• The Food Science and Technology Research Center of Universidad de Santiago was accredited as a laboratory for 4 years by the National Institute for Standardization, an agency that is in charge of certifying infrastructure, equipment and qualified staff, in this case, to perform scientific tests in the areas of chemistry and microbiology. President Juan Manuel Zolezzi congratulated the Center’s managers, academics and students for this achievement, stressing that “the commitment of our University to science, technology and innovation is faithfully reflected in this laboratory, so we will continue making it stronger.”

On Wednesday 8th, the President of Universidad de Santiago, Juan Manuel Zolezzi arrived in the facilities of the Food Science and Technology Research Center (CECTA, its acronym in Spanish) to congratulate its managing team, academics and students for the accreditation of CECTA by the National Institute for Standardization (INN, its acronym in Spanish).

The INN is an autonomous foundation created by the Chilean Economic Development Agency (Corfo) that is in charge of promoting the creation and use of Chilean standards and accrediting conformity assessment institutions like CECTA of Universidad de Santiago, which was certified for the maximum period of 4 years.

After a process started in 2009, with more emphasis as of 2011, the INN finally informed in December, 2013, that the CECTA has the infrastructure, equipment and qualified staff to run scientific tests as a test laboratory in the areas of chemistry and microbiology.

During his visit, President Zolezzi said that he was aware of “the great job done by everyone who is part of CECTA in an accreditation process that is not easy.”

“I know the efforts that CECTA has made to get accredited. These are not simple processes, but the excellent results obtained are worthy. Also, this certification significantly backs not only the Center but the University, that has contributed to this achievement with funds and will continue doing it,” President Zolezzi said.

“The commitment of our University to science, technology and innovation is faithfully reflected in this laboratory; this is why we are interested in continuing to make this type of organization stronger and we expect this to attract researchers from the University and other institutions,” he said.

For his part, Claudio Martínez, director of CECTA, described CECTA’s accreditation by the INN as “a milestone in the history of our Center.”

“This decision recognizes our very professional way of working and it open doors for us to undertake more complex projects, together with companies, exporting ones mainly, which we were not able to access before. It is a great opportunity and it is our challenge to make the most of it,” Martínez said.

“For example now, we can have access to other types of certification, through SAG (Agricultural and Livestock Service) or Sernapesca (Fishing National Service), which are agencies that require previous accreditations,” he added.

“This means that the accreditation was the first big step; now, our mission is to keep CECTA moving forward in the same way it has advanced up to now: meeting standards and regulations to the greatest possible degree,” concluded Claudio Martínez, director of this accredited Center.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• According to Scopus database, the most cited article of Universidad de Santiago during 2012 belongs to Mario Inostroza, of the Department of Informatics Engineering, who is part of an interdisciplinary team of Australia that has provided findings related to different organisms’ genomes and has developed computational biology studies.

In 2012, Universidad de Santiago de Chile published 421 scientific articles, according to Scopus database. Out of these articles, the most cited one was the article written by Mario Inostroza, PhD, a researcher at the Department of Informatics Engineering, of the Faculty of Engineering. This result included 2012 and the record was closed on November 28th, 2013.

The work called “Genome-wide analysis of long noncoding RNA stability”, was published on the American journal Genome Research (Q1), and gives information about new findings regarding different organisms’ genomes and about computational biology studies, among others.

For the author, an expert in Computer Science, “being cited by the scientific community is recognition of the research work that I am doing. My goals are to continue working on this research line and to contribute, from Computer Science, to new areas of development.”

This work is the result of an interdisciplinary collaboration work with research groups of Australia, where professor Inostroza contributed from his discipline. “My particular contribution has been from the world of Computer Science and the development of data analysis advanced tools,” Inostroza said.

The results show new evidence of how some DNA sequences work, that before were considered only as noncoding DNA. “Particularly, we found a stable behavior in a large group of these sequences, that shows that they may have an important role in complex metabolisms and different functions,” he explained.

