Healthcare-associated infections: New challenges looking for answers

Nosocomial transmission of multiresistant bacteria is a growing healthcare issue. In addition, new pathogens and pathogenic mechanisms, associated with therapies based on the use of live microorganisms, can be of importance in the near future. The current issue of CKJ illustrates healthcare-associated infections that go beyond common bacteria. First, the therapeutic use of live BCG mycobacteria is not without risks in the chronic kidney disease patients. Familiarity with these complications will allow their rapid recognition and optimized management. Second, strict adherence to universal precautions and healthcare guidelines is still mandatory in order to avoid undesirable risks such as transmission of hepatitis B virus

Academic Success and Student Satisfaction with University Teaching

This study uses surveys to assess student academic success in relation to the teaching activity of the University staff. The main goal is to test how the student’s degree of satisfaction of with their teachers can be considered dependent on the success the student obtains in each subject. The results show that the students are more satisfied with their teaching when they have a higher rate of success, although in some optional courses, the degree of satisfaction diminishes with the higher rate of success. The course expectations, when defined by the difference between achievement and success, impact the student satisfaction with the teaching

Labor density and productivity in Spain: Evidence from geographically disaggregated data

In this paper we estimate agglomeration economies in Spain in 2009 basing on Ciccone?s (2002) model, which explains average labor productivity in one spatial unit on employment density and other controls. The novelty of our analysis is that the empirical model is estimated at a highly disaggregated spatial scale, oppositely to the convention of taking as unit of analysis NUTS-2 or NUTS-3 regions. Recent contributions to New Economic Geography (NEG) base their theoretical analysis on geographical units defined at a more disaggregated spatial scale than these administratively defined regions. Specifically, from a sample of income-taxpayers published by the Spanish Fiscal Studies Institute -Instituto de Estudios Fiscales- we derive figures on average wages by worker at the scale of Local Labor Markets (LLMs). The empirical analysis bases on several estimation strategies; namely, Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), Two-Stages Least Squares (2SLS), Quantile Regressions (QR) and Instrumental Variable Quantile Regressions (IVQR) estimators, all they finding a significantly positive effect of agglomeration in the conditional mean of labor productivity. Additionally, the QR and IVQR estimators find a progressively decreasing, but still positive, effect of employment density along the conditional distribution of labor productivity

Returns to education in Argentina: a regional analysis

The study of regional differences in Argentina in terms of returns to education is highly relevant, primarily due to the existence of deep inequalities in the configuration of regional structures in this country. The main differences are based on several economic and demographic characteristics across regions that have an impact on the social dynamics of such regions.This issue has been acknowledged in the literature, in order to get a full understanding of the dynamics that might explain those dissimilarities, especially in the educational and labour fields. However, empirical literature or the case of Argentina is still limited.The analysis of regional differences in human capital, as well as their impact on private returns to education - i.e. income levels of individuals - has been addressed in a number of studies, such as Winters (2012), Lopez-Bazo and Motellón (2012), and Ciccone et al. (2004), for the cases of the United States, Spain, and Italy, respectively. For the Argentinean case, no attention has been paid to differences in the returns to education by region. Only a few recent studies, such as Giovagnoli et al. (2005), have approached this issue by using Mincerian equations as the methodological strategy to estimate the returns to education, combined with a quantile regression analysis to detect differences in the returns across the distribution of wages. However, the regional perspective was not incorporated in this study, even when wage differences between regions are remarkable.On the other hand López Bóo (2010) quantify the returns to education in Argentina according different macroeconomic shocks from 1992 to 2003 but not including the regional perspective neither.Several literature across the Latin-American countries quantifies the rates of the returns to education using - most of them - quintile regression or time series, such as: Psacharopoulos & Velez (1992) who estimate the returns of education in Colombia for a ten years period; López-Acevedo (2004) that analyse the contribution of educational inequality as a key variable for understanding earnings inequality in Mexico and Patrinos & Sakellariou (2010) who study the relation between the returns to education and the effect of the swings in economic activity on the demand and supply of education and skills in Venezuela for the period 1992 to 2002. Nevertheless none of them use the regional perspective in their analysis, even when the different levels of returns to education can be explained through regional characteristics as a determinant of those differences.It is surprising that being this issue greatly relevant in order to understand the heterogeneity among geographic regions in Argentina, no previous studies have considered the role played by human capital in order to explain the substantive regional differences within the national labour market. This paper seeks to contribute to the study of regional labour markets in terms of their returns to education in Argentina. For that aim we firstly quantify the returns to education for every region using a typical Mincerian equation and then analyse the wage gap through the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition.The paper is organized in five sections, as follow: the next one describe the regional structure in Argentina, as well as the main characteristics of the labour market and the endowment of human capital. Then we explain the methodological strategy so as to estimate the empirical wage model in the second section. A description and summary of the data set is briefly presented in third section. Before that we present the results for different specifications of the model by region in section fourth. Finally, in the last section the conclusions and future extensions.https://rdu.unc.edu.ar/handle/11086/4528Fil: Quiroga Martínez, Facundo. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Económicas; Argentina.Fil: Fernández-Vázquez, Esteban. Universidad de Oviedo. Department of Applied Economics; España.Fil: Alberto, Catalina Lucía. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Económicas; Argentina.Matemática Aplicad

