Inferring Mechanisms for Global Constitutional Progress

Constitutions help define domestic political orders, but are known to be influenced by two international mechanisms: one that reflects global temporal trends in legal development, and another that reflects international network dynamics such as shared colonial history. We introduce the provision space; the growing set of all legal provisions existing in the world's constitutions over time. Through this we uncover a third mechanism influencing constitutional change: hierarchical dependencies between legal provisions, under which the adoption of essential, fundamental provisions precedes more advanced provisions. This third mechanism appears to play an especially important role in the emergence of new political rights, and may therefore provide a useful roadmap for advocates of those rights. We further characterise each legal provision in terms of the strength of these mechanisms

Social Media Fingerprints of Unemployment

Anexo: Supporting Information. This file contains Figures A-I, Tables A-F and Sections A-I.Recent widespread adoption of electronic and pervasive technologies has enabled the study of human behavior at an unprecedented level, uncovering universal patterns underlying human activity, mobility, and interpersonal communication. In the present work, we investigate whether deviations from these universal patterns may reveal information about the socio-economical status of geographical regions. We quantify the extent to which deviations in diurnal rhythm, mobility patterns, and communication styles across regions relate to their unemployment incidence. For this we examine a country-scale publicly articulated social media dataset, where we quantify individual behavioral features from over 19 million geo-located messages distributed among more than 340 different Spanish economic regions, inferred by computing communities of cohesive mobility fluxes. We find that regions exhibiting more diverse mobility fluxes, earlier diurnal rhythms, and more correct grammatical styles display lower unemployment rates. As a result, we provide a simple model able to produce accurate, easily interpretable reconstruction of regional unemployment incidence from their social-media digital fingerprints alone. Our results show that cost-effective economical indicators can be built based on publicly-available social media datasets.Partial funding came from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through grant FIS2013-47532-C3-3-P, the Australian Government, and the Australian Research Council. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Micellar Iron Oxide Nanoparticles Coated with Anti-Tumor Glycosides

The synthesis procedure of nanoparticles based on thermal degradation produces organic solvent dispersible iron oxide nanoparticles (OA-IONP) with oleic acid coating and unique physicochemical properties of the core. Some glycosides with hydrophilic sugar moieties bound to oleyl hydrophobic chains have antimitotic activity on cancer cells but reduced in vivo applications because of the intrinsic low solubility in physiological media, and are prone to enzymatic hydrolysis. In this manuscript, we have synthetized and characterized OA-IONP-based micelles encapsulated within amphiphilic bioactive glycosides. The glycoside-coated IONP micelles were tested as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) contrast agents as well as antimitotics on rat glioma (C6) and human lung carcinoma (A549) cell lines. Micelle antimitotic activity was compared with the activity of the corresponding free glycosides. In general, all OA-IONP-based micellar formulations of these glycosides maintained their anti-tumor effects, and, in one case, showed an unusual therapeutic improvement. Finally, the micelles presented optimal relaxometric properties for their use as T2-weighed MRI contrast agents. Our results suggest that these bioactive hydrophilic nano-formulations are theranostic agents with synergistic properties obtained from two entities, which separately are not ready for in vivo applications, and strengthen the possibility of using biomolecules as both a coating for OA-IONP micellar stabilization and as drugs for therapy.This research was funded by FP7 Marie Curie Pulmonary imaging network (PINET) and Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad MAT2015-65184-C2-2-R; SAF2016-79593-P; SAF2017-84494-C2-1-R). This work was partially funded by Instituto de Salud Carlos III (DTS16/00059), CNIC (Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares), and Comunidad de Madrid (B2017-BMD3731 and B2017-BMD3875). We thank Ligue contre le cancer, comite Charentes Maritimes which allows to free up some time to complete the redaction of this manuscript during a grant-not dedicated on this work-agreed to LIENSs, UMR CNRS 7266, La Rochelle.S

