253 research outputs found
Singularity-invariant leg rearrangements in Stewart-Gough platforms
Postprint (authorâs final draft
Genetic dissection of photoperiod response based on GWAS of pre-anthesis phase duration in spring barley
Heading time is a complex trait, and natural variation in photoperiod responses is a major factor controlling time to heading, adaptation and grain yield. In barley, previous heading time studies have been mainly conducted under field conditions to measure total days to heading. We followed a novel approach and studied the natural variation of time to heading in a world-wide spring barley collection (218 accessions), comprising of 95 photoperiod-sensitive (Ppd-H1) and 123 accessions with reduced photoperiod sensitivity (ppd-H1) to long-day (LD) through dissecting pre-anthesis development into four major stages and sub-phases. The study was conducted under greenhouse (GH) conditions (LD; 16/8 h; âŒ20/âŒ16°C day/night). Genotyping was performed using a genome-wide high density 9K single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) chip which assayed 7842 SNPs. We used the barley physical map to identify candidate genes underlying genome-wide association scans (GWAS). GWAS for pre-anthesis stages/sub-phases in each photoperiod group provided great power for partitioning genetic effects on floral initiation and heading time. In addition to major genes known to regulate heading time under field conditions, several novel QTL with medium to high effects, including new QTL having major effects on developmental stages/sub-phases were found to be associated in this study. For example, highly associated SNPs tagged the physical regions around HvCO1 (barley CONSTANS1) and BFL (BARLEY FLORICAULA/LEAFY) genes. Based upon our GWAS analysis, we propose a new genetic network model for each photoperiod group, which includes several newly identified genes, such as several HvCO-like genes, belonging to different heading time pathways in barley
Proceso de Bolonia (VI): aprendiendo comunicaciĂłn para la salud en el Grado de Medicina
La comunicaciĂłn forma parte de la actividad clĂnica y en ocasiones determina el Ă©xito o fracaso del proceso asistencial. Sin embargo, no ha sido reconocida en los planes de estudio del Estado español hasta muy recientemente, sobre todo con el impulso del llamado 'Plan Bolonia'. En el año 2009 se aprobĂł en la Facultad de Medicina de la Universitat de Barcelona un nuevo plan docente que proponĂa incorporar la enseñanza de la comunicaciĂłn en las materias clĂnicas y pre-clĂnicas, contabilizando entre 3 y 6 crĂ©ditos europeos (ECTS), como competencia transversal. El presente artĂculo aborda el diseño de esta competencia, los pros y contras, cĂłmo se inserta en diferentes asignaturas y cĂłmo puede evaluarse
Clinical Audit of the Radiotherapy Process in Rectal Cancer: Clinical Practice guidelines and Quality Certification Do Not Avert Variability in Clinical Practice
Background: The therapeutic approach to cancer is complex and multidisciplinary. Radiotherapy is among the essential treatments, whether used alone or in conjunction with other therapies. This study reports a clinical audit of the radiotherapy process to assess the process of care, evaluate adherence to agreed protocols and measure the variability to improve therapeutic quality for rectal cancer. Methods: Multicentre retrospective cohort study in a representative sample of patients diagnosed with rectal cancer in the Institut CatalĂ d'Oncologia, a comprehensive cancer centre with three different settings. We developed a set of indicators to assess the key areas of the radiotherapy process. The clinical audit consisted of a review of a random sample of 40 clinical histories for each centre. Results: The demographic profile, histology and staging of patients were similar between centres. The MRI reports did not include the distance from tumour to mesorectal fascia (rCRM) in 38.3% of the cases. 96.7% of patients received the planned dose, and 57.4% received it at the planned time. Surgery followed neoadjuvant treatment in 96.7% of the patients. Among this group, postoperative CRM was recorded in 65.5% of the cases and was negative in 93.4% of these. With regard to the 34.5% (n = 40) of cases where no CRM value was stated, there were differences between the centres. Mean follow-up was 3.4 (SD 0.6) years, and overall survival at four years was 81.7%. Conclusions: The audit revealed a suboptimal degree of adherence to clinical practice guidelines. Significant variability between centres exists from a clinical perspective but especially with regard to organization and process
Origin and Control of Chemoselectivity in Cytochrome c Catalyzed Carbene Transfer into SiâH and NâH bonds
A cytochrome c heme protein was recently engineered to catalyze the formation of carbonâsilicon bonds via carbene insertion into SiâH bonds, a reaction that was not previously known to be catalyzed by a protein. High chemoselectivity toward CâSi bond formation over competing CâN bond formation was achieved, although this trait was not screened for during directed evolution. Using computational and experimental tools, we now establish that activity and chemoselectivity are modulated by conformational dynamics of a protein loop that covers the substrate access to the ironâcarbene active species. Mutagenesis of residues computationally predicted to control the loop conformation altered the proteinâs chemoselectivity from preferred silylation to preferred amination of a substrate containing both NâH and SiâH functionalities. We demonstrate that information on protein structure and conformational dynamics, combined with knowledge of mechanism, leads to understanding of how non-natural and selective chemical transformations can be introduced into the biological world
Toward a clinical practice guide in pharmacogenomics testing for functional polymorphisms of drug-metabolizing enzymes. Gene/drug pairs and barriers perceived in Spain
The development of clinica lpractice recommendations or
guidelines for the clinical use of biomarkers is an issue of great importance withr regard to adverse drug reactions.The poten-tial of pharmacogenomicbiomarkers has been extensively investigated in recent years.However,several barriers to implementing the use of pharmacogenomics testing exist.We conducted a survey among members of the Spanish Societies of Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacology to obtain information about the perception of such barriers and to compare the perceptions of participants about the relative importance of majorgene/drug pairs.Of 11 potential barriers,the highest importance was attributed to lack of institutional support for pharmacogenomic stesting,and to the issues related to the lack of guidelines.Of the proposed gene/drug pairs the highest importance was assigned to HLA-B/abacavir, UGT1A1/irinotecan, and CYP2D6/tamoxifen.In this perspective article,we compare the relative importance of 29 gene/drugpairs in the Spanish study with that of the same pairs in the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutic sstudy,and we provide suggestions and areas of focus to develop a guide for clinical practice in pharmacogenomics testingThe work in the authorâs laboratory is financed by Grants
PS09/00943, PS09/00469, RETICS RIRAAF RD07/0064/0016,
and CIBERehd from Instituto de Salud CarlosIII,Madrid,
Spain, and by Grants GR10068 from Junta de Extremadura,
Spain. Financed in part with FEDER funds from the European
Unio
Association of self-reported and device-measured sedentary behaviour and physical activity with health-related quality of life among european older adults
Human movement behaviours such as physical activity (PA) and sedentary behaviour (SB) during waking time have a significant impact on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in older adults. In this study, we aimed to analyse the association between self-reported and device-measured SB and PA with HRQoL in a cohort of community-dwelling older adults from four European countries. A subsample of 1193 participants from the SITLESS trial (61% women and 75.1 ± 6.2 years old) were included in the analysis. The association between self-reported and objective measures of SB and PA with HRQoL were quantified using Spearmanâs Rho coefficients. The strength of the associations between self-reported and device-measured PA and SB with self-rated HRQoL (mental composite score, MCS; physical composite score, PCS) were assessed through multivariate multiple regression analysis. Self-reported and device-measured PA and SB levels showed significant but poor associations with PCS (p < 0.05). The association with MCS was only significant but poor with self-reported light PA (LPA) and moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA). In conclusion, the findings of this study suggest that both self-reported and device-measured PA of all intensities were positively and significantly associated, while SB was negatively and significantly associated with the PCS of the SF-12. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland
Nominal anchoring: Specificity, definiteness and article systems across languages
The papers in this volume address to different degrees issues on the relationship of articles systems and the pragmatic notions of definiteness and specificity in typologically diverse languages: Vietnamese, Siwi (Berber), Russian, Mopan (Mayan), Persian, Danish and Swedish. The main questions that motivate this volume are:
How do languages with and without an article system go about helping the hearer to recognize whether a given noun phrase should be interpreted as definite, specific or non-specific?
Is there clear-cut semantic definiteness without articles or do we find systematic ambiguity regarding the interpretation of bare noun phrases?
If there is ambiguity, can we still posit one reading as the default?
What exactly do articles in languages encode that are not analyzed as straightforwardly coding (in)definiteness?
Do we find linguistic tools in these languages that are similar to those found in languages without articles?
