Infant formula nutrition buying behavior in a pharmacy chain

[Resumen] Este artículo tiene por objeto caracterizar el comportamiento de compra de fórmulas de nutrición infantil, por parte de las madres de familia en una cadena de farmacias de la ciudad de Guayaquil. Se realizó una investigación descriptiva, que consistió en la aplicación de un cuestionario a 384 madres de familia, el cual mide características socio-económicas, culturales, actitudinales y de decisión de compra, encontrándose que si bien la lactancia materna es preferida por la sociedad en general, problemas como incapacidad para dar de lactar o cumplir horarios de lactancia, obliga a la adquisición de fórmulas infantiles, siendo los pediatras y familias de las madres los que más influyen en su decisión de compra y selección de marca, mientras que la publicidad tiene un rol poco relevante[Abstract] The aim of this article is to characterize the infant formula nutrition buying behavior by mothers in a pharmacy chain in the city of Guayaquil. A descriptive investigation was carried out, based on the application of a survey to 384 mothers, which measures socio-economic, cultural, attitudinal and purchasing decision characteristics. Findings show that although breastfeeding is preferred by society, problems such as inability to breastfeed or to comply with breastfeeding schedules, obliges the acquisition of infant formulas. In consequence, pediatricians and mothers` relatives are the once the influence the most in the purchasing decision and brand selection, whereas the publicity has an irrelevant role

A fast and cost-effective method for apolipoprotein E isotyping as an alternative to APOE genotyping for patient screening and stratification

Apolipoprotein E (apoE) is a 34 kDa glycoprotein involved in lipid metabolism. The human APOE gene encodes for three different apoE protein isoforms: E2, E3 and E4. The interest in apoE isoforms is high for epidemiological research, patient stratification and identification of those at increased risk for clinical trials and prevention. The isoform apoE4 is associated with increased risk for coronary heart and Alzheimer's diseases. This paper describes a method for specifically detecting the apoE4 isoform from biological fluids by taking advantage of the capacity of apoE to bind "specifically" to polystyrene surfaces as capture and a specific anti-apoE4 monoclonal antibody as reporter. Our results indicate that the apoE-polystyrene binding interaction is highly stable, resistant to detergents and acid and basic washes. The methodology here described is accurate, easily implementable, fast and cost-effective. Although at present, our technique is unable to discriminate homozygous APOE ε4/ε4 from APOE ε3/ε4 and ε2/ε4 heterozygous, it opens new avenues for the development of inexpensive, yet effective, tests for the detection of apoE4 for patients' stratification. Preliminary results indicated that this methodology is also adaptable into turbidimetric platforms, which make it a good candidate for clinical implementation through its translation to the clinical analysis routine.The authors thank all the patients, hospitals, and institutions that made this study possible. We thank Pablo Cabello and Carlo Zanotti for their decisive role throughout the course of this project, and Elisenda Rodón, Almudena Pérez and Sergi Gassó from Pragmatic Diagnostics (Barcelona, Spain) for their work on the adaptation of the method to immunoturbidimetry. We also thank Montserrat Puntes (MD.) and Maria Teresa Garrido (MSc.) from the Centre for Drug Research (CIM) of the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau for their collaboration on the project entitled “Study for the development of a non-genetic test in blood for the identification of carriers of the ε4 alelle of the APOE gene (APOE ε4)” (Code: BCR-2017-01).S

Gene-ectomy: Gene Ablation with CRISPR/Cas9 in Human Hematopoietic Cells

CRISPR/Cas9 has recently been introduced as a gene editing tool and shows considerable promise. In this issue of Cell Stem Cell, Mandal et al. (2014) show efficient CRISPR/Cas9-mediated ablation of the CCR5 and B2M genes in primary human hematopoietic cells, two editing strategies that are potentially translatable into clinical application

Administración de Riesgo y Teoria de la Cartera : Riesgo crediticio en los microcreditos que ofrece el fondo del Instituto Nicaraguense de Desarrollo (FINDE) en el primer semestre del año 2016

El crédito es una operación financiera en la que se pone a nuestra disposición una cantidad de dinero hasta un límite especificado y durante un periodo de tiempo determinado. En un crédito nosotros mismos administramos ese dinero mediante la disposición o retirada del dinero y el ingreso o devolución del mismo atendiendo a nuestras necesidades en cada momento. De esta manera podemos cancelar una parte o totalidad de la deuda, cuando creemos conveniente, con la consiguiente deducción en el pago de intereses. El propósito de crédito es cubrir los gastos corrientes o extraordinarios en momentos puntuales de fatiga de liquidez. El crédito conlleva normalmente la apertura de una cuenta corriente se distinguen dos tipos de crédito: las cuentas de créditos y las tarjetas de crédito. Un microcrédito es un crédito personal está hecho de una micro financiera a un individuo. En Nicaragua el micro financiero FINDE ofrece el servicio de microcrédito dirigido a personas naturales o jurídicas como resultado la suma de dinero que se trata tiende a ser considerablemente mínimo. El microcrédito sirve para crecer, maximizar la rentabilidad y aprovechar oportunidades de negocio cuando no se tiene recursos propios. Para la evaluación y manejo de este tipo de crédito se emplea el criterio de administración de riesgo que comprende la aplicación de una serie de normas, leyes y principios fundamentales relacionados con la banca. Ante lo anterior el trabajo concluye con un caso práctico en el que podremos determinar si la institución financiera estudio, pone en práctica los principios de administración de riesgo de crédito y en este caso particular es un microcrédito

