The activation of the Sox2 RR2 pluripotency transcriptional reporter in human breast cancer cell lines is dynamic and labels cells with higher tumorigenic potential

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).-- et al.The striking similarity displayed at the mechanistic level between tumorigenesis and the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells and the fact that genes and pathways relevant for embryonic development are reactivated during tumor progression highlights the link between pluripotency and cancer. Based on these observations, we tested whether it is possible to use a pluripotency-associated transcriptional reporter, whose activation is driven by the SRR2 enhancer from the Sox2 gene promoter (named S4+ reporter), to isolate cancer stem cells (CSCs) from breast cancer cell lines. The S4+ pluripotency transcriptional reporter allows the isolation of cells with enhanced tumorigenic potential and its activation was switched on and offin the cell lines studied, reflecting a plastic cellular process. Microarray analysis comparing the populations in which the reporter construct is active versus inactive showed that positive cells expressed higher mRNA levels of cytokines (IL-8, IL-6, TNF) and genes (such as ATF3, SNAI2, and KLF6) previously related with the CSC phenotype in breast cancer.This work is supported by grants from Obra Social Kutxa, Gobierno Vasco (Saiotek program and Consejería de Educación PI2010-25), and Instituto de Salud Carlos III Acción Estratégica en Salud (PI2010-01035). Work in Atanasio Pandiella lab is supported by the MINECO (BFU2012-39151).Peer Reviewe

La Influencia de los Productos Hidrofugantes en la Succión del Ladrillo Cerámico Cara Vista

Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Cerámica y Vidrio

Development of Magnetostrictive Transducer Prototype for Blockage Detection on Molten Salt Pipes

In solar thermal power plants molten salt is often used to store and transport the energy that is collected during the day. The external pipe temperature is measured to activate an electric heating system if the temperature approaches the melting point. However, salt solidification cannot be completely excluded from the plant management. Once occurred, the location of a salt blockage is very complex due to the high temperature of the pipe. Therefore, when this problem arises, power plants have to stop production with the consequences in time and cost that this entails. Electro-magnetic acoustic transducers can be used as non-destructive testing systems for this application. A method for salt blockage detection is proposed that is applicable in straight sections of pipes by employing torsional guided waves that are generated with magnetostrictive transducers. The present paper deals with the transducer conception and the design of the power supply to activate it. Two alternatives are proposed and compared to determine the improvement in the amplitude/noise ratio. Finally, the experimental results show the performance of the equipment in a small prototype, thus validating the technique presented

Online Multichannel Speech Enhancement combining Statistical Signal Processing and Deep Neural Networks: A Ph.D. Thesis Overview

Speech-related applications on mobile devices require highperformance speech enhancement algorithms to tackle challenging, noisy real-world environments. In addition, current mobile devices often embed several microphones, allowing them to exploit spatial information. The main goal of this Thesis is the development of online multichannel speech enhancement algorithms for speech services in mobile devices. The proposed techniques use multichannel signal processing to increase the noise reduction performance without degrading the quality of the speech signal. Moreover, deep neural networks are applied in specific parts of the algorithm where modeling by classical methods would be, otherwise, unfeasible or very limiting. Our contributions focus on different noisy environments where these mobile speech technologies can be applied. These include dualmicrophone smartphones in noisy and reverberant environments and general multi-microphone devices for speech enhancement and target source separation. Moreover, we study the training of deep learning methods for speech processing using perceptual considerations. Our contributions successfully integrate signal processing and deep learning methods to exploit spectral, spatial, and temporal speech features jointly. As a result, the proposed techniques provide us with a manifold framework for robust speech processing under very challenging acoustic environments, thus allowing us to improve perceptual quality and intelligibility measures.Project PID2019-104206GB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/50110001103

A detailed chemistry model for transient hydrogen and carbon monoxide catalytic recombination on parallel flat Pt surfaces implemented in an integral code

A detailed chemistry model has been adapted and developed for surface chemistry, heat and mass transfer between H2/CO/air/steam/CO2 mixtures and vertical parallel Pt-coated surfaces. This model is based onto a simplified Deutschmann reaction scheme for methane surface combustion and the analysis by Elenbaas for buoyancy-induced heat transfer between parallel plates. Mass transfer is treated by the heat and mass transfer analogy. The proposed model is able to simulate the H2/CO recombination phenomena characteristic of parallel-plate Passive Autocatalytic Recombiners (PARs), which have been proposed and implemented as a promising hydrogen-control strategy in the safety of nuclear power stations or other industries. The transient model is able to approach the warm-up phase of the PAR and its shut-down as well as the dynamic changes within the surrounding atmosphere. The model has been implemented within the MELCOR code and assessed against results of the Battelle Model Containment tests of the Zx series. Results show accurate predictions and a better performance than traditional methods in integral codes, i.e., empirical correlations, which are also much case-specific. Influence of CO present in the mixture on the PAR performance is also addressed in this paper

Transcriptomic analysis of Streptomyces coelicolor differentiation in solid sporulating cultures: first compartmentalized and second multinucleated mycelia have different and distinctive transcriptomes

[EN] Streptomycetes are very important industrial bacteria, which produce two thirds of all clinically relevant secondary metabolites. They have a complex developmental-cycle in which an early compartmentalized mycelium (MI) differentiates to a multinucleated mycelium (MII) that grows inside the culture medium (substrate mycelium) until it starts to growth into the air (aerial mycelium) and ends up forming spores. Streptomyces developmental studies have focused mainly on the later stages of MII differentiation (aerial mycelium and sporulation), with regulation of pre-sporulation stages (MI/MII transition) essentially unknown. This work represents the first study of the Streptomyces MI transcriptome, analyzing how it differs from the MII transcriptome. We have used a very conservative experimental approach to fractionate MI from MII and quantify gene expressions. The expression of well characterized key developmental/metabolic genes involved in bioactive compound production (actinorhodin, undecylprodigiosin, calcium-dependent antibiotic, cpk, geosmin) or hydrophobic cover formation-sporulation (bld, whi, wbl, rdl, chp, ram) was correlated with MII differentiation. Additionally, 122 genes conserved in the Streptomyces genus, whose biological function had not been previously characterized, were found to be differentially expressed (more than 4-fold) in MI or MII. These genes encoded for putative regulatory proteins (transcriptional regulators, kinases), as well as hypothetical proteins. Knowledge about differences between the MI (vegetative) and MII (reproductive) transcriptomes represents a huge advance in Streptomyces biology that will make future experiments possible aimed at characterizing the biochemical pathways controlling pre-sporulation developmental stages and activation of secondary metabolism in StreptomycesSIThis research was funded by grant BIO2010-16303 from the Subdirección General de Proyectos de Investigación, (DGI), Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN), Spain; and by an ERC Starting Grant (Strp-differentiation 280304). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Infiltration of abdominal striae distensae by Hodgkin's lymphoma

Cutaneous Hodgkin’s lymphoma (HL) is generally secondary to dissemination from a nodal HL; it tends to occur late in thecourse of the disease, and is associated with a poor progno-sis. It often manifests first as painless erythematous nodules and papules in the chest area. Primary cutaneous HL is extremely uncommon

Dual-Channel Speech Enhancement Based on Extended Kalman Filter Relative Transfer Function Estimation

This paper deals with speech enhancement in dual-microphone smartphones using beamforming along with postfiltering techniques. The performance of these algorithms relies on a good estimation of the acoustic channel and speech and noise statistics. In this work we present a speech enhancement system that combines the estimation of the relative transfer function (RTF) between microphones using an extended Kalman filter framework with a novel speech presence probability estimator intended to track the noise statistics’ variability. The available dual-channel information is exploited to obtain more reliable estimates of clean speech statistics. Noise reduction is further improved by means of postfiltering techniques that take advantage of the speech presence estimation. Our proposal is evaluated in different reverberant and noisy environments when the smartphone is used in both close-talk and far-talk positions. The experimental results show that our system achieves improvements in terms of noise reduction, low speech distortion and better speech intelligibility compared to other state-of-the-art approaches.Spanish MINECO/FEDER Project TEC2016-80141-PSpanish Ministry of Education through the National Program FPU under Grant FPU15/0416

Agrupación activa conformadora de haz

In this paper, a high linearity power amplifying active antenna is proposed. Taking advantage of a large signal regime device-level bias-adaptation technique, a low radiated distortion level with independence of the radiated power is assured, improving the linearity-efficiency trade-off. Two PHEMT-based power amplifiers excite the perpendicular input ports of an aperture coupled patch antenna in a quadrature-phase configuration achieving amplitude control of the radiated field with circular polarization. Beamforming capabilities of the designed antenna have also been considered for different amplitude distributions employing such studied bias-adaptation technique. An specific test set-up has been implemented to completely characterize the antenna behavior using digital modulated signals

Li-Po Battery Charger Based on the Constant Current/Voltage Parallel Resonant Converter Operating in ZVS

Battery requirements for electrical vehicles are continuously becoming more demanding in terms of energy density and reliability. Nowadays, batteries for drones must be able to supply 100 A for 15 min, not to mention the specifications required for batteries in electrical vehicles. These specifications result in more stringent specifications for battery chargers. They are required to be more efficient, flexible, and, as with any another power equipment, to have reduced size and weight. Since the parallel resonant converter can operate as a current source and as a voltage source, this paper presents a battery charger power stage for lithium ion polymer batteries, based on the above topology, operating in zero voltage switching mode, and implementing frequency and duty cycle control