Is the new "new" digital journalism a type of activism? An analysis of "Jot Down", "Gatopardo" and "The New Yorker"

Digitization and the economic crisis have led journalism to a new paradigm (Albalad, 2018). Contents and customs have changed, supporting media has changed, new journalistic models are hybrids and the mainstream media do not always deal with the issues that society demands (Sims, 2018). With a knowledge of tradition, but following the path of innovation, narrative journalism emerges as a possible response to this state of affairs. The objective of this analysis is to identify the challenges facing narrative journalism and narrative journalists themselves in this regard. We analyse their formats, routines and content, study how their digitally existence (Drok & Hermans, 2016) and ask ourselves if they constitute a platform for journalistic activism. Three magazines were identified for the selection of case studies: Jot Down, Gatopardo and The New Yorker. Their digital models, content and literary quality are the principal reasons for their selection, in addition to their different seniorities, geographical backgrounds and formats. By deploying a qualitative research methodology based on content analysis (Voutsina, 2018), in-depth interviews (Johnson, 2002), non-participant observation and document review, this analysis suggests that the new new digital journalism is a kind of activist journalism that upholds the traditions of reporting, narrative journalism and literary quality. This study is based on two theoretical premises: narrative journalism, exemplified by authors such as Sims (1996) and Herrscher (2012) and digital journalism, represented by writers such as Rost (2006) and Domingo & Heinonen (2008)

GD3 synthase overexpression sensitizes hepatocarcinoma cells to hypoxia and reduces tumor growth by suppressing the cSrc/NF-κB survival pathway

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.[Background]: Hypoxia-mediated HIF-1a stabilization and NF-kB activation play a key role in carcinogenesis by fostering cancer cell survival, angiogenesis and tumor invasion. Gangliosides are integral components of biological membranes with an increasingly recognized role as signaling intermediates. In particular, ganglioside GD3 has been characterized as a proapoptotic lipid effector by promoting cell death signaling and suppression of survival pathways. Thus, our aim was to analyze the role of GD3 in hypoxia susceptibility of epatocarcinoma cells and in vivo tumor growth.[Methodology/Principal Findings]: We generated and characterized a human hepatocarcinoma cell line stably expressing GD3 synthase (Hep3B-GD3), which catalyzes the synthesis of GD3 from GM3. Despite increased GD3 levels (2–3 fold), no significant changes in cell morphology or growth were observed in Hep3B-GD3 cells compared to wild type Hep3B cells under normoxia. However, exposure of Hep3B-GD3 cells to hypoxia (2% O2) enhanced reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, resulting in decreased cell survival, with similar findings observed in Hep3B cells exposed to increasing doses of exogenous GD3. In addition, hypoxia-induced c-Src phosphorylation at tyrosine residues, NF-kB activation and subsequent expression of Mn-SOD were observed in Hep3B cells but not in Hep3B-GD3 cells. Moreover, MnTBAP, an antioxidant with predominant SOD mimetic activity, reduced ROS generation, protecting Hep3B-GD3 cells from hypoxia-induced death. Finally, lower tumor growth, higher cell death and reduced Mn-SOD expression were observed in Hep3B-GD3 compared to Hep3B tumor xenografts.[Conclusion]: These findings underscore a role for GD3 in hypoxia susceptibility by disabling the c-Src/NF-kB survival pathway resulting in lower Mn-SOD expression, which may be of relevance in hepatocellular carcinoma therapy.Grant support: CIBEREHD and grants FIS06/0395, FIS07/1039, SAF2006-06789 and SAF2008-02199 by Instituto de Salud Carlos III and Ministry of Science and Innovation from Spain, and from the Research Center for Liver and Pancreatic Diseases, P50-AA-11999 funded by the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.Peer reviewe

Efficacy of augmented immunosuppressive therapy for early vasculopathy in heart transplantation

AbstractObjectives. The present study was undertaken to prospectively and comparatively evaluate the role of serial myocardial perfusion imaging and coronary angiography for the detection of early vasculopathy in a large patient population and also to determine the short- and long-term efficacy of augmented immunosuppressive therapy in the potential reversal of the early vasculopathy.Background. Allograft vasculopathy is the commonest cause of death after the first year of heart transplantation. Anecdotal studies have reported the efficacy of augmented immunosuppressive therapy after early detection of vascular involvement. However, no prospective study has evaluated the feasibility of early detection and treatment of allograft vasculopathy.Methods. In 76 cardiac allograft recipients, 230 coronary angiographic and 376 scintigraphic studies were performed in a follow-up period of 8 years. Angiography was performed at 1 month and every year after transplantation, and thallium-201 scintigraphy at 1, 3, 6 and 12 months after transplantation and twice a year thereafter. Prospective follow-up of 76 patients showed that 18 developed either angiographic or scintigraphic evidence of coronary vasculopathy. All episodes were treated with 3-day methylprednisolone pulse and antithymocyte globulin.Results. Twenty-two episodes of vasculopathy were diagnosed and treated in these 18 patients. Of these 22 episodes, two were detected only by angiography, seven by both angiography and scintigraphy, four by scintigraphy and histologic evidence of vasculitis and nine episodes only by thallium-201 scintigraphy studies. Angiographic and/or scintigraphic resolution was observed in 15 of the 22 episodes (68%) with augmented immunosuppression. The likelihood of regression was higher when treatment was instituted within the first year of transplantation (92%) than after the first year (40%) (p = 0.033). Eighty percent of patients who responded to follow-up.Conclusions. The present study suggests that early detection of allograft coronary vasculopathy is feasible with surveillance myocardial perfusion or coronary angiographic studies. When identified early after transplantation, immunosuppressive treatment may result in regression of coronary disease

