Reconstrucción paleoambiental de la Formación El Floral – Ciénaga de Oro a partir de una sección estratigráfica entre los municipios de Montería y Planeta Rica

La Formación El Floral – Ciénaga de Oro está compuesta por rocas sedimentarias como conglomerados, areniscas desde tamaño de grano muy finos a muy gruesos, lodolitas, carbones y calizas; acompañadas de estructuras sedimentarias, trazas y contenido fósil -- A partir del levantamiento de una sección estratigráfica, ubicada entre los municipios de Montería y Planeta Rica, se realiza el análisis de facies y la reconstrucción paleoambiental, interpretándose como una secuencia característica de ambientes transicionales, de deltas a marinos someros -- Entre los procesos que se cree que dominaron se encuentran: la avulsión del canal afectado por la variación del aporte de sedimentos y la disminución del caudal, permitiendo que procesos marinos actuaran sobre ambientes continentales -- La aparición de las mismas facies, a lo largo de la sección estratigráfica estudiada evidencia que la Formación El Floral – Ciénaga de Oro estuvo influenciada por la autociclicidad característica de los deltas y no por cambios relativos y eustáticos del nivel del mar, como ha sido propuesto anteriormente -- También a partir de la información recolectada, se determina que la Formación El Floral – Ciénaga de Oro se deposita en el intervalo de tiempo Oligoceno – Mioceno, en el cual se pudieron dar cambios climáticos reflejados en la aparición de minerales como yes

Unasur: la agenda de la integración sudamericana

En el presente informe analizaremos el recorrido de la UNASUR a lo largo del año 2013. En la primera parte del trabajo revisaremos la actividad del organismo a lo largo del período. En la segunda, repasaremos el tratamiento que se da a la participación ciudadana en la organización y finalizaremos con una breve conclusión que sirva de balance de la actividad del organismo, para avanzar luego con el análisis de los Consejos de la Unasur.Instituto de Relaciones Internacionale

Clima y salud en la Argentina: diagnóstico de situación 2018

Fil: Domínguez, Diana Analía. Servicio Meteorológico Nacional. Dirección Nacional de Ciencia e Innovación en Productos y Servicios. Dirección Central de Monitoreo del Clima; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Ciencias de la Atmósfera y los Océanos; Argentina.El presente diagnóstico de situación sobre Clima y Salud en Argentina fue realizado por la Mesa de Trabajo sobre Cambio Climático de la Secretaría de Gobierno de Salud. Se realizó un estudio de tipo descriptivo, en el cual se presenta por un lado el comportamiento de las variables meteorológicas y por otro, algunos eventos seleccionados en salud. Asimismo, se desarrolla el estado del conocimiento sobre la relación entre el clima y la salud en Argentina en el período comprendido entre los años 2005 y 2017. La descripción climática fue realizada por el Departamento de Climatología del Servicio Meteorológico Nacional (SMN). Las estadísticas se basan en valores medios (promedio) del periodo 1981-2010. Los efectos del clima sobre la salud humana fueron estudiados a partir de su clasificación en efectos directos e indirectos, entendiendo como efectos directos aquellos ocurridos a raíz de la ocurrencia de eventos meteorológicos extremos tales como olas de frío y calor, inundaciones, sequías y vientos fuertes. Para el análisis de estos eventos se realizó el análisis de la frecuencia y distribución espacial de los eventos extremos para el período 2005-2017. Para el estudio de las patologías sensible al clima se priorizaron las patologías más relevantes para ser descriptas en base a la evidencia científica. Se realizó una descripción de la evolución temporal de los casos entre 2005 y 2017, a partir de los datos obtenidos de la vigilancia clínica (a través del módulo C2 del SNVS). Por último se presentan las tendencias y retos que afrontará el sistema sanitario debido al cambio climático

Treatment with tocilizumab or corticosteroids for COVID-19 patients with hyperinflammatory state: a multicentre cohort study (SAM-COVID-19)

Objectives: The objective of this study was to estimate the association between tocilizumab or corticosteroids and the risk of intubation or death in patients with coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) with a hyperinflammatory state according to clinical and laboratory parameters. Methods: A cohort study was performed in 60 Spanish hospitals including 778 patients with COVID-19 and clinical and laboratory data indicative of a hyperinflammatory state. Treatment was mainly with tocilizumab, an intermediate-high dose of corticosteroids (IHDC), a pulse dose of corticosteroids (PDC), combination therapy, or no treatment. Primary outcome was intubation or death; follow-up was 21 days. Propensity score-adjusted estimations using Cox regression (logistic regression if needed) were calculated. Propensity scores were used as confounders, matching variables and for the inverse probability of treatment weights (IPTWs). Results: In all, 88, 117, 78 and 151 patients treated with tocilizumab, IHDC, PDC, and combination therapy, respectively, were compared with 344 untreated patients. The primary endpoint occurred in 10 (11.4%), 27 (23.1%), 12 (15.4%), 40 (25.6%) and 69 (21.1%), respectively. The IPTW-based hazard ratios (odds ratio for combination therapy) for the primary endpoint were 0.32 (95%CI 0.22-0.47; p < 0.001) for tocilizumab, 0.82 (0.71-1.30; p 0.82) for IHDC, 0.61 (0.43-0.86; p 0.006) for PDC, and 1.17 (0.86-1.58; p 0.30) for combination therapy. Other applications of the propensity score provided similar results, but were not significant for PDC. Tocilizumab was also associated with lower hazard of death alone in IPTW analysis (0.07; 0.02-0.17; p < 0.001). Conclusions: Tocilizumab might be useful in COVID-19 patients with a hyperinflammatory state and should be prioritized for randomized trials in this situatio

