La mujer como ser histórico y cultural

Los años bajo la dictadura del General Franco desde 1939 a 1975, constituyeron un periodo donde ser mujer significaba la subyugación a maridos o padres, una educación segregada y enfocada siempre al servilismo, la implantación y establecimiento de la denominada 'Sección Femenina', donde cobraban mayor importancia coser y bordar que estudiar otras materias consideradas masculinas. La necesidad de un consentimiento marital para poder realizar algunos trámites burocráticos, la inexistente capacidad legal de la mujer para decidir en ciertos temas de salud o la precaria planificación familiar eran aspectos habituales de la vida cotidiana de las mujeres. Éstos son sólo algunos ejemplos de la innumerable lista que llenaba el significado de ser mujer en ese contexto histórico; pero en ninguno de estos puntos a enumerar encontraríamos trazas, ni atisbos, de autonomía o libertad como género, como mujeres, o evidentemente tampoco como parturientas. Afortunadamente, en la actualidad la mujer puede expresar sus preferencias, necesidades, deseos y expectativas sobre el proceso del parto y nacimiento mediante su "plan de parto"

3D-Printed Microswimmers with Nanostructures for Color Tracking

Two-Photon Polymerization (TPP) is a fabrication technique based on the localized linking of photosensitive materials resulting from femtosecond – a quadrillionth of a second – exposure to a laser. Such materials are based on building blocks named monomers that combine under certain stimuli (i.e. light) to form chains or complex networks. Utilization of TPP as a method for micro-3D printing has expanded the field of microrobotics, which presents medical solutions for minimizing procedure invasiveness as well as increasing treatment and diagnosis accuracy. One of the challenges in achieving desired accuracies is designing trackable features onto a microrobot. With the capabilities of TPP, we propose the construction of patterns on microrobot surfaces, mimicking color-expressing nanostructures present on beetles and butterflies. In this study, a tracking point is defined by these patterns on top of a surface on a helical microswimmer. A side-by-side comparison of various patterns determined which responds favorably to visible light. Microswimmers are decorated with the structures that elicit bright and stable reflections, and the whole design is printed and magnetized. The helix moves using an external rotating magnetic field and the color expressing features of the microswimmer are visible. Many microrobotic tracking systems are vision-based, thus, this patterning technique has the potential to mark multiple microrobots for differentiation, or even specific features on a singular robot to track displacement-type functionalities for improvement of microrobot control

Carbonate-based Janus micromotors moving in ultra-light acidic environment generated by HeLa cells in situ

Novel approaches to develop naturally-induced drug delivery in tumor environments in a deterministic and controlled manner have become of growing interest in recent years. Different polymeric-based microstructures and other biocompatible substances have been studied taking advantage of lactic acidosis phenomena in tumor cells, which decrease the tumor extracellular pH down to 6.8. Micromotors have recently demonstrated a high performance in living systems, revealing autonomous movement in the acidic environment of the stomach or moving inside living cells by using acoustic waves, opening the doors for implementation of such smart microengines into living entities. The need to develop biocompatible motors which are driven by natural fuel sources inherently created in biological systems has thus become of crucial importance. As a proof of principle, we here demonstrate calcium carbonate Janus particles moving in extremely light acidic environments (pH 6.5), whose motion is induced in conditioned acidic medium generated by HeLa cells in situ. Our system not only obviates the need for an external fuel, but also presents a selective activation of the micromotors which promotes their motion and consequent dissolution in presence of a quickly propagating cell source (i.e. tumor cells), therefore inspiring new micromotor configurations for potential drug delivery systems

Radioprotección en el área quirúrgica

El conocimiento de los riesgos que supone el uso de radiación ionizante y los mecanismos de radioprotección frente a ésta, que sirven para protegernos de ella, son útiles para proteger a los pacientes y para responder a posibles dudas respecto a los procedimientos que la utilizan como base de obtención de la imagen. El uso de las radiaciones ionizantes es un riesgo laboral más para las enfermeras en el entorno quirúrgico, éstas deben conocer lo mecanismos y las herramientas para protegerse de dichas radiaciones, trabajar en un entorno seguro y sin riesgos para su salud

POSTER: Exploiting asymmetric multi-core processors with flexible system sofware

Energy efficiency has become the main challenge for high performance computing (HPC). The use of mobile asymmetric multi-core architectures to build future multi-core systems is an approach towards energy savings while keeping high performance. However, it is not known yet whether such systems are ready to handle parallel applications. This paper fills this gap by evaluating emerging parallel applications on an asymmetric multi-core. We make use of the PARSEC benchmark suite and a processor that implements the ARM big.LITTLE architecture. We conclude that these applications are not mature enough to run on such systems, as they suffer from load imbalance. Furthermore, we explore the behaviour of dynamic scheduling solutions on either the Operating System (OS) or the runtime level. Comparing these approaches shows us that the most efficient scheduling takes place in the runtime level, influencing the future research towards such solutions.This work has been supported by the Spanish Government (SEV2015-0493), by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (contracts TIN2015-65316-P), by Generalitat de Catalunya (contracts 2014-SGR-1051 and 2014-SGR-1272), by the RoMoL ERC Advanced Grant (GA 321253) and the European HiPEAC Network of Excellence. The Mont-Blanc project receives funding from the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement number 610402 and from the EU's H2020 Framework Programme (H2020/2014-2020) under grant agreement number 671697. M. Moretó has been partially supported by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral fellowship number JCI-2012-15047. M. Casas is supported by the Secretary for Universities and Research of the Ministry of Economy and Knowledge of the Government of Catalonia and the Cofund programme of the Marie Curie Actions of the 7th R&D Framework Programme of the European Union (Contract 2013 BP B 00243).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Nanoparticles for cosmetics : how safe is safe?

L'ús creixent de materials nanoparticulats qüestiona la seguretat d'aquests. Un cas paradigmàtic és la seva aplicació en cosmètica, en principi degut a què aquests materials estan directament en contacte amb el cos i perquè probablement la utilització de la nanotecnologia en cosmètica s'anticiparà a la utilització de nanopartícules en medicina. Fins el moment present, no s'han observat efectes tòxics aguts, i ja s'estan fent servir quantitats elevades de nanopartícules en protectors solars. No obstant, els efectes observats sobre la interacció entre nanopartícules i estructures biològiques requereix una millor comprensió d'aquesta interacció i un desenvolupament prudent dels productes de consum basats en nanopartícules. En aquest article, resumim els fets coneguts en relació a l'ús de nanopartícules en cosmètica.The increasing use of nanoparticulate engineered materials posses the question on the safety of those materials. A paradigmatic case is their use in cosmetics, in principle because those materials are in direct contact with the body and because probably cosmetic usage of nanotechnology will anticipate the use of nanoparticles in medicine. Non acute toxic effects have been observed so far and some tones of some nanoparticles are already used in sunscreens. However the observed effects of interaction between nanoparticles and biological structures calls for a better understanding of that interaction and a prudent development of consumer products based on nanoparticles. In this paper we summarize the known facts regarding the use of nanoparticles in cosmetics

Actualice sus conocimientos sobre el dolor

El dolor no sólo es un problema por quienes lo padecen, sino que tiene graves repercusiones sociales, y subsanarlo comportaría una notable mejoría económica para las arcas públicas. En esta línea, uno de los premiados con el premio Príncipe de Asturias 2010 de Investigación Científica y Técnica, David Julius, reivindica la necesidad de invertir más dinero en la investigación y el tratamiento del dolor, pues si se equiparara el presupuesto que se dedica a su estudio al de otras enfermedades se conseguirían grandes resultados. En nuestra sociedad ha aumentado espectacularmente la esperanza de vida, pero muchas veces esto es a costa de la cronicidad de determinadas patologías, de intervenciones quirúrgicas de riesgo, de los avances en cuidados críticos, situaciones todas que provocan dolor. Esto se contrapone a la aspiración de una mayor calidad de vida, confortable y libre de dolor. Por tanto, la puesta al día en este tema es fundamental para ofertar unos cuidados de enfermería de calidad. Las siguientes preguntas sobre su fisiopatología, sus mecanismos de respuesta, la farmacología específica para tratarlo y sus formas de valoración pueden facilitar la comprensión de este difícil problema

Guided accumulation of active particles by topological design of a second-order skin effect

Collective guidance of out-of-equilibrium systems without using external fields is a challenge of paramount importance in active matter, ranging from bacterial colonies to swarms of self-propelled particles. Designing strategies to guide active matter and exploiting enhanced diffusion associated to its motion will provide insights for application from sensing, drug delivery to water remediation. However, achieving directed motion without breaking detailed balance, for example by asymmetric topographical patterning, is challenging. Here we engineer a two-dimensional periodic topographical design with detailed balance in its unit cell where we observe spontaneous particle edge guidance and corner accumulation of self-propelled particles. This emergent behaviour is guaranteed by a second-order non-Hermitian skin effect, a topologically robust non-equilibrium phenomenon, that we use to dynamically break detailed balance. Our stochastic circuit model predicts, without fitting parameters, how guidance and accumulation can be controlled and enhanced by design: a device guides particles more efficiently if the topological invariant characterizing it is non-zero. Our work establishes a fruitful bridge between active and topological matter, and our design principles offer a blueprint to design devices that display spontaneous, robust and predictable guided motion and accumulation, guaranteed by out-of-equilibrium topology

Comprehensive geriatric assesment of the nonagenarian population

Our society is facing new economic, political, social and demographic challenges that will require health care services capable of responding to the population's growing health needs, especially chronic processes linked to ageing. Comprehensive assessment of the frail elderly people represents one of the most important matters in providing proper geriatric care in primary health care (PHC). A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on a final sample of 105 patients > 90 years of age cared for by a PHC team. 75.2% of the population were women. 17.1% of the population as a whole and 18.9% of women lived alone. Close to 40% of the population had experienced one or more falls. 65.7% were taking more than 4 drugs/day and approximately 50% had been properly vaccinated. On a cognitive level, the majority of the population suffered from mild decline, despite their advanced age. We must progress towards comprehensive, proactive and patient-centred care. Good comprehensive geriatric assessment coupled with good care from PHC teams provides elderly persons with a better state of health