Retrieval of ionospheric profiles from the Mars Express MARSIS experiment data and comparison with radio occultation data

Abstract. Since 2005 the Mars Advanced Radar and Ionospheric Sounding experiment (MARSIS) aboard Mars Express has acquired a unique dataset on the ionosphere of Mars made up of ionospheric soundings taken by the instrument working in its active ionospheric sounding (AIS) mode. These soundings play a role similar to those of modern Terrestrial digisondes in the analysis of our planet ionosphere and have allowed us to dramatically improve our knowledge about the Martian ionosphere. This paper describes this kind of data, which are available from the public Planetary Science Archive, and introduces the MAISDAT tool developed by the European Space Agency to analyze and derive the vertical profile of electron density. Comparisons with radio occultation profiles obtained from Mars Express Radio Science instrument are performed to validate the procedure used in this study

Surface functionalization of PLGA nanoparticles to increase transport across the BBB for Alzheimers disease

Alzheimers disease (AD) is a chronic neurodegenerative disorder that accounts for about 60% of all diagnosed cases of dementia worldwide. Although there are currently several drugs marketed for its treatment, none are capable of slowing down or stopping the progression of AD. The role of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) plays a key role in the design of a successful treatment for this neurodegenerative disease. Nanosized particles have been proposed as suitable drug delivery systems to overcome BBB with the purpose of increasing bioavailability of drugs in the brain. Biodegradable poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) nanoparticles (PLGA-NPs) have been particularly regarded as promising drug delivery systems as they can be surface-tailored with functionalized molecules for site-specific targeting. In this review, a thorough discussion about the most recent functionalization strategies based on PLGA-NPs for AD and their mechanisms of action is provided, together with a description of AD pathogenesis and the role of the BBB in brain targeting.A.C. [Amanda Cano] acknowledges the support of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities under the grant Juan de la Cierva (FJC2018-036012-I). Authors acknowledge the support of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under the project SAF2017-84283-R; Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Neurodegenerative Diseases (CIBERNED, CB06/05/0024) and Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) for the strategic fund (UIDB/04469/2020).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Diferenciación y desarrollo postnatal de los tipos de fibras musculares en el cerdo chato murciano

Mediante la técnica que detecta la actividad de la enzima ATPasa miosínica se analiza el tamaño y porcentajes de los distintos tipos de fibras que integran el músculo longísimo lumbar del cerdo “Chato Murciano”, desde el nacimiento hasta los 120 días de edad. Al nacimiento, el músculo longísimo está conformado por un 5,5% de fibras tipo I, de gran tamaño y un 94,5% de fibras tipo II, de menor tamaño. Durante el primer mes de vida postnatal las fibras tipo II se irán diferenciando en nuevas fibras tipo I y subtipos IIA y IIX. A partir de los dos meses tiene lugar un aumento del diámetro fibrilar (hipertrofia) y una distribución fibrilar que recuerda a la de animales adultos. Aunque la hipertrofia observada afecta a los tres tipos de fibras evaluados, parece claro que el crecimiento y conformación muscular en el cerdo chato murciano está muy asociado al notable incremento en diámetro que experimentan las fibras IIX, ya que éstas crecen más rápidamente que las tipo I y IIA

SDSS IV MaNGA: Dependence of Global and Spatially Resolved SFR-M ∗ Relations on Galaxy Properties

