Fully coherent follow-up of continuous gravitational-wave candidates: an application to Einstein@Home results

We characterize and present the details of the follow-up method used on the most significant outliers of the Hough Einstein@Home all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves arXiv:1207.7176. This follow-up method is based on the two-stage approach introduced in arXiv:1303.2471, consisting of a semicoherent refinement followed by a fully coherent zoom. We quantify the efficiency of the follow-up pipeline using simulated signals in Gaussian noise. This pipeline does not search beyond first-order frequency spindown, and therefore we also evaluate its robustness against second-order spindown. We present the details of the Hough Einstein@Home follow-up (arXiv:1207.7176) on three hardware-injected signals and on the 8 most significant outliers of unknown origin.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, 3 table

El comunicador social y el mercado laboral uruguayo

El presente artículo trata sobre la interrelación comunicadorsocial-mercado laboral, adelantando algunosresultados de una investigación que la autora viene desarrollando en la Facultadde Comunicación Socialde la  Universidad Católica, con elasesoramiento de la M. Á. María Ester Mancebo. En el artículo se plantea una reseña de la historia dela carrera en el continente, el debate en torno al perfil del egresado y algunos datos preliminares a modo de diagnóstico de la situación de los egresados en el mercado de trabajo

Cooperativity and flexibility of the protonmotive activity of mitochondrial respiratory chain

AbstractFunctional and structural data are reviewed which provide evidence that proton pumping in cytochrome c oxidase is associated with extended allosteric cooperativity involving the four redox centers in the enzyme . Data are also summarized showing that the H+/e− stoichiometry for proton pumping in the cytochrome span of the mitochondrial respiratory chain is flexible. The ΔpH component of the bulk-phase membrane electrochemical proton gradient exerts a decoupling effect on the proton pump of both the bc1 complex and cytochrome c oxidase. A slip in the pumping efficiency of the latter is also caused by high electron pressure. The mechanistic and physiological implications of proton-pump slips are examined. The easiness with which bulk phase ΔpH causes, at least above a threshold level, decoupling of proton pumping indicates that for active oxidative phosphorylation efficient protonic coupling between redox complexes and ATP synthase takes place at the membrane surface, likely in cristae, without significant formation of delocalized ΔμH+. A role of slips in modulating oxygen free radical production by the respiratory chain and the mitochondrial pathway of apoptosis is discussed

Encuentro de Comunicación Miradas Múltiples

El Encuentro de Comunicación Miradas Múltiples se realizó el 14 y 15 de setiembre en la Universidad Católica del Uruguay. El desafío fue generar un espacio para hacer visible la reflexión sobre la disciplina y la licenciatura. Participaron docentes, investigadores, profesionales y estudiantes, quienes expusieron miradas renovadas sobre el campo de la comunicación

the valuation of brand architectures an empirical investigation in the wine sector

In recent years, consulting firms and academics have developed a plethora of methods to place a monetary value on brands. The models used in practice either focus on product brands - the commercial trademarks used to target specific client segments, or on corporate brands - all the intangibles that come under an umbrella name. However, the current marketing strategies reveal that few companies use commercial brands and corporate brands separately, as they are typically integrated into complex brand architectures that combine product brands and corporate brands in different flavours. This study critically reviews the brand valuation literature to assist practitioners in choosing appropriate methods to estimate different brand architectures. The analysis is carried out applying the Brand Finance valuation process to two Italian wineries. The findings suggest that whenever wineries use strong umbrella brand strategies, it is feasible to bundle the product brands into one comprehensive brand. The latter can be measured either by splitting the incremental benefits from the core brand, as suggested by Anson (2000), or by assembling the core brand and the incremental benefits together, as proposed by the Excess Earnings Method. For integrated wineries producing high quality wines, it is proposed that brand strength analysis be combined with the relief from royalty method.</p

Picoplankton Community Composition by CARD-FISH and Flow Cytometric Techniques: A Preliminary Study in Central Adriatic Sea Water