Chronic Glaucoma Using Biodegradable Microspheres to Induce Intraocular Pressure Elevation. Six-Month Follow-Up

Altres ajuts: Rio Hortega Research Grant M17/00213, Research Group UCM 920415, UCM-Santander fellowship (CT17/17-CT17-18).Background: To compare two prolonged animal models of glaucoma over 24 weeks of follow-up. A novel pre-trabecular model of chronic glaucoma was achieved by injection of biodegradable poly lactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA) microspheres (10-20 µm) (Ms20/10) into the ocular anterior chamber to progressively increase ocular hypertension (OHT). Methods: Rat right eyes were injected to induce OHT: 50% received a suspension of Ms20/10 in the anterior chamber at 0, 2, 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20 weeks, and the other 50% received a sclerosing episcleral vein injection biweekly (EPIm). Ophthalmological clinical signs, intraocular pressure (IOP), neuroretinal functionality measured by electroretinography (ERG), and structural analysis of the retina, retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) and ganglion cell layer (GCL) protocols using optical coherence tomography (OCT) and histological exams were performed. Results: Both models showed progressive neuroretinal degeneration (p < 0.05), and contralateral eye affectation. The Ms20/10 model showed a more progressive increase in IOP and better preservation of ocular surface. Although no statistical differences were found between models, the EPIm showed a tendency to produce thicker retinal and thinner GCL thicknesses, slower latency and smaller amplitude as measured using ERG, and more aggressive disturbances in retinal histology. In both models, while the GCL showed the greatest percentage loss of thickness, the RNFL showed the greatest and earliest rate of thickness loss. Conclusions: The intracameral model with biodegradable microspheres resulted more like the conditions observed in humans. It was obtained by a less-aggressive mechanism, which allows for adequate study of the pathology over longer periods

Exchangeable Self-Assembled Lanthanide Antennas for PLIM Microscopy

This is the published manuscript version of the following manuscript: Exchangeable Self-Assembled Lanthanide Antennas for PLIM Microscopy, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2023, e202314595 doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202314595 This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Sharing Policies. Supplementary Materials accompanying this article can be found on-line at the publisher’s site.Lanthanides have unique photoluminescence (PL) emission properties, including very long PL life- times. This makes them ideal for biological imaging applications, especially using PL lifetime imaging micro- scopy (PLIM). PLIM is an inherently multidimensional technique with exceptional advantages for quantitative biological imaging. Unfortunately, due to the required prolonged acquisitions times, photobleaching of lantha- nide PL emission currently constitutes one of the main drawbacks of PLIM. In this study, we report a small aqueous-soluble, lanthanide antenna, 8-methoxy-2-oxo- 1,2,4,5-tetrahydrocyclopenta[de]quinoline-3-phosphonic acid, PAnt, specifically designed to dynamically interact with lanthanide ions, serving as exchangeable dye aimed at mitigating photobleaching in PLIM microscopy in cellulo. Thus, self-assembled lanthanide complexes that may be photobleached during image acquisition are continuously replenished by intact lanthanide antennas from a large reservoir. Remarkably, our self-assembled lanthanide complex clearly demonstrated a significant reduction of PL photobleaching when compared to well- established lanthanide cryptates, used for bioimaging. This concept of exchangeable lanthanide antennas opens new possibilities for quantitative PLIM bioimaging.Grant PID2020-114256RB-I00 funded by AEI/10.13039/501100011033Grant PID2019- 104366RB-C22 funded by AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ FEDER “Una manera de hacer Europa”Grants P21_00212, A-FQM-386-UGR20 and 2021/00627/001-FEDER_UJA_ 2020 funded by FEDER/Junta de Andalucía-Consejería de Transformación Económica, Industria, Conocimiento y UniversidadesCSIC grant 202180E073Acción 1 from Universidad de JaénFunding for open access charge: Universidad de Granada/CBUASpanish Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional for the FPU Ph.D. scholarshi