Preparación para el retiro laboral en el ámbito universitario.

La jubilación supone para muchas personas un fuerte desequilibrio. Hoy en día aun parece natural pensar que jubilarse implica perder bienestar, perder poder adquisitivo, perder función social y perder actividad. El sentimiento generalizado de quienes dejan la actividad laboral, es de pérdida. Casi la mitad de los recién jubilados creen que lo que viene por delante es un período de vigilia en el que deben descubrir cuál será su futuro, sin saberlo aún. El cambio que va a sufrir su vida, en cuanto a hábitos y costumbres es muy brusco y, para tratar de reducir sus efectos, conviene preparar este momento. En la medida que una persona pueda conocer sus expectativas de trabajo reales, podrá afrontar mejor el último periodo de desarrollo profesional

The molecular vista: current perspectives on molecules and life in the twentieth century

This essay considers how scholarly approaches to the development of molecular biology have too often narrowed the historical aperture to genes, overlooking the ways in which other objects and processes contributed to the molecularization of life. From structural and dynamic studies of biomolecules to cellular membranes and organelles to metabolism and nutrition, new work by historians, philosophers, and STS scholars of the life sciences has revitalized older issues, such as the relationship of life to matter, or of physicochemical inquiries to biology. This scholarship points to a novel molecular vista that opens up a pluralist view of molecularizations in the twentieth century and considers their relevance to current science

Statistical Signatures of Structural Organization: The case of long memory in renewal processes

Identifying and quantifying memory are often critical steps in developing a mechanistic understanding of stochastic processes. These are particularly challenging and necessary when exploring processes that exhibit long-range correlations. The most common signatures employed rely on second-order temporal statistics and lead, for example, to identifying long memory in processes with power-law autocorrelation function and Hurst exponent greater than $1/2$. However, most stochastic processes hide their memory in higher-order temporal correlations. Information measures---specifically, divergences in the mutual information between a process' past and future (excess entropy) and minimal predictive memory stored in a process' causal states (statistical complexity)---provide a different way to identify long memory in processes with higher-order temporal correlations. However, there are no ergodic stationary processes with infinite excess entropy for which information measures have been compared to autocorrelation functions and Hurst exponents. Here, we show that fractal renewal processes---those with interevent distribution tails $\propto t^{-\alpha}$---exhibit long memory via a phase transition at $\alpha = 1$. Excess entropy diverges only there and statistical complexity diverges there and for all $\alpha < 1$. When these processes do have power-law autocorrelation function and Hurst exponent greater than $1/2$, they do not have divergent excess entropy. This analysis breaks the intuitive association between these different quantifications of memory. We hope that the methods used here, based on causal states, provide some guide as to how to construct and analyze other long memory processes.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, 3 appendixes; http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~cmg/compmech/pubs/lrmrp.ht

Human immunodeficiency virus: 25 years of diagnostic and therapeutic strategies and their impact on hepatitis B and C virus

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) had spread unrecognized in the human population as sexually transmitted disease and was finally identified by its disease AIDS in 1981. Even after the isolation of the causative agent in 1983, the burden and death rate of AIDS accelerated worldwide especially in young people despite the confection of new drugs capable to inhibit virus replication since 1997. However, at least in industrialised countries, this trend could be reversed by the introduction of combination therapy strategies. The design of new drugs is on going; besides the inhibition of the three enzymes of HIV for replication and maturation (reverse transcriptase, integrase and protease), further drugs inhibits fusion of viral and cellular membranes and virus maturation. On the other hand, viral diagnostics had been considerably improved since the emergence of HIV. There was a need to identify infected people correctly, to follow up the course of immune reconstitution of patients by measuring viral load and CD4 cells, and to analyse drug escape mutations leading to drug resistance. Both the development of drugs and the refined diagnostics have been transferred to the treatment of patients infected with hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV). This progress is not completed; there are beneficial aspects in the response of the scientific community to the HIV burden for the management of other viral diseases. These aspects are described in this contribution. Further aspects as handling a stigmatising disease, education of self-responsiveness within sexual relationships, and ways for confection of a protective vaccine are not covered

Targeted Overexpression of Osteoactivin in Cells of Osteoclastic Lineage Promotes Osteoclastic Resorption and Bone Loss in Mice

This study sought to test whether targeted overexpression of osteoactivin (OA) in cells of osteoclastic lineage, using the tartrate-resistant acid phosphase (TRAP) exon 1B/C promoter to drive OA expression, would increase bone resorption and bone loss in vivo. OA transgenic osteoclasts showed ∼2-fold increases in OA mRNA and proteins compared wild-type (WT) osteoclasts. However, the OA expression in transgenic osteoblasts was not different. At 4, 8, and 15.3 week-old, transgenic mice showed significant bone loss determined by pQCT and confirmed by μ-CT. In vitro, transgenic osteoclasts were twice as large, had twice as much TRAP activity, resorbed twice as much bone matrix, and expressed twice as much osteoclastic genes (MMP9, calciton receptor, and ADAM12), as WT osteoclasts. The siRNA-mediated suppression of OA expression in RAW264.7-derived osteoclasts reduced cell size and osteoclastic gene expression. Bone histomorphometry revealed that transgenic mice had more osteoclasts and osteoclast surface. Plasma c-telopeptide (a resorption biomarker) measurements confirmed an increase in bone resorption in transgenic mice in vivo. In contrast, histomorphometric bone formation parameters and plasma levels of bone formation biomarkers (osteocalcin and pro-collagen type I N-terminal peptide) were not different between transgenic mice and WT littermates, indicating the lack of bone formation effects. In conclusion, this study provides compelling in vivo evidence that osteoclast-derived OA is a novel stimulator of osteoclast activity and bone resorption

Organisms in experimental research

Rachel A. Ankeny and Sabina Leonell