Estudio de los mecanismos de autofagia en la colitis ulcerosa

[ES] El objetivo general es caracterizar perfiles de expresión de proteínas relacionadas con autofagia y correlacionarlos con la evolución de la enfermedad

Event-Related Potentials Reveal Altered Executive Control Activity in Healthy Elderly With Subjective Memory Complaints

Several studies reported that healthy elderly with subjective memory complaints (SMC) evolve to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) more frequently than elderly without subjective memory decline. In the present study, we investigated event-related potentials (ERPs) associated to executive control processes taking place during the performance of a Simon task with two irrelevant dimensions (stimulus position and direction pointed by an arrow) in healthy elderly divided in low and high SMC (LSMC, HSMC) groups. P300 was studied as a correlate of working memory. Medial frontal negativity (MFN) was studied as a correlate of conflict monitoring. Whereas the LSMC group showed interference from the stimulus position, participants with HSMC showed interference from both irrelevant dimensions. P300 latency was longer and P300 amplitude was lower when the stimulus position was incompatible with the required response but differences between both groups were not observed. MFN was not modulated in the LSMC group; however, the HSMC group showed larger MFN when the stimulus position and/or the direction pointed by the arrow were incompatible with the required response. These results suggest that participants with HSMC deployed greater conflict monitoring activity to maintain the performance when the target stimulus contained conflictive spatial informationThis study was financially supported by funds from the Spanish Government: Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (PSI2014-55316-C3-3-R; PSI2017-89389-C2-2-R), with FEDER Funds; the Galician Government: Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria; Axudas para a Consolidación e Estruturación de Unidades de Investigación Competitivas do Sistema Universitario de Galicia: GRC (GI-1807-USC); Ref: ED431-2017/27, with FEDER funds; Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación postdoctoral grantsS

Inhibition deficit in the spatial tendency of the response in multiple-domain amnestic mild cognitive impairment. An event-related potential study

Longitudinal studies have shown that a high percentage of people with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) develop Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Prodromal AD is known to involve deficits in executive control processes. In the present study, we examined such deficits by recording EEG in 13 single-domain amnestic MCI (sdaMCI), 12 multiple-domain amnestic MCI (mdaMCI) and 18 healthy elderly (control group, CG) participants while they performed a Simon task. The Simon task demands deployment of executive processes because participants have to respond to non-spatial features of a lateralized stimulus and inhibit the more automatic spatial tendency of the response. We specifically focused on the negativity central contralateral (N2cc), an event-related potential (ERP) component related to brain activity that prevents the cross-talk between direction of spatial attention and manual response preparation. The reaction time (RT) was not significantly different among the three groups of participants. The percentage of errors (PE) was higher in mdaMCI than in CG and sdaMCI participants. In addition, N2cc latency was delayed in mdaMCI (i.e., delayed implementation of mechanisms for controlling the spatial tendency of the response). The N2cc latency clearly distinguished among mdaMCI and CG/sdaMCI participants (area under curve: 0.91). Longer N2cc was therefore associated with executive control deficits, which suggests that N2cc latency is a correlate of mdaMCIThis study was funded by the Spanish Government: Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (PSI2010-22224-C03-03); and by the Galician Government: Consellería de Economía e Industria (10 PXIB 211070 PR), and Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria (Axudas de Apoio á etapa inicial de formación posdoutoral 2011-2015 (Plan I2C); Axudas para a Consolidación e Estruturación de unidades de investigación competitivas do sistema universitario de Galicia. Ref: CN 2012/033; with FEDER funds)S

Cognitive control activity is modulated by the magnitude of interference and pre-activation of monitoring mechanisms

The Simon task is used to study interference from irrelevant spatial information. Interference is manifested by longer reaction times when the required response –based on non-spatial features- is spatially incompatible with stimulus position. Interference is greater when incompatible trials are preceded by compatible trials (compatible-incompatible sequence) than when they are preceded by incompatible trials (incompatible-incompatible sequence). However, the relationships between spatial attention, interference and cognitive control have not been investigated. In the present study, we distinguished three experimental conditions according to sequential effects: same mappings (SM, compatible-compatible/incompatible-incompatible sequences: low interference), opposite mappings (OM, compatible-incompatible/incompatible-compatible sequences: high interference) and unrelated mappings (UM, central-compatible/central-incompatible sequences: intermediate interference). The negativity central contralateral (N2cc, a correlate of prevention of spatial response tendencies) was larger in OM than in SM, indicating greater cognitive control for greater interference. Furthermore, N2cc was larger in UM than in SM/OM, indicating lower neural efficiency for suppressing spatial tendencies of the response after central trials. Attentional processes (negativity posterior contralateral) were also delayed in UM relative to SM/OM, suggesting attentional facilitation by similar sets of attentional shifts in successive trials. Overall, the present findings showed that cognitive control is modulated by the magnitude of interference and pre-activation of monitoring mechanismshis study was funded by the Spanish Government (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad: PSI2014-55316-C3-3-R), the Galician Government (Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria, Axudas para a consolidación e Estruturación de unidades de investigación competitivas do SUG: GPC2014/047, with FEDER funds and by European Commission (Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions, Individual Fellowships: Grant Reference NIBSAD-655423)S

