New Approaches in the Manufacture of Biomaterials for Betalactam Allergic Diagnose

Betalactams are the most widely utilized drugs against infections but are the primary cause of allergic reactions to antibiotic drugs. REF1 An accurate diagnosis of these allergic reactions to betalactams is crucial to avoid the use of unnecessary alternative antibiotics that may reduce efficacy, lead to prolonged treatments, have a higher toxicity or induce bacterial resistance. The most consensual approach to diagnose betalactam allergy are in vivo tests. However, they are not risky free, require experienced personnel and are both time-consuming and expensive for health-care systems, being so in vitro test more appropriate or complementary to the in vivo tests. In vitro tests are not still widely used on account of their low sensitivity. Current efforts are in progress to improve these assays, thus allowing for better diagnosis of allergic responses within patients. REF 2 We report progress in the preparation of new functional materials for in vitro allergic diagnosis testing. In particular, the application of new approaches employing orthogonally functionalised fluorescent dyes based upon 4-amino-1,8 naphthalimide joined with the multivalence of polyamide dendrimers. REF 3 The in vitro diagnosis capabilities of these functional materials was verified by testing on patient sera samples, with results demonstrating their potential for application within the healthcare industry. Acknowledgments: The present study has been supported by MINECO CTQ2016-75870P; by Andalusian Regional Ministry Health (grants: PI-0250-2016); by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and “Plan Propio Universidad de Málaga” (UMA-Andalucía-TECH).Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Tracking Turbulent Coherent Structures by Means of Neural Networks

[EN] The behaviours of individual flow structures have become a relevant matter of study in turbulent flows as the computational power to allow their study feasible has become available. Especially, high instantaneous Reynolds Stress events have been found to dominate the behaviour of the logarithmic layer. In this work, we present a viability study where two machine learning solutions are proposed to reduce the computational cost of tracking such structures in large domains. The first one is a Multi-Layer Perceptron. The second one uses Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM). Both of the methods are developed with the objective of taking the the structures' geometrical features as inputs from which to predict the structures' geometrical features in future time steps. Some of the tested Multi-Layer Perceptron architectures proved to perform better and achieve higher accuracy than the LSTM architectures tested, providing lower errors on the predictions and achieving higher accuracy in relating the structures in the consecutive time steps.This work was supported by RTI2018-102256-B-I00 of MINECO/FEDER. The computations of the new simulations were made possible by a generous grant of computing time from the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, reference AECT-2020-2-0005.Aguilar-Fuertes, JJ.; Noguero-Rodríguez, F.; Jaen Ruiz, JC.; García-Raffi, LM.; Hoyas, S. (2021). Tracking Turbulent Coherent Structures by Means of Neural Networks. Energies. 14(4):1-15. https://doi.org/10.3390/en1404098411514

Clemastine Induces an Impairment in Developmental Myelination

[EN] Abnormalities in myelination are associated to behavioral and cognitive dysfunction in neurodevelopmental psychiatric disorders. Thus, therapies to promote or accelerate myelination could potentially ameliorate symptoms in autism. Clemastine, a histamine H1 antagonist with anticholinergic properties against muscarinic M1 receptor, is the most promising drug with promyelinating properties. Clemastine penetrates the blood brain barrier efficiently and promotes remyelination in different animal models of neurodegeneration including multiple sclerosis, ischemia and Alzheimer's disease. However, its role in myelination during development is unknown. We showed that clemastine treatment during development increased oligodendrocyte differentiation in both white and gray matter. However, despite the increase in the number of oligodendrocytes, conduction velocity of myelinated fibers of corpus callosum decreased in clemastine treated mice. Confocal and electron microscopy showed a reduction in the number of myelinated axons and nodes of Ranvier and a reduction of myelin thickness in corpus callosum. To understand the mechanisms leading to myelin formation impairment in the presence of an excess of myelinating oligodendrocytes, we focused on microglial cells that also express muscarinic M1 receptors. Importantly, the population of CD11c(+) microglia cells, necessary for myelination, as well as the levels of insulin growth factor-1 decrease in clemastine-treated mice. Altogether, these data suggest that clemastine impact on myelin development is more complex than previously thought and could be dependent on microglia-oligodendrocyte crosstalk. Further studies are needed to clarify the role of microglia cells on developmental myelination.This work was supported by Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (SAF 2016-75292- R); Spanish Ministry of Science andInnovation (PID 2019-109724RB-I00); Basque Government (PI-2016-1-0016); the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU);and Centro de Investigacion Biomedica en Red, EnfermedadesNeurodegenerativas (CIBERNED; grant CB06/05/0076). AP hasa predoctoral fellowship from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), AM has a predoctoral fellowship fromthe Spanish Ministry of Education and Science and AO-de-A hasa postdoctoral fellowship from the Basque Governmen

Rocketing restoration : enabling the upscaling of ecological restoration in the Anthropocene

In the 25 years during which the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) has overseen the publication of Restoration Ecology, the field has witnessed conceptual and practical advances. These have become necessary due to the scale of environmental change wrought by the increasing global human population, and associated demands for food, fiber, energy, and water. As we look to the future, and attempt to fulfill global restoration commitments and meet sustainable development goals, there is a need to reverse land degradation and biodiversity loss through upscaling ecological restoration. Here, we argue that this upscaling requires an expanded vision for restoration that explicitly accounts for people and nature. This expansion can assess success in a future-focused way and as improvements relative to a degraded socio-ecological system. We suggest that upscaling requires addressing governance, legal and ethical challenges, investing in technological and educational capacity building, bolstering the practical science necessary for restoration, encouraging adoptable packages to ensure livelihoods of local stakeholders, and promoting investment opportunities for local actors and industry. Providing SER embraces this socio-ecological vision, it is ideally placed to aid the achievement of goals and remain globally relevant. SER needs to harness and coordinate three sources of potential energy (global political commitments, the green economy, and local community engagement) to rocket restoration into the Anthropocene. With principles that can embrace flexibility and context-dependency in minimum restoration standards, SER has the potential to guide socio-ecological restoration and help realize the ultimate goal of a sustainable Earth

Quality indicators in radiation oncology: proposal of the Spanish Society of Radiation Oncology (SEOR) for a continuous improvement of the quality of care in oncology.

Purpose Current cancer treatment options include surgical intervention, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy. The quality of the provision of each of them and their effective coordination determines the results in terms of benefit/risk. Regarding the radiation oncology treatments, there are not stabilised quality indicators to be used to perform control and continuous improvement processes for healthcare services. Therefore, the Spanish Society of Radiation Oncology has undertaken a comprehensive project to establish quality indicators for use with the information systems available in most Spanish healthcare services. Methods A two-round Delphi study examines consensus of several possible quality indicators (n = 28) in daily practice. These indicators were defined after a bibliographic search and the assessment by radiation oncology specialists (n = 8). They included aspects regarding treatment equipment, patient preparation, treatment, and follow-up processes and were divided in structure, process, and outcome indicators. Results After the evaluation of the defined quality indicators (n = 28) by an expert panel (38 radiation oncologist), 26 indicators achieved consensus in terms of agreement with the statement. Two quality indicators did not achieve consensus. Conclusions There is a high degree of consensus in Spanish Radiation Oncology specialists on which indicators in routine clinical practice can best measure quality. These indicators can be used to classify services based on several parameters (patients, equipments, complexity of the techniques used, and scientific research). Furthermore, these indicators allow assess our current situation and set improvements’ objectives.pre-print241 K

Innovación sanitaria en la gestión del riesgo de caídas de personas mayores en Atención Primaria

[ES] Las caídas son actualmente uno de los problemas de salud más frecuentes y graves en las personas mayores. La gestión sociosanitaria eficiente desde el punto de vista preventivo se destaca como uno de los objetivos principales para afrontar esta problemática. Para dar respuesta a ello, el IBV y el Hospital Universitario de la Ribera, gestionado por Ribera Salud II UTE Ley 18/82, llevan a cabo de forma conjunta una línea de investigación para desarrollar y validar nuevos avances tecnológicos. El proyecto que se presenta a continuación ha servido para conocer la aplicabilidad y utilidad de la herramienta FallSkip en el contexto de la consulta del médico de Atención Primaria. Se han valorado, entre otros aspectos, el tiempo y la facilidad de uso, así como la utilidad de la información proporcionada en la evaluación del riesgo de caídas respecto a los métodos convencionales basados en cuestionarios y escalas clínicas.Folch, B.; Donato, C.; Ruivo, M.; Ruiz, A.; Tapia, A.; Palop, V.; Pitarch Corresa, S.... (2019). Innovación sanitaria en la gestión del riesgo de caídas de personas mayores en Atención Primaria. Revista de Biomecánica (Online). (66). http://hdl.handle.net/10251/128736S6

Cost-effective ecological restoration

© 2015 Society for Ecological Restoration Ecological restoration is a multibillion dollar industry critical for improving degraded habitat. However, most restoration is conducted without clearly defined success measures or analysis of costs. Outcomes are influenced by environmental conditions that vary across space and time, yet such variation is rarely considered in restoration planning. Here, we present a cost-effectiveness analysis of terrestrial restoration methods to determine how practitioners may restore the highest native plant cover per dollar spent. We recorded costs of 120 distinct methods and described success in terms of native versus non-native plant germination, growth, cover, and density. We assessed effectiveness using a basic, commonly used metric (% native plant cover) and developed an index of cost-effectiveness (% native cover per dollar spent on restoration). We then evaluated success of multiple methods, given environmental variation across topography and multiple years, and found that the most successful method for restoring high native plant cover is often different from the method that results in the largest area restored per dollar expended, given fixed mitigation budgets. Based on our results, we developed decision-making trees to guide practitioners through established phases of restoration-site preparation, seeding and planting, and maintenance. We also highlight where additional research could inform restoration practice, such as improved seasonal weather forecasts optimizing allocation of funds in time or valuation practices that include costs of specific outcomes in the collection of in lieu fees