SARS- CoV-2 infection and oxidative stress in early-onset preeclampsia

SARS-CoV-2 causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) also in pregnant women. Infection in pregnancy leads to maternal and placental functional alterations. Pregnant women with vascular defects such as preeclampsia show high susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection by undefined mechanisms. Pregnant women infected with SARS-CoV-2 show higher rates of preterm birth and caesarean delivery, and their placentas show signs of vasculopathy and inflammation. It is still unclear whether the foetus is affected by the maternal infection with this virus and whether maternal infection associates with postnatal affections. The SARS-CoV-2 infection causes oxidative stress and activation of the immune system leading to cytokine storm and next tissue damage as seen in the lung. The angiotensin-converting-enzyme 2 expression is determinant for these alterations in the lung. Since this enzyme is expressed in the human placenta, SARS-CoV-2 could infect the placenta tissue, although reported to be of low frequency compared with maternal lung tissue. Early-onset preeclampsia (eoPE) shows higher expression of ADAM17 (a disintegrin and metalloproteinase 17) causing an imbalanced renin-angiotensin system and endothelial dysfunction. A similar mechanism seems to potentially account for SARS-CoV-2 infection. This review highlights the potentially common characteristics of pregnant women with eoPE with those with COVID-19. A better understanding of the mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2 infection and its impact on the placenta function is determinant since eoPE/COVID-19 association may result in maternal metabolic alterations that might lead to a potential worsening of the foetal programming of diseases in the neonate, young, and adult

Development Of a Multisensorial System For Emotions Recognition

Automated reading and analysis of human emotion has the potential to be a powerful tool to develop a wide variety of applications, such as human-computer interaction systems, but, at the same time, this is a very difficult issue because the human communication is very complex. Humans employ multiple sensory systems in emotion recognition. At the same way, an emotionally intelligent machine requires multiples sensors to be able to create an affective interaction with users. Thus, this Master thesis proposes the development of a multisensorial system for automatic emotion recognition. The multisensorial system is composed of three sensors, which allowed exploring different emotional aspects, as the eye tracking, using the IR-PCR technique, helped conducting studies about visual social attention; the Kinect, in conjunction with the FACS-AU system technique, allowed developing a tool for facial expression recognition; and the thermal camera, using the FT-RoI technique, was employed for detecting facial thermal variation. When performing the multisensorial integration of the system, it was possible to obtain a more complete and varied analysis of the emotional aspects, allowing evaluate focal attention, valence comprehension, valence expressions, facial expression, valence recognition and arousal recognition. Experiments were performed with sixteen healthy adult volunteers and 105 healthy children volunteers and the results were the developed system, which was able to detect eye gaze, recognize facial expression and estimate the valence and arousal for emotion recognition, This system also presents the potential to analyzed emotions of people by facial features using contactless sensors in semi-structured environments, such as clinics, laboratories, or classrooms. This system also presents the potential to become an embedded tool in robots to endow these machines with an emotional intelligence for a more natural interaction with humans. Keywords: emotion recognition, eye tracking, facial expression, facial thermal variation, integration multisensoria

Relación entre hemoglobina glicosilada e inhibidor del activador del plasminógeno-1 en Diabéticos tipo 2

 The objective was to determine the relationship between the glycosylated hemoglobin level and the prevalence of type - 1 plasminogen activator inhibitor elevated in type 2 diabetic patients. The type was quantitative, design descriptive and crosssectional, 632 elderly patients were selected. 18 years, 263 men and 369 women diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, analyzed the plasma markers: PAI -1, tPA, fibrinogen and homocysteine. The status of type 2 diabetes was evaluated with HbA1c, considering itself uncontrolled patient with Hb1c values> 5.9%. Among the main results, the group of high type 2 diabetic patients (HbA1c> 5.9%) has a prevalence of 74.4% of elevated PAI-1 while patients with normal HbA1c have a prevalence of 40.7, which means that Patients who do not control their glycemic profile have 3.9 (Odd Ratio) times more risk of presenting high levels of PAI -1 in relation to patients with controlled glycemia. In addition, patients with an altered glucose profile have a 1.6 times higher risk of presenting high levels of fibrinogen and a 1.5 times higher risk of having high tPA, no association was observed between plasma homocysteine levels in uncontrolled diabetic patients, estimated with the logistic regression model. It is concluded that uncontrolled type 2 diabetic patients have an increase in the prevalence of the inhibitor of the raised type -1 plasminogen activator.El objetivo del presente trabajo fue determinar la relación entre el nivel hemoglobina glicosilada y la prevalencia de inhibidor del activador del plasminógeno tipo - 1 elevado en pacientes diabéticos tipo 2. El tipo de estudio fue cuantitativo y el diseño descriptivo de corte transversal, se seleccionó 632 pacientes mayores de 18 años, 263 varones y 369 mujeres con diagnóstico de diabetes tipo 2, se analizaron los marcadores plasmáticos: PAI -1, tPA, fibrinógeno y homocisteína. El estado de la diabetes tipo 2 se evaluó con la HbA1c, considerándose paciente no controlado con valores de Hb1c >5,9%. Entre los principales resultados el grupo de pacientes diabéticos tipo 2 elevado (HbA1c >5,9%) tiene una pre- valencia de 74,4% de PAI-1 elevado mientras que los pacientes con HbA1c normal tienen una prevalencia de 40,7, significa que los pacientes que no controlan su perfil glicémico tienen 3,9 (Odd Ratio) veces más riesgo de presentar niveles elevados de PAI -1 en relación a los pacientes con glicemia controlada. Además, los pacientes con perfil de glucosa alterada tienen 1,6 veces más riesgo de presentar niveles elevados de fibrinógeno y 1,5 veces más riesgo de tener tPA elevado, no se observó asociación entre los niveles de homocisteína plasmático en pacientes diabéticos no controlados, estimado con el modelo de regresión logística. Se concluye que los pacientes diabéticos tipo 2 no controlados presentan un incremento en la prevalencia Inhibidor del activador del plasminógeno tipo -1 elevada

Intravenous tPA therapy does not worsen acute intracerebral hemorrhage in mice

Tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) is the only FDA-approved treatment for reperfusing ischemic strokes. But widespread use of tPA is still limited by fears of inadvertently administering tPA in patients with intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). Surprisingly, however, the assumption that tPA will worsen ICH has never been biologically tested. Here, we assessed the effects of tPA in two models of ICH. In a mouse model of collagenase-induced ICH, hemorrhage volumes and neurological deficits after 24 hrs were similar in saline controls and tPA-treated mice, whereas heparin-treated mice had 3-fold larger hematomas. In a model of laser-induced vessel rupture, tPA also did not worsen hemorrhage volumes, while heparin did. tPA is known to worsen neurovascular injury by amplifying matrix metalloproteinases during cerebral ischemia. In contrast, tPA did not upregulate matrix metalloproteinases in our mouse ICH models. In summary, our experimental data do not support the assumption that intravenous tPA has a deleterious effect in acute ICH. However, due to potential species differences and the inability of models to fully capture the dynamics of human ICH, caution is warranted when considering the implications of these findings for human therapy

Longitudinal Effects of Distress and Its Management During COVID-19 Lockdown in Spain

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic that hit Spain during March 2020 forced the strict confinement of the population for 2 months. The objectives of this study were (a) to assess the magnitude and duration of the influence of confinement on people’s Distress, (b) to study the temporal sequence of stress, and (c) to show how different day-to-day activities and personal variables influence perceived Distress levels. Method: A daily registration was completed by 123 people, with ages ranging from 21 to 75 years old (X = 43, SD = 10 years), of which there were 40 men (32%) and 83 females (68%). During 45 days of lockdown, from March 19th to May 3rd, participants were asked to respond to a socio-demographic survey and make daily records comprising the MASQ-D30 and some day-to-day behaviors. Pooled time series was applied to establish what effect time had on the dependent variable. Results: Distress has a 14-day autoregressive function and gender, physical activity, sexual activity, listening to music, and teleworking also influence Distress. It has been hypothesized that the intercept presents variability at level 2 (individual), but it has not been significant. Interactions between Gender—Telecommuting, and Gender—Physical Activity were observed. Approximately 66% of the variance of Distress was explained (R 2 = 0.663). Discussion: At the beginning of the lockdown, the average levels of Distress were well above the levels of the end (z = 3.301). The individuals in the sample have followed a very similar process in the development of Distress. During the lockdown, the “memory” of Distress was 2 weeks. Our results indicate that levels of Distress depend on activities during lockdown. Interactions exist between gender and some behavioral variables that barely influence Distress in men but decrease Distress in women. The importance of routine maintenance and gender differences must be considered to propose future interventions during confinement

Developing an e-infrastructure for social science

We outline the aims and progress to date of the National Centre for e-Social Science e-Infrastructure project. We examine the challenges faced by the project, namely in ensuring outputs are appropriate to social scientists, managing the transition from research projects to service and embedding software and data within a wider infrastructural framework. We also provide pointers to related work where issues which have ramifications for this and similar initiatives are being addressed

Exchange Effects in the Invar Hardening: Fe0.65Ni0.35Fe_{0.65}Ni_{0.35} as a test case

An increase of the critical resolved shear stress of Invar alloys (Invar hardening) with a lowering temperature is explained. The effect is caused by a growth of the exchange interaction between dangling $d$-electron states of dislocation cores and paramagnetic obstacles (e.g., Ni atoms in FeNi alloys) which occurs below the Curie temperature. The spins of the two electrons align along the magnetization due to the exchange interaction with the surrounding atoms of the ferromagnetic. The exchange interaction between the dislocations and obstacles is enhanced in Invars due to a strong growth of the magnetic moments of atoms under the action of elastic strains near the dislocation cores. Parameters characterizing the exchange interaction are determined for the case of the Fe$_{0.65}$Ni$_{0.35}$ Invar. The influence of the internal magnetic field on the dislocation detachment from the obstacles is taken into account. The obtained temperature dependence of the critical resolved shear stress in the Fe$_{0.65}$Ni$_{0.35}$ Invar agrees well with the available experimental data. Experiments facilitating a further check of the theoretical model are suggested.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure