Towards adaptation of agriculture to climate change in the Mediterranean

his study links climate change impacts to the development of adaptation strategies for agriculture on the Mediterranean region. Climate change is expected to intensify the existing risks, particularly in regions with current water scarcity, and create new opportunities for improving land and water management. These risks and opportunities are characterised and interpreted across Mediterranean areas by analysing water scarcity pressures and potential impacts on crop productivity over the next decades. The need to respond to these risks and opportunities is addressed by evaluating an adaptive capacity index that represents the ability of Mediterranean agriculture to respond to climate change. We propose an adaptive capacity index with three major components that characterise the economic capacity, human and civic resources, and agricultural innovation. These results aim to assist stakeholders as they take up the adaptation challenge and develop measures to reduce the vulnerability of the sector to climate change

Planificación de un protocolo sobre atención sanitaria en un centro invernal

Los accidentes son algo común en los centros invernales, generalmente de carácter traumático, por los que los pacientes precisan tanto de una evacuación hasta un centro medico como de asistencia sanitaria. Ante esta situación, se observa que esa evacuación del paciente hasta el centro medico se realiza frecuentemente sin presencia de personal sanitario, por lo que la evaluación que se pueda realizar al llegar al lugar del accidente podría no estar completa, además de existir un retraso en el comienzo de la asistencia sanitaria al no comenzar hasta que el paciente llega al centro medico. Por ello, se ha elaborado un protocolo donde socorristas o pisters y el personal sanitario trabajen conjuntamente y acudan a los avisos para comenzar la asistencia sanitaria de forma mas rápida. <br /

Use of Recombinant Antigens for the Diagnosis of Invasive Candidiasis

Invasive candidiasis is a frequent and often fatal complication in immunocompromised and critically ill patients. Unfortunately, the diagnosis of invasive candidiasis remains difficult due to the lack of specific clinical symptoms and a definitive diagnostic method. The detection of antibodies against different Candida antigens may help in the diagnosis. However, the methods traditionally used for the detection of antibodies have been based on crude antigenic fungal extracts, which usually show low-reproducibility and cross-reactivity problems. The development of molecular biology techniques has allowed the production of recombinant antigens which may help to solve these problems. In this review we will discuss the usefulness of recombinant antigens in the diagnosis of invasive candidiasis

Late-onset thymidine kinase 2 deficiency: a review of 18 cases

BACKGROUND: TK2 gene encodes for mitochondrial thymidine kinase, which phosphorylates the pyrimidine nucleosides thymidine and deoxycytidine. Recessive mutations in the TK2 gene are responsible for the 'myopathic form' of the mitochondrial depletion/multiple deletions syndrome, with a wide spectrum of severity. METHODS: We describe 18 patients with mitochondrial myopathy due to mutations in the TK2 gene with absence of clinical symptoms until the age of 12. RESULTS: The mean age of onset was 31 years. The first symptom was muscle limb weakness in 10/18, eyelid ptosis in 6/18, and respiratory insufficiency in 2/18. All patients developed variable muscle weakness during the evolution of the disease. Half of patients presented difficulty in swallowing. All patients showed evidence of respiratory muscle weakness, with need for non-invasive Mechanical Ventilation in 12/18. Four patients had deceased, all of them due to respiratory insufficiency. We identified common radiological features in muscle magnetic resonance, where the most severely affected muscles were the gluteus maximus, semitendinosus and sartorius. On muscle biopsies typical signs of mitochondrial dysfunction were associated with dystrophic changes. All mutations identified were previously reported, being the most frequent the in-frame deletion p.Lys202del. All cases showed multiple mtDNA deletions but mtDNA depletion was present only in two patients. CONCLUSIONS: The late-onset is the less frequent form of presentation of the TK2 deficiency and its natural history is not well known. Patients with late onset TK2 deficiency have a consistent and recognizable clinical phenotype and a poor prognosis, due to the high risk of early and progressive respiratory insufficiency.Instituto de Salud Carlos III PI16-01843 PI16/00579 CP09/00011Subdirección General de Evaluación y Fomento de la Investigación Sanitaria PI16-01843 PI16/00579 CP09/00011 PI 15/00431 PMP15/0002

Diagnosis of invasive candidiasis by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay using the N-terminal fragment of Candida albicans hyphal wall protein 1

