Estudio sobre algunos hábitos nocivos en estudiantes de Medicina de la Universidad de Zaragoza

Los hábitos que se comienzan a adquirir en la juventud son importantes determinantes de la salud futura de los individuos. Un diagnóstico y erradicación precoz de los hábitos nocivos de la juventud supondría una disminución de la incidencia de enfermedades tan prevalentes y mortales como las cardiovasculares, el cáncer, la diabetes o las enfermedades respiratorias crónicas. El objetivo principal de este trabajo es estudiar los hábitos nocivos entre estudiantes del Grado de Medicina de la Universidad de Zaragoza, así como comparar los de los dos primeros y los dos últimos cursos bajo la hipótesis de que los conocimientos adquiridos en las diferentes materias del Grado, los pueden modificar de forma positiva. Para ello se tomó una muestra aleatoria de alumnos, estratificada por género y curso durante el curso académico 2014-2015. El consumo de cafeína, tabaco, alcohol y drogas ilegales fue evaluado usando una encuesta anónima vía internet. Pese a la falta de significación de los datos, pensamos que los resultados obtenidos permiten vislumbrar posibles líneas de investigación en las que interesaría profundizar, como la baja prevalencia de consumo de tabaco y drogas ilegales obtenidas en la muestra

The action of obestatin in skeletal muscle repair: stem cell expansion, muscle growth, and microenvironment remodeling

The development of therapeutic strategies for skeletal muscle diseases, such as physical injuries and myopathies, depends on the knowledge of regulatory signals that control the myogenic process. The obestatin/GPR39 system operates as an autocrine signal in the regulation of skeletal myogenesis. Using a mouse model of skeletal muscle regeneration after injury and several cellular strategies, we explored the potential use of obestatin as a therapeutic agent for the treatment of trauma-induced muscle injuries. Our results evidenced that the overexpression of the preproghrelin, and thus obestatin, and GPR39 in skeletal muscle increased regeneration after muscle injury. More importantly, the intramuscular injection of obestatin significantly enhanced muscle regeneration by simulating satellite stem cell expansion as well as myofiber hypertrophy through a kinase hierarchy. Added to the myogenic action, the obestatin administration resulted in an increased expression of VEGF/VEGFR2 and the consequent microvascularization, with no effect on collagen deposition in skeletal muscle. Furthermore, the potential inhibition of myostatin during obestatin treatment might contribute to its myogenic action improving muscle growth and regeneration. Taken together, our data demonstrate successful improvement of muscle regeneration, indicating obestatin is a potential therapeutic agent for skeletal muscle injury and would benefit other myopathies related to muscle regeneration

c-Src Regulates Akt Signaling in Response to Ghrelin via β-Arrestin Signaling-Independent and -Dependent Mechanisms

The aim of the present study was to identify the signaling mechanisms to ghrelin-stimulated activation of the serine/threonine kinase Akt. In human embryonic kidney 293 (HEK293) cells transfected with GHS-R1a, ghrelin leads to the activation of Akt through the interplay of distinct signaling mechanisms: an early Gi/o protein-dependent pathway and a late pathway mediated by β-arrestins. The starting point is the Gi/o-protein dependent PI3K activation that leads to the membrane recruitment of Akt, which is phosphorylated at Y by c-Src with the subsequent phosphorylation at A-loop (T308) and HM (S473) by PDK1 and mTORC2, respectively. Once the receptor is activated, a second signaling pathway is mediated by β-arrestins 1 and 2, involving the recruitment of at least β-arrestins, c-Src and Akt. This β-arrestin-scaffolded complex leads to full activation of Akt through PDK1 and mTORC2, which are not associated to the complex. In agreement with these results, assays performed in 3T3-L1 preadipocyte cells indicate that β-arrestins and c-Src are implicated in the activation of Akt in response to ghrelin through the GHS-R1a. In summary this work reveals that c-Src is crucially involved in the ghrelin-mediated Akt activation. Furthermore, the results support the view that β-arrestins act as both scaffolding proteins and signal transducers on Akt activation

Towards better understanding cybersecurity: Or are "cyberspace" and "cyber space" the same?

Although there are many technology challenges and approaches to attaining cybersecurity, human actions (or inactions) also often pose large risks. There are many reasons, but one problem is whether we all “see the world” the same way. That is, what does “cybersecurity” actually mean – as well as the many related concepts, such as “cyberthreat,” “cybercrime,” etc. Although dictionaries, glossaries, and other sources tell you what words/phrases are supposed to mean (somewhat complicated by the fact that they often contradict each other), they do not tell you how people are actually using them. If we are to have an effective solution, it is important that all the parties understand each other – or, at least, understand that there are different perspectives. For the purpose of this poster and to demonstrate our methodology, we consider the case of the words, “cyberspace” and “cyber space.” We had developed techniques and algorithms for the automated generation of taxonomies for chosen “seed terms” (such as “cyberspace” and “cyber space”) based on the co-occurrence of those words in the list of keywords of documents in large document repositories, such as Compendex and Inspec. The system that we had developed and used in this experiment employed the Heymann algorithm, closeness centrality, cosine similarity metric (which we refer to as H-CC). When we started, we assumed that “cyberspace” and “cyber space” were essentially the same word with just a minor variation in punctuation (i.e., the space, or lack thereof, between “cyber” and “space”) and that the choice of the punctuation was a rather random occurrence. With that assumption in mind, we would expect that the usage of these words would be basically the same and would produce roughly similar taxonomies. As it turned out, the taxonomies generated were quite different, both in overall shape and groupings within the taxonomy. Since the overall field of cybersecurity is so new, understanding the field and how people think about it (as evidenced by their actual usage of terminology, and how usage changes over time) is an important goal. Our approach helps to illuminate these understandings.This material is based on work supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Grant No. N00014-09-1-0597. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations therein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Office of Naval Research

Exploring terms and taxonomies relating to the cyber international relations research field: Or are "cyberspace" and "cyber space" the same?

This project has at least two facets to it: (1) advancing the algorithms in the sub-field of bibliometrics often referred to as "text mining" whereby hundreds of thousands of documents (such as journal articles) are scanned and relationships amongst words and phrases are established and (2) applying these tools in support of the Explorations in Cyber International Relations (ECIR) research effort. In international relations, it is important that all the parties understand each other. Although dictionaries, glossaries, and other sources tell you what words/phrases are supposed to mean (somewhat complicated by the fact that they often contradict each other), they do not tell you how people are actually using them. As an example, when we started, we assumed that "cyberspace" and "cyber space" were essentially the same word with just a minor variation in punctuation (i.e., the space, or lack thereof, between "cyber" and "space") and that the choice of the punctuation was a rather random occurrence. With that assumption in mind, we would expect that the taxonomies that would be constructed by our algorithms using "cyberspace" and "cyber space" as seed terms would be basically the same. As it turned out, they were quite different, both in overall shape and groupings within the taxonomy. Since the overall field of cyber international relations is so new, understanding the field and how people think about (as evidenced by their actual usage of terminology, and how usage changes over time) is an important goal as part of the overall ECIR project.This material is based on work supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Grant No. N00014-09-1-0597. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations therein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Office of Naval Research

The precautionary principle and wind-farm planning: Data scarcity does not imply absence of effects

Peer Reviewe

The metabolic versatility of PAOs as an opportunity to obtain a highly P-enriched stream for further P-recovery

The effects of two sequencing batch reactor operation strategies for phosphorus stream enrichment over the biological phosphorus removal performance have been studied. The objective of both strategies is of performing an extraction cycle in order to obtain a new stream highly enriched with phosphorus. In the 1st strategy the amount of influent volatile fatty acids (VFAs) is the same in each cycle; while in the 2nd strategy the influent VFAs concentration is increased during phosphorus extraction experiments. Despite the strong decrease of the stored poly-P inside the cells in both strategies after the recovery cycles, the ability of the systems to remove phosphorus was not affected. The P-release/HAcuptake ratio (changing from 0.73 to 0.21 mmol P mmol C-1) together with FISH analyses (around 85% of Accumulibacter through the experimental period) confirmed that a shift from PAM to GAM occurred after phosphorus enrichment in the 2nd strategy experiments. These results suggest that energy required for VFA uptake by polyphosphate-accumulating organisms (PAO5) was not only derived from polyphosphates degradation, but also from glycogen degradation. FISH also revealed that Type II Accumulibacter species are responsible of the metabolic shift. The strategy based on increasing influent VFAs concentration during phosphorus extraction experiments showed a higher extraction efficiency (from 46% to 76%), as higher phosphorus concentration within supernatant can be achieved (from 113.9 to 198.7 mg Pl(-1)). Following this strategy, it is possible to concentrate up to 81% of the incoming phosphorus in a single enriched stream. This suggests that, despite the extra addition of carbon source needed (9%), this strategy is more appropriate if phosphorus recovery for reuse purposes is required. (C) 2015 Elsevier BM. All rights reserved.This research work has been supported by the Generalitat Valenciana (GVPRE/2008/044) and the Polytechnic University of Valencia (PAID-06-08-3227), which are gratefully acknowledged. Special acknowledgements to Consejo Nacional de la Ciencia y la Tecnologia de Mexico (CONACYT) No. 207966.Acevedo Juárez, B.; Camiña, C.; Corona, JE.; Borrás Falomir, L.; Barat Baviera, R. (2015). The metabolic versatility of PAOs as an opportunity to obtain a highly P-enriched stream for further P-recovery. Chemical Engineering Journal. 270:459-467. doi:10.1016/j.cej.2015.02.063S45946727