Liquid hot water pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis as a valorization route of Italian green pepper waste to delivery free sugars

In this work, liquid hot water pretreatment (autohydrolysis) was used to improve enzymatic hydrolysis of a commonly consumed vegetable waste in Spain, Italian green pepper, to finally produce fermentable sugars. Firstly, the effect of temperature and contact time on sugar recovery during pretreatment (in insoluble solid and liquid fraction) was studied in detail. Then, enzymatic hydrolysis using commercial cellulase was performed with the insoluble solid resulting from pretreatment. The objective was to compare results with and without pretreatment. The results showed that the pretreatment step was effective to facilitate the sugars release in enzymatic hydrolysis, increasing the global sugar yield. This was especially notable when pretreatment was carried out at 180 °C for 40 min for glucose yields. In these conditions a global glucose yield of 61.02% was obtained. In addition, very low concentrations of phenolic compounds (ranging from 69.12 to 82.24 mg/L) were found in the liquid fraction from enzymatic hydrolysis, decreasing the possibility of fermentation inhibition produced by these components. Results showed that Italian green pepper is an interesting feedstock to obtain free sugars and prevent the enormous quantity of this food waste discarded annually

Water IoT monitoring system for aquaponics health and fishery applications

Aquaponic health is a very important in the food industry field, as currently there is a huge amount of fishing farms, and the demands are growing in the whole world. This work examines the process of developing an innovative aquaponics health monitoring system that incorporates high-tech back-end innovation sensors to examine fish and crop health and a data analytics framework with a low-tech front-end approach to feedback actions to farmers. The developed system improves the state-of-the-art in terms of aquaponics life cycle monitoring metrics and communication technologies, and the energy consumption has been reduced to make a sustainable system

Life cycle assessment of mechanical recycling of post-consumer polyethylene flexible films based on a real case in Spain

Mechanical recycling of plastic waste is a common practice in industry and is an environmental solution to the problem of plastics disposal. In this article, a case study of mechanical recycling of post-consumer polyethylene flexible films in Granada (Spain) was analyzed from an environmental point of view by the Life-Cycle Assessment methodology. The industrial process is divided into four large areas of operation: sorting, washing, extrusion and wastewater treatment. The results show that the washing area has the largest environmental impacts, mostly due to the electricity consumption, followed by sorting. Also, the overall mechanical recycling process causes damage, mainly, on human health, which dominates over ecosystems and resources with 93.4% of the total impact of the process. Two different scenarios have also been considered for the generated waste, and they critically affect the overall environmental performance of the entire process. The first scenario considers the impacts of the landfill disposal of the humid organic matter generated and the losses of PE. In this scenario, all the CH4 resulting from the anaerobic degradation of organic matter was emitted into the atmosphere. In this case, human health impact was high. In the second end-of-life scenario, all the CH4 generated would be captured and burned in a gas turbine for energy generation. Lower impacts were found in human health and ecosystems categories, as well as the total value, in the second scenario.This work has received funds from the European Union– LIFE Programme, under Grant Agreement LIFE17ENV/ES/000229. Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Granada / CBUA

Design, Implementation, and Empirical Validation of a Framework for Remote Car Driving Using a Commercial Mobile Network

Despite the fact that autonomous driving systems are progressing in terms of their automation levels, the achievement of fully self-driving cars is still far from realization. Currently, most new cars accord with the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Level 2 of automation, which requires the driver to be able to take control of the car when needed: for this reason, it is believed that between now and the achievement of fully automated self-driving car systems, there will be a transition, in which remote driving cars will be a reality. In addition, there are tele-operation-use cases that require remote driving for health or safety reasons. However, there is a lack of detailed design and implementation available in the public domain for remote driving cars: therefore, in this work we propose a functional framework for remote driving vehicles. We implemented a prototype, using a commercial car. The prototype was connected to a commercial 4G/5G mobile network, and empirical experiments were conducted, to validate the prototype’s functions, and to evaluate its performance in real-world driving conditions. The design, implementation, and empirical evaluation provided detailed technical insights into this important research and innovation area.This research was funded in part by the EU Horizon 2020 5G-PPP 5G-INDUCE project (“Open cooperative 5G experimentation platforms for the industrial sector NetApps”) under grant number H2020-ICT-2020-2/101016941, by the EU Horizon Europe INCODE project (“Programming platform for intelligent collaborative deployments over heterogeneous edge-IoT environments”) under grant number HORIZON-CL4-2022-DATA-01-03/101093069, and by the EU Horizon Europe project INCODE: programming platform for intelligent collaborative deployments over heterogeneous edge-IoT environments (HORIZON-CL4-2022-DATA-01-03/101093069)