Impacto de la Inmunidad Humoral en la Disfunción del Injerto en el Trasplante Renal.

La causa principal de pérdida del injerto renal a largo plazo es el daño tisular provocado por anticuerpos anti-HLA donante específico (DSA). El estudio parte del desconocimiento actual sobre aspectos tan importantes en el trasplante de órganos sólidos como el análisis de los factores de riesgo, que provocan la formación de DSA, así cómo el papel que juegan en la formación de DSA y en el rechazo humoral (RH) la dosis y variabilidad de los niveles plasmáticos de los inhibidores de la calcineurina. Finalmente queda por aclarar las vías patogénicas del impacto de los DSA sobre la histología del injerto, una cuestión, que se debate entre la activación del sistema del complemento y la inmunidad celular mediada por anticuerpos. A raíz de esta hipótesis se plantean los siguientes objetivos: a) Analizar la incidencia de formación de DSA en la población trasplantada; b) describir la naturaleza de los DSA y su evolución en el tiempo; c) identificar factores de riesgo de formación de DSA; d) determinar la incidencia de RH y su impacto en la supervivencia; e) identificar factores de riesgo del RH; f) valorar la intensidad de fluorescencia media (IFM) y la activación de C1q cómo método de diferenciación de anticuerpos que provocan daño tisular; g) evaluar el coeficiente de variabilidad de los niveles en sangre de tacrolimus como factor de riesgo de formación de DSA y de RH. Cómo objetivos secundarios: h) analizar el impacto del RH en la función renal; y i) determinar el impacto del RH en la supervivencia del paciente. Para ello se diseña un estudio de cohortes, observacional, longitudinal, retrospectivo y analítico, que incluye 591 pacientes trasplantados desde el 1 de Enero del 2008 al 31 de Diciembre del 2012 en el Hospital Regional Universitario de Málaga, con seguimiento hasta el 30 de Junio del 2014. A raíz de los resultados obtenidos se llegan a las siguientes conclusiones: a) la incidencia de formación de DSA es del 8,6%; b) hay un predominio de DSA de clase II, especialmente DQ y la aparición de los DSA se produce fundamentalmente durante el primer año (41,2%), observándose una expansión generalizada de anticuerpos anti-HLA acorde al % PRA virtual; c) los factores de riesgo asociados a la formación de DSA son la función retrasada del injerto, los anticuerpos preformados y el rechazo agudo (RA) celular; d) la incidencia de RH es del 3,6%; e) los factores de riesgo asociados al RH son los anticuerpos preformados, el RA celular, el retrasplante, el tiempo en lista de espera, el panel reactivo de anticuerpos≥25% y la creatinina sérica a los 12 meses. En los pacientes con DSA, los factores de riesgo asociados al RH son el RA celular y la fijación de la fracción C1q del complemento; f) en los pacientes que forman DSA, la fracción C1q del complemento es un factor de riesgo asociado al RH y a la pérdida del injerto. La IFM no se asocia a la aparición de RH ni a la pérdida del injerto; g) un coeficiente de variabilidad del 27,5% de los niveles de tacrolimus predice con adecuada sensibilidad y especificidad el riesgo de aparición de DSA y de RH; h) los pacientes con RH tienen una peor función renal; i) el RH no tiene impacto negativo en la supervivencia del paciente

Latent Profiles of Burnout, Self-Esteem and Depressive Symptomatology among Teachers

Burnout is a reality in the teaching profession. Specifically, teaching staff usually have higher burnout rates. The present study aims to analyze the different burnout profiles and to verify if there were differences between burnout profiles in depressive symptomatology and in the self-esteem of the teachers at school. The total number of participants was 210 teachers from 30 to 65 years. The first scale was the Maslach burnout inventory, the second scale was the Self-Rating depression scale and the third scale was the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale . The latent class analysis identified three burnout profiles: the first group with a high level of emotional exhaustion, low personal accomplishment and depersonalization (high burnout); the second group with low emotional exhaustion, low depersonalization and high personal accomplishment (low burnout) and the third group with low depersonalization, low emotional exhaustion and low personal accomplishment (moderate burnout). The results revealed that there were differences in depressive symptomatology (group 1 obtained higher scores than group 2 and group 3) and self-esteem (group 2 obtained higher scores than group 1). The psychological balance and health of teachers depend on preventing the factors that have been associated with this syndrome

