Red Cell Distribution Width and Elongation Index in a Cohort of Patients With Juvenile Acute Myocardial Infarction

In a cohort of patients with juvenile myocardial infarction, we considered the red cell distribution width (RDW), hematocrit, hemoglobin, and elongation index values at the initial phase and at 3 and 12 months from the acute event. In the initial phase, only the elongation index values turn out reduced if compared with those of the control group, and that only turn out to discriminate the infarcted ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) from non-STEMI. Dividing the patients according to the traditional risk factors and the extent of coronary heart disease, there are no significant variations in the analyzed parameters. No major changes are observed after 12 months from the acute event. Both to 3 and to 12 months from the infarct episode, the negative statistical correlation between RDW and the value of elongation index remains. These data make us reflect on the role of the degree of anisocytosis of red blood cell expressed by the RDW on the determinism of erythrocyte deformability, which plays its role in the microcirculation district and that is essential in the transfer of tissue oxygen

The political culture of the Chilean Socialist Party and its influence on the nomination of Michelle Bachelet as presidential candidate in 2005

This study develops a conceptualisation of the political cultures of the Chilean Socialist Party (PSCh) in order to understand and develop an explanation of the nomination of Michelle Bachelet as presidential candidate in 2005 which avoids the oversimplifications of existing approaches. At the theoretical level, political culture is defined from the collective action perspective conceptualising it as a framework for action (Elkin, 1993: 123). This political culture is formed by patterns for political participation which drive internal power relations between members and leaders. The formation of these patterns is influenced by their social context which is mediated by groups of members and leaders in relation to their histories, experiences of critical historical junctures and ideological heritages. The conceptualisation developed thus links structure and agency in a way that enables a nuanced analysis of inter-party power relationships and agency. This fosters a deeper explanation of Bachelet’s nomination and enables evaluation of its meaning for the party as an institution. It also help us to understand internal dynamics and contradictions than could be found in her nomination. I argue that the PSCh has historically had two political cultures whose relative balance of power within the party has shifted over time. The first which I name the institutional pattern is a normative pattern which frames political participation as libertarian, democratic and pluralistic. Currently it is the non-dominant political culture to be found in the party bases. The second is the dominant party political culture which I name the practice pattern. This frames relationships between members and leaders from the perspective of co-optation, authoritarianism and hegemony over decision-making. The formation of these political cultures has been influenced by the Chilean social context during three stages of party institutional development: Foundational (1933-1956), the New Left (1956-1979), and Socialist Renewal (1979-2005). The first political culture represented in the institutional pattern is formed during the Foundational stage, where political participation is based on Pizzorno’s system of solidarity and collective identification. The second political culture, represented by the practice pattern integrated ideas about discipline and obedience presented in the New Left stage but is reinforced during the Socialist Renewal stage, when participation shifted to Pizzorno’s system of interest and individual goals. These two political cultures define and delimit participation within the party, which is highly individualised. Membership and leadership participation is settled between factions, but also results in the presence of informal types of membership and leadership within the party. Factional membership and leadership is the attribute which legitimises a subject as party member. In Bachelet’s case, her persona brings together these two cultures, despite increasing tensions between excluded sectors in the base and leadership of the party and the hegemonic leadership. The first institutional pattern played to an idea that her candidacy and nomination represented the inclusion of historical members as part of pluralism and democracy. The discontented base membership linked her persona with this pattern and supported her. However, as a faction leader and mandatario she also reinforced the elitist and hegemonic 'practice pattern' of participation, which resulted in strong disciplinary relationships coming from the faction’s elite in order to secure her nomination. As a result, the elitist practice pattern was deepened due to the strengthening of authoritarianism, co-optation and hegemony within the party. This then helps us understand the fragility of party unity in support of her candidacy and the subsequent division of the party in 2010 when a coalition of the right was elected to power

Harmer, Tanya (2020) Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America, The University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), xvi + 370 pp., £36.50 hbk., £19.29 ebk.

© 2022 The Author. Published by Wiley. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1111/blar.13367Published versio

Obstinate memory: Working-class politics and neoliberal forgetting in the United Kingdom and Chile

© 2022 The Authors. Published by SAGE. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980211073111In the 40 years since Chile and the United Kingdom became the crucibles of neoliberalization, working-class agency has been transformed, its institutions systematically dismantled and its politics, after the continuity neoliberalism of both the UK Blair government and the Chilean Concertación, in a crisis of legitimacy. In the process, memories of struggle have been captured within narratives of ‘capitalist realism’ (Fisher) – the present, past and future collapsed into Walter Benjamin’s ‘empty homogeneous time’. This article explores ways in which two traumatic moments of working-class struggle have been narrativized by the media in the service of this ‘presentism’: the 1973 coup in Chile and the 1984–1985 Miners’ Strike in the United Kingdom. We argue that the use of ‘living history’ or bottom-up approaches to memory provides an urgently needed recovery of disruptive narratives of class identity and offers a way of reclaiming alternative futures from the grip of reductive economic nationalism.Published onlin

Protamine-like proteins have bactericidal activity. The first evidence in Mytilus galloprovincialis.