Neural Collaborative Filtering Classification Model to Obtain Prediction Reliabilities

Neural collaborative filtering is the state of art field in the recommender systems area; it provides some models that obtain accurate predictions and recommendations. These models are regression-based, and they just return rating predictions. This paper proposes the use of a classification-based approach, returning both rating predictions and their reliabilities. The extra information (prediction reliabilities) can be used in a variety of relevant collaborative filtering areas such as detection of shilling attacks, recommendations explanation or navigational tools to show users and items dependences. Additionally, recommendation reliabilities can be gracefully provided to users: “probably you will like this film”, “almost certainly you will like this song”, etc. This paper provides the proposed neural architecture; it also tests that the quality of its recommendation results is as good as the state of art baselines. Remarkably, individual rating predictions are improved by using the proposed architecture compared to baselines. Experiments have been performed making use of four popular public datasets, showing generalizable quality results. Overall, the proposed architecture improves individual rating predictions quality, maintains recommendation results and opens the doors to a set of relevant collaborative filtering fields

Electrophysiological Correlates of Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment in a Simon Task

Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) represents a prodromal stage of Alzheimer`s disease (AD), especially when additional cognitive domains are affected (Petersen et al., 2009). Thus, single-domain amnestic MCI (sdaMCI) and multipledomain-amnestic MCI (mdaMCI) biomarkers are important for enabling early interventions to help slow down progression of the disease. Recording event-related potentials (ERPs) is a non-invasive and inexpensive measure of brain activity associated with cognitive processes, and it is of interest from a clinical point of view. The ERP technique may also be useful for obtaining early sdaMCI and mdaMCI biomarkers because ERPs are sensitive to impairment in processes that are not manifested at behavioral or clinical levels. In the present study, EEG activity was recorded in 25 healthy participants and 30 amnestic MCI patients (17 sdaMCI and 13 mdaMCI) while they performed a Simon task. The ERPs associated with visuospatial (N2 posterior-contralateral – N2pc -) and motor (lateralized readiness potential – LRP –) processes were examined. The N2pc amplitude was smaller in participants with mdaMCI than in healthy participants, which indicated a decline in the correlates of allocation of attentional resources to the target stimulus. In addition, N2pc amplitude proved to be a moderately good biomarker of mdaMCI subtype (0.77 sensitivity, 0.76 specificity). However, the LRP amplitude was smaller in the two MCI groups (sdaMCI and mdaMCI) than in healthy participants, revealing a reduction in the motor resources available to execute the response in sdaMCI and mdaMCI patients. Furthermore, the LRP amplitude proved to be a valid biomarker (0.80 sensitivity, 0.92 specificity) of both amnestic MCI subtypesThis study was financially supported by funds from the Spanish Government: Ministerios de Educación (Beca FPU AP2007-04362) and Economía y Competitividad (PSI2010-22224-C03-03), and from the Galician Government: Consellería de Economía e Industria (10 PXIB 211070 PR), and Consellería de Educación e Ordenación Universitaria (Axudas para a Consolidación e Estruturación de unidades de investigación competitivas do sistema universitario de Galicia. Modalidade: Grupos con potencial de crecemento. Ref: CN 2012/033). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscriptS

Vision-based techniques for automatic marine plankton classification

Plankton are an important component of life on Earth. Since the 19th century, scientists have attempted to quantify species distributions using many techniques, such as direct counting, sizing, and classification with microscopes. Since then, extraordinary work has been performed regarding the development of plankton imaging systems, producing a massive backlog of images that await classification. Automatic image processing and classification approaches are opening new avenues for avoiding time-consuming manual procedures. While some algorithms have been adapted from many other applications for use with plankton, other exciting techniques have been developed exclusively for this issue. Achieving higher accuracy than that of human taxonomists is not yet possible, but an expeditious analysis is essential for discovering the world beyond plankton. Recent studies have shown the imminent development of real-time, in situ plankton image classification systems, which have only been slowed down by the complex implementations of algorithms on low-power processing hardware. This article compiles the techniques that have been proposed for classifying marine plankton, focusing on automatic methods that utilize image processing, from the beginnings of this field to the present day.Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málaga / CBUA. Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. The authors wish to thank Alonso Hernández-Guerra for his frm support in the development of oceanographic technology. Special thanks to Laia Armengol for her help in the domain of plankton. This study has been funded by Feder of the UE through the RES-COAST Mac-Interreg pro ject (MAC2/3.5b/314). We also acknowledge the European Union projects SUMMER (Grant Agreement 817806) and TRIATLAS (Grant Agreement 817578) from the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme and the Ministry of Science from the Spanish Government through the Project DESAFÍO (PID2020-118118RB-I00)

