211 research outputs found
Reforma beneficial en Palencia a fines del Antiguo Régimen
La reforma beneficial es el intento por parte de la Corona de mejorar aquella parte de los bienes del clero que estaban vinculados a cargos u organismos eclesiásticos, pertenecían a la Iglesia como institución y la participación de sus miembros se producía como contraprestación al desempeño de unas funciones. Había una gran diferencia entre parroquias e incluso dentro de ellas. Estos objetivos hay que enmarcarlos dentro de la política reformista e ilustrada que se realizó durante el reinado de Carlos III
Adipose-Derived Stem Cells in Crohn's Rectovaginal Fistula
Therapeutic options for recto-vaginal fistula in the setting of Crohn's disease are limited and many data are available in the literature. The manuscript describes the history of a patient who has been the pioneer of our Clinical Trials in treating this disease in fistulizing Crohn's disease environment. We believe it is the first time that a patient with this disease has been treated by adipose-derived stem cells in allogeneic form. The conclusion of our study with Mary is that the use of mesenchymal stem cells derived from adipose tissue is secure, either in autologous or allogeneic form. Furthermore, we have proved that if we use multi-dose and multiple applications on a patient, it does not produce any adverse effect, which confirms us the safety of using these cells in patients at least in the fistulizing Crohn's disease environment
Dual-Channel Speech Enhancement Based on Extended Kalman Filter Relative Transfer Function Estimation
This paper deals with speech enhancement in dual-microphone smartphones using
beamforming along with postfiltering techniques. The performance of these algorithms relies on
a good estimation of the acoustic channel and speech and noise statistics. In this work we present
a speech enhancement system that combines the estimation of the relative transfer function (RTF)
between microphones using an extended Kalman filter framework with a novel speech presence
probability estimator intended to track the noise statistics’ variability. The available dual-channel
information is exploited to obtain more reliable estimates of clean speech statistics. Noise reduction
is further improved by means of postfiltering techniques that take advantage of the speech presence
estimation. Our proposal is evaluated in different reverberant and noisy environments when the
smartphone is used in both close-talk and far-talk positions. The experimental results show that our
system achieves improvements in terms of noise reduction, low speech distortion and better speech
intelligibility compared to other state-of-the-art approaches.Spanish MINECO/FEDER Project TEC2016-80141-PSpanish
Ministry of Education through the National Program FPU under Grant FPU15/0416
A Deep Learning Loss Function Based on the Perceptual Evaluation of the Speech Quality
This letter proposes a perceptual metric for speech quality evaluation, which is suitable, as a loss function, for training deep learning methods. This metric, derived from the perceptual evaluation of the speech quality algorithm, is computed in a per-frame basis and from the power spectra of the reference and processed speech signal. Thus, two disturbance terms, which account for distortion once auditory masking and threshold effects are factored in, amend the mean square error (MSE) loss function by introducing perceptual criteria based on human psychoacoustics. The proposed loss function is evaluated for noisy speech enhancement with deep neural networks. Experimental results show that our metric achieves significant gains in speech quality (evaluated using an objective metric and a listening test) when compared to using MSE or other perceptual-based loss functions from the literature.Spanish MINECO/FEDER (Grant Number: TEC2016-80141-P)Spanish Ministry of Education through the National Program FPU (Grant Number: FPU15/04161)NVIDIA Corporation with the donation of a Titan X GP
Relationship between solar radiation on watercore on apple fruit assessed with MRI
This work is a preliminary studio of the possibility of assess a relationship between solar radiation and watercore development on apple fruit, during maturation, using a non destructive method such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). For such purpose, several low cost solar radiation sensors were designed for the trial and placed at 2 different heights (1.5 and 2.5 m) on 6 adult ?Esperiega? apple trees, in a commercial orchard in Ademuz (Valencia). Sensors were connected along 27 days, during the end of the growth period and start of the fruit maturation process, and radiation measurements of the a-Si sensors were recorded every 1 minute. At the end of this period, fruits from the upper and the lower part of the canopy of each tree were harvested. In all, 152 apples were collected and images with MRI. A Principal Component Analysis, perfomed over the histograms of the images, as well as segmentation methods were performed on the MR images in order to find a pattern involving solar radiation and watercore incidence
Assessment of watercore development in apples with MRI: Effect offruit location in the canopy
tWatercore distribution inside apple fruit (block or radial), and its incidence (% of tissue) were relatedto the effect of solar radiation inside the canopy as measured by a set of low-cost irradiation sensors.221 samples were harvested in two seasons from the top and the bottom of the canopy and submittedto the non-invasive and non-destructive technique of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in order toobtain 20 inner tomography slices from each fruit and analyze the damaged areas using an interactive3D segmentation method. The number of fruit corresponding to each type of damage and the relevantpercentage were calculated and it was found that apples from the top of the tree were mainly of the radialtype (84%) and had more watercore (approx. 5% more) than apples from the bottom (65% radial). From theimage segmentation, the Euler number, a morphometric parameter, was extracted from the segmentedimages and related to the type of watercore symptoms. Apples with block watercore were grouped inEuler numbers between −400 and 400 with a small evolution. For apples with radial development, theEuler number was highly negative: up to −1439. Significant differences were also found regarding sugarcomposition, with higher fructose and total sugar contents in apples from the upper canopy, compared tothose in the lower canopy location. In the seasons studied (2011 and 2012), significantly higher sorbitoland lower sucrose and fructose contents were found in watercore-affected tissue compared to the healthytissue of affected apples and also compared to healthy apples
Protumorigenic effects of Snail-expression fibroblasts on colon cancer cells
et al.Snail1 is a transcriptional factor that plays an important role in epithelial–mesenchymal transition and in the acquisition of invasive properties by epithelial cells. In colon tumors, Snail1 expression in the stroma correlates with lower specific survival of cancer patients. However, the role(s) of Snail1 expression in stroma and its association with patients' survival have not been determined. We used human primary carcinoma-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) or normal fibroblasts (NFs) and fibroblast cell lines to analyze the effects of Snail1 expression on the protumorigenic capabilities in colon cancer cells. Snail1 expression was higher in CAFs than in NFs and, as well as α-SMA, a classic marker of activated CAFs. Moreover, in tumor samples from 50 colon cancer patients, SNAI1 expression was associated with expression of other CAF markers, such as α-SMA and fibroblast activation protein. Interestingly, coculture of CAFs with colon cells induced a significant increase in epithelial cell migration and proliferation, which was associated with endogenous SNAI1 expression levels. Ectopic manipulation of Snail1 in fibroblasts demonstrated that Snail1 expression controlled migration as well as proliferation of cocultured colon cancer cells in a paracrine manner. Furthermore, expression of Snail1 in fibroblasts was required for the coadjuvant effect of these cells on colon cancer cell growth and invasion when coxenografted in nude mice. Finally, cytokine profile changes, particularly MCP-3 expression, in fibroblasts are put forward as mediators of Snail1-derived effects on colon tumor cell migration. In summary, these studies demonstrate that Snail1 is necessary for the protumorigenic effects of fibroblasts on colon cancer cells.This research was supported by the PI12/02037, Fundación Científica AECC, SAF2010-20750, S2010/BMD-2344, RTICC-RD12/0036/0041 and by the Fundación Banco Santander. Antonio García de Herreros’ laboratory was supported by RTICC-RD12/0036/0005 and SAF 2010-16089. Ma Jesús Larriba’s laboratory was supported by RD12/0036/0021. Cristina Peña and José Miguel García are recipients of Miguel Servet Contracts from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III.Peer reviewe
The Area of Pressure-Induced Referred Pain Is Dependent on the Intensity of the Suprathreshold Stimulus: An Explorative Study
Objective: To investigate the pain referral area (number of pixels) and extent (vector length) as elicited from increasing intensities of pressure-induced pain at the shoulder.
Design: Cross-sectional design.
Setting: Clinical laboratory setting.
Participants: Twenty-two healthy men and women participated in two experimental sessions.
Methods: Delayed onset of muscle soreness (DOMS) was induced in the dominant shoulder and assessed 24 hours later. Participants rated the level of DOMS on a 6-point Likert scale. Four different intensities (pressure pain threshold [PPT]+20%, PPT+30%, PPT+40%, and PPT+50%) were applied to the infraspinatus in a randomized, balanced fashion for 60 seconds from low to high intensity or vice versa. The resulting location, area, and extent of referred pain as drawn by the participants on a digital body chart were extracted and expressed in pixels. The extent of pain was defined as the vector length extending from the ipsilateral earlobe to the most distal location of the pain.
Results: The referred pain area from PPT+20% was smaller than PPT+30%, PPT+40%, and PPT+50%. The extent of referred pain did not differ between the pressure pain intensities.
Conclusions: Pressure intensity at PPT+30%, but no more, produces the greatest referred pain area as compared with the traditional pressure intensity of PPT+20%. Thus, the intensity of PPT+30% may be ideal for exploring the mechanisms of referred pain. The extent of the pain represents an independent expression of the intensity of the provoking stimulus and may be more closely related to the location of the stimulus
p73 deficiency results in impaired self renewal and premature neuronal differentiation of mouse neural progenitors independently of p53
10 p.-5 fig.The question of how neural progenitor cells maintain its self-renewal throughout life is a fundamental problem in cell biology with
implications in cancer, aging and neurodegenerative diseases. In this work, we have analyzed the p73 function in embryonic
neural progenitor cell biology using the neurosphere (NS)-assay and showed that p73-loss has a significant role in the
maintenance of neurosphere-forming cells in the embryonic brain. A comparative study of NS from Trp73-/-, p53KO, p53KO;Trp73-/-and their wild-type counterparts demonstrated that p73 deficiency results in two independent, but related, phenotypes: a smaller NS size (related to the proliferation and survival of the neural-progenitors) and a decreased capacity to
form NS (self-renewal). The former seems to be the result of p53 compensatory activity, whereas the latter is p53 independent.
We also demonstrate that p73 deficiency increases the population of neuronal progenitors ready to differentiate into neurons at the expense of depleting the pool of undifferentiated neurosphere-forming cells. Analysis of the neurogenic niches
demonstrated that p73-loss depletes the number of neural-progenitor cells, rendering deficient niches in the adult mice.
Altogether, our study identifies TP73 as a positive regulator of self-renewal with a role in the maintenance of the neurogenic
capacity. Thus, proposing p73 as an important player in the development of neurodegenerative diseases and a potential
therapeutic target.This work was supported by Grants SAF2009-
07897 from Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (to MCM), Grant from Cajas de Ahorro de Castilla y León (to MCM), and Grants LE030A07 (to MMM) and
LE015A10-2 (to MCM) from the Junta de Castilla y León.Peer reviewe
COMPARISON OF THE EVOLUTION OF MECHANICAL VENTILATION ASSOCIATED PNEUMONIA (VAP) BEFORE THE IMPLANTATION OF SELECTIVE DIGESTIVE DECONTAMINATION (DDS) AND AFTER IMPLANTATION OF PNEUMONIA ZERO PROGRAM (NZ)
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