Reduced incidence of necrotizing enterocolitis associated with enteral administration of Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium infantis to neonates in an intensive care unit

AbstractObjectives: Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) has been associated with a wide variety of bacteria and their cytotoxins. The content and the nature of gut bacterial colonization in newborns that require intensive care hospitalization has been demonstrated to be abnormal. In the 25-bed neonatal intensive care unit in Hospital Simon Bolivar, in Bogotá, Colombia, cases of NEC are common causes of morbidity and mortality. This article examines the hypothesis that oral administration of prophylactic Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium infantis to all neonates in an intensive care unit, would decrease the incidence of NEC.Methods: Daily doses of 250 million live L. acidophilus and 250 million B. infantis were given to all 1237 newborns (both inpatients and transfer patients) admitted to the unit during 1 year, until they were discharged from the hospital. In this study, 1282 patients hospitalized during the previous year were used as controls.Results: There were no complications attributed to the daily administration of L. acidophilus and B. infantis. The study groups were compared for place of origin, clinical, and demographic variables, and there was no statistically significant difference in those variables. In the historic control group, there were 85 NEC cases compared to 34 cases in the group that received probiotic prophylaxis (P < 0.0002). In the historic control group, there were 35 NEC-associated fatalities compared to 14 fatalities in the group that received probiotic prophylaxis (P < 0.005).Conclusions: The positive results in this study support the need for further investigation of bacterial colonization and its role in NEC

Computational analysis of the behavior of atmospheric pollution due to demographic, structural factors, vehicular flow and commerce activities

According to the latest assessments made by the world health organization (WHO2016), the atmospheric pollution (air), has become one of the main causes of morbidity and mortality in the world, with a steep growth of respiratory diseases, increase in lung cancer, ocular complications, and dermis diseases [1,2,3]. Currently, there are governments which still underestimate investments in environmental care, turning their countries into only consumers and predators of the ecosystem [1,2,3]. Worldwide, several cities have been implementing different regional strategies to decrease environmental pollution, however, these actions have not been effective enough and significant indices of contamination and emergency declarations persist [1,2,3]. Medellín is one of the cities most affected by polluting gases in Latin America due to the high growth of construction sector, high vehicular flow, increase in commerce, besides a little assertive planting trees system, among other reasons [1,2,3]. With the purpose of providing new researching elements which benefit the improvement of air quality in the cities of the world, it is pretended to mathematically model and computationally implement the behavior of the flow of air, e.g., in zones in the city of Medellín to determine the extent of pollution by tightness, impact of current architectural designs, vehicular transport, high commerce flow, and confinement in the public transport system. The simulations allowed to identify spotlights of particulate tightness caused by architectural designs of the city which do not benefit air flow. Also, recirculating gases were observed in different zones of the city. This research can offer greater knowledge around the incidence of pollution generated by structures and architecture. Likewise, these studies can contribute to a better urban, structural and ecological reordering in cities, the implementation of an assertive arborization system, and the possibility to orientate effective strategies over cleaning (purification) and contaminant extracting systems

Excited electronic states from a variational approach based on symmetry-projected Hartree--Fock configurations

Recent work from our research group has demonstrated that symmetry-projected Hartree--Fock (HF) methods provide a compact representation of molecular ground state wavefunctions based on a superposition of non-orthogonal Slater determinants. The symmetry-projected ansatz can account for static correlations in a computationally efficient way. Here we present a variational extension of this methodology applicable to excited states of the same symmetry as the ground state. Benchmark calculations on the C$_2$ dimer with a modest basis set, which allows comparison with full configuration interaction results, indicate that this extension provides a high quality description of the low-lying spectrum for the entire dissociation profile. We apply the same methodology to obtain the full low-lying vertical excitation spectrum of formaldehyde, in good agreement with available theoretical and experimental data, as well as to a challenging model $C_{2v}$ insertion pathway for BeH$_2$. The variational excited state methodology developed in this work has two remarkable traits: it is fully black-box and will be applicable to fairly large systems thanks to its mean-field computational cost

Hacia una etnografía radial en la era digital

La tesis doctoral en Diseño y Creación: “Visualización de la arquitectura a través del sonido. En busca de la imagen radiofónica del habitar” presenta un diseño metodológico basado en la visualización de los intangibles de la arquitectura. La visualización es entendida como la formación de imágenes mentales a partir de estímulos sonoros que actúan sobre la memoria, el recuerdo y la asociación del pasado y el presente. El trabajo de campo se lleva a cabo a través del programa radial La casa. Su metodología revela un nuevo instrumento para el registro de datos de la investigación; contribuye a la definición y la construcción de la etnografía radial; y aporta el registro polifónico de los moradores: la escala humana de la imagen radiofónica del habitar. Se explora la validez de un método propuesto desde el diseño y la creación que favorezca procesos autoconclusivos acerca del morar y las posibles implicaciones de esta investigación: aplicación de la etnografía radial a otros objetos de estudio y la radio universitaria como escenario potencial para el radioarte, la socialización y el registro de datos de investigaciones académicas

