Targeting nicotine addiction: the possibility of a therapeutic vaccine

Cigarette smoking is the primary cause of lung cancer, cardiovascular diseases, reproductive disorders, and delayed wound healing all over the world. The goals of smoking cessation are both to reduce health risks and to improve quality of life. The development of novel and more effective medications for smoking cessation is crucial in the treatment of nicotine dependence. Currently, first-line smoking cessation therapies include nicotine replacement products and bupropion. The partial nicotinic receptor agonist, varenicline, has recently been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for smoking cessation. Clonidine and nortriptyline have demonstrated some efficacy, but side effects may limit their use to second-line treatment products. Other therapeutic drugs that are under development include rimonabant, mecamylamine, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, and dopamine D3 receptor antagonists. Nicotine vaccines are among newer products seeking approval from the FDA. Antidrug vaccines are irreversible, provide protection over years and need booster injections far beyond the critical phase of acute withdrawal symptoms. Interacting with the drug in the blood rather than with a receptor in the brain, the vaccines are free of side effects due to central interaction. For drugs like nicotine, which interacts with different types of receptors in many organs, this is a further advantage. Three anti-nicotine vaccines are today in an advanced stage of clinical evaluation. Results show that the efficiency of the vaccines is directly related to the antibody levels, a fact which will help to optimize the vaccine effect. The vaccines are expected to appear on the market between 2011 and 2012

GiGAn: evolutionary mutation testing for C++ object-oriented systems

The reduction of the expenses of mutation testing should be based on well-studied cost reduction techniques to avoid biased results. Evolutionary Mutation Testing (EMT) aims at generating a reduced set of mutants by means of an evolutionary algorithm, which searches for potentially equivalent and difficult to kill mutants to help improve the test suite. However, there is little evidence of its applicability to other contexts beyond WS-BPEL compositions. This study explores its performance when applied to C++ object-oriented programs thanks to a newly developed system, GiGAn. The conducted experiments reveal that EMT shows stable behavior in all the case studies, where the best results are obtained when a low percentage of the mutants is generated. They also support previous studies of EMT when compared to random mutant selection, reinforcing its use for the goal of improving the fault detection capability of the test suite

Class mutation operators for C++ object-oriented systems

Mutation testing is a fault injection testing technique around which a great variety of studies and tools for different programming languages have been developed. Nevertheless, the mutation testing research with respect to C++ is pending. This paper proposes a set of class mutation operators related to this language and its particular object-oriented (OO) features. In addition, an implementation technique to apply mutation testing based on the traversal of the abstract syntax tree (AST) is presented. Finally, an experiment is conducted to study the operator behaviour with different C++ programs, suggesting their usefulness in the creation of complete test suites. The analysis includes a Web service (WS) library, one of the domains where this technique can prove useful, considering its challenging testing phase and that C++ is still a reference language for critical distributed systems WS

Phenotypic diploidization in plant functional traits uncovered by synthetic neopolyploids in Dianthus broteri

Whole-genome duplication and post-polyploidization genome downsizing play key roles in the evolution of land plants; however, the impact of genomic diploidization on functional traits still remains poorly understood. Using Dianthus broteri as a model, we compared the ecophysiological behaviour of colchicine-induced neotetraploids (4xNeo) to diploids (2x) and naturally occurring tetraploids (4xNat). Leaf gas-exchange and chlorophyll fluorescence analyses were performed in order to asses to what extent post-polyploidization evolutionary processes have affected 4xNat. Genomic diploidization and phenotypic novelty were evident. Distinct patterns of variation revealed that post-polyploidization processes altered the phenotypic shifts directly mediated by genome doubling. The photosynthetic phenotype was affected in several ways but the main effect was phenotypic diploidization (i.e. 2x and 4xNat were closer to each other than to 4xNeo). Overall, our results show the potential benefits of considering experimentally synthetized versus naturally established polyploids when exploring the role of polyploidization in promoting functional divergence.España Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación project POLYTRANSECO (PGC2018-098358-B-I00)Spanish Ministerio de Universidades (FPU19/02936

