Joan Maragall: un aristocràtic platònic preocupat per la democràcia

El creixement de les idees i les reivindicacions democràtiques preocupen Joan Maragall. Entén que han arribat per quedar-se i cal pensar les limitacions que té aquest pensament polític per les condicions del poble que hauria de governar. L’article vol aproximar-se a les reflexions de Maragall sobre la democràcia, i també sobre l’aristocràcia, que hauria de tenir, al seu parer, totes les virtuts per exercir el govern. Unes reflexions que connecten Maragall amb destacats pensadors de l’època que escriuen des de la mateixa preocupació. Unes reflexions que avui ens poden ajudar a pensar unes societats que es volen democràtiques.   The growth of ideas and the democratic demands concerned Joan Maragall. He understands that they have arrived to stay and that it is necessary to think about the limitations that this political current has in terms of the conditions of the people it must govern. This article interrogates Maragall’s reflections on democracy, and also on the aristocracy, that must have, according to him, all the virtues needed in order to govern. These reflections link Maragall to outstanding thinkers of the period who wrote from the same sense of concern. Today, these reflections can help us think about the democratic societies we want

Bases of the PAH (Movement of Mortgage Victims): activism, collective advice and nonviolent civil disobedience

Aquest article recull alguns dels resultats i conclusions procedents de dos estudis desenvolupats en els darrers mesos dedicats a la mobilització social des de la Plataforma d’Afectats per la Hipoteca (PAH) pel dret a l’habitatge. En tots dos casos s’ha optat per treballar amb una perspectiva qualitativa a partir d’entrevistes a persones vinculades principalment a les PAH de Barcelona, Terrassa i Sabadell. Centrem les conclusions en dos aspectes que considerem essencials per entendre l’origen d’aquesta mobilització, el seu desenvolupament i l’impacte que està tenint: la importància de les persones activistes en la creació de la PAH i el procés de desenvolupament del projecte amb la participació activa de les persones que s’hi apropen inicialment en la seva condició d’afectades i l’activisme que seran capaces de posar en pràctica.Este artículo recoge algunas de los resultados y conclusiones provenientes de dos investigaciones desarrolladas en los últimos meses dedicadas a la movilización social desde la Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) por el derecho a la vivienda. En ambos casos se ha optado por trabajar con una perspectiva cualitativa a partir de entrevistas a personas vinculadas principalmente a las PAH de Barcelona, Terrassa, Sabadell. Centramos las conclusiones en dos aspectos que consideramos esenciales para entender el origen de esta movilización, su desarrollo y el impacto que está teniendo: la importancia de las personas activistas en la creación de la PAH y el proceso de desarrollo del proyecto con la participación activa de las personas que se aproximan inicialmente en su condición de afectadas y el activismo que serán capaces de poner en práctica.This paper presents some of the results and conclusions that emerge from two recent studies of social mobilization in relation to the right to housing by the PAH Movement of Mortgage Victims. In both cases the researchers chose to work from a perspective based on qualitative interviews with individuals linked mainly to PAH in Barcelona, Terrassa and Sabadell. Our findings focus on two aspects that we regard as essential to understanding the origin of this mobilization, its development and its impact: on one hand, the importance of activists in the creation of PAH and the process of its development with the active participation of people who initially became involved when they were personally threatened with eviction, and on the other the activism they were able to put into practice

Sobre los escraches y la necesidad de repertorios transformadores

A principios de 2013, escrache se convirtió en la palabra más sonada en los entornos activistas. Es un término que viene del lunfardo, el habla coloquial de Buenos Aires y de otras ciudades argentinas. Escrachar, en el contexto argentino de lucha contra la impunidad de los responsables de la dicta- dura, significaba poner en evidencia, revelar en público, hacer aparecer la cara de una persona que pretende pasar desaperci- bida

15-M: INTENTOS DE APROXIMAR ÉTICA, POLÍTICA Y DEMOCRACIA

En el 15-M confluyeron un conjunto heterogéneo de personas y grupos que dieron apoyo a lo que acabaría siendo una especie de plataforma o espacio de movilización que recogía distintas reivindicaciones, unas de carácter económico y social, y otras de naturaleza política. Sus críticas a la realidad económica, social y política existente, así como sus propuestas, contaron con la simpatía y el apoyo de muchas organizaciones sociales y amplios sectores de la sociedad. ¿Cómo explicar la gran dimensión social e importancia política que adquirió el 15-M? Se pueden apuntar, al menos, tres tipos de factores que condujeron al surgimiento del 15-M y que favorecieron su posterior extensión en la sociedad

Fundamentos de la Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca: activismo, asesoramiento colectivo y desobediencia civil no violenta

