Theoretical investigation of the reflection of ionizing shocks

Wall pressure pulses and reflected waves in argon and xenon ionized gases in shock tube

The Effect of ICT on Trade: Does Product Complexity Matter?

We use a gravity model of trade to investigate the effect of internet use on aggregate trade flows. We apply a structural gravity model using up-to-date PPML estimation techniques to a sample of bilateral exports of 120 countries over the period 2000–2014. In contrast to previous studies, we segment countries according to their degree of product complexity and estimate the model for each segment. The results show that internet use increases trade, and the segmentation by product complexity is more sensitive to internet use than segmenting by level of income. The main results also indicate that countries trade more if similar levels of ICT use are coupled with similar degrees of product complexity in the trading countries

Innate Immune Response against Hepatitis C Virus: Targets for Vaccine Adjuvants.

Despite successful treatments, hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections continue to be a significant world health problem. High treatment costs, the high number of undiagnosed individuals, and the difficulty to access to treatment, particularly in marginalized susceptible populations, make it improbable to achieve the global control of the virus in the absence of an effective preventive vaccine. Current vaccine development is mostly focused on weakly immunogenic subunits, such as surface glycoproteins or non-structural proteins, in the case of HCV. Adjuvants are critical components of vaccine formulations that increase immunogenic performance. As we learn more information about how adjuvants work, it is becoming clear that proper stimulation of innate immunity is crucial to achieving a successful immunization. Several hepatic cell types participate in the early innate immune response and the subsequent inflammation and activation of the adaptive response, principally hepatocytes, and antigen-presenting cells (Kupffer cells, and dendritic cells). Innate pattern recognition receptors on these cells, mainly toll-like receptors, are targets for new promising adjuvants. Moreover, complex adjuvants that stimulate different components of the innate immunity are showing encouraging results and are being incorporated in current vaccines. Recent studies on HCV-vaccine adjuvants have shown that the induction of a strong T- and B-cell immune response might be enhanced by choosing the right adjuvant.PI17CIII/00003/Instituto de Salud Carlos III PI19CIII/00009/Instituto de Salud Carlos III RD16CIII/0002/0002/Plan Nacional R+D+IS

Strategies Targeting the Innate Immune Response for the Treatment of Hepatitis C Virus-Associated Liver Fibrosis

Direct-acting antivirals eliminate hepatitis C virus (HCV) in more than 95% of treated individuals and may abolish liver injury, arrest fibrogenesis, and reverse fibrosis and cirrhosis. However, liver regeneration is usually a slow process that is less effective in the late stages of fibrosis. What is more, fibrogenesis may prevail in patients with advanced cirrhosis, where it can progress to liver failure and hepatocellular carcinoma. Therefore, the development of antifibrotic drugs that halt and reverse fibrosis progression is urgently needed. Fibrosis occurs due to the repair process of damaged hepatic tissue, which eventually leads to scarring. The innate immune response against HCV is essential in the initiation and progression of liver fibrosis. HCV-infected hepatocytes and liver macrophages secrete proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines that promote the activation and differentiation of hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) to myofibroblasts that produce extracellular matrix (ECM) components. Prolonged ECM production by myofibroblasts due to chronic inflammation is essential to the development of fibrosis. While no antifibrotic therapy is approved to date, several drugs are being tested in phase 2 and phase 3 trials with promising results. This review discusses current state-of-the-art knowledge on treatments targeting the innate immune system to revert chronic hepatitis C-associated liver fibrosis. Agents that cause liver damage may vary (alcohol, virus infection, etc.), but fibrosis progression shows common patterns among them, including chronic inflammation and immune dysregulation, hepatocyte injury, HSC activation, and excessive ECM deposition. Therefore, mechanisms underlying these processes are promising targets for general antifibrotic therapies.This study was supported by Grants from Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) (Grant numbers PI17CIII/00003 and PI20CIII/00004 to SR, and PI19CIII/00009 to IM). The study was also funded by the RD16CIII/0002/0002 project as part of the Plan Nacional R+D+I and co-funded by ISCIII- Subdirección General de Evaluación and the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER). DSC is supported through Fundación SEIMC-GESIDA by a fellowship award from Fundación ONCE ‘Oportunidad al Talento, 2019/20’ co-fnanced by Fondo Social Europeo (202001FONCE1).S

Creating and sustaining a high-performing tennis culture

The coach is identified as a key actor in the development of a high-performing culture, in this case, tennis. We investigated how the participating tennis coaches on the International Tennis Federation/Olympic Solidarity Tennis program in Spain made an impact within their national organizations, by developing and implementing a coach-created high-performing environment. We collected data using both interview and survey. Our findings from the survey indicated that the participating coaches found the program to be very helpful to their practice, especially long term tennis development, structure and organization of effective tennis programs and appropriate training methods. Analysis of the interviews revealed three main themes: 1) high-performing environment 2) deliberate focus on growth and development; 3) obstacles to creating a tennis culture. We discuss the difficulties associated with transferring a successful development programme to a different environment and conclude with some key points for implementation

The superadditivity effects of quantum capacity decrease with the dimension for qudit depolarizing channels

Quantum channel capacity is a fundamental quantity in order to understand how good can quantum information be transmitted or corrected when subjected to noise. However, it is generally not known how to compute such quantities, since the quantum channel coherent information is not additive for all channels, implying that it must be maximized over an unbounded number of channel uses. This leads to the phenomenon known as superadditivity, which refers to the fact that the regularized coherent information of $n$ channel uses exceeds one-shot coherent information. In this article, we study how the gain in quantum capacity of qudit depolarizing channels relates to the dimension of the systems considered. We make use of an argument based on the no-cloning bound in order to proof that the possible superadditive effects decrease as a function of the dimension for such family of channels. In addition, we prove that the capacity of the qudit depolarizing channel coincides with the coherent information when $d\rightarrow\infty$. We conclude that when high dimensional qudits experiencing depolarizing noise are considered, the coherent information of the channel is not only an achievable rate but essentially the maximum possible rate for any quantum block code.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Drug-drug interactions between tyrosine kinase inhibitors and concomitant medications: drug safety in chronic myeloid leukemia treatment.

Background: Clinical Pharmacist should be aware of hematologic toxicities from tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) used to treat chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). Drug-drug interactions (DDI) may be problematic. Objective: To analyze DDI between TKI and the concomitant medication. Setting: Retrospective observational study carried in a tertiary hospital of Spain. Method: A bibliographic search was made on the UpToDate®, Lexicomp® and Micromedex® software platforms to search for evidence on DDI between TKI and the concomitant medication. Main outcome measure: Number of interactions with respect to sex,to number of concomitant drugs, and to TKI used. Results: A total of 28 patients were analyzed. 78.6% of patients had medication associated with the TKI. There was a total of 50 significant DDI, out of a total of 128 drugs, so the risk of having interaction in the study population was 39.1%. Regarding the management of the interactions by the hematologist and the acceptance of the pharmaceutical intervention: 10 patients experienced 14 high-level interactions. Of these the doctor knew 50% and had performed intervention in all cases: modify the treatment in 28.6%, consulted with service responsible for treatment in 42.8% and spaced the intake of drugs in 28.6%. It is important to periodically review concomitant medication and to have a strategy to manage interactions. The role of the clinical pharmacist is essential in communication with the patient, assessment of treatments, detecting potential interactions and disseminating information among the multidisciplinary team. Conclusion: All patients who are prescribed oral antineoplastic drugs are provided patient education materials about TKI, which include possible interactions. Any changes in the patient’s medications prompt a review for DDI

Seismic Activity Rates in the Iberian Peninsula

Evaluating the seismic hazard requires establishing a distribution of the seismic activity rate, irrespective of the methodology used in the evaluation. In practice, how that activity rate is established tends to be the main difference between the various evaluation methods. The traditional procedure relies on a seismogenic zonation and the Gutenberg-Richter (GR) hypothesis. Competing zonations are often compared looking only at the geometry of the zones, but the resulting activity rate is affected by both geometry and the values assigned to the GR parameters. Contour plots can be used for conducting more meaningful comparisons, providing the GR parameters are suitably normalised. More recent approaches for establishing the seismic activity rate forego the use of zones and GR statistics and special attention is paid here to such procedures. The paper presents comparisons between the local activity rates that result for the complete Iberian Peninsula using kernel estimators as well as two seismogenic zonations. It is concluded that the smooth variation of the seismic activity rate produced by zoneless methods is more realistic than the stepwise changes associated with zoned approaches; moreover, the choice of zonation often has a stronger influence on the results than its fairly subjective origin would warrant. It is also observed that the activity rate derived from the kernel approach, related with the GR parameter “a”, is qualitatively consistent with the epicentres in the catalogue. Finally, when comparing alternative zonations it is not just their geometry but the distribution of activity rate that should be compared

Seismic Isolation of Liquefied Natural Gas Tanks: a Compartive Assessment

In severe seismic environments, tanks for storage of liquefied natural gas may benefit from seismic isolation. As the design accelerations increase, the inner tank undergoes progressively greater demands and may suffer from corner uplift, elephant’s foot buckling, gross sliding, shell thickness requirements beyond what can be reliably welded and, eventually, global uplift. Some of these problems cause extra costs while others make the construction impossible. The seismic environments at which the previous problems arise are quantified for modern 160,000 m3 tanks, whether supported on shallow or pile foundations, for both a conventional design and one employing seismic isolation. Additionally, by introducing some cost assumptions, comparisons can be made as to the cost of dealing with the seismic threat for each seismic environment and tank design option. It then becomes possible to establish the seismic environments that require seismic isolation, as well as to offer guidance for decisions in intermediate cases