Fishing the Targets of Bioactive Compounds from Psidium guajava L. Leaves in the Context of Diabetes

Psidium guajava L. (guava) leaves have demonstrated their in vitro and in vivo effect against diabetes mellitus (DM). However, there is a lack of literature concerning the effect of the individual phenolic compounds present in the leaves in DM disease. The aim of the present work was to identify the individual compounds in Spanish guava leaves and their potential contribution to the observed anti-diabetic effect. Seventy-three phenolic compounds were identified from an 80% ethanol extract of guava leaves by high performance liquid chromatography coupled to electrospray ionization and quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry. The potential anti-diabetic activity of each compound was evaluated with the DIA-DB web server that uses a docking and molecular shape similarity approach. The DIA-DB web server revealed that aldose reductase was the target protein with heterogeneous affinity for compounds naringenin, avicularin, guaijaverin, quercetin, ellagic acid, morin, catechin and guavinoside C. Naringenin exhibited the highest number of interactions with target proteins dipeptidyl peptidase-4, hydroxysteroid 11-beta dehydrogenase 1, aldose reductase and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor. Compounds catechin, quercetin and naringenin displayed similarities with the known antidiabetic drug tolrestat. In conclusion, the computational workflow showed that guava leaves contain several compounds acting in the DM mechanism by interacting with specific DM protein targets.Spanish Government CTQ2017-87974-RSupercomputing infrastructure of Poznan Supercomputing CenterEuropean CommissionSpanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness - MCIN/AEI RTI2018-099835-A-I00Supercomputing infrastructure of the NLHPCSupercomputer center of UiT-the Arctic University of Norway ECM-0

Erizainaren rola giza immunoeskasiaren birusaren sexu bidezko transmisioaren prebentzioan

Giza Immunoeskasiaren Birusa (GIB) gorputzean sartzerakoan, abiadura azkarrean ugaldu eta immunitate sistemaren suntsidura progresiboa probokatzen duen erretrobirusa da. Bost bide ezberdinetatik transmiti badaiteke ere, egun sexu bidezko kutsatzea da ohikoena. Arazo honi aurre egiteko, osasun zerbitzuen presentzia indartzeko beharra eskatzen duten prebentzio estrategia berriak proposatu behar dira. HELBURUA: Lanaren helburu nagusia GIB birusaren sexu bidezko transmisioa prebenitzeko dauden neurri ezberdinak aztertzea izan da eta prebentzio horretan erizainak duen rola ezagutzea. METODOLOGIA: Gaiaren inguruan idatzitako literatura zientifikoaren errebisio narratiboa egin da. Horretarako bi fasetan burututako bilaketa bibliografikoa egin da: lehenean artikuluen bilaketa eta aukeraketa egin da; bigarrenean, berriz, horien ebaluazioa. EMAITZAK: Sexu bidez Transmititzen diren Infekzioak (STI) areagotu egin dira azken urteetan eta hartzen diren arriskuzko jarduera gehienak ezjakintasunaren ondorio dira. Dauden prebentzio neurriak populazio guztira heltzen ez direnez, teknologia berrien eta biomedikuntzan oinarritutako ikerketen aldeko apustua egin da arlo honetan. Erizaintzari dagokionez, erizainak hezteak duen garrantzia azpimarratzen da, gaixoari zainketa egokiak eman ahal izateko. Bestalde, eskolako erizainaren figura planteatzen da bizitzako lehen etapako osasun heziketaren erreferente gisa. EZTABAIDA: Errebisioan aztertutako artikuluek bat egiten dute prebentzio neurri bakar bat ez dela eraginkorra ondorioztatzean. Arriskuzko sexu jarduerak murrizten dituzten jarrera aldaketan oinarritutako esku-hartzeak eta antierretrobiralen bidezko tratamenduaren erabileraren arteko elkarketa, kontsidera daiteke etorkizuneko GIB birusaren sexu bidezko transmisioaren prebentzio neurri ezin hobea. ONDORIOAK: Kasuen areagotzeak biztanleriak duen gaiaren inguruko ezagutza urria edota arrisku hautemate eza bistan uzten du. Hori dela eta, heziketa eraginkor baten aldeko apustua egin beharko da, gainontzeko prebentzio neurriek ere heziketa baten beharra eskatzen baitute. Gizartea osasunean heztea erizainaren funtzio nagusietako bat den aldetik, erizainak GIB birusaren sexu bidezko transmisioaren prebentzioan duen rolean aldaketa bat planteatu beharko litzatekeela ikusten da

Consistent Phosphenes Generated by Electrical Microstimulation of the Visual Thalamus. An Experimental Approach for Thalamic Visual Neuroprostheses

Most work on visual prostheses has centered on developing retinal or cortical devices. However, when retinal implants are not feasible, neuroprostheses could be implanted in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) of the thalamus, the intermediate relay station of visual information from the retina to the visual cortex (V1). The objective of the present study was to determine the types of artificial stimuli that when delivered to the visual thalamus can generate reliable responses of the cortical neurons similar to those obtained when the eye perceives a visual image. Visual stimuli {Si} were presented to one eye of an experimental animal and both, the thalamic {RThi} and cortical responses {RV1i} to such stimuli were recorded. Electrical patterns {RThi*} resembling {RThi} were then injected into the visual thalamus to obtain cortical responses {RV1i*} similar to {RV1i}. Visually- and electrically generated V1 responses were compared. Results: During the course of this work we: (i) characterized the response of V1 neurons to visual stimuli according to response magnitude, duration, spiking rate, and the distribution of interspike intervals; (ii) experimentally tested the dependence of V1 responses on stimulation parameters such as intensity, frequency, duration, etc., and determined the ranges of these parameters generating the desired cortical activity; (iii) identified similarities between responses of V1 useful to compare the naturally and artificially generated neuronal activity of V1; and (iv) by modifying the stimulation parameters, we generated artificial V1 responses similar to those elicited by visual stimuli. Generation of predictable and consistent phosphenes by means of artificial stimulation of the LGN is important for the feasibility of visual prostheses. Here we proved that electrical stimuli to the LGN can generate V1 neural responses that resemble those elicited by natural visual stimuli

