El Joc de rol com a eina d’aprenentatge en assignatures de ciència i tecnologia de materials

La incorporació de les universitats europees a l'EHEA ha conduit a la remodelació de plans d'estudi i també, a la redefinició de protagonismes en el procés d'ensenyament-aprenentatge en l'àmbit universitari. Així, el paradigma de Bolònia ha contribuït a que, progressivament, s'hagin incorporat competències, processos d'avaluació continuada, d'autoavaluació i de coavaluació, que afavoreixen que l'estudiantat formi part del propi procés d'aprenentatge. Paral•lelament, en els darrers anys, la diversitat de formats disponibles per compartir informació (text, imatge, simulacions, vídeo) ha ajudat a que la pràctica docent pugui ser més àgil i, per tant, ha contribuït a afavorir la participació de l'estudiantat. En l'àmbit de materials, les tecnologies de comunicació han ajudat a visualitzar processos, a gestionar bases de dades de selecció de materials i a optimitzar les quotes d'atenció en l'activitat docent universitària. En aquest escenari, el projecte RIMA (Recerca i Innovació en Metodologies d'aprenentatge) neix amb la voluntat de potenciar les activitats desenvolupades pels Grups d'Interès (Communities of Practice) que s'han creat a la UPC. Entre ells, el grup d'Innovació Docent en Materials, GidMAT, proporciona un espai de comunió i compartició d'experiències així com un foro de debat entre professionals de la docència de materials. En aquest treball es proposa una activitat de joc de rol com a activitat pràctica de materials en l'àmbit de l'enginyeria. La interacció professorat-alumnat és imprescindible i la metodologia proposada garanteix una constant comunicació i un feed-back eficaç que possibiliti l'avaluació continua de les assignatures de tecnologia de materials.Peer Reviewe

Endoscopical and pathological dissociation in severe colitis induced by immune-checkpoint inhibitors

Checkpoint inhibitors have improved the survival of patients with advanced tumors and show a manageable toxicity profile. However, auto-immune colitis remains a relevant side effect, and combinations of anti-PD1/PDL1 and anti-CTLA-4 increase its incidence and severity. Here, we report the case of a 50-year-old patient diagnosed with stage IV cervical cancer that relapsed following radical surgery, external radiation/brachytherapy and standard chemotherapy. She was subsequently treated with Nivolumab and Ipilimumab combination and developed grade 2 colitis presenting a dissociation between endoscopic and pathological findings. At cycle 10 the patient reported grade 3 diarrhea and abdominal discomfort, without blood or mucus in the stools. Immunotherapy was withheld and a colonoscopy was performed, showing normal mucosa in the entire colon. Puzzlingly, histologic evaluation of randomly sampled mucosal biopsy of the distal colon showed an intense intraepithelial lymphocyte infiltration with crypt loss and some regenerating crypts with a few apoptotic bodies set in a chronically inflamed lamina propria, consistent with the microscopic diagnosis of colitis. Treatment with methylprednisolone 2 mg/kg was initiated which led to a decrease in the number of stools to grade 1. Additional investigations to exclude other causes of diarrhea rendered negative results. The patient experienced a major partial response and, following the resolution of diarrhea, she was re-challenged again with immunotherapy, with the reappearance of grade 2 diarrhea, leading to permanent immunotherapy interruption. We conclude and propose that performing random colonic biopsies should be considered in cases of immune checkpoint-associated unexplained diarrhea, even when colonoscopy shows macroscopically normal colonic mucosa inflammatory lesions

A scalar field condensation instability of rotating anti-de Sitter black holes

Near-extreme Reissner-Nordstrom-anti-de Sitter black holes are unstable against the condensation of an uncharged scalar field with mass close to the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound. It is shown that a similar instability afflicts near-extreme large rotating AdS black holes, and near-extreme hyperbolic Schwarzschild-AdS black holes. The resulting nonlinear hairy black hole solutions are determined numerically. Some stability results for (possibly charged) scalar fields in black hole backgrounds are proved. For most of the extreme black holes we consider, these demonstrate stability if the ``effective mass" respects the near-horizon BF bound. Small spherical Reissner-Nordstrom-AdS black holes are an interesting exception to this result.Comment: 34 pages; 13 figure

The Rich Structure of Gauss-Bonnet Holographic Superconductors

We study fully backreacting, Gauss-Bonnet (GB) holographic superconductors in 5 bulk spacetime dimensions. We explore the system's dependence on the scalar mass for both positive and negative GB coupling, $\alpha$. We find that when the mass approaches the Breitenlohner-Freedman (BF) bound and $\alpha\rightarrow L^2/4$ the effect of backreaction is to increase the critical temperature, $T_c$, of the system: the opposite of its effect in the rest of parameter space. We also find that reducing $\alpha$ below zero increases $T_c$ and that the effect of backreaction is diminished. We study the zero temperature limit, proving that this system does not permit regular solutions for a non-trivial, tachyonic scalar field and constrain possible solutions for fields with positive masses. We investigate singular, zero temperature solutions in the Einstein limit but find them to be incompatible with the concept of GB gravity being a perturbative expansion of Einstein gravity. We study the conductivity of the system, finding that the inclusion of backreaction hinders the development of poles in the conductivity that are associated with quasi-normal modes approaching the real axis from elsewhere in the complex plane.Comment: 26 pages, 11 figures, V3, Added discussion of non-tachyonic scalars, alterations to figures and tex

Cytokines in clinical cancer immunotherapy

Cytokines are soluble proteins that mediate cell-to-cell communication. Based on the discovery of the potent anti-tumour activities of several pro-inflammatory cytokines in animal models, clinical research led to the approval of recombinant interferon-alpha and interleukin-2 for the treatment of several malignancies, even if efficacy was only modest. These early milestones in immunotherapy have been followed by the recent addition to clinical practice of antibodies that inhibit immune checkpoints, as well as chimeric antigen receptor T cells. A renewed interest in the anti-tumour properties of cytokines has led to an exponential increase in the number of clinical trials that explore the safety and efficacy of cytokine-based drugs, not only as single agents, but also in combination with other immunomodulatory drugs. These second-generation drugs under clinical development include known molecules with novel mechanisms of action, new targets, and fusion proteins that increase half-life and target cytokine activity to the tumour microenvironment or to the desired effector immune cells. In addition, the detrimental activity of immunosuppressive cytokines can be blocked by antagonistic antibodies, small molecules, cytokine traps or siRNAs. In this review, we provide an overview of the novel trends in the cytokine immunotherapy field that are yielding therapeutic agents for clinical trials

Diagnosis features of pediatric Gaucher disease patients in the era of enzymatic therapy, a national-base study from the Spanish Registry of Gaucher Disease

Background: The enzymatic replacement therapy (ERT) availability for Gaucher disease (GD) has changed the landscape of the disease, several countries have screening programs. These actions have promoted the early diagnosis and avoided many complications in pediatric patients. In Spain ERT has been available since 1993 and 386 patients have been included in the Spanish Registry of Gaucher Disease (SpRGD). The aim of this study is to analyze the impact of ERT on the characteristics at time of diagnosis and initial complications in pediatric Gaucher disease patients. Aim: To analyze the impact of ERT on the characteristics at time of diagnosis and initial complications in pediatric Gaucher disease patients. Methods: A review of data in SpRGD from patients'' diagnosed before 18 years old was performed. The cohort was split according the year of diagnosis (=1994, cohort A; =1995, cohort B). Results: A total of 98 pediatric patients were included, GD1: 80, GD3: 18; mean age: 7.2 (0.17-16.5) years, 58 (59.2%) males and 40 (40.8%) females. Forty-five were diagnosed = 1994 and 53 = 1995. Genotype: N370S/N370S: 2 (2.0%), N370S/L444P: 27 (27.5%), N370S/other: 47 (48%), L444P/L444P: 7 (7.1%), L444P/D409H: 2 (2.0%), L444P/other: 3 (6.2%), other/other: 10 (10.2%). The mean age at diagnosis was earlier in patients diagnosed after 1995 (p < 0.001) and different between the subtypes, GD1: 8.2 (0.2-16.5) years and GD3: 2.8 (0.17-10.2) years (p < 0.001). There were more severe patients in the group diagnosed before 1994 (p = 0.045) carrying L444P (2), D409H (2), G377S (1), G195W (1) or the recombinant mutation. The patients'' diagnosed =1994 showed worse cytopenias, higher chance of bone vascular complications at diagnosis and previous spleen removal. The patients started ERT at a median time after diagnosis of 5.2 years [cohort A] and 1.6 years [cohort B] (p < 0.001). Conclusions: The early diagnosis of Gaucher disease in the era of ERT availability has permitted to reduce the incidence of severe and irreversible initial complication in pediatric patients, and this has permitted better development of these patients. This is the largest pediatric cohort from a national registry

