Pensar lo Político. Ontología y Mundo Contemporáneo

Los vertiginosos cambios del mundo actual reclaman una reflexión desde los más diversos derroteros disciplinarios y, en esta tarea, la filosofía no es la excepción. Sin embargo, la complejidad de los dilemas contemporáneos demanda un examen desde la propia ontología, pues así como el Ser se dice de muchas maneras, la política es también un affaire que se dice de variados modos, en tanto termina reflejando y enriqueciendo tal pluralidad ontológica. Los textos aquí reunidos comparten una preocupación común: interrogarse por el Ser de la política y la manera que ésta, y sus expresiones contemporáneas, nos arrojan a habitar un mundo lleno de contradicciones y retos. La forma como vivimos el tiempo, como enfrentamos la globalización, la manera como territorializamos el espacio, como creamos alternativas frente a las lógicas dominantes, como nos insertamos o intentamos frenar la aceleración de lo cotidiano, como reconstruimos nuestras prácticas e ideas sobre la libertad, incluso, el modo de edificar nuestro estar en común, son cuestiones en las que lo político y el mundo contemporáneo terminan repensando muchos de los temas y conceptos ontológicos clásicos. Vivimos tiempos críticos no sólo porque parecen violentar nuestras visiones y formas de vida tradicionales, sino sobre todo porque nos invitan a pensar de maneras inéditas, así como a plantearnos otras formas de acción, nuevos conceptos y herramientas de pensamiento

Motor Decline in Clinically Presymptomatic Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 2 Gene Carriers

BACKGROUND: Motor deficits are a critical component of the clinical characteristics of patients with spinocerebellar ataxia type 2. However, there is no current information on the preclinical manifestation of those motor deficits in presymptomatic gene carriers. To further understand and characterize the onset of the clinical manifestation in this disease, we tested presymptomatic spinocerebellar ataxia type 2 gene carriers, and volunteers, in a task that evaluates their motor performance and their motor learning capabilities. METHODS AND FINDINGS: 28 presymptomatic spinocerebellar ataxia type 2 gene carriers and an equal number of control volunteers matched for age and gender participated in the study. Both groups were tested in a prism adaptation task known to be sensible to both motor performance and visuomotor learning deficits. Our results clearly show that although motor learning capabilities are intact, motor performance deficits are present even years before the clinical manifestation of the disease start. CONCLUSIONS: The results show a clear deficit in motor performance that can be detected years before the clinical onset of the disease. This motor performance deficit appears before any motor learning or clinical manifestations of the disease. These observations identify the performance coefficient as an objective and quantitative physiological biomarker that could be useful to assess the efficiency of different therapeutic agents

Anaerobic Carbon Monoxide Dehydrogenase Diversity in the Homoacetogenic Hindgut Microbial Communities of Lower Termites and the Wood Roach

Anaerobic carbon monoxide dehydrogenase (CODH) is a key enzyme in the Wood-Ljungdahl (acetyl-CoA) pathway for acetogenesis performed by homoacetogenic bacteria. Acetate generated by gut bacteria via the acetyl-CoA pathway provides considerable nutrition to wood-feeding dictyopteran insects making CODH important to the obligate mutualism occurring between termites and their hindgut microbiota. To investigate CODH diversity in insect gut communities, we developed the first degenerate primers designed to amplify cooS genes, which encode the catalytic (β) subunit of anaerobic CODH enzyme complexes. These primers target over 68 million combinations of potential forward and reverse cooS primer-binding sequences. We used the primers to identify cooS genes in bacterial isolates from the hindgut of a phylogenetically lower termite and to sample cooS diversity present in a variety of insect hindgut microbial communities including those of three phylogenetically-lower termites, Zootermopsis nevadensis, Reticulitermes hesperus, and Incisitermes minor, a wood-feeding cockroach, Cryptocercus punctulatus, and an omnivorous cockroach, Periplaneta americana. In total, we sequenced and analyzed 151 different cooS genes. These genes encode proteins that group within one of three highly divergent CODH phylogenetic clades. Each insect gut community contained CODH variants from all three of these clades. The patterns of CODH diversity in these communities likely reflect differences in enzyme or physiological function, and suggest that a diversity of microbial species participate in homoacetogenesis in these communities

Conditional Gene Knockout in Human Cells with Inducible CRISPR/Cas9.

The advent of the easily programmable and efficient CRISPR/Cas9 nuclease system has revolutionized genetic engineering. While conventional gene knockout experiments using CRISPR/Cas9 are very valuable, these are not well suited to study stage-specific gene function in dynamic situations such as development or disease. Here we describe a CRISPR/Cas9-based OPTimized inducible gene KnockOut method (OPTiKO) for conditional loss-of-function studies in human cells. This approach relies on an improved tetracycline-inducible system for conditional expression of single guide RNAs (sgRNAs) that drive Cas9 activity. In order to ensure homogeneous and stable expression, the necessary transgenes are expressed following rapid and efficient single-step genetic engineering of the AAVS1 genomic safe harbor. When implemented in human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs), the approach can be then efficiently applied to virtually any hPSC-derived human cell type at various stages of development or disease

Maternal and perinatal outcomes after bariatric surgery: a spanish multicenter study

The final publication is avaliable at Springer Link[Abstract] Background. Bariatric surgery (BS) has become more frequent among women of child-bearing age. Data regarding the underlying maternal and perinatal risks are scarce. The objective of this nationwide study is to evaluate maternal and perinatal outcomes after BS. Methods. We performed a retrospective observational study of 168 pregnancies in 112 women who underwent BS in 10 tertiary hospitals in Spain over a 15-year period. Maternal and perinatal outcomes, including gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), pregnancy-associated hypertensive disorders (PAHD), pre-term birth cesarean deliveries, small and large for gestational age births (SGA, LGA), still births, and neonatal deaths, were evaluated. Results were further compared according to the type of BS performed: restrictive techniques (vertical-banded gastroplasty, sleeve gastrectomy, and gastric banding), Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB), and biliopancreatic diversion (BPD). Results. GDM occurred in five (3 %) pregnancies and there were no cases of PAHD. Women whose pregnancies occurred before 1 year after BS had a higher pre-gestational body mass index (BMI) than those who got pregnant 1 year after BS (34.6 ± 7.7 vs 30.4 ± 5.3 kg/m2, p = 0.007). In pregnancies occurring during the first year after BS, a higher rate of stillbirths was observed compared to pregnancies occurring after this period of time (35.5 vs 16.8 %, p = 0.03). Women who underwent BPD delivered a higher rate of SGA babies than women with RYGB or restrictive procedures (34.8, 12.7, and 8.3 %, respectively). Conclusions. Pregnancy should be scheduled at least 1 year after BS. Malabsorptive procedures are associated to a higher rate of SGA births

Common variations in estrogen-related genes are associated with severe large-joint osteoarthritis: a multicenter genetic and functional study

OBJECTIVE: Several lines of evidence suggest that estrogens influence the development of osteoarthritis (OA). The aim of this study was to explore the association of two common polymorphisms within the aromatase (CYP19A1) and estrogen receptor (ER) alpha (ESR1) genes with severe OA of the lower limbs. METHODS: The rs1062033 (CYP19A1) and rs2234693 (ESR1) single nucleotide polymorphisms were genotyped in 5528 individuals (3147 patients with severe hip or knee OA, and 2381 controls) from four centres in Spain and the United Kingdom. Gene expression was measured in femoral bone samples from a group of patients. RESULTS: In the global analysis, both polymorphisms were associated with OA, but there was a significant sex interaction. The GG genotype at rs1062033 was associated with an increased risk of knee OA in women [odds ratio (OR) 1.23; P=0.04]. The CC genotype at rs2234693 tended to be associated with reduced OA risk in women (OR 0.76, P=0.028, for knee OA; OR=0.84, P=0.076 for hip OA), but with increased risk of hip OA in men (OR 1.28; P=0.029). Women with unfavourable genotypes at both loci had an OR of 1.61 for knee OA (P=0.006). The rs1062033 genotype associated with higher OA risk was also associated with reduced expression of the aromatase gene in bone. CONCLUSIONS: Common genetic variations of the aromatase and ER genes are associated with the risk of severe OA of the large joints of the lower limb in a sex-specific manner. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that estrogen activity may influence the development of large-joint OA

Additive effects of LPL, APOA5 and APOE variant combinations on triglyceride levels and hypertriglyceridemia: results of the ICARIA genetic sub-study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Hypertriglyceridemia (HTG) is a well-established independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease and the influence of several genetic variants in genes related with triglyceride (TG) metabolism has been described, including <it>LPL</it>, <it>APOA5 </it>and <it>APOE</it>. The combined analysis of these polymorphisms could produce clinically meaningful complementary information.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A subgroup of the ICARIA study comprising 1825 Spanish subjects (80% men, mean age 36 years) was genotyped for the <it>LPL</it>-HindIII (rs320), S447X (rs328), D9N (rs1801177) and N291S (rs268) polymorphisms, the <it>APOA5</it>-S19W (rs3135506) and -1131T/C (rs662799) variants, and the <it>APOE </it>polymorphism (rs429358; rs7412) using PCR and restriction analysis and TaqMan assays. We used regression analyses to examine their combined effects on TG levels (with the log-transformed variable) and the association of variant combinations with TG levels and hypertriglyceridemia (TG ≥ 1.69 mmol/L), including the covariates: gender, age, waist circumference, blood glucose, blood pressure, smoking and alcohol consumption.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found a significant lowering effect of the <it>LPL</it>-HindIII and S447X polymorphisms (<it>p </it>< 0.0001). In addition, the D9N, N291S, S19W and -1131T/C variants and the <it>APOE</it>-ε4 allele were significantly associated with an independent additive TG-raising effect (<it>p </it>< 0.05, <it>p </it>< 0.01, <it>p </it>< 0.001, <it>p </it>< 0.0001 and <it>p </it>< 0.001, respectively). Grouping individuals according to the presence of TG-lowering or TG-raising polymorphisms showed significant differences in TG levels (<it>p </it>< 0.0001), with the lowest levels exhibited by carriers of two lowering variants (10.2% reduction in TG geometric mean with respect to individuals who were homozygous for the frequent alleles of all the variants), and the highest levels in carriers of raising combinations (25.1% mean TG increase). Thus, carrying two lowering variants was protective against HTG (OR = 0.62; 95% CI, 0.39-0.98; <it>p </it>= 0.042) and having one single raising polymorphism (OR = 1.20; 95% CI, 1.39-2.87; <it>p </it>< 0.001) or more (2 or 3 raising variants; OR = 2.90; 95% CI, 1.56-5.41; <it>p </it>< 0.001) were associated with HTG.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our results showed a significant independent additive effect on TG levels of the <it>LPL </it>polymorphisms HindIII, S447X, D9N and N291S; the S19W and -1131T/C variants of <it>APOA5</it>, and the ε4 allele of <it>APOE </it>in our study population. Moreover, some of the variant combinations studied were significantly associated with the absence or the presence of hypertriglyceridemia.</p

Observation of associated near-side and away-side long-range correlations in √sNN=5.02 TeV proton-lead collisions with the ATLAS detector

Two-particle correlations in relative azimuthal angle (Δϕ) and pseudorapidity (Δη) are measured in √sNN=5.02  TeV p+Pb collisions using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurements are performed using approximately 1  μb-1 of data as a function of transverse momentum (pT) and the transverse energy (ΣETPb) summed over 3.1<η<4.9 in the direction of the Pb beam. The correlation function, constructed from charged particles, exhibits a long-range (2<|Δη|<5) “near-side” (Δϕ∼0) correlation that grows rapidly with increasing ΣETPb. A long-range “away-side” (Δϕ∼π) correlation, obtained by subtracting the expected contributions from recoiling dijets and other sources estimated using events with small ΣETPb, is found to match the near-side correlation in magnitude, shape (in Δη and Δϕ) and ΣETPb dependence. The resultant Δϕ correlation is approximately symmetric about π/2, and is consistent with a dominant cos⁡2Δϕ modulation for all ΣETPb ranges and particle pT

Centrality dependence of charged particle production at large transverse momentum in Pb-Pb collisions at sNN=2.76\sqrt{s_{\rm{NN}}} = 2.76 TeV

The inclusive transverse momentum ($p_{\rm T}$) distributions of primary charged particles are measured in the pseudo-rapidity range $|\eta|<0.8$ as a function of event centrality in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm{NN}}}=2.76$ TeV with ALICE at the LHC. The data are presented in the $p_{\rm T}$ range $0.15<p_{\rm T}<50$ GeV/$c$ for nine centrality intervals from 70-80% to 0-5%. The Pb-Pb spectra are presented in terms of the nuclear modification factor $R_{\rm{AA}}$ using a pp reference spectrum measured at the same collision energy. We observe that the suppression of high-$p_{\rm T}$ particles strongly depends on event centrality. In central collisions (0-5%) the yield is most suppressed with $R_{\rm{AA}}\approx0.13$ at $p_{\rm T}=6$-7 GeV/$c$. Above $p_{\rm T}=7$ GeV/$c$, there is a significant rise in the nuclear modification factor, which reaches $R_{\rm{AA}} \approx0.4$ for $p_{\rm T}>30$ GeV/$c$. In peripheral collisions (70-80%), the suppression is weaker with $R_{\rm{AA}} \approx 0.7$ almost independently of $p_{\rm T}$. The measured nuclear modification factors are compared to other measurements and model calculations.Comment: 17 pages, 4 captioned figures, 2 tables, authors from page 12, published version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/284