Mapping poverty at the local level in Europe: A consistent spatial disaggregation of the AROPE indicator for France, Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom

In the EU, territorial inequalities in terms of income and poverty have been broadly analysed at the national and regional levels. However, mainly due to the lack of reliable data, very little attention has been paid to territorial inequalities within European regions, namely, at a more local level, such as in metropolitan areas, cities or neighbourhoods. This paper proposes a methodology to disaggregate official regional poverty figures into poverty indicators for smaller spatial units, mainly local administrative units. For each country, poverty figures at the regional level from household surveys are combined with microcensus data that contain details on the local entities of residence to disaggregate the regional poverty indicator. In contrast to previous methodologies, our proposed technique guarantees consistency between the local poverty estimates and the regional poverty figures through a second step that adjusts the initial estimates based on generalized cross entropy. The procedure is applied for four European countries: France, Spain, the United Kingdom and Portugal. The resulting local estimates provide an intraregional map of poverty and some insights into the particular behaviour of the capital regions and the disparities between city centres and their surrounding areas.En la UE, las desigualdades territoriales en cuanto a ingresos y pobreza se han analizado ampliamente a nivel nacional y regional. Sin embargo, debido principalmente a la falta de datos fiables, se ha prestado muy poca atención a las desigualdades territoriales dentro de las regiones europeas a un nivel más local, como pueden ser las zonas metropolitanas, las ciudades o los barrios. En el presente artículo se propone una metodología para desglosar las cifras regionales oficiales de pobreza en indicadores de pobreza para unidades espaciales más pequeñas, principalmente unidades administrativas locales. Para cada país, se combinan las cifras de pobreza a nivel regional procedentes de las encuestas de hogares con datos de microcensos que contienen detalles sobre las entidades locales de residencia para desglosar el indicador de pobreza regional. A diferencia de las metodologías anteriores, la técnica que se propone aquí garantiza la coherencia entre las estimaciones de pobreza locales y las cifras de pobreza regionales mediante un segundo paso que ajusta las estimaciones iniciales basadas en la entropía cruzada generalizada. El procedimiento se aplica en cuatro países europeos: Francia, España, el Reino Unido y Portugal. Las estimaciones locales resultantes proporcionan un mapa intrarregional de la pobreza y algunas percepciones del comportamiento particular de las regiones que albergan la capital y las disparidades entre los centros de las ciudades y sus zonas circundantes

Destilador solar multietapa subatmosferico

Se presenta el diseño y los primeros resultados experimentales de un destilador multietapa operado a baja presión. El destilador está formado por varias etapas que se superponen verticalmente. El agua salada se entrega en la etapa superior y va pasando sucesivamente de etapa en etapa. La fuente térmica calienta la etapa inferior y por evaporaciones sucesivas calienta las superiores. El área de base es de 0.5 x 0.8 m2. El perímetro de cada etapa se construyó con caños cuadrados reforzados para poder bajar la presión interna evaluando un posible aumento de la producción. Se muestran detalles constructivos del equipo y resultados experimentales preliminaresFil: Franco, Ada Judith. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Salta. Instituto de Investigaciones en Energía No Convencional; ArgentinaFil: Saravia Mathon, Luis Roberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Salta. Instituto de Investigaciones en Energía No Convencional; ArgentinaFil: Fernández, Carlos Alberto. Universidad Nacional de Salta, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas; ArgentinaFil: Esteban, Ester Sonia. Universidad Nacional de Salta, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Dpto de Física; Argentin

Phytoextraction of heavy metals from mine soils using hyperaccumulator plants.

Phytoextraction is an environmental-friendly and cost-effective technology that uses metal hyperaccumulator plants to remove heavy metals from soils. The metals are absorbed by the roots, transported and accumulated in the aerial parts of the plants, which can be harvested and eliminated. The aim of this work was to study some hyperaccumulator species that could be useful to decontaminate mine soils and also to investigate the bioavailability and uptake of these metals by plants with the addition of organic amendments. Pot experiments were performed with soil samples collected from two mining areas in the north of Madrid, where there was an intense mining activity more than 50 years ago. Three species (Thlaspi arvense, Brassica juncea and Atriplex halimus) were grown under controlled conditions in pots filled with contaminated soils mixed with 0 Mg, 30 Mg and 60 Mg per hectare of two different organic amendments: a commercial compost made of pine bark, peat and wood fiber and other made of horse and sheep manure and wood fiber. Plants were harvested at the end of their crop cycle and were digested in order to measure metal concentration (Zn, Cu and Cd) in roots and shoots. Highest plant metal concentration was observed in pots treated with pine bark amendment and with pure soil due to an increase in metal bioavailability with decreasing pH. Also in those treatments the total plant biomass was lower, even some plants could not germinate. On the contrary, there was a lower metal concentration in plant tissues of pots with manure because its higher pH whereas plant growth was significantly larger so there was an incresing amount of metals removed from soil by plants. Comparing the three species results indicate a higher total metal uptake in A. halimus than B. juncea and T. arvense. In conclusion, results show that pH affects metal bioavailability and uptake by hyperaccumulator plants. Addition of organic amendments could be a successful technique for stabilization of metals in contaminated soils

Do Elderly Patients with Heart Failure and Reduced Ejection Fraction Benefit from Pharmacological Strategies for Prevention of Arrhythmic Events?

