Detection and identification of 'Candidatus Phytoplasma prunorum' in Prunus germoplasm

The molecular characterization of the causal agent of diseases associated with several symptoms such as decline, yellowing, leaf roll and off-season growth in stone fruits made it possible to determine a common etiology, and the name ´European stone fruit yellows´ phytoplasma was proposed. Recently, the new taxonomical species description within the genus is 'Candidatus Phytoplasma prunorum'.A 2-yr survey was carried out in two different Prunus collections of the Centro de Investigación y Tecnología Agroalimentaria de Aragón (CITA) including European and Japanese plum genotypes of various species and several interspecific hybrids used as rootstocks. Both off-season growth in winter and decline were observed. In order to identify the phytoplasma suspected as a causal agent, two different PCR methods were applied to all inspected trees. The first method was a nested PCR with 16Sr X group-specific primers followed by RFLP analysis. The second method was a direct PCR with specific primers for 'Ca P. prunorum' (Eca1/Eca2). In the most symptomatic trees the presence of this phytoplasma was confirmed by at least one of the methods; negative results were obtained in asymptomatic trees. The nested PCR-RFLPs analysis was confirmed as a reliable method for routinary diagnosis rather than direct PCR.La caracterización molecular del agente causante de enfermedades asociadas a varios síntomas, como el enrollamiento clorótico, anticipación de la floración y la brotación, leptonecrosis o amarillamiento en los frutales de hueso permitió determinar una etiología común, el fitoplasma 'European stone fruit yellows', recientemente clasificado taxonómicamente como 'Candidatus Phytoplasma prunorum'. Durante dos años