21 research outputs found

    Análisis de necesidades para un curso de inglés en línea para Comercio Exterior e Internacional

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    Especialización en Didáctica de las Lenguas ExtranjerasEl propósito de este trabajo fue llevar a cabo un Análisis de Necesidades (AN) para un futuro curso extracurricular online de Inglés para el Comercio Exterior e Internacional (ICEeI) como rama del Inglés de Negocios y subdivisión del Inglés para Fines Específicos (English for Specific Purposes o ESP), que favoreciera la toma de decisiones pedagógicas eficientes en ese contexto determinado de enseñanza-aprendizaje. La problemática que dio origen a esta investigación surgió de la propia experiencia de la investigadora como tutora privada y corporativa de Inglés de Negocios (IN) en el campo profesional del Comercio Exterior e Internacional de Córdoba y Argentina.Fil: Ferrer, María Victoria N. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina

    Design of a UMTS/GPRS Assisted Mesh Network (UAMN)

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    Wireless Mesh or multi-hop networks (WMNs) are well known thanks to its simplicity on deployment and the lack of infrastructure. These two advantages come with some drawbacks. WMNs have limitations with the support of Quality of Service (QoS), they do not assure coverage or even connectivity, and security, management and monitoring are not considered key requirements. In order to benefit of mesh networks and use them as an operator graded network, it is necessary to either improve mesh networks to fulfill all these requirements or use an alternative network that offers full availability, connectivity and security to assist the mesh network. Considering the two options, the second is the one selected making use of GPRS/UMTS as an assistant network. The document describes a set of requirements and the design of the functionalities needed to build an operator graded network using the cellular GPRS/UMTS. The aspects covered in the design are: security, quality of service, mobility, self configuration and optimization. The last point, optimization, is not directly involved with mesh networking, but it is an improvement easy to achieve when using a gateway node to access the Internet through a GPRS/UMTS connection. The design of the solution not only considers functionality, but also feasibility employing of the shelve elements. The mesh nodes and gateways are built on top of Linux operating system with the aim to reuse previous results and open source software. The final objective of the project is to build a usable system to be used as a proof of concept.Peer Reviewe

    Clonal chromosomal mosaicism and loss of chromosome Y in elderly men increase vulnerability for SARS-CoV-2

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    The pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19) had an estimated overall case fatality ratio of 1.38% (pre-vaccination), being 53% higher in males and increasing exponentially with age. Among 9578 individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 in the SCOURGE study, we found 133 cases (1.42%) with detectable clonal mosaicism for chromosome alterations (mCA) and 226 males (5.08%) with acquired loss of chromosome Y (LOY). Individuals with clonal mosaic events (mCA and/or LOY) showed a 54% increase in the risk of COVID-19 lethality. LOY is associated with transcriptomic biomarkers of immune dysfunction, pro-coagulation activity and cardiovascular risk. Interferon-induced genes involved in the initial immune response to SARS-CoV-2 are also down-regulated in LOY. Thus, mCA and LOY underlie at least part of the sex-biased severity and mortality of COVID-19 in aging patients. Given its potential therapeutic and prognostic relevance, evaluation of clonal mosaicism should be implemented as biomarker of COVID-19 severity in elderly people. Among 9578 individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 in the SCOURGE study, individuals with clonal mosaic events (clonal mosaicism for chromosome alterations and/or loss of chromosome Y) showed an increased risk of COVID-19 lethality

    Multiancestry analysis of the HLA locus in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases uncovers a shared adaptive immune response mediated by HLA-DRB1*04 subtypes

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    Across multiancestry groups, we analyzed Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) associations in over 176,000 individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) versus controls. We demonstrate that the two diseases share the same protective association at the HLA locus. HLA-specific fine-mapping showed that hierarchical protective effects of HLA-DRB1*04 subtypes best accounted for the association, strongest with HLA-DRB1*04:04 and HLA-DRB1*04:07, and intermediary with HLA-DRB1*04:01 and HLA-DRB1*04:03. The same signal was associated with decreased neurofibrillary tangles in postmortem brains and was associated with reduced tau levels in cerebrospinal fluid and to a lower extent with increased Aβ42. Protective HLA-DRB1*04 subtypes strongly bound the aggregation-prone tau PHF6 sequence, however only when acetylated at a lysine (K311), a common posttranslational modification central to tau aggregation. An HLA-DRB1*04-mediated adaptive immune response decreases PD and AD risks, potentially by acting against tau, offering the possibility of therapeutic avenues

