Stated benefits from air quality improvement through urban afforestation in an arid city – A contingent valuation in Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico

Cities in drylands are expected to experience increasing challenges when it comes to air pollution. Currently, concentrations of particulate matter in these cities frequently reach dangerous levels. Urban afforestation represents an alternative to increase human health in arid cities via air-filtering and dry deposition. By simulating a non-existing market through a contingent valuation protocol, this study estimates the willingness to contribute monetarily to an urban afforestation scenario in Mexicali -an arid city located at the US-Mexico border. We estimate an average annual willingness to pay (WTP) of (2019) USD 88 per household. Variations in WTP are associated with the respondent's perception of air quality and the presence of respiratory symptoms in the respondent's household. The smallest WTP (USD 75) is reported by those perceiving poor air quality in their neighborhood and with no household members affected by respiratory symptoms. Respondents perceiving good air quality and with at least one household member facing respiratory symptoms report a WTP of USD 99. The highest WTP represents around 0.8 % of the annual household income. This WTP, when extrapolated to and aggregated over the total number of households in Mexicali, justifies the implementation of an urban afforestation program supplying 30 thousand tree seedlings annually

Facebook: una estrategia digital para desarrollar la producción y comprensión textual del género narrativo

Este proyecto se llevó a cabo en el colegio Nuevo Milenio ubicado en la comuna seis del Municipio de Soacha con los estudiantes de grado sexto, con los cuales se realizó una encuesta como base para iniciar la investigación acerca del uso de la lectura, escritura así como el desconocimiento del género narrativo, de esta manera poder realizar actividades acordes a los objetivos propuestos. De acuerdo con lo anterior se propone reconocer la importancia e implementación de estrategias con elementos tecnológicos para facilitar procesos de comunicación e interacciones del individuo, haciendo uso de herramientas virtuales incentivando la interacción social, cultural, informativa y por qué no, de diversión y oci

Rheumatoid arthritis: pathological mechanisms and modern pharmacologic therapies.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic systemic autoimmune disease that primarily affects the lining of the synovial joints and is associated with progressive disability, premature death, and socioeconomic burdens. A better understanding of how the pathological mechanisms drive the deterioration of RA progress in individuals is urgently required in order to develop therapies that will effectively treat patients at each stage of the disease progress. Here we dissect the etiology and pathology at specific stages: (i) triggering, (ii) maturation, (iii) targeting, and (iv) fulminant stage, concomitant with hyperplastic synovium, cartilage damage, bone erosion, and systemic consequences. Modern pharmacologic therapies (including conventional, biological, and novel potential small molecule disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs) remain the mainstay of RA treatment and there has been significant progress toward achieving disease remission without joint deformity. Despite this, a significant proportion of RA patients do not effectively respond to the current therapies and thus new drugs are urgently required. This review discusses recent advances of our  understanding of RA pathogenesis, disease modifying drugs, and provides perspectives on next generation therapeutics for RA

The Helicobacter pylori Genome Project : insights into H. pylori population structure from analysis of a worldwide collection of complete genomes

Helicobacter pylori, a dominant member of the gastric microbiota, shares co-evolutionary history with humans. This has led to the development of genetically distinct H. pylori subpopulations associated with the geographic origin of the host and with differential gastric disease risk. Here, we provide insights into H. pylori population structure as a part of the Helicobacter pylori Genome Project (HpGP), a multi-disciplinary initiative aimed at elucidating H. pylori pathogenesis and identifying new therapeutic targets. We collected 1011 well-characterized clinical strains from 50 countries and generated high-quality genome sequences. We analysed core genome diversity and population structure of the HpGP dataset and 255 worldwide reference genomes to outline the ancestral contribution to Eurasian, African, and American populations. We found evidence of substantial contribution of population hpNorthAsia and subpopulation hspUral in Northern European H. pylori. The genomes of H. pylori isolated from northern and southern Indigenous Americans differed in that bacteria isolated in northern Indigenous communities were more similar to North Asian H. pylori while the southern had higher relatedness to hpEastAsia. Notably, we also found a highly clonal yet geographically dispersed North American subpopulation, which is negative for the cag pathogenicity island, and present in 7% of sequenced US genomes. We expect the HpGP dataset and the corresponding strains to become a major asset for H. pylori genomics