Local Food Impacts on Health and Nutrition

Prevalence of local foods is believed to answer several food issues one of which is health and nutrition. This study focused on the on the availability of local foods to consumers and see its relationship with two specific diet-related diseases namely, obesity and diabetes. Other variables were included in the analysis to provide additional evidence to previous findings. Factors considered are divided into 5 groups namely diet-, local food-, environment-, education- and gender-related factors. Diet- and environment-related variables provide the most perceptive findings while local food variables provided significant however weak evidence of positive impacts to health and nutrition.local foods, diabetes, obesity, food environment, farmers' market, Agricultural and Food Policy, Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Health Economics and Policy, I15, I31,

El desarrollo de actividades físicas en el medio ambiente por los profesionales de la Cultura Física

This article aims to reflect on environmental problems, in addition to how they affect the quality of life of the human being and propose to the Physical Culture professional the necessary elements that allow them to develop physical activities to mitigate the effects that they may bring to the health of participants current environmental conditions. In the development of the research, research methods and techniques were used such as: the interview, the review of documents among others that allowed determining the elements necessary for the preparation of the proposal.Este artículo tiene como objetivo reflexionar sobre los problemas medio ambientales, además de cómo afectan la calidad de vida del ser humano y proponer al profesional de la Cultura Física elementos necesarios que le permitan desarrollar actividades físicas para mitigar las afectaciones que puedan traer a la salud de los participantes las actuales condiciones medioambientales. En el desarrollo de la investigación se utilizaron métodos y técnicas de investigación tales como: la entrevista, la revisión de documentos entre otros que permitieron determinar los elementos necesarios para la elaboración de la propuesta

Reflections on the future of the modern constitutional state

Este texto apresenta reflexões sobre o Estado Constitucional Moderno, seu presente e o futuro na Sociedade contemporânea, com o intuito de estimular os leitores a reflexões criticamente responsáveis e voltadas à predição mais do que à previsão, ou seja, focadas, predominantemente, na sequência em função de propostas de tendências e não de especulações.This text presents reflections on the Modern Constitutional State, its present and the future of the Contemporary Society, stimulating the readers to responsible reflections more related to prediction than prevision, in other words, mainly focused on trends proposals and not speculations

Analysis of Nonviscous Oscillators Based on the Damping Model Perturbation

[EN] A novel numerical approach to compute the eigenvalues of linear viscoelastic oscillators is developed.The dissipative forces of these systems are characterized by convolution integrals with kernel functions, which in turn contain a set of damping parameters. The free-motion characteristic equation defines implicitly the eigenvalues as functions of such parameters. After choosing one of them as independent variable, the key idea of the current paper is to obtain a differential equation whose solution can be considered, under certain conditions, a good approximation. The method is validated with several numerical examples related to damping models based on exponential kernels, on fractional derivatives, and on the well-known viscous model. Taylor series expansions up to the second order are obtained and in addition analytical solutions for the viscous model are achieved. The numerical results are very close to the exact ones for light and medium levels of damping and also very good for high levels if the chosen parameter is close to initial values that are defined for every caseLázaro, M.; Casanova, CF.; Ferrer Ballester, I.; Martín Concepcion, PE. (2016). Analysis of Nonviscous Oscillators Based on the Damping Model Perturbation. Shock and Vibration. 2016:1-19. doi:10.1155/2016/9634103S119201

Paulo Freire: the act of reading as a decolonizing process

This papers aims to make a critical inter- pretation of Paulo Freire literacy proposal and contrast it with the theoretical gui- delines of decolonial thought. To achieve this end, the presentation is divided into three central aspects: the first part presents the humanistic characteristics that the act of reading possesses in Freire’s pedagogical thought; secondly, it points out the importance of the word, as a means of meeting individuals with them- selves and with others, in this process the students discover that the word is part of their reality, of their cultural heritage and, as such, has the power to lead them to li- berating dilological processes. Finally, the need to recognize the act of reading as a decolonizing process is pointed out, in the face of Eurocentric patterns and the monolithic logic of Western Modernity. In this sense, it is proposed to guide the act of reading as a process that strengthens the rational capacity of individuals, to lead to an epistemic, ontological and political decolonization.La presente disertación tiene como ob- jetivo realizar una interpretación crítica de la propuesta alfabetizadora de Paulo Freire y contrastarla con los lineamientos teóricos del pensamiento decolonial. Para lograr tal fin, la ponencia se divide en tres aspectos centrales: la primera parte, pre- senta las características humanísticas que posee el acto de leer en el pensamiento pedagógico de Freire; en segundo lugar, señala la importancia de la palabra, como medio de encuentro de los individuos consigo mismo y con los otros. En este proceso, los educandos descubren que la palabra forma parte de su realidad, de su acervo cultural y, como tal, tiene la fa- cultad de conducirles a procesos dilógicos liberadores. Finalmente, se señala la ne- cesidad de hacer reconocimiento al acto de leer como un proceso descolonizador, frente a los patrones eurocéntricos y la lógica monolítica de la Modernidad Occi- dental. En tal sentido, se propone orien- tar el acto de leer como un proceso que fortalezca la capacidad racional de los in- dividuos, para conducirles a una descolo- nización epistémica, ontológica y política

Reference Gene Validation for RT-qPCR in PBMCs from Asthmatic Patients with or without Obesity

Obesity is known to impair the efficacy of glucocorticoid medications for asthma control. Glucocorticoid-induced gene expression studies may be useful to discriminate those obese asthmatic patients who present a poor response to glucocorticoids. The expression of genes of interest is normalized with respect to reference genes (RGs). Ideally, RGs have a stable expression in different samples and are not affected by experimental conditions. The objective of this work was to analyze suitable RGs to study the role of glucocorticoid-induced genes in obese asthmatic patients in further research. The gene expression of eight potential RGs (GUSB, B2M, POLR2A, PPIA, ACTB, GAPDH, HPRT1, and TBP) was assessed with reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from asthmatic, obese asthmatic, and healthy individuals. Their stability was analyzed using four different algorithms-BestKeeper, ?Ct, geNorm, and NormFinder. geNorm analysis recommended the use of a minimum of three genes for normalization. Moreover, intergroup variation due to the treatment was calculated by NormFinder, which found that B2M was the gene that was least affected by different treatments. Comprehensive rankings indicated GUSB and HPRT1 as the best RGs for qPCR in PBMCs from healthy and asthmatic subjects, while B2M and PPIA were the best for obese asthmatic subjects. Finally, our results demonstrated that B2M and HPRT1 were the most stable RGs among all groups, whereas ACTB, TBP, and GAPDH were the worst shared ones

Grey matter reduction in the occipitotemporal cortex in Spanish children with dyslexia: A voxel-based morphometry study

Structural and functional neuroimaging studies have reported brain alterations in occipitotemporal, temporoparietal, and left frontal areas in dyslexic patients. These areas have been linked to reading skill impairments, due to their involvement in word recognition and processing. However, most of the patients in these studies were speakers of languages with a deep orthography. In this study, we used voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to investigate brain differences in grey matter volume associated with a transparent language in a sample of 25 native Spanish participants (13 dyslexic and 12 non-dyslexic children). Results revealed a volume reduction in the left occipitotemporal cortex and right cerebellum in dyslexics. Significantly, the reduction in occipitotemporal areas has been previously linked to reading in transparent languages. Our results support previous studies and are consistent with the idea that reading problems in languages with a shallow orthography are related to the ventral reading network