A New Tool to Study Parkinsonism in the Context of Aging: MPTP Intoxication in a Natural Model of Multimorbidity

The diurnal rodent Octodon degus (O. degus) is considered an attractive natural model for Alzheimer's disease and other human age-related features. However, it has not been explored so far if the O. degus could be used as a model to study Parkinson's disease. To test this idea, 10 adult male O. degus were divided into control group and MPTP-intoxicated animals. Motor condition and cognition were examined. Dopaminergic degeneration was studied in the ventral mesencephalon and in the striatum. Neuroinflammation was also evaluated in the ventral mesencephalon, in the striatum and in the dorsal hippocampus. MPTP animals showed significant alterations in motor activity and in visuospatial memory. Postmortem analysis revealed a significant decrease in the number of dopaminergic neurons in the ventral mesencephalon of MPTP animals, although no differences were found in their striatal terminals. We observed a significant increase in neuroinflammatory responses in the mesencephalon, in the striatum and in the hippocampus of MPTP-intoxicated animals. Additionally, changes in the subcellular expression of the calcium-binding protein S100 beta were found in the astrocytes in the nigrostriatal pathway. These findings prove for the first time that O. degus are sensitive to MPTP intoxication and, therefore, is a suitable model for experimental Parkinsonism in the context of aging

A New Tool to Study Parkinsonism in the Context of Aging: MPTP Intoxication in a Natural Model of Multimorbidity

The diurnal rodent Octodon degus (O. degus) is considered an attractive natural model for Alzheimer’s disease and other human age-related features. However, it has not been explored so far if the O. degus could be used as a model to study Parkinson’s disease. To test this idea, 10 adult male O. degus were divided into control group and MPTP-intoxicated animals. Motor condition and cognition were examined. Dopaminergic degeneration was studied in the ventral mesencephalon and in the striatum. Neuroinflammation was also evaluated in the ventral mesencephalon, in the striatum and in the dorsal hippocampus. MPTP animals showed significant alterations in motor activity and in visuospatial memory. Postmortem analysis revealed a significant decrease in the number of dopaminergic neurons in the ventral mesencephalon of MPTP animals, although no differences were found in their striatal terminals. We observed a significant increase in neuroinflammatory responses in the mesencephalon, in the striatum and in the hippocampus of MPTP-intoxicated animals. Additionally, changes in the subcellular expression of the calcium-binding protein S100β were found in the astrocytes in the nigrostriatal pathway. These findings prove for the first time that O. degus are sensitive to MPTP intoxication and, therefore, is a suitable model for experimental Parkinsonism in the context of aging

Identificación de alumnos-as con altas habilidades : evaluación y entrenamiento de la competencia cognitiva

Identificar, intervenir y evaluar el rendimiento y competencia de los sujetos superdotados. Detectar las diferencias individuales entre éstos y los sujetos con habilidades intelectuales medias. Planteamiento de hipótesis. 2055 alumnos/as de quinto y sexto de EGB pertenecientes a 22 centros públicos o privado-concertados de la región de Murcia. 1. Análisis de los principales estudios sobre la identificación de superdotados. 2. En la primera fase se aplica la prueba de inteligencia STAT (Sternberg Triarchic Abilities Test), la prueba de factor 'G' de Cattell y el inventario de estilos intelectuales de Sternberg, con el fin de identificar a los sujetos con altas habilidades. En la segunda fase, la muestra se reduce y se forman 4 subgrupos de nivel intelectual alcanzado en las pruebas anteriores. A continuación se realiza la aplicación de las tareas de evaluación de insight, estilos intelectuales (de nuevo), autoconcepto y habilidades metacognitivas. En esta fase se analizan las características diferenciales de los sujetos con distinto nivel de habilidad intelectual. De forma transversal al procedimiento seguido se han realizado diferentes procesos de validación. Porcentajes, percentiles, correlación lineal (r de Pearson), índices de consistencia (coeficiente Phi). El test STAT muestra una validez externa e interna adecuadas, de acuerdo con la correlación de las puntuaciones obtenidas en esta prueba con las del factor 'G' de Cattell. El factor común subyacente a las altas habilidades se situa en los procesos de insight que implican procesos selectivos de codificación, combinación y comparación de la información. Estos sujetos con altas habilidades muestran estilos de pensamiento más legislativos y críticos, así como un mayor autoconcepto en el ámbito verbal y matemático. Los sujetos con altas habilidades poseen estilos de pensamiento más abiertos, flexibles y críticos. Sin embargo, no muestran mayor habilidad metacognitiva que los sujetos con habilidades medias.Ministerio Educación CIDEBiblioteca de Educación del Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte; Calle San Agustín, 5 - 3 Planta; 28014 Madrid; Tel. +34917748000; Fax +34917748026; [email protected]

Discovering HIV related information by means of association rules and machine learning

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is still one of the main health problems worldwide. It is therefore essential to keep making progress in improving the prognosis and quality of life of affected patients. One way to advance along this pathway is to uncover connections between other disorders associated with HIV/AIDS-so that they can be anticipated and possibly mitigated. We propose to achieve this by using Association Rules (ARs). They allow us to represent the dependencies between a number of diseases and other specific diseases. However, classical techniques systematically generate every AR meeting some minimal conditions on data frequency, hence generating a vast amount of uninteresting ARs, which need to be filtered out. The lack of manually annotated ARs has favored unsupervised filtering, even though they produce limited results. In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised system, able to identify relevant ARs among HIV-related diseases with a minimal amount of annotated training data. Our system has been able to extract a good number of relationships between HIV-related diseases that have been previously detected in the literature but are scattered and are often little known. Furthermore, a number of plausible new relationships have shown up which deserve further investigation by qualified medical experts

¡Todos somos Montero!

El trabajo obtuvo un premio de la Modalidad A de los Premios Tomás García Verdejo a las buenas prácticas educativas en la Comunidad Autónoma de Extremadura para el curso académico 2014/2015Se presenta el proyecto curricular del CEIP Montero de Espinosa (Almendralejo, Badajoz) basado en el aprendizaje en acción, en la individualización de la enseñanza y en la participación de las familias. Las actividades desarrolladas se han centrado en los siguientes ámbitos: valores y actitudes sociales (la convivencia escolar, el fomento de la igualdad, la educación ambiental, etc.), uso didáctico de las tecnologías de la información, fomento del aprendizaje de las lenguas, promoción de la biblioteca escolar (de la lectura, la escritura y el acceso a la información) y programas educativos encaminados al éxito escolar del alumnadoExtremaduraES