The emerging role of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in vascular homeostasis : lessons from recent trials with anti-VEGF drugs

Peer reviewedPostprin

Stress assignment in reading Italian polysyllabic pseudowords.

In four naming experiments we investigated how Italian readers assign stress to pseudowords. We assessed whether participants assign stress following distributional information such as stress neighborhood (the proportion and number of existent words sharing orthographic ending and stress pattern) and whether such distributional information affects naming speed. Experiments 1 and 2 tested how readers assign stress to pseudowords. The results showed that participants assign stress on the basis of the pseudowords\u27 stress neighborhood, but only when this orthographic/phonological information is widely represented in the lexicon. Experiments 3 and 4 tested the naming speed of pseudowords with different stress patterns. Participants were faster in reading pseudowords with antepenultimate than with penultimate stress. The effect was not driven by distributional information, but it was related to the stage of articulation planning. Overall, the experiments showed that, under certain conditions, readers assign stress using orthographic/phonological distributional information. However, the distributional information does not speed up pseudoword naming, which is affected by stress computation at the level of the articulation planning of the stimulus. It is claimed that models of reading aloud and speech production should be merged at the level of phonological encoding, when segmental and metrical information are assembled and articulation is planned

Evidence of semantic processing in parafoveal reading: a rapid parallel visual presentation (Rpvp) study

This study explores whether semantic processing in parafoveal reading in the Italian language is modulated by the perceptual and lexical features of stimuli by analyzing the results of the rapid parallel visual presentation (RPVP) paradigm experiment, which simultaneously presented two words, with one in the fovea and one in the parafovea. The words were randomly sampled from a set of semantically related and semantically unrelated pairs. The accuracy and reaction times in reading the words were measured as a function of the stimulus length and written word frequency. Fewer errors were observed in reading parafoveal words when they were semantically related to the foveal ones, and a larger semantic facilitatory effect was observed when the foveal word was highly frequent and the parafoveal word was short. Analysis of the reaction times suggests that the semantic relation between the two words sped up the naming of the foveal word when both words were short and highly frequent. Altogether, these results add further evidence in favor of the semantic processing of words in the parafovea during reading, modulated by the orthographic and lexical features of the stimuli. The results are discussed within the context of the most prominent models of word processing and eye movement controls in reading

Evaluation of subcutaneous proleukin (Interleukin-2) in a randomized international trial (ESPRIT): Geographical and gender differences in the baseline characteristics of participants

Background: ESPRIT, is a phase III, open-label, randomized, international clinical trial evaluating the effects of subcutaneous recombinant interleukin-2 (rIL-2) plus antiretroviral therapy (ART) versus ART alone on HIV-disease progression and death in HIV-1-infected individuals with CD4+ T-cells ≥300 cells/μL. Objectives: To describe the baseline characteristics of participants randomized to ESPRIT overall and by geographic location. Method: Baseline characteristics of randomized participants were summarized by region. Results: 4,150 patients were enrolled in ESPRIT from 254 sites in 25 countries. 41%, 27%, 16%, 11%, and 5% were enrolled in Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Australia, respectively. The median age was 40 years, 81% were men, and 76%, 11%, and 9% were Caucasian, Asian, and African American or African, respectively. 44% of women enrolled (n = 769) were enrolled in Thailand and Argentina. Overall, 55% and 38% of the cohort acquired HIV through male homosexual and heterosexual contact, respectively. 25% had a prior history of AIDS-defining illness; Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia, M. tuberculosis, and esophageal candida were most commonly reported. Median nadir and baseline CD4+ T-cell counts were 199 and 458 cells/μL, respectively. 6% and 13% were hepatitis B or C virus coinfected, respectively. Median duration of antiretroviral therapy (ART) was 4.2 years; the longest median duration was in Australia (5.2 years) and the shortest was in Asia (2.3 years). 17%, 13%, and 69% of participants began ART before 1995, between 1996 and 1997, and from 1998 onward, respectively. 86% used ART from two or more ART classes, with 49% using a protease inhibitor-based regimen and 46% using a nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor-based regimen. 78% had plasma HIV RNA below detection (<500 cp/mL). Conclusion: ESPRIT has enrolled a diverse population of HIV-infected individuals including large populations of women and patients of African-American/African and Asian ethnicity often underrepresented in HIV research. As a consequence, the results of the study may have wide global applicability

High performance liquid chromatography of long-chain acylcarnitine and phospholipids in fatty acid turnover studies.

