Modifications of Gait as Predictors of Natural Osteoarthritis Progression in STR/Ort Mice

OBJECTIVE: Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common chronic disease for which disease-modifying therapies are not currently available. Studies to seek new targets for slowing the progress of OA rely on mouse models, but these do not allow for longitudinal monitoring of disease development. This study was undertaken to determine whether gait can be used to measure disease severity in the STR/Ort mouse model of spontaneous OA and whether gait changes are related to OA joint pain. METHODS: Gait was monitored using a treadmill-based video system. Correlations between OA severity and gait at 3 treadmill speeds were assessed in STR/Ort mice. Gait and pain behaviors of STR/Ort mice and control CBA mice were analyzed longitudinally, with monthly assessments. RESULTS: The best speed to identify paw area changes associated with OA severity in STR/Ort mice was found to be 17 cm · seconds(−1). Paw area was modified with age in CBA and STR/Ort mice, but this began earlier in STR/Ort mice and correlated with the onset of OA at 20 weeks of age. In addition, task noncompliance appeared at 20 weeks. Surprisingly, STR/Ort mice did not show any signs of pain with OA development, even when treated with the opioid antagonist naloxone, but did exhibit normal pain behaviors in response to complete Freund's adjuvant–induced arthritis. CONCLUSION: The present results identify an animal model in which OA severity and OA pain can be studied in isolation from one another. The findings suggest that paw area and treadmill noncompliance may be useful tools to longitudinally monitor nonpainful OA development in STR/Ort mice. This will help in providing a noninvasive means of assessing new therapies to slow the progression of OA

La importancia del registro documental en las colecciones arqueológicas: el caso de los vasos líticos de la Colección Benjamín Muniz Barreto (Museo de La Plata)

El objetivo de este trabajo es reconstruir y analizar los contextos funerarios de 9 vasos líticos de la Colección Benjamín Muniz Barreto, en base al estudio de su diversidad morfo-estilística y al de los objetos que acompañan dichos ajuares. Complementada esta tarea con el análisis del registro documental de diarios y libretas de campo. Este objetivo se encuentra enmarcado dentro del proyecto de Puesta en Valor del Depósito N° 7 de la División Arqueología del Museo de La Plata, destinado a realizar tareas de conservación, investigación y comunicación, contribuyendo a preservar nuestro patrimonio cultural.Red de Museos de la Universidad Nacional de La Plat

La importancia del registro documental en las colecciones arqueológicas: el caso de los vasos líticos de la Colección Benjamín Muniz Barreto (Museo de La Plata)

El objetivo de este trabajo es reconstruir y analizar los contextos funerarios de 9 vasos líticos de la Colección Benjamín Muniz Barreto, en base al estudio de su diversidad morfo-estilística y al de los objetos que acompañan dichos ajuares. Complementada esta tarea con el análisis del registro documental de diarios y libretas de campo. Este objetivo se encuentra enmarcado dentro del proyecto de Puesta en Valor del Depósito N° 7 de la División Arqueología del Museo de La Plata, destinado a realizar tareas de conservación, investigación y comunicación, contribuyendo a preservar nuestro patrimonio cultural.Red de Museos de la Universidad Nacional de La Plat

La importancia del registro documental en las colecciones arqueológicas: el caso de los vasos líticos de la Colección Benjamín Muniz Barreto (Museo de La Plata)

El objetivo de este trabajo es reconstruir y analizar los contextos funerarios de 9 vasos líticos de la Colección Benjamín Muniz Barreto, en base al estudio de su diversidad morfo-estilística y al de los objetos que acompañan dichos ajuares. Complementada esta tarea con el análisis del registro documental de diarios y libretas de campo. Este objetivo se encuentra enmarcado dentro del proyecto de Puesta en Valor del Depósito N° 7 de la División Arqueología del Museo de La Plata, destinado a realizar tareas de conservación, investigación y comunicación, contribuyendo a preservar nuestro patrimonio cultural.Red de Museos de la Universidad Nacional de La Plat

GeantV: Results from the prototype of concurrent vector particle transport simulation in HEP

Full detector simulation was among the largest CPU consumer in all CERN experiment software stacks for the first two runs of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In the early 2010's, the projections were that simulation demands would scale linearly with luminosity increase, compensated only partially by an increase of computing resources. The extension of fast simulation approaches to more use cases, covering a larger fraction of the simulation budget, is only part of the solution due to intrinsic precision limitations. The remainder corresponds to speeding-up the simulation software by several factors, which is out of reach using simple optimizations on the current code base. In this context, the GeantV R&D project was launched, aiming to redesign the legacy particle transport codes in order to make them benefit from fine-grained parallelism features such as vectorization, but also from increased code and data locality. This paper presents extensively the results and achievements of this R&D, as well as the conclusions and lessons learnt from the beta prototype.Comment: 34 pages, 26 figures, 24 table

Redes de ayuda en el acontecimiento

El objetivo principal de este trabajo es analizar algunos aspectos significativos de los procesos de ayuda y cooperación que se activaron, emergieron y evidenciaron a partir de la inundación ocurrida el 2 de abril de 2013 en la ciudad de La Plata. Este acontecimiento sacudió la representación local de una noción naturalizada de orden, a partir de la cual se legitima un modo específico de apropiación del espacio social (Reguillo, 2005). Nos proponemos una aproximación al reconocimiento de estas representaciones a través del análisis de distintas narrativas acerca de las prácticas y de las formas gregarias en que se configuró la ayuda, de las formas en que se apeló a las redes de contención disponibles, a sus formas objetivadas y de las distintas valoraciones de la respuesta obtenida. Nos interesa, en particular, indagar acerca de la posible relación entre estas representaciones y un acceso diferencial al capital social, el cual brinda -a su vez- un acceso desigual a otros capitales, a otras propiedades del espacio social (Bourdieu, 1984). Conscientes del alcance limitado de este ejercicio y ajenos a cualquier intención generalizadora, nos proponemos confrontar con nuestro referente empírico un conjunto de supuestos e interrogantes que nos movilizan.Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Muse

Methionine Adenosyltransferase I/III Deficiency in Portugal: High Frequency of a Dominantly Inherited Form in a Small Area of Douro High Lands

Methionine adenosyltransferase deficienc(MAT I/III deficiency) is an inborn error of metabolism resulting in isolated hypermethioninemia, and usually inherited as an autosomal recessive trait, although a dominant form has been reported in several families. During the last 6 years, approximately 520,000 newborns were screened in the Portuguese Newborn Screening Laboratory by MS/MS, and 21 cases of persistent hypermethioninemia were found. One case was confirmed to be a deficiency of cystathionine b-synthase and 20 cases were confirmed by MAT1A gene analysis to have an elevation of methionine due to MAT I/III deficiency, which indicates an incidence for this condition of 1/26,000. Twelve of the MAT I/III deficient newborns, belonging to 11 families, were identified in the northern region of Portugal and sent to the same treatment center, where they are under follow-up. Clinical, biochemical, and genetic characteristics of individuals from these 11 families are presented. Plasma methionine and homocysteine concentrations were found to be moderately increased in all newborns, and molecular analysis revealed that they all were heterozygous for R264H mutation. Normal growth,development, and neurological examination were observed in all cases, and cerebral MRI performed in six cases revealed myelination abnormalities in one case. Plasma methionine concentration for all 12 cases was always below 300 mM, and they are all on a normal diet for their age

Simple Metals at High Pressure

In this lecture we review high-pressure phase transition sequences exhibited by simple elements, looking at the examples of the main group I, II, IV, V, and VI elements. General trends are established by analyzing the changes in coordination number on compression. Experimentally found phase transitions and crystal structures are discussed with a brief description of the present theoretical picture.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures, lecture notes for the lecture given at the Erice course on High-Pressure Crystallography in June 2009, Sicily, Ital

Advances in ab-initio theory of Multiferroics. Materials and mechanisms: modelling and understanding

Within the broad class of multiferroics (compounds showing a coexistence of magnetism and ferroelectricity), we focus on the subclass of "improper electronic ferroelectrics", i.e. correlated materials where electronic degrees of freedom (such as spin, charge or orbital) drive ferroelectricity. In particular, in spin-induced ferroelectrics, there is not only a {\em coexistence} of the two intriguing magnetic and dipolar orders; rather, there is such an intimate link that one drives the other, suggesting a giant magnetoelectric coupling. Via first-principles approaches based on density functional theory, we review the microscopic mechanisms at the basis of multiferroicity in several compounds, ranging from transition metal oxides to organic multiferroics (MFs) to organic-inorganic hybrids (i.e. metal-organic frameworks, MOFs)Comment: 22 pages, 9 figure

The order parameter-entropy relation in some universal classes: experimental evidence

The asymptotic behaviour near phase transitions can be suitably characterized by the scaling of $\Delta s/Q^2$ with $\epsilon=1-T/T_c$, where $\Delta s$ is the excess entropy and $Q$ is the order parameter. As $\Delta s$ is obtained by integration of the experimental excess specific heat of the transition $\Delta c$, it displays little experimental noise so that the curve $\log(\Delta s/Q^2)$ versus $\log\epsilon$ is better constrained than, say, $\log\Delta c$ versus $\log\epsilon$. The behaviour of $\Delta s/Q^2$ for different universality classes is presented and compared. In all cases, it clearly deviates from being a constant. The determination of this function can then be an effective method to distinguish asymptotic critical behaviour. For comparison, experimental data for three very different systems, Rb2CoF4, Rb2ZnCl4 and SrTiO3, are analysed under this approach. In SrTiO3, the function $\Delta s/Q^2$ does not deviate within experimental resolution from a straight line so that, although Q can be fitted with a non mean-field exponent, the data can be explained by a classical Landau mean-field behaviour. In contrast, the behaviour of $\Delta s/Q^2$ for the antiferromagnetic transition in Rb2CoF4 and the normal-incommensurate phase transition in Rb2ZCl4 is fully consistent with the asymptotic critical behaviour of the universality class corresponding to each case. This analysis supports, therefore, the claim that incommensurate phase transitions in general, and the A$_2$BX$_4$ compounds in particular, in contrast with most structural phase transitions, have critical regions large enough to be observable.Comment: 13 pp. 9 ff. 2 tab. RevTeX. Submitted to J. Phys.: Cond. Matte