Background Heart failure constitutes one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in Western countries, in which it is also the leading cause of hospitalization in elderly patients. The pharmacological therapy of patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) has greatly improved during the last years. Summary The quadruple therapy (sacubitril/valsartan, beta-blockers, mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists, and sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors) is nowadays the cornerstone of medical treatment since it associates lower risk of heart failure hospitalizations and mortality (also of arrhythmic origin). Cardiac arrhythmias, including sudden cardiac death, are common in patients with HFrEF, entailing worse prognosis. Previous studies addressing the role of blocking the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system and beta-adrenergic receptors in HFrEF have suggested different beneficial effects on arrhythmia mechanisms. Therefore, the lower mortality associated with the use of the four pillars of HFrEF therapy depends, in part, on lower sudden (mostly arrhythmic) cardiac death. Key Messages In this review, we highlight and assess the role of the four pharmacological groups that constitute the central axis of the medical treatment of patients with HFrEF in clinical prognosis and prevention of arrhythmic events, with special focus on the elderly patient, since evidence supports most benefits provided are irrespective of age, but elderly HF patients receive less frequently guideline recommended medical treatment.12 página

De novo assembly and characterization of leaf transcriptome for the development of functional molecular markers of the extremophile multipurpose tree species Prosopis alba

Background: Prosopis alba (Fabaceae) is an important native tree adapted to arid and semiarid regions of north-western Argentina which is of great value as multipurpose species. Despite its importance, the genomic resources currently available for the entire Prosopis genus are still limited. Here we describe the development of a leaf transcriptome and the identification of new molecular markers that could support functional genetic studies in natural and domesticated populations of this genus. Results: Next generation DNA pyrosequencing technology applied to P. alba transcripts produced a total of 1,103,231 raw reads with an average length of 421 bp. De novo assembling generated a set of 15,814 isotigs and 71,101 non-assembled sequences (singletons) with an average of 991 bp and 288 bp respectively. A total of 39,000 unique singletons were identified after clustering natural and artificial duplicates from pyrosequencing reads. Regarding the non-redundant sequences or unigenes, 22,095 out of 54,814 were successfully annotated with Gene Ontology terms. Moreover, simple sequence repeats (SSRs) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were searched, resulting in 5,992 and 6,236 markers, respectively, throughout the genome. For the validation of the the predicted SSR markers, a subset of 87 SSRs selected through functional annotation evidence was successfully amplified from six DNA samples of seedlings. From this analysis, 11 of these 87 SSRs were identified as polymorphic. Additionally, another set of 123 nuclear polymorphic SSRs were determined in silico, of which 50% have the probability of being effectively polymorphic. Conclusions: This study generated a successful global analysis of the P. alba leaf transcriptome after bioinformatic and wet laboratory validations of RNA-Seq data. The limited set of molecular markers currently available will be significantly increased with the thousands of new markers that were identified in this study. This information will strongly contribute to genomics resources for P. alba functional analysis and genetics. Finally, it will also potentially contribute to the development of population-based genome studies in the genera.Fil: Torales, Susana. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación de Recursos Naturales. Instituto de Recursos Biológicos; ArgentinaFil: Rivarola, Maximo Lisandro. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Veterinarias y Agronómicas. Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Pomponio, María Florencia. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación de Recursos Naturales. Instituto de Recursos Biológicos; ArgentinaFil: González, Sergio Alberto. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Veterinarias y Agronómicas. Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Acuña, Cintia Vanesa. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Veterinarias y Agronómicas. Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Fernández, Paula del Carmen. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Veterinarias y Agronómicas. Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: López Lauenstein, Diego. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigaciones Agropecuarias. Instituto de Fisiología y Recursos Genéticos Vegetales; ArgentinaFil: Verga, Aníbal Ramón. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigaciones Agropecuarias. Instituto de Fisiología y Recursos Geneticos Vegetales; ArgentinaFil: Hopp, Horacio Esteban. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Veterinarias y Agronómicas. Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; ArgentinaFil: Paniego, Norma Beatriz. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Veterinarias y Agronómicas. Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Marcucci Poltri, Susana Noemí. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Veterinarias y Agronómicas. Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentin

Obtención del módulo de elasticidad estático de la madera de Pinus radiata D. Don. mediante la comparación de técnicas de regresión y una red neuronal artificial

El objetivo de este estudio ha sido comparar el método de regresión tradicional frente al diseño de una red neuronal artificial del tipo perceptrón multicapa para obtener el MOEestático de la madera de Pinus radiata D. Don. a partir del MOEdinámico obtenido por técnica de ultrasonidos en el primer caso y a partir de la velocidad de propagación de la onda de ultrasonidos en el segundo