Biophotonic Sensing Cells (BICELLs) for label-free biosensing

Label free immunoassay sector is a ferment of activity, experiencing rapid growth as new technologies come forward and achieve acceptance. The landscape is changing in a “bottom up” approach, as individual companies promote individual technologies and find a market for them. Therefore, each of the companies operating in the label-free immunoassay sector offers a technology that is in some way unique and proprietary. However, no many technologies based on Label-free technology are currently in the market for PoC and High Throughput Screening (HTS), where mature labeled technologies have taken the market

Biophotonic Sensing Cells Optimization for label-free biosensing

Los sectores de detección biológica demandan continuamente técnicas de análisis y diagnóstico más eficientes y precisas para identificar enfermedades y desarrollar nuevos medicamentos. Actualmente se considera que hay una gran necesidad de desarrollar herramientas de diagnóstico capaces de asegurar sensibilidad, rapidez, sencillez y asequibilidad para aplicaciones en sectores como la salud, la alimentación, el medioambiente o la seguridad. En el ámbito clínico se necesitan profundos avances tecnológicos capaces de ofrecer análisis rápidos, exactos, fiables y asequibles en coste y que tengan como consecuencia la mejora clínica y económica a partir de un diagnóstico eficiente. En concreto, hay un interés creciente por la descentralización del diagnóstico clínico mediante plataformas de detección cercanas al usuario final, denominadas POCs (Point Of Care devices). La utilización de POCs (referidas al diagnóstico cercano al usuario final o fuera del laboratorio de análisis clínico), mediante detección in vitro (IVD), será extremadamente útil en centros de salud, clínicas o unidades hospitalarias, entornos laborales o incluso en el hogar. Por otra parte, el desarrollo de la genómica, proteómica y otras tecnologías conocidas como “omics” (sufijo en inglés para referirse, por ejemplo, a genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics) está incrementando la demanda de nuevas tecnologías mucho más avanzadas con una clara orientación hacia la medicina personalizada y la necesidad de hacer frente a cambios en los tratamientos en el caso de enfermedades complejas. Desde hace poco tiempo se han definido las Celdas Biofónicas (BICELLs) como una metodología novedosa para la detección de agentes biológicos que ofrecen una serie de características que las hacen interesantes como son: Capacidad de multiplexación, alta sensibilidad, posibilidad de medir en gota, compatible con otras tecnologías. En este trabajo se hace un estudio y optimización sobre diferentes tipos de BICELLs y se valoran una serie de figuras de merito a tener en cuenta desde el punto de vista del lector óptico a emplear

Expansion of Signal Transduction Pathways in Fungi by Extensive Genome Duplication

International audienceno abstrac

Atrasentan and renal events in patients with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease (SONAR): a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial

Background: Short-term treatment for people with type 2 diabetes using a low dose of the selective endothelin A receptor antagonist atrasentan reduces albuminuria without causing significant sodium retention. We report the long-term effects of treatment with atrasentan on major renal outcomes. Methods: We did this double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial at 689 sites in 41 countries. We enrolled adults aged 18–85 years with type 2 diabetes, estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR)25–75 mL/min per 1·73 m 2 of body surface area, and a urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio (UACR)of 300–5000 mg/g who had received maximum labelled or tolerated renin–angiotensin system inhibition for at least 4 weeks. Participants were given atrasentan 0·75 mg orally daily during an enrichment period before random group assignment. Those with a UACR decrease of at least 30% with no substantial fluid retention during the enrichment period (responders)were included in the double-blind treatment period. Responders were randomly assigned to receive either atrasentan 0·75 mg orally daily or placebo. All patients and investigators were masked to treatment assignment. The primary endpoint was a composite of doubling of serum creatinine (sustained for ≥30 days)or end-stage kidney disease (eGFR <15 mL/min per 1·73 m 2 sustained for ≥90 days, chronic dialysis for ≥90 days, kidney transplantation, or death from kidney failure)in the intention-to-treat population of all responders. Safety was assessed in all patients who received at least one dose of their assigned study treatment. The study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT01858532. Findings: Between May 17, 2013, and July 13, 2017, 11 087 patients were screened; 5117 entered the enrichment period, and 4711 completed the enrichment period. Of these, 2648 patients were responders and were randomly assigned to the atrasentan group (n=1325)or placebo group (n=1323). Median follow-up was 2·2 years (IQR 1·4–2·9). 79 (6·0%)of 1325 patients in the atrasentan group and 105 (7·9%)of 1323 in the placebo group had a primary composite renal endpoint event (hazard ratio [HR]0·65 [95% CI 0·49–0·88]; p=0·0047). Fluid retention and anaemia adverse events, which have been previously attributed to endothelin receptor antagonists, were more frequent in the atrasentan group than in the placebo group. Hospital admission for heart failure occurred in 47 (3·5%)of 1325 patients in the atrasentan group and 34 (2·6%)of 1323 patients in the placebo group (HR 1·33 [95% CI 0·85–2·07]; p=0·208). 58 (4·4%)patients in the atrasentan group and 52 (3·9%)in the placebo group died (HR 1·09 [95% CI 0·75–1·59]; p=0·65). Interpretation: Atrasentan reduced the risk of renal events in patients with diabetes and chronic kidney disease who were selected to optimise efficacy and safety. These data support a potential role for selective endothelin receptor antagonists in protecting renal function in patients with type 2 diabetes at high risk of developing end-stage kidney disease. Funding: AbbVie

Learning Monotone Term Decision Lists

We study the learnability of monotone term decision lists in the exact model of equivalence and membership queries. We show that, for any constant k 0, k-term monotone decision lists are exactly and properly learnable with n O(k) membership queries in O(n k 3 ) time. We also show n \Omega\Gamma k) membership queries are necessary for exact learning. In contrast, both k-term monotone decision lists (k 2) and general monotone decision lists are not learnable with equivalence queries alone. 1 Supported by the Esprit EC program under project 7141 (ALCOM-II), the Working Group 8556 (NeuroColt) , and the Spanish DGICYT (project PB92-0709) 2 Supported by grant FP93 13717942 from the Spanish Government 3 This work was supported by NSF grant CCR-9510392. 1 Introduction Decision lists were introduced by Rivest [Riv87], who showed that the class of k-decision lists is properly PAC-learnable in polynomial time, for constant k 0. Here the constant k refers to the maximum number..

Whatsapp and Facebook as a New Political Agora?

This research tries to know how the political interaction of the citizens from the center of Ecuador is on the Internet. Every day more people use new technologies in order to learn about political issues. Virtual media allow different forms of citizen participation, making the traditional ones such as television, radio o written press to be obsolete. Through an online questionnaire, people were asked about the use of the political information in the different channels, and especially, about their participation in the last election campaign of 2017. The results show different patterns according to factors such as gender, age or occupation, confirming a panorama of transition between offline and online media. © 2018 IEEE