Fe3O4-TiO2 Thin Films in Solar Photocatalytic Processes

The optical properties of 5wt% Fe3O4-TiO2 thin films were evaluated in detail with the aim of proposing a mechanism for solar photocatalytic processes and highlighting the advantages over the use of bare TiO2. The results showed that the incorporation of 5wt% Fe3O4 enhanced the optical properties by a redshift to a wavelength in the visible range, reducing the anatase/rutile band gap energy from 3.2 eV to 2.8 eV. Photoluminescence studies reveal a superior separation efficiency of photoexcited electron-hole pairs when Fe3O4 nanoparticles (NPs) are present in the photocatalyst. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy spectra confirm the presence of Fe3O4 and existence of a chemical bonding between TiO2 and Fe3O4 NPs. Moreover, in this study, a mechanism of solar photocatalytic processes involving Fe3O4-TiO2 thin films is proposed and it is supported by experimental results. Finally, solar photocatalytic experiments were carried out, indicating that the effectiveness for the removal of the selected pharmaceutical is considerably improved when the composite material is used as catalyst. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that the photocatalytic activity of the prepared Fe3O4-TiO2 thin films depends on their thickness, achieving the highest pharmaceutical removal yields using the 2 mu m thick sample. The stability and reusability of the catalyst was confirmed studying the photocatalytic activity over three cycles

Spectroscopic Ellipsometry Study on Tuning the Electrical and Optical Properties of Zr-Doped ZnO Thin Films Grown by Atomic Layer Deposition

This work reports the ellipsometry analysis of atomic layer deposition (ALD) films of ZnO doped with Zr to determine parameters like free carrier concentration and mobility. Thin films of zinc oxide (ZnO) and Zr-doped ZnO of thickness similar to 100 nm were prepared by atomic layer deposition on sapphire, SiO2/Si(100), and Si(100) substrates. Variable-angle spectroscopic ellipsometry was used to study their optical properties in the 0.5-3.5 eV spectral range. The optical constants were accurately obtained using a model that combines Drude and Tauc-Lorentz oscillators with Bruggeman effective medium approximations, allowing the inclusion of a roughness layer in the optical model. The effect of Zr doping (ca. 1.9- 4.4 atom %) was then investigated in both as- prepared samples and samples annealed in the temperature range of 100-300 degrees C. All of the films exhibited good optical transparency (ca. 70-90% in the visible region). For doping levels below 2.7 atom %, the real part of the dielectric permittivity reveals a semiconductor-to-metal transition in the near-infrared (NIR) region, as the permittivity goes from positive to negative. Besides, the plasma energy increases with increasing Zr concentration, and both resistivity and carrier concentration exhibit slightly parabolic behaviors, with a minimum of similar to 1.5 x 10(-3) Omega cm and a maximum of 2.4 x 10(20) cm(-3), respectively, at the same critical Zr concentration (2.7 atom %). In contrast, the carrier mobility decreases rapidly from 76.0 to 19.2 cm(2)/(V s) with increasing Zr content, while conductivities and carrier mobilities worsen when the annealing temperature increases, probably due to the segregation of ZnO crystals. Finally, the optical band gap is very stable, revealing its interesting independence of substrate composition and annealing temperature, as it collapses to a single master curve when band gap energy is plotted versus free carrier concentration, following the Burstein-Moss effect. Overall, the Zr-doped ZnO films studied here would be a highly desirable system for developing thermally stable transparent conductive oxides (TCOs)

Impact of the pandemic on the teaching and research staff at a technological university in Spain: deepening the gender gap

The alteration of the educational model caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has not affected all university faculty equally. This work explores the academic, digital and gender inequalities caused by the pandemic on the teaching and research staff of a technological university for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines in Spain, the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya—BarcelonaTech (UPC). The study considers an anonymous survey with a non-probabilistic voluntary sample (n = 355). The results of the survey reveal that, over these months, the teaching and research staff of the university, regardless of gender, has significantly increased its academic activity due especially to the number of hours devoted to virtual teaching compared to its teaching dedication in a situation of normalcy. This study shows that the lockdown has strongly affected women who are more vulnerable to crisis. In particular, the negative impact on research has been higher in female faculty staff from the UPC, who already face disparities regarding promotion and, during lockdown, stated more difficulties with household work reconciliation. From the results of this study, it is possible to conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic has deepened the gender gap in the academic field.Peer ReviewedObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::4 - Educació de QualitatObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::5 - Igualtat de GènereObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::10 - Reducció de les DesigualtatsObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::3 - Salut i BenestarPostprint (published version

Class mutation operators for C++ object-oriented systems

Mutation testing is a fault injection testing technique around which a great variety of studies and tools for different programming languages have been developed. Nevertheless, the mutation testing research with respect to C++ is pending. This paper proposes a set of class mutation operators related to this language and its particular object-oriented (OO) features. In addition, an implementation technique to apply mutation testing based on the traversal of the abstract syntax tree (AST) is presented. Finally, an experiment is conducted to study the operator behaviour with different C++ programs, suggesting their usefulness in the creation of complete test suites. The analysis includes a Web service (WS) library, one of the domains where this technique can prove useful, considering its challenging testing phase and that C++ is still a reference language for critical distributed systems WS