Criterios de Selección de un Corpus Lingüístico Específico para el Estudio de la Metáfora en la Ciencia

Esta comunicación comienza con el concepto y la evolución histórica de la utilización de corpora en la investigación lingüística, para pasar a detallar los criterios seguidos en la selección de un corpus específico para el estudio de los términos metafóricos en la ciencia y la tecnología. Siguiendo a Biber (1993) y a Sinclair (1991), los criterios más importantes son: la autenticidad de la muestra, su representatividad y su especificidad, es decir, su adecuación al propósito del estudio. A ellos, Krishnamurthy (2001: 85) añade el equilibrio de la representatividad de los campos y/o géneros seleccionados. La comunicación termina relacionando dichos criterios con el tema de nuestra investigación: el uso de los términos metafóricos en la ciencia, para sentar las bases a las otras ponencias de la misma Mesa Redonda de la que forma parte, que presentarán pormenorizadamente el corpus utilizado en el proyecto META-CITEC1 y aportarán datos concretos sobre el mismo

Extrinsic effects that influence the evaluations of the judges in morpho-functional horse-shows of Spanish Purebred horses

El caballo de Pura Raza Española (PRE) es la raza equina más importante de España desde el punto de vista censal, histórico y socio-económico. Aunque su Esquema de Selección contempla la valoración de los animales según su rendimiento deportivo, la conformación y el temperamento, tradicionalmente ha sido seleccionado por su morfología y su aptitud para la silla en concursos morfofuncionales. En estos concursos, los caballos de PRE agrupados en función de su sexo y edad, son evaluados subjetivamente, generalmente por 3 jueces de forma independiente. Estos jueces emiten puntuaciones sobre caracteres morfológicos (8), de movimientos (2) y funcionales (3, únicamente se emiten para los machos mayores de tres años), utilizando una escala numérica de 1 (muy malo) a 10 (muy bueno), con incrementos de 0,5 puntos. Para este estudio las puntuaciones se han combinado en tres notas globales por juez (morfológica, movimientos y funcional, calculadas a partir de las puntuaciones parciales). En este trabajo se han analizado los factores extrínsecos al propio juez (dependientes del animal y del concurso) que condicionan su actuación en los concursos y consecuentemente la clasificación de los animales. Así se ha estudiado el efecto de la capa, la edad, el sexo, y la ganadería del animal, el concurso, el año y la Comunidad Autónoma donde se ha celebrado la prueba, sobre las puntuaciones emitidas por cada juez (interacción del juez con los diferentes factores), así como el efecto del número de animales participantes, animales juzgados por cada juez y el orden de participación. Todos los factores estudiados han resultado ser estadísticamente significativos sobre las puntuaciones emitidas por los jueces.The Spanish Purebred (PRE) horse is the most important breed in Spain due to its census, and its historical and socio-economical importance. PRE horses are evaluated according to their sportive performance, conformation and temperament within the Breeding Scheme of this breed. Individuals (grouped by sex and age) are subjectively evaluated by judges in horse-shows. The aim of this study is to ascertain the influence of environmental factors (related to the animal and the show) influencing the scores and rankings. Up to 8 morphological, 2 movement and 3 functional (only in 3 years-old males) traits are scored by show-judges using a numerical scale from 1 (the worst) to 10 (the best). Here, 3 composite traits cha-racterising morphology, movement and functional performance of the individuals have been constructed using partial scores. The effects of the coat colour, age, sex, stud, show-horse, year of celebration, state, total number of animals, number of judged animals and the order within age-sex group on judgements have been tested besides some interactions between these effects. The statistical significance of the analysed effects on the scores given by the show-judges is discussed

Differences and Relationship Between Standard and Specific Throwing Test in Handball According to the Competitive and Professional Level

The present study analyzed the differences in distance throwing with heavy and light medicine ball and throwing velocity between handball players of different competitive and professional level. Likewise, the relationship between the three throwing test of progressive specificity was analyzed: throwing with heavy medicinal ball (TH), throwing with light medicinal ball (TL) and throwing velocity (TV). For this purpose, sixty-five professional (P), semiprofessional (S) and non-professional (N) players were evaluated. El presente estudio analizó las diferencias en la distancia de lanzamiento realizado con balón medicinal pesado y ligero y en la velocidad de lanzamiento entre jugadores de balonmano de diferente nivel competitivo y profesional. Igualmente, la relación entre los tres test de lanzamiento, de progresiva especificidad, fue analizado: lanzamiento con balón medicinal pesado (TH), lanzamiento con balón medicinal ligero (TL) y velocidad de lanzamiento (TV). Para ello, sesenta y cinco jugadores profesionales (P), semi-profesionales (S) y no-profesionales (N) fueron evaluados