For the academic, besides being a purely scientific contribution, this work is also important because it reflects the spirit of the Department of Informatics Engineering, where the knowledge of Computer Science is applied to different areas, collaborating with top-quality research groups.

Quality versus quantity

An issue that is constantly debated among the scientific community is that, when it comes to publishing articles, a researcher should favor quantity or quality. Regarding this, Dr. Inostroza said that an article goes under several proof procedures, what in turn results in a good-quality and good-level article.

First the researcher’s work is studied. He has to comply with all the steps demanded by scientific rigor. Then, the article undergoes a revision process by the corresponding journal or conference committee. In the end, the scientific community is the one that judges the article’s quality by citing it or using its results.

“During the last years, what has been mainly judged is the number of publications that a researcher has, acknowledging and considering the ones with a larger number of publications. The nature of the different research areas has long been discussed and the number of publications in each considerably varies. I believe that a differentiated acknowledgement policy according to the research area would positively contribute to improve the quality and the impact of the works presented,” Inostroza said.

Regarding to what the University should promote in this area, professor Inostroza has a clear opinion: “Together with encouraging teachers to do research and publish articles in high-impact journals, the University should strengthen collaborative work and the generation of networks with high-level international institutions and research groups. This will benefit not only the researcher. It will make possible the visit of renowned researchers and the exchange of undergraduate and graduate students.”

Finally, the academic suggested the need of protecting quality over quantity regarding the scientific production of the institution. “Nowadays, most of the University’s incentives are short-term (for example, number of publications in a year) and I don’t have information about long-term approaches. One example of this is the process called Evaluación de Antecedentes de Investigación (Research Background Evaluation) and the Asignación de Estímulo a la Excelencia en Investigación (Incentives for Excellence at Research), which consider the number of publications and not the impact that they have had.”

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• The implementation of this new research instance was announced by the University’s President, Juan Manuel Zolezzi, on December 3rd, during the launching of a Program for Institutional Improvement (PMI, in Spanish), funded by the Ministry of Education. The purpose of this new Information Technology Innovation Center for Social Applications (Citiaps, in Spanish) is to be an intermediary between research and its viability as software products that could be commercially developed, based on the premise of integrating innovation and science.

The PMI was created by this Corporation as a strategy to achieve world-class excellence in an innovative way, integrating three research areas to develop science- based innovation: Information technology, psychology and neuroscience. The University was awarded a grant from the Ministry of Education’s contestable fund to finance the program through a performance agreement.

“With this project we intend to improve our international competitiveness, increase the University’s scientific productivity in a significant way, and reach higher levels of teaching and scientific discoveries. All this will be done through the highly specialized and interdisciplinary research centers that we already have and through others that we are committed to create,” said President Zolezzi.

In the program’s launching ceremony, held on December 3rd in the University’s Salón de Honor, the University’s President said that the PMI will outline the future of applied research and that a significant share of this goal will lie on this new Information Technology Innovation Center for Social Applications.

Applied innovation for society

“The Citiaps will integrate the work done until now and it also considers the technological origins of this University and the great development of social sciences during the last years,” President Zolezzi said, emphasizing at the same time the center’s efforts to develop strategic partnerships among researchers, entrepreneurs and companies, doing a state-of-the-art interdisciplinary work.

“The PMI will strengthen the Vice Presidency of Investigation, Development and Innovation (Vridei, in Spanish) and to consolidate a technology transfer platform to do research in association with companies and to transfer and commercialize the R+D results,” the President added.

Oscar Bustos, Vice President of Investigation, Development and Innovation said that, although the Citiaps will be focused on three main areas (Information technology, psychology and neuroscience), its goal will be to cover all disciplines. “We want our students- who are very creative- to channel their ideas through the center, so that researchers develop these ideas and create products which are useful to society.”

“The idea is to generate innovation based on high-impact science. We have set ambitious but real goals,” the Vice President said.

Contributing to the country

Alberto Vásquez, Head of the Ministry of Education’s Higher Education Division, referred to the excellent assessment that the PMI had during the contest, which meant being granted the funds, and to the significance of contributing with new knowledge for Chile. “We would like to congratulate and support this initiative and say that for our country is good, important and relevant to award this performance agreement to Universidad de Santiago.”

John Fraser, American expert and professor at the Florida State University, who was a special guest at the ceremony, valued this interdisciplinary initiative from an international point of view saying that this was the best moment to invest in knowledge and to promote creativity, considering the economic success of the country.

Finally, Luis Magne, Head of the Vridei’s Technological Management Department awarded the winners of the First Patent Contest for Students: Roberto Santiago, from the Department of Chemical Engineering; Jaime Lagos and Álvaro Espejo, from the Department of Physics; Camila Manfredi, from the School of Architecture, and Loreto Acevedo, from the Department of Food Science and Technology.

Fernando Vial, Head of the Ministry of Education’s Institutional Financing Department; Mauricio Marín, PMI and Citiaps’ Scientific Director; Pablo Vera, Citiaps’ Deputy Scientific Director; Ramón Blasco, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering; Rafael Labarca, Dean of the Faculty of Science, Augusto Samaniego, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, and other authorities, also attended the ceremony.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• The increase in cardiovascular diseases and the lack of reliable information, on the mechanical capacity of the arteries, became the engine of a promising research led by Claudio Garcia, professor  in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
• "Normally, engineers work with steel, concrete, industrial materials, and leave aside those materials with unknown behaviors," the expert says. He claims that his study of the aorta artery can become a tool for "predicting dangerous states in patients. We want to help physicians in taking decisions when performing an operation," he says.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the leading cause of death in the world is related to cardiovascular diseases. These pathologies do not distinguish gender and they affect mostly people in poor or developing countries.

In this context, he estimates that about 23.6 million people will die in 2030, due to cardiovascular complications; that is why the study led by Dr. Claudio Garcia –professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Santiago- is very relevant. He seeks to quantify the effects of the diseases and the age in the arteries, particularly the aorta, one of the main arteries of the human body.

This year, he presented part of his findings in an ISI publication, entitled "Mechanical Behaviour and rupture of normal and pathological human ascending aortic wall," which appeared in June in the Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing journal.

He explains that arterial mechanics defines the structural and functional capacity of the arteries, and it can be studied to obtain new information about their behavior and how the mechanical properties affect the diseases or the patients’ age.

"Our idea was to identify and assess the properties of the materials that make up this blood vessel and try to differentiate how it is affected by age or various diseases. We wanted to know how these factors alter the properties of the material that constitute the aorta,” Dr. Garcia says. He began this research in his doctoral thesis, a study about the properties of biomaterial at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, an organization that has provided resources for his research, which also has the support of a FONDECYT grant.

According to this professional, his interest in finding out about this health subject arose during his stay in the European country, where he felt motivated "by the permanent interaction with physicians who wanted to understand how the diseases affect this kind of biological materials. In their view, having an index to predict rupture states is important because, most of the time, the criteria used by doctors are only the arteries size or diameter. "

"Normally, engineers work with steel, concrete, industrial materials, and leave aside those materials with unknown behaviors." Research to establish and study how they behave is just starting," the expert says. Then, he refers to one of the main conclusions of his study, which released the mechanical properties of materials that were unknown. He points out that the main difference among patients is the age. As people become older, the arteries become less elastic and the mechanical resistance drops significantly, so they are more prone to rupture.

The importance of this information is to "predict dangerous states in patients. We want to help physicians in taking decisions when performing an operation," he says.

• In this way, Dr. Rodolfo Madrid, from the Faculty of Chemistry and Biology, refers to the Conicyt  funds granted for implementing a research ring that will join top scientists. The challenge is to study the physiological role of the TRP ion channels involved in detecting thermal and pain stimuli, among many other physiological processes. Knowing how these channels work may allow the development of treatments for attacking diseases related to the their malfunction.

Three research groups and a common commitment -understanding the role of TRP channels in heat sensitivity, pain and synaptic plasticity-  define the project led by Dr. Rodolfo Madrid researcher at the Faculty of Chemistry and Biology. His initiative has recently received funds from the "2011 Fourth Contest of Research Rings in Science and Technology" organized by the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research, CONICYT. (See related article).

"Study of the Physiological role of TRP Channels in Thermotransduction and Synaptic Plasticity" is an associative research project that joins three research groups: two correspond to the University’s laboratory of neurosciences at the Faculty of Chemistry and Biology -one led by Dr. Rodolfo Madrid and the other by Dr. Bernardo Morales-  the third is the Interdisciplinary Center for Neuroscience from Valparaiso, led by Dr. Patricio Orio. The joint challenge is to study the physiological role of various members of a group of membrane proteins: polymodal ion channels of the TRP (Transient Receptor Potential) superfamily in diverse physiological processes. For this purpose, they will have the annual funds of 150 million pesos, for three years.

"We want to study the role of various TRP channels in the electrical response of thermoreceptors of cold and nociceptors against various physiological and pathophysiological situations, in order to develop a mathematical model that could serve as a tool for predicting the electrical behavior of these neurons against modifications -that could be the result, for example, of an inflammatory process or an injury-  and  determining  the role of ion channels in regulating neuronal communication in particular regions of the central nervous system," Dr. Rodolfo Madrid explains.

"TRP channels are part of a large group of proteins involved in the detection of thermal stimuli and nociception, among many other physiological processes, and have recently been associated with learning and memory processes," the specialist says.
 

Advanced human capital

This associative research, will attract and train new high-level human capital. It will also  incorporate doctoral and postdoctoral students and, in this way, the group of neuroscientists at the University’s Faculty of Chemistry and Biology will become stronger.

"Besides, we will work with the collaboration of laboratories that belong to some of the world's best centers in the field, such as the Institute of Neuroscience in Alicante, Cambridge University and John Hopkins University, worldwide reference points in the study of neuroscience. This will not only help the growth and consolidation of  our group, but it will also allow our students go directly to stay in those centers,” the researcher says.

Besides, Dr. Madrid values ​​the grant of this ring project "as a recognition that should extend not only to the members of our group, but to all the neuroscientists at the University. From our point of view, this is the most important project of neuroscience that our institution has received and it means that our work has not been the result of improvisation, " he finally  points out.

• Dr Leonor Huerta, physics engineer, Master’s in Astronomy and professor at Universidad de Santiago, says that the discovery of a new solar system with Earth-like planets should promote the creation of more research centers and the generation of more resources to take advantage of the astronomical potential of our country.

Scientists at the NASA informed about the discovery of a new solar system with seven exoplanets similar to the Earth in size and temperature. The system, Trappist-1, is about 40 light years from Earth and it contains three planets that are likely to be habitable, as their weather conditions would allow liquid water, and maybe, life. The telescopes in La Silla and Paranal observatories, both located in the north of Chile, took part in the discovery. 

Dr Leonor Huerta, physics engineer, Master’s in Astronomy and professor at Universidad de Santiago, said: “We need more astronomy and research centers to incorporate all the human capital generated in Chile. We have facilities available at no charge, as large foreign conglomerates have built telescopes in Chile for the quality of its night sky in the north.”

“We need more Chilean scientists to work on this, not only astronomers. If we are going to search for life in the universe, we also need astrobiologists and geologists,” she explained.

“Observatories also require “Hydraulic engineers and computer scientists, for example, to take care of the infrastructure. This is a multidisciplinary field. To explore the universe and to study the evolution of life, we will need a very strong multidisciplinary collaboration,” she added.

“From a scientific point of view, this finding is very interesting because there are three planets which are likely to have water somewhere on their surface in its three states: solid, liquid and gas.”

With regard to the next stage after this finding, she said: “Clearly, the next step is to know if these planets have atmospheres. This will happen when the next exoplanet program mission of the NASA is carried out.”