Gestión del conocimiento: perspectiva multidisciplinaria. Volumen 12

El libro “Gestión del Conocimiento. Perspectiva Multidisciplinaria”, Volumen 12, de la Colección Unión Global, es resultado de investigaciones. Los capítulos del libro, son resultados de investigaciones desarrolladas por sus autores. El libro cuenta con el apoyo de los grupos de investigación: Universidad Sur del Lago “Jesús María Semprúm” (UNESUR), Zulia – Venezuela; Universidad Politécnica Territorial de Falcón Alonso Gamero (UPTAG), Falcón – Venezuela; Universidad Politécnica Territorial de Mérida Kleber Ramírez (UPTM), Mérida – Venezuela; Universidad Guanajuato (UG) - Campus Celaya - Salvatierra - Cuerpo Académico de Biodesarrollo y Bioeconomía en las Organizaciones y Políticas Públicas (C.A.B.B.O.P.P), Guanajuato – México; Centro de Altos Estudios de Venezuela (CEALEVE), Zulia – Venezuela, Centro Integral de Formación Educativa Especializada del Sur (CIFE - SUR) - Zulia - Venezuela, Centro de Investigaciones Internacionales SAS (CIN), Antioquia - Colombia.y diferentes grupos de investigación del ámbito nacional e internacional que hoy se unen para estrechar vínculos investigativos, para que sus aportes científicos formen parte de los libros que se publiquen en formatos digital e impreso

Multiancestry analysis of the HLA locus in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases uncovers a shared adaptive immune response mediated by HLA-DRB1*04 subtypes

Across multiancestry groups, we analyzed Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) associations in over 176,000 individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) versus controls. We demonstrate that the two diseases share the same protective association at the HLA locus. HLA-specific fine-mapping showed that hierarchical protective effects of HLA-DRB1*04 subtypes best accounted for the association, strongest with HLA-DRB1*04:04 and HLA-DRB1*04:07, and intermediary with HLA-DRB1*04:01 and HLA-DRB1*04:03. The same signal was associated with decreased neurofibrillary tangles in postmortem brains and was associated with reduced tau levels in cerebrospinal fluid and to a lower extent with increased Aβ42. Protective HLA-DRB1*04 subtypes strongly bound the aggregation-prone tau PHF6 sequence, however only when acetylated at a lysine (K311), a common posttranslational modification central to tau aggregation. An HLA-DRB1*04-mediated adaptive immune response decreases PD and AD risks, potentially by acting against tau, offering the possibility of therapeutic avenues

Stroke genetics informs drug discovery and risk prediction across ancestries

Previous genome-wide association studies (GWASs) of stroke — the second leading cause of death worldwide — were conducted predominantly in populations of European ancestry1,2. Here, in cross-ancestry GWAS meta-analyses of 110,182 patients who have had a stroke (five ancestries, 33% non-European) and 1,503,898 control individuals, we identify association signals for stroke and its subtypes at 89 (61 new) independent loci: 60 in primary inverse-variance-weighted analyses and 29 in secondary meta-regression and multitrait analyses. On the basis of internal cross-ancestry validation and an independent follow-up in 89,084 additional cases of stroke (30% non-European) and 1,013,843 control individuals, 87% of the primary stroke risk loci and 60% of the secondary stroke risk loci were replicated (P < 0.05). Effect sizes were highly correlated across ancestries. Cross-ancestry fine-mapping, in silico mutagenesis analysis3, and transcriptome-wide and proteome-wide association analyses revealed putative causal genes (such as SH3PXD2A and FURIN) and variants (such as at GRK5 and NOS3). Using a three-pronged approach4, we provide genetic evidence for putative drug effects, highlighting F11, KLKB1, PROC, GP1BA, LAMC2 and VCAM1 as possible targets, with drugs already under investigation for stroke for F11 and PROC. A polygenic score integrating cross-ancestry and ancestry-specific stroke GWASs with vascular-risk factor GWASs (integrative polygenic scores) strongly predicted ischaemic stroke in populations of European, East Asian and African ancestry5. Stroke genetic risk scores were predictive of ischaemic stroke independent of clinical risk factors in 52,600 clinical-trial participants with cardiometabolic disease. Our results provide insights to inform biology, reveal potential drug targets and derive genetic risk prediction tools across ancestries

