Language is a uniquely human ability that evolved at some point in the roughly 6,000,000 years since human and chimpanzee lines diverged. Even in the most linguistically impoverished environments, children naturally develop sophisticated language systems. In contrast, reading is a learnt skill that does not develop without intensive tuition and practice. Learning to read is likely to involve ontogenic structural brain changes, but these are nearly impossible to isolate in children owing to concurrent biological, environmental and social maturational changes. In Colombia, guerrillas are re-integrating into mainstream society and learning to read for the first time as adults. This presents a unique opportunity to investigate how literacy changes the brain, without the maturational complications present in children. Here we compare structural brain scans from those who learnt to read as adults (late-literates) with those from a carefully matched set of illiterates. Late-literates had more white matter in the splenium of the corpus callosum and more grey matter in bilateral angular, dorsal occipital, middle temporal, left supramarginal and superior temporal gyri. The importance of these brain regions for skilled reading was investigated in early literates, who learnt to read as children. We found anatomical connections linking the left and right angular and dorsal occipital gyri through the area of the corpus callosum where white matter was higher in late-literates than in illiterates; that reading, relative to object naming, increased the interhemispheric functional connectivity between the left and right angular gyri; and that activation in the left angular gyrus exerts top-down modulation on information flow from the left dorsal occipital gyrus to the left supramarginal gyrus. These findings demonstrate how the regions identified in late-literates interact during reading, relative to object naming, in early literates.

The currently growing demand for metallic and polymeric products has undoubtedly changed the rules of manufacturing, enabling customers to more functionally define their products based on their needs. Nowadays, a new technique for rapid tooling, Additive Manufacturing (AM), can create customized products with more complex geometries and short life cycles (flexibility) in order to keep up with the new variables imposed by the manufacturing environment. In the last two decades, the migration from subtractive manufacturing to AM has materialized such products with reduced costs and cycle times. AM has been recently promoted to develop polymer molds for product manufacturing. This paper reviews the main findings in the literature concerning polymer molds created by AM compared to conventional (metal) molds obtained by subtractive manufacturing. Information about specific topics is scarce or nonexistent, for example, about the characterization of the most commonly injected materials and molds used in this type of technology, their mechanical properties (part and mold), designs for all types of geometries, and costs. These aspects are addressed in this literature review, highlighting the advantages of this alternative manufacturing process, which is considered a desirable technology worldwide.

The mixtures of natural rubber with post-industrial leather waste have a high potential given their technical characteristics, as evidenced in works developed by different authors; however, there is no information on the processes of transformation on an industrial scale. The rheology studies about rubber mixtures allow to define the best method for its processing, to validate the above experimental tests are required in molds that allow to determine the fluidity of various mixtures. Therefore, it is necessary to emphasize the research on the formulation of rubber-leather blends, their treatment, design and transformation to obtain products applicable on an industrial scale, as an alternative solution to the environmental problems generated by leather waste. The present work allows to know experimentally the fluidity of 3 elastomeric mixtures (injection, extrusion and compression grade) in a mold designed for this purpose, its validation allows to determine the processing behaviour of these materials, after this relate this behaviour with the fluidity of leather rubber mixtures and the correlation with their rheological behaviour. The parameters obtained by vulcanization reometries have a direct relationship with the mixtures behaviour in the "X" type flow mold. Key Words: Elastomers, natural rubber, leather waste, elastomer rheology, flow molds.

The current research project presents a methodology product design, characterization for different thermoplastic elastomeric mixtures with mechanicals properties evaluation and computer aided engineering simulations (CAE) for ear tags devices applied in the control and semovient identification. From product design and the characterization of reference product through Fourier Transformed Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) is achieved new alternative mixtures to the reference, after the exposition to UV radiation for 320 hours, are evaluated through different mechanicals and chemical properties as hardness and FTIR. With the characteristics and 3 geometry designs, a design was selected regarding to the customer requirements from the Product Design Methodology - PDS [1]-[3]. This design and mixtures evaluation obtained were the initial conditions for the analysis CAE in Software Sigmasoft® specialized in mold injection simulation for thermoplastic elastomeric materials. The simulations reveal important results in temperature, packing pressure and other variables to know in the adequate mixture processing with the best performance properties, with the goal to determine de best processing conditions, and different requirements to know in the mold manufacturing achieving an optimum final product processing.