Unitized regenerative polymeric fuel cell modeling

The research's objective is to have a single machine to function as fuel cell and electrolyser based and needs, that is to say, unitized regenerative fuel cell (when fed to the machine with electric power and water flows will be obtained and H2 and O2 and conversely when the machine is fuelled with H2 and O2 will get water, heat and electricity) The study focuses on polymeric fuel cells and polymeric electrolysers. The development of this machine will make a very significant cost reduction (currently to use hydrogen as an energy store needed the electrolyser and fuel cell) as a single machine may replace the fuel cell and electrolyser. The achievement of the objective mentioned above, have been going by completing a series of stages. The stages addressed in this work are: ¿ A first stage, which will be studied in detail the polymeric fuel cells and polymeric electrolysers, in order to see the similarities between the machines and to design the unitized regenerative fuel cell. ¿ A second stage of simulation, which will develop models to show the behaviour of the unitized regenerative fuel cell and compare results with those obtained from the theoretical. ¿ A third stage of model verification generated polymer fuel cells and electrolyzers polymer on the market

The influence of Ni(II) on brushite structure stabilization

Brushite samples doped with Ni(II) in different concentrations, from 5% to 20%, were prepared in aqueous solution at pH = 7 and at two temperatures: 25 and 37 °C. The solid samples were characterized by chemical analysis, infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and x-ray powder diffraction (XRPD). Chemical analysis has shown Ni(II) almost complete incorporation to the solid phase up to 15%. X-ray diffraction patterns have allowed to identify brushite phase with almost no modification of the line breadth and only small shifts of lines positions with increasing Ni(II) incorporation up to 15%. For larger Ni(II) concentration, in solution, a mixture of phases has been detected. Infrared spectra have supported diffraction results. For Ni(II) 20% and over the characteristic bands of HPO2-4 anions tend to vanish, and the typical shaped PO3=4 bands are observed. These results have allowed to establish that the presence of low levels of Ni in the synthetic process not only helps brushite formation; but, also prevents brushite from apatite conversion and, in addition, preserves brushite crystallinity. According to these findings, it is possible to propose that nickel traces present in the urinary system might be a trigger to brushite stone formation and/or growth, rather than the expected brushite conversion to hydroxyapatite. This outcome would explain the recurrent detection of difficult to treat brushite stones, observed in the last three decades.Centro de Química InorgánicaInstituto de Física La Plat

The nutritional supplements consumption by federate athletes in Bragança

The use of nutritional supplements in sport is a pertinent subject by its indiscriminate application to athletes of many sportive modalities, to improve, apparently, the athlete sportive performance. The study main goal was evaluate the consumption of nutritional supplements by federate sportists in Bragan/la. It was built a questionnaire, submitted to a pre-test, and was administered to a population of 120 federate sportists between 9 and 36 years old. With these questionnaire were compared the supplement kinds not only with the age, gender, modality, frequency, timetable, duration of the exercise and origin of the consumption, but also with some anthropometric characteristics and food habits

Evaluation of Natural Language Processing for the Identification of Crohn Disease-Related Variables in Spanish Electronic Health Records:A Validation Study for the PREMONITION-CD Project

Background: The exploration of clinically relevant information in the free text of electronic health records (EHRs) holds the potential to positively impact clinical practice as well as knowledge regarding Crohn disease (CD), an inflammatory bowel disease that may affect any segment of the gastrointestinal tract. The EHRead technology, a clinical natural language processing (cNLP) system, was designed to detect and extract clinical information from narratives in the clinical notes contained in EHRs. Objective: The aim of this study is to validate the performance of the EHRead technology in identifying information of patients with CD. Methods: We used the EHRead technology to explore and extract CD-related clinical information from EHRs. To validate this tool, we compared the output of the EHRead technology with a manually curated gold standard to assess the quality of our cNLP system in detecting records containing any reference to CD and its related variables. Results: The validation metrics for the main variable (CD) were a precision of 0.88, a recall of 0.98, and an F1 score of 0.93. Regarding the secondary variables, we obtained a precision of 0.91, a recall of 0.71, and an F1 score of 0.80 for CD flare, while for the variable vedolizumab (treatment), a precision, recall, and F1 score of 0.86, 0.94, and 0.90 were obtained, respectively. Conclusions: This evaluation demonstrates the ability of the EHRead technology to identify patients with CD and their related variables from the free text of EHRs. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to use a cNLP system for the identification of CD in EHRs written in Spanish. © 2022 JMIR Medical Informatics. All rights reserved

