Thermodynamics of primitive model electrolytes in the symmetric and modified Poisson-Boltzmann theories. A comparative study with Monte Carlo simulations

Osmotic coefficients, individual and mean activity coefficients of primitive model electrolyte solutions are computed at different molar concentrations using the symmetric Poisson-Boltzmann and modified Poisson-Boltzmann theories. The theoretical results are compared with an extensive series of Monte Carlo simulation data obtained by Abbas et al. [Fluid Phase Equilib., 2007, 260, 233; J. Phys. Chem. B, 2009, 113, 5905]. The agreement between modified Poisson-Boltzmann predictions with the "exact" simulation results is almost quantitative for monovalent salts, while being semi-quantitative or better for higher and multivalent salts. The symmetric Poisson-Boltzmann results, on the other hand, are very good for monovalent systems but tend to deviate at higher concentrations and/or for multi-valent systems. Some recent experimental values for activity coefficients of HCl solution (individual and mean activities) and NaCl solution (mean activity only) have also been compared with the symmetric and modified Poisson-Boltzmann theories, and with the Monte Carlo simulations.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure

Is fetal gender associated with adverse perinatal outcome in intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR)?

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a difference in perinatal outcome by gender among growth-restricted fetuses. STUDY DESIGN: This was a retrospective cohort study of intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) singleton pregnancies over a 5-year period. Clinical outcomes compared by gender included preterm delivery, perinatal mortality (PNM), respiratory distress syndrome (RDS), grade 3 or 4 intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH), necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), and periventricular leukomalacia (PVL). Statistical analysis included bivariate and multivariable techniques. RESULTS: Seven hundred and twenty-seven singleton pregnancies with IUGR were identified. Three hundred and forty-six (47.6%) were males. Birth weight was similar between the groups. After adjusting for maternal demographics, medical history, gestational age, mode of delivery, and antenatal corticosteroids, adverse perinatal outcomes were similar between the groups. Severity of outcomes was also similar between males and females (P = .66). CONCLUSION: Male fetuses with IUGR have similar outcomes when compared with female IUGR fetuses. Gender does not play a role in perinatal outcome in the setting of fetal growth restriction

Prevalent Multimorbidity Combinations Among Middle-Aged and Older Adults Seen in Community Health Centers

BACKGROUND: Multimorbidity (≥ 2 chronic diseases) is associated with greater disability and higher treatment burden, as well as difficulty coordinating self-management tasks for adults with complex multimorbidity patterns. Comparatively little work has focused on assessing multimorbidity patterns among patients seeking care in community health centers (CHCs). OBJECTIVE: To identify and characterize prevalent multimorbidity patterns in a multi-state network of CHCs over a 5-year period. DESIGN: A cohort study of the 2014-2019 ADVANCE multi-state CHC clinical data network. We identified the most prevalent multimorbidity combination patterns and assessed the frequency of patterns throughout a 5-year period as well as the demographic characteristics of patient panels by prevalent patterns. PARTICIPANTS: The study included data from 838,642 patients aged ≥ 45 years who were seen in 337 CHCs across 22 states between 2014 and 2019. MAIN MEASURES: Prevalent multimorbidity patterns of somatic, mental health, and mental-somatic combinations of 22 chronic diseases based on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Multiple Chronic Conditions framework: anxiety, arthritis, asthma, autism, cancer, cardiac arrhythmia, chronic kidney disease (CKD), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease, dementia, depression, diabetes, hepatitis, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hyperlipidemia, hypertension, osteoporosis, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), schizophrenia, substance use disorder, and stroke. KEY RESULTS: Multimorbidity is common among middle-aged and older patients seen in CHCs: 40% have somatic, 6% have mental health, and 24% have mental-somatic multimorbidity patterns. The most frequently occurring pattern across all years is hyperlipidemia-hypertension. The three most frequent patterns are various iterations of hyperlipidemia, hypertension, and diabetes and are consistent in rank of occurrence across all years. CKD-hyperlipidemia-hypertension and anxiety-depression are both more frequent in later study years. CONCLUSIONS: CHCs are increasingly seeing more complex multimorbidity patterns over time; these most often involve mental health morbidity and advanced cardiometabolic-renal morbidity

Trabajo, empleo, calificaciones profesionales, relaciones de trabajo e identidades laborales. Vol. I