DenseNeXt-MD : a volumetric neural network for brain tumor segmentation

"La segmentación de lesiones cerebrales es una aplicación crítica de visión por computador para el análisis de imágenes biomédicas. La dificultad del problema se encuentra en la gran variación entre instancias y el alto costo computacional del procesamiento de datos tridimensionales. En este documento presentamos DenseNext-MD, una red neuronal para la segmentación semántica de tumores cerebrales que analiza sus estructuras internas y es capaz de procesar datos volumétricos a partir de múltiples modalidades de MRI simultáneamente. De esta manera, el método es capaz de aprender a partir de una cantidad pequeña de datos de entrenamiento. Expandimos los métodos de vanguardia ResNeXt [1] y DenseNet [2] para procesar información tridimensional y combinarlos en un nuevo bloque denominado DenseNext. Presentamos una arquitectura que consta de cuatro bloques DenseNext que analiza parches de múltiples modalidades de MRI, utilizando al final las capas totalmente conectadas para combinar la información y obtener una segmentación semántica del tumor cerebral." -- Tomado del Formato de Documento de Grado."Brain lesion segmentation is a critical application of computer vision to biomedical image analysis. The difficulty is derived from the great variance between instances, and the high computational cost of processing three-dimensional data. We introduce DenseNext-MD, a neural network for brain tumor semantic segmentation that parses their internal structures and is capable of processing volumetric data from multiple MRI modalities simultaneously. As a result, the method is able to learn from small training datasets. We expand the state-of-the-art methods ResNeXt [1] and DenseNet [2] to process three-dimensional information, and combine them in a new DenseNext block. We introduce an architecture with a pathway consisting of four DenseNext Blocks that analyzes patches from multiple MRI modalities, using at the end fully-connected layers to combine the information and obtain a semantic segmentation of the brain tumor." -- Tomado del Formato de Documento de Grado.Magíster en Ingeniería BiomédicaMaestrí

Lung Nodule Malignancy Prediction in Sequential CT Scans: Summary of ISBI 2018 Challenge

Lung cancer is by far the leading cause of cancer death in the US. Recent studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of screening using low dose CT (LDCT) in reducing lung cancer related mortality. While lung nodules are detected with a high rate of sensitivity, this exam has a low specificity rate and it is still difficult to separate benign and malignant lesions. The ISBI 2018 Lung Nodule Malignancy Prediction Challenge, developed by a team from the Quantitative Imaging Network of the National Cancer Institute, was focused on the prediction of lung nodule malignancy from two sequential LDCT screening exams using automated (non-manual) algorithms. We curated a cohort of 100 subjects who participated in the National Lung Screening Trial and had established pathological diagnoses. Data from 30 subjects were randomly selected for training and the remaining was used for testing. Participants were evaluated based on the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of nodule-wise malignancy scores generated by their algorithms on the test set. The challenge had 17 participants, with 11 teams submitting reports with method description, mandated by the challenge rules. Participants used quantitative methods, resulting in a reporting test AUC ranging from 0.698 to 0.913. The top five contestants used deep learning approaches, reporting an AUC between 0.87 - 0.91. The team's predictor did not achieve significant differences from each other nor from a volume change estimate (p =.05 with Bonferroni-Holm's correction)

Recovery course of persistent posterior subretinal fluid after successful repair of rhegmatogenous retinal detachment

Purpose To investigate best corrected visual acuity (BCVA), subretinal fluid (SRF) absorption time or ellipsoid zone (EZ) restoration time and various variables in patients with persistent SRF after successful primary repair of rhegmatogenous retinal detachment (RRD). Methods This retrospective multicenter study allowed independent analysis of the healing pattern by two observers based on composite of serial cross-sectional macular optical coherence tomography (OCT) scans. Univariate and multivariate analyses were implemented. Results One hundred and three cases had persistent SRF after pars plana vitrectomy, scleral buckling, or pneumatic retinopexy. By univariate analysis, SRF resolution time correlated positively with the number of retinal breaks ( p < 0.001) and with increased myopia ( p = 0.011). Using multivariate analysis, final BCVA (log MAR) correlated positively with age, duration of RRD, initial BCVA (OR = 3.28; [95%CI = 1.44–7.47]; p = 0.015), and SRF resolution time (OR = 0.46 [95%CI 0.21–1.05]; p = 0.049). EZ restoration time was longer with increasing number of retinal tears (OR = 0.67; [95%CI 0.29–1.52]; p = 0.030), worse final BCVA, and presence of macula-off RRD (OR = 0.26; [95%CI 0.08–0.88]; p = 0.056). SRF resolution time correlated marginally with prone position. Conclusions Residual posterior SRF is more common in eyes with multiple breaks or in myopic eyes. Final BCVA is better in younger subjects and in eyes with shorter duration of RRD. Persistent SRF is a self-limited disorder with a mean resolution of 11.2 months with good visual prognosis improving from a mean baseline logMAR of 1.08 to 0.25 at one year