Should blind judokas and partially sighted judokas compete together? a reflection from the study of the temporal structure of combat

The investigation of the temporal structure of Para judo combat according to sport classes or visual categories (B1, B2 and B3) has only been carried out in women. The objectives of the study were to analyze the differences in the temporal structure of combat between the male para-judokas sport classes, and to determine whether the blind judokas and partially sighted judokas should compete together. All para-judokas who competed in the 2018 IBSA Judo World Championships (172 men) participated. Using observational methodology, we analyzed all the combats (n=232). To obtain the results, we used different analysis techniques: descriptive, one-way ANOVA, t-test for independent simples and effect size. The significance level established for the study was ρ ≤ 0.05. The results determine that during the pauses, the time dedicated to the displacement is increased when there is a B1 judoka in the pairing, causing the pauses to be significantly longer. Coaches should take this into account. We conclude that there are differences between the visual categories. B1 judokas have longer pauses, perform more ground fighting sequences and win fewer combats. The competition is not on equal terms. More research is needed in order to know if the new regulations have modified the combat temporality

Antimicrobial Resistance Determinants in Genomes and Plasmids from Acinetobacter baumannii Clinical Isolates

Acinetobacter baumannii is a Gram-negative coccoid rod species, clinically relevant as a human pathogen, included in the ESKAPE group. Carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii (CRAB) areconsidered by the Worl Health Organization (WHO) as a critical priority pathogen for the research and development of new antibiotics. Some of the most relevant features of this pathogen are its intrinsic multidrug resistance and its ability to acquire rapid and effective new resistant determinants against last-resort clinical antibiotics, mostly from other ESKAPE species. The presence of plasmids and mobile genetic elements in their genomes contributes to the acquisition of new antimicrobial resistance determinants. However, although A. baumannii has arisen as an important human pathogen, information about these elements is still not well understood. Current genomic analysis availability has increased our ability to understand the microevolution of bacterial pathogens, including point mutations, genetic dissemination, genomic stability, and pan- and core-genome compositions. In this work, we deeply studied the genomes of four clinical strains from our hospital, and the reference strain ATCC®19606TM, which have shown a remarkable ability to survive and maintain their effective capacity when subjected to long-term stress conditions. With that, our aim was presenting a detailed analysis of their genomes, including antibiotic resistance determinants and plasmid composition.This research was funded by ‘Plan Nacional de I+D+i and Instituto de Salud Carlos III (Fondo de Investigaciones Sanitarias PI16/01103 to J.R.-V.), Subdirección General de Redes y Centros de Investigación Cooperativa, Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, Spanish Network for Research in Infectious Diseases (REIPI RD12/0015) and (REIPI RD16/0016) co-financed by the European Development Regional Fund “A way to achieve Europe” ERDF and Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Acciones de dinamización «Redes de Investigación» RED2018-102469-T

Population distribution and biomass variability of sardine and anchovy in the Canary current system as simulated by an end-to-end coupled model

Small pelagic fishes as sardine and anchovy account for as much as 20-25% of the world fisheries catch. They are particularly abundant in the four major eastern boundary upwelling ecosystems, where high levels of biological productivity are sustained by the supply of nutrient-rich water from beneath the photic zone. An intrinsic and puzzling feature of small pelagic fish is the large fluctuations of their population, typically occurring at decadal scales. The causes for such fluctuations have been extensively analyzed and discussed in the literature, yet our understanding of the mechanism involved is very limited. End-to-end models are emerging tools useful to test hypothesis for such fish population variability or to gain new insights into the problem. This comprehensive and complex model approach is now becoming possible largely thanks to the present-day computer power. This contribution focuses on the population dynamics of sardine (Sardina pilchardus) and anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus) in the Canary Current Upwelling Ecosystem. We describe and present the results of an end-to-end coupled model simulation including these two small pelagic species. The end-to-end application includes three model components: the ROMS circulation sub-model, the lower trophic ecosystem sub-model NEMURO, and a recently developed individual-based model for the fish (Rose et al. 2015; Fiechter et al. 2015). The computational grid for the three models covers NW Africa and the Western Iberian Peninsula at a spatial resolution of 12 km. This resolution is sufficient for certain eddy variability to occur in ROMS. Different biological traits were prescribed for anchovy and sardine: temperature optimum, diet preferences, and the onset and duration of the spawning season, among others. A hind-cast simulation of the period 1958-2007 was carried out. Model results reveal a fairly different behavior of sardine and anchovy. Anchovies gather off the northern part of Morocco and the Gulf of Cadiz, whereas sardines appear more scattered across the domain, further offshore, and further south, where upwelling favorable conditions take place year round. Both species exhibit decadal-scale fluctuations in both the location of the center of mass of the population and their biomass abundance; the latter being reasonably correlated with historical landing records.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional del Mar CEIMAR. Campus de Excelencia Andalucía Tec