CAN EQIP BE EFFECTIVE IN HELPING FARMERS MEET MANURE MANAGEMENT GOALS?

A manure application cost model was used to examine the impact financial assistance from EQIP can have on reducing costs to confined hog operations from meeting a manure nutrient application standard. Sector costs are examined under alternative scenarios involving type of nutrient standard and landowner willingness to accept manure.Livestock Production/Industries,

Estrés en el personal de enfermería y las relaciones interpersonales entre equipo de salud

El enfermero(a), es un profesional preparado para valorar y tomar decisiones adecuadas en lo que, se refiere a la problemática de la salud, donde uno de los propósitos es evitar entorpecer la labor interdisciplinaria del personal que participa en la atención integral del paciente. Un gran porcentaje de enfermeros piensan que el resto del equipo de salud ignora su labor, la minimizan y no confían en sus aptitudes como profesionales además de no tener en cuenta sus opiniones. Estas situaciones generan un gran estrés en el personal de enfermería, sintiendo muchas veces la falta de motivación hacia su tarea y el deseo de superarse en el cuidado dirigido a los pacientes. Este trabajo de investigación tiene como objetivo conocer cuál es la relación que existe entre los signos de estrés en el personal de enfermería de los Servicios de Maternidad y las relaciones interpersonales del resto del equipo de salud, del Hospital Luis Lagomaggiore, Mendoza durante 2016. Se tomó como población y muestra al Equipo de Enfermeros de los Servicios de Admisión de Partos, Pre-Internación, Partos y Servicio de Maternidades de Internación Conjunta de dicho hospital: cincuenta (50) personas que respondieron un cuestionario con preguntas cerradas.Fil: Monges, Elizabeth. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas. Escuela de Enfermería..Fil: Ribaudo, Andrea. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas. Escuela de Enfermería..Fil: Tunqui, Beatriz. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas. Escuela de Enfermería.

ZenHackAdemy: Ethical Hacking @ DIBRIS

Cybersecurity attacks are on the rise, and the current response is not effective enough. The need for a competent workforce, able to face attackers, is increasing. At the moment, the gap between academia and real-world skills is huge and academia cannot provide students with skills that match those of an attacker. To pass on these skills, teachers have to train students in scenarios as close as possible to real-world ones. Capture the Flag (CTF) competitions are a great tool to achieve this goal, since they encourage students to think as an attacker does, thus creating more awareness on the modalities and consequences of an attack. We describe our experience in running an educational activity on ethical hacking, which we proposed to computer science and computer engineering students. We organized seminars, outside formal classes, and provided online support on the hands-on part of the training. We delivered different types of exercises and held a final CTF competition. These activities resulted in growing a community of students and researchers interested in cybersecurity, and some of them have formed ZenHack, an official CTF team

Targeted activation of the SHP-1/PP2A signaling axis elicits apoptosis of chronic lymphocytic leukemia cells

Lyn, a member of the Src family of kinases, is a key factor in the dys-regulation of survival and apoptotic pathways of malignant B cells in chronic lymphocytic leukemia. One of the effects of Lyn's action is spatial and functional segregation of the tyrosine phosphatase SHP-1 into two pools, one beneath the plasma membrane in an active state promoting pro-survival signals, the other in the cytosol in an inhibited conformation and unable to counter the elevated level of cytosolic tyrosine phosphorylation. We herein show that SHP-1 activity can be elicited directly by nintedanib, an agent also known as a triple angiokinase inhibitor, circumventing the phospho-S591-dependent inhibition of the phosphatase, leading to the dephosphorylation of pro-apoptotic players such as procaspase-8 and serine/threonine phosphatase 2A, eventually triggering apoptosis. Furthermore, the activation of PP2A by using MP07-66, a novel FTY720 analog, stimulated SHP-1 activity via dephosphorylation of phospho-S591, which unveiled the existence of a positive feedback signaling loop involving the two phosphatases. In addition to providing further insights into the molecular basis of this disease, our findings indicate that the PP2A/SHP-1 axis may emerge as an attractive, novel target for the development of alternative strategies in the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia

Differential Levels of Soluble Inflammatory Markers by Human Immunodeficiency Virus Controller Status and Demographics

