Tombs, materiality and maternity in the Bell Beaker female burials: Two Case Studies in the middle Tagus valley

Two Bell Beaker tombs in Toledo’s province aid to evaluate the women burials from the Iberian Peninsula and the existence of identifiable behaviour based on sex. Women are part of Bell Beaker burials and they appear in all the different constructions, associations and rituals distinctive of this period of time. Grave goods show heterogeneity while displaying her social relevance and integration within their society. This suggests that the women burials remain in the same social status of Bell Beaker communities, regardless of sex. The fact that one of the case studies is a pregnant woman allows us to rethink the importance of maternity in the 3rd millennium B.C. and the casuality of the pregnancy in women death in the past.El trabajo ha sido realizado dentro de los proyectos CCGC2017-HUM/020 de la UAH y 12122945/2017 JCC

Bronze age Iinhumations in ceramic urn in the middle and upper Tagus basin: A comparative point of view

Se aborda el tema de los enterramientos prehistóricos en urnas en el valle interior del río Tajo. Los caracterizamos a partir de los enterramientos conocidos hasta el momento en la zona y tres más inéditos procedentes del yacimiento de Las Mayores (Toledo), de los que hemos obtenidos recientes datos arqueométricos. Con la información resultante reflexionamos sobre su relación con otros ámbitos peninsulares, especialmente el argárico, donde tienen amplia representación, y sobre su identificación dentro de la secuencia zonal, siendo característicos de la Edad del Bronce pero ajenos a las comunidades Protocogotas. Los enterramientos en pithoi tienen escaso arraigo en el interior peninsular, mostrando, aun así, una enorme variabilidad que impide ver en ellos consideraciones sociales más allá de los valores comprensibles dentro del reducido ámbito familiar, que es el dominante en los enterramientos de la Edad del Bronce en la zonaPrehistoric urn burials in the inland Tagus valley are characterised through the known examples in the area and three new ones at the site of Las Mayores (Toledo), for which archaeometric data have recently been obtained. The information obtained allows a reflection, first on their relationship with other parts of Iberia, especially the Argaric world, where such burials are well known. In second place, their identification within the regional sequence is assessed, as they are characteristic of the Bronze Age but foreign to ProtoCogotas communities. Pithoi burials did not enjoy a tradition in inland Iberia and their great variability does not allow social considerations at the community level. This practice is only comprehensible within the small family circles of the segmentary societies that characterised the Bronze Age in the are

Re-reading past: the megalithic monument of Portillo de las Cortes, Guadalajara / MAN

La oportunidad de retomar el estudio del dolmen del Portillo de las Cortes, Guadalajara, a partir de los materiales conservados en el MAN y de recientes trabajos de campo, ofrece un resultado positivo. Podemos aportar el conocimiento de fuentes de aprovisionamiento, una fecha C14 obtenida de un cráneo recientemente documentado en la reestructuración del MAN, y una nueva lectura de posibles refacturas del monumento.Positive results have been obtained from resuming the study of the dolmen of El Portillo de las Cortes (Guadalajara, Spain) taking into account materials that are nowadays kept in the MAN (Museo Arqueológico Nacional) as well as recent fieldwork. We hereby present a new C14 date obtained from a recently found and documented skull from the MAN, and new perspectives about possible ancient interventions to rebuild the monument and about supply sources for the community that erected it

Geno-and cytotoxicity induced on Cyprinus carpio by aluminum, iron, mercury and mixture thereof.

Metals such as Al, Fe and Hg are used in diverse anthropogenic activities. Their presence in water bodies is due mainly to domestic, agricultural and industrial wastewater discharges and constitutes a hazard for the organisms inhabiting these environments. The present study aimed to evaluate geno- and cyto- toxicity induced by Al, Fe, Hg and the mixture of these metals on blood of the common carp Cyprinus carpio. Specimens were exposed to the permissible limits in water for human use and consumption according to the pertinent official Mexican norm [official Mexican norm NOM-127-SSA1-1994] Al (0.2 mg L 1), Fe (0.3 mg L 1), Hg (0.001 mg L 1) and their mixture for 12, 24, 48, 72 and 96 h. Bio- markers of genotoxicity (comet assay and micronucleus test) and cytotoxicity (caspase-3 activity and TUNEL assay) were evaluated. Significant increases relative to the control group (po0.05) were observed in all biomarkers at all exposure times in all test systems; however, damage was greater when the metals were present as a mixture. Furthermore, correlations between metal concentrations and biomarkers of geno- and cytotoxicity were found only at certain exposure times. In conclusion, Al, Fe, Hg and the mixture of these metals induce geno- and cytotoxicity on blood of C. carpio.CONACyT-Mexico, Project 18154

Boletín NUESTRA AMÉRICA XXI - Desafíos y alternativas, num.27, Enero 2019

Una excelente iniciativa del Grupo de Trabajo Crisis y economía mundial, coordinado por María Josefina Morales y Gabriela Roffinelli

Cross-disease Meta-analysis of Genome-wide Association Studies for Systemic Sclerosis and Rheumatoid Arthritis Reveals IRF4 as a New Common Susceptibility Locus

Objectives: Systemic sclerosis (SSc) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are autoimmune diseases that share clinical and immunological characteristics. To date, several shared SSc- RA loci have been identified independently. In this study, we aimed to systematically search for new common SSc-RA loci through an inter-disease meta-GWAS strategy. Methods: We performed a meta-analysis combining GWAS datasets of SSc and RA using a strategy that allowed identification of loci with both same-direction and opposingdirection allelic effects. The top single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were followed-up in independent SSc and RA case-control cohorts. This allowed us to increase the sample size to a total of 8,830 SSc patients, 16,870 RA patients and 43,393 controls. Results: The cross-disease meta-analysis of the GWAS datasets identified several loci with nominal association signals (P-value < 5 x 10-6), which also showed evidence of association in the disease-specific GWAS scan. These loci included several genomic regions not previously reported as shared loci, besides risk factors associated with both diseases in previous studies. The follow-up of the putatively new SSc-RA loci identified IRF4 as a shared risk factor for these two diseases (Pcombined = 3.29 x 10-12). In addition, the analysis of the biological relevance of the known SSc-RA shared loci pointed to the type I interferon and the interleukin 12 signaling pathways as the main common etiopathogenic factors. Conclusions: Our study has identified a novel shared locus, IRF4, for SSc and RA and highlighted the usefulness of cross-disease GWAS meta-analysis in the identification of common risk loci

Complement component C4 structural variation and quantitative traits contribute to sex-biased vulnerability in systemic sclerosis

Altres ajuts: Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER), "A way of making Europe".Copy number (CN) polymorphisms of complement C4 play distinct roles in many conditions, including immune-mediated diseases. We investigated the association of C4 CN with systemic sclerosis (SSc) risk. Imputed total C4, C4A, C4B, and HERV-K CN were analyzed in 26,633 individuals and validated in an independent cohort. Our results showed that higher C4 CN confers protection to SSc, and deviations from CN parity of C4A and C4B augmented risk. The protection contributed per copy of C4A and C4B differed by sex. Stronger protection was afforded by C4A in men and by C4B in women. C4 CN correlated well with its gene expression and serum protein levels, and less C4 was detected for both in SSc patients. Conditioned analysis suggests that C4 genetics strongly contributes to the SSc association within the major histocompatibility complex locus and highlights classical alleles and amino acid variants of HLA-DRB1 and HLA-DPB1 as C4-independent signals

Global Retinoblastoma Presentation and Analysis by National Income Level.

Importance: Early diagnosis of retinoblastoma, the most common intraocular cancer, can save both a child's life and vision. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that many children across the world are diagnosed late. To our knowledge, the clinical presentation of retinoblastoma has never been assessed on a global scale. Objectives: To report the retinoblastoma stage at diagnosis in patients across the world during a single year, to investigate associations between clinical variables and national income level, and to investigate risk factors for advanced disease at diagnosis. Design, Setting, and Participants: A total of 278 retinoblastoma treatment centers were recruited from June 2017 through December 2018 to participate in a cross-sectional analysis of treatment-naive patients with retinoblastoma who were diagnosed in 2017. Main Outcomes and Measures: Age at presentation, proportion of familial history of retinoblastoma, and tumor stage and metastasis. Results: The cohort included 4351 new patients from 153 countries; the median age at diagnosis was 30.5 (interquartile range, 18.3-45.9) months, and 1976 patients (45.4%) were female. Most patients (n = 3685 [84.7%]) were from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Globally, the most common indication for referral was leukocoria (n = 2638 [62.8%]), followed by strabismus (n = 429 [10.2%]) and proptosis (n = 309 [7.4%]). Patients from high-income countries (HICs) were diagnosed at a median age of 14.1 months, with 656 of 666 (98.5%) patients having intraocular retinoblastoma and 2 (0.3%) having metastasis. Patients from low-income countries were diagnosed at a median age of 30.5 months, with 256 of 521 (49.1%) having extraocular retinoblastoma and 94 of 498 (18.9%) having metastasis. Lower national income level was associated with older presentation age, higher proportion of locally advanced disease and distant metastasis, and smaller proportion of familial history of retinoblastoma. Advanced disease at diagnosis was more common in LMICs even after adjusting for age (odds ratio for low-income countries vs upper-middle-income countries and HICs, 17.92 [95% CI, 12.94-24.80], and for lower-middle-income countries vs upper-middle-income countries and HICs, 5.74 [95% CI, 4.30-7.68]). Conclusions and Relevance: This study is estimated to have included more than half of all new retinoblastoma cases worldwide in 2017. Children from LMICs, where the main global retinoblastoma burden lies, presented at an older age with more advanced disease and demonstrated a smaller proportion of familial history of retinoblastoma, likely because many do not reach a childbearing age. Given that retinoblastoma is curable, these data are concerning and mandate intervention at national and international levels. Further studies are needed to investigate factors, other than age at presentation, that may be associated with advanced disease in LMICs

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Pasados y presente. Estudios para el profesor Ricardo García Cárcel

Ricardo García Cárcel (Requena, 1948) estudió Historia en Valencia bajo el magisterio de Joan Reglà, con quien formó parte del primer profesorado de historia moderna en la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. En esta universidad, desde hace prácticamente cincuenta años, ha desarrollado una extraordinaria labor docente y de investigación marcada por un sagaz instinto histórico, que le ha convertido en pionero de casi todo lo que ha estudiado: las Germanías, la historia de la Cataluña moderna, la Inquisición, las culturas del Siglo de Oro, la Leyenda Negra, Felipe II, Felipe V, Austrias y Borbones, la guerra de la Independencia, la historia cultural, los mitos de la historia de España... Muy pocos tienen su capacidad para reflexionar, ordenar, analizar, conceptualizar y proponer una visión amplia y llena de matices sobre el pasado y las interpretaciones historiográficas. A su laboriosidad inimitable se añade una dedicación sin límites en el asesoramiento de alumnos e investigadores e impulsando revistas, dosieres, seminarios o publicaciones colectivas. Una mínima correspondencia a su generosidad lo constituye este volumen a manera de ineludible agradecimiento