Different in Vivo Reactivity Profile in Health Care Workers and Patients with Spina Bifida to Internal and External Latex Glove Surface-Derived Allergen Extracts

BACKGROUND: Allergy to natural rubber latex is a well-recognized health problem, especially among health care workers and patients with spina bifida. Despite latex sensitization being acquired in health institutions in both health care workers and patients with spina bifida, differences in allergen sensitization profiles have been described between these two risk groups. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the in vivo reactivity of health care workers and patients with spina bifida to extracts of internal and external surfaces of latex gloves and also to specific extracts enriched in major allergens for these risk groups. METHODS: Gloves from different manufacturers were used for protein extraction, and salt precipitation and hydrophobic interaction chromatography (HIC) were applied to obtain the enriched latex extracts. The major latex allergens were quantified by an enzyme immunoassay. The extracts obtained were tested in 14 volunteers using skin prick tests (SPT). RESULTS: Latex glove extracts enriched in the hydrophobic allergens that are most often seen in patients with spina bifida were obtained by selective precipitation, whereas HIC produced extracts enriched in the hydrophilic allergens commonly found in health care workers. The health care workers had positive SPTs to glove extracts from internal surfaces and to the hydrophilic allergen-enriched extracts. By contrast, patients with spina bifida had larger skin reactions both to external glove extracts and to the extracts enriched with the hydrophobic major allergens for this risk group. Despite the protein concentration of these extracts being less than half the concentration of the commercial extract, the weal-and-flare reactions were of similar magnitude. CONCLUSION: Using novel latex extracts, our study showed a different in vivo reactivity pattern in health care workers and in patients with spina bifida to extracts of the internal and external surfaces of gloves, which suggests that sensitization may occur by different routes of exposure, and that this influences the allergen reactivity profiles of these risk group

Conscious mobility for urban spaces: case studies review and indicator framework design

A lack of data collection on conscious mobility behaviors has been identified in current sustainable and smart mobility planning, development and implementation strategies. This leads to technocentric solutions that do not place people and their behavior at the center of new mobility solutions in urban centers around the globe. This paper introduces the concept of conscious mobility to link techno-economic analyses with user awareness on the impact of their travel decisions on other people, local urban infrastructure and the environment through systematic big data collection. A preliminary conscious mobility indicator framework is presented to leverage behavioral considerations to enhance urban-community mobility systems. Key factors for conscious mobility analysis have been derived from five case studies. The sample offers regional diversity (i.e., local, regional and the global urban contexts), as well as different goals in the transformation of conventional urban transport systems, from improving public transport efficiency and equipment electrification to mitigate pollution and climate risks, to focusing on equity, access and people safety. The case studies selected provide useful metrics on the adoption of cleaner, smarter, safer and more autonomous mobility technologies, along with novel people-centric program designs to build an initial set of conscious mobility indicators frameworks. The parameters were applied to the city of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon in Mexico focusing on the needs of the communities that work, study and live around the local urban campus of the Tecnologico de Monterrey’s Distrito Tec. This case study, served as an example of how conscious mobility indicators could be applied and customized to a community and region of interest. This paper introduces the first application of the conscious mobility framework for urban communities’ mobility system analysis. This more holistic assessment approach includes dimensions such as society and culture, infrastructure and urban spaces, technology, government, normativity, economy and politics, and the environment. The expectation is that the conscious mobility framework of analysis will become a useful tool for smarter and sustainable urban and mobility problem solving and decision making to enhance the quality of life all living in urban communities

Hardware-in-the-loop Testing of On-Off Controllers in Semi-Active Suspension Systems