Data concerning picoplanktonic community composition and abundance in the Central Adriatic Sea are presented in an effort to improve the knowledge of bacterioplankton and autotrophic picoplankton and their seasonal changes. Flow cytometry analyses revealed the presence of two distinct bacteria populations: HNA and LNA cells. HNA cells showed an explicit correlation with viable and actively respiring cells. The study of viability and activity may increase our knowledge of the part that contributes really to the remineralization and bacterial biomass production. Authotrophic picoplankton abundance, especially picocyanobacteria, was strongly influenced by seasonality, indicating that light availability and water temperature are very important regulating factors. In terms of total carbon biomass, the main contribution came from heterotrophic bacteria with a lower contribution from autotrophic picoplankton. CARD-FISH evidenced, within the Eubacteria domain, the dominance of members of the phyla Alphaproteobacteria, with a strong contribution from SAR11clade, followed by Cytophaga-Flavobacterium and Gammaproteobacteria. The bacterial groups detected contributed differently depending when the sample was taken, suggesting possible seasonal patterns. This study documents for the first time picoplankton community composition in the Central Adriatic Sea using two different approaches, FCM and CARD-FISH, and could provide preliminary data for future studies

Heart transplantation in patients with dystrophinopathic cardiomyopathy: Review of the literature and personal series

Cardiomyopathy associated with dystrophinopathies [Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), Becker muscular dystrophy (BMD), X-linked dilated cardiomyopathy (XL-dCM) and cardiomyopathy of Duchenne/Becker (DMD/BMD) carriers] is an increasing recognized manifestation of these neuromuscular disorders and notably contributes to their morbidity and mortality. Dystrophinopathic cardiomyopathy (DCM) is the result of the dystrophin protein deficiency at the myocardium level, parallel to the deficiency occurring at the skeletal muscle level. It begins as a "presymptomatic" stage in the first decade of life and evolves in a stepwise manner toward pictures of overt cardiomyopathy (hypertrophic stage, arrhythmogenic stage and dilated cardiomyopathy). The final stage caused by the extensive loss of cardiomyocytes results in an irreversible cardiac failure, characterized by frequent episodes of acute congestive heart failure (CHF), despite a correct pharmacological treatment. The picture of a severe dilated cardiomyopathy with intractable heart failure is typical of BMD, XL-dCM and cardiomyopathy of DMD/BMD carriers, while it is less frequently observed in patients with DMD. Heart transplantation (HT) is the only curative therapy for patients with dystrophinopathic end-stage heart failure who remain symptomatic despite an optimal medical therapy. However, no definitive figures exist in literature concerning the number of patients with DCM transplanted, and their outcome. This overview is to summarize the clinical outcomes so far published on the topic, to report the personal series of dystrophinopathic patients receiving heart transplantation and finally to provide evidence that heart transplantation is a safe and effective treatment for selected patients with end-stage DCM

Comparing Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases networks using graph communities structure

Background: Recent advances in large datasets analysis offer new insights to modern biology allowing system-level investigation of pathologies. Here we describe a novel computational method that exploits the ever-growing amount of "omics" data to shed light on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Neurological disorders exhibit a huge number of molecular alterations due to a complex interplay between genetic and environmental factors. Classical reductionist approaches are focused on a few elements, providing a narrow overview of the etiopathogenic complexity of multifactorial diseases. On the other hand, high-throughput technologies allow the evaluation of many components of biological systems and their behaviors. Analysis of Parkinson's Disease (PD) and Alzheimer's Disease (AD) from a network perspective can highlight proteins or pathways common but differently represented that can be discriminating between the two pathological conditions, thus highlight similarities and differences. Results: In this work we propose a strategy that exploits network community structure identified with a state-of-the-art network community discovery algorithm called InfoMap, which takes advantage of information theory principles. We used two similarity measurements to quantify functional and topological similarities between the two pathologies. We built a Similarity Matrix to highlight similar communities and we analyzed statistically significant GO terms found in clustered areas of the matrix and in network communities. Our strategy allowed us to identify common known and unknown processes including DNA repair, RNA metabolism and glucose metabolism not detected with simple GO enrichment analysis. In particular, we were able to capture the connection between mitochondrial dysfunction and metabolism (glucose and glutamate/glutamine). Conclusions: This approach allows the identification of communities present in both pathologies which highlight common biological processes. Conversely, the identification of communities without any counterpart can be used to investigate processes that are characteristic of only one of the two pathologies. In general, the same strategy can be applied to compare any pair of biological networks