According to scientists from UC3M,
university students
who do sport activities during the year
improve their academic record.
Researchers selected a sample of more than 3600 students
who begun the degree from 2008 and finished them before 2015.
The final results showed that
regular and regulated physical-sportive practice
affected positively, over 9%,
the student's academic performance.
The project took into account parameters such as sex,
the time it takes for the student to graduate
his age at the beginning of the degree,
the specialty studied:
engineering, social and legal sciences or humanities
if the student has enjoyed a scholarship or if he belongs to a large family.
According to the authors, this study emphasizes
sport as a regular activity of the university world.
Now, the logical next step
will be to expand and extrapolate the study
to other Spanish university centers.
Scientists from Microelectronics Institute of Barcelona
have developed a device that obtains energy from vibrations;
the enrivonmental ones in particular.
Movement vibrations release energy
which can be capturated
by attaching to what is moving or vibrating
generators with secondary batteries
or condensers that store the energy.
The European project Sinergy has driven this idea.
One of its results is a small device
based on a piezoelectric generator
that captures the energy of vibrations.
The device, already patented,
can be manufactured on a large-scale with the current silicon technology
and it has been designed to reduce losses
and to facilitate its integration with other electronic devices.
This device obtains the energy
from the mechanical movements generated by the environment
and it has a milimetric size.
It would power small sensors or other devices
that do not need too much power to function;
in particular, one of the first developed prototypes
was smaller than one cent euro coin.
Finding specific antivirals against various pathogens
is a crucial task in the development of new therapies.
Researchers of IrsiCaixa AIDS Research Institute
and Pompeu Fabra University
have contributed in a study on the design of a molecule
with antiviral efficacy against several virus simultaneously;
HIV -human immunodeficiency virus-,
hepatitis C virus, dengue virus and West Nile virus.
The new antiviral is directed against a cellular protein
involved in the replicative process of several viruses that,
althought it can be inhibited, does not jeopardize cell viability.
This cellular protein is called DDX3.
The discovery is clearly relevant
considering that many patients with HIV
become infected, because of their low immune defenses,
with other viruses.
The study has been published in the journal PNAS
Now, researchers
aim to broaden the spectrum of action to other viruses
such as Ebola, Zika or Chikungunya.
We could be at the beginning of
a new generation of antivirals of wide spectrum.
For Madri+d and UNED Television, José Antonio López Guerrero.