Este artículo recoge algunos de los resultados y conclusiones provenientes de dos investigaciones desarrolladas en los últimos meses dedicadas a la movilización social desde la Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) por el derecho a la vivienda. En ambos casos se ha optado por trabajar con una perspectiva cualitativa a partir de entrevistas a personas vinculadas principalmente a las PAH de Barcelona, Terrassa, Sabadell. Centramos las conclusiones en dos aspectos que consideramos esenciales para entender el origen de esta movilización, su desarrollo y el impacto que está teniendo: la importancia de las personas activistas en la creación de la PAH y el proceso de desarrollo del proyecto con la participación activa de las personas que se aproximan inicialmente en su condición de afectadas y el activismo que serán capaces de poner en práctica

Sequencing of 6.7 Mb of the melon genome using a BAC pooling strategy

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Cucumis melo </it>(melon) belongs to the Cucurbitaceae family, whose economic importance among horticulture crops is second only to Solanaceae. Melon has a high intra-specific genetic variation, morphologic diversity and a small genome size (454 Mb), which make it suitable for a great variety of molecular and genetic studies. A number of genetic and genomic resources have already been developed, such as several genetic maps, BAC genomic libraries, a BAC-based physical map and EST collections. Sequence information would be invaluable to complete the picture of the melon genomic landscape, furthering our understanding of this species' evolution from its relatives and providing an important genetic tool. However, to this day there is little sequence data available, only a few melon genes and genomic regions are deposited in public databases. The development of massively parallel sequencing methods allows envisaging new strategies to obtain long fragments of genomic sequence at higher speed and lower cost than previous Sanger-based methods.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In order to gain insight into the structure of a significant portion of the melon genome we set out to perform massive sequencing of pools of BAC clones. For this, a set of 57 BAC clones from a double haploid line was sequenced in two pools with the 454 system using both shotgun and paired-end approaches. The final assembly consists of an estimated 95% of the actual size of the melon BAC clones, with most likely complete sequences for 50 of the BACs, and a total sequence coverage of 39x. The accuracy of the assembly was assessed by comparing the previously available Sanger sequence of one of the BACs against its 454 sequence, and the polymorphisms found involved only 1.7 differences every 10,000 bp that were localized in 15 homopolymeric regions and two dinucleotide tandem repeats. Overall, the study provides approximately 6.7 Mb or 1.5% of the melon genome. The analysis of this new data has allowed us to gain further insight into characteristics of the melon genome such as gene density, average protein length, or microsatellite and transposon content. The annotation of the BAC sequences revealed a high degree of collinearity and protein sequence identity between melon and its close relative <it>Cucumis sativus </it>(cucumber). Transposon content analysis of the syntenic regions suggests that transposition activity after the split of both cucurbit species has been low in cucumber but very high in melon.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results presented here show that the strategy followed, which combines shotgun and BAC-end sequencing together with anchored marker information, is an excellent method for sequencing specific genomic regions, especially from relatively compact genomes such as that of melon. However, in agreement with other results, this map-based, BAC approach is confirmed to be an expensive way of sequencing a whole plant genome. Our results also provide a partial description of the melon genome's structure. Namely, our analysis shows that the melon genome is highly collinear with the smaller one of cucumber, the size difference being mainly due to the expansion of intergenic regions and proliferation of transposable elements.</p

TSPAN1 : a Novel Protein Involved in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma Chemoresistance

Altres ajuts: This work was supported by grants from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Ayudas a Grupos PCTI Principado de Asturias (IDI2018/155 to J.P.R.), co-financed by the European Regional Fund (ERDF) and AECC (Spanish Association of Cancer Research) Founding Ref. GC16173720CARR (M.E.L.). Y.G.-M. and C.M. were granted by the VHIR and iP-FIS (ISCIII) fellowships respectively.Sensitization of resistant cells and cancer stem cells (CSCs) represents a major challenge in cancer therapy. A proteomic study revealed tetraspanin-1 (TSPAN1) as a protein involved in acquisition of cisplatin (CDDP) resistance (Data are available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD020159). TSPAN1 was found to increase in CDDP-resistant cells, CSCs and biopsies from head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) patients. TSPAN1 depletion in parental and CDDP-resistant HNSCC cells reduced cell proliferation, induced apoptosis, decreased autophagy, sensitized to chemotherapeutic agents and inhibited several signaling cascades, with phospho-SRC inhibition being a major common target. Moreover, TSPAN1 depletion in vivo decreased the size and proliferation of parental and CDDP-resistant tumors and reduced metastatic spreading. Notably, CDDP-resistant tumors showed epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) features that disappeared upon TSPAN1 inhibition, suggesting a link of TSPAN1 with EMT and metastasis. Immunohistochemical analysis of HNSCC specimens further revealed that TSPAN1 expression was correlated with phospho-SRC (pSRC), and inversely with E-cadherin, thus reinforcing TSPAN1 association with EMT. Overall, TSPAN1 emerges as a novel oncogenic protein and a promising target for HNSCC therapy