Exosomes as Hedgehog carriers in cytoneme-mediated transport and secretion

The Hedgehog signalling pathway is crucial for development, adult stem cell maintenance, cell migration and axon guidance in a wide range of organisms. During development, the Hh morphogen directs tissue patterning according to a concentration gradient. Lipid modifications on Hh are needed to achieve graded distribution, leading to debate about how Hh is transported to target cells despite being membrane-tethered. Cytonemes in the region of Hh signalling have been shown to be essential for gradient formation, but the carrier of the morphogen is yet to be defined. Here we show that Hh and its co-receptor Ihog are in exovesicles transported via cytonemes. These exovesicles present protein markers and other features of exosomes. Moreover, the cell machinery for exosome formation is necessary for normal Hh secretion and graded signalling. We propose Hh transport via exosomes along cytonemes as a significant mechanism for the restricted distribution of a lipid-modified morphogen.PostprintPeer reviewe

Immunochip analysis identifies multiple susceptibility loci for systemic sclerosis

In this study, 1,833 systemic sclerosis (SSc) cases and 3,466 controls were genotyped with the Immunochip array. Classical alleles, amino acid residues, and SNPs across the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region were imputed and tested. These analyses resulted in a model composed of six polymorphic amino acid positions and seven SNPs that explained the observed significant associations in the region. In addition, a replication step comprising 4,017 SSc cases and 5,935 controls was carried out for several selected non-HLA variants, reaching a total of 5,850 cases and 9,401 controls of European ancestry. Following this strategy, we identified and validated three SSc risk loci, including DNASE1L3 at 3p14, the SCHIP1-IL12A locus at 3q25, and ATG5 at 6q21, as well as a suggested association of the TREH-DDX6 locus at 11q23. The associations of several previously reported SSc risk loci were validated and further refined, and the observed peak of association in PXK was related to DNASE1L3. Our study has increased the number of known genetic associations with SSc, provided further insight into the pleiotropic effects of shared autoimmune risk factors, and highlighted the power of dense mapping for detecting previously overlooked susceptibility loci

Lack of EGFR catalytic activity in hepatocytes improves liver regeneration following DDC-induced cholestatic injury by promoting a pro-restorative inflammatory response

Despite the well-known hepatoprotective role of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) pathway upon acute damage, its specific actions during chronic liver disease, particularly cholestatic injury, remain ambiguous and unresolved. Here, we analyzed the consequences of inactivating EGFR signaling in the liver on the regenerative response following cholestatic injury. For that, transgenic mice overexpressing a dominant negative mutant human EGFR lacking tyrosine kinase activity (ΔEGFR) in albumin-positive cells were submitted to liver damage induced by 3,5-diethoxycarbonyl-1,4-dihydrocollidine (DDC), an experimental model resembling human primary sclerosing cholangitis. Our results show an early activation of EGFR after 1–2 days of a DDC-supplemented diet, followed by a signaling switch-off. Furthermore, ΔEGFR mice showed less liver damage and a more efficient regeneration following DDC injury. Analysis of the mechanisms driving this effect revealed an enhanced activation of mitogenic/survival signals, AKT and ERK1/2-MAPKs, and changes in cell turnover consistent with a quicker resolution of damage in response to DDC. These changes were concomitant with profound differences in the profile of intrahepatic immune cells, consisting of a shift in the M1/M2 balance towards M2 polarity, and the Cd4/Cd8 ratio in favor of Cd4 lymphocytes, overall supporting an immune cell switch into a pro-restorative phenotype. Interestingly, ΔEGFR livers also displayed an amplified ductular reaction, with increased expression of EPCAM and an increased number of CK19-positive ductular structures in portal areas, demonstrating an overexpansion of ductular progenitor cells. In summary, our work supports the notion that hepatocyte-specific EGFR activity acts as a key player in the crosstalk between parenchymal and non-parenchymal hepatic cells, promoting the pro-inflammatory response activated during cholestatic injury and therefore contributing to the pathogenesis of cholestatic liver disease. © 2022 The Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland.This work was supported by the Ministry of Science,Innovation and Universities (MICIU) and AgenciaEstatal de Investigacion (AEI), Spain (co-funded byFEDER funds/Development Fund–a Way to BuildEurope): RTI2018-099098-B-100 to AS/BH andRTI2018-094052-B-100 to AMV; and the RamonAreces Foundation: 20th National Competition forScientific and Technical Research in Life and MatterScience (2020) to IF. NL and JGS were recipients ofresearch assistant contracts linked to grant SAF2015-69145-R and RTI2018-099098-B-100, respectively. CMR was the recipient of a researchcontract (PEJD-2019-POST/BMD-16090) from the Education, Universities, Research and Spokesperson Counseling of the Community of Madrid

El tabaquismo en los pacientes de hemodiálisis. Prevalencia de consumo y actitudes

El objetivo del estudio es conocer la prevalencia y las características del hábito tabáquico en los pacientes incluidos en hemodiálisis en nuestra provincia y estudiar así mismo, algunas actitudes y conocimientos relacionadas con este hábito que nos orienten en la creación de un Plan Sanitario para la disminución del consumo de tabaco en los pacientes de diálisis