Proposal of a Donor Behavior Model Applied to Spanish Organizations for Development

NGOs need a thorough knowledge of the donordecision process in order to be successful in their strategies forraising awareness and fundraising. In this paper, we focus onparticular types of nonprofit organizations: those whose aimsare to contribute to the advancement of developing countriesand, specifically, those trying to raise awareness of theirsituation and obtain funds in Spain. The model we propose isthe result of the study of bibliography, the authors’experiences in the last 25 years in over 15 NGOs with differentlevels of responsibility, and a study conducted by Salvetti &Llombart for the Spanish Association of Fundraising,consisting of 1.437 on-line interviews with donors, high andlow potential donors, as well as non-donors. The interviewstook place in December 2010 to February 2011

Chagas disease reactivation in a heart transplant patient infected by domestic Trypanosoma cruzi discrete typing unit I (TcIDOM)

Background Trypanosoma cruzi, causative agent of Chagas disease, displays high intraspecific genetic diversity: six genetic lineages or discrete typing units (DTUs) are currently recognized, termed TcI through TcVI. Each DTU presents a particular distribution pattern across the Americas, and is loosely associated with different transmission cycles and hosts. Several DTUs are known to circulate in Central America. It has been previously suggested that TcI infection is benign and does not lead to chronic chagasic cardiomyopathy (CCC). Findings In this study, we genotyped T. cruzi parasites circulating in the blood and from explanted cardiac tissue of an El Salvadorian patient who developed reactivation Chagas disease while on immunosuppressive medications after undergoing heart transplant in the U.S. as treatment for end-stage CCC. Parasite typing was performed through molecular methods (restriction fragment length polymorphism of polymerase reaction chain amplified products, microsatellite typing, maxicircle sequence typing and low-stringency single primer PCR, [LSSP-PCR]) as well as lineage-specific serology. We show that the parasites infecting the patient belong to the TcI DTU exclusively. Our data indicate that the parasites isolated from the patient belong to a genotype frequently associated with human infection throughout the Americas (TcI DOM ). Conclusions Our results constitute compelling evidence in support of TcI DTU’s ability to cause end-stage CCC and help dispel any residual bias that infection with this lineage is benign, pointing to the need for increased surveillance for dissemination of this genotype in endemic regions, the USA and globally

Comparison of Deep-Water Viromes from the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea

The aim of this study was to compare the composition of two deep-sea viral communities obtained from the RomancheFracture Zone in the Atlantic Ocean (collected at 5200 m depth) and the southwest Mediterranean Sea (from 2400 m depth)using a pyro-sequencing approach. The results are based on 18.7% and 6.9% of the sequences obtained from the AtlanticOcean and the Mediterranean Sea, respectively, with hits to genomes in the non-redundant viral RefSeq database. Theidentifiable richness and relative abundance in both viromes were dominated by archaeal and bacterial viruses accountingfor 92.3% of the relative abundance in the Atlantic Ocean and for 83.6% in the Mediterranean Sea. Despite characteristicdifferences in hydrographic features between the sampling sites in the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, 440 virusgenomes were found in both viromes. An additional 431 virus genomes were identified in the Atlantic Ocean and 75 virusgenomes were only found in the Mediterranean Sea. The results indicate that the rather contrasting deep-sea environmentsof the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea share a common core set of virus types constituting the majority of bothvirus communities in terms of relative abundance (Atlantic Ocean: 81.4%; Mediterranean Sea: 88.7%)

Serving Refugees in a Pandemic: Insights from Yazidis in the Midwest

There is a critical need for research to examine factors that hinder or facilitate access to healthcare in the context of COVID-19. The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated barriers to healthcare for marginalized communities globally, leaving many without access to needed health services. Resettled refugees, in particular, must grapple with added challenges to locating and obtaining culturally appropriate healthcare services. Recent focus groups shed light on the experiences of Yazidi refugees in the U.S. Midwest during COVID-19. Yazidis are a historically persecuted religious and ethnic minority group from northern Iraq (Kizilhan, 2017). Many Yazidis migrated to the U.S. on Special Immigrant Visas after providing interpretation services for the U.S. Army. Focus groups reflected diverse perspectives from health care providers, social workers, Yazidi community members, and cultural centers. Findings reveal four critical areas that limit access to healthcare: (1) language barriers; (2) economic barriers; (3) social barriers; and (4) cultural stigma. In this commentary, we explore how these barriers contribute to adverse health experiences and outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic, and offer insights relevant to public health practice with marginalized communities

Quasi Free 238U (e,e'f)-Cross Section in Macroscopic-Microscopic Approach

We present the result of a theoretical study of inclusive quasi free electrofission of $^{238}$U. The off-shell $$cross sections for the quasi free reaction stage have been calculated within the Plane Wave Impulse Approximation (PWIA), using a Macroscopic -Microscopic description of the proton and neutron single particle momentum distributions. Electron wave function distortion corrections were included using the effective momentum approximation, and the Final State Interaction (FSI) effects were calculated using an optical potential. The fissility for the proton single hole excited states of the residual nucleus $^{237}$Pa was calculated both without and with contributions of the pre-equilibrium emission of the particles. The fissility for $^{237,238}U$ residual nuclei was calculated within the compound nucleus model. The $(e,e^{\prime}f)-$cross sections thus obtained were compared with available experimental data.Comment: 26 pages, 7 figure

Traversable Wormholes Construction in 2+1 Dimensions

We study traversable Lorentzian wormholes in the three-dimensional low energy string theory by adding some matter source involving a dilaton field. It will be shown that there are two-different types of wormhole solutions such as BTZ and black string wormholes depending on the dilaton backgrounds, respectively. We finally obtain the desirable solutions which confine exotic matter near the throat of wormhole by adjusting NS charge.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, JHEP style, one reference adde

Transient vitamin B5 starving improves mammalian cell homeostasis and protein production.

Maintaining a metabolic steady state is essential for an organism's fitness and survival when confronted with environmental stress, and metabolic imbalance can be reversed by exposing the organism to fasting. Here, we attempted to apply this physiological principle to mammalian cell cultures to improve cellular fitness and consequently their ability to express recombinant proteins. We showed that transient vitamin B5 deprivation, an essential cofactor of central cellular metabolism, can quickly and irreversibly affect mammalian cell growth and division. A selection method was designed that relies on mammalian cell dependence on vitamin B5 for energy production, using the co-expression of the B5 transporter SLC5A6 and a gene of interest. We demonstrated that vitamin B5 selection persistently activates peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPAR), a family of transcription factors involved in energy homeostasis, thereby altering lipid metabolism, improving cell fitness and therapeutic protein production. Thus, stable PPAR activation may constitute a cellular memory of past deprivation state, providing increased resistance to further potential fasting events. In other words, our results imply that cultured cells, once exposed to metabolic starvation, may display an improved metabolic fitness as compared to non-exposed cells, allowing increased resistance to cellular stress

Equilibrium and stability properties of a coupled two-component Bose-Einstein condensate

The equilibrium and stability properties of a coupled two-component BEC is studied using a variational method and the one-dimensional model of Williams and collaborators. The variational parameters are the population fraction, translation and scaling transformation of the condensate densities, assumed to have a Gaussian shape. We study the equilibrium and stability properties as a function of the strength of the laser field and the traps displacement. We find many branches of equilibrium configurations, with a host of critical points. In all cases, the signature of the onset of criticality is the collapse of a normal mode which is a linear combination of the out of phase translation and an in phase breathing oscillation of the condensate densities. Our calculations also indicate that we have symmetry breaking effects when the traps are not displacedComment: 13 pages,3 figure

Cosmological CMBR dipole in open universes ?

The observed CMBR dipole is generally interpreted as a Doppler effect arising from the motion of the Earth relative to the CMBR frame. An alternative interpretation, proposed in the last years, is that the dipole results from ultra-large scale isocurvature perturbations. We examine this idea in the context of open cosmologies and show that the isocurvature interpretation is not valid in an open universe, unless it is extremely close to a flat universe, $|\Omega_0 -1|< 10^{-4}$.Comment: 26 pages, Latex, 6 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Restoring the sting to metric preheating

The relative growth of field and metric perturbations during preheating is sensitive to initial conditions set in the preceding inflationary phase. Recent work suggests this may protect super-Hubble metric perturbations from resonant amplification during preheating. We show that this possibility is fragile and sensitive to the specific form of the interactions between the inflaton and other fields. The suppression is naturally absent in two classes of preheating in which either (1) the vacua of the non-inflaton fields during inflation are deformed away from the origin, or (2) the effective masses of non-inflaton fields during inflation are small but during preheating are large. Unlike the simple toy model of a $g^2 \phi^2 \chi^2$ coupling, most realistic particle physics models contain these other features. Moreover, they generically lead to both adiabatic and isocurvature modes and non-Gaussian scars on super-Hubble scales. Large-scale coherent magnetic fields may also appear naturally.Comment: 6 pages, 3 ps figures, RevTex, revised discussion of backreaction and new figure. To appear Phys. Rev. D (Rapid Communication