Although she recognizes that it is very likely that there is other life in universe, there is not any empirical evidence. “For a scientist- astronomer or biologist- it is very difficult to affirm that the conditions of our solar system are unique,” she says.

Translated by Marcela Contreras 

• The study will last three years and it will develop computational tools to optimize the equipment and processes in which energy is transferred by fluids using numerical simulation.

• The conference organized by the Chilean Senate’s commission Desafíos del Futuro is the most important instance for science promotion in the southern hemisphere. During its opening ceremony, President Michelle Bachelet announced a bill to create the Ministry of Science and Technology

Between January 09^th and 14^th, the 6^th version of the Congress of the Future was held in Santiago. The activity is organized by the Chilean Senate’s commission Desafíos del Futuro (Challenges of the Future) and every year it gathers renowned scientists, researchers and humanists from different countries to study and discuss on the problems and challenges that society will have to face in the future.

The conference was held in partnership with the Chilean Academy of Sciences, the Chilean Government, universities and scientific and academic institutions of the country, in a context of collaboration in which sciences get closer to people and connected to daily life. The opening ceremony was held at the Salón de Honor in the National Congress building, in Santiago.

New Ministry of Science and Technology

In the opening ceremony, President Michelle Bachelet announced that the Government would send to the Congress the bill to create the Ministry of Science and Technology.

President Bachelet referred to the need of creating partnerships to strengthen the dialogues that seek to open up to people’s interests and concerns. “The future is a space of possibilities for the life of all of us. The future will be built by common will and action,” she said.

In his presentation during the ceremony, Dr. Juan Manuel Zolezzi, President of Universidad de Santiago de Chile highlighted the University’s interest in science and technology. “The joint efforts of the State and its universities are essential to have these renowned researchers here, who can contribute with their ideas of what the future will bring us in the field of science and technology,” he said.

He added that the Congress of the future has consolidated its position,” as it has become more important every day, with more people involved and more people interested to participate; therefore, we expect to have soon a conference at a Latin American level.”

For his part, Juan Carlos Espinoza Ramírez, the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering of Universidad de Santiago, besides saying that this conference is the most important scientific event in Chile, said that it is very important for our university to be a protagonist in activities of this type.

The Congress of the Future concluded on January 14th and it included activities both in Santiago and in ten different regions of the country.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• Dr. Sergio Velastín, professor at the Department of Informatics Engineering of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, gave a talk on the use of data fusion in computer vision at the 17th Conference of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), held at Salamanca, Spain. Around 400 officials from the Ministries of Defense of different countries and members of the NATO attended the conference.

International experts on data management gathered last week in Salamanca, Spain, at the 17th version of the International Conference on Information Fusion (Fusion 2014) supported by the IEEE. Universidad the Santiago de Chile was represented by Dr. Sergio Velastín, full professor at the Department of Informatics Engineering, who gave a presentation during the activity.

He gave his presentation “The potential of fusion in computer vision application” to more than 400 people, many of them members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and representatives of Ministries of Defense of different countries, who attended the conference to learn about the progress in this field.

Dr. Velastín talked about computer vision, the branch of artificial intelligence that is concerned with finding artificial means to interpret the visual information of the surrounding world. Human beings have specialized in this interpretation and use a significant part of their brains to do it. “Most of what we do every day (getting around, driving, interacting with others, enjoying sports, teaching our children, learning, reading information, among others) requires interpreting what we see. If machines were able to emulate these abilities, we could potentially enrich our lives and empower mentally or motor- handicapped people. We could also make our public spaces safer,” the academic said.

Data processing in the digital era

According to the researcher, more than 40 years ago, a revolution started in human development that would potentially transform what up to then were physical quantities (images, printed letters, vital signs like blood pressure, sounds, among others) into digital data (numbers) that could be processed by a computer. “This digital era in which we live has surrounded us to such a degree that we almost do not realize how extended the generation, transmission and processing of data are. A routine telephone call occurs thanks to the processing of these numbers. Everything can be more easily filed and humankind is generating more data than ever in its existence,” professor Velastín said.

The academic explained that although many technologies- like data fusion- initially arose due to military needs, especially during the Cold War, “the use of this data involves large potential benefits, but they undoubtedly depend on how societies and governments use it. Europe, with a more egalitarian and socially inclusive model, is achieving great progress benefiting people, for example, through the so-called intelligent cities and environmentally assisted life.”

Professor Velastín thinks that in societies with more individualistic models, like Chile or even the United States, benefits could turn into danger, mainly because these contributions are not well distributed and are not used for social inclusion. “How many municipal schools do usually use tablets or smart boards?” The risk posed by disparity in the access to technology increases inequality, particularly, in future generations,” he said.

Security cameras

At present, Dr. Velastín is conducting a study in London on people’s behavior on public transportation, by recording and interpreting digital images captured by security cameras. In his opinion, the use of cameras in public spaces is a complex issue that depends on the balance between the right to security and the right to privacy. “In an ideal society, nobody is arrested at random unless he/she is a suspect or has put other people’s security at risk. What is important is to have clear regulations that are transparently respected by everyone who is responsible for a security camera, both in the government and in the private sector.

Professor Velastín has worked for several years in the United Kingdom, the country with more cameras per capita in the world, but also with very strong regulations for protecting data. He went to Spain in the context of a visiting professorship at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, through its Chairs of Excellence program, funded by Banco Santander.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• Dr. María José Galotto, director of Universidad de Santiago’s Packaging Laboratory, was appointed as the National Contact Point for Horizon 2020 Framework Program in the area of nanotechnology. Horizon 2020 is a European program that provides funding for research and innovation in different fields. “This is in recognition of the University’s positioning in the area of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, reached through CEDENNA,” the researcher said.

The National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (Conicyt, in Spanish) informed that Dr. María José Galotto, director of Universidad de Santiago’s Packaging Laboratory (Laben, in Spanish) was appointed National Contact Point for the Horizon 2020 Framework Program in the area of “Nanotechnologies, Advanced Materials and Advanced Manufacturing and Processing.”

Dr. Galotto said that her appointment “is in recognition of the University’s positioning in the area of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, reached through the Center for the Development of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (CEDENNA, in Spanish), where nanotechnology is being applied to different areas of knowledge. This appointment will consolidate this new line of research and this positioning.”

According to Dr. Galotto, it is also in recognition of the constant work that Laben has developed over time, which results have been reflected in several research projects, publications in ISI journals and patents. This, in turn, results in a very close relation with the food and agricultural industry and food packaging industry at a national and international level.

The Laben was invited to be part of the International Association of Packaging Research Institutes (IAPRI). This membership, awarded by invitation only, is proof of the international recognition that our University has received.

Dr. Galotto’s appointment is also important because this area has a great future in the Food Science and Technology field; therefore, being able to get in contact with other research groups in Chile and abroad, will strengthen the links between the University’s academics and other researchers.

Among her new responsibilities, she will have to promote and foster the participation of nanotechnology research groups in the Horizon 2020 Framework Program, in which Chile will be entitled the same benefits that the European Union member states enjoy.

Regarding this, Dr. Galotto said that “up to date, we have had the first work meeting at Conicyt and we have scheduled others for the second semester, both here in Chile and in Europe.”

Nanotechnology

According to the researcher, “nanotechnology will integrate with food and agricultural industry as an option for developing food with better sensory and nutritional properties, better quality, and useful life, and greater safety.”

Dr. Galotto specified that our University is well ahead in this area, since the Laben has been working several years in applying nanotechnology to food packaging.

She added that researchers at Laben have led studies, in which nanotechnology has been applied, for example, to the development of packaging with anti-microbial activity to extend the life of food like salmon, or to reducing the level of compounds that accelerate the ripening of climacteric fruits like kiwi or avocado, among others.

Translated by Marcela Contreras