Candida glabrata : a review of its features and resistance

Candida species belong to the normal microbiota of the oral cavity and gastrointestinal and vaginal tracts, and are responsible for several clinical manifestations, from mucocutaneous overgrowth to bloodstream infections. Once believed to be non-pathogenic, Candida glabrata was rapidly blamable for many human diseases. Year after year, these pathological circumstances are more recurrent and problematic to treat, especially when patients reveal any level of immunosuppression. These difficulties arise from the capacity of C. glabrata to form biofilms and also from its high resistance to traditional antifungal therapies. Thus, this review intends to present an excerpt of the biology, epidemiology, and pathology of C. glabrata, and detail an approach to its resistance mechanisms based on studies carried out up to the present.The authors are grateful to strategic project PTDC/SAU-MIC/119069/2010 for the financial support to the research center and for Celia F. Rodrigues' grant

Mind the gap : The role of mindfulness in adapting to increasing risk and climate change

It is becoming clear that increasingly complex global challenges cannot simply be solved by new technology or governments alone. We also need to develop new social practices and encourage a broader cultural shift towards sustainability. Against this background, this paper explores the role of mindfulness in adapting to increasing risk and climate change. Based on a literature review, it assesses current research on ‘mindful climate adaptation’, and explores how individual mindfulness is linked to climate adaptation. While in practice mindfulness-based approaches to climate adaptation have gained widespread recognition (e.g., by the United Nations), the results show that related research is scarce and fragmented. There is almost no research into the role of mindfulness in climate adaptation. At the same time, new scientific domains are opening up in cognate fields that illuminate the mindfulness–adaptation nexus from certain perspectives. These fields include: (1) disaster management; (2) individual well-being; (3) organisational management; (4) environmental behaviour; (5) social justice; and (6) knowledge production. As new concepts and approaches emerge, they require critical construct validation and empirical testing. The importance of further investigation is supported by a complementary empirical study, which shows that individual mindfulness disposition coincides with increased motivation to take (or support) climate adaptation actions. The paper concludes that mindfulness has the potential to facilitate adaptation at all scales (through cognitive, managerial, structural, ontological, and epistemological change processes) and should, therefore, become a core element in climate and associated sustainability research. Finally, it sketches the conceptual trajectories of the mindfulness–adaptation nexus and presents a pioneering, comprehensive framework for ‘mindful climate adaptation’

A Randomized, Double-blind, Placebo-Controlled Study of Latrepirdine in Patients With Mild to Moderate Huntington Disease

Experimentele farmacotherapi