Association of acid phosphatase locus 1*C allele with the risk of cardiovascular events in rheumatoid arthritis patients

Introduction: Acid phosphatase locus 1 (ACP1) encodes a low molecular weight phosphotyrosine phosphatase implicated in a number of different biological functions in the cell. The aim of this study was to determine the contribution of ACP1 polymorphisms to susceptibility to rheumatoid arthritis (RA), as well as the potential contribution of these polymorphisms to the increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CV) observed in RA patients. Methods: A set of 1,603 Spanish RA patients and 1,877 healthy controls were included in the study. Information related to the presence/absence of CV events was obtained from 1,284 of these participants. All individuals were genotyped for four ACP1 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), rs10167992, rs11553742, rs7576247, and rs3828329, using a predesigned TaqMan SNP genotyping assay. Classical ACP1 alleles (*A, *B and *C) were imputed with SNP data. Results: No association between ACP1 gene polymorphisms and susceptibility to RA was observed. However, when RA patients were stratified according to the presence or absence of CV events, an association between rs11553742*T and CV events was found (P = 0.012, odds ratio (OR) = 2.62 (1.24 to 5.53)). Likewise, the ACP1*C allele showed evidence of association with CV events in patients with RA (P = 0.024, OR = 2.43). Conclusions: Our data show that the ACP1*C allele influences the risk of CV events in patients with R

Association between smoking status and the parameters of vascular structure and function in adults : results from the EVIDENT study

Background: The present study analyses the relation between smoking status and the parameters used to assess vascular structure and function. Methods: This cross-sectional, multi-centre study involved a random sample of 1553 participants from the EVIDENT study. Measurements: The smoking status, peripheral augmentation index and ankle-brachial index were measured in all participants. In a small subset of the main population (265 participants), the carotid intima-media thickness and pulse wave velocity were also measured. Results: After controlling for the effect of age, sex and other risk factors, present smokers have higher values of carotid intima-media thickness (p = 0.011). Along the same lines, current smokers have higher values of pulse wave velocity and lower mean values of ankle-brachial index but without statistical significance in both cases. Conclusions: Among the parameters of vascular structure and function analysed, only the IMT shows association with the smoking status, after adjusting for confounders

Computational flow cytometry reveals that cryopreservation induces spermptosis but subpopulations of spermatozoa may experience capacitation-like changes

[EN] The reduced lifespan of cryopreserved spermatozoa in the mare reproductive tract has been attributed to both capacitative and apoptotic changes. However, there is a lack of studies investigating both phenomena simultaneously. In order to improve our knowledge in this particular point, we studied in raw and frozen-thawed samples apoptotic and capacitative markers using a wide battery of test based in flow cytometry. Apoptotic markers evaluated were caspase 3 activity, externalization of phosphatidylserine (PS), and mitochondrial membrane potential. Markers of changes resembling capacitation were membrane fluidity, tyrosine phosphorylation, and intracellular sodium. Conventional and computational flow cytometry using nonlinear dimensionally reduction techniques (t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE)) and automatic classification of cellular expression by nonlinear stochastic embedding (ACCENSE) were used. Most of the changes induced by cryopreservation were apoptotic, with increase in caspase 3 activation (P < 0.01), PS translocation to the outer membrane (P < 0.001), loss of mitochondrial membrane potential (P < 0.05), and increase in intracellular Na+ (P < 0.01). Average values of markers of capacitative changes were not affected by cryopreservation; however, the analysis of the phenotype of individual spermatozoa using computational flow cytometry revealed the presence of subpopulations of spermatozoa experiencing capacitative changes. For the first time advanced computational techniques were applied to the analysis of spermatozoa, and these techniques were able to disclose relevant information of the ejaculate that remained hidden using conventional flow cytometry.SIThe authors received financial support for this study from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad-FEDER, Madrid, Spain, grant AGL2013-43211-R, Junta de Extremadura-FEDER (GR 15029). PMM is supported by a pre-doctoral grant from the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, Madrid Spain FPU13/03991. COF is supported by a post-doctoral grant from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad “Juan de la Cierva” IJCI-2014-21671