The major acid-soluble protein components of the mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis sperm chromatin consist of the protamine-like proteins PL-II, PL-III and PL-IV, an intermediate group of sperm nuclear basic proteins between histones and protamines. The aim of this study was to investigate the bactericidal activity of these proteins since, to date, there are reports on bactericidal activity of protamines and histones, but not on protamine-like proteins. We tested the bactericidal activity of these proteins against Gram-positive bacteria: Enterococcus faecalis and two different strains of Staphylococcus aureus, as well as Gram-negative bacteria: Proteus mirabilis, Proteus vulgaris, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Salmonella typhmurium, Enterobacter aerogenes, Enterobacter cloacae, and Escherichia coli. Clinical isolates of the same bacterial species were also used to compare their sensitivity to these proteins. The results show that Mytilus galloprovincialis protamine-like proteins exhibited bactericidal activity against all bacterial strains tested with different minimum bactericidal concentration values, ranging from 15.7 to 250 µg/mL. Furthermore, these proteins were active against some bacterial strains tested that are resistant to conventional antibiotics. These proteins showed very low toxicity as judged by red blood cell lysis and viability MTT assays and seem to act both at the membrane level and within the bacterial cell. We also tested the bactericidal activity of the product obtained from an in vitro model of gastrointestinal digestion of protamine-like proteins on a Gram-positive and a Gram-negative strain, and obtained the same results with respect to undigested protamine-like proteins on the Gram-positive bacterium. These results provide the first evidence of bactericidal activity of protamine-like-proteins

The political culture of the Chilean Socialist Party and its influence on the nomination of Michelle Bachelet as presidential candidate in 2005

This study develops a conceptualisation of the political cultures of the Chilean Socialist Party (PSCh) in order to understand and develop an explanation of the nomination of Michelle Bachelet as presidential candidate in 2005 which avoids the oversimplifications of existing approaches. At the theoretical level, political culture is defined from the collective action perspective conceptualising it as a framework for action (Elkin, 1993: 123). This political culture is formed by patterns for political participation which drive internal power relations between members and leaders. The formation of these patterns is influenced by their social context which is mediated by groups of members and leaders in relation to their histories, experiences of critical historical junctures and ideological heritages. The conceptualisation developed thus links structure and agency in a way that enables a nuanced analysis of inter-party power relationships and agency. This fosters a deeper explanation of Bachelet’s nomination and enables evaluation of its meaning for the party as an institution. It also help us to understand internal dynamics and contradictions than could be found in her nomination. I argue that the PSCh has historically had two political cultures whose relative balance of power within the party has shifted over time. The first which I name the institutional pattern is a normative pattern which frames political participation as libertarian, democratic and pluralistic. Currently it is the non-dominant political culture to be found in the party bases. The second is the dominant party political culture which I name the practice pattern. This frames relationships between members and leaders from the perspective of co-optation, authoritarianism and hegemony over decision-making. The formation of these political cultures has been influenced by the Chilean social context during three stages of party institutional development: Foundational (1933-1956), the New Left (1956-1979), and Socialist Renewal (1979-2005). The first political culture represented in the institutional pattern is formed during the Foundational stage, where political participation is based on Pizzorno’s system of solidarity and collective identification. The second political culture, represented by the practice pattern integrated ideas about discipline and obedience presented in the New Left stage but is reinforced during the Socialist Renewal stage, when participation shifted to Pizzorno’s system of interest and individual goals. These two political cultures define and delimit participation within the party, which is highly individualised. Membership and leadership participation is settled between factions, but also results in the presence of informal types of membership and leadership within the party. Factional membership and leadership is the attribute which legitimises a subject as party member. In Bachelet’s case, her persona brings together these two cultures, despite increasing tensions between excluded sectors in the base and leadership of the party and the hegemonic leadership. The first institutional pattern played to an idea that her candidacy and nomination represented the inclusion of historical members as part of pluralism and democracy. The discontented base membership linked her persona with this pattern and supported her. However, as a faction leader and mandatario she also reinforced the elitist and hegemonic 'practice pattern' of participation, which resulted in strong disciplinary relationships coming from the faction’s elite in order to secure her nomination. As a result, the elitist practice pattern was deepened due to the strengthening of authoritarianism, co-optation and hegemony within the party. This then helps us understand the fragility of party unity in support of her candidacy and the subsequent division of the party in 2010 when a coalition of the right was elected to power

Interspecific functional convergence and divergence and intraspecific negative density dependence underlie the seed-to-seedling transition in tropical trees

