and fitness costs of movement between groups frequently lead to restricted exchange between breeding areas. We report on four individual humpback whales identified in both the Cape Verde Islands and Guadeloupe; locations separated by an ocean basin and >4000 km. This rate of exchange is rarely encountered between such geographically discrete breeding areas. Two individuals returned to the area where they were originally identified. In contrast, no individuals from the Cape Verde Islands were resighted to the much larger sample from the Dominican Republic, though the migratory distances from the feeding areas are comparable between these areas. The social factors driving the stark difference between groups that is observed here are not clear. Effective conservation requires an understanding of the extent and pattern of movement between population units. The findings presented here suggest that there may well be more than one behaviourally distinct group within the West Indies. More broadly, they argue that considerable caution is warranted in assumptions made regarding the number, boundaries and status of population units based solely on spatial separation or proximity.

Anthropometric reference data for older adults, particularly for the oldest old, are still limited, especially in developing countries. The aim of the present study was to describe sex- and age-specific distributions of anthropometric measurements and body composition in Mexican older adults. The methods included in the present study were assessment of height, weight, BMI, calf circumference (CC), waist circumference (WC) and hip circumference (HC) as well as knee height in a sample of 8883 Mexican adults aged 60 years and above and the estimation of sex- and age-specific differences in these measures. Results of the study (n 7865, 54 % women) showed that men are taller, have higher BMI, and larger WC than women, whereas women presented higher prevalence of obesity and adiposity. Overall prevalence of underweight was 2·3 % in men and 4·0 % in women, with increasing prevalence with advancing age. Significant differences were found by age group for weight, height, WC, HC, CC, BMI and knee height (P<0·001), but no significant differences in waist–hip circumference were observed. Significant differences between men and women were found in height, weight, circumferences, BMI and knee height (P<0·001). These results, which are consistent with studies of older adults in other countries, can be used for comparison with other Mexican samples including populations living in the USA and other countries with similar developmental and socio-economic conditions. This information can also be used as reference in clinical settings as a tool for detection of individuals at risk of either underweight or overweight and obesity.