In this paper we describe a rapid, isocratic high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method for the study of radioactive fatty acid incorporation into complex lipids of human erythrocytes, which allows the simultaneous separation of the major phospholipid classes and long-chain acylcarnitines. The lipid extract of erythrocytes pulsed with radioactive fatty acids was injected into an HPLC system equipped with a silica column. The individual components eluted were monitored by ultraviolet absorption and radioactive emission. With respect to the UV profile, the radioactive profile showed an additional peak between phosphatidyl-choline and phosphatidylethanolamine, which was identified as long-chain acylcarnitine by different experimental approaches. The radioactivity recovered in the long-chain acylcarnitines contains essential information enabling definition of acyl trafficking in red cells

The focal attention window size explains letter substitution errors in reading

Acquired Neglect Dyslexia is often associated with right-hemisphere brain damage and is mainly characterized by omissions and substitutions in reading single words. Martelli et al. proposed in 2011 that these two types of error are due to different mechanisms. Omissions should depend on neglect plus an oculomotor deficit, whilst substitutions on the difficulty with which the letters are perceptually segregated from each other (i.e., crowding phenomenon). In this study, we hypothesized that a deficit of focal attention could determine a pathological crowding effect, leading to imprecise letter identification and consequently substitution errors. In Experiment 1, three brain-damaged patients, suffering from peripheral dyslexia, mainly characterized by substitutions, underwent an assessment of error distribution in reading pseudowords and a T detection task as a function of cue size and timing, in order to measure focal attention. Each patient, when compared to a control group, showed a deficit in adjusting the attentional focus. In Experiment 2, a group of 17 right-brain-damaged patients were asked to perform the focal attention task and to read single words and pseudowords as a function of inter-letter spacing. The results allowed us to confirm a more general association between substitution-type reading errors and the performance in the focal attention task

El derecho del autor asalariado en Argentina

El autor contratado bajo relación de dependencia laboral en la Argentina no se encuentra regulado en la legislación sobre derecho de autor. La ley número 11723 no contempla la figura, y la reforma de la ley número 25.036 en su art. 2 solo hace referencia a los programas de computación realizados en virtud de un contrato laboral. No obstante, la ley de patentes número 24481 modificada por ley número 24572, ha regulado la cuestión de los derechos de explotación de patentes de invención, mediando relación contractual. Asimismo se ha regulado en ley número 20.744 lo relativo a las invenciones del trabajador. En la ley de patentes de invención se regula la situación del inventor contratado o asalariado. El derecho laboral y la propiedad intelectual en general, y en particular el derecho de autor son de naturaleza diversa y tienen regulaciones específicas con principios jurídicos propios. Por ello, se abordará cada temática desde su generalidad a fin de arribar al tratamiento del problema planteado

Nano CaCO3 particles in cement mortars towards developing a circular economy in the cement industry

This paper calls into question the effects of incorporating nano calcium carbonate (CaCO3) particles in cement mortars, as they are interesting additive materials already successfully tested as cement nanofiller. These nanoparticles could potentially be prepared through the carbonation route using CO2 from combustion gases from the cement industry. This could enable a circular-economy approach for carbon capture and its re-use within the cement industry, in a sustainable and synergistic manner. In this study, part of the cement content was substituted with commercial nano CaCO3 particles to investigate their effects on the flexural and compressive strength of the resulting cement mortars, after curing for 7 and 28 days. Decreasing the cement content could lead to a reduction in the carbon footprint of cement, which is responsible for approximately 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Preliminary results using synthesized CaCO3 particles as nanofillers showed that, after 7 days of curing, mechanical properties of cement mortars improved. This indicates that hydration reaction was accelerated since CaCO3 acts as seeding for this reaction. By contrast, after 28 days of curing, no major improvement was observed. A higher content of calcium carbonate nanoparticles may have reduced the filler effect of these particles due to aggregation phenomena. In the present work, the effects of commercial nano CaCO3 particles on cement hydration were investigated. Mechanical tests showed promising results both after 7 and 28 days of curing. This could lead to the reduction of the carbon footprint of cement manufacturing and produce increasingly better performing building materials. Thus, the development of a circular economy in the cement industry could be achieved