The seed-to-seedling transition constitutes a critical bottleneck in the life history of plants and represents a major determinant of species composition and abundance. However, we have surprisingly little knowledge regarding the forces driving this ontogenetic transition. Here we utilize information regarding organismal function to investigate the strength of intra- and interspecific negative density dependence during the seed-to-seedling transition in Puerto Rican tree species. Our analyses were implemented at individual sites and across an entire 16-ha forest plot, spanning 6 years. The functional richness of seedling assemblages was significantly lower than expected given the seed assemblages, but the functional evenness was significantly higher than expected, indicating the simultaneous importance of constraints on the overall phenotypic space and trait differences for successful transitions from seed to seedling. The results were consistent across years. Within species, we also found evidence for strong intraspecific negative density dependence, where the probability of transition was proportionally lower when in a site with high conspecific density. These results suggest that filtering of similar phenotypes across species and strong negative density dependence within and among species are simultaneously driving the structure and dynamics of tropical tree assemblages during this critical life-history transition

Behaviour of the plasma concentration of gelatinases and their tissue inhibitors in subjects with venous leg ulcers.

Venous leg ulcers are common in subjects with chronic venous insufficiency. The increased intraluminal pressure causes alteration of the skin microcirculation, leukocyte activation and release of proteolytic enzymes leading to ulceration. An impaired expression and activity of matrix metalloproteases (MMPs) and their tissue inhibitors (TIMPs) might influence extracellular matrix degradation and deposition in chronic venous ulcers with the failure of the healing process. Our aim was to evaluate plasma concentration of gelatinases (MMP-2 and MMP-9) and their inhibitors (TIMP-1 and TIMP-2) in subjects with venous leg ulcers before and after the compression therapy. We enrolled 36 subjects (12 men and 24 women, mean age 67.38 ± 12.7 yrs) with non-infected venous leg ulcers (CEAP C6), which underwent a color Duplex scan examination of the veins and arteries of the inferior limbs and were treated with a multi-layer bandaging system. The ulcer healing was obtained in 23 subjects only (9 men and 14 women). We evaluated, on fasting venous blood, the plasma levels of MMP-2, MMP-9, TIMP-1 and TIMP-2 using ELISA kit, before and after the treatment. We observed a significant increase in plasma concentration of gelatinases and their inhibitors and in MMP-2/TIMP-2 ratio in subjects with leg ulcers in comparison with normal controls. In subjects with healed ulcers we found a decrease in MMP-9 and TIMP-1 levels and in MMP-2/TIMP-2 ratio compared to the baseline values, although higher levels of all the examined parameters in comparison with normal controls. In conclusion, plasma MMPs profile is impaired in subjects with venous leg ulcers and it improves after the healing, persisting anyway altered in respect to healthy controls

Lightning Activity Over Chilean Territory

This work presents the spatial distribution and temporal variability of lightning activity over the continental territory of Chile by means of Thunderstorms days (Td), on the basis of 7 years (2012–2018) of lightning measurement from World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN). Td are obtained separately for the 15 geopolitical regions of Chile, reporting the higher lightning activity in the northeastern region of the country with 85 thunderstorms days per year. These values are mainly located in the mountains between 2,000 and 5,000 m.a.s.l. where extensive mining activity is located and there are electrical facilities of great importance for Chile. The Td values obtained in this study update the information presented by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1953, so far the only one available for the entire Chilean territory. From the diurnal cycle analysis, there is a marked mono-modal behavior of lightning activity in the afternoon for latitudes between (Formula presented.) S and (Formula presented.) S (regions XV, I, and II) and a different behavior of lightning activity over the region between (Formula presented.) S and (Formula presented.) S (regions X, XI, and XII) known as Chilean Patagonia, due to special weather conditions in that area. Further more, the seasonal analysis showed that the highest lightning activity occurs in January and February and the lowest activity takes place between June and August. Once again, the Chilean Patagonia showed a different behavior because the highest activity is presented in May and August, and the lowest in September. The analysis and results presented here contribute to the knowledge of lightning activity in the region that has not been characterized before and can serve as a basis for future research to determine the behavior of this natural phenomenon.Fil: Montana, Johny. Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria.; ChileFil: Rodriguez Morales, Carlos Augusto. Universidade do Sao Paulo. Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas; BrasilFil: Nicora, Maria Gabriela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Unidad de Investigación y Desarrollo Estratégico para la Defensa. Ministerio de Defensa. Unidad de Investigación y Desarrollo Estratégico para la Defensa; Argentina. Ministerio de Defensa. Instituto de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas para la Defensa; ArgentinaFil: Rey Ardila, Jorge. Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria.; ChileFil: Schurch, Roger. Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria.; ChileFil: Aranguren, D.. Keraunos; Colombi