Indexación: Scopus.The galaxy integrated Hα star formation rate-stellar mass relation, or SFR(global)-M ∗(global) relation, is crucial for understanding star formation history and evolution of galaxies. However, many studies have dealt with SFR using unresolved measurements, which makes it difficult to separate out the contamination from other ionizing sources, such as active galactic nuclei and evolved stars. Using the integral field spectroscopic observations from SDSS-IV MaNGA, we spatially disentangle the contribution from different Hα powering sources for ∼1000 galaxies. We find that, when including regions dominated by all ionizing sources in galaxies, the spatially resolved relation between Hα surface density (ΣHα(all)) and stellar mass surface density (Σ∗(all)) progressively turns over at the high Σ∗(all) end for increasing M ∗(global) and/or bulge dominance (bulge-to-total light ratio, B/T). This in turn leads to the flattening of the integrated Hα(global)-M ∗(global) relation in the literature. By contrast, there is no noticeable flattening in both integrated Hα(H ii)-M ∗(H ii) and spatially resolved ΣHα(H ii)-Σ∗(H ii) relations when only regions where star formation dominates the ionization are considered. In other words, the flattening can be attributed to the increasing regions powered by non-star-formation sources, which generally have lower ionizing ability than star formation. An analysis of the fractional contribution of non-star-formation sources to total Hα luminosity of a galaxy suggests a decreasing role of star formation as an ionizing source toward high-mass, high-B/T galaxies and bulge regions. This result indicates that the appearance of the galaxy integrated SFR-M ∗ relation critically depends on their global properties (M ∗(global) and B/T) and relative abundances of various ionizing sources within the galaxies.http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aaa9bc/met

Biodegradable nanoparticles for the treatment of epilepsy: from current advances to future challenges

Epilepsy is the second most prevalent neurological disease worldwide. It is mainly characterized by an electrical abnormal activity in different brain regions. The massive entrance of Ca2+ into neurons is the main neurotoxic process that lead to cell death and finally to neurodegeneration. Although there are a huge number of antiseizure medications, there are many patients who do not respond to the treatments and present refractory epilepsy. In this context, nanomedicine constitutes a promising alternative to enhance the central nervous system bioavailability of antiseizure medications. The encapsulation of different chemical compounds at once in a variety of controlled drug delivery systems gives rise to an enhanced drug effectiveness mainly due to their targeting and penetration into the deepest brain region and the protection of the drug chemical structure. Thus, in this review we will explore the recent advances in the development of drugs associated with polymeric and lipid based nanocarriers as novel tools for the management of epilepsy disorders.Amanda Cano acknowledges the support of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities under the grant Juan de la Cierva (FJC2018-036012-I). Authors acknowledge the support of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Ccompetitiveness under project SAF2017-84283-R; Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Neurodegenerative Diseases (CIBERNED, CB06/05/0024) and Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) for the strategic fund (UIDB/04469/2020).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Space Weather in the Saturn-Titan System

New evidence based on Cassini magnetic field and plasma data has revealed that the discovery of Titan outside Saturn’s magnetosphere during the T96 flyby on 2013 December 1 was the result of the impact of two consecutive interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) that left the Sun in 2013 early November and interacted with the moon and the planet. We study the dynamic evolution of Saturn's magnetopause and bow shock, which evidences a magnetospheric compression from late November 28 to December 4 (at least), under prevailing solar wind dynamic pressures of 0.16-0.3 nPa. During this interval, transient disturbances associated with the two ICMEs are observed, allowing for the identification of their magnetic structures. By analyzing the magnetic field direction, and the pressure balance in Titan’s induced magnetosphere, we show that Cassini finds Saturn’s moon embedded in the second ICME after being swept by its interplanetary shock and amid a shower of solar energetic particles that may have caused dramatic changes in the moon’s lower ionosphere. Analyzing a list of Saturn's bow shock crossings during 2004-2016, we find that the magnetospheric compression needed for Titan to be in the supersonic solar wind can be generally associated with the presence of an ICME or a corotating interaction region. This leads to the conclusion that Titan would rarely face the pristine solar wind, but would rather interact with transient solar structures under extreme space weather conditions

State-of-the-art polymeric nanoparticles as promising therapeutic tools against human bacterial infections