International audienceThis paper presents an experimental validation of a proposed Frequency Estimation-Based (FEB) controller for semi-active suspensions by using a Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) platform of a Quarter of Vehicle (QoV) model. The FEB approach is compared with three commercial On-Off controllers that have shown good results in comfort and road holding: Sky-Hook (SH), Groud-Hook (GH) and Mix-1-sensor (M1S). The comparison was done under the same experimental tests; the standards ISO-2631 and BS-6841 are used to evaluate the comfort and the Root Mean Square (RMS) index to quantify the road holding. The QoV model belongs to a front-left corner of a pick-up truck; the used experimental Magneto-Rheological (MR) damper is not symmetric and only hast 2 manipulation states. Experimental results show that the FEB controller has the best comfort performance at low frequencies (outperforms the benchmark controllers at 11.2%); while, for road holding, the improvement is slight; however, FEB controller works better for both goals simultaneously. By analyzing the suspension deflection, the FEB controller reduces up to 32.8% of motion respect to the GH controller. Additionally, the manipulation of the SH and GH controllers have several changes of actuation that do not allow the stabilization of the force in its desirable value; while FEB controller has a soft actuation defined on bandwidths

Cytochrome P450 from Plants: Platforms for Valuable Phytopharmaceuticals

Cytochrome P450 enzymes are important for biotechnology due to their capacity to modify diverse secondary metabolites that may produce chemicals with pharmacological properties. Most terpenes, flavonoids and alkaloids require P450 catalytic functions to reach their biological activity. In the last ten years, several efforts have focused on the expression and production of these three main types of secondary metabolites in engineered microorganisms and plants using P450 of ethnobotanical origin. Despite this, several P450 coding sequences from plant sources are discovered yearly but only a few have been screened by functional genomics. Amongst them, only a few have shown potentials for use in sustainable production of novel drugs and highly valuable products. Cytochrome P450 involvement in the biosynthesis of these products is discussed in this work.Keywords: Biotechnological platforms, Cytochrome P450, Phytopharmaceuticals, Yield improvement, Terpenes, Flavonoids, Alkaloids, Microbial expressio

Analytical design and optimization of an automotive rubber bushing

The ride comfort, driving safety, and handling of the vehicle should be designed and tuned to achieve the expectations defined in the company's design. The ideal method of tuning the characteristics of the vehicle is to modify the bushings and mounts used in the chassis system. To deal with the noise, vibration and harshness on automobiles, elastomeric materials in mounts and bushings are determinant in the automotive components design, particularly those related to the suspension system. For most designs, stiffness is a key design parameter. Determination of stiffness is often necessary in order to ensure that excessive forces or deflections do not occur. Many companies use trial and error method to meet the requirements of stiffness curves. Optimization algorithms are an effective solution to this type of design problems. This paper presents a simulation-based methodology to design an automotive bushing with specific characteristic curves. Using an optimum design formulation, a mathematical model is proposed to design and then optimize structural parameters using a genetic algorithm. To validate the resulting data, a finite element analysis (FEA) is carried out with the optimized values. At the end, results between optimization, FEA, and characteristic curves are compared and discussed to establish the correlation among them

Aptitud clínica del médico familiar ante la atención primaria de depresión en embarazadas

Introducción: La depresión es un trastorno que ocurre mayormente en mujeres, esto aunado con la experiencia del embarazo, produce un grado elevado de estrés y compete al primer contacto de la embarazada detectar padecimientos que conformen un riesgo para la gestante.Objetivo: Determinar el nivel de aptitud clínica del médico familiar ante el diagnóstico de depresión en embarazadas en el primer nivel de atención en la UMF 1 en Cd Obregón, Sonora.Materiales y métodos: Estudio observacional, transversal analítico, con la participación de 28 médicos familiares, a quienes se les aplicó un instrumento de evaluación de aptitud clínica de depresión en el embarazo, que tiene confiabilidad a través de la fórmula Kuder-Richardson de 0.78, consta de 4 casos clínico, 138 reactivos en total y valora diversos indicadores.Resultados: De los 28 médicos participantes 4 (14.28%) tuvieron nivel de aptitud clínico alto, 23 (82.13%) tuvieron nivel regular, y 1 (3.5%) se encontró en nivel bajo. La asociación con el género obtuvo p=0.593, para la edad fue p=0.752 y el estado civil tuvo p=0.517.Conclusión: El nivel de aptitud clínica de los médicos familiares fue regular y no se encontraron asociaciones con las variables: género, edad o antigüedad

Fine-tuned convolutional neural nets for cardiac MRI acquisition plane recognition

This is an electronic version of an article published inComputer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering: Imaging & Visualizationon 13 August 2015, by Taylor & Francis, DOI: 10.1080/21681163.2015.1061448.Available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/21681163.2015.1061448.International audienceIn this paper, we propose a convolutional neural network-based method to automatically retrieve missing or noisy cardiac acquisition plane information from magnetic resonance imaging and predict the five most common cardiac views. We fine-tune a convolutional neural network (CNN) initially trained on a large natural image recognition data-set (Imagenet ILSVRC2012) and transfer the learnt feature representations to cardiac view recognition. We contrast this approach with a previously introduced method using classification forests and an augmented set of image miniatures, with prediction using off the shelf CNN features, and with CNNs learnt from scratch. We validate this algorithm on two different cardiac studies with 200 patients and 15 healthy volunteers, respectively. We show that there is value in fine-tuning a model trained for natural images to transfer it to medical images. Our approach achieves an average F1 score of 97.66% and significantly improves the state-of-the-art of image-based cardiac view recognition. This is an important building block to organise and filter large collections of cardiac data prior to further analysis. It allows us to merge studies from multiple centres, to perform smarter image filtering, to select the most appropriate image processing algorithm, and to enhance visualisation of cardiac data-sets in content-based image retrieval

The SARS-coronavirus-host interactome

Coronaviruses (CoVs) are important human and animal pathogens that induce fatal respiratory, gastrointestinal and neurological disease. The outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002/2003 has demonstrated human vulnerability to (Coronavirus) CoV epidemics. Neither vaccines nor therapeutics are available against human and animal CoVs. Knowledge of host cell proteins that take part in pivotal virus-host interactions could define broad-spectrum antiviral targets. In this study, we used a systems biology approach employing a genome-wide yeast-two hybrid interaction screen to identify immunopilins (PPIA, PPIB, PPIH, PPIG, FKBP1A, FKBP1B) as interaction partners of the CoV non-structural protein 1 (Nsp1). These molecules modulate the Calcineurin/NFAT pathway that plays an important role in immune cell activation. Overexpression of NSP1 and infection with live SARS-CoV strongly increased signalling through the Calcineurin/NFAT pathway and enhanced the induction of interleukin 2, compatible with late-stage immunopathogenicity and long-term cytokine dysregulation as observed in severe SARS cases. Conversely, inhibition of cyclophilins by cyclosporine A (CspA) blocked the replication of CoVs of all genera, including SARS-CoV, human CoV-229E and -NL-63, feline CoV, as well as avian infectious bronchitis virus. Non-immunosuppressive derivatives of CspA might serve as broad-range CoV inhibitors applicable against emerging CoVs as well as ubiquitous pathogens of humans and livestock

Humedales para el tratamiento de aguas residuales y mitigación de la contaminación al agua

La comunidad de Zacoalco de Torres presenta una problemática de contaminación por agua residual, la cual se mezcla con el agua que fluye de un arroyo que desemboca en la Laguna de Sayula ocasionando un impacto negativo en el sistema hidrológico y aquellos que se relacionan con él. El presente proyecto “Humedales para el tratamiento de aguas residuales y mitigación de la contaminación al agua”, busca solucionar esta problemática mediante la implementación de un sistema de tratamiento de agua residual alternativo por medio de un modelo de humedales artificiales. Se colaboró directamente con la administración de alcantarillado y agua potable del municipio, con quienes se presentó la propuesta y se atendió la solicitud de realizar estudios al agua residual con el fin de obtener de los parámetros necesarios para proceder con la elaboración de las estimaciones del diseño. Además, se realizó una profunda investigación para determinar el diseño óptimo para aplicar en el área en cuestión, que tomó en cuenta otras experiencias, información contenida en fuentes bibliográficas reconocidas y consultas con expertos en la materia.ITESO, A.C