Fifth Annual Conference on New and Re-Emerging Infectious Diseases

The fifth annual Conference on New and Re-Emerging Infectious Diseases was hosted on April 18–19, 2002, by the College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). The conference featured 8 speakers and 35 poster presentations

The Ibero-American Science and Technology Education Consortium (ISTEC):\nThe Initiative Approach for Science and Technology Education, Research and Development

Effective and efficient, up-to-date education and information interchange are needed for the well-being of a country or region. To this end the Ibero-American Science and Technology Education Consortium (ISTEC) has been organized. The Consortium is providing mechanisms for improvement of education, research and development, and technology transfer throughout the Americas and the Iberian Peninsula. The mechanism utilized to identify and facilitate these activities is the Initiative, which is an area of interest identified by participating institutions to address the needs of a member institution, country, or region. By creating projects organized within these initiatives, current technology and information are made available for the solution of problems. Four initiatives have been identified to date, and within each of these initiatives projects are being carried out to achieve the objectives of the Consortium. The Library Linkages Initiative promotes the use and creation of innovative real-time information-sharing services. Within this initiative are projects which seek to provide technical information in a timely fashion to a user community which is diverse in its needs and its geographical distribution. This includes distribution of material through networked interconnection, development of regional data bases, and improved availability of materials for education and research. The Advanced Continuing Education Initiative seeks to upgrade human resources through a variety of activities. Included in this initiative are a number of training efforts. Short courses are being developed and delivered in a series of advanced technical presentations. Distance education is being used to distribute information about Information Technologies. Network facilities are being utilized to provide collaborative educational activities which draw together faculty and students on three continents. In addition, exchange programs, such as “sandwich” graduate programs which minimize time away from the home institution and maximize information transfer, permit the sharing of expertise among participating institutions. The Research and Development Laboratories Initiative creates cooperating laboratories that are modular, flexible, and expandable for education, R&D, and other activities. Similar laboratories are made available in many ISTEC institutions. With common basic elements in the laboratory, experiments, experiences, and techniques can be shared. These results, both in teaching mechanisms and research explorations, are made available to minimize the impact of starting new avenues of activities.\nThe “Los Libertadores” Initiative has been started, an initiative which will culminate in the creation of a nextgeneration network connecting multidisciplinary Centers of Excellence for addressing current in-country and regional problems. The Centers of Excellence allow technology to be utilized to address concerns of a country or region, and the network of these Centers is designed to share the information between cooperating sites to effectively utilize scarce resources throughout Ibero-America. The distributed nature of the projects and initiatives avoids duplication of efforts and responds needs identified by the members. A variety of projects are underway based on the initiatives in order to bring the benefits of technology to participants. Projects are designed to be dynamic and extensible, and maximum utilization of available resources is encouraged by transnational coordination and collaboration

The Ibero-American Science and Technology Education Consortium (ISTEC): The Initiative Approach for Science and Technology Education, Research and Development

Effective and efficient, up-to-date education and information interchange are needed for the well-being of a country or region. To this end the Ibero-American Science and Technology Education Consortium (ISTEC) has been organized. The Consortium is providing mechanisms for improvement of education, research and development, and technology transfer throughout the Americas and the Iberian Peninsula. The mechanism utilized to identify and facilitate these activities is the Initiative, which is an area of interest identified by participating institutions to address the needs of a member institution, country, or region. By creating projects organized within these initiatives, current technology and information are made available for the solution of problems. Four initiatives have been identified to date, and within each of these initiatives projects are being carried out to achieve the objectives of the Consortium. The Library Linkages Initiative promotes the use and creation of innovative real-time information-sharing services. Within this initiative are projects which seek to provide technical information in a timely fashion to a user community which is diverse in its needs and its geographical distribution. This includes distribution of material through networked interconnection, development of regional data bases, and improved availability of materials for education and research. The Advanced Continuing Education Initiative seeks to upgrade human resources through a variety of activities. Included in this initiative are a number of training efforts. Short courses are being developed and delivered in a series of advanced technical presentations. Distance education is being used to distribute information about Information Technologies. Network facilities are being utilized to provide collaborative educational activities which draw together faculty and students on three continents. In addition, exchange programs, such as “sandwich” graduate programs which minimize time away from the home institution and maximize information transfer, permit the sharing of expertise among participating institutions. The Research and Development Laboratories Initiative creates cooperating laboratories that are modular, flexible, and expandable for education, R&D, and other activities. Similar laboratories are made available in many ISTEC institutions. With common basic elements in the laboratory, experiments, experiences, and techniques can be shared. These results, both in teaching mechanisms and research explorations, are made available to minimize the impact of starting new avenues of activities. The “Los Libertadores” Initiative has been started, an initiative which will culminate in the creation of a nextgeneration network connecting multidisciplinary Centers of Excellence for addressing current in-country and regional problems. The Centers of Excellence allow technology to be utilized to address concerns of a country or region, and the network of these Centers is designed to share the information between cooperating sites to effectively utilize scarce resources throughout Ibero-America. The distributed nature of the projects and initiatives avoids duplication of efforts and responds needs identified by the members. A variety of projects are underway based on the initiatives in order to bring the benefits of technology to participants. Projects are designed to be dynamic and extensible, and maximum utilization of available resources is encouraged by transnational coordination and collaboration.Facultad de Ingenierí

