Suchergebnisse

Tesis doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Física Teórica . Fecha de lectura: 14-12-2018 ; Esta tesis tiene embargado el acceso al texto completo hasta el 14-06-2020 ; This thesis has received support from MINECO/FEDER (Spain) AYA2012-31101 and AYA2015- 63810-P grants. I acknowledge funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 734374 (LACEGALRISE) for a secondment at the Astrophysics group of Univ. Andrés Bello (Santiago, Chile). Also funding from the Univ. Autónoma de Madrid for a stay at the Leibniz Institut fur Astrophysik Potsdam to obtain the international mention for my PhD.

Filamentous fungi are a ubiquitous and diverse group of eukaryotic organisms and may contribute, along with bacteria, yeasts, protozoa and viruses, to the formation of biofilms in water distribution systems. However, fungal involvement in biofilms has not been demonstrated unambiguously. Furthermore, these fungi may be responsible for the production of tastes, odours and mycotoxins in drinking water making their early detection important. To overcome these problems a combination of two fluorescent techniques for direct detection was tested: (a) Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (FISH) employing the universal rRNA probe EUK516, labelled with the red Cy3, and (b) staining with Calcofluor White MR2 fluorescent dye which stains fungal cell walls blue. Pure cultures of Penicillium brevicompactum were used to establish the methods followed by separate experiments with real water biofilm samples in PVC-C and cast iron coupons. FISH demonstrated eukaryotic microrganisms after approximately 5 h while the calcofluor method revealed chitinous and/or cellulose containing filamentous structures in less than one hour. When the two methods were combined, additional resolution was obtained from the images of filamentous walls (blue) with intact protoplasm (red). In conclusion, FISH and Calcofluor staining provide rapid, and direct information on the involvement of filamentous fungi in biofilms which form in water. ; European Union, Fifth Framework Programme; Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia ...

Abstract
The impact of sexual dimorphism on facial attractiveness has been controversial owing to contradictory results, particularly in studies on female preferences. Given that sexually dimorphic facial features, especially more masculine ones, have been previously related to the perception of anger, we investigated the bi-directional influence of emotional expressions and facial masculinity and explored their impact on women's preferences for facial masculinity. We confirmed the effect of facial sexual dimorphism on the perception of emotional cues (happiness and anger) and explored whether smiling or angry expressions influence women's perception of masculinity in male faces. Additionally, we examined women's preferences for emotionally expressive male faces altered along a continuum of masculinity. The results showed that masculinised faces are perceived as angrier, while feminised faces are perceived as happier (Experiment 1), and that angry faces are perceived as more masculine when compared with happy faces (Experiment 2). It is noteworthy that our Experiment 3 uncovered a pivotal finding: women prefer reduced feminisation in happy faces compared with neutral/angry faces. This suggests that the avoidance response observed towards masculinity is attenuated by a smiling expression. The current study introduces a new perspective to be considered when exploring the role of facial masculinity in women's attractiveness preferences.