Evaluation of public and private health care systems

Indexación: ScieloBackground: There is a great degree of dissatisfaction with the Chilean health care system. Aim: To investigate which are the most relevant perceived factors when the health care system is evaluated. Material and Methods: Analysis of a survey about the Chilean health care system carried out during 2011, 2012 and 2013, involving 2,801 respondents. Results: The response capacity of emergency systems was the main factor considered for the evaluation of public and private health care systems. Respondents who were affiliated to private insurance systems also took into consideration the quality of medical infrastructure. Conclusions: There are different factors considered when public or private health care systems are evaluated. Key words: Delivery of health care; Public Health; Public Opinion; Chile

Seedling vigor variation among 80 recombinant chromosome substitution lines (RCSL) of barley (Hordeum vulgare)

del Pozo, A (del Pozo, Alejandro). Univ Talca, Fac Ciencias Agr, Talca, Chile.Seedling vigor of 80 recombinant chromosome substitution lines (RCSL) of barley (Hordeum vulgare). Cien. Inv. Agr. 38 (1): 137-147. The seedling vigor of 80 barley recombinant chromosome substitution lines (RCSLs) was measured for selecting high seedling vigor genotypes. The RCSLs were derived from a cross between H. vulgare subsp. spontaneum and H. vulgare subsp. vulgare 'Harrington'. The work was carried out under greenhouse conditions during the summer of 2008. The experimental design was an alpha lattice with 3 replicates. In each replicate, 40 plants were established, distributed in eight polyethylene pots containing sand as substrate, which were fertilized an irrigated. The emergence of seedlings, number of leaves and shoots, dry matter of leaves, shoots and roots and leaf area of fully expanded leaves were measured. In addition, growth indices were calculated: emergence rate, leaf appearance rate, relative leaf expansion rate, relative growth rate (RGR), net assimilation rate (NAR), leaf area ratio (LAR) and the allometric coefficient (K) between root and shoot thy matter. All calculated indices varied significantly among genotypes (P <= 0.05) and some RCSLs showed better early vigor associated traits than 'Harrington'. The dry matter accumulation 30 DAS (when the experiment ended) was significant and positively correlated with the RGR (r=0.61; P <= 0.05) and NAR (r=0.41; P <= 0.05). The K coefficient was negatively correlated with NAR (r=-0.40, P <= 0.05). The genotypes with the greatest seminal vigor were the RCSLs 45, 92, 112 and 'Harrington', whereas the RCSLs 5, 19,47 and 121 presented the lowest seminal vigor

Encapsulation of gold nanostructures and oil-in-water nanocarriers in microgels with biomedical potential

Indexación: Scopus.Funding: This research was funded by FONDECYT 1161450, 1150744, 11130494 and 1170929, FONDEQUIP EQM160157, EQM170111, CONICYT-FONDAP 15130011, and CONICYT PhD Scholarship 21141137.Here we report the incorporation of gold nanostructures (nanospheres or nanorods, functionalized with carboxylate-end PEG) and curcumin oil-in-water (O/W) nanoemulsions (CurNem) into alginate microgels using the dripping technique. While gold nanostructures are promising nanomaterials for photothermal therapy applications, CurNem possess important pharmacological activities as reported here. In this sense, we evaluated the effect of CurNem on cell viability of both cancerous and non-cancerous cell lines (AGS and HEK293T, respectively), demonstrating preferential toxicity in cancer cells and safety for the non-cancerous cells. After incorporating gold nanostructures and CurNem together into the microgels, microstructures with diameters of 220 and 540 µm were obtained. When stimulating microgels with a laser, the plasmon effect promoted a significant rise in the temperature of the medium; the temperature increase was higher for those containing gold nanorods (11–12 ◦ C) than nanospheres (1–2 ◦ C). Interestingly, the incorporation of both nanosystems in the microgels maintains the photothermal properties of the gold nanostructures unmodified and retains with high efficiency the curcumin nanocarriers. We conclude that these results will be of interest to design hydrogel formulations with therapeutic applications. © 2018 by the authors.https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/23/5/120

Phytase-producing Bacillus sp. inoculation increases phosphorus availability in cattle manure

Organic wastes rich in phosphorus (P) are considered an alternative to decrease the dependence on chemical P fertilization in crops and pastures. Microbial inoculants are being studied as a tool to increase plant P availability in organic wastes. In this study, we explore the effect of inoculation with Bacillus sp. MQH-19 (a native phytase-producing bacterium) on the release of inorganic phosphorus (Pi) in cattle manure with low available P but a high total P content. Bacteria inoculation resulted in a higher release of Pi (8% in NaHCÜ3 and 13% in NaOH-EDTA extracts) compared with that of uninoculated manure (0.7% in NaHCÜ3 and 0.1% in NaOH-EDTA extracts). However, a greater amount of Pi was released in inoculated manure supplemented with phytate (47% in NaHCÜ3 and 117% in NaOH-EDTA extracts) compared with that of uninoculated manure supplemented with phytate (30% in NaHCÜ3 and 15% in NaOH-EDTA extracts). In addition, the use of denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and quantitative PCR (qPCR) revealed that the bacterial community structure in manure was affected by inoculation and that the prevalence of Bacillus sp. MQH-19 decreased during incubation (6 days). This study demonstrates that Pi availability in cattle manure can be increased by phytase-producing bacteria inoculation. Phytase-producing bacteria inoculation might represent an attractive strategy to increase P availability in agricultural wastes, which are used as organic fertilizers in crops and pastures

Trichoderma-Plant Root Colonization: Escaping Early Plant Defense Responses and Activation of the Antioxidant Machinery for Saline Stress Tolerance

Trichoderma spp. are versatile opportunistic plant symbionts which can colonize the apoplast of plant roots. Microarrays analysis of Arabidopsis thaliana roots inoculated with Trichoderma asperelloides T203, coupled with qPCR analysis of 137 stress responsive genes and transcription factors, revealed wide gene transcript reprogramming, proceeded by a transient repression of the plant immune responses supposedly to allow root colonization. Enhancement in the expression of WRKY18 and WRKY40, which stimulate JA-signaling via suppression of JAZ repressors and negatively regulate the expression of the defense genes FMO1, PAD3 and CYP71A13, was detected in Arabidopsis roots upon Trichoderma colonization. Reduced root colonization was observed in the wrky18/wrky40 double mutant line, while partial phenotypic complementation was achieved by over-expressing WRKY40 in the wrky18 wrky40 background. On the other hand increased colonization rate was found in roots of the FMO1 knockout mutant. Trichoderma spp. stimulate plant growth and resistance to a wide range of adverse environmental conditions. Arabidopsis and cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) plants treated with Trichoderma prior to salt stress imposition show significantly improved seed germination. In addition, Trichoderma treatment affects the expression of several genes related to osmo-protection and general oxidative stress in roots of both plants. The MDAR gene coding for monodehydroascorbate reductase is significantly up-regulated and, accordingly, the pool of reduced ascorbic acid was found to be increased in Trichoderma treated plants. 1-Aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate (ACC)-deaminase silenced Trichoderma mutants were less effective in providing tolerance to salt stress, suggesting that Trichoderma, similarly to ACC deaminase producing bacteria, can ameliorate plant growth under conditions of abiotic stress, by lowering ameliorating increases in ethylene levels as well as promoting an elevated antioxidative capacity

Foods with Functional Properties and their Potential Uses in Human Health

Vegetables and fruits have been a part of human diet since ancient times; nevertheless, as countries develop, its population’s feeding habits change and tend to have a diet poor in vegetables and fruits, with well-known consequences. Several food plant products with massive consumption and within the reach of the population are products such as artichoke, leek, hot chili pepper, coriander, kiwifruit, sweet orange, highbush blueberry, and maracuyá to name a few. They have many beneficial properties principally by its content of phytochemicals with high impact on human health, beyond nutritional support. The phytochemicals are bioactive compounds such as vitamins, carotenoids, phenolic acid, and flavonoids, which contribute to antioxidant capacity and as a whole prevent chronic nontransmissible diseases such as: diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol in blood, cardiovascular risks, among others. This relationship between food plant for human consumption and its impacts on human health is discussed in this chapter, highlighting coriander and kiwifruit by its wide range of benefits

Key Parameters for Urban Heat Island Assessment in A Mediterranean Context: A Sensitivity Analysis Using the Urban Weather Generator Model

Although Urban Heat Island (UHI) is a fundamental effect modifying the urban climate, being widely studied, the relative weight of the parameters involved in its generation is still not clear. This paper investigates the hierarchy of importance of eight parameters responsible for UHI intensity in the Mediterranean context. Sensitivity analyses have been carried out using the Urban Weather Generator model, considering the range of variability of: 1) city radius, 2) urban morphology, 3) tree coverage, 4) anthropogenic heat from vehicles, 5) building’s cooling set point, 6) heat released to canyon from HVAC systems, 7) wall construction properties and 8) albedo of vertical and horizontal surfaces. Results show a clear hierarchy of significance among the considered parameters; the urban morphology is the most important variable, causing a relative change up to 120% of the annual average UHI intensity in the Mediterranean context. The impact of anthropogenic sources of heat such as cooling systems and vehicles is also significant. These results suggest that urban morphology parameters can be used as descriptors of the climatic performance of different urban areas, easing the work of urban planners and designers in understanding a complex physical phenomenon, such as the UHI

TargetSearch - a Bioconductor package for the efficient preprocessing of GC-MS metabolite profiling data

Background: Metabolite profiling, the simultaneous quantification of multiple metabolites in an experiment, is becoming increasingly popular, particularly with the rise of systems-level biology. The workhorse in this field is gas-chromatography hyphenated with mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The high-throughput of this technology coupled with a demand for large experiments has led to data pre-processing, i.e. the quantification of metabolites across samples, becoming a major bottleneck. Existing software has several limitations, including restricted maximum sample size, systematic errors and low flexibility. However, the biggest limitation is that the resulting data usually require extensive hand-curation, which is subjective and can typically take several days to weeks. Results: We introduce the TargetSearch package, an open source tool which is a flexible and accurate method for pre-processing even very large numbers of GC-MS samples within hours. We developed a novel strategy to iteratively correct and update retention time indices for searching and identifying metabolites. The package is written in the R programming language with computationally intensive functions written in C for speed and performance. The package includes a graphical user interface to allow easy use by those unfamiliar with R. Conclusions: TargetSearch allows fast and accurate data pre-processing for GC-MS experiments and overcomes the sample number limitations and manual curation requirements of existing software. We validate our method by carrying out an analysis against both a set of known chemical standard mixtures and of a biological experiment. In addition we demonstrate its capabilities and speed by comparing it with other GC-MS pre-processing tools. We believe this package will greatly ease current bottlenecks and facilitate the analysis of metabolic profiling data

Caracterización ultraestructural y molecular de cepas de Tetraselmis (Chlorodendrophyceae, Chlorophyta) aisladas de Chile

Species of the genus Tetraselmis (Chlorodendrophyceae, Chlorophyta) have traditionally been used in aquaculture facilities as food forlarval varieties of marine organisms. Recently, some strains with high lipid content have been considered as having potential for biofuelproduction. Although many Tetraselmis species are relatively well-characterized using light and electron microscopical methods,there are still taxonomic ambiguities among the species. DNA sequence analysis, which provides a reliable and more convenient toolfor species delimitation, has been poorly used in Tetraselmis. In this study, three strains of Tetraselmis, isolated from coastal Chileanwaters, have been characterized using an integrative approach (light and electron microscopy, molecular phylogeny of ITS, includingsecondary structure analysis). According to the pyrenoid ultrastructure of the strains investigated two of them (from Dichato andColiumo) belong to the subgenus Parviselmis, while the Caldera strain corresponds to the subgenus Tetrathele. Even though it was notpossible to identify the strains at species level, it was clearly demonstrated by phylogenetic analyses of ITS-1 and ITS-2 sequencesand by ITS-2 secondary structure that the Dichato and Coliumo strains are the same species, and could belong either to T. suecica or T.chui. However, the Caldera strain might correspond to an undescribed species. As our study has shown, the genus Tetraselmis needs tobe taxonomically revised using an integrative approach, which includes the investigations of authentic strains of this genus.Especies del género Tetraselmis (Chlorodendrophyceae, Chlorophyta) han sido tradicionalmente usadas en centros acuícolas comoalimento para larvas de una variedad de organismos marinos. Adicionalmente, algunas cepas con alto contenido de lípidos hansido recientemente consideradas como fuente potencial para la producción de biodiesel. Aunque muchas especies de Tetraselmis seencuentran morfológica y ultraestructuralmente bien caracterizadas, todavía hay ambigüedades taxonómicas al interior del género. Elanálisis de secuencias de ADN, una herramienta complementaria y conveniente para delimitar especies, ha sido pobremente utilizadoen Tetraselmis. En este estudio, se caracterizaron tres cepas de Tetraselmis, aisladas de aguas costeras chilenas, utilizando un enfoqueintegrativo (morfología, ultraestructura y filogenia molecular). Basado en la ultraestructura del pirenoide de las cepas estudiadas,dos de ellas (Dichato y Coliumo) pertenecen al subgénero Parviselmis, mientras que la cepa de Caldera corresponde al subgéneroTetrathele. Aunque no fue posible identificar las cepas a nivel específico, el análisis filogenético de las secuencias ITS-1 e ITS-2y la estructura secundaria del ITS-2 demostraron claramente que las cepas de Dichato y Coliumo son la misma especie, y podríanpertenecer a T. suecica o a T. chui, mientras que la cepa de Caldera podría corresponder a una especie no descrita aún para la ciencia.Los resultados obtenidos demuestran la necesidad de llevar a cabo una revisión taxonómica del género Tetraselmis, utilizando unenfoque integrativo, el cual incluya las cepas auténticas de las especies