Suelos volcanicos endurecidos

The degree of fragmentation and irregularity of tepetate areas can be measured with fractal parameters. A lot of different empirical fractal dimensions can be used with this purposed. Some of these dimensions were estimated and compared in the present work. The tepetates lineal and mass fractal dimensions were independent of the scale of measurement. These data indicate the near ideal fractal dimensionality of tepetate areas. The doble value of lineal fractal dimension was similar to the mass fractal dimension. The tepetate surface fractal dimensions indicate the considerable irregularities of tepetate areas boundaries related with advanced erosion in the studied area. (Résumé d'auteur

Self-Assembly Behavior of Amphiphilic Janus Dendrimers in Water: A Combined Experimental and Coarse-Grained Molecular Dynamics Simulation Approach

Indexación: Scopus.Acknowledgments: M.E.E.G. thank the Ph. D. scholarship (251115) from CONACyT. The authors would like to thank: Luis Elizalde-Herrera (CIQA) for his help running the NMR spectra; Gloria Macedo-Raygoza and Miguel J. Beltrán-García (UAG), for their help in the measuring of MALDI-TOF mass spectra; and Maricela Rodríguez-Nieto and Jorge Luis Menchaca (UANL), for their help with the AFM measurements. FDGN thanks to the USA Air Force Office of Scientific Research Awards.Amphiphilic Janus dendrimers (JDs) are repetitively branched molecules with hydrophilic and hydrophobic components that self-assemble in water to form a variety of morphologies, including vesicles analogous to liposomes with potential pharmaceutical and medical application. To date, the self-assembly of JDs has not been fully investigated thus it is important to gain insight into its mechanism and dependence on JDs’ molecular structure. In this study, the aggregation behavior in water of a second-generation bis-MPA JD was evaluated using experimental and computational methods. Dispersions of JDs in water were carried out using the thin-film hydration and ethanol injection methods. Resulting assemblies were characterized by dynamic light scattering, confocal microscopy, and atomic force microscopy. Furthermore, a coarse-grained molecular dynamics (CG-MD) simulation was performed to study the mechanism of JDs aggregation. The obtaining of assemblies in water with no interdigitated bilayers was confirmed by the experimental characterization and CG-MD simulation. Assemblies with dendrimersome characteristics were obtained using the ethanol injection method. The results of this study establish a relationship between the molecular structure of the JD and the properties of its aggregates in water. Thus, our findings could be relevant for the design of novel JDs with tailored assemblies suitable for drug delivery systems. © 2018 by the authors.https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/23/4/96

Gaucher disease: expression and characterization of mild and severe acid beta-glucosidase mutations in Portuguese type 1 patients

Type 1 Gaucher disease (GD), the most prevalent lysosomal storage disease, results from the deficient activity of acid alpha-glucosidase. Molecular analysis of 12 unrelated Portuguese patients with type 1 GD identified three novel acid â-glucosidase mutations (F109V, W184R and R395P), as well as three previously reported, but uncharacterized, lesions (R359Q, G377S and N396T). The type 1 probands were either heteroallelic for the well-characterized common lesion, N370S, and the F109V, W184R, R359Q or N396T lesions or homoallelic for the G377S or N396T mutations. Expression of the W184R, R359Q, and R395P mutations revealed very low specific activities based on cross-reacting immunologic material (CRIM SAs of 0.0004, 0.016 and 0.045, respectively), consistent with their being found only in type 1 patients who had a neuroprotective N370S allele. In contrast, the F109V, G377S and N396T alleles had significant acid â-glucosidase activity (CRIM specific activities of 0.15, 0.17, 0.14, respectively), in agreement with their being mild type 1 alleles. Thus, these studies identified additional acid â-glucosidase mutations in the Portuguese population and demonstrated that the G377S and N396T mutations were neuroprotective, consistent with the mild clinical phenotypes of the type 1 patients who were homoallelic for the G377S and N396T lesions

On the path to rabies elimination: The need for risk assessments to improve administration of post-exposure prophylaxis.

Costs of rabies post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) often remain high in regions where rabies has been controlled in dogs, presenting a challenge for sustaining rabies elimination programmes. We investigated the potential for bite patient risk assessments to improve PEP provision and surveillance in settings approaching elimination of dog-mediated rabies. We conducted a longitudinal study of patients presenting to animal bite treatment centres (ABTCs) on the island province of Bohol in the Philippines to investigate the health status of biting dogs and to quantify current expenditure on PEP. Incidence of bite patients presenting to ABTCs was high (>300/100,000 persons/year) and increasing, resulting in substantial health provider costs. Over $142,000 was spent on PEP in 2013 for a population of 1.3 million. From follow up of 3820 bite patients we found that  >92% were bitten by healthy dogs (alive 14 days after the bite) and just 1.4% were bitten by probable or confirmed rabid dogs. The status of dogs that bit 6% of patients could not be determined. During the course of investigations of bites by suspect dogs, we were able to obtain samples for case confirmation, identify exposed persons who had not sought PEP as well as in-contact dogs at risk of developing rabies. We calculate that expenditure on PEP could at least be halved through more judicious approaches to provision of PEP, based on the histories of biting animals determined through risk assessments with bite patients. We conclude that a One Health approach to surveillance based on Integrated Bite Case Management could improve the sustainability and effectiveness of rabies elimination programmes while also improving patient care by identifying those genuinely in need of lifesaving PEP

X-boson cumulant approach to the periodic Anderson model

The Periodic Anderson Model (PAM) can be studied in the infinite U limit by employing the Hubbard X operators to project out the unwanted states. We have already studied this problem employing the cumulant expansion with the hybridization as perturbation, but the probability conservation of the local states (completeness) is not usually satisfied when partial expansions like the Chain Approximation (CHA) are employed. Here we treat the problem by a technique inspired in the mean field approximation of Coleman's slave-bosons method, and we obtain a description that avoids the unwanted phase transition that appears in the mean-field slave-boson method both when the chemical potential is greater than the localized level Ef at low temperatures (T) and for all parameters at intermediate T.Comment: Submited to Physical Review B 14 pages, 17 eps figures inserted in the tex

Semi-automated background removal limits data loss and normalizes imaging mass cytometry data

Imaging mass cytometry (IMC) allows the detection of multiple antigens (approximately 40 markers) combined with spatial information, making it a unique tool for the evaluation of complex biological systems. Due to its widespread availability and retained tissue morphology, formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissues are often a material of choice for IMC studies. However, antibody performance and signal to noise ratios can differ considerably between FFPE tissues as a consequence of variations in tissue processing, including fixation. In contrast to batch effects caused by differences in the immunodetection procedure, variations in tissue processing are difficult to control. We investigated the effect of immunodetection-related signal intensity fluctuations on IMC analysis and phenotype identification, in a cohort of 12 colorectal cancer tissues. Furthermore, we explored different normalization strategies and propose a workflow to normalize IMC data by semi-automated background removal, using publicly available tools. This workflow can be directly applied to previously acquired datasets and considerably improves the quality of IMC data, thereby supporting the analysis and comparison of multiple samples.Imaging- and therapeutic targets in neoplastic and musculoskeletal inflammatory diseas

High-resolution x-ray study of the nematic - smectic-A and smectic-A - smectic-C transitions in 8barS5-aerosil gels

The effects of dispersed aerosil nanoparticles on two of the phase transitions of the thermotropic liquid crystal material 4-n-pentylphenylthiol-4'-n-octyloxybenzoate 8barS5 have been studied using high-resolution x-ray diffraction techniques. The aerosils hydrogen bond together to form a gel which imposes a weak quenched disorder on the liquid crystal. The smectic-A fluctuations are well characterized by a two-component line shape representing thermal and random-field contributions. An elaboration on this line shape is required to describe the fluctuations in the smectic-C phase; specifically the effect of the tilt on the wave-vector dependence of the thermal fluctuations must be explicitly taken into account. Both the magnitude and the temperature dependence of the smectic-C tilt order parameter are observed to be unaffected by the disorder. This may be a consequence of the large bare smectic correlation length in the direction of modulation for this transition. These results show that the understanding developed for the nematic to smectic-A transition for octylcyanobiphenyl (8CB) and octyloxycyanobiphenyl (8OCB) liquid crystals with quenched disorder can be extended to quite different materials and transitions.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figure

Visual cohort comparison for spatial single-cell omics-data

Spatially-resolved omics-data enable researchers to precisely distinguish cell types in tissue and explore their spatial interactions, enabling deep understanding of tissue functionality. To understand what causes or deteriorates a disease and identify related biomarkers, clinical researchers regularly perform large-scale cohort studies, requiring the comparison of such data at cellular level. In such studies, with little a-priori knowledge of what to expect in the data, explorative data analysis is a necessity. Here, we present an interactive visual analysis workflow for the comparison of cohorts of spatially-resolved omics-data. Our workflow allows the comparative analysis of two cohorts based on multiple levels-of-detail, from simple abundance of contained cell types over complex co-localization patterns to individual comparison of complete tissue images. As a result, the workflow enables the identification of cohort-differentiating features, as well as outlier samples at any stage of the workflow. During the development of the workflow, we continuously consulted with domain experts. To show the effectiveness of the workflow, we conducted multiple case studies with domain experts from different application areas and with different data modalities.Imaging- and therapeutic targets in neoplastic and musculoskeletal inflammatory diseas