    Heterogeneous contributions of change in population distribution of body mass index to change in obesity and underweight NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC)

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    From 1985 to 2016, the prevalence of underweight decreased, and that of obesity and severe obesity increased, in most regions, with significant variation in the magnitude of these changes across regions. We investigated how much change in mean body mass index (BMI) explains changes in the prevalence of underweight, obesity, and severe obesity in different regions using data from 2896 population-based studies with 187 million participants. Changes in the prevalence of underweight and total obesity, and to a lesser extent severe obesity, are largely driven by shifts in the distribution of BMI, with smaller contributions from changes in the shape of the distribution. In East and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the underweight tail of the BMI distribution was left behind as the distribution shifted. There is a need for policies that address all forms of malnutrition by making healthy foods accessible and affordable, while restricting unhealthy foods through fiscal and regulatory restrictions

    Design of a UMTS/GPRS Assisted Mesh Network (UAMN)

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    Wireless Mesh or multi-hop networks (WMNs) are well known thanks to its simplicity on deployment and the lack of infrastructure. These two advantages come with some drawbacks. WMNs have limitations with the support of Quality of Service (QoS), they do not assure coverage or even connectivity, and security, management and monitoring are not considered key requirements. In order to benefit of mesh networks and use them as an operator graded network, it is necessary to either improve mesh networks to fulfill all these requirements or use an alternative network that offers full availability, connectivity and security to assist the mesh network. Considering the two options, the second is the one selected making use of GPRS/UMTS as an assistant network. The document describes a set of requirements and the design of the functionalities needed to build an operator graded network using the cellular GPRS/UMTS. The aspects covered in the design are: security, quality of service, mobility, self configuration and optimization. The last point, optimization, is not directly involved with mesh networking, but it is an improvement easy to achieve when using a gateway node to access the Internet through a GPRS/UMTS connection. The design of the solution not only considers functionality, but also feasibility employing of the shelve elements. The mesh nodes and gateways are built on top of Linux operating system with the aim to reuse previous results and open source software. The final objective of the project is to build a usable system to be used as a proof of concept.Peer Reviewe

    Microbial stratification in low pH oxic and suboxic macroscopic growths along an acid mine drainage

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    Macroscopic growths at geographically separated acid mine drainages (AMDs) exhibit distinct populations. Yet, local heterogeneities are poorly understood. To gain novel mechanistic insights into this, we used OMICs tools to profile microbial populations coexisting in a single pyrite gallery AMD (pH ∼2) in three distinct compartments: two from a stratified streamer (uppermost oxic and lowermost anoxic sediment-attached strata) and one from a submerged anoxic non-stratified mat biofilm. The communities colonising pyrite and those in the mature formations appear to be populated by the greatest diversity of bacteria and archaea (including ‘ARMAN’ (archaeal Richmond Mine acidophilic nano-organisms)-related), as compared with the known AMD, with ∼44.9% unclassified sequences. We propose that the thick polymeric matrix may provide a safety shield against the prevailing extreme condition and also a massive carbon source, enabling non-typical acidophiles to develop more easily. Only 1 of 39 species were shared, suggesting a high metabolic heterogeneity in local microenvironments, defined by the O2 concentration, spatial location and biofilm architecture. The suboxic mats, compositionally most similar to each other, are more diverse and active for S, CO2, CH4, fatty acid and lipopolysaccharide metabolism. The oxic stratum of the streamer, displaying a higher diversity of the so-called ‘ARMAN’-related Euryarchaeota, shows a higher expression level of proteins involved in signal transduction, cell growth and N, H2, Fe, aromatic amino acids, sphingolipid and peptidoglycan metabolism. Our study is the first to highlight profound taxonomic and functional shifts in single AMD formations, as well as new microbial species and the importance of H2 in acidic suboxic macroscopic growths.We gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Projects CSD2007-00005, BIO2010-16303 and BIO2011-25012) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Partial support by the FP7-KBBE program through the projects Microme (Grant No. 222886-2) and MAGICPAH (FP7-KBBE-2009-245226) is also gratefully acknowledged. Proteomics analysis performed in the ONJ laboratory was supported by a research grant (FNU 09-072287) and an EliteForsk award to ONJ from the Danish Council for Independent Research.Peer Reviewe

