Inter-channel Granger Causality for Estimating EEG Phase Connectivity Patterns in Dyslexia

Methods like Electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalogram (MEG) record brain oscillations and provide an invaluable insight into healthy and pathological brain function. These signals are helpful to study and achieve an objective and early diagnosis of neural disorders as Developmental Dyslexia (DD). An atypical oscillatory sampling could cause the characteristic phonological difficulties of dyslexia at one or more temporal rates; in this sense, measuring the EEG signal can help to make an early diagnosis of DD. The LEEDUCA study conducted a series of EEG experiments on children listening to amplitude modulated (AM) noise with slow-rhythmic prosodic (0.5–1 Hz) to detect differences in perception of oscillatory ampling that could be associated with dyslexia. The evolution of each EEG channel has been studied in the frequency domain, obtaining the analytical phase using the Hilbert transform. Subsequently, the cause-effect relationships between channels in ach subject have been reflected thanks to Granger causality, obtaining matrices that reflect the interaction between the different parts of the brain. Hence, each subject was classified as belonging or not to the control group or the experimental group. For this purpose, two ensemble classification algorithms were compared, showing that both can reach acceptable classifying erformance in delta band with an accuracy up to 0.77, recall of 0.91 and AUC of 0.97 using Gradient Boosting classifier.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Granzyme A inhibition reduces inflammation and increases survival during abdominal sepsis

Aims: Peritonitis is one of the most common causes of sepsis, a serious syndrome characterized by a dysregulated systemic inflammatory response. Recent evidence suggests that Granzyme A (GzmA), a serine protease mainly expressed by NK and T cells, could act as a proinflammatory mediator and could play an important role in the pathogenesis of sepsis. This work aims to analyze the role and the therapeutic potential of GzmA in the pathogenesis of peritoneal sepsis. Methods: The level of extracellular GzmA as well as GzmA activity were analyzed in serum from healthy volunteers and patients with confirmed peritonitis and were correlated with the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score. Peritonitis was induced in C57Bl/6 (WT) and GzmA-/- mice by cecal ligation and puncture (CLP). Mice were treated intraperitoneally with antibiotics alone or in combination serpinb6b, a specific GzmA inhibitor, for 5 days. Mouse survival was monitored during 14 days, levels of some proinflammatory cytokines were measured in serum and bacterial load and diversity was analyzed in blood and spleen at different times. Results: Clinically, elevated GzmA was observed in serum from patients with abdominal sepsis suggesting that GzmA plays an important role in this pathology. In the CLP model GzmA deficient mice, or WT mice treated with an extracellular GzmA inhibitor, showed increased survival, which correlated with a reduction in proinflammatory markers in both serum and peritoneal lavage fluid. GzmA deficiency did not influence bacterial load in blood and spleen and GzmA did not affect bacterial replication in macrophages in vitro, indicating that GzmA has no role in bacterial control. Analysis of GzmA in lymphoid cells following CLP showed that it was mainly expressed by NK cells. Mechanistically, we found that extracellular active GzmA acts as a proinflammatory mediator in macrophages by inducing the TLR4-dependent expression of IL-6 and TNFa. Conclusions: Our findings implicate GzmA as a key regulator of the inflammatory response during abdominal sepsis and provide solid evidences about its therapeutic potential for the treatment of this severe pathology

Report of the ICCAT GBYP international workshop on Atlantic bluefin tuna growth

In the last Atlantic bluefin tuna assessment, an age-length database coming from direct ageing was presented for the first time. It was observed that otolith age estimates for fish younger than 8 years old had a smaller size at age compared to spine (first dorsal fin radius) age estimates. This difference, although small, was enough to misallocate the year class. This misallocation was solved when introducing a vector of bias corrected aged otoliths based on paired otolithspine samples. We have identified two possible causes for over-estimating age in the otolith agelength data: the current age adjustment criterion (to convert the bands counting into ages) and a reading bias in age estimations from some laboratories. Otolith preparation and reading protocols have been reviewed. The edge type and marginal increment analysis showed that the formation of opaque zones would seem likely to occur primarily between December through to June, contrary to what was thought until now, for which a new criterion for age adjustment has been proposed

Monte Carlo characterization of PETALO, a full-body liquid xenon-based PET detector

[EN] New detector approaches in Positron Emission Tomography imaging will play an important role in reducing costs, lowering administered radiation doses, and improving overall performance. PETALO employs liquid xenon as the active scintillating medium and UV-sensitive silicon photomultipliers for scintillation readout. The scintillation time in liquid xenon is fast enough to register time-of-flight information for each detected coincidence, and sufficient scintillation is produced with low enough fluctuations to obtain good energy resolution. The present simulation study examines a full-body-sized PETALO detector and evaluates its potential performance in PET image reconstruction.This work was supported by the European Research Council under grant ID 757829 and by Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad for grant FPA2016-78595-C3-1-R.Renner, J.; Romo-Luque, C.; Aliaga, RJ.; Álvarez-Puerta, V.; Ballester Merelo, FJ.; Benlloch-Rodríguez, J.; Carrión, J.... (2022). Monte Carlo characterization of PETALO, a full-body liquid xenon-based PET detector. Journal of Instrumentation. 17(5):1-14. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-0221/17/05/P0504411417

IBPOWER Project, Intermediate band materials and solar cells for photovoltaics with high efficiency and reduced cost

IBPOWER is a Project awarded under the 7th European Framework Programme that aims to advance research on intermediate band solar cells (IBSCs). These are solar cells conceived to absorb below bandgap energy photons by means of an electronic energy band that is located within the semiconductor bandgap, whilst producing photocurrent with output voltage still limited by the total semiconductor bandgap. IBPOWER employs two basic strategies for implementing the IBSC concept. The first is based on the use of quantum dots, the IB arising from the confined energy levels of the electrons in the dots. Quantum dots have led to devices that demonstrate the physical operation principles of the IB concept and have allowed identification of the problems to be solved to achieve actual high efficiencies. The second approach is based on the creation of bulk intermediate band materials by the insertion of an appropriate impurity into a bulk semiconductor. Under this approach it is expected that, when inserted at high densities, these impurities will find it difficult to capture electrons by producing a breathing mode and will cease behaving as non-radiative recombination centres. Towards this end the following systems are being investigated: a) Mn: In1-xGax N; b) transition metals in GaAs and c) thin films