Computational Tools for the Assessment and Substitution of Biocidal Active Substances of Ecotoxicological Concern

Book Editor(s):Kunal Roy Capítulo 27.In this chapter, we present the EU LIFE + project entitled “Computational tool for the assessment and substitution of biocidal active substances of ecotoxicological concern (LIFECOMBASE)” ( www.life-combase.com ), a three-year collaborative project financed by the European Commission through the LIFE + Environmental program GA N LIFE15 ENV/ES/416, which ended in September 2019.Peer reviewe

A genome-wide association study follow-up suggests a possible role for PPARG in systemic sclerosis susceptibility

Introduction: A recent genome-wide association study (GWAS) comprising a French cohort of systemic sclerosis (SSc) reported several non-HLA single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) showing a nominal association in the discovery phase. We aimed to identify previously overlooked susceptibility variants by using a follow-up strategy.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Methods: Sixty-six non-HLA SNPs showing a P value &#60;10-4 in the discovery phase of the French SSc GWAS were analyzed in the first step of this study, performing a meta-analysis that combined data from the two published SSc GWASs. A total of 2,921 SSc patients and 6,963 healthy controls were included in this first phase. Two SNPs, PPARG rs310746 and CHRNA9 rs6832151, were selected for genotyping in the replication cohort (1,068 SSc patients and 6,762 healthy controls) based on the results of the first step. Genotyping was performed by using TaqMan SNP genotyping assays. Results: We observed nominal associations for both PPARG rs310746 (PMH = 1.90 × 10-6, OR, 1.28) and CHRNA9 rs6832151 (PMH = 4.30 × 10-6, OR, 1.17) genetic variants with SSc in the first step of our study. In the replication phase, we observed a trend of association for PPARG rs310746 (P value = 0.066; OR, 1.17). The combined overall Mantel-Haenszel meta-analysis of all the cohorts included in the present study revealed that PPARG rs310746 remained associated with SSc with a nominal non-genome-wide significant P value (PMH = 5.00 × 10-7; OR, 1.25). No evidence of association was observed for CHRNA9 rs6832151 either in the replication phase or in the overall pooled analysis.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Conclusion: Our results suggest a role of PPARG gene in the development of SSc

Combined clinical and genomic signatures for the prognosis of early stage non-small cell lung cancer based on gene copy number alterations

BACKGROUND: The development of a more refined prognostic methodology for early non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is an unmet clinical need. An accurate prognostic tool might help to select patients at early stages for adjuvant therapies. RESULTS: A new integrated bioinformatics searching strategy, that combines gene copy number alterations and expression, together with clinical parameters was applied to derive two prognostic genomic signatures. The proposed methodology combines data from patients with and without clinical data with a priori information on the ability of a gene to be a prognostic marker. Two initial candidate sets of 513 and 150 genes for lung adenocarcinoma (ADC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), respectively, were generated by identifying genes which have both: a) significant correlation between copy number and gene expression, and b) significant prognostic value at the gene expression level in external databases. From these candidates, two panels of 7 (ADC) and 5 (SCC) genes were further identified via semi-supervised learning. These panels, together with clinical data (stage, age and sex), were used to construct the ADC and SCC hazard scores combining clinical and genomic data. The signatures were validated in two independent datasets (n = 73 for ADC, n = 97 for SCC), confirming that the prognostic value of both clinical-genomic models is robust, statistically significant (P = 0.008 for ADC and P = 0.019 for SCC) and outperforms both the clinical models (P = 0.060 for ADC and P = 0.121 for SCC) and the genomic models applied separately (P = 0.350 for ADC and P = 0.269 for SCC). CONCLUSION: The present work provides a methodology to generate a robust signature using copy number data that can be potentially used to any cancer. Using it, we found new prognostic scores based on tumor DNA that, jointly with clinical information, are able to predict overall survival (OS) in patients with early-stage ADC and SCC

Laboratorio en abierto: aprendendiendo a copiar ADN.2

El objetivo principal del proyecto es la puesta a punto de recursos educativos en abierto (REA) dirigidos a los alumnos de secundaria. La propuesta pretende desarrollar habilidades, para la resolución de problemas científicos, a través de retos que despierten el interés y la imaginación de los alumnos de secundaria. En esta propuesta la resolución de los problemas planteados estaría basada en la aplicación de una herramienta que ha revolucionado la genética y biología, la reacción en Cadena de la Polimerasa, conocida como PCR