FERROCENYL ALKYLAMMONIUM N-SUBSTITUTED POLYPYRROLE CONTAINING Pt AND Pd AND ITS APPLICATION ON ELECTROANALYSIS OF ARSENITE

Indexación: Web of Science; Scopus; Scielo.Arsenic occurs in a variety of forms and oxidation states and is a very toxic element. The main inorganic arsenic species present in natural waters are arsenate (oxidation state V) and arsenite ions (oxidation state III). Arsenite is more toxic and mobile than arsenate. Therefore, it is important the development of new materials for analysis and control of these toxic species. This research proves that polymer-metal composite electrode materials synthesized by incorporation of Pt-0 and Pd-0 nanoparticles into a poly(pyrrole-ferrocenyl alkylammonium) matrix present electrocatalytic properties towards the oxidation of arsenite to arsenate. The polymer films displayed a stable electrochemical response in aqueous solution. However, when the polymer film modified electrode were transferred to aqueous solution in presence of arsenite anions, the CV curves for polymer films were deeply modified by the decrease in the electroactivity of the film. It can be concluded that the cationic polymer films present a strong affinity toward arsenite anions. The composite films containing Pt-0 or Pd-0 showed catalytic activity towards oxidation of As(III) to As(V) due to the presence of metal catalyst particles into the polymer films.http://ref.scielo.org/dgdvx

Effect of conductive area trimming on the read range of inkjet printed Epidermal RFID tags

The effect of reducing the volume of conductive ink used in the fabrication of Epidermal RFID tags on the read range of the tag is investigated in this paper. The ink usage reduction is achieved by redesigning of the conductive parts of the designed tag

Neopterin plasma concentrations in patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage: Correlation with infection and long-term outcome

© AANS, 2016. Objective Aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH) is associated with high rates of mortality and morbidity. The main predictor for the poor outcome is the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies (WFNS) scale. However, this scale does not take into account proinflammatory events, such as infection occurring after the aSAH, which could modify the long-term status of patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate neopterin as an inflammatory biomarker for outcome and infection prediction in aSAH patients. Methods Plasma concentrations of neopterin were measured in 61 aSAH patients (22 male and 39 female; mean age [± SD] 52.8 ± 11.8 years) using a commercial ELISA kit. Samples were collected daily for 10 days. Outcome at 12 months was determined using the Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOS) and dichotomized as poor (GOS score 1, 2, or 3) or good (GOS score 4 or 5). Infection was determined by the presence of a positive bacterial culture. Results Patients with poor outcome at 12 months had higher concentrations of neopterin than patients with good outcome. In the same way, patients who had an infection during the hospitalization had significantly higher concentrations of neopterin than patients without infection (p = 0.001). Moreover, neopterin concentrations were significantly (p < 0.008) elevated in infected patients 2 days before infection detection and antibiotic therapy. Conclusions Neopterin is an efficient outcome predictor after aSAH. Furthermore, it is able to differentiate between infected and uninfected patients as early as 2 days before clinical signs of infection, facilitating earlier antibiotic therapy and better management

Developments in Trait Emotional Intelligence Research

Trait emotional intelligence ("trait EI") concerns our perceptions of our emotional abilities, that is, how good we believe we are in terms of understanding, regulating, and expressing emotions in order to adapt to our environment and maintain well-being. In this article, we present succinct summaries of selected findings from research on (a) the location of trait EI in personality factor space, (b) the biological underpinnings of the construct, (c) indicative applications in the areas of clinical, health, social, educational, organizational, and developmental psychology, and (d) trait EI training. Findings to date suggest that individual differences in trait EI are a consistent predictor of human behavior across the life span

Targeting Btk/Etk of prostate cancer cells by a novel dual inhibitor.

Btk and Etk/BMX are Tec-family non-receptor tyrosine kinases. Btk has previously been reported to be expressed primarily in B cells and has an important role in immune responses and B-cell malignancies. Etk has been shown previously to provide a strong survival and metastasis signal in human prostate cancer cells, and to confer androgen independence and drug resistance. While the role of Etk in prostate carcinogenesis is well established, the functions of Btk in prostate cancer have never been investigated, likely due to the perception that Btk is a hematopoietic, but not epithelial, kinase. Herein, we found that Btk is overexpressed in prostate cancer tissues and prostate cancer cells. The level of Btk in prostate cancer tissues correlates with cancer grades. Knockdown of Btk expression selectively inhibits the growth of prostate cancer cells, but not that of the normal prostate epithelial cells, which express very little Btk. Dual inhibition of Btk and Etk has an additive inhibitory effect on prostate cancer cell growth. To explore Btk and Etk as targets for prostate cancer, we developed a small molecule dual inhibitor of Btk and Etk, CTN06. Treatment of PC3 and other prostate cancer cells, but not immortalized prostate epithelial cells with CTN06 resulted in effective cell killing, accompanied by the attenuation of Btk/Etk signals. The killing effect of CTN06 is more potent than that of commonly used inhibitors against Src, Raf/VEGFR and EGFR. CTN06 induces apoptosis as well as autophagy in human prostate cancer cells, and is a chemo-sensitizer for docetaxel (DTX), a standard of care for metastatic prostate cancer patients. CTN06 also impeded the migration of human prostate cancer cells based on a 'wound healing' assay. The anti-cancer effect of CTN06 was further validated in vivo in a PC3 xenograft mouse model

A Symbiotic Brain-Machine Interface through Value-Based Decision Making

BACKGROUND: In the development of Brain Machine Interfaces (BMIs), there is a great need to enable users to interact with changing environments during the activities of daily life. It is expected that the number and scope of the learning tasks encountered during interaction with the environment as well as the pattern of brain activity will vary over time. These conditions, in addition to neural reorganization, pose a challenge to decoding neural commands for BMIs. We have developed a new BMI framework in which a computational agent symbiotically decoded users' intended actions by utilizing both motor commands and goal information directly from the brain through a continuous Perception-Action-Reward Cycle (PARC). METHODOLOGY: The control architecture designed was based on Actor-Critic learning, which is a PARC-based reinforcement learning method. Our neurophysiology studies in rat models suggested that Nucleus Accumbens (NAcc) contained a rich representation of goal information in terms of predicting the probability of earning reward and it could be translated into an evaluative feedback for adaptation of the decoder with high precision. Simulated neural control experiments showed that the system was able to maintain high performance in decoding neural motor commands during novel tasks or in the presence of reorganization in the neural input. We then implanted a dual micro-wire array in the primary motor cortex (M1) and the NAcc of rat brain and implemented a full closed-loop system in which robot actions were decoded from the single unit activity in M1 based on an evaluative feedback that was estimated from NAcc. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that adapting the BMI decoder with an evaluative feedback that is directly extracted from the brain is a possible solution to the problem of operating BMIs in changing environments with dynamic neural signals. During closed-loop control, the agent was able to solve a reaching task by capturing the action and reward interdependency in the brain

Fluoxetine: a case history of its discovery and preclinical development

Introduction: Depression is a multifactorial mood disorder with a high prevalence worldwide. Until now, treatments for depression have focused on the inhibition of monoaminergic reuptake sites, which augment the bioavailability of monoamines in the CNS. Advances in drug discovery have widened the therapeutic options with the synthesis of so-called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), such as fluoxetine. Areas covered: The aim of this case history is to describe and discuss the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic profiles of fluoxetine, including its acute effects and the adaptive changes induced after long-term treatment. Furthermore, the authors review the effect of fluoxetine on neuroplasticity and adult neurogenesis. In addition, the article summarises the preclinical behavioural data available on fluoxetine’s effects on depressive-like behaviour, anxiety and cognition as well as its effects on other diseases. Finally, the article describes the seminal studies validating the antidepressant effects of fluoxetine. Expert opinion: Fluoxetine is the first selective SSRI that has a recognised clinical efficacy and safety profile. Since its discovery, other molecules that mimic its mechanism of action have been developed, commencing a new age in the treatment of depression. Fluoxetine has also demonstrated utility in the treatment of other disorders for which its prescription has now been approved

Radar Detectability Studies of Slow and Small Zodiacal Dust Cloud Particles. III. The Role of Sodium and the Head Echo Size on the Probability of Detection

We present a path forward on a long-standing issue concerning the flux of small and slow meteoroids, which are believed to be the dominant portion of the incoming meteoric mass flux into the Earth's atmosphere. Such a flux, which is predicted by dynamical dust models of the Zodiacal Cloud, is not evident in ground-based radar observations. For decades this was attributed to the fact that the radars used for meteor observations lack the sensitivity to detect this population, due to the small amount of ionization produced by slow-velocity meteors. Such a hypothesis has been challenged by the introduction of meteor head echo (HE) observations with High Power and Large Aperture radars, in particular the Arecibo 430 MHz radar. Janches et al. developed a probabilistic approach to estimate the detectability of meteors by these radars and initially showed that, with the current knowledge of ablation and ionization, such particles should dominate the detected rates by one to two orders of magnitude compared to the actual observations. In this paper, we include results in our model from recently published laboratory measurements, which showed that (1) the ablation of Na is less intense covering a wider altitude range; and (2) the ionization probability, βip for Na atoms in the air is up to two orders of magnitude smaller for low speeds than originally believed. By applying these results and using a somewhat smaller size of the HE radar target we offer a solution that reconciles these observations with model predictions