Temas clave en la formación de profesores en Chile desde la perspectiva de docentes y directivos

Teacher education in Chile and the issues that intersect it are nowadays in the public debate of the Chilean society. This study aims at analyze key issues on teacher education- research, innovation, continuous education, university-school relationship, and management- from the perspective of academics, school-teachers and administrators. The study was conducted on 222 participants from Chilean universities and schools in the context of a non-experimental research design of cross-sectional and descriptive nature. The surveys and semi-structured interviews results show that it is necessary to strengthen the relationship between schools and universities, train teachers that achieve effective performances in the current socio-educational contexts and create the conditions for teachers to do research of their own pedagogical practices.La formación de profesores en Chile y los puntos que la intersectan, están hoy en día en el debate público de la sociedad chilena. El objetivo de este estudio es analizar temas clave de la formación de profesores- investigación, innovación, formación continua, relación universidad-establecimiento educacional, y gestión- desde la perspectiva de profesores universitarios, profesores del sistema escolar y directivos. Para esto, el estudio se realizó con una muestra de 222 participantes de establecimientos educacionales y universidades chilenas en el contexto de un diseño investigativo de carácter no experimental y de tipo transeccional descriptivo. Los resultados de las encuestas y entrevistas aplicadas revelan que es necesario fortalecer la relación establecimiento educacional y universidad, formar profesores que tengan un desempeño efectivo en los contextos socio-educativos actuales y crear las condiciones para que los profesores puedan realizar investigaciones de sus propias prácticas pedagógicas

The Pulsed Neutron Beam EDM Experiment

We report on the Beam EDM experiment, which aims to employ a pulsed cold neutron beam to search for an electric dipole moment instead of the established use of storable ultracold neutrons. We present a brief overview of the basic measurement concept and the current status of our proof-of-principle Ramsey apparatus

Neisseria gonorrhoeae challenge increases matrix metalloproteinase-8 expression in fallopian tube explants

Indexación: Scopus.Background: Neisseria gonorrhoeae (Ngo) is the etiological agent of gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted infection that initially infects the female lower genital tract. In untreated women, the bacteria can ascend to the upper genital reproductive tract and infect the fallopian tube (FTs), which is associated with salpingitis and can lead to impaired FT function and infertility. The extracellular matrix (ECM) plays an important role in cell migration and differentiation in the female genital tract, and some pathogens modify the ECM to establish successful infections. The ECM is regulated by matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases (TIMPs), their endogenous inhibitors; MMP deregulation causes pathological conditions in a variety of tissues. Results: The aim of this work was to analyze the expression and localization of MMP-3, MMP-8, MMP-9, and TIMP-1 in FT explants during Ngo infection using real-time PCR, immunohistochemistry, zymography and ELISA. No significant variations in MMP-3, MMP-9, and TIMP-1 transcript levels were observed. In contrast, a significant increase (p < 0.05) was observed for MMP-8 expression and was accompanied by stromal immunoreactivity in infected explants. ELISA results supported these findings and showed that MMP-8 release increased upon gonococcal infection. Conclusions: Our results indicate that gonococcal infection induces increased MMP-8 expression, which might contribute to FT damage during infection. © 2017 Juica, Rodas, Solar, Borda, Vargas, Muñoz, Paredes, Christodoulides and Velasquez.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2017.00399/ful

CRUXEval: A Benchmark for Code Reasoning, Understanding and Execution

We present CRUXEval (Code Reasoning, Understanding, and eXecution Evaluation), a benchmark consisting of 800 Python functions (3-13 lines). Each function comes with an input-output pair, leading to two natural tasks: input prediction and output prediction. First, we propose a generic recipe for generating our execution benchmark which can be used to create future variation of the benchmark. Second, we evaluate twenty code models on our benchmark and discover that many recent high-scoring models on HumanEval do not show the same improvements on our benchmark. Third, we show that simple CoT and fine-tuning schemes can improve performance on our benchmark but remain far from solving it. The best setup, GPT-4 with chain of thought (CoT), achieves a pass@1 of 75% and 81% on input and output prediction, respectively. In contrast, Code Llama 34B achieves a pass@1 of 50% and 46% on input and output prediction, highlighting the gap between open and closed source models. As no model is close to acing CRUXEval, we provide examples of consistent GPT-4 failures on simple programs as a lens into its code reasoning capabilities and areas for improvement.Comment: 71 pages, 29 figure

Total and main as species present in cardiovascular tirrues of people living in as contaminated areas

The concentration levels of As in the Chilean II Region of Antofagasta produces non cancer health outcomes such as cardiovascular diseases and in last term heart attack. On this study, the determination of total As content and main inorganic and organoarsenic species found in three heart tissues (auricle, mammary artery and fat) and the saphene vein of people living in the Chilean II Region, suffering coronary thrombosis has been carried out. Comparison with similar tissues of patients from other non-contaminated areas has been undertaken. The extraction of As species occurred in methanol: water (1:1) and As species determination have been used the tandem HPLC-ICP-MS using the Hamilton PRP X100 anion column. For total As determination has been performed by HG-AAS and ICP-MS. The auricle and in less extend the saphene support the higher As concentration (mean values of 7.7 and 2.5 µg g-1, respectively), being As(III) the predominant species. Methylarsonate (MA) and dimethylarsinate (DMA) is not a favoured mechanism. The presence of high total As and high As(III) species content in the auricle and saphene of more contaminated people, the damage found in the saphene tissue and the global characteristics of the people under study in which the As stigmas are present in all of them, suggests that As could be involved in the cardiovascular diseases. e-mail: ipizarro @uantof.cl

Identificación y cuantificación del arsénico unido a las proteínas de tejidos cardiovasculares de pacientes sometidos a cirugía de revascularización coronaria

Introducción: Los efectos de la intoxicación con Arsénico (As) como enfermedades cardiovasculares (CV), pigmentaciones y oclusiones arteriales coronarias están asociados con la ingestión de As inorgánico a través del agua de bebida y a exposiciones ambientales. La unión del As (III) a proteínas y la metilación del As podría ser una primera etapa en el mecanismo de detoxificación. Objetivo: Evaluar la unión de As a proteínas en aurícula derecha y vena safena (VS) en sujetos expuestos de la Región de Antofagasta. Métodos: Se estudió la asociación As-proteína en el citosol de AD y VS de 6 pacientes con enfermedad coronaria grave de la Región de Antofagasta. Para el fraccionamiento del citosol se utilizaron columnas de exclusión molecular de tres diferentes rangos de masas. El perfil del As se detectó por Espectrometría de Masas Inductivamente Acoplado (ICP-MS) y por Espectroscopía Ultra Violeta - Visible de las fracciones moleculares (enlaces As- tiolatos de proteínas). Resultados: En todos los casos el As estuvo ampliamente distribuido en todo el intervalo de fracciones para AUD y VS. Los porcentajes de As colectado en las fracciones de las diferentes columnas usadas fueron 10, 25 y 50%. En la especiación de As en el citosol, por Cromatografía Líquida de Alta Resolución acoplada a la Espectrometría de Masas (IC-HPLC-ICP-MS), solamente se encontró As(III) y As(V) con una distribución Gaussiana para ambas especies, siendo la relación As(III)/As(V) constante para AUD y VS. Conclusión: En los tejidos CV existe asociación As – proteína lo cual podría implicar que el As está unido a biocompuestos de diferente peso molecular a través de grupos sulfhidrilos vecinales. Es probable que el As en AUD y VS se una a fracciones proteicas de masa molecular superior a 80 kDA y a subunidades de la estructura cuaternaria de la proteína nativa

Assessment of morbidity in gynaecologic oncology laparoscopy and identification of possible risk factors

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to ascertain the incidence of and the risk factors associated with morbidity in laparoscopy performed on patients with cervical cancer and endometrial cancer. METHODS: This was an observational study of a cohort of 128 women, 89 with endometrial cancer and 39 with cervical cancer from January 2000 to December 2011. We used the Student's t-test or the Mann-Whitney U test for continuous variables, and the Chi-square or Fisher's exact test for categorical variables. RESULTS: Complications were found in 44 patients (34.4%). After a multivariate analysis, among the risk factors associated with the presence of complications as the only type of surgery was found to be statistically significant (p = 0.043), more frequent in the most complex procedures such as Wertheim operation, trachelectomy, and para-aortic lymphadenectomy. Type of surgery (p = 0.003) and tumour type (p = 0.003) were risk factors associated with conversion to laparotomy. It was more frequent among the most complex procedures and cervical cancer cases. Regarding the need for transfusion, significant differences were observed in terms of surgery duration (p < 0.001), more frequent in longer surgery. CONCLUSION: Morbidity in laparoscopic surgical oncology is related to the surgery complexity, where the basal characteristics of the patient are not a factor of influence in the development of complications

Key issues on Chilean teacher education from the perspective of teachers and administrators

Teacher education in Chile and the issues that intersect it are nowadays in the public debate of the Chilean society. This study aims at analyze key issues on teacher education- research, innovation, continuous education, university-school relationship, and management- from the perspective of academics, school-teachers and administrators. The study was conducted on 222 participants from Chilean universities and schools in the context of a non-experimental research design of cross-sectional and descriptive nature. The surveys and semi-structured interviews results show that it is necessary to strengthen the relationship between schools and universities, train teachers that achieve effective performances in the current socio-educational contexts and create the conditions for teachers to do research of their own pedagogical practices.</p

Conformational plasticity of RepB, the replication initiator protein of promiscuous streptococcal plasmid pMV158

13 p.-7 fig.-1 tab.DNA replication initiation is a vital and tightly regulated step in all replicons and requires an initiator factor that specifically recognizes the DNA replication origin and starts replication. RepB from the promiscuous streptococcal plasmid pMV158 is a hexameric ring protein evolutionary related to viral initiators. Here we explore the conformational plasticity of the RepB hexamer by i) SAXS, ii)sedimentation experiments, iii) molecular simulations and iv) X-ray crystallography. Combining these techniques, we derive an estimate of the conformational ensemble in solution showing that the C-terminal oligomerisation domains of the protein form a rigid cylindrical scaffold to which the N-terminal DNA-binding/catalytic domains are attached as highly flexible appendages, featuring multiple orientations. In addition, we show that the hinge region connecting both domains plays a pivotal role in the observed plasticity. Sequence comparisons and a literature survey show that this hinge region could exists in other initiators, suggesting that it is a common, crucial structural element for DNA binding and manipulation.This study was supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Grants BFU2008-02372/BMC; BFU2011-22588, BFU2014-53550 and Unidad de Excelencia Maria de Maeztu MDM-2014-0435 to MC; BIO2009-10964 and E-SCIENCE to MO;BFU2010-19597, PNEUMOTALK, and CSD2008-00013, INTERMODS, to GdS; Ramón and Cajal subprogramme RYC-2011-09071 to CM), the Generalitat de Catalunya (Grants 2014-SGR1309 to MC and SGR2009-1348 to MO),Fundación Marcelino Botín (MO) and the European Commission (Cooperation Project SILVER, GA No. 260644 to MC and SCALALIFE Project to MO).Peer reviewe