Infectious diseases kill over 17 million people a year, among which bacterial infections stand out. From all the bacterial infections, tuberculosis, diarrhoea, meningitis, pneumonia, sexual transmission diseases and nosocomial infections are the most severe bacterial infections, which affect millions of people worldwide. Moreover, the indiscriminate use of antibiotic drugs in the last decades has triggered an increasing multiple resistance towards these drugs, which represent a serious global socioeconomic and public health risk. It is estimated that 33,000 and 35,000 people die yearly in Europe and the United States, respectively, as a direct result of antimicrobial resistance. For all these reasons, there is an emerging need to find novel alternatives to overcome these issues and reduced the morbidity and mortality associated to bacterial infectious diseases. In that sense, nanotechnological approaches, especially smart polymeric nanoparticles, has wrought a revolution in this field, providing an innovative therapeutic alternative able to improve the limitations encountered in available treatments and capable to be effective by theirselves. In this review, we examine the current status of most dangerous human infections, together with an in-depth discussion of the role of nanomedicine to overcome the current disadvantages, and specifically the most recent and innovative studies involving polymeric nanoparticles against most common bacterial infections of the human body.Authors acknowledge the support of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (SAF2017-84283-R and RTI2018-098641-B-I00), Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Neurodegenerative Diseases (CIBERNED, CB06/05/0024), Scientifc Project Marató TV3 (ref 201829-10) and European Regional Development Founds. Authors also acknowledge the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) for the strategic fund (UIDB/04469/2020).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

SDSS-IV MANGA: Spatially Resolved Star Formation Main Sequence and LI(N)ER Sequence

We present our study on the spatially resolved H_alpha and M_star relation for 536 star-forming and 424 quiescent galaxies taken from the MaNGA survey. We show that the star formation rate surface density (Sigma_SFR), derived based on the H_alpha emissions, is strongly correlated with the M_star surface density (Sigma_star) on kpc scales for star- forming galaxies and can be directly connected to the global star-forming sequence. This suggests that the global main sequence may be a consequence of a more fundamental relation on small scales. On the other hand, our result suggests that about 20% of quiescent galaxies in our sample still have star formation activities in the outer region with lower SSFR than typical star-forming galaxies. Meanwhile, we also find a tight correlation between Sigma_H_alpha and Sigma_star for LI(N)ER regions, named the resolved "LI(N)ER" sequence, in quiescent galaxies, which is consistent with the scenario that LI(N)ER emissions are primarily powered by the hot, evolved stars as suggested in the literature.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. ApJ Letter accepte

State of the art on toxicological mechanisms of metal and metal oxide nanoparticles and strategies to reduce toxicological risks

Metal nanoparticles have been extensively investigated for different types of pharmaceutical applications. However, their use has raised some concerns about their toxicity involving the increase of reactive oxygen species causing cellular apoptosis. Therefore, in this review we summarize the most relevant toxicity mechanisms of gold, silver, copper and copper oxide nanoparticles as well as production methods of metal nanoparticles. Parameters involved in their toxicity such as size, surface charge and concentration are also highlighted. Moreover, a critical revision of the literature about the strategies used to reduce the toxicity of this type of nanoparticles is carried out throughout the review. Additionally, surface modifications using different coating strategies, nanoparticles targeting and morphology modifications are deeply explained.This work was funded by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) from the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCTES), European Social Fund (FSE) of EU, through the project UIDB/04469/2020 (CEB strategic fund), co-funded by European Funds (PRODER/COMPETE) and FEDER, under the Partnership Agreement PT2020.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Psoriasis: from pathogenesis to pharmacological and nano-technological-based therapeutics

Research in the pathogenesis of inflammatory skin diseases, such as skin dermatitis and psoriasis, has experienced some relevant breakthroughs in recent years. The understanding of age-related factors, gender, and genetic predisposition of these multifactorial diseases has been instrumental for the development of new pharmacological and technological treatment approaches. In this review, we discuss the molecular mechanisms behind the pathological features of psoriasis, also addressing the currently available treatments and novel therapies that are under clinical trials. Innovative therapies developed over the last 10 years have been researched. In this area, advantages of nanotechnological approaches to provide an effective drug concentration in the disease site are highlighted, together with microneedles as innovative candidates for drug delivery systems in psoriasis and other inflammatory chronic skin diseases.This research was funded by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT/MCT) and European Funds (PRODER/COMPETE), under the project reference UIDB/04469/2020 (strategic fund), co-financed by FEDER, under the Partnership Agreement PT2020, granted to EBS.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio