A legacy of waste: Reflections on literature and the environment

This article is included in a Special focus: Eco-fictions: Emergent Discourses and Nature and the Environment in Postcolonial LiteratureMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad; FEM2015-66937-

c-Jun N-terminal kinase phosphorylation is a biomarker of plitidepsin activity

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License.-- et al.Plitidepsin is an antitumor drug of marine origin currently in Phase III clinical trials in multiple myeloma. In cultured cells, plitidepsin induces cell cycle arrest or an acute apoptotic process in which sustained activation of c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) plays a crucial role. With a view to optimizing clinical use of plitidepsin, we have therefore evaluated the possibility of using JNK activation as an in vivo biomarker of response. In this study, we show that administration of a single plitidepsin dose to mice xenografted with human cancer cells does indeed lead to increased phosphorylation of JNK in tumors at 4 to 12 h. By contrast, no changes were found in other in vitro plitidepsin targets such as the levels of phosphorylated-ERK, -p38MAPK or the protein p27KIP1. Interestingly, plitidepsin also increased JNK phosphorylation in spleens from xenografted mice showing similar kinetics to those seen in tumors, thereby suggesting that normal tissues might be useful for predicting drug activity. Furthermore, plitidepsin administration to rats at plasma concentrations comparable to those achievable in patients also increased JNK phosphorylation in peripheral mononuclear blood cells. These findings suggest that changes in JNK activity provide a reliable biomarker for plitidepsin activity and this could be useful for designing clinical trials and maximizing the efficacy of plitidepsin.This work has been partially supported by grants (Programa Cenit, CEN-20091016, SAF2010-18302 and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional-Instituto de Salud Carlos III, RD12/0036/0021) from Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of Spain.Peer Reviewe

The derived category of quasi-coherent sheaves and axiomatic stable homotopy

We prove in this paper that for a quasi-compact and semi-separated (non necessarily noetherian) scheme X, the derived category of quasi-coherent sheaves over X, D(A_qc(X)), is a stable homotopy category in the sense of Hovey, Palmieri and Strickland, answering a question posed by Strickland. Moreover we show that it is unital and algebraic. We also prove that for a noetherian semi-separated formal scheme X, its derived category of sheaves of modules with quasi-coherent torsion homologies D_qct(X) is a stable homotopy category. It is algebraic but if the formal scheme is not a usual scheme, it is not unital, therefore its abstract nature differs essentially from that of the derived category of a usual scheme.Comment: v2: 31 pages, some improvements in exposition; v3 updated bibliography, to appear Adv. Mat

Regulation of Ace2-dependent genes requires components of the PBF complex in schizosaccharomyces pombe

The division cycle of unicellular yeasts is completed with the activation of a cell separation program that results in the dissolution of the septum assembled during cytokinesis between the 2 daughter cells, allowing them to become independent entities. Expression of the eng1+ and agn1+ genes, encoding the hydrolytic enzymes responsible for septum degradation, is activated at the end of each cell cycle by the transcription factor Ace2. Periodic ace2+ expression is regulated by the transcriptional complex PBF (PCB Binding Factor), composed of the forkhead-like proteins Sep1 and Fkh2 and the MADS box-like protein Mbx1. In this report, we show that Ace2-dependent genes contain several combinations of motifs for Ace2 and PBF binding in their promoters. Thus, Ace2, Fkh2 and Sep1 were found to bind in vivo to the eng1+ promoter. Ace2 binding was coincident with maximum level of eng1+ expression, whereas Fkh2 binding was maximal when mRNA levels were low, supporting the notion that they play opposing roles. In addition, we found that the expression of eng1+ and agn1+ was differentially affected by mutations in PBF components. Interestingly, agn1+ was a major target of Mbx1, since its ectopic expression resulted in the suppression of Mbx1 deletion phenotypes. Our results reveal a complex regulation system through which the transcription factors Ace2, Fkh2, Sep1 and Mbx1 in combination control the expression of the genes involved in separation at the end of the cell division cycle

Clupiter: a Raspberry Pi mini-supercomputer for educational purposes

© 2024 IEEE. This version of the paper has been accepted for publication. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.[Abstract]: The main objective of this work is to bring supercomputing and parallel processing closer to non-specialized audiences by building a Raspberry Pi cluster, called Clupiter, which emulates the operation of a supercomputer. It consists of eight Raspberry Pi devices interconnected to each other so that they can run jobs in parallel. To make it easier to show how it works, a web application has been developed. It allows launching parallel applications and accessing a monitoring system to see the resource usage when these applications are running. The NAS Parallel Benchmarks (NPB) are used as demonstration applications. From this web application a couple of educational videos can also be accessed. They deal, in a very informative way, with the concepts of supercomputing and parallel programming.Clupiter has been supported by grants EDC431C 2021/30 (Xunta de Galicia, Consolidation Program of Competitive Reference Groups) and PID2022-136435NB-I00, funded by MCIN/AEI/ 1 0.13039/501100011033 and by “ERDF A wayof making Europe”, EU.Xunta de Galicia; EDC431C 2021/3

Biodiversity of Archaea and floral of two inland saltern ecosystems in the Alto Vinalopó Valley, Spain

Background. The extraction of salt from seawater by means of coastal solar salterns is a very well-described process. Moreover, the characterization of these environments from ecological, biochemical and microbiological perspectives has become a key focus for many research groups all over the world over the last 20 years. In countries such as Spain, there are several examples of coastal solar salterns (mainly on the Mediterranean coast) and inland solar salterns, from which sodium chloride is obtained for human consumption. However, studies focused on the characterization of inland solar salterns are scarce and both the archaeal diversity and the plant communities inhabiting these environments remain poorly described. Results. Two of the inland solar salterns (termed Redonda and Penalva), located in the Alto Vinalopó Valley (Alicante, Spain), were characterized regarding their geological and physico-chemical characteristics and their archaeal and botanical biodiversity. A preliminary eukaryotic diversity survey was also performed using saline water. The chemical characterization of the brine has revealed that the salted groundwater extracted to fill these inland solar salterns is thalassohaline. The plant communities living in this environment are dominated by Sarcocornia fruticosa (L.) A.J. Scott, Arthrocnemum macrostachyum (Moris) K. Koch, Suaeda vera Forsk. ex Gmelin (Amaranthaceae) and several species of Limonium (Mill) and Tamarix (L). Archaeal diversity was analyzed and compared by polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based molecular phylogenetic techniques. Most of the sequences recovered from environmental DNA samples are affiliated with haloarchaeal genera such as Haloarcula, Halorubrum, Haloquadratum and Halobacterium, and with an unclassified member of the Halobacteriaceae. The eukaryote Dunaliella was also present in the samples. Conclusions. To our knowledge, this study constitutes the first analysis centered on inland solar salterns located in the southeastern region of Spain. The results obtained revealed that the salt deposits of this region have marine origins. Plant communities typical of salt marshes are present in this ecosystem and members of the Halobacteriaceae family can be easily detected in the microbial populations of these habitats. Possible origins of the haloarchaea detected in this study are discussed.Financial support was obtained from grants CGL2008-05056 (MICINN-Spain), GRE08-P01, BIO2008-00082 (MICINN-Spain, Fondos FEDER) and VIGROB-016 (Universidad de Alicante)

Un nuevo híbrido del género Thymus L. (Lamiaceae).

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Examples of Games for Learning in Erasmus+

[EN]This article focuses on the review of specific examples of European educational projects, within the framework of Erasmus+, that use educational games or platforms as the main axis of action. It is assumed that games are a great tool to engage students in the teaching-learning process and the fact of being able to observe projects that have been considered good practice in this field can contribute not only to the use of resources developed, but also to inspire the realization of new projects in this line of work. In this publication, one or two example projects are reviewed for different educational sectors (school, vocational education and training, and youth), in total five projects. Most of them are projects that have been selected and analysedwithin the framework of the research “Methodological guide for the successful use of digital technologies in education: Improving learning through European educational projects”. They have worked on the development of iOS or Android games and all have the label of good practice. As their main result they have proven to be useful for the educational community in general and especially for teachers because all of them have helped to solve a need in education