Ring Vibrations to Sense Anionic Ibuprofen in Aqueous Solution as Revealed by Resonance Raman

We unravel the potentialities of resonance Raman spectroscopy to detect ibuprofen in diluted aqueous solutions. In particular, we exploit a fully polarizable quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) methodology based on fluctuating charges coupled to molecular dynamics (MD) in order to take into account the dynamical aspects of the solvation phenomenon. Our findings, which are discussed in light of a natural bond orbital (NBO) analysis, reveal that a selective enhancement of the Raman signal due to the normal mode associated with the C–C stretching in the ring, νC=C, can be achieved by properly tuning the incident wavelength, thus facilitating the recognition of ibuprofen in water samples

Estudio comparativo de parámetros composicionales y nutricionales en leche de vaca, cabra y búfala, Antioquia, Colombia

Milk is a fluid secreted by females of all species of mammals, which is used mainly to supply the nutritional needs of the newborn calf. It is an important source of carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, vitamins and minerals. Throughout history many countries have characterized the composition and nutritional quality of many mammals species milk, especially those that have been domesticated. However in Colombia there is insufficient information with respect to milk produced by different species to the cow. The aim of this study was to determine the composition and evaluate the nutritional quality of cow, goat and buffalo milk. Buffalo milk showed higher values in for parameters such as protein (4,07%), fat (7,23%), lactose (5,06%), total solids (16,81%) and solids non-fat (9,91%) than goat and cow milk, making it an excellent alternative for the production and processing of milk products. On the other hand goat milk had the highest content of polyunsaturated fat (0.1298 g/100g) compared to cow milk and buffalo milk, which makes it more digestible and healthy for human consumption. All this led to the conclusion that each of these milk types has particular characteristics that make them more or less digestible and suitable for the manufacture of dairy products, which determines the advantages and disadvantages of each of the species.La leche es un líquido secretado por las hembras de todas las especies de mamíferos, la cual es utilizada principalmente para satisfacer las necesidades nutricionales de la cría recién nacida. Es una fuente importante de carbohidratos, lípidos, proteínas, vitaminas y minerales. A lo largo de la historia en varios países se ha caracterizado la composición y calidad nutricional de la leche de numerosas especies de mamíferos, especialmente las que han sido domesticadas. Sin embargo en Colombia no hay suficiente información en lo que respecta a leches producidas por especies no vacunas. El objetivo del presente estudio fue determinar la composición y evaluar la calidad nutricional de las leches de vaca, cabra y búfalo. La leche de búfala presento valores más altos para parámetros tales como la proteína (4,07%), grasa (7,23%), lactosa (5,06%), solidos totales (16,81%) y solidos no grasos (9,91%) que las leches de cabra y vaca, lo cual la convierte en una excelente alternativa para la producción y transformación de productos. De otro lado la leche de cabra presento el mayor contenido de grasa poliinsaturada (0,1298 g/100g) comparadas con las leches de vaca y búfala, lo que la hace más digestible y saludable para el consumo humano. Todo lo anterior llevó a la conclusión de que cada uno de estos tipos de leche tiene características particulares que las hacen más o menos digestibles y adecuadas para la fabricación de productos lácteos, lo cual determina las ventajas y desventajas de cada una de las especies

Cost-utility analysis of insulin analogues compared with multiple daily injections of human insulin for the treatment of 15 years old or older patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus in Colombia

A609-A609Insulin analogues offer certain advantages over regular human insulin. Our objective was to establish the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of insulin analogues compared with human insulin, with multiple daily injections (MID) in adult patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM1) in Colombia. We designed a Markov model of annual cycles, time horizon of up to 55 years, from a third-party payer perspective (only direct medical costs for the Colombian healthcare system) and applying discount rate of 3.5% both for costs and outcomes. Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), taken from published literature, were used as a measure of effectiveness with a threshold of three times the per capita gross domestic product (GDP), approximately € 17,550. The comparison between analog and human insulin was performed separately for short and long term. The costs were in Colombian pesos (1 € = COP 2.660), and were built through base cases designed by interdisciplinary expert panels, with drug prices and costs of interventions or adverse events were estimated using official tariff manuals and databases. Univariate and probabilistic sensitivity analysis were performed. Despite certain clinical advantages, insulin analogues gain, on average, very few QALYs (from 0.02 to 0.1 depending on scenarios). With this result, the average ICER for short-term insulins would be € 78,900; while long duration insulin analogues have an ICER of € 94,550. Results were highly sensitive to price of medication, as well as to disutility or costs of hypoglycemic events. Given the assumptions and limitations of our model, insulin analogues would not be considered cost-effective within the Colombian healthcare system compared with multiple daily injections for adult patients with DM1

Identifying resources used by young people to overcome mental distress in three Latin American cities: a qualitative study

OBJECTIVE: To explore which resources and activities help young people living in deprived urban environments in Latin America to recover from depression and/or anxiety. DESIGN: A multimethod, qualitative study with 18 online focus groups and 12 online structured group conversations embedded into arts workshops. SETTING: This study was conducted in Bogotá (Colombia), Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Lima (Peru). PARTICIPANTS: Adolescents (15–16 years old) and young adults (20–24 years old) with capacity to provide assent/consent and professionals (older than 18 years of age) that had experience of professionally working with young people were willing to share personal experience within a group, and had capacity to provide consent. RESULTS: A total of 185 participants took part in this study: 111 participants (36 adolescents, 35 young adults and 40 professionals) attended the 18 focus groups and 74 young people (29 adolescents and 45 young adults) took part in the 12 arts workshops. Eight categories captured the resources and activities that were reported by young people as helpful to overcome mental distress: (1) personal resources, (2) personal development, (3) spirituality and religion, (4) social resources, (5) social media, (6) community resources, (7) activities (subcategorised into artistic, leisure, sports and outdoor activities) and (8) mental health professionals. Personal and social resources as well as artistic activities and sports were the most common resources identified that help adolescents and young adults to overcome depression and anxiety. CONCLUSION: Despite the different contexts of the three cities, young people appear to use similar resources to overcome mental distress. Policies to improve the mental health of young people in deprived urban settings should address the need of community spaces, where young people can play sports, meet and engage in groups, and support community organisations that can enable and facilitate a range of social activities

Sustainable use and commercialisation of bushmeat in Colombia: Toward the operationalization of legal frameworks

Key points • Under Colombian law, the sale of game to cover basic needs (e.g. housing, health, education) or to buy other food items is not allowed, since this is considered commercial hunting and does not fall under provisions allowing for subsistence bushmeat hunting. • Law 611 (2000) opened the path to legal commercial use of wildlife. In practice, however, the requirements for obtaining legal permits for commercial hunting activities make it extremely challenging for rural communities to obtain them. • Aware of the role that bushmeat plays in food security, family economy and cultural identity among many rural communities, a number of high-profile Colombian environmental institutions participated in a workshop in 2015 to discuss the operationalisation of the legal framework for the trade in bushmeat by rural communities. • One of the main conclusions of the workshop was that commercial hunting regulations need to legally distinguish between large-scale commercial hunting and the sale of surplus game by subsistence hunters in rural communities. Indeed, these two types of commercial hunting differ in terms of the scale of action, the governance systems in place and the ways in which benefits are equitably distributed among different actors. • The main recommendation was that the regulatory framework should adopt flexible management processes for the local development of sustainable management rules (e.g. list of tradable species, quotas, open seasons, monitoring and evaluation systems). This would allow for the recognition of the specificities of each socio-ecological context, rather than imposing a national-level framework that would likely fail, given Colombia’s diverse biological and cultural characteristics

The reaction coordinate mapping in quantum thermodynamics

We present an overview of the reaction coordinate approach to handling strong system-reservoir interactions in quantum thermodynamics. This technique is based on incorporating a collective degree of freedom of the reservoir (the reaction coordinate) into an enlarged system Hamiltonian (the supersystem), which is then treated explicitly. The remaining residual reservoir degrees of freedom are traced out in the usual perturbative manner. The resulting description accurately accounts for strong system-reservoir coupling and/or non-Markovian effects over a wide range of parameters, including regimes in which there is a substantial generation of system-reservoir correlations. We discuss applications to both discrete stroke and continuously operating heat engines, as well as perspectives for additional developments. In particular, we find narrow regimes where strong coupling is not detrimental to the performance of continuously operating heat engines.Comment: 17 pages, 2 tables, 7 figures. As a chapter of: F. Binder, L. A. Correa, C. Gogolin, J. Anders, and G. Adesso (eds.), "Thermodynamics in the quantum regime - Recent Progress and Outlook", (Springer International Publishing

First Colombian Multicentric Newborn Screening for Congenital Toxoplasmosis

Congenital toxoplasmosis can result in permanent sequel as blindness or neurological damage in children and it seems to be more severe in South America than in other continents. There is a lack of information about this frequency in Colombia, where no control program is established, although it is a recognized cause of potentially preventable congenital blindness. We propose the first Colombian multicentric study to determine the frequency and impact of congenital toxoplasmosis. More than 15,000 newborns in seven cities were studied. Newborns were tested at birth by doing a cord blood test for toxoplasmosis. Additionally, children from mothers with history of toxoplasmosis acquired during pregnancy were recalled for a follow-up. The program identified fifteen children otherwise undiagnosed; three of these children died as consequence of congenital toxoplasmosis. The frequency of the congenital infection varied significantly between cities, being higher in Armenia and Florencia, intermediate in Bogota, Bucaramanga and Barranquilla and very low in western cities such as Cucuta and Riohacha. For the first time a significant correlation was found between mean rainfall at the city and the incidence of this congenital infection

Summary of the DREAM8 Parameter Estimation Challenge: Toward Parameter Identification for Whole-Cell Models

Whole-cell models that explicitly represent all cellular components at the molecular level have the potential to predict phenotype from genotype. However, even for simple bacteria, whole-cell models will contain thousands of parameters, many of which are poorly characterized or unknown. New algorithms are needed to estimate these parameters and enable researchers to build increasingly comprehensive models. We organized the Dialogue for Reverse Engineering Assessments and Methods (DREAM) 8 Whole-Cell Parameter Estimation Challenge to develop new parameter estimation algorithms for whole-cell models. We asked participants to identify a subset of parameters of a whole-cell model given the model’s structure and in silico “experimental” data. Here we describe the challenge, the best performing methods, and new insights into the identifiability of whole-cell models. We also describe several valuable lessons we learned toward improving future challenges. Going forward, we believe that collaborative efforts supported by inexpensive cloud computing have the potential to solve whole-cell model parameter estimation

NK-CD11c+ Cell Crosstalk in Diabetes Enhances IL-6-Mediated Inflammation during Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection

In this study, we developed a mouse model of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) using streptozotocin and nicotinamide and identified factors that increase susceptibility of T2DM mice to infection by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). All Mtb-infected T2DM mice and 40% of uninfected T2DM mice died within 10 months, whereas all control mice survived. In Mtb-infected mice, T2DM increased the bacterial burden and pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokine and chemokine production in the lungs relative to those in uninfected T2DM mice and infected control mice. Levels of IL-6 also increased. Anti-IL-6 monoclonal antibody treatment of Mtb-infected acute- and chronic-T2DM mice increased survival (to 100%) and reduced pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokine expression. CD11c+ cells were the major source of IL-6 in Mtb-infected T2DM mice. Pulmonary natural killer (NK) cells in Mtb-infected T2DM mice further increased IL-6 production by autologous CD11c+ cells through their activating receptors. Anti-NK1.1 antibody treatment of Mtb-infected acute-T2DM mice increased survival and reduced pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokine expression. Furthermore, IL-6 increased inflammatory cytokine production by T lymphocytes in pulmonary tuberculosis patients with T2DM. Overall, the results suggest that NK-CD11c+ cell interactions increase IL-6 production, which in turn drives the pathological immune response and mortality associated with Mtb infection in diabetic mice