Potential effect of prior raccoonpox virus infection in raccoons on vaccinia-based rabies immunization

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The USDA, Wildlife Services cooperative oral rabies vaccination (ORV) program uses a live vaccinia virus-vectored (genus <it>Orthopoxvirus</it>) vaccine, Raboral V-RG^®(V-RG), to vaccinate specific wildlife species against rabies virus in several regions of the U.S. Several naturally occurring orthopoxviruses have been found in North America, including one isolated from asymptomatic raccoons (<it>Procyon lotor</it>). The effect of naturally occurring antibodies to orthopoxviruses on successful V-RG vaccination in raccoons is the focus of this study.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Overall, raccoons pre-immunized (n = 10) with a recombinant raccoonpox virus vaccine (RCN-F1) responded to vaccination with V-RG with lower rabies virus neutralizing antibody (VNA) titers than those which were not pre-immunized (n = 10) and some failed to seroconvert for rabies VNA to detectable levels.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results suggest that the success of some ORV campaigns may be hindered where raccoonpox virus or possibly other orthopoxvirus antibodies are common in wildlife species targeted for ORV. If these areas are identified, different vaccination strategies may be warranted.</p

Adipose tissue derived stem cells secretome: soluble factors and their roles in regenerative medicine

Stem cells have been long looked at as possible therapeutic vehicles for different health related problems. Among the different existing stem cell populations, Adipose derived Stem Cells (ASCs) have been gathering attention in the last 10 years. When compared to other stem cells populations and sources, ASCs can be easily isolated while providing higher yields upon the processing of adipose tissue. Similar to other stem cell populations, it was initially thought that the main potential of ASCs for regenerative medicine approaches was intimately related to their differentiation capability. Although this is true, there has been an increasing body of literature describing the trophic effects of ASCs on the protection, survival and differentiation of a variety of endogenous cells/tissues. Moreover, they have also shown to possess an immunomodulatory character. This effect is closely related to the ASCs’ secretome and the soluble factors found within it. Molecules such as hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), granulocyte and macrophage colony stimulating factors, interleukins (ILs) 6, 7, 8 and 11, tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), nerve growth factor (NGF), adipokines and others have been identified within the ASCs’ secretome. Due to its importance regarding future applications for the field of regenerative medicine, we aim, in the present review, to make a comprehensive analysis of the literature relating to the ASCs’ secretome and its relevance to the immune and central nervous system, vascularization and cardiac regeneration. The concluding section will highlight some of the major challenges that remain before ASCs can be used for future clinical applications

Origins of life before the cell: echos from the past with broad implications in our future

Abstract. The following pages refers to the origin of life, but the discussion focuses far beyond finding the place where it probably started, and moves toward some intriguing questions and some of its broad implications for evolution itself. Can life flourish in all its complexity from a single proto-organism model that thrive thanks to natural selection at an individual level? Or, is there any implicit constraint in the mechanisms that drives evolution in the first steps of precelular life to allow community-based, collaborative abiogenic systems that differ from cellular life as we know it? As we will discuss here, it seems pertinent to expand some evolutionary concepts that seems to reach the limits of the discipline, and can be helpful to link the abiogenic world where life probably emerge, and the Darwinian cellular world ruled by the natural selection. With some of these questions in mind, we are obliged to at least consider the implications of this answers for the future exploration of the space, particularly within the field of applied astrobiology, a discipline that will have to tackle the problem of how a minimal viable community of microorganisms or precelullar forms, can thrive and cross the Darwinian threshold that allow life to take over a planet, by creating a Biosphere. A key question for the future of life beyond the boundaries of our planet

Supervivencia en niños de muy bajo peso al nacimiento, 1996-2004

El objetivo de esta investigación fue establecer la probabilidad de supervivencia y la morbilidad de los neonatos con muy bajo peso al nacimiento, en un hospital de tercer nivel de Colombia. Para este fin se evaluaron todos los neonatos nacidos vivos con peso inferior a 1500g en el Hospital General de Medellín, entre 1996 y 2004. Resultados: durante el período de estudio ingresaron 1443 neonatos. 54% de las madres recibió esteroides antenatales y 17.1% de los neonatos recibió surfactante pulmonar. La media del tiempo de supervivencia de los neonatos con peso inferior a 1000g fue menor a un día. Ningún neonato de 23 semanas o menos egresó vivo. La probabilidad de ingresar a la Unidad de Cuidado Intensivo Neonatal fue significativamente menor entre los neonatos menores de 1000g, que entre los neonatos de 1000 a 1490 g, y el RR = 0.54 (IC95%: 0.44-0.65). La mortalidad de este grupo fue mayor de manera estadísticamente significativa, que entre los de 1000 a 1490 g, y el RR = 3.8 (IC 95%=3.3-4.3). La fracción atribuible en la población (RAP%) debida al extremo bajo peso al nacer fue de 47.8%.  AbstractThe aim of this trial was to measure the neonatal survival rate and the morbidity of the very low birth weight infants in a third level hospital in Colombia. In the Hospital General of Medellín were evaluated all the neonates born between 1996 and 2004 with a birth weight less than 1500g. Results: 1443 neonates were enrolled to this cohorte-study 54% of the mothers got antenatal steroids and 17.1% of the neonates got pulmonary surfactant. The neonates with a birth weight less than 1000g had a survival time median less than one day. No one neonate with 23 weeks or less of gestational age went away live. The likelihood of enter to the neonatal intensive care unit was significant lower in neonates with a birth weight less than 1000g that in the neonates with a birth weight between 1000 to 1490 g, RR = 0.54 (CI95%: 0.44-0.65), the mortality in the first group was greater than in the second group, RR = 3.8 (CI95%: 3.3-4.3). The percentage of attributable risk in the population (%PAR) was 47.8% caused to have a birth weigh lower than 1000 g. Conclusions: There is a lower risk to enter at the neonatal intensive care unit in those neonates with a birth weight less than 1000g, and the survival rate of this population is diminished because of this. The high likelihood of dying due to the extreme low birth weight must call the attention of the sanitary authorities, because this evaluates of indirect way the quality of attention that receive the obstetrical patients. Cohort studies should to carry out in this population for evaluating the long time prognosis and would allow design policies of maternal and neonatal health.Keywords: very low birth weight infant, neonatal intensive care unit, neonatal mortality, survival rate, pulmonary surfactant, neonatal respiratory distress syndrome, bronchopulmonary dysplasia

Fox : a un año de la alternancia

Reflexiones críticas desde diversas disciplinas de las ciencias sociales acerca del primer año de gobierno de Vicente Fox Quesada. Entre los rubros que se analizan están: la política cultural, el sector rural, los jóvenes, los derechos humanos, la cultura indígena y la seguridad pública.ITESO, A.C

Ground-based detection of an extended helium atmosphere in the Saturn-mass exoplanet WASP-69b

Hot gas giant exoplanets can lose part of their atmosphere due to strong stellar irradiation, affecting their physical and chemical evolution. Studies of atmospheric escape from exoplanets have mostly relied on space-based observations of the hydrogen Lyman-{\alpha} line in the far ultraviolet which is strongly affected by interstellar absorption. Using ground-based high-resolution spectroscopy we detect excess absorption in the helium triplet at 1083 nm during the transit of the Saturn-mass exoplanet WASP-69b, at a signal-to-noise ratio of 18. We measure line blue shifts of several km/s and post transit absorption, which we interpret as the escape of part of the atmosphere trailing behind the planet in comet-like form. [Additional notes by authors: Furthermore, we provide upper limits for helium signals in the atmospheres of the exoplanets HD 209458b, KELT-9b, and GJ 436b. We investigate the host stars of all planets with detected helium signals and those of the three planets we derive upper limits for. In each case we calculate the X-ray and extreme ultraviolet flux received by these planets. We find that helium is detected in the atmospheres of planets (orbiting the more active stars and) receiving the larger amount of irradiation from their host stars.]Comment: Submitted to Science on 14 March 2018; Accepted by Science on 16 November 2018; Published by Science on 6 December 2018. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of the AAAS for personal use. The definitive version was published in Science, on 6 December 2018 - Report: pages 21 (preprint), 4 figures - Supplementary materials: 22 pages, 10 figures, 3 table

