Workshop on cardiovascular extracellular matrix in health and disease in Baeza, Spain

The Workshop on Cardiovascular Extracellular Matrix in Health and Disease, International University of Andalusia, Baeza, Spain, 6-8 October 2014 served to discuss the current knowledge on the mechanisms integral to extracellular matrix homeostasis that are fundamental to understanding the pathological basis of several cardiovascular diseases, including the development of cardiac fibrosis in response to cardiac hypertrophy and myocardial infarction, and the extracellular matrix alterations contributing to aortic stenosis or aneurysms.We highly appreciate the contribution of the International University of Andalusia (UNIA), the European Research Council (ERC) and the consortium FIBROTEAM (Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2010-BMD2321)

Analysis of filaggrin mutations and expression in corneal specimens from patients with or without atopic dermatitis

BACKGROUND: Filaggrin is expressed in the epidermis and is essential for the maintenance of the epidermal barrier. Null mutations within the filaggrin gene (FLG) lead to a disturbed epidermal barrier and are associated with a significantly increased risk of atopic dermatitis (AD). The association of AD with ocular surface disorders prompted us to speculate that common FLG mutations may be particularly prevalent in AD patients with ocular comorbidities. METHODS: Corneal buttons and biopsies from AD patients with ocular involvement (n = 11) and from non-atopic patients (n = 9) with a histological diagnosis of keratitis were included in the study. DNA samples obtained from paraffin-embedded corneal specimens were genotyped for the two most common FLG mutations (R501X and 2282del4). Filaggrin protein expression was analysed by immunohistochemistry. RESULTS: Normal skin and corneal specimens (n = 6) were positive for filaggrin, which could be detected in the stratum corneum of the skin and in the basal epithelial layer of the cornea. Interestingly, all AD corneal specimens as well as the specimens from keratitis patients without AD were negative for filaggrin expression. Genotyping of the FLG mutations R501X and 2282del4 revealed wild-type alleles in all analysed samples. CONCLUSIONS: The lack of filaggrin expression observed in the analysed corneal specimens from AD patients is not due to the two most common FLG mutations (R501X, 2282del4) but is most likely secondary to inflammation, as all keratitis specimens of non-AD patients showed lack of filaggrin expression as well

Norm-attaining weighted composition operators on weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00013-012-0458-zWe investigate weighted composition operators that attain their norm on weighted Banach spaces of holomorphic functions on the unit disc of type H∞. Applications for composition operators on weighted Bloch spaces are given. © 2012 Springer Basel.1. The authors are thankful to the referee for pointing to us the references [15] and [16] and their relevance in the present research. 2. The research of Bonet was partially supported by MICINN and FEDER Project MTM2010-15200 and by GV project Prometeo/2008/101 and project ACOMP/2012/090.Bonet Solves, JA.; Lindström, M.; Wolf, E. (2012). Norm-attaining weighted composition operators on weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions. Archiv der Mathematik. 99(6):537-546. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00013-012-0458-zS537546996Bierstedt K.D., Bonet J., Galbis A.: Weighted spaces of holomorphic functions on bounded domains. Michigan Math. J. 40, 271–297 (1993)Bierstedt K.D., Bonet J., Taskinen J.: Associated weights and spaces of holomorphic functions. Studia Math. 127, 137–168 (1998)J. Bonet, P. Domański, and M. Lindström, Essential norm and weak compactness of composition operators on weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions. Canad, Math. Bull. 42, no. 2, (1999), 139–148Bonet J. et al.: Composition operators between weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions. J. Austral. Math. Soc. Ser. A 64, 101–118 (1998)Bonet J., Lindström M, Wolf E.: Isometric weighted composition operators on weighted Banach spaces of type H ∞. Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 136, 4267–4273 (2008)Bonet J, Wolf E.: A note on weighted spaces of holomorphic functions. Archiv Math. 81, 650–654 (2003)Contreras M.D, Hernández-Díaz A.G.: Weighted composition operators in weighted banach spaces of analytic functions. J. Austral. Math. Soc. Ser. A 69, 41–60 (2000)Cowen C., MacCluer B.: Composition Operators on Spaces of Analytic Functions. CRC Press, Boca Raton (1995)J. Diestel, Geometry of Banach Spaces. Selected Topics, Lecture Notes in Math. vol. 485, Springer, Berlin, 1975.Hammond C.: On the norm of a composition operator with linear fractional symbol. Acta Sci. Math. (Szeged) 69, 813–829 (2003)Hosokawa T., Izuchi K., Zheng D.: Isolated points and essential components of composition operators on H ∞. Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 130, 1765–1773 (2001)Hosokava T., Ohno S.: Topological strusctures of the sets of composition operatorson the Bloch spaces. J. Math. anal. Appl. 303, 499–508 (2005)Lusky W.: On the isomorphy classes of weighted spaces of harmonic and holomorphic functions. Studia Math. 175, 19–45 (2006)Martín M.: Norm-attaining composition operators on the Bloch spaces. J. Math. Anal. Appl. 369, 15–21 (2010)A. Montes-Rodríguez, The Pick-Schwarz lemma and composition operators on Bloch spaces, International Workshop on Operator Theory (Cefalu, 1997), Rend. Circ. Mat. Palermo (2) Suppl. 56 (1998), 167–170.Montes-Rodríguez A.: The essential norm of a composition operator on Bloch spaces. Pacific J. Math. 188, 339–351 (1999)Montes-Rodríguez A.: Weighted composition operators on weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions. J. London Math. Soc. 61, 872–884 (2000)J.H. Shapiro, Composition Operators and Classical Function Theory, Springer, 1993.K. Zhu, Operator Theory in Function Spaces, Second Edition. Amer. Math. Soc., 2007

Diseño de un instrumento de evaluación de aplicaciones digitales (Apps) que permiten desarrollar la competencia artística

Las Apps de Arte son aquellas que se han pensado y diseñado para llevar a cabo experiencias artísticas o que permiten trabajar contenidos de arte. Metodología. En este estudio presentamos un instrumento de evaluación que sirve para identificar y seleccionar diversos ítems que desarrollan la competencia artística según acciones expresivas o perceptivas. Esta batería de evaluación se configuró teniendo en cuenta los contenidos artísticos para las etapas formativas preuniversitarias, en especial primaria y secundaria. Está compuesta por 98 ítems distribuidos en tres dimensiones y cuatro escalas: Dimensión Artística (dominio expresivo y perceptivo), Dimensión Técnica y Dimensión Pedagógica. La metodología que hemos seguido ha sido un proceso interjueces con expertos en educación artística y en el uso de tecnologías emergentes aplicando un Análisis de Concordancia de Atributos a través de escalas Likert ordinales. Resultados. Se incluyen los estadísticos descriptivos obtenidos así como el listado de ítems resultantes en cada dimensión. Discusión. Una vez finalizado el proceso y teniendo en cuenta el número de ítems resultante y su redacción consideramos que es viable utilizar el instrumento para evaluar de forma comprensiva Apps de Arte teniendo en cuenta las dimensiones artística, técnica y pedagógica y considerando además el nivel educativo de las experiencias artísticas.Apps of Art are those that have been thought and designed to carry out artistic experiences or that allow working with art contents. Methodology. In this study we present an evaluation instrument that serves to identify and select various items that develop artistic competence according to expressive or perceptive actions. This assessment battery was configured taking into account the artistic contents for the pre-university training stages, especially primary and secondary. It is composed of 98 items distributed in three dimensions and four scales: Artistic Dimension (expressive and perceptive domain), Technical Dimension and Pedagogical Dimension. The methodology we have followed has been a process validated by the judgment of experts in artistic education and the use of emerging technology, applying an Attribute Agreement Analysis through ordinal Likert scales. Results. The descriptive statistics obtained as well as the list of resulting items in each dimension are included. Discussion. Once the process is finished and taking into account the resulting number of items and their wording, we consider that it is feasible to use the instrument to comprehensively evaluate Apps of Art pedagogical dimensions and including the educational . taking into consideration the artistic, technical and level of the artistic experiences

The Transiting Multi-planet System HD15337: Two Nearly Equal-mass Planets Straddling the Radius Gap

We report the discovery of a super-Earth and a sub-Neptune transiting the star HD 15337 (TOI-402, TIC 120896927), a bright (V = 9) K1 dwarf observed by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in Sectors 3 and 4. We combine the TESS photometry with archival High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher spectra to confirm the planetary nature of the transit signals and derive the masses of the two transiting planets. With an orbital period of 4.8 days, a mass of ${7.51}_{-1.01}^{+1.09}\,{M}_{\oplus }$ and a radius of 1.64 ± 0.06 R ⊕, HD 15337 b joins the growing group of short-period super-Earths known to have a rocky terrestrial composition. The sub-Neptune HD 15337 c has an orbital period of 17.2 days, a mass of ${8.11}_{-1.69}^{+1.82}\,{{\rm{M}}}_{\oplus }$, and a radius of 2.39 ± 0.12 R ⊕, suggesting that the planet might be surrounded by a thick atmospheric envelope. The two planets have similar masses and lie on opposite sides of the radius gap, and are thus an excellent testbed for planet formation and evolution theories. Assuming that HD 15337 c hosts a hydrogen-dominated envelope, we employ a recently developed planet atmospheric evolution algorithm in a Bayesian framework to estimate the history of the high-energy (extreme ultraviolet and X-ray) emission of the host star. We find that at an age of 150 Myr, the star possessed on average between 3.7 and 127 times the high-energy luminosity of the current Sun

Multi-ancestry genome-wide association study of 21,000 cases and 95,000 controls identifies new risk loci for atopic dermatitis

Genetic association studies have identified 21 loci associated with atopic dermatitis risk predominantly in populations of European ancestry. To identify further susceptibility loci for this common, complex skin disease, we performed a meta-analysis of >15 million genetic variants in 21,399 cases and 95,464 controls from populations of European, African, Japanese and Latino ancestry, followed by replication in 32,059 cases and 228,628 controls from 18 studies. We identified ten new risk loci, bringing the total number of known atopic dermatitis risk loci to 31 (with new secondary signals at four of these loci). Notably, the new loci include candidate genes with roles in the regulation of innate host defenses and T cell function, underscoring the important contribution of (auto)immune mechanisms to atopic dermatitis pathogenesis

Erratum to: 36th International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s13054-016-1208-6.]

Erratum: Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 84 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017

Interpretation: By quantifying levels and trends in exposures to risk factors and the resulting disease burden, this assessment offers insight into where past policy and programme efforts might have been successful and highlights current priorities for public health action. Decreases in behavioural, environmental, and occupational risks have largely offset the effects of population growth and ageing, in relation to trends in absolute burden. Conversely, the combination of increasing metabolic risks and population ageing will probably continue to drive the increasing trends in non-communicable diseases at the global level, which presents both a public health challenge and opportunity. We see considerable spatiotemporal heterogeneity in levels of risk exposure and risk-attributable burden. Although levels of development underlie some of this heterogeneity, O/E ratios show risks for which countries are overperforming or underperforming relative to their level of development. As such, these ratios provide a benchmarking tool to help to focus local decision making. Our findings reinforce the importance of both risk exposure monitoring and epidemiological research to assess causal connections between risks and health outcomes, and they highlight the usefulness of the GBD study in synthesising data to draw comprehensive and robust conclusions that help to inform good policy and strategic health planning

Shared genetic origin of asthma, hay fever and eczema elucidates allergic disease biology

Asthma, hay fever (or allergic rhinitis) and eczema (or atopic dermatitis) often coexist in the same individuals, partly because of a shared genetic origin. To identify shared risk variants, we performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS; n = 360,838) of a broad allergic disease phenotype that considers the presence of any one of these three diseases. We identified 136 independent risk variants (P < 3 × 10-8), including 73 not previously reported, which implicate 132 nearby genes in allergic disease pathophysiology. Disease-specific effects were detected for only six variants, confirming that most represent shared risk factors. Tissue-specific heritability and biological process enrichment analyses suggest that shared risk variants influence lymphocyte-mediated immunity. Six target genes provide an opportunity for drug repositioning, while for 36 genes CpG methylation was found to influence transcription independently of genetic effects. Asthma, hay fever and eczema partly coexist because they share many genetic risk variants that dysregulate the expression of immune-related genes