Long runs of homozygosity are associated with Alzheimer's disease

Altres ajuts: The Genome Research at Fundació ACE project (GR@ACE) is supported by Fundación bancaria "La Caixa," Grifols SA and Fundació ACE. L.M.R. is supported by Consejería de Salud de la Junta de Andalucía (Grant PI-0001/2017).Long runs of homozygosity (ROH) are contiguous stretches of homozygous genotypes, which are a footprint of inbreeding and recessive inheritance. The presence of recessive loci is suggested for Alzheimer's disease (AD); however, their search has been poorly assessed to date. To investigate homozygosity in AD, here we performed a fine-scale ROH analysis using 10 independent cohorts of European ancestry (11,919 AD cases and 9181 controls.) We detected an increase of homozygosity in AD cases compared to controls [ β (CI 95%) = 0.070 (0.037-0.104); P = 3.91 × 10 −5 ; β (CI95%) = 0.043 (0.009-0.076); P = 0.013]. ROHs increasing the risk of AD (OR > 1) were significantly overrepresented compared to ROHs increasing protection (p < 2.20 × 10 −16). A significant ROH association with AD risk was detected upstream the HS3ST1 locus (chr4:11,189,482‒11,305,456), (β (CI 95%) = 1.09 (0.48 ‒ 1.48), p value = 9.03 × 10 −4), previously related to AD. Next, to search for recessive candidate variants in ROHs, we constructed a homozygosity map of inbred AD cases extracted from an outbred population and explored ROH regions in whole-exome sequencing data (N = 1449). We detected a candidate marker, rs117458494, mapped in the SPON1 locus, which has been previously associated with amyloid metabolism. Here, we provide a research framework to look for recessive variants in AD using outbred populations. Our results showed that AD cases have enriched homozygosity, suggesting that recessive effects may explain a proportion of AD heritability

Lymphangioleiomyomatosis biomarkers linked to lung metastatic potential and cell stemness

Lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) is a rare lung-metastasizing neoplasm caused by the proliferation of smooth muscle-like cells that commonly carry loss-of-function mutations in either the tuberous sclerosis complex 1 or 2 (TSC1 or TSC2) genes. While allosteric inhibition of the mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) has shown substantial clinical benefit, complementary therapies are required to improve response and/or to treat specific patients. However, there is a lack of LAM biomarkers that could potentially be used to monitor the disease and to develop other targeted therapies. We hypothesized that the mediators of cancer metastasis to lung, particularly in breast cancer, also play a relevant role in LAM. Analyses across independent breast cancer datasets revealed associations between low TSC1/2 expression, altered mTOR complex 1 (mTORC1) pathway signaling, and metastasis to lung. Subsequently, immunohistochemical analyses of 23 LAM lesions revealed positivity in all cases for the lung metastasis mediators fascin 1 (FSCN1) and inhibitor of DNA binding 1 (ID1). Moreover, assessment of breast cancer stem or luminal progenitor cell biomarkers showed positivity in most LAM tissue for the aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 (ALDH1), integrin-ß3 (ITGB3/CD61), and/or the sex-determining region Y-box 9 (SOX9) proteins. The immunohistochemical analyses also provided evidence of heterogeneity between and within LAM cases. The analysis of Tsc2-deficient cells revealed relative over-expression of FSCN1 and ID1; however, Tsc2-deficient cells did not show higher sensitivity to ID1-based cancer inhibitors. Collectively, the results of this study reveal novel LAM biomarkers linked to breast cancer metastasis to lung and to cell stemness, which in turn might guide the assessment of additional or complementary therapeutic opportunities for LAM

Genome-wide association analysis of dementia and its clinical endophenotypes reveal novel loci associated with Alzheimer's disease and three causality networks: The GR@ACE project

Introduction: Large variability among Alzheimer's disease (AD) cases might impact genetic discoveries and complicate dissection of underlying biological pathways. Methods: Genome Research at Fundacio ACE (GR@ACE) is a genome-wide study of dementia and its clinical endophenotypes, defined based on AD's clinical certainty and vascular burden. We assessed the impact of known AD loci across endophenotypes to generate loci categories. We incorporated gene coexpression data and conducted pathway analysis per category. Finally, to evaluate the effect of heterogeneity in genetic studies, GR@ACE series were meta-analyzed with additional genome-wide association study data sets. Results: We classified known AD loci into three categories, which might reflect the disease clinical heterogeneity. Vascular processes were only detected as a causal mechanism in probable AD. The meta-analysis strategy revealed the ANKRD31-rs4704171 and NDUFAF6-rs10098778 and confirmed SCIMP-rs7225151 and CD33-rs3865444. Discussion: The regulation of vasculature is a prominent causal component of probable AD. GR@ACE meta-analysis revealed novel AD genetic signals, strongly driven by the presence of clinical heterogeneity in the AD series