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The diagnosis of invasive candidiasis is difficult because there are no specific clinical manifestations of the disease and colonization and infection are difficult to distinguish. In the last decade, much effort has been made to develop reliable tests for rapid diagnosis of invasive candidiasis, but none of them have found widespread clinical use.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Antibodies against a recombinant N-terminal fragment of the <it>Candida albicans </it>germ tube-specific antigen hyphal wall protein 1 (Hwp1) generated in <it>Escherichia coli </it>were detected by both immunoblotting and ELISA tests in a group of 36 hematological or Intensive Care Unit patients with invasive candidiasis and in a group of 45 control patients at high risk for the mycosis who did not have clinical or microbiological data to document invasive candidiasis. Results were compared with an immunofluorescence test to detect antibodies to <it>C. albicans </it>germ tubes (CAGT). The sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values of a diagnostic test based on the detection of antibodies against the N-terminal fragment of Hwp1 by immunoblotting were 27.8 %, 95.6 %, 83.3 % and 62.3 %, respectively. Detection of antibodies to the N-terminal fragment of Hwp1 by ELISA increased the sensitivity (88.9 %) and the negative predictive value (90.2 %) but slightly decreased the specificity (82.6 %) and positive predictive values (80 %). The kinetics of antibody response to the N-terminal fragment of Hwp1 by ELISA was very similar to that observed by detecting antibodies to CAGT.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>An ELISA test to detect antibodies against a recombinant N-terminal fragment of the <it>C. albicans </it>germ tube cell wall antigen Hwp1 allows the diagnosis of invasive candidiasis with similar results to those obtained by detecting antibodies to CAGT but without the need of treating the sera to adsorb the antibodies against the cell wall surface of the blastospore.</p

Late-onset thymidine kinase 2 deficiency: a review of 18 cases

Mitochondrial myopathy; Multiple deletions; TK2 deficiencyMiopatia mitocondrial; Delecions múltiples; Deficiència de TK2Miopatía mitocondrial; Deleciones múltiples; Deficiencia de TK2BACKGROUND: TK2 gene encodes for mitochondrial thymidine kinase, which phosphorylates the pyrimidine nucleosides thymidine and deoxycytidine. Recessive mutations in the TK2 gene are responsible for the 'myopathic form' of the mitochondrial depletion/multiple deletions syndrome, with a wide spectrum of severity. METHODS: We describe 18 patients with mitochondrial myopathy due to mutations in the TK2 gene with absence of clinical symptoms until the age of 12. RESULTS: The mean age of onset was 31 years. The first symptom was muscle limb weakness in 10/18, eyelid ptosis in 6/18, and respiratory insufficiency in 2/18. All patients developed variable muscle weakness during the evolution of the disease. Half of patients presented difficulty in swallowing. All patients showed evidence of respiratory muscle weakness, with need for non-invasive Mechanical Ventilation in 12/18. Four patients had deceased, all of them due to respiratory insufficiency. We identified common radiological features in muscle magnetic resonance, where the most severely affected muscles were the gluteus maximus, semitendinosus and sartorius. On muscle biopsies typical signs of mitochondrial dysfunction were associated with dystrophic changes. All mutations identified were previously reported, being the most frequent the in-frame deletion p.Lys202del. All cases showed multiple mtDNA deletions but mtDNA depletion was present only in two patients. CONCLUSIONS: The late-onset is the less frequent form of presentation of the TK2 deficiency and its natural history is not well known. Patients with late onset TK2 deficiency have a consistent and recognizable clinical phenotype and a poor prognosis, due to the high risk of early and progressive respiratory insufficiency

Application of Drought Management Guidelines in Spain

The Spanish case study presents the drought planning process carried in the Tagus Basin. The presentation is structured in four parts: organizational, methodological, operational and public review components. The organizational component presents the framework and specific legislations and the organizations and institutions in Spain that work on drought preparedness and mitigation. The methodological component presents the analytical techniques used for drought risk analysis and management. The operational component describes the proposed structure for the drought management plan and presents the specific actions that are contemplated in it. The process review component identifies stakeholders that are involved in the decision making process and presents their views on the process

A regional comparison of the effects of climate change on agricultural crops in Europe

The effects of climate change will be felt by most farmers in Europe over the next decades. This study provides consistent results of the impact of climate change on arable agriculture in Europe by using high resolution climate data, socio-economic data, and impact assessment models, including farmer adaptation. All scenarios are consistent with the spatial distribution of effects, exacerbating regional disparities and current vulnerability to climate. Since the results assume no restrictions on the use of water for irrigation or on the application of agrochemicals, they may be considered optimistic from the production point of view and somewhat pessimistic from the environmental point of view. The results provide an estimate of the regional economic impact of climate change, as well as insights into the importance of mitigation and adaptation policies

Normal tissue content impact on the GBM molecular classification.

Molecular classification of glioblastoma has enabled a deeper understanding of the disease. The four-subtype model (including Proneural, Classical, Mesenchymal and Neural) has been replaced by a model that discards the Neural subtype, found to be associated with samples with a high content of normal tissue. These samples can be misclassified preventing biological and clinical insights into the different tumor subtypes from coming to light. In this work, we present a model that tackles both the molecular classification of samples and discrimination of those with a high content of normal cells. We performed a transcriptomic in silico analysis on glioblastoma (GBM) samples (n = 810) and tested different criteria to optimize the number of genes needed for molecular classification. We used gene expression of normal brain samples (n = 555) to design an additional gene signature to detect samples with a high normal tissue content. Microdissection samples of different structures within GBM (n = 122) have been used to validate the final model. Finally, the model was tested in a cohort of 43 patients and confirmed by histology. Based on the expression of 20 genes, our model is able to discriminate samples with a high content of normal tissue and to classify the remaining ones. We have shown that taking into consideration normal cells can prevent errors in the classification and the subsequent misinterpretation of the results. Moreover, considering only samples with a low content of normal cells, we found an association between the complexity of the samples and survival for the three molecular subtypes.pre-print2217 K

Perception of wildlife from various religious views: A tool to promote environmental education in the Osa Peninsula

En la península de Osa, al sur de Costa Rica, la cacería y el comercio de la fauna silvestre son prácticas extendidas que ponen en riesgo su conservación. Los líderes religiosos podrían ser actores importantes si se integra en sus discursos ideas sobre esta problemática, pues ellos tienden a crear enlaces profundos con la comunidad. Con el objetivo de conocer la percepción de los líderes religiosos frente a la problemática ambiental local, se realizaron entrevistas a profundidad. En general mostraron sensibilidad hacia la naturaleza y los problemas ambientales actuales. Existió una aceptación sobre la caza de subsistencia, pero no así de la caza deportiva ni comercial. Se encontró una buena disposición de aprender sobre la problemática ambiental y las vías para su mitigación, así como elementos en sus doctrinas que pueden usarse para canalizar estrategias de educación ambiental.In the Osa peninsula in southern Costa Rica, hunting and wildlife trade are common practices that threaten biodiversity conservation. Religious leaders could play an important role if they integrate in their speeches ideas about these issues, as they tend to create deep links with the community. In order to understand the perception of religious leaders against local environmental issues they were interviewed in depth. In general they showed sensitivity to nature and the current environmental problems. They showed an acceptance on subsistence hunting, but not for commercial or sport hunting. Also religious leaders showed a willingness to learn about environmental issues and ways to mitigate them, as well as elements in their doctrines that can be used to channel environmental education strategies.Fil: Mazzolari, Ana Clara. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Provincia de Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas; ArgentinaFil: Pardo, Laín. Universidad de Costa Rica; Costa RicaFil: Monge, Otto. No especifica;Fil: Montalvo, Víctor. Universidad de Costa Rica; Costa RicaFil: Armero-Durán, Dora. Universidad de Costa Rica; Costa RicaFil: Cruz-Díaz, Juan Carlos. Universidad de Costa Rica; Costa RicaFil: Orias-Hidalgo, Nancy. Universidad de Costa Rica; Costa RicaFil: Rodríguez, Virginia. Universidad de Costa Rica; Costa RicaFil: Sarmento, Martha. Universidad de Costa Rica; Costa RicaFil: Tovar, Adriana. Universidad de Costa Rica; Costa RicaFil: Vargas-Mena, Emilio. Universidad de Costa Rica; Costa RicaFil: Wong-Reyes, Grace. Universidad de Costa Rica; Costa Ric