A Green Strategy for Federated and Heterogeneous Clouds with Communicating Workloads

Providers of cloud environments must tackle the challenge of configuring their system to provide maximal performance while minimizing the cost of resources used. However, at the same time, they must guarantee an SLA (service-level agreement) to the users. The SLA is usually associated with a certain level of QoS (quality of service). As response time is perhaps the most widely used QoS metric, it was also the one chosen in this work. This paper presents a green strategy (GS) model for heterogeneous cloud systems. We provide a solution for heterogeneous job-communicating tasks and heterogeneous VMs that make up the nodes of the cloud. In addition to guaranteeing the SLA, the main goal is to optimize energy savings. The solution results in an equation that must be solved by a solver with nonlinear capabilities. The results obtained from modelling the policies to be executed by a solver demonstrate the applicability of our proposal for saving energy and guaranteeing the SLA.This work was supported by the MEYC under Contracts TIN2011-28689-C02-02. The authors are members of the research groups 2009-SGR145 and 2014-SGR163, funded by the Generalitat de Catalunya

Influence of Regulated Deficit Irrigation on Arbequina’s Crop Yield and EVOOs Quality and Sensory Profile

Regulated deficit irrigation in super-high-density (SHD) olive orchards is a well-known strategy to save water and control plant vigor, without decreasing fruit or oil yield. As there is controversial information about its influence on virgin olive oil quality, a trial was conducted in five SHD olive orchards of Arbequina cultivar in different locations of central, east, north and northeast Spain under full irrigation (FI) and regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) treatments. RDI applied during phase II of fruit growing (40% of total needs) saves more than 20% of water on average, without reductions in olive fruit or extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) yield. No threshold of 3.5 MPa of stem water potential was crossed in any case. RDI modified sterols and the fatty acid profile of EVOOs but not phenols, quality parameters, or the sensory profile. Latitude, altitude, and yearly rainfall have a big impact on some compounds such as campesterol, oleuropein, or margaroleic or linolenic acids.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Pharmacogenetics of efficacy and safety of HCV treatment in HCV-HIV coinfected patients: significant associations with IL28B and SOCS3 gene variants.

Background and Aims This was a safety and efficacy pharmacogenetic study of a previously performed randomized trial which compared the effectiveness of treatment of hepatitis C virus infection with pegylated interferon alpha (pegIFNα) 2a vs. 2b, both with ribavirin, for 48 weeks, in HCV-HIV coinfected patients. Methods The study groups were made of 99 patients (efficacy pharmacogenetic substudy) and of 114 patients (safety pharmacogenetic substudy). Polymorphisms in the following candidate genes IL28B, IL6, IL10, TNFα, IFNγ, CCL5, MxA, OAS1, SOCS3, CTLA4 and ITPA were assessed. Genotyping was carried out using Sequenom iPLEX-Gold, a single-base extension polymerase chain reaction. Efficacy end-points assessed were: rapid, early and sustained virological response (RVR, EVR and SVR, respectively). Safety end-points assessed were: anemia, neutropenia, thrombocytopenia, flu-like syndrome, gastrointestinal disturbances and depression. Chi square test, Student's T test, Mann-Whitney U test and logistic regression were used for statistic analyses. Results As efficacy is concerned, IL28B and CTLA4 gene polymorphisms were associated with RVR (p<0.05 for both comparisons). Nevertheless, only polymorphism in the IL28B gene was associated with SVR (p = 0.004). In the multivariate analysis, the only gene independently associated with SVR was IL28B (OR 2.61, 95%CI 1.2-5.6, p = 0.01). With respect to safety, there were no significant associations between flu-like syndrome or depression and the genetic variants studied. Gastrointestinal disturbances were associated with ITPA gene polymorphism (p = 0.04). Anemia was associated with OAS1 and CTLA4 gene polymorphisms (p = 0.049 and p = 0.045, respectively), neutropenia and thromobocytopenia were associated with SOCS3 gene polymorphism (p = 0.02 and p = 0.002, respectively). In the multivariate analysis, the associations of the SOCS3 gene polymorphism with neutropenia (OR 0.26, 95%CI 0.09-0.75, p = 0.01) and thrombocytopenia (OR 0.07, 95%CI 0.008-0.57, p = 0.01) remained significant. Conclusions In HCV-HIV coinfected patients treated with PegIFNα and ribavirin, SVR is associated with IL28B rs8099917 polymorphism. HCV treatment-induced neutropenia and thrombocytopenia are associated with SOCS3 rs4969170 polymorphism

Bases per a la renovació de l’espai comunicatiu valencià i la restitució del servei públic de radiotelevisió. Informe de la Comissió d’Experts en comunicació de les universitats valencianes (CECUV)

Informe encarregat pel Fòrum Social de l'Audiovisual Valenci