Evaluation of Java for General Purpose GPU Computing

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/WAINA.2013.234[Abstract] The presence of many-core units as accelerators has been increasing due to their ability to improve the performance of highly parallel workloads. General Purpose GPU(GPGPU) computing has allowed the graphical units to emerge as successful co-processors that can be employed to improve the performance of many different non-graphical applications with high parallel requirements, which make them suitable for many High Performance Computing workloads. While the main libraries developed to exploit the massive parallel capacity of GPUs are oriented to C/C++ programmers, there have been several efforts to extend this support to other languages. Among them, Java stands out for being one of the most extended languages and there are multiple projects that try to enable Java to take advantage of GPGPU computing. In this scenario, this paper presents an evaluation of the most relevant among the current solutions that exploit GPGPU computing in Java.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación; TIN2010-16735Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia: FPU AP2010-4348Xunta de Galicia; CN2012/21

Magnetically propelled chained nanocomposites for biologically relevant media exploration

Financiado para publicación en acceso aberto: Universidade de Vigo/CISUGElongated nanostructures to be remotely and magnetically propelled in biologically relevant media, have gained attention as offering themselves as effective tools or carriers in theragnostics applications. However, the magnetic actuation associated remains challenging due to the lack of mechanical information in the media of interest, taking into account biophysical or biomedical purposes. In this study, we detail the magnetic actuation of magnetically propelled chained nanocomposites considering their dynamics, in which their velocity can be modulated in terms of the viscosity of the medium considered, given a magnetic field gradient. Simpler cases of distilled water, a water/glycerol mixture and a fluid made of cell extracts (imitating the cytosol of cells) of known viscosity are the basis experiments for the study of more complex media inside HeLa cells, murine NIH-3T3 fibroblasts and zebrafish larvae, offering the mechanical information required. The experimental results indicate that the magnetically propelled performance of the chained nanostructures can be precisely controlled in potentially changing scenarios, where drug and heat delivery, magnetic separation, or microfluidic technologies are demanded, using a magnetic field gradient and providing good estimations of the dynamical parameters involved.Xunta de Galicia | Ref. ED481A/322Xunta de Galicia | Ref. IN606A-2018/019Xunta de Galicia | Ref. IN853B 2018/03Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad | Ref. PI16/00496Instituto de Salud Carlos III | Ref. PI19/00349Instituto de Salud Carlos III | Ref. DTS19/00033Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. MAT2016-81955-REDTAgencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. PID2020-119242-I0

Synthesis and biological evaluation of 1-alkylaminomethyl-1,1-bisphosphonic acids against Trypanosoma cruzi and Toxoplasma gondii

As an extension of our project aimed at the search for new chemotherapeutic agents against Chagas disease and toxoplasmosis, several 1,1-bisphosphonates were designed, synthesized and biologically evaluated against Trypanosoma cruzi and Toxoplasma gondii, the etiologic agents of these diseases, respectively. In particular, and based on the antiparasitic activity exhibited by 2-alkylaminoethyl-1,1-bisphosphonates targeting farnesyl diphosphate synthase, a series of linear 2-alkylaminomethyl-1,1-bisphosphonic acids (compounds 21–33), that is, the position of the amino group was one carbon closer to the gem-phosphonate moiety, were evaluated as growth inhibitors against the clinically more relevant dividing form (amastigotes) of T. cruzi. Although all of these compounds resulted to be devoid of antiparasitic activity, these results were valuable for a rigorous SAR study. In addition, unexpectedly, the synthetic designed 2-cycloalkylaminoethyl-1,1-bisphosphonic acids 47–49 were free of antiparasitic activity. Moreover, long chain sulfur-containing 1,1-bisphosphonic acids, such as compounds 54–56, 59, turned out to be nanomolar growth inhibitors of tachyzoites of T. gondii. As many bisphosphonate-containing molecules are FDA-approved drugs for the treatment of bone resorption disorders, their potential nontoxicity makes them good candidates to control American trypanosomiasis and toxoplasmosis.Fil: Galaka, Tamila Pavlivna. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Unidad de Microanálisis y Métodos Físicos en Química Orgánica. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Unidad de Microanálisis y Métodos Físicos en Química Orgánica; ArgentinaFil: Falcone, Bruno Nicolas. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Unidad de Microanálisis y Métodos Físicos en Química Orgánica. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Unidad de Microanálisis y Métodos Físicos en Química Orgánica; ArgentinaFil: Li, Catherine. University of Georgia; Estados UnidosFil: Szajnman, Sergio Hernan. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Unidad de Microanálisis y Métodos Físicos en Química Orgánica. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Unidad de Microanálisis y Métodos Físicos en Química Orgánica; ArgentinaFil: Moreno, Silvia N.J.. University of Georgia; Estados UnidosFil: Docampo, Roberto. University of Georgia; Estados UnidosFil: Rodriguez, Juan Bautista. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Unidad de Microanálisis y Métodos Físicos en Química Orgánica. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Unidad de Microanálisis y Métodos Físicos en Química Orgánica; Argentin

Aryloxyethyl thiocyanates are potent growth inhibitors of Trypanosoma cruzi and Toxoplasma gondii

As a part of our project aimed at searching new safe chemotherapeutic agents against parasitic diseases, several compounds structurally related to the antiparasitic agent WC-9 (4-phenoxyphenoxyethyl thiocyanate), which were modified at the terminal phenyl ring, were designed, synthesized and evaluated as growth inhibitors against Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent of Chagas disease and Toxoplasma gondii, the parasite responsible of toxoplasmosis. Most of the synthetic analogues exhibited similar antiparasitic activity being slightly more potent than our lead WC-9. For example, the trifluoromethyl derivatives 15 and 16 exhibited ED50 values of 10.0 uM and 9.2 uM, respectively, against intracellular T. cruzi, whereas they showed potent action against tachyzoites of T. gondii (ED50 values 1.6 uM and 1.9 uM against T. gondii, respectively). In addition, the WC-9 analogues 48 and 61, in which the terminal aryl group was meta with respect to the alkyl chain bearing the thiocyanate group, showed potent inhibitory action against both T. cruzi and T. gondii at the very low micromolar range suggesting that para-phenyl substitution pattern is not necessarily required for biological activity.Fil: Chao, Maria Noelia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Unidad de Microanálisis y Métodos Físicos en Química Orgánica. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Unidad de Microanálisis y Métodos Físicos en Química Orgánica; ArgentinaFil: Exeni Matiuzzi, Carolina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Unidad de Microanálisis y Métodos Físicos en Química Orgánica. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Unidad de Microanálisis y Métodos Físicos en Química Orgánica; ArgentinaFil: Storey, Melissa. University of Georgia; Estados UnidosFil: Li, Catherine. University of Georgia; Estados UnidosFil: Szajnman, Sergio Hernan. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Unidad de Microanálisis y Métodos Físicos en Química Orgánica. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Unidad de Microanálisis y Métodos Físicos en Química Orgánica; ArgentinaFil: Docampo, Roberto. University of Georgia; Estados UnidosFil: Moreno, Silvia N. J.. University of Georgia; Estados UnidosFil: Rodriguez, Juan Bautista. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Unidad de Microanálisis y Métodos Físicos en Química Orgánica. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Unidad de Microanálisis y Métodos Físicos en Química Orgánica; Argentin

A 43-nucleotide U-rich element in 3′-untranslated region of large number of Trypanosoma cruzi transcripts is important for mRNA Abundance in intracellular amastigotes

Trypanosoma cruzi, the agent of Chagas disease, does not seem to control gene expression through regulation of transcription initiation and makes use of post-transcriptional mechanisms. We report here a 43-nt U-rich RNA element located in the 3′-untranslated region (3′-UTR) of a large number of T. cruzi mRNAs that is important for mRNA abundance in the intracellular amastigote stage of the parasite. Whole genome scan analysis, differential display RT-PCR, Northern blot, and RT-PCR analyses were used to determine the transcript levels of more than 900 U-rich-containing mRNAs of large gene families as well as single and low copy number genes. Our results indicate that the 43-nt U-richmRNAelement is preferentially present in amastigotes. The cis-element of a protein kinase 3′-UTR but not its mutated version promoted the expression of the green fluorescent protein reporter gene in amastigotes. The regulatory ciselement, but not its mutated version, was also shown to interact with the trypanosome-specific RNA-binding protein (RBP) TcUBP1 but not with other related RBPs. Co-immunoprecipitation experiments of TcUBP1-containing ribonucleoprotein complexes formed in vivo validated the interaction with representative endogenous RNAs having the element. These results suggest that this 43-nt U-rich element together with other yet unidentified sequences might be involved in the modulation of abundance and/or translation of subsets of transcripts in the amastigote stage.Fil: Li, Zhu Hong. University of Georgia; Estados UnidosFil: de Gaudenzi, Javier Gerardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas "Dr. Raúl Alfonsín" (sede Chascomús). Universidad Nacional de San Martín. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas "Dr. Raúl Alfonsín" (sede Chascomús); ArgentinaFil: Alvarez, Vanina Eder. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas "Dr. Raúl Alfonsín" (sede Chascomús). Universidad Nacional de San Martín. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas "Dr. Raúl Alfonsín" (sede Chascomús); ArgentinaFil: Mendiondo, Nicolas. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas "Dr. Raúl Alfonsín" (sede Chascomús). Universidad Nacional de San Martín. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas "Dr. Raúl Alfonsín" (sede Chascomús); ArgentinaFil: Wang, Haiming. University of Georgia; Estados UnidosFil: Kissinger, Jessica C.. University of Georgia; Estados UnidosFil: Frasch, Alberto Carlos C.. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas "Dr. Raúl Alfonsín" (sede Chascomús). Universidad Nacional de San Martín. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas "Dr. Raúl Alfonsín" (sede Chascomús); ArgentinaFil: Docampo, Roberto. University of Georgia; Estados Unido