Economía y cambio climático: los costes y la financiación de las políticas de adaptación

La lucha contra el cambio climático se ha convertido en una de las mayores preocupaciones mundiales. Los esfuerzos por reducir las emisiones de efecto invernadero y fomentar la resiliencia se plasman a través de políticas de mitigación y adaptación. Los expertos del Panel Intergubernamental sobre el cambio climático (IPCC) confirman que a pesar de que se produjera una reducción en las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero (GEI), sería necesario abordar medidas de adaptación para hacer frente a los impactos del cambio climático, por ello, la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre cambio climático (CMNUCC) ha puesto en relieve la importancia de la adaptación en el Acuerdo de París (2015). Por este motivo, las medidas de adaptación van a tener una mayor consideración en este estudio, así como los costes que requiere y su financiación.The fight against climate change has become one of the world's biggest concerns. Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote resilience are reflected through mitigation and adaptation policies. Experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirm that despite a reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it would be necessary to address adaptation measures to deal with the impacts of climate change, Therefore, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has highlighted the importance of adaptation in the Paris Agreement (2015). For this reason, the adaptation measures are going to have a greater consideration in this study, as well as the costs that it requires and its financing.Departamento de Economía AplicadaGrado en Administración y Dirección de Empresa

Métodos de escalamiento aplicados a la priorización de necesidades de formación en organizaciones

Los criterios para priorizar las necesidades que justifican las acciones formativas a implantar no se suelen explicitar a priori en los programas de formación continua en contextos organizacionales. En este trabajo se proponen los métodos de escalamiento como procedimiento factible y útil para identificar criterios explícitos de priorización de necesidades, y se concreta cuál de ellos es más apropiado en este contexto de intervención. 404 empleados de una organización pública cumplimentaron un cuestionario ad hoc para priorizar necesidades formativas en diferentes áreas durante el período 2004 al 2006; concretamente, se ordenaron 117, 75 y 286 estímulos, respectivamente. Se calcularon y compararon las ordenaciones obtenidas con cuatro métodos de escalamiento: el método de Dunn-Rankin y tres métodos derivados de la Ley del Juicio Categórico de Thurstone, concretamente ordenación por rangos, intervalos sucesivos e intervalos aparentemente iguales. Con los resultados, se constata la factibilidad y utilidad de estos métodos de escalamiento para la solución de los problemas planteados; a partir de los métodos más precisos, se propone el uso del método de ordenación por rangos por su parsimonia (respecto a sencillez en su procedimiento); y se anticipan futuras líneas de actuación

Metal substrate catalysis in the confined space for platinum drug delivery

[EN] Catalysis-based approaches for the activation of anticancer agents hold considerable promise. These principally rely on the use of metal catalysts capable of deprotecting inactive precursors of organic drugs or transforming key biomolecules available in the cellular environment. Nevertheless, the efficiency of most of the schemes described so far is rather low, limiting the benefits of catalytic amplification as strategy for controlling the therapeutic effects of anticancer compounds. In the work presented here, we show that flavin reactivity within a hydrogel matrix provides a viable solution for the efficient catalytic activation and delivery of cisplatin, a worldwide clinically-approved inorganic chemotherapy agent. This is achieved by ionically adsorbing a flavin catalyst and a Pt(iv) prodrug as substrate into porous amino-functionalized agarose beads. The hydrogel chassis supplies high local concentrations of electron donating groups/molecules in the surrounding of the catalyst, ultimately boosting substrate conversion rates (TOF >200 min(-1)) and enabling controlled liberation of the drug by light or chemical stimuli. Overall, this approach can afford platforms for the efficient delivery of platinum drugs as demonstrated herein by using a transdermal diffusion model simulating the human skin.We acknowledge financial support from the Spanish State Research Agency (grants CTQ2016-80844-R, PID2019-109111RBI00, RTI2018-094398-B-I00, BIO2014-61838-EXP) and the Basque Government (Eusko Jaurlaritza, grant PIBA_2021_1_0034). S. V. L. thanks the Mexican Council of Science and Technology (CONACyT) for the postdoctoral fellowship she received (ref. CVU-267390). C. S. C. thanks Gipuzkoa Foru Aldundia (Gipuzkoa Fellows program; grant number 2019-FELL-000018-01/62/2019) for.nancial support. L. S. thanks the Spanish MultiMetDrugs network (RED2018-102471-T) for fruitful discussion. FLG thanks the Spanish Biocatalysis network (RED2018-102403T) and the European Research Council (ERC-Co-2018 818089). This work was performed under the Maria de Maeztu and Severo Ochoa Centres of Excellence Programme run by the Spanish State Research Agency, Grant No. MDM-2017-0720 (CIC biomaGUNE) and CEX2018-000867-S (DIPC)

Biocatalytic synthesis of oxygenated biofuels through the technologies of ionic liquids and supercritical carbon dioxide

Póster presentado en el Congreso Nacional de Biotecnologia (BIOTEC 2019), celebrado en Vigo (España) entre los días 10 y 13 de junio de 2019.The increase in the production of biofuels has generated in the market an excess of glycerol as a byproduct. Some glycerol derivatives, such as solketal (1,2-isopropylidene glycerol), have been used successfully to synthesize new oxygenated fuels, such as fatty acid solketal esters (FASE), in order to increase the octane number of the gasolines. Biodiesel exhibits an excellent suitability as a liquid fuel (adiabatic flame temperature, viscosity, etc.), blending up to 20% volume fraction of ASE

Cognitive and clinical gender-related differences among binge-spectrum eating disorders: Analysis of therapy response predictors

Objective: This study assessed gender-related differences in executive functions (decision-making, inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility), personality traits and psychopathological symptoms in binge-spectrum eating disorders (EDs). Secondly, we aimed to separately explore the predictive value of gender and executive functions in treatment outcome. Method: A battery of self-reported and neurocognitive measures were answered by a sample of 85 patients (64 females) diagnosed with a binge-spectrum ED (41 BN; 44 binge eating disorder). Results: Data showed gender-related differences in executive functioning, displaying women lower inhibitory control and lower cognitive flexibility than men. Regarding personality traits and psychopathology symptoms, women presented higher reward dependence and cooperativeness, as well as more drive for thinness, body dissatisfaction, bulimia, and somatisation symptoms than men. Finally, worse executive functioning, particularly having lower ability in concept formation seems to predict worse treatment outcomes and dropout in these patients. Conclusions: We described gender specific neuropsychological, personality and psychopathological impairments in patients with binge-spectrum EDs. Moreover, difficulties in executive functioning might have an impact on treatment response, since patients with a lower ability in concept formation are less likely to benefit from treatment. The present results can help improving current treatment approaches by tackling gender and individual differences

The development of selective stopping: qualitative and quantitative changes from childhood to early adulthood

Although progress has been made in elucidating the behavioral and neural development of global stopping across the lifespan, little is known about the development of selective stopping. This more complex form of inhibitory control is required in real-world situations where ongoing responses must be inhibited to certain stimuli but not others, and can be assessed in laboratory settings using a stimulus selective stopping task. Here we used this task to investigate the qualitative and quantitative developmental changes in selective stopping in a large-scale cross-sectional study with three different age groups (children, preadolescents, and young adults). We found that the ability to stop a response selectively to some stimuli (i.e., use a selective strategy) rather than non-selectively to all presented stimuli (i.e., use a global, non-selective strategy) is fully mature by early preadolescence, and remains stable afterwards at least until young adulthood. By contrast, the efficiency or speed of stopping (indexed by a shorter stop-signal reaction time or SSRT) continues to mature throughout adolescence until young adulthood, both for global and selective implementations of stopping. We also provide some preliminary findings regarding which other task variables beyond the strategy and SSRT predicted age group status. Premature responding (an index of “waiting impulsivity”) and post-ignore slowing (an index of cognitive control) were among the most relevant predictors in discriminating between developmental age groups. Although present results need to be confirmed and extended in longitudinal studies, they provide new insights into the development of a relevant form of inhibitory controlThis work was supported by grants PSI2017-84922-R (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO, Spain) and SI1/PJI/2019-00061 (Comunidad de Madrid, Spain; V PRICIT

Impact of impulsivity and therapy response in eating disorders from a neurophysiological, personality and cognitive perspective

Impulsivity, as a multidimensional construct, has been linked to eating disorders (EDs) and may negatively impact treatment response. The study aimed to identify the dimensions of impulsivity predicting poor remission of ED symptoms. A total of 37 ED patients underwent a baseline assessment of impulsive personality traits and inhibitory control, including the Stroop task and the emotional go/no-go task with event-related potentials (ERPs) analysis. The remission of EDs symptomatology was evaluated after 3 months of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and at a 2-year follow-up. Poor remission after CBT was predicted by poor inhibitory control, as measured by the Stroop task. At 2 years, the risk of poor remission was higher in patients with higher novelty seeking, lower inhibitory control in the Stroop and in ERPs indices (N2 amplitudes) during the emotional go/no-go task. The present results highlight inhibitory control negatively impacting both short- and long-term symptomatology remission in ED patients. On the other hand, high novelty seeking and ERPs indices of poor inhibition seem to be more specifically related to long-term remission. Therefore, a comprehensive assessment of the impulsivity dimension in patients with ED is recommended to tailor treatments and improve their efficacy

The angiotensin-(1-7)/Mas receptor a xis protects from endothelial cell senescence via klotho and Nrf2 activation

Endothelial cell senescence is a hallmark of va scular aging that pre disposes to vascular disease. We aimed to explore the capacity of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) heptapeptide angiotensin (Ang)-(1-7) to counteract human endothelial cell senescence and to identify intracellular pathways mediati ng its potential protective action. In human umbilical vein endothelial cell (HUVEC) cult ures, Ang II promoted cell senescence, as revealed by the enhancement in se nescence-associated galactosidase (SA- -gal+) positive staining, total and telomeric DNA damage, adhesion molecules expression and human mononuclear adhesion to HUVEC monolaye rs. By activating the G-coupled receptor Mas, Ang-(1-7) inhibit ed the pro-senescence action of Ang II, but also of a non- RAS stressor such as the cytokine IL-1 . Moreover, Ang-(1-7) enhanced endothelial klotho levels, while klotho silencing resulted in th e loss of the anti-senescence action of the heptapeptide. Indeed, both Ang-(1-7) and recombinant klotho activated the cytoprotective Nrf2/heme-oxygenase-1 (HO)-1 pathway. The HO-1 inhibitor tin protoporphyrin IX prevented the anti-senescence action evoked by Ang-(1-7) or recombinant klotho. Overall, the present study ide ntifies Ang-(1-7) as an anti-senescence peptide displaying its protectiv e action beyond the RAS by consecutively activating klotho and Nrf2/HO-1. Ang-(1-7) mimetic dru gs may thus prove useful to prevent endothelial cell senescence and its re lated vascular complications

Changes in hypothalamic expression of the Lin28/let-7 system and related MicroRNAs during postnatal maturation and after experimental manipulations of puberty

[Abstract] Lin28 and Lin28b are related RNA-binding proteins that inhibit the maturation of miRNAs of the let-7 family and participate in the control of cellular stemness and early embryonic development. Considerable interest has arisen recently concerning other physiological roles of the Lin28/let-7 axis, including its potential involvement in the control of puberty, as suggested by genome-wide association studies and functional genomics. We report herein the expression profiles of Lin28 and let-7 members in the rat hypothalamus during postnatal maturation and in selected models of altered puberty. The expression patterns of c-Myc (upstream positive regulator of Lin28), mir-145 (negative regulator of c-Myc), and mir-132 and mir-9 (putative miRNA repressors of Lin28, predicted by bioinformatic algorithms) were also explored. In male and female rats, Lin28, Lin28b, and c-Myc mRNAs displayed very high hypothalamic expression during the neonatal period, markedly decreased during the infantile-to-juvenile transition and reached minimal levels before/around puberty. A similar puberty-related decline was observed for Lin28b in monkey hypothalamus but not in the rat cortex, suggesting species conservation and tissue specificity. Conversely, let-7a, let-7b, mir-132, and mir-145, but not mir-9, showed opposite expression profiles. Perturbation of brain sex differentiation and puberty, by neonatal treatment with estrogen or androgen, altered the expression ratios of Lin28/let-7 at the time of puberty. Changes in the c-Myc/Lin28b/let-7 pathway were also detected in models of delayed puberty linked to early photoperiod manipulation and, to a lesser extent, postnatal underfeeding or chronic subnutrition. Altogether, our data are the first to document dramatic changes in the expression of the Lin28/let-7 axis in the rat hypothalamus during the postnatal maturation and after different manipulations that disturb puberty, thus suggesting the potential involvement of developmental changes in hypothalamic Lin28/let-7 expression in the mechanisms permitting/leading to puberty onset.Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad; BFU 2008-00984Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad; BFU 2011-25021Junta de Andalucía; P08-CVI-03788United States. National Institutes of Health HD025123-ARRAUnited States. National Science Foundation; IOS1121691Instituto de Salud Carlos III; PI10/00088Xunta de Galicia; IN845B-2010/187Xunta de Galicia; 10CSA916014P

Executive functions in binge spectrum eating disorders with comorbid compulsive buying

Objective: The aims were to explore if bulimic spectrum disorders (BSD) patients, who also present comorbid compulsive buying (CB), could represent a specific subtype considering its neuropsychological performance; to present a descriptive analysis of different clinical features; and to explore how these variables could influence treatment outcome. It was hypothesised that the comorbid group will present worse neuropsychological performance that will lead to a worse treatment outcome. Method: The study has a longitudinal design. Women (N = 75) diagnosed with BSD, BSD + CB and Healthy Controls (HC); completed an evaluation of: cognitive flexibility, decision making, eating disorder (ED) symptomatology, psychopathological state and personality traits. Results: BSD + CB was the group with the most severe clinical profile, worst treatment outcome and higher neuropsychological impairment, than other groups. Path-analysis evidenced that deficits in decision making were associated with bad treatment outcome, while deficits in flexibility with the presence of the comorbidity. Self-directedness and novelty seeking were associated with the neuropsychological performance and the comorbidity. Conclusion: BSD + CB exhibit a worse clinical and neuropsychological profile that seems to be related with the treatment outcome, which should be taken into account for the establishment of specific treatment approaches