Alcohol drinking and mammary cancer: Pathogenesis and potential dietary preventive alternatives

Alcohol consumption is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer, increasing linearly even with a moderate consumption and irrespectively of the type of alcoholic beverage. It shows no dependency from other risk factors like menopausal status, oral contraceptives, hormone replacement therapy, or genetic history of breast cancer. The precise mechanism for the effect of drinking alcohol in mammary cancer promotion is still far from being established. Studies by our laboratory suggest that acetaldehyde produced in situ and accumulated in mammary tissue because of poor detoxicating mechanisms might play a role in mutational and promotional events. Additional studies indicated the production of reactive oxygen species accompanied of decreases in vitamin E and GSH contents and of glutathione transferase activity. The resulting oxidative stress might also play a relevant role in several stages of the carcinogenic process. There are reported in literature studies showing that plasmatic levels of estrogens significantly increased after alcohol drinking and that the breast cancer risk is higher in receptor ER-positive individuals. Estrogens are known that they may produce breast cancer by actions on ER and also as chemical carcinogens, as a consequence of their oxidation leading to reactive metabolites. In this review we introduce our working hypothesis integrating the acetaldehyde and the oxidative stress effects with those involving increased estrogen levels. We also analyze potential preventive actions that might be accessible. There remains the fact that alcohol drinking is just one of the avoidable causes of breast cancer and that, at present, the suggested acceptable dose for prevention of this risk is of one drink per day.Fil: Castro, Gerardo Daniel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. GP. CITEFA - Centro de Investigaciones Toxicológicas (I); Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Unidad de Investigación y Desarrollo Estratégico para la Defensa. Ministerio de Defensa. Unidad de Investigación y Desarrollo Estratégico para la Defensa; ArgentinaFil: Castro, Jose Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Unidad de Investigación y Desarrollo Estratégico para la Defensa. Ministerio de Defensa. Unidad de Investigación y Desarrollo Estratégico para la Defensa; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de San Martín. Instituto de Investigación e Ingeniería Ambiental; Argentin

Enumeration of kk-Fibonacci Paths using Infinite Weighted Automata

In this paper, we introduce a new family of generalized colored Motzkin paths, where horizontal steps are colored by means of $F_{k,l}$ colors, where $F_{k,l}$ is the $l$th $k$-Fibonacci number. We study the enumeration of this family according to the length. For this, we use infinite weighted automata.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1310.244

MARY JULIA WORKMAN: CATHOLIC PROGRESSIVISM IN LOS ANGELES (1900-1920)

Mary Julia Workman was a social activist in the early twentieth century. She was the founder of the Brownson Settlement House in Los Angeles. By the 1900s. during the Progressive Era, Mary Julia Workman, a Catholic activist, led a group of women to help the immigrants that were segregated and discriminated in the growing city of Los Angeles. Although Catholic activism was influenced by the Protestant Progressive ideology, Mary Julia Workman provided social justice to the marginalized. Her Americanization methodology would be focused to learn from the foreigner culture and adapted it to our society. Meanwhile, the Americanization efforts promoted by conservative and nationalist religious groups in the immigrant communities brought antagonism, racism, and discrimination in the community. Mary Julia Workman had to leave her position as president of Brownson House due to the religious bureaucracy at the Los Angeles Archdiocese

Historical knowledge of sharks: ancient science, earliest American encounters, and American science, fisheries, and utilization

In western civilization, the knowledge of the elasmobranch or selachian fishes (sharks and rays) begins with Aristotle (384–322 B.C.). Two of his extant works, the “Historia Animalium” and the “Generation of Animals,” both written about 330 B.C., demonstrate knowledge of elasmobranch fishes acquired by observation. Roman writers of works on natural history, such as Aelian and Pliny, who followed Aristotle, were compilers of available information. Their contribution was that they prevented the Greek knowledge from being lost, but they added few original observations. The fall of Rome, around 476 A.D., brought a period of economic regression and political chaos. These in turn brought intellectual thought to a standstill for nearly one thousand years, the period known as the Dark Ages. It would not be until the middle of the sixteenth century, well into the Renaissance, that knowledge of elasmobranchs would advance again. The works of Belon, Salviani, Rondelet, and Steno mark the beginnings of ichthyology, including the study of sharks and rays. The knowledge of sharks and rays increased slowly during and after the Renaissance, and the introduction of the Linnaean System of Nomenclature in 1735 marks the beginning of modern ichthyology. However, the first major work on sharks would not appear until the early nineteenth century. Knowledge acquired about sea animals usually follows their economic importance and exploitation, and this was also true with sharks. The first to learn about sharks in North America were the native fishermen who learned how, when, and where to catch them for food or for their oils. The early naturalists in America studied the land animals and plants; they had little interest in sharks. When faunistic works on fishes started to appear, naturalists just enumerated the species of sharks that they could discern. Throughout the U.S. colonial period, sharks were seldom utilized for food, although their liver oil or skins were often utilized. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Spiny Dogfish, Squalus acanthias, was the only shark species utilized in a large scale on both coasts. It was fished for its liver oil, which was used as a lubricant, and for lighting and tanning, and for its skin which was used as an abrasive. During the early part of the twentieth century, the Ocean Leather Company was started to process sea animals (primarily sharks) into leather, oil, fertilizer, fins, etc. The Ocean Leather Company enjoyed a monopoly on the shark leather industry for several decades. In 1937, the liver of the Soupfin Shark, Galeorhinus galeus, was found to be a rich source of vitamin A, and because the outbreak of World War II in 1938 interrupted the shipping of vitamin A from European sources, an intensive shark fishery soon developed along the U.S. West Coast. By 1939 the American shark leather fishery had transformed into the shark liver oil fishery of the early 1940’s, encompassing both coasts. By the late 1940’s, these fisheries were depleted because of overfishing and fishing in the nursery areas. Synthetic vitamin A appeared on the market in 1950, causing the fishery to be discontinued. During World War II, shark attacks on the survivors of sunken ships and downed aviators engendered the search for a shark repellent. This led to research aimed at understanding shark behavior and the sensory biology of sharks. From the late 1950’s to the 1980’s, funding from the Office of Naval Research was responsible for most of what was learned about the sensory biology of sharks

The geography of innovation: the effects of university research

Applied studies on the relationship between geography and technological innovation for United States, Germany, France and Italy have shown the positive effects that academic research exerts on the innovative output of firms at a spatial level. The purpose of this paper is to look for new evidence on the possible effects of the university research for the case of Spain. To do so, within the framework of a Griliches-Jaffe knowledge production function, and using panel data and count models, the relationship between innovative inputs and patents, in the case of the Spanish regions is explored.geography of innovation, patents, r&d