CLACSO ha apoyado desde sus inicios la constitución y desarrollo de grupos de reflexión centrados en la problemática del mundo del trabajo. Los temas abordados sucesivamente han sido el empleo y el desempleo, los movimientos laborales, las relaciones de trabajo, las condiciones y medio ambiente de trabajo. Las reuniones y seminarios se han desarrollado en las principales ciudades del continente: México DF, La Habana, Medellín, Santiago de Chile, Río de Janeiro, San Pablo, Buenos Aires y Montevideo. Los objetivos son facilitar los encuentros, el debate y las acciones de cooperación entre los especialistas mas reconocidos y con los jóvenes investigadores, becarios, maestrandos y doctorandos y nutrir una comunidad muy diversa, y pluralista de científicos sociales que no han cesado de crecer. Los grupos han reunido a destacados especialistas de la casi totalidad de países de la región, con una composición multidisciplinaria y pluralista que abarca a sociólogos del trabajo y de la educación, cientistas políticos, economístas del trabajo y del desarrollo, abogados laboralistas y psicólogos del trabajo, entre otras. Sus estudios han dado lugar a numerosas publicaciones editadas por CLACSO, la UAM, el PREALC de la OIT, el CEIL PIETTE del CONICET y Trabajo y Sociedad de Argentina, y forman parte de las bibliografías de aquellas disciplinas. Desde 2007 se constituyó el actual grupo "Trabajo, empleo, calificaciones profesionales, relaciones de trabajo e identidades laborales" con sede en la UNAM, sede Iztapalapa y en el CEIL-PIETTE del CONICET. Los dos volúmenes que ofrecemos a la comunidad académica y a los actores sociales contienen la mayoría de las ponencias presentadas en el Seminario de Buenos Aires, realizado en noviembre de 2007.INDICE Presentación del Grupo de Trabajo: Trabajo, empleo, calificaciones profesionales, relaciones de trabajo e identidades laborales Julio César Neffa y Enrique de la Garza Toledo 11 Presentación de la obra: Nuevos y viejos escenarios en el mundo laboral latinoamericano: distintas miradas para su estudio Leticia Muñiz Terra 15 Primera parte Dimensiones teóricas y metodológicas Diez tesis sobre el trabajo del presente (y el futuro del trabajo) Ricardo Antunes 29 Aportes a una teoría del cambio: gubernamentalidad, fuerzas productivas y praxis de sujetos colectivos en nueva época Alberto L. Bialakowsky, María Ignacia Costa y M. Mercedes Patrouilleau 45 um ensaio sobre inércia social Adalberto Cardoso 83 Hacia un concepto ampliado de trabajo Enrique de la Garza Toledo 111 Comentarios: Del trabajo esclavo a las nuevas formas de esclavitud en el trabajo Irene Vasilachis de Gialdino 141 Segunda parte Trabajo, identidad y subjetividad Cuando el trabajo informal es espacio para la construcción de identificaciones colectivas. Un estudio sobre ferias comerciales urbanas Mariana Busso 159 Construcción del sujeto de trabajo en la condición de precariedad Karina Arellano, Diego Baccarelli, Cecilia Dallacia, Lucía De Gennaro, Soraya Giradles y Emilio Sadier 193 Comentarios: Comentarios críticos de las ponencias presentadas en la Mesa Trabajo, identidad y subjetividad Juan Montes Cató 203 Tercera parte Educación, calificación profesional, productividad y salarios Fuentes de la valorización del capital: la relación entre productividad y salarios. Argentina 1993-2006 Javier Lindenboim, Juan M. Graña y Damián Kennedy 215 Demandas empresariales en las estrategias de formación de los ingenieros en dos zonas argentinas Marta Panaia 243 Saberes, intervenciones profesionales y clasificaciones profesionales: nuevos requerimientos a idóneos, técnicos e ingenieros Julio Testa; Claudia Figari y Martín Spinosa 275 Pautas de desigualdad en el mundo social productivo uruguayo. Aportes para el debate en torno a la gestión por competencias Mariela Quiñones Montoro 309 Cuarta parte La nueva dinámica empresarial. Innovación y flexibilización en la industria Trabajo de organización y cadenas de valor. El caso de la vestimenta uruguaya Marcos Supervielle y Emiliano Rojido 337 Potencialidades y limitaciones de sectores dinámicos de alto valor agregado: la industria aeroespacial en México, Jorge Carrillo y Alfredo Hualde 373 La industria del salmón en Chile: ¿crecimiento social o explotación laboral?, Antonio Aravena 397 Rasgos posfordistas en el paisaje laboral de la gran industria del Valle del Cauca colombiano Carlos Mejía Sanabria 42

Using surveillance data to estimate pandemic vaccine effectiveness against laboratory confirmed influenza A(H1N1)2009 infection : two case-control studies, Spain, season 2009-2010

Background: Physicians of the Spanish Influenza Sentinel Surveillance System report and systematically swab patients attended to their practices for influenza-like illness (ILI). Within the surveillance system, some Spanish regions also participated in an observational study aiming at estimating influenza vaccine effectiveness (cycEVA study). During the season 2009-2010, we estimated pandemic influenza vaccine effectiveness using both the influenza surveillance data and the cycEVA study. Methods: We conducted two case-control studies using the test-negative design, between weeks 48/2009 and 8/2010 of the pandemic season. The surveillance-based study included all swabbed patients in the sentinel surveillance system. The cycEVA study included swabbed patients from seven Spanish regions. Cases were laboratory-confirmed pandemic influenza A(H1N1)2009. Controls were ILI patients testing negative for any type of influenza. Variables collected in both studies included demographic data, vaccination status, laboratory results, chronic conditions, and pregnancy. Additionally, cycEVA questionnaire collected data on previous influenza vaccination, smoking, functional status, hospitalisations, visits to the general practitioners, and obesity. We used logistic regression to calculate adjusted odds ratios (OR), computing pandemic influenza vaccine effectiveness as (1-OR *100. Results: We included 331 cases and 995 controls in the surveillance-based study and 85 cases and 351 controls in the cycEVA study. We detected nine (2.7%) and two (2.4%) vaccine failures in the surveillance-based and cycEVA studies, respectively. Adjusting for variables collected in surveillance database and swabbing month, pandemic influenza vaccine effectiveness was 62% (95% confidence interval (CI): -5; 87). The cycEVA vaccine effectiveness was 64% (95%CI: -225; 96) when adjusting for common variables with the surveillance system and 75% (95%CI: -293; 98) adjusting for all variables collected. Conclusion: Point estimates of the pandemic influenza vaccine effectiveness suggested a protective effect of the pandemic vaccine against laboratory-confirmed influenza A(H1N1)2009 in the season 2009-2010. Both studies were limited by the low vaccine coverage and the late start of the vaccination campaign. Routine influenza surveillance provides reliable estimates and could be used for influenza vaccine effectiveness studies in future seasons taken into account the surveillance system limitations

Rhodium(III)-Catalyzed Dearomatizing (3+2) Annulation of 2-Alkenylphenols and Alkynes

Appropriately substituted 2-alkenylphenols undergo a mild formal [3C+2C] cycloaddition with alkynes when treated with a Rh(III) catalyst and an oxidant. The reaction, which involves the cleavage of the terminal C–H bond of the alkenyl moiety and the dearomatization of the phenol ring, provides a versatile and efficient approach to highly appealing spirocyclic skeletons and occurs with high selectivityWe thank the financial support provided by the Spanish Grants SAF2010-20822-C02 and CSD2007-00006 Consolider Ingenio 2010, the Xunta de Galicia Grants GR2013-041 and EM2013/036, the ERDF, and the European Research Council (Advanced Grant No. 340055). M.G. thanks Xunta de Galicia for a Parga Pondal contractS

Sheldon Spectrum and the Plankton Paradox: Two Sides of the Same Coin : A trait-based plankton size-spectrum model

The Sheldon spectrum describes a remarkable regularity in aquatic ecosystems: the biomass density as a function of logarithmic body mass is approximately constant over many orders of magnitude. While size-spectrum models have explained this phenomenon for assemblages of multicellular organisms, this paper introduces a species-resolved size-spectrum model to explain the phenomenon in unicellular plankton. A Sheldon spectrum spanning the cell-size range of unicellular plankton necessarily consists of a large number of coexisting species covering a wide range of characteristic sizes. The coexistence of many phytoplankton species feeding on a small number of resources is known as the Paradox of the Plankton. Our model resolves the paradox by showing that coexistence is facilitated by the allometric scaling of four physiological rates. Two of the allometries have empirical support, the remaining two emerge from predator-prey interactions exactly when the abundances follow a Sheldon spectrum. Our plankton model is a scale-invariant trait-based size-spectrum model: it describes the abundance of phyto- and zooplankton cells as a function of both size and species trait (the maximal size before cell division). It incorporates growth due to resource consumption and predation on smaller cells, death due to predation, and a flexible cell division process. We give analytic solutions at steady state for both the within-species size distributions and the relative abundances across species

Electrophysiological evidence for an early processing of human voices

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Previous electrophysiological studies have identified a "voice specific response" (VSR) peaking around 320 ms after stimulus onset, a latency markedly longer than the 70 ms needed to discriminate living from non-living sound sources and the 150 ms to 200 ms needed for the processing of voice paralinguistic qualities. In the present study, we investigated whether an early electrophysiological difference between voice and non-voice stimuli could be observed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>ERPs were recorded from 32 healthy volunteers who listened to 200 ms long stimuli from three sound categories - voices, bird songs and environmental sounds - whilst performing a pure-tone detection task. ERP analyses revealed voice/non-voice amplitude differences emerging as early as 164 ms post stimulus onset and peaking around 200 ms on fronto-temporal (positivity) and occipital (negativity) electrodes.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our electrophysiological results suggest a rapid brain discrimination of sounds of voice, termed the "fronto-temporal positivity to voices" (FTPV), at latencies comparable to the well-known face-preferential N170.</p