Building capacities for oriented innovation: Argentina’s response to COVID-19 from a gender perspective

La pandemia puso a prueba la resiliencia de los sistemas públicos, pues los Gobiernos enfrentaron el desafío de adaptar rápidamente sus políticas y prácticas. En ese contexto, Argentina fue reconocida como uno de los pocos países que logró transversalizar la perspectiva de género para alcanzar a las poblaciones más vulnerables, mostrando capacidades de adaptación y orientación estratégica. En este artículo se busca captar, sistematizar y repensar –en el contexto de las políticas de innovación orientadas por misiones– las estrategias desplegadas por el Gobierno argentino. El objetivo es comprender qué capacidades resultan claves para el abordaje de problemáticas sociales complejas en el Sur Global y cómo estas pueden nutrirse. A través de un marco teórico que articula la literatura sobre “capacidades dinámicas del sector público” y “capacidades estatales” en América Latina, y la aplicación de una metodología cualitativa (estudio de caso), encontramos que las capacidades estatales se fortalecieron reconfigurando recursos preexistentes a partir de un proyecto de gobierno, liderazgos colectivos, y una serie de innovaciones institucionales y políticas en el contexto del auge de los feminismos regionales. Esta experiencia, que le ha valido a Argentina el reconocimiento mundial, ofrece importantes lecciones para abordar los retos sociales mediante políticas de innovación, la institucionalización de las demandas de los movimientos populares y las colaboraciones para lograr sistemas resilientes.The pandemic tested the resilience of public systems, as governments faced the challenge of rapidly adapting their policies and practices. In this context, Argentina was recognized as one of the few countries that managed to mainstream a gender perspective to reach the most vulnerable populations, showing adaptive capacities and strategic orientation. This article seeks to document, systematize, and rethink the strategies deployed by the Argentine government in terms of mission-oriented innovation policies. The objective is to understand which capabilities are key to address complex social issues in the Global South and how they can be nurtured. Through a theoretical framework that articulates the literature on “dynamic public sector capacities” and “state capacities” in Latin America and the application of a qualitative methodology (case study), we find that state capacities were strengthened by reconfiguring pre-existing resources based on a government project, collective leadership, and a series of institutional and political innovations in the context of the rise of regional feminisms. This experience, which has earned Argentina global recognition, offers important lessons for addressing social challenges through innovation policies, the institutionalization of popular movement demands, and collaborations for resilient systems.Fil: Mucarsel Elaskar, Leila Yasmín. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Artes y Diseño; ArgentinaFil: Barile, Ana Clara. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Artes y Diseño; Argentina. Universidad "Juan Agustín Maza"; ArgentinaFil: Bhat, Meera. State University of New York; Estados Unido

Building capacities for oriented innovation: Argentina’s response to COVID-19 from a gender perspective

The pandemic tested the resilience of public systems, as governments faced the challenge of rapidly adapting their policies and practices. In this context, Argentina was recognized as one of the few countries that managed to mainstream a gender perspective to reach the most vulnerable populations, showing adaptive capacities and strategic orientation. This article seeks to document, systematize, and rethink the strategies deployed by the Argentine government in terms of mission-oriented innovation policies. The objective is to understand which capabilities are key to address complex social issues in the Global South and how they can be nurtured. Through a theoretical framework that articulates the literature on “dynamic public sector capacities” and “state capacities” in Latin America – and the application of a qualitative methodology (case study), we find that state capacities were strengthened by reconfiguring pre-existing resources based on a government project, collective leadership, and a series of institutional and political innovations in the context of the rise of regional feminisms. This experience, which has earned Argentina global recognition, offers important lessons for addressing social challenges through innovation policies, the institutionalization of popular movement demands, and collaborations for resilient systems

Detection of zoonotic pathogens and characterization of novel viruses carried by commensal Rattus norvegicus in New York City

Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) are globally distributed and concentrate in urban environments, where they live and feed in closer proximity to human populations than most other mammals. Despite the potential role of rats as reservoirs of zoonotic diseases, the microbial diversity present in urban rat populations remains unexplored. In this study, we used targeted molecular assays to detect known bacterial, viral, and protozoan human pathogens and unbiased high-throughput sequencing to identify novel viruses related to agents of human disease in commensal Norway rats in New York City. We found that these rats are infected with bacterial pathogens known to cause acute or mild gastroenteritis in people, including atypical enteropathogenic Escherichia coli, Clostridium difficile, and Salmonella enterica, as well as infectious agents that have been associated with undifferentiated febrile illnesses, including Bartonella spp., Streptobacillus moniliformis, Leptospira interrogans, and Seoul hantavirus. We also identified a wide range of known and novel viruses from groups that contain important human pathogens, including sapoviruses, cardioviruses, kobuviruses, parechoviruses, rotaviruses, and hepaciviruses. The two novel hepaciviruses discovered in this study replicate in the liver of Norway rats and may have utility in establishing a small animal model of human hepatitis C virus infection. The results of this study demonstrate the diversity of microbes carried by commensal rodent species and highlight the need for improved pathogen surveillance and disease monitoring in urban environments. Importance: The observation that most emerging infectious diseases of humans originate in animal reservoirs has led to wide-scale microbial surveillance and discovery programs in wildlife, particularly in the developing world. Strikingly, less attention has been focused on commensal animals like rats, despite their abundance in urban centers and close proximity to human populations. To begin to explore the zoonotic disease risk posed by urban rat populations, we trapped and surveyed Norway rats collected in New York City over a 1-year period. This analysis revealed a striking diversity of known pathogens and novel viruses in our study population, including multiple agents associated with acute gastroenteritis or febrile illnesses in people. Our findings indicate that urban rats are reservoirs for a vast diversity of microbes that may affect human health and indicate a need for increased surveillance and awareness of the disease risks associated with urban rodent infestation