    Gastrointestinal eosinophils in health, disease and functional disorders

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    Esterases receive special attention because of their wide distribution in biological systems and environments and their importance for physiology and chemical synthesis. The prediction of esterases’ substrate promiscuity level from sequence data and the molecular reasons why certain such enzymes are more promiscuous than others remain to be elucidated. This limits the surveillance of the sequence space for esterases potentially leading to new versatile biocatalysts and new insights into their role in cellular function. Here, we performed an extensive analysis of the substrate spectra of 145 phylogenetically and environmentally diverse microbial esterases, when tested with 96 diverse esters. We determined the primary factors shaping their substrate range by analyzing substrate range patterns in combination with structural analysis and protein–ligand simulations. We found a structural parameter that helps rank (classify) the promiscuity level of esterases from sequence data at 94% accuracy. This parameter, the active site effective volume, exemplifies the topology of the catalytic environment by measuring the active site cavity volume corrected by the relative solvent accessible surface area (SASA) of the catalytic triad. Sequences encoding esterases with active site effective volumes (cavity volume/SASA) above a threshold show greater substrate spectra, which can be further extended in combination with phylogenetic data. This measure provides also a valuable tool for interrogating substrates capable of being converted. This measure, found to be transferred to phosphatases of the haloalkanoic acid dehalogenase superfamily and possibly other enzymatic systems, represents a powerful tool for low-cost bioprospecting for esterases with broad substrate ranges, in large scale sequence data sets.C.C. thanks the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness for a Ph.D. fellowship (Grant BES-2015-073829). This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program [Blue Growth: Unlocking the potential of Seas and Oceans] under grant agreement no. 634486 (project acronym INMARE). This research was also supported by the European Community Projects MAGICPAH (FP7-KBBE-2009-245226), ULIXES (FP7-KBBE-2010-266473), and KILLSPILL (FP7-KBBE2012-312139) and grants BIO2011-25012, PCIN-2014-107, BIO2014-54494-R, and CTQ2016-79138-R from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness. The present investigation was also funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness within the ERA NET IB2, grant no. ERA-IB-14-030 (MetaCat), the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), grant no. BB/M029085/1, and the German Research Foundation (FOR1296). R.B. and P.N.G. acknowledge the support of the Supercomputing Wales project, which is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) via the Welsh Government. O.V.G. and P.N.G. acknowledge the support of the Centre of Environmental Biotechnology Project funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Welsh Government. A.Y. and A.S. gratefully acknowledge funding from Genome Canada (2009-OGI-ABC-1405) and the NSERC Strategic Network grant IBN. A.I.P. was supported by the Counseling of Economy and Employment of the Principality of Asturias, Spain (Grant FC-15-GRUPIN14-107). V.G. acknowledges the joint BSC-CRG-IRB Research Program in Computational Biology. The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support provided by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).We acknowledge support by the CSIC Open Access Publication Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI).Peer reviewe

    Biocatalysis in ionic liquids: enzymatic synthesis of sugar fatty acid esters

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    Sugar fatty acid esters (SFAEs) are composed of one or more fatty acid chains linked to a carbohydrate molecule. They are commonly used as non-ionic and biodegradable surfactants and emulsifiers. However, SFAEs also present other interesting features such as tasteless, odorless, non-toxicity, and bioactivity which make them suitable for industrial applications in the food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetics industries. Traditionally, SFAEs are obtained from chemical synthesis despite the recognized disadvantages associated to this process. More recently, the synthesis of SFAEs using enzymes as biocatalysts proved to be a suitable and greener alternative. However, the use of organic solvents as reaction medium has been pointed out as one of the greatest limitations of the enzymatic process. To overcome this issue, ionic liquids (ILs) have been proposed as alternative solvents. ILs are frequently described as ``tunable'' solvents due to the possibility of combining different cations and anions to obtain the desired physicochemical properties. Based on their unique characteristics, ILs have been recognized as suitable solvents for biocatalytic processes involving different enzymes and reactions. Nevertheless, the selection of the suitable IL for the enzymatic synthesis of SFAEs is considered a key aspect in the bioprocess since compounds chemically different (sugars, fatty acids, and enzymes) are simultaneously present in the reaction medium. Ideally, the IL used as solvent should facilitate the solubilization of the substrates and not negatively affect the enzymatic activity and stability. The enzymatic synthesis of SFAEs can occur though two different approaches, namely esterification and transesterification. Several ILs and biocatalysts have been successfully reported for the synthesis of different types of SFAEs. Considering the enormous versatility of combining different sugars with fatty acids, it is expected that novel and promising SFAEs could be synthesized in the future using ILs as reaction medium.FEDER -European Regional Development Fund(NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000004)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
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