Ultraspinning instability: the missing link

We study linearized perturbations of Myers-Perry black holes in d=7, with two of the three angular momenta set to be equal, and show that instabilities always appear before extremality. Analogous results are expected for all higher odd d. We determine numerically the stationary perturbations that mark the onset of instability for the modes that preserve the isometries of the background. The onset is continuously connected between the previously studied sectors of solutions with a single angular momentum and solutions with all angular momenta equal. This shows that the near-extremality instabilities are of the same nature as the ultraspinning instability of d>5 singly-spinning solutions, for which the angular momentum is unbounded. Our results raise the question of whether there are any extremal Myers-Perry black holes which are stable in d>5.Comment: 19 pages. 1 figur

A scalar field instability of rotating and charged black holes in (4+1)-dimensional Anti-de Sitter space-time

We study the stability of static as well as of rotating and charged black holes in (4+1)-dimensional Anti-de Sitter space-time which possess spherical horizon topology. We observe a non-linear instability related to the condensation of a charged, tachyonic scalar field and construct "hairy" black hole solutions of the full system of coupled Einstein, Maxwell and scalar field equations. We observe that the limiting solution for small horizon radius is either a hairy soliton solution or a singular solution that is not a regular extremal solution. Within the context of the gauge/gravity duality the condensation of the scalar field describes a holographic conductor/superconductor phase transition on the surface of a sphere.Comment: 16 pages including 8 figures, v2: discussion on soliton solutions extended; v3: matches version accepted for publication in JHE

Applied Geography

[EN] Lakes with strong variations in their water coverage may act as in dicators of different natural phenomena. Recent techniques for the extraction of Satellite-Derived Shorelines (SDSs) with subpixel accuracy are potentially useful for accurate and continuous monitoring of the limits of water bodies along large periods. This work proposes a method for combining the shoreline position with a digital elevation model to assign elevation values to the points defining the SDSs along the period 1984¿2020 in the shallow Gallocanta Lake (NE Iberian Peninsula). The relationship between the water surface and the elevation allows modeling the phenomena of lake changes as well as an estimation of the volume. The obtained data enables analyzing size and elevation changes of the water surface and the volumetric changes of the lake over more than three decades with a sub-weekly frequency (2¿5 days). The results constitute a valuable data package for robust analysis of lake trends. In the short term, the methodology provides sufficient precision to capture the changes caused by single meteorological events such as rainfall, even of small magnitude. The method constitutes a novel approach for curate hydric monitoring of lakes and water bodies, along large terrtories without requiring continuous in situ data acquisition.Support This research has been supported by the projects 'Monitorizacion de precision de las fluctuaciones de agua de humedales salinos intermitentes RAMSAR en la cuenca media del Ebro mediante teledeteccion espacial' with the financial support of Fundacion Biodiversidad from the Spanish Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO), PCI2018-092999 (AQUASALT) funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and co-funded by European Union, AQ-01.2021 (IRENE) funded by the Government of Aragon, MONOBESAT (PID2019-111435RB-I00) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, and the Margarita Salas contract within the Re-qualification programme by the Spanish Ministry of Universities financed by the European Union-NextGenerationEU. This is a contribution to Research Group RNM 328 of the Andalusian Research Plan (PAI), and to CSIC Interdisciplinary Thematic Platform (PTI) Tele-deteccion (PTI-TELEDETECT). ESA and USGS provided access to the satellite imagery. The Spanish Meteorological Agency (AEMET) provided data after contract no. L2990130734. The Ebro River-Basin Authority (CHE) provided the water level data.Palomar-Vázquez, J.; Cabezas-Rabadán, C.; Castañeda, C.; Gracia, FJ.; Fernández-Sarría, A.; Priego De Los Santos, E.; Pons Crespo, R.... (2022). Inferring volumetric changes at a shallow lake from subpixel satellite-derived shorelines. Applied Geography. 149(102792):1-10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2022.10279211014910279