Staphylococcus aureus ST398, New York City and Dominican Republic

Closely related Staphylococcus aureus strains of ST398, an animal-associated strain, were identified in samples collected from humans in northern Manhattan, New York, NY, USA, and in the Dominican Republic. A large population in northern Manhattan has close ties to the Dominican Republic, suggesting international transmission

Report from the American Society of Transplantation on frailty in solid organ transplantation

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/148387/1/ajt15198_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/148387/2/ajt15198.pd

Convalescent plasma in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised controlled, open-label, platform trial

SummaryBackground Azithromycin has been proposed as a treatment for COVID-19 on the basis of its immunomodulatoryactions. We aimed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of azithromycin in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19.Methods In this randomised, controlled, open-label, adaptive platform trial (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19Therapy [RECOVERY]), several possible treatments were compared with usual care in patients admitted to hospitalwith COVID-19 in the UK. The trial is underway at 176 hospitals in the UK. Eligible and consenting patients wererandomly allocated to either usual standard of care alone or usual standard of care plus azithromycin 500 mg once perday by mouth or intravenously for 10 days or until discharge (or allocation to one of the other RECOVERY treatmentgroups). Patients were assigned via web-based simple (unstratified) randomisation with allocation concealment andwere twice as likely to be randomly assigned to usual care than to any of the active treatment groups. Participants andlocal study staff were not masked to the allocated treatment, but all others involved in the trial were masked to theoutcome data during the trial. The primary outcome was 28-day all-cause mortality, assessed in the intention-to-treatpopulation. The trial is registered with ISRCTN, 50189673, and ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04381936.Findings Between April 7 and Nov 27, 2020, of 16 442 patients enrolled in the RECOVERY trial, 9433 (57%) wereeligible and 7763 were included in the assessment of azithromycin. The mean age of these study participants was65·3 years (SD 15·7) and approximately a third were women (2944 [38%] of 7763). 2582 patients were randomlyallocated to receive azithromycin and 5181 patients were randomly allocated to usual care alone. Overall,561 (22%) patients allocated to azithromycin and 1162 (22%) patients allocated to usual care died within 28 days(rate ratio 0·97, 95% CI 0·87–1·07; p=0·50). No significant difference was seen in duration of hospital stay (median10 days [IQR 5 to >28] vs 11 days [5 to >28]) or the proportion of patients discharged from hospital alive within 28 days(rate ratio 1·04, 95% CI 0·98–1·10; p=0·19). Among those not on invasive mechanical ventilation at baseline, nosignificant difference was seen in the proportion meeting the composite endpoint of invasive mechanical ventilationor death (risk ratio 0·95, 95% CI 0·87–1·03; p=0·24).Interpretation In patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19, azithromycin did not improve survival or otherprespecified clinical outcomes. Azithromycin use in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 should be restrictedto patients in whom there is a clear antimicrobial indication

Computational approach towards promoter sequence comparison via TF mapping using a new distance measure

We propose a method for identifying transcription factor binding sites (TFBS) in the given promoter sequence and mapping the transcription factors (TFs). The proposed algorithm searches the +1 transcription start site (TSS) for eukaryotic and prokaryotic sequences individually. The algorithm was tested with sequences from both eukaryotes and prokaryotes for at least 9 experimentally verified and validated functional TFs in promoter sequences. The order and type of TF binding to the promoter of genes encoding central metabolic pathway (CMP) enzyme was tabulated. A new similarity measure was devised for scoring the similarity between a pair of promoter sequences based on the number and order of motifs. Further, these were grouped in clusters considering the scores between them. The distance between each of the clusters in individual pathway was calculated and a phylogenetic tree was developed. This method is further applied to other pathways such as lipid and amino acid biosynthesis to retrieve and compare experimentally verified and conserved TFBS

Computational approach towards finding evolutionary distance and gene order using promoter sequences of central metabolic pathway

The comparative analysis of motifs of promoter sequences of the genes encoding enzymes of metabolic pathways such as glycolysis and kreb cycle in different genomes can give insights into the understanding of evolutionary and organizational relationships among both the species as well as enzymes. The comparison of resulting analysis with those of the evolutionary distances drawn considering coding regions of the genes allows one to measure the evolution of complete processes. In the present study we have collected promoter sequences of the glycolysis and kreb cycle genes encoding the respective enzymes from the standard EMBL database and extracted ten Transcription factors (TFs) using the TFsearch tool. This information was put together to develop a database CMPP database both offline and online (http://cmpp.sbbiotech.com). The matrix was developed by calculating the distances based on the presence or absence of motifs (TFs). The phylogenetic tree was obtained by using the NJ method by calculating the distances both within and between the enzymes of glycolysis and kreb cycle individually. The present study could also be extended to pathways such as carbohydrate and lipid metabolic networks