Transiciones, conflictos y democracia : estudios de coyuntura

México ha vivido un largo proceso de transición que ha desencadenado dinamismos económicos, culturales y políticos. En la actual coyuntura, estos dinamismos muestran toda su complejidad, su inevitable articulación y la tensión entre las fuerzas que intentan sostener un viejo modelo de gobernar y decidir el rumbo del país, y aquellas que buscan abrirse a un espectro mucho más amplio y diversificado de actores. En ellos se conjuntan las aspiraciones más legítimas de los mexicanos por avanzar en el reconocimiento y respeto de la pluralidad étnica, de género y entre generaciones, y por impulsar una dinámica en la que —en medio de los procesos de mundialización— los distintos grupos e intereses de los mexicanos puedan ser incluidos. La transición mexicana tiende a centrarse en la dimensión política. La intensidad que cobran los procesos políticos y el énfasis que importantes analistas ponen en dichos procesos, contribuyen a que esta asociación vaya cobrandoíuerza. En este sentido, es necesario advertir que en las transiciones la tendencia privatizadora, la reducción del gasto social, así como la necesidad de pactos sociales que sean respetados, la participación creciente de la sociedad civil, etc. son factores importantes que, en medio de contradicciones, van generando nuevos esquemas de relación entre gobierno y sociedad.ITESO, A.C

TOI-1201 b: A mini-Neptune transiting a bright and moderately young M dwarf

Kossakowski, D., et al.We present the discovery of a transiting mini-Neptune around TOI-1201, a relatively bright and moderately young early M dwarf (J ≈ 9.5 mag, ~600-800 Myr) in an equal-mass ~8 arcsecond-wide binary system, using data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, along with follow-up transit observations. With an orbital period of 2.49 d, TOI-1201 b is a warm mini-Neptune with a radius of Rb = 2.415 ± 0.090 R⊕. This signal is also present in the precise radial velocity measurements from CARMENES, confirming the existence of the planet and providing a planetary mass of Mb = 6.28 ± 0.88 M⊕ and, thus, an estimated bulk density of 2.45-0.42+0.48 g cm-3. The spectroscopic observations additionally show evidence of a signal with a period of 19 d and a long periodic variation of undetermined origin. In combination with ground-based photometric monitoring from WASP-South and ASAS-SN, we attribute the 19 d signal to the stellar rotation period (Prot = 19-23 d), although we cannot rule out that the variation seen in photometry belongs to the visually close binary companion. We calculate precise stellar parameters for both TOI-1201 and its companion. The transiting planet is anexcellent target for atmosphere characterization (the transmission spectroscopy metric is 97-16+21) with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. It is also feasible to measure its spin-orbit alignment via the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect using current state-of-the-art spectrographs with submeter per second radial velocity precision.Part of this work was supported by the German Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) project number Ts 17/2–1. CARMENES is an instrument at the Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán (CAHA) at Calar Alto (Almería, Spain), operated jointly by the Junta de Andalucía and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC). CARMENES was funded by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through projects FICTS-2011-02, ICTS-2017-07-CAHA-4, and CAHA16-CE-3978, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Landessternwarte Königstuhl, Institut de Ciències de l’Espai, Institut für Astrophysik Göttingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg,Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiología and Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán), with additional contributions by the MINECO, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and Research Unit FOR2544 “Blue Planets around Red Stars”, the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Württemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucía. This work was based on data from the CARMENES data archive at CAB (CSIC-INTA). We acknowledgefinancial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades and the ERDF through projects PID2019-109522GB-C5[1:4]/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the Centre of Excellence “Severo Ochoa” and “María de Maeztu” awards to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (SEV-2015-0548), Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709), and Centro de Astrobiología (MDM-2017-0737), the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program (ERC Advanced Grant Origins 83 24 28), the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme, the DFG priority program SPP 1992 “Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets (JE 701/5-1)”, the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program via ERC Advanced Grant Origins 832428 and under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant 895525

Desafíos y tendencias del México actual

Conjunto de once ensayos cuyo propósito es suscitar la reflexión sobre las tendencias más importantes que marcan el inicio del siglo XXI en México y Jalisco, sin obviar las direcciones que a escala mundial toman la vida social, política y económica.ITESO, A.C