Stress, Coping, and Resilience Before and After COVID-19: A Predictive Model Based on Artificial Intelligence in the University Environment

The COVID-19 global health emergency has greatly impacted the educational field. Faced with unprecedented stress situations, professors, students, and families have employed various coping and resilience strategies throughout the confinement period. High and persistent stress levels are associated with other pathologies; hence, their detection and prevention are needed. Consequently, this study aimed to design a predictive model of stress in the educational field based on artificial intelligence that included certain sociodemographic variables, coping strategies, and resilience capacity, and to study the relationship between them. The non-probabilistic snowball sampling method was used, involving 337 people (73% women) from the university education community in south-eastern Spain. The Perceived Stress Scale, Stress Management Questionnaire, and Brief Resilience Scale were administered. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (version 24) was used to design the architecture of artificial neural networks. The results found that stress levels could be predicted by the synaptic weights of coping strategies and timing of the epidemic (before and after the implementation of isolation measures), with a predictive capacity of over 80% found in the neural network model. Additionally, direct and significant associations were identified between the use of certain coping strategies, stress levels, and resilience. The conclusions of this research are essential for effective stress detection, and therefore, early intervention in the field of educational psychology, by discussing the influence of resilience or lack thereof on the prediction of stress levels. Identifying the variables that maintain a greater predictive power in stress levels is an effective strategy to design more adjusted prevention programs and to anticipate the needs of the community

Dynamic and efficient point-to-point and point-to-multipoint communications by slicing the optical constellation

Optical Constellation Slicing is proposed to convey heterogenous traffic from a source to multiple destinations, while supporting dynamic capacity allocation. Illustrative numerical results reveal the potential of the proposed scheme, while providing significant cost reduction.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community through the MSCA REAL-NET project (G.A. 813144), by the AEI through the IBON project (PID2020-114135RB-I00), and by the ICREA institution.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Dual time and frequency domain optical layer digital twin

We demonstrate a digital twin for failure detection in optical networks. Artificial neural networks-based models for optical constellation analysis enable predicting the transmitted signal in the time domain whereas analytical models are usually used to estimate their spectral evolution.This project has received funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 MSCA-EID MENTOR (G.A. 956713), the H2020 B5G-OPEN (G.A. 101016663), the MICINN IBON (PID2020- 114135RB-I00), and the ICREA Institution.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Association between Cardiovascular Health, C-Reactive Protein, and Comorbidities in Spanish Urban-Dwelling Overweight/Obese Hypertensive Patients.

The relationship between poorer cardiovascular health metrics (CVHM) plus low-grade inflammation (LGI) and hypertension-mediated organ damage (HMOD) and hypertension-related comorbidities (HRC) in hypertensive populations with an overweight/obese (Ow/Ob) hypertensionrelated phenotype is understudied. We examined the relationship between the CVHM score and the presence of LGI and Ow/Ob hypertension-associated phenotype morbidities and mortality in 243 hypertensive patients from an urban primary care center. We recorded the baseline CVHM score plus clinical data, including hs-C-reactive protein (CRP) and prevalent and incident HMOD-HRC and death. A total of 26 (10.7%) had a body mass index (BMI) < 25 kg/m2, 95 (31.1%) were overweight (BMI 25–29.9 kg/m2), and 122 (50.2%) were obese (BMI 30 kg/m2). There were 264 cases of HMOD-HRC and 9 deaths. Higher hs-CRP levels were observed as BMI increased. Linear regression analysis showed a significant correlation between BMI and hs-CRP, adjusted for confounders. Additionally, individuals with a higher hs-CRP tertile had a significant increase in BMI. Significantly lower log hs-CRP levels were found as the number of ideal CVHM scores rose. Multivariate binary logistic regression found the risk of HMOD-HRC increased significantly as the ideal CVHM scores decreased, and hs-CRP levels also correlated with HMOD-HRC in the whole cohort and in the Ow and Ob subpopulations. These findings highlight the need for early intervention targeting ideal CVHMs among hypertensive individuals with an Ow/Ob phenotype in order to attenuate the inflammatory state and prevent cardiovascular disease.Partial funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málag

Quantum bit retransmission using universal quantum copying machine

Quantum internet, which is expected to be a combination of quantum and classical networks, promises to provide information-theoretic security for data exchange. Classical networks have well-established protocols for reliable end-to-end transmission that implicitly make use of duplicating classical bits. However, quantum bits (qubits) cannot be copied due to the no-cloning theorem. In this paper, we take advantage of the principle of creating imperfect clones using a Universal Quantum Copying Machine (UQCM) and propose the Quantum Automatic Repeat Request (QARQ) protocol, inspired by its classical equivalent. A simulation platform has been developed to study the feasibility of QARQ. Results show that our proposal is well suited for applications that are compatible with low fidelity requirements.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Communities through the MSCA REAL-NET project (G.A. 813144), the H2020 B5G-OPEN (G.A. 101016663), the MICINN IBON (PID2020-114135RB-I00) project, and from the ICREA Institution.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Investigating imperfect cloning for extending quantum communication capabilities

Quantum computing allows the implementation of powerful algorithms with enormous computing capabilities and promises a secure quantum Internet. Despite the advantages brought by quantum communication, certain communication paradigms are impossible or cannot be completely implemented due to the no-cloning theorem. Qubit retransmission for reliable communications and point-to-multipoint quantum communication (QP2MP) are among them. In this paper, we investigate whether a Universal Quantum Copying Machine (UQCM) generating imperfect copies of qubits can help. Specifically, we propose the Quantum Automatic Repeat Request (QARQ) protocol, which is based on its classical variant, as well as to perform QP2MP communication using imperfect clones. Note that the availability of these protocols might foster the development of new distributed quantum computing applications. As current quantum devices are noisy and they decohere qubits, we analyze these two protocols under the presence of various sources of noise. Three major quantum technologies are studied for these protocols: direct transmission (DT), teleportation (TP), and telecloning (TC). The Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) center platform is used to create simulation models. Results show that TC outperforms TP and DT in terms of fidelity in both QARQ and QP2MP, although it is the most complex one in terms of quantum cost. A numerical study shows that the QARQ protocol significantly improves qubit recovery and that creating more clones does not always improve qubit recovery.This work has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 101070009 [sic, correct code: 101092766] (ALLEGRO Project), from the AEI IBON (PID2020-114135RB-I00) project, and from the ICREA Institution.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

LPsec: a fast and secure cryptographic system for optical connections

High capacity and low latency of optical connections are ideal for supporting current and future communication services, including 5G and beyond. Although some of those services are already secured at the packet layer using standard stream ciphers, like the Advanced Encryption Standard and ChaCha, secure transmission at the optical layer is still not implemented. To secure the optical layer, cryptographic methods need to be fast enough to support high-speed optical transmission and cannot introduce significant delay. Moreover, methods for key exchange, key generation, and key expansion are required, which can be implemented on standard coherent transponders. In this paper, we propose Light Path SECurity (LPsec), a secure cryptographic solution for optical connections that involves fast data encryption using stream ciphers and key exchange using Diffie–Hellman protocol through the optical channel. To support encryption of high-speed data streams, a fast, general-purpose pseudorandom number generator is used. Moreover, to make the scheme more secure against exhaustive search attacks, an additional substitution cipher is proposed. In contrast to the limited encryption speeds that standard stream ciphers can support, LPsec can support high-speed rates. Numerical simulation for 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), 32-QAM, and 64-QAM show that LPsec provides a sufficient security level while introducing only negligible delay.H2020 Industrial Leadership [H2020 B5G-OPEN (101016663)]; H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions [REALNET (813144)]; Agencia Estatal de Investigación [IBON (PID2020- 114135RB-I00)]; Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Lightweight optical constellation modeling by concatenating artificial neural networks

A lightweight optical constellations modeling method based on concatenating ANNs is proposed. Statistical validation of the reproduced constellations is shown. The method accelerates data generation and facilitates detecting (un)intentioned misconfigurations, among others.This work has been partially supported by the EC through the MSC REAL-NET project (G.A. 813144), by the AEI/FEDER through the TWINS project (TEC2017-90097-R), and by the ICREA institution.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft