Editorial

Ars Pharmaceutica is a multidisciplinary scientific journal which focuses on all aspects of pharmaceutical science. It was the first journal of its type in Spain, and has been published by the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Granada every year for the past 51 years. During this time, it has evolved in the same way as most scientific journals, and is now no longer only printed in paper format, but is also available free of charge via the Internet. This means that more and more researchers from around the world can access the journal. And they have done so, as proven by the high number of website hits and researchers’ growing interest in having their work published in the journal. Another reason why the number of papers received over the last year has increased is that the journal now accepts papers in both Spanish and English. The journal is currently indexed in the following databases: Chemical Abstracts; ICYT (CSIC); EMBASE/Excerpta Médica; International Pharmaceutical Abstracts (IPA); Indice Bibliográfico Español en Ciencias de la Salud (IBECS); Biological Abstracts; and Life Sciences Collection. We are working to have the journal included in more databases in the future.The current issue, number 52, is the first of a new era, for which we, the editorial team at Ars Pharmaceutica, have set ourselves two priority objectives: to produce a top-quality journal, and to achieve maximum exposure amongst the scientific and pharmaceutical community.We have therefore designed and developed a new website. The different categories of papers suitable for publication have been clearly defined. An electronic submission system has been developed to make it easier for authors to submit their papers via our website. We now have more human and financial resources, and these have allowed us to produce the journal in electronic format, available free of charge to all the scientists and professionals who want to read it.In this new era for the journal, the publication and editorial guidelines will be adapted so that they come into line with international requirements for scientific publications. We would therefore like to remind authors to check that their papers meet the requirements stipulated in the Guide for authors before they submit them to us. Ars Pharmaceutica uses a peer review system so that each paper is reviewed by experts in the research focus of each study and the methodologies used.Our second aim is to increase the readership of Ars Pharmaceutica and encourage authors to submit their papers to the journal. To do this, we will make the publication available to public and private research bodies and scientific and professional associations. We would therefore like to take this opportunity to invite all authors to send their contributions to the different sections of the journal.We cannot sign off without thanking the people whose hard work made all of this possible back in the 1960s, Professors Cabo and Suñé. If it were not for their enthusiasm and determination to create and maintain this journal, with so little money and hardly any external help, we would not be here today, pouring all our renewed energy into what we believe could become a key tool for the dissemination of scientific knowledge in the field of pharmacy.Ars Pharmaceutica es una revista científica de carácter multidisciplinar, en el ámbito de las ciencias farmacéuticas en su sentido más amplio, pionera en España, editada por la Facultad de Farmacia de la Universidad de Granada durante los últimos 51 años de manera ininterrumpida. Durante este tiempo se ha ido adaptando a la evolución de la mayoría de las revistas científicas, en la que se ha pasado de su publicación en papel a convertirla en una revista electrónica de libre acceso. Esto ha supuesto una mayor accesibilidad de investigadores de todos los países a la publicación, lo que se ha podido comprobar por el número de visitas recibidas en la web, y un interés por publicar sus trabajos en ella. El hecho de aceptar trabajos en español o inglés indistintamente, también ha contribuido a aumentar el número de originales recibidos en el último año. Actualmente se encuentra indexada en las siguientes bases de datos: Chemicals Abstracts, ICYT (CSIC); EMBASE/Excerpta Médica; International Pharmaceutical Abstrac (IPA); Indice Bibliográfico Español en Ciencias de la Salud (IBECS); Biological Abstrac, Life Sciencies Collection, y es nuestra intención aumentar su presencia en otras bases.Este número 52 es el primero de una nueva etapa, en la cual los responsables de Ars Pharmacéutica nos hemos planteado como principales objetivos, conseguir la mejor calidad editorial posible y la máxima visibilidad en la comunidad científica relacionada con las áreas farmacéuticas.Para ello hemos diseñado y desarrollado una nueva página web. Se han establecido de forma clara las distintas categorías de trabajos que se pueden publicar. Para agilizar el envió de originales a través de la web se ha desarrollado un sistema electrónico de envío. Se han habilitado recursos humanos y económicos, que nos permiten ofrecer la revista en formato electrónico y de forma gratuita a todos los científicos y profesionales interesados.Esta nueva etapa supondrá también la adaptación de las normas de publicación y las normas editoriales a los requerimientos internacionales de publicaciones científicas. De ahí que se llame la atención a los autores a que antes de enviar un trabajo comprueben que cumple los requisitos que se incluyen en la guía de autor. Ars Pharmacéutica es una revista arbitrada que utiliza el sistema de revisión externa por expertos (peer-review), en el conocimiento de los objetos investigados y en las metodologías utilizadas en las investigaciones.Nuestro segundo objetivo es conseguir una difusión masiva de Ars Pharmaceutica y fomentar el interés por publicar en la misma, poniéndola a disposición de los organismos de investigación públicos y privados, sociedades científicas y profesionales. Por ello desde aquí invitamos a todos los autores a enviar sus aportaciones a las distintas secciones de la revista.No quisiéramos finalizar estas palabras sin tener un cariñoso recuerdo de los que fueron los artífices y promotores de esta revista, los profesores Cabo y Suñé. Su ilusión, tesón e interés en los años 60 del pasado siglo, por crear y mantener con bajo presupuesto y poca ayuda exterior esta revista, ha permitido que hoy sigamos con renovadas energías lo que consideramos puede ser un órgano de difusión del conocimiento científico en el ámbito farmacéutico

Bacteriocin Producing Lactobacilli Strains as a Biological Strategy to Control Listerial Growthc

Listeria monocytogenes causes listeriosis in humans and animals, and is predominantly transmitted by ingestion of contaminated food. Its severity and high mortality rate make listeriosis a relevant foodborne disease. Currently, biological strategies using probiotic lactobacilli to prevent and control infectious diseases are being globally investigated. The biocontrol exerted by certain Lactobacillus spp. is mainly due to the production of a variety of antimicrobial substances. The aims of this work were (1) to investigate the presence of Listeria spp. in raw cow milk and (2) to determine the inhibitory activity of bacteriocin-like inhibitory substances (BLIS-es) produced by Lactobacillus fermentum L23 and Lactobacillus rhamnosus L60 on L. monocytogenes and other listerial species isolated from food and clinical samples. The presence of Listeria spp. in raw milk was evaluated in 814 samples from 238 cows. The listerial prevalence in cattle was 0.84% and the isolates were identified as L. innocua (LI1) and L. welshimeri (LW1). A total of 29 listerial strains were used as indicator microorganisms to evaluate the antimicrobial activity of BLIS-es L23 and L60. Bioactive metabolites produced by these lactobacilli strains were able to inhibit the listerial growth. This biological activity was mainly attributed to the BLIS-es L23 and L60 which, even at low concentration, were active on 100% of listerial strains. This study reveals a strong potential for the biotechnological use of these bacteriocin producing lactobacilli as a biostrategy against Listeria spp

Developments in Trait Emotional Intelligence Research

Trait emotional intelligence ("trait EI") concerns our perceptions of our emotional abilities, that is, how good we believe we are in terms of understanding, regulating, and expressing emotions in order to adapt to our environment and maintain well-being. In this article, we present succinct summaries of selected findings from research on (a) the location of trait EI in personality factor space, (b) the biological underpinnings of the construct, (c) indicative applications in the areas of clinical, health, social, educational, organizational, and developmental psychology, and (d) trait EI training. Findings to date suggest that individual differences in trait EI are a consistent predictor of human behavior across the life span

Information fusion from multiple databases using meta-association rules

Nowadays, data volume, distribution, and volatility make it difficult to search global patterns by applying traditional Data Mining techniques. In the case of data in a distributed environment, sometimes a local analysis of each dataset separately is adequate but some other times a global decision is needed by the analysis of the entire data. Association rules discovering methods typically require a single uniform dataset and managing with the entire set of distributed data is not possible due to its size. To address the scenarios in which satisfying this requirement is not practical or even feasible, we propose a new method for fusing information, in the form of rules, extracted from multiple datasets. The proposed model produces meta-association rules, i.e. rules in which the antecedent or the consequent may contain rules as well, for finding joint correlations among trends found individually in each dataset. In this paper, we describe the formulation and the implementation of two alternative frameworks that obtain, respectively, crisp meta-rules and fuzzy meta-rules. We compare our proposal with the information obtained when the datasets are not separated, in order to see the main differences between traditional association rules and meta-association rules. We also compare crisp and fuzzy methods for meta-association rule mining, observing that the fuzzy approach offers several advantages: it is more accurate since it incorporates the strength or validity of the previous information, produces a more manageable set of rules for human inspection, and allows the incorporation of contextual information to the mining process expressed in a more human-friendly format

Thermal Neutron Relative Biological Effectiveness Factors for Boron Neutron Capture Therapy from In Vitro Irradiations

The experimental determination of the relative biological effectiveness of thermal neutron factors is fundamental in Boron Neutron Capture Therapy. The present values have been obtained while using mixed beams that consist of both neutrons and photons of various energies. A common weighting factor has been used for both thermal and fast neutron doses, although such an approach has been questioned. At the nuclear reactor of the Institut Laue-Langevin a pure low-energy neutron beam has been used to determine thermal neutron relative biological effectiveness factors. Different cancer cell lines, which correspond to glioblastoma, melanoma, and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, and non-tumor cell lines (lung fibroblast and embryonic kidney), have been irradiated while using an experimental arrangement designed to minimize neutron-induced secondary gamma radiation. Additionally, the cells were irradiated with photons at a medical linear accelerator, providing reference data for comparison with that from neutron irradiation. The survival and proliferation were studied after irradiation, yielding the Relative Biological Effectiveness that corresponds to the damage of thermal neutrons for the different tissue types.Asociacion Espanola Contra el Cancer (AECC) PS16163811PORRSpanish MINECO FIS2015-69941-C2-1-PJunta de Andalucia P11-FQM-8229Campus of International Excellence BioTic P-BS-64University of Granada Chair Neutrons for Medicine: the Spanish Fundacion ACSAsociacion Capitan AntonioFundacion ACSLa Kuadrilla de IznallozSonriendo Se Puede Gana

Radiobiology data of melanoma cells after low-energy neutron irradiation and boron compound administration

The cold neutron beam at the PF1b line at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), without fast neutrons and a low contribution of gamma rays, is a very suitable facility to measure cell damage following low-energy neutron irradiation. The biological damage associated with the thermal and the boron doses can be obtained in order to evaluate the relative biological effectiveness (RBE) for Boron Neutron Capture Therapy. Three different experiments were carried out on the A375 melanoma cell line: the first one in a hospital LINAC, to obtain the reference radiation data, and the other two at the ILL, in which the damage to cells with and without boron compounds added was measured

Aplicación de la topología molecular en la predicción de la inhibición de Trypanosoma cruzi Hexokinasa y un grupo de derivados bifosfonatos

A topological-mathematical model has been arranged to search for new derivatives of bisphosphonate compounds actingas inhibitors against Trypanosoma cruzi hexokinase. By using linear discriminant analysis, a four-variable function wasachieved allowing an accurate prediction of the IC50 for each compound of the training and test series. After carryingout a virtual screening based upon such a model, new structures potentially actives against T. cruzi are proposedSe ha desarrollado un modelo topológico-matemático para la búsqueda de nuevos derivados bisfosfonatos activosfrente a la hexokinasa de Trypanosoma cruzi. Utilizando el análisis lineal discriminante se ha seleccionado una funcióncon cuatro variables capaz de predecir adecuadamente la CI50 para cada compuesto de las series de entrenamientoy test. El modelo propuesto se ha aplicado a una librería molecular y se han propuesto nuevas estructuraspotencialmente activas frente a T. cruzi

Editorial

Ars Pharmaceutica es una revista científica de carácter multidisciplinar, en el ámbito de las ciencias farmacéuticas en su sentido más amplio, pionera en España, editada por la Facultad de Farmacia de la Universidad de Granada durante los últimos 51 años de manera ininterrumpida. Durante este tiempo se ha ido adaptando a la evolución de la mayoría de las revistas científicas, en la que se ha pasado de su publicación en papel a convertirla en una revista electrónica de libre acceso. Esto ha supuesto una mayor accesibilidad de investigadores de todos los países a la publicación, lo que se ha podido comprobar por el número de visitas recibidas en la web, y un interés por publicar sus trabajos en ella. El hecho de aceptar trabajos en español o inglés indistintamente, también ha contribuido a aumentar el número de originales recibidos en el último año. Actualmente se encuentra indexada en las siguientes bases de datos: Chemicals Abstracts, ICYT (CSIC); EMBASE/Excerpta Médica; International Pharmaceutical Abstrac (IPA); Indice Bibliográfico Español en Ciencias de la Salud (IBECS); Biological Abstrac, Life Sciencies Collection, y es nuestra intención aumentar su presencia en otras bases.Este número 52 es el primero de una nueva etapa, en la cual los responsables de Ars Pharmacéutica nos hemos planteado como principales objetivos, conseguir la mejor calidad editorial posible y la máxima visibilidad en la comunidad científica relacionada con las áreas farmacéuticas.Para ello hemos diseñado y desarrollado una nueva página web. Se han establecido de forma clara las distintas categorías de trabajos que se pueden publicar. Para agilizar el envió de originales a través de la web se ha desarrollado un sistema electrónico de envío. Se han habilitado recursos humanos y económicos, que nos permiten ofrecer la revista en formato electrónico y de forma gratuita a todos los científicos y profesionales interesados.Esta nueva etapa supondrá también la adaptación de las normas de publicación y las normas editoriales a los requerimientos internacionales de publicaciones científicas. De ahí que se llame la atención a los autores a que antes de enviar un trabajo comprueben que cumple los requisitos que se incluyen en la guía de autor. Ars Pharmacéutica es una revista arbitrada que utiliza el sistema de revisión externa por expertos (peer-review), en el conocimiento de los objetos investigados y en las metodologías utilizadas en las investigaciones.Nuestro segundo objetivo es conseguir una difusión masiva de Ars Pharmaceutica y fomentar el interés por publicar en la misma, poniéndola a disposición de los organismos de investigación públicos y privados, sociedades científicas y profesionales, por ello desde aquí invitamos a todos los autores a enviar sus aportaciones a las distintas secciones de la revista.No quisiéramos finalizar estas palabras sin tener un cariñoso recuerdo de los que fueron los artífices y promotores de esta revista, los profesores Cabo y Suñé. Su ilusión, tesón e interés en los años 60 del pasado siglo, por crear y mantener con bajo presupuesto y poca ayuda exterior esta revista, ha permitido que hoy sigamos con renovadas energías lo que consideramos puede ser un órgano de difusión del conocimiento científico en el ámbito farmacéutico. Ars Pharmaceutica is a multidisciplinary scientific journal which focuses on all aspects of pharmaceutical science. It was the first journal of its type in Spain, and has been published by the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Granada every year for the past 51 years. During this time, it has evolved in the same way as most scientific journals, and is now no longer only printed in paper format, but is also available free of charge via the Internet. This means that more and more researchers from around the world can access the journal. And they have done so, as proven by the high number of website hits and researchers’ growing interest in having their work published in the journal. Another reason why the number of papers received over the last year has increased is that the journal now accepts papers in both Spanish and English. The journal is currently indexed in the following databases: Chemical Abstracts; ICYT (CSIC); EMBASE/Excerpta Médica; International Pharmaceutical Abstracts (IPA); Indice Bibliográfico Español en Ciencias de la Salud (IBECS); Biological Abstracts; and Life Sciences Collection. We are working to have the journal included in more databases in the future.The current issue, number 52, is the first of a new era, for which we, the editorial team at Ars Pharmaceutica, have set ourselves two priority objectives: to produce a top-quality journal, and to achieve maximum exposure amongst the scientific and pharmaceutical community.We have therefore designed and developed a new website. The different categories of papers suitable for publication have been clearly defined. An electronic submission system has been developed to make it easier for authors to submit their papers via our website. We now have more human and financial resources, and these have allowed us to produce the journal in electronic format, available free of charge to all the scientists and professionals who want to read it.In this new era for the journal, the publication and editorial guidelines will be adapted so that they come into line with international requirements for scientific publications. We would therefore like to remind authors to check that their papers meet the requirements stipulated in the Guide for authors before they submit them to us. Ars Pharmaceutica uses a peer review system so that each paper is reviewed by experts in the research focus of each study and the methodologies used.Our second aim is to increase the readership of Ars Pharmaceutica and encourage authors to submit their papers to the journal. To do this, we will make the publication available to public and private research bodies and scientific and professional associations. We would therefore like to take this opportunity to invite all authors to send their contributions to the different sections of the journal.We cannot sign off without thanking the people whose hard work made all of this possible back in the 1960s, Professors Cabo and Suñé. If it were not for their enthusiasm and determination to create and maintain this journal, with so little money and hardly any external help, we would not be here today, pouring all our renewed energy into what we believe could become a key tool for the dissemination of scientific knowledge in the field of pharmacy