A low-cost tracking system for running race applications based on bluetooth low energy technology

Timing points used in running races and other competition events are generally based on radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology. Athletes’ times are calculated via passive RFID tags and reader kits. Specifically, the reader infrastructure needed is complex and requires the deployment of a mat or ramps which hide the receiver antennae under them. Moreover, with the employed tags, it is not possible to transmit additional and dynamic information such as pulse or oximetry monitoring, alarms, etc. In this paper we present a system based on two low complex schemes allowed in Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE): the non-connectable undirected advertisement process and a modified version of scannable undirected advertisement process using the new capabilities present in Bluetooth 5. After fully describing the system architecture, which allows full real-time position monitoring of the runners using mobile phones on the organizer side and BLE sensors on the participants’ side, we derive the mobility patterns of runners and capacity requirements, which are determinant for evaluating the performance of the proposed system. They have been obtained from the analysis of the real data measured in the last Barcelona Marathon. By means of simulations, we demonstrate that, even under disadvantageous conditions (50% error ratio), both schemes perform reliably and are able to detect the 100% of the participants in all the cases. The cell coverage of the system needs to be adjusted when non-connectable process is considered. Nevertheless, through simulation and experimental, we show that the proposed scheme based on the new events available in Bluetooth 5 is clearly the best implementation alternative for all the cases, no matter the coverage area and the runner speed. The proposal widely exceeds the detection requirements of the real scenario, surpassing the measured peaks of 20 sensors per second incoming in the coverage area, moving at speeds that range from 1.5 m/s to 6.25 m/s. The designed real test-bed shows that the scheme is able to detect 72 sensors below 600 ms, fulfilling comfortably the requirements determined for the intended application. The main disadvantage of this system would be that the sensors are active, but we have proved that its consumption can be so low (9.5 µA) that, with a typical button cell, the sensor battery life would be over 10, 000 h of use

Anti-Collision Adaptations of BLE Active Scanning for Dense IoT Tracking Applications

Bluetooth low energy (BLE) is one of most promising technologies to enable the Internet-of-Things (IoT) paradigm. The BLE neighbor discovery process (NDP) based on active scanning may be the core of multiple IoT applications in which a large and varying number of users/devices/tags must be detected in a short period of time. Minimizing the discovery latency and maximizing the number of devices that can be discovered in a limited time are challenging issues due to collisions between frames sent by advertisers and scanners. The mechanism for resolution of collisions between scanners has a great impact on the achieved performance, but backoff in NDP has been poorly studied so far. This paper includes a detailed analysis of backoff in NDP, identifies and studies the factors involved in the process, reveals the limitations and problems presented by the algorithm suggested by the specifications and proposes simple and practical adaptations on scanner functionality. They are easily compatible with the current definitions of the standard, which together with a new proposal for the backoff scheme, may significantly improve the discovery latencies and, thus, the probability of discovering a large number of devices in high density scenarios

Analytical and experimental performance evaluation of BLE neighbor discovery process including non-idealities of real chipsets

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate from a real perspective the performance of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) as a technology that enables fast and reliable discovery of a large number of users/devices in a short period of time. The BLE standard specifies a wide range of configurable parameter values that determine the discovery process and need to be set according to the particular application requirements. Many previous works have been addressed to investigate the discovery process through analytical and simulation models, according to the ideal specification of the standard. However, measurements show that additional scanning gaps appear in the scanning process, which reduce the discovery capabilities. These gaps have been identified in all of the analyzed devices and respond to both regular patterns and variable events associated with the decoding process. We have demonstrated that these non-idealities, which are not taken into account in other studies, have a severe impact on the discovery process performance. Extensive performance evaluation for a varying number of devices and feasible parameter combinations has been done by comparing simulations and experimental measurements. This work also includes a simple mathematical model that closely matches both the standard implementation and the different chipset peculiarities for any possible parameter value specified in the standard and for any number of simultaneous advertising devices under scanner coverage

Mikrotxipak arrainetan: atzo, gaur eta bihar

Microarrays have been designed among others, to study transcriptomic differences or differences in the mRNA that is being transcribed, between target organisms, tissues or cells. As result, the transcriptional mode of action of different stress factors are been widely studied in aquatic organisms. Thus, the principal aim of this manuscript, is to summarize fish microarray studies that reveal the mode of action of chemical substances typically found in aquatic environments, as well as, to point out microarray studies derived criticisms.; Mikrotxipak, besteak beste, itu organismo, ehun edo zelulen artean ematen diren transkriptoma mailako ezberdintasunak ikertzeko diseinatu dira. Emaitza gisa, faktore estresatzaile ezberdinen jokatzeko modua edo jarraibidea itsas organismoetan modu zabalean ikertzea lortu da. Horrela, lan honen helburu nagusiak, batetik, teleosteotan ingurune urtarretan ohikoak diren sustantzia kimikoen ekiteko modua aztertzen duten mikrotxipak laburbiltzea da; eta bestetik, mikrotxipen inguruan dauden kritikak azaltzea