Towards a radio ethnography in the digital era

La tesis doctoral en Diseño y Creación: “Visualización de la arquitectura a través del sonido. En busca de la imagen radiofónica del habitar” presenta un diseño metodológico basado en la visualización de los intangibles de la arquitectura. La visualización es entendida como la formación de imágenes mentales a partir de estímulos sonoros que actúan sobre la memoria, el recuerdo y la asociación del pasado y el presente.&amp;nbsp;El trabajo de campo se lleva a cabo a través del programa radial La casa. Su metodología revela un nuevo instrumento para el registro de datos de la investigación; contribuye a la definición y la construcción de la etnografía radial; y aporta el registro polifónico de los moradores: la escala humana de la imagen radiofónica del habitar.&amp;nbsp;Se explora la validez de un método propuesto desde el diseño y la creación que favorezca procesos autoconclusivos acerca del morar y las posibles implicaciones de esta investigación: aplicación de la etnografía radial a otros objetos de estudio y la radio universitaria como escenario potencial para el radioarte, la socialización y el registro de datos de investigaciones académicas.Abstract The Design and Creation Doctoral Thesis “Visualization of&amp;nbsp;Architecture through sound: Searching for the inhabit radio&amp;nbsp;broadcasting” presents a methodological design based on the&amp;nbsp;visualization of architecture intangibles. The visualization is&amp;nbsp;understood as the formation of mental images from resonant&amp;nbsp;stimuli acting on memory, remembrance and association of&amp;nbsp;the past and the present.&amp;nbsp;The field work is carried out through the radio program “La&amp;nbsp;Casa” (The House). The methodology reveals a new instrument&amp;nbsp;for the research data collection; it contributes to the definition&amp;nbsp;and the construction of radio ethnography and provides the&amp;nbsp;polyphonic recording of the inhabitants: the human scale of&amp;nbsp;the inhabit radio broadcasting image.&amp;nbsp;The validity of the method proposed is explored from design&amp;nbsp;and creation viewpoints that favor self-conclusive processes&amp;nbsp;about inhabiting and the possible implications of this research:&amp;nbsp;application of radio ethnography to other objects of study and&amp;nbsp;the University Radio as potential scenery for radio-art, socialization&amp;nbsp;and recording of academic research data

The DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey: Discovery of Luminous, Metal-poor, Sta r-forming Galaxies at Redshifts z~0.7

We have discovered a sample of 17 metal-poor, yet luminous, star-forming galaxies at redshifts z~0.7. They were selected from the initial phase of the DEEP2 survey of 3900 galaxies and the Team Keck Redshift Survey (TKRS) of 1536 galaxies as those showing the temperature-sensitive [OIII]l4363 auroral line. These rare galaxies have blue luminosities close to L*, high star formation rates of 5 to 12 solar masses per year, and oxygen abundances of 1/3 to 1/10 solar. They thus lie significantly off the luminosity-metallicity relation found previously for field galaxies with strong emission lines at redshifts z~0.7. The prior surveys relied on indirect, empirical calibrations of the R23 diagnostic and the assumption that luminous galaxies are not metal-poor. Our discovery suggests that this assumption is sometimes invalid. As a class, these newly-discovered galaxies are: (1) more metal-poor than common classes of bright emission-line galaxies at z~0.7 or at the present epoch; (2) comparable in metallicity to z~3 Lyman Break Galaxies but less luminous; and (3) comparable in metallicity to local metal-poor eXtreme Blue Compact Galaxies (XBCGs), but more luminous. Together, the three samples suggest that the most-luminous, metal-poor, compact galaxies become fainter over time.Comment: This is a .tgz file. It should create the following files: texto.tex, tab1.tex, f1.eps and f2.eps. The LaTeX style used is emulateapj.cls, version November 26, 2004. This submission is 5 pages long, one table and two figures. To appear in ApJ

Stellar Populations Found in the Central kpc of Four Luminous Compact Blue Galaxies at Intermediate Redshift

We investigate the star formation history of the central regions of four Luminous Compact Blue Galaxies (LCBGs). LCBGs are blue (B-V<0.6), compact (MU_B<21.5 mag arcsec^-2) galaxies with absolute magnitudes M_B brighter than -17.5. The LCBGs analyzed here are located at 0.436<z<0.525. They are among the most luminous (M_B < -20.5), blue (B-V < 0.4) and high surface brightness (MU_B < 19.0 mag arcsec^-2) of this population. The observational data used were obtained with the HST/STIS spectrograph, the HST/WF/PC-2 camera and the HST/NICMOS first camera. We find evidence for multiple stellar populations. One of them is identified as the ionizing population, and the other one corresponds to the underlying stellar generation. The estimated masses of the inferred populations are compatible with the dynamical masses, which are typically 2--10x 10^9 M_sun. Our models also indicate that the first episodes of star formation the presented LCBGs underwent happened between 5 and 7 Gyr ago. We compare the stellar populations found in LCBGs with the stellar populations present in bright, local HII galaxies, nearby spheroidal systems and Blue Compact Dwarf Galaxies. It turns out that the underlying stellar populations of LCBGs are similar yet bluer to those of local HII galaxies. It is also the case that the passive color evolution of the LCBGs could convert them into local Spheroidal galaxies if no further episode of star formation takes place. Our results help to impose constraints on evolutionary scenarios for the population of LCBGs found commonly at intermediate redshifts.Comment: 35 pages, 10 Figures. Accepted for publication in AJ. Compile with pdflatex. Contains png figure

Baculoviruses--re-emerging biopesticides.

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