Most contributions report on research on different corpora and elicited data or present the outcome of various experimental studies. One paper presents a diachronic study of the emergence of article systems. On the issue of how languages with and without articles guide the hearer to the conclusion that a given noun phrase should be interpreted as definite, specific or non-specific, the studies in this paper argue for similar strategies. The languages investigated in this volume use constructions and linguistic tools that receive a final interpretation based on discourse prominence considerations and various aspects of the syntax-semantics interface. In case of ambiguity between these readings, the default interpretation is given by factors (e. g., familiarity, uniqueness) that are known to contribute to the salience of phrases, but may be overridden by discourse prominence. Articles that do not straightforwardly mark (in)definiteness encode different kinds of specificity. In the languages studied in this volume, whether they have articles or do not have an article system, we find similar factors and linguistic tools in the calculation process of interpretations. The volume contains revised selected papers from the workshop entitled Specificity, definiteness and article systems across languages held at the 40th Annual Conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS), 7-9 March, 2018 at the University of Stuttgart
Nominal anchoring: Specificity, definiteness and article systems across languages
The papers in this volume address to different degrees issues on the relationship of articles systems and the pragmatic notions of definiteness and specificity in typologically diverse languages: Vietnamese, Siwi (Berber), Russian, Mopan (Mayan), Persian, Danish and Swedish. The main questions that motivate this volume are:
How do languages with and without an article system go about helping the hearer to recognize whether a given noun phrase should be interpreted as definite, specific or non-specific?
Is there clear-cut semantic definiteness without articles or do we find systematic ambiguity regarding the interpretation of bare noun phrases?
If there is ambiguity, can we still posit one reading as the default?
What exactly do articles in languages encode that are not analyzed as straightforwardly coding (in)definiteness?
Do we find linguistic tools in these languages that are similar to those found in languages without articles?
Most contributions report on research on different corpora and elicited data or present the outcome of various experimental studies. One paper presents a diachronic study of the emergence of article systems. On the issue of how languages with and without articles guide the hearer to the conclusion that a given noun phrase should be interpreted as definite, specific or non-specific, the studies in this paper argue for similar strategies. The languages investigated in this volume use constructions and linguistic tools that receive a final interpretation based on discourse prominence considerations and various aspects of the syntax-semantics interface. In case of ambiguity between these readings, the default interpretation is given by factors (e. g., familiarity, uniqueness) that are known to contribute to the salience of phrases, but may be overridden by discourse prominence. Articles that do not straightforwardly mark (in)definiteness encode different kinds of specificity. In the languages studied in this volume, whether they have articles or do not have an article system, we find similar factors and linguistic tools in the calculation process of interpretations. The volume contains revised selected papers from the workshop entitled Specificity, definiteness and article systems across languages held at the 40th Annual Conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS), 7-9 March, 2018 at the University of Stuttgart
Nominal anchoring: Specificity, definiteness and article systems across languages
The papers in this volume address to different degrees issues on the relationship of articles systems and the pragmatic notions of definiteness and specificity in typologically diverse languages: Vietnamese, Siwi (Berber), Russian, Mopan (Mayan), Persian, Danish and Swedish. The main questions that motivate this volume are:
How do languages with and without an article system go about helping the hearer to recognize whether a given noun phrase should be interpreted as definite, specific or non-specific?
Is there clear-cut semantic definiteness without articles or do we find systematic ambiguity regarding the interpretation of bare noun phrases?
If there is ambiguity, can we still posit one reading as the default?
What exactly do articles in languages encode that are not analyzed as straightforwardly coding (in)definiteness?
Do we find linguistic tools in these languages that are similar to those found in languages without articles?
Most contributions report on research on different corpora and elicited data or present the outcome of various experimental studies. One paper presents a diachronic study of the emergence of article systems. On the issue of how languages with and without articles guide the hearer to the conclusion that a given noun phrase should be interpreted as definite, specific or non-specific, the studies in this paper argue for similar strategies. The languages investigated in this volume use constructions and linguistic tools that receive a final interpretation based on discourse prominence considerations and various aspects of the syntax-semantics interface. In case of ambiguity between these readings, the default interpretation is given by factors (e. g., familiarity, uniqueness) that are known to contribute to the salience of phrases, but may be overridden by discourse prominence. Articles that do not straightforwardly mark (in)definiteness encode different kinds of specificity. In the languages studied in this volume, whether they have articles or do not have an article system, we find similar factors and linguistic tools in the calculation process of interpretations. The volume contains revised selected papers from the workshop entitled Specificity, definiteness and article systems across languages held at the 40th Annual Conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS), 7-9 March, 2018 at the University of Stuttgart
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