Epigenetic Strategies to Boost Cancer Immunotherapies

The CNIO- Lilly Epigenetics Laboratory is supported by Eli Lilly and Company.Recently, immunotherapeutic approaches have shown impressive responses in a subset of cancer patients. However, the rate of success is low and a large percentage of treated patients do not experience clinical benefits. Therefore, additional strategies are needed to improve responses and select responsive patients. Emerging data suggest that epigenetic drugs can improve the responses to immunotherapy. Understanding the mechanisms of resistance to immunotherapy and the epigenetic events that take place during immune evasion is critical to providing a rational combined use of immunotherapies and epigenetic drugs. This review focuses in the epigenetic mechanisms involved in the responses to immunotherapy and how current drugs that target epigenetic regulators impact on them.S

Long Social Distancing

More than ten percent of Americans with recent work experience say they will continue social distancing after the COVID-19 pandemic ends, and another 45 percent will do so in limited ways. We uncover this Long Social Distancing phenomenon in our monthly Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes. It is more common among older persons, women, the less educated, those who earn less, and in occupations and industries that require many face-to-face encounters. People who intend to continue social distancing have lower labor force participation—unconditionally, and conditional on demographics and other controls. Regression models that relate outcomes to intentions imply that Long Social Distancing reduced participation by 2.5 percentage points in the first half of 2022. Separate self-assessed causal effects imply a reduction of 2.0 percentage points. The impact on the earnings-weighted participation rate is smaller at about 1.4 percentage points. This drag on participation reduces potential output by nearly one percent and shrinks the college wage premium. Economic reasoning and evidence suggest that Long Social Distancing and its effects will persist for many months or years

Why working from home will stick

COVID-19 drove a mass social experiment in working from home (WFH). We survey more than 30,000 Americans over multiple waves to investigate whether WFH will stick, and why. Our data say that 20 percent of full workdays will be supplied from home after the pandemic ends, compared with just 5 percent before. We develop evidence on five reasons for this large shift: better-than-expected WFH experiences, new investments in physical and human capital that enable WFH, greatly diminished stigma associated with WFH, lingering concerns about crowds and contagion risks, and a pandemic-driven surge in technological innovations that support WFH. We also use our survey data to project three consequences: First, employees will enjoy large benefits from greater remote work, especially those with higher earnings. Second, the shift to WFH will directly reduce spending in major city centers by at least 5-10 percent relative to the pre-pandemic situation. Third, our data on employer plans and the relative productivity of WFH imply a 5 percent productivity boost in the post-pandemic economy due to re-optimized working arrangements. Only one-fifth of this productivity gain will show up in conventional productivity measures, because they do not capture the time savings from less commuting

Internet access and its implications for productivity, inequality and resilience

About one-fifth of paid workdays will be supplied from home in the post-pandemic economy, and more than one-fourth on an earnings-weighted basis. In view of this projection, we consider some implications of home internet access quality, exploiting data from the new Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes. Moving to high-quality, fully reliable home internet service for all Americans ('universal access') would raise earnings-weighted labor productivity by an estimated 1.1% in the coming years. The implied output gains are $160 billion per year, or$4 trillion when capitalized at a 4% rate. Estimated flow output payoffs to universal access are nearly three times as large in economic disasters like the COVID-19 pandemic. Our survey data also say that subjective well-being was higher during the pandemic for people with better home internet service conditional on age, employment status, earnings, working arrangements, and other controls. In short, universal access would raise productivity, and it would promote greater economic and social resilience during future disasters that inhibit travel and in-person interactions

The shift to remote work lessens wage-growth pressure

The recent shift to remote work raised the amenity value of employment. As compensation adjusts to share the amenity-value gains with employers, wage-growth pressures moderate. We find empirical support for this mechanism in the wage-setting behavior of U.S. employers, and we develop novel survey data to quantify its force. Our data imply a cumulative wage-growth moderation of 2.0 percentage points over two years. This moderation offsets more than half the real-wage catchup effect that Blanchard (2022) highlights in his analysis of near-term inflation pressures. The amenity-values gains associated with the recent rise of remote work also lower Labor's share of national income by 1.1 percentage points. In addition, the 'unexpected compression' of wages since early 2020 (Autor and Dube, 2022) is partly explained by the same amenity-value effect, which operates differentially across the earnings distribution

