LATEX: Audiovisual Presentations Editor in Culture Classes Complementary to Courses of Spanish as a Foreign Language (ELE)

Este artículo describe los fundamentos del sistema LATEX-beamer e introduce el protocolo de trabajo para el diseño de presentaciones audiovisuales basadas en un archivo sistemático de recursos audiovisuales para un curso de Cultura Argentina destinado a mejorar la competencia pragmática de los estudiantes internacionales de la Universidad Nacional del Sur. Se identifican algunas de las ventajas que el sistema ofrece: archivos más pequeños, portabilidad completa a distintas plataformas o sistemas operativos, reciclamiento veloz de diapositivas y enlaces efectivos a archivos de audio y video externos, así como a sitios de Internet.This article describes the basics of the LATEX-beamer system and introduces the work protocol devised for the design of audiovisual presentations based on a systematic archive of audiovisual resources and destined to the Course on Argentine Culture, with a focus on improving the pragmatic competences of the international Students at Universidad Nacional del Sur. It identifies some of the advantages the system offers: smaller files, full portability to different platforms or operating systems, fast recycling of slides, and effective links to external audio and video files, as well as, to Internet websites

Encapsulation of biologically active agents in emulsions stabilized by natural polymers

El uso de nanotransportadores para la encapsulación de diferentes moléculas ha sido explorado a lo largo de los últimos años para múltiples aplicaciones. Ha sido utilizado por ejemplo para la vehiculización de moléculas hidrofóbicas en medios acuosos (y de hidrofílicas en medios oléicos), la protección de moléculas sensibles o la inmovilización de diferentes moléculas en soportes.Entre los diferentes tipos de nanotransportadores que han sido desarrollados, las nanocápsulas poliméricas han atraído la atención de multitud de investigadores debido a sus grandes ventajas. En esta tesis, nanoemulsiones recubiertas de polisacáridos han sido desarrolladas para su utilización como nanotransportadores de diferentes moléculas. Gracias a su versatilidad, estas nanocápsulas permiten la encapsulación de moléculas hidrofóbicas en el interior aceitoso, mientras que las moléculas hidrofílicas pueden ser atrapadas en la recubierta polimérica. Además, los componentes de las nanocápsulas pueden ser modificados a demanda de la aplicación final.Las nanocápsulas desarrolladas han demostrado ser muy efectivas para la encapsulación de antibióticos como bedaquilina y daptomicina para su uso en el tratamiento de infecciones causadas por Mycobacterium tuberculosis y Staphylococcus aureus resistente a la meticilina (SARM), respectivamente. Han sido utilizadas también en un estudio exploratorio para la encapsulación del fármaco disulfiram y su utilización alternativa en el tratamiento del cáncer de páncreas e infecciones causadas por SARM. También han mostrado gran capacidad como soportes para la inmovilización de la enzima cloroperoxidasa así como la encapsulación de partículas magnéticas. Por último, también han sido desarrolladas nanocápsulas para la encapsulación de nanopartículas de vanadato de holmio para su utilización como agentes de contraste.Todas las nanocápsulas desarrolladas han sido recubiertas con el polímero adecuado teniendo en cuenta la aplicación final y las necesidades que se debían cubrir. Tanto el quitosano como el alginato y el xantano han sido utilizados para este propósito de manera satisfactoria. Se han realizado las caracterizaciones fisicoquímicas así como las pruebas de eficacia necesarias para cada aplicación.En todos los casos, estas nanocápsulas han demostrado tener una gran versatilidad como agentes nanotransportadores de diferentes fármacos, enzimas y nanopartículas así como ser capaces de modificar su superficie con diferentes polímeros para conseguir los requerimientos de la aplicación final.The use of nanocarriers for the encapsulation of different molecules has been explored over the recent years for multiple applications. They have been used for the vehiculization of hydrophobic molecules in aqueous media (or hydrophilic ones in oily media), protection of sensitive molecules or immobilization of different molecules in supports. Among the different nanocarriers that have been developed, polymeric nanocapsules have attracted the interest of many researchers thanks to their great advantages. In this thesis, polysaccharide coated nanoemulsions have been developed as potential nanocarriers for the encapsulation of different molecules. Thanks to their versatility, these nanocarriers allow the encapsulation of hydrophobic in the oily core, while hydrophilic ones can be entrapped in the polymer coating. Besides, the components of the nanocapsules can be modified upon the needs of the final application. All the developed nanocapsules were coated with the adequate polymer depending on the final application and the characteristics that needed to be achieved. Both chitosan, alginate and xanthan were used successfully. The developed nanocapsules have proven to be very effective for the encapsulation of antibiotics such as bedaquiline and daptomycin used the treatment of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections, respectively. An exploratory research has been also carried out to encapsulate the drug disulfiram for its repurposing for the treatment of pancreatic cancer and MRSA infections. The developed nanocapsules have shown great capability as immobilizing agents of the enzyme chloroperoxidase and the encapsulation of magnetic nanoparticles (NP). They have also been able to encapsulate holmium vanadate NP for their use as contrast agents. Physicochemical characterization as well as efficacy test for the different purposes were performed in all the cases. For all the tested applications, the developed nanocapsules showed great versatility for their use as nanocarriers of many different drugs, enzymes and nanoparticles as well as being able to modify the surface with different polymers to meet the application requirements.<br /

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Resumen tomado de la publicaciónSe describen los fundamentos del sistema LATEX-beamer e introduce el protocolo de trabajo para el diseño de presentaciones audiovisuales basadas en un archivo sistemático de recursos audiovisuales para un curso de Cultura Argentina destinado a mejorar la competencia pragmática de los estudiantes internacionales de la Universidad Nacional del Sur. Se identifican algunas de las ventajas que el sistema ofrece: archivos más pequeños, portabilidad completa a distintas plataformas o sistemas operativos, reciclamiento veloz de diapositivas y enlaces efectivos a archivos de audio y video externos, así como a sitios de Internet.ES

Natural Polysaccharides for siRNA Delivery: Nanocarriers Based on Chitosan, Hyaluronic Acid, and Their Derivatives

Natural polysaccharides are frequently used in the design of drug delivery systems due to their biocompatibility, biodegradability, and low toxicity. Moreover, they are diverse in structure, size, and charge, and their chemical functional groups can be easily modified to match the needs of the final application and mode of administration. This review focuses on polysaccharidic nanocarriers based on chitosan and hyaluronic acid for small interfering RNA (siRNA) delivery, which are highly positively and negatively charged, respectively. The key properties, strengths, and drawbacks of each polysaccharide are discussed. In addition, their use as efficient nanodelivery systems for gene silencing applications is put into context using the most recent examples from the literature. The latest advances in this field illustrate effectively how chitosan and hyaluronic acid can be modified or associated with other molecules in order to overcome their limitations to produce optimized siRNA delivery systems with promising in vitro and in vivo result

Staged Contact-Aware Global Human Motion Forecasting

Scene-aware global human motion forecasting is critical for manifold applications, including virtual reality, robotics, and sports. The task combines human trajectory and pose forecasting within the provided scene context, which represents a significant challenge. So far, only Mao et al. NeurIPS'22 have addressed scene-aware global motion, cascading the prediction of future scene contact points and the global motion estimation. They perform the latter as the end-to-end forecasting of future trajectories and poses. However, end-to-end contrasts with the coarse-to-fine nature of the task and it results in lower performance, as we demonstrate here empirically. We propose a STAGed contact-aware global human motion forecasting STAG, a novel three-stage pipeline for predicting global human motion in a 3D environment. We first consider the scene and the respective human interaction as contact points. Secondly, we model the human trajectory forecasting within the scene, predicting the coarse motion of the human body as a whole. The third and last stage matches a plausible fine human joint motion to complement the trajectory considering the estimated contacts. Compared to the state-of-the-art (SoA), STAG achieves a 1.8% and 16.2% overall improvement in pose and trajectory prediction, respectively, on the scene-aware GTA-IM dataset. A comprehensive ablation study confirms the advantages of staged modeling over end-to-end approaches. Furthermore, we establish the significance of a newly proposed temporal counter called the "time-to-go", which tells how long it is before reaching scene contact and endpoints. Notably, STAG showcases its ability to generalize to datasets lacking a scene and achieves a new state-of-the-art performance on CMU-Mocap, without leveraging any social cues. Our code is released at: https://github.com/L-Scofano/STAGComment: 15 pages, 7 figures, BMVC23 ora

Acceptability and Adherence in a Chemoprevention Trial among Women at Increased Risk for Breast Cancer Attending the Modena Familial Breast and Ovarian Cancer Center (Italy)

Chemoprevention for women at risk for breast cancer has been shown to be effective, but in actual practice, women's uptake of chemoprevention has been poor. We explored factors that influence acceptability, adherence, and dropout in the International Breast (Prevention) Intervention Study during our first 3 years of activity at the Modena Familial Breast and Ovarian Cancer Center. We evaluated socio-demographic characteristics, health status, adherence, and side effect intensity. Semi-structured interviews analyzed reasons for accepting/refusing/stopping the trial. A total of 471 postmenopausal women were invited to participate, of which 319 declined to participate (68%), 137 accepted to participate (29%), and 15 participants did not make a final decision (3%). Breast cancer-related worries and trust in our preventive and surveillance programs were the most frequent reasons for accepting. Side effect-related worry was the most frequent reason for refusing. General practitioners' and family members' opinions played an important role in the decision-making process. Adherence significantly decreased after a 12-month follow-up, but it remained unchanged after 24- and 36-month follow-ups. Mild/moderate side effects reported by women did not change after 12 months of treatment. Forty percent of women withdrew from the study due to complaints of side effects. We concluded that chemoprevention trials are difficult medical experiments and that the process of deciding about whether or not to participate is based mainly on beliefs and values. This study has important clinical implications. During counselling with prospective participants, it is important to emphasize the potential benefits and to promote an informed choice. How participants make decisions, their belief systems, and their perception of risk are all factors that should be investigated in future research

Ovarian cancer: can proteomics give new insights for therapy and diagnosis?

The study of the ovarian proteomic profile represents a new frontier in ovarian cancer research, since this approach is able to enlighten the wide variety of post-translational events (such as glycosylation and phosphorylation). Due to the possibility of analyzing thousands of proteins, which could be simultaneously altered, comparative proteomics represent a promising model of possible biomarker discovery for ovarian cancer detection and monitoring. Moreover, defining signaling pathways in ovarian cancer cells through proteomic analysis offers the opportunity to design novel drugs and to optimize the use of molecularly targeted agents against crucial and biologically active pathways. Proteomic techniques provide more information about different histological types of ovarian cancer, cell growth and progression, genes related to tumor microenvironment and specific molecular targets predictive of response to chemotherapy than sequencing or microarrays. Estimates of specificity with proteomics are less consistent, but suggest a new role for combinations of biomarkers in early ovarian cancer diagnosis, such as the OVA1 test. Finally, the definition of the proteomic profiles in ovarian cancer would be accurate and effective in identifying which pathways are differentially altered, defining the most effective therapeutic regimen and eventually improving health outcomes

Desarrollo de nanocápsulas polisacarídicas para el transporte de agentes terapéuticos y estudio de sus interacciones con sistemas biológicos

El uso de nanotransportadores para vehiculizar los agentes terapéuticos en el cuerpo humano permite superar muchas de las limitaciones actuales de la farmacoterapia. Los nanotransportadores permiten incrementar la concentración local de principio activo y alcanzar una mayor respuesta terapéutica, lo que permite reducir la dosis y la frecuencia de administración y, en consecuencia, los efectos secundarios y el coste económico del tratamiento. Entre los distintos tipos de nanotransportadores que se han investigado durante las últimas décadas, las nanocápsulas poliméricas constituyen un nanotransportador óptimo debido a su gran versatilidad, estabilidad y facilidad de funcionalización. En esta tesis se han desarrollado nanocápsulas poliméricas y se ha evaluado su potencial para la incorporación y el transporte de diversos agentes activos con aplicaciones biomédicas.Tras una apropiada optimización de los métodos de síntesis, encapsulación y caracterización, las nanocápsulas obtenidas han demostrado una gran capacidad para encapsular, de forma eficiente y estable, señuelos de factores de transcripción (TFD) para terapia antibacteriana, RNA interferente pequeño (siRNA) para silenciamiento génico, nanopartículas de oro para administración oral y fluoróforos para el seguimiento in vitro e in vivo de las nanocápsulas. También se ha establecido una efectiva estrategia para funcionalizar las nanocápsulas mediante la unión a su superficie, de forma altamente controlada, de moléculas de poli(etilenglicol) (PEG), trimanósido y DY-780.Además de la síntesis y caracterización físico-química de todos estos tipos de nanocápsulas, se ha investigado su interacción con sistemas biológicos, principalmente en relación a la toxicidad celular, eficacia de la biomolécula transportada y localización intracelular. Se ha demostrado que las nanocápsulas protegen eficazmente al agente activo encapsulado frente a la degradación e inestabilidad en medios biológicos. También aumentan drásticamente la internalización del agente transportado en las células de una forma extremadamente rápida en comparación con otros nanotransportadores descritos en la literatura. En conclusión, los prometedores resultados obtenidos demuestran el potencial de estas nanocápsulas como nanotransportadores de principios activos para aplicaciones biomédicas.<br /

Co-delivery of free vancomycin and transcription factor decoy-nanostructured lipid carriers can enhance inhibition of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is widely regarded as a major public health concern with last resort MRSA treatments like vancomycin now encountering resistant strains. TFDs (Transcription Factor Decoys) are oligonucleotide copies of the DNA-binding sites for transcription factors. They bind to and sequester the targeted transcription factor, thus inhibiting transcription of many genes. By developing TFDs with sequences aimed at inhibiting transcription factors controlling the expression of highly conserved bacterial cell wall proteins, TFDs present as a potential method for inhibiting microbial growth without encountering typical resistance mechanisms. However, the efficient protection and delivery of the TFDs inside the bacterial cells is a critical step for the success of this technology. Therefore, in our study, specific TFDs against S. aureus were complexed with two different types of nanocarriers: cationic nanostructured lipid carriers (cNLCs) and chitosan-based nanoparticles (CS-NCs). These TFD-carrier nanocomplexes were characterized for size, zeta potential and TFD complexation or loading efficiency in a variety of buffers. In vitro activity of the nanocomplexes was examined alone and in combination with vancomycin, first in methicillin susceptible strains of S. aureus with the lead candidate advancing to tests against MRSA cultures. Results found that both cNLCs and chitosan-based carriers were adept at complexing and protecting TFDs in a range of physiological and microbiological buffers up to 72 hours. From initial testing, chitosan-TFD particles demonstrated no visible improvements in effect when co-administered with vancomycin. However, co-delivery of cNLC-TFD with vancomycin reduced the MIC of vancomycin by over 50% in MSSA and resulted in significant decreases in viability compared with vancomycin alone in MRSA cultures. Furthermore, these TFD-loaded particles demonstrated very low levels of cytotoxicity and haemolysis in vitro. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt at a combined antibiotic/oligonucleotide-TFD approach to combatting MRSA and, as such, highlights a new avenue of MRSA treatment combining traditional small molecules drugs and bacterial gene inhibition

Psychological Well-Being, Self-Esteem, Quality of Life and Gender Differences as Determinants of Post-Traumatic Growth in Long-Term Knee Rotationplasty Survivors: A Cohort Study

: Rotationplasty (RP) is a special surgical technique for bone tumors of the lower limb and is the chosen procedure for children under 6 with bone sarcoma in the distal femur. Leg reconstruction results in an unusual aspect of the limb potentially giving life-long emotional outcomes, especially considering the young age of most RP patients. Although the high level of the quality of life of these patients has been previously reported, aspects related to long-term psychological well-being, self-esteem and life satisfaction, particularly regarding the gender, procreation and parenting, have never been explored. The aim of this study was to assess the general degree of psychological well-being of RP patients, with specific reference to gender, procreation and parenting. Twenty long-term RP survivors of high-grade bone sarcoma participated in the study. They were administered the following validated questionnaires: HADS for psychological well-being (degree of anxiety and depression), Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), RSES for self-esteem, SF-36 for quality of life, SWLS extended to life satisfaction, and ABIS for body image integration. Data on education, marriage, employment and parenthood were gathered. All the scores obtained were very close to normal references. The only gender difference was found for the TCI Cooperativeness scale, which was higher in women than in men. A satisfactory psychological well-being in terms of both self-esteem and integration of the prosthetic joint limb into one's body image, with relatively limited amount of anxiety/depression, good quality of life, and good temperament and character traits, was found. No major gender differences were reported