Background. Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1 elite controllers (ECs) represent an ideal population to study the effects of HIV persistence on chronic inflammation in the absence of antiretroviral therapy (ART). Methods. Twenty inflammatory markers measured in cohorts of ECs, HIV suppressed noncontrollers, and HIV-uninfected controls were compared using rank-based tests and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLSDA). Spearman correlations were determined among the inflammatory markers, residual viremia by the single-copy assay, and CD4+ T cell slope. Results. Significant differences were seen between cohorts in 15 of the soluble inflammatory markers. Human immunodeficiency virus-1 ECs were found to have the highest levels for all of the markers with the exception of RANTES. In particular, median levels of 7 inflammatory markers (soluble CD14 [sCD14], interferon [IFN]-γ, IFN-γ-inducible protein [IP]-10, interleukin [IL]-4, IL-10, sCD40L, and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor) were twice as high in the HIV-1 ECs compared with either of the HIV-suppressed or uninfected groups. Multivariate PLSDA analysis of inflammatory markers improved differentiation between the patient cohorts, discerning gender differences in inflammatory profile amongst individuals on suppressive ART. Soluble markers of inflammation in ECs were not associated with either levels of residual HIV-1 viremia or CD4+ T cell decline. Conclusions. Despite maintaining relatively low levels of viremia, HIV-1 ECs had elevated levels of a set of key inflammatory markers. Additional studies are needed to determine whether ECs may benefit from ART and to further evaluate the observed gender differences

Garbage in, garbage out: how reliable training data improved a virtual screening approach against SARS-CoV-2 MPro

Introduction: The identification of chemical compounds that interfere with SARS-CoV-2 replication continues to be a priority in several academic and pharmaceutical laboratories. Computational tools and approaches have the power to integrate, process and analyze multiple data in a short time. However, these initiatives may yield unrealistic results if the applied models are not inferred from reliable data and the resulting predictions are not confirmed by experimental evidence.Methods: We undertook a drug discovery campaign against the essential major protease (MPro) from SARS-CoV-2, which relied on an in silico search strategy –performed in a large and diverse chemolibrary– complemented by experimental validation. The computational method comprises a recently reported ligand-based approach developed upon refinement/learning cycles, and structure-based approximations. Search models were applied to both retrospective (in silico) and prospective (experimentally confirmed) screening.Results: The first generation of ligand-based models were fed by data, which to a great extent, had not been published in peer-reviewed articles. The first screening campaign performed with 188 compounds (46 in silico hits and 100 analogues, and 40 unrelated compounds: flavonols and pyrazoles) yielded three hits against MPro (IC50 ≤ 25 μM): two analogues of in silico hits (one glycoside and one benzo-thiazol) and one flavonol. A second generation of ligand-based models was developed based on this negative information and newly published peer-reviewed data for MPro inhibitors. This led to 43 new hit candidates belonging to different chemical families. From 45 compounds (28 in silico hits and 17 related analogues) tested in the second screening campaign, eight inhibited MPro with IC50 = 0.12–20 μM and five of them also impaired the proliferation of SARS-CoV-2 in Vero cells (EC50 7–45 μM).Discussion: Our study provides an example of a virtuous loop between computational and experimental approaches applied to target-focused drug discovery against a major and global pathogen, reaffirming the well-known “garbage in, garbage out” machine learning principle

Less Bone Loss With Maraviroc- Versus Tenofovir-Containing Antiretroviral Therapy in the AIDS Clinical Trials Group A5303 Study

Background. There is a need to prevent or minimize bone loss associated with antiretroviral treatment (ART) initiation. We compared maraviroc (MVC)- to tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF)–containing ART

Early galaxy formation and its large-scale effects

Galaxy formation is at the heart of our understanding of cosmic evolution. Although there is a consensus that galaxies emerged from the expanding matter background by gravitational instability of primordial fluctuations, a number of additional physical processes must be understood and implemented in theoretical models before these can be reliably used to interpret observations. In parallel, the astonishing recent progresses made in detecting galaxies that formed only a few hundreds of million years after the Big Bang is pushing the quest for more sophisticated and detailed studies of early structures. In this review, we combine the information gleaned from different theoretical models/studies to build a coherent picture of the Universe in its early stages which includes the physics of galaxy formation along with the impact that early structures had on large-scale processes as cosmic reionization and metal enrichment of the intergalactic medium

Semi-automatic Generation of Cybersecurity Exercises: A Preliminary Proposal

Computer security competitions in which teams competitively attack and defend programs in real time are powerful training vehicles, but they are costly to organize and run. The same problem arises in the case of cybersecurity education since practical exercises are hard to design and, once exploited, they cannot be reused by the same students. In this preliminary work, we propose the use of flow-based programming - and specifically the Node-RED tool - to semi-automatically generate resources for cybersecurity competitions and training. The long term goal is defining a library of modules which can be easily combined to build a pool of fresh exercises, which are injected with different vulnerabilities, but at the same time maintain similar levels of difficulty