Working from home around the world

The pandemic triggered a large, lasting shift to work from home (WFH). To study this shift, we survey full-time workers who finished primary school in 27 countries as of mid-2021 and early 2022. Our cross-country comparisons control for age, gender, education, and industry and treat the U.S. mean as the baseline. We find, first, that WFH averages 1.5 days per week in our sample, ranging widely across countries. Second, employers plan an average of 0.7 WFH days per week after the pandemic, but workers want 1.7 days. Third, employees value the option to WFH 2-3 days per week at 5 percent of pay, on average, with higher valuations for women, people with children and those with longer commutes. Fourth, most employees were favorably surprised by their WFH productivity during the pandemic. Fifth, looking across individuals, employer plans for WFH levels after the pandemic rise strongly with WFH productivity surprises during the pandemic. Sixth, looking across countries, planned WFH levels rise with the cumulative stringency of government-mandated lockdowns during the pandemic. We draw on these results to explain the big shift to WFH and to consider some implications for workers, organization, cities, and the pace of innovation

Innovación Educativa en la E.T.S.I. en Topografía, Geodesia y Cartografía de Madrid.

El Plan de Convergencia Europeo con el acuerdo de la puesta en marcha del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior para 2010, ha implicado a las Universidades españolas, y en particular a la UPM, en el desarrollo de planes estratégicos conducentes a la adecuación de sus enseñanzas y metodologías docentes a las directrices de dicho plan. Desde 2005 la UPM está realizando convocatorias de Proyectos de Innovación Educativa y ha aprobado la normativa para la creación de Grupos de Innovación Educativa (GIE). La ETSITGC de Madrid, con el apoyo de las direcciones del Departamento y Escuela, ha participado activamente desde el primer momento en estas iniciativas y cuenta en la actualidad con el grupo INNGEO (GIE consolidado). Hasta el curso actual se vienen desarrollando numerosos Proyectos de Innovación e Investigación Educativa tanto en el ámbito del Centro como en colaboración con otras iniciativas de la UPM y Universidades Latinoamericana

El EEES: La oportunidad para una profunda renovación de Titulaciones y asignaturas

La adaptación al Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior (EEES) está consiguiendo en la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) un debate de intensidad creciente, sobre sus métodos docentes y su estructura organizativa. Lo que comenzó con discusiones centradas en la duración de las titulaciones, bajo el condicionamiento de las competencias profesionales, y la transformación a créditos ECTS, ha derivado en la elaboración de auténticos planes estratégicos para la renovación/creación de Modelos Educativos, Titulaciones, Planes de Estudio, Metodologías Docentes y de Evaluación que incluyan diferentes espacios para el aprendizaje. Desde 2005 la UPM realiza anualmente convocatorias de Innovación Educativa y en 2006 aprobó la normativa para la creación de Grupos de Innovación Educativa (GIE). Aprovechando estas oportunidades, en la ETSITGC se ha creado el GIE INNGEO, cuyos miembros hemos desarrollado desde 2005, hasta la fecha 10 (+1) proyectos propios de I.E. y hemos participado activamente en 5 proyectos más dentro la UPM o en colaboración con Universidades Iberoamericanas. La experiencia que progresivamente vamos acumulando nos permite avanzar en el planteamiento de estrategias, en el ámbito metodológico, atención tutorial y uso de TIC que creemos mejorarán la eficiencia y calidad de nuestras asignaturas y servirá a nuestras futuras Titulaciones

Personality Disorders and Health Problems Distinguish Suicide Attempters from Completers in a Direct Comparison

Background Whether suicide attempters and completers represent the same population evaluated at different points along a progression towards suicide death, overlapping populations, or completely different populations is a problem still unresolved. Methods 446 Adult suicide attempters and knowledgeable collateral informants for 190 adult suicide probands were interviewed. Sociodemographic and clinical data was collected for both groups using semi-structured interviews and structured assessments. Univariate analyses and logistic regression models were conducted to explore the similarities and differences between suicide attempters and completers. Results Univariate analyses yielded significant differences in sociodemographics, recent life events, impulsivity, suicide intent, and distribution of Axis I and II disorders. A logistic regression model aimed at distinguishing suicide completers from attempters properly classified 90% of subjects. The most significant variables that distinguished suicide from attempted suicide were the presence of narcissistic personality disorder (OR=21.4; 95% CI=6.8–67.7), health problems (OR=20.6; 95% CI=5.6–75.9), male sex (OR=9.6; 95% CI=4.42–20.9), and alcohol abuse (OR=5.5; 95% CI=2.3–14.2). Limitations Our study shares the limitations of studies comparing suicide attempters and completers, namely that information from attempters can be obtained from the subject himself, whereas the assessment of completers depends on information from close family or friends. Furthermore, different semi-structured instruments assessed Axis I and Axis II disorders in suicide attempters and completers. Finally, we have no data on inter-rater reliability data. Conclusions Suicide completers are more likely to be male and suffer from alcohol abuse, health problems (e.g. somatic illness), and narcissistic personality disorder. The findings emphasize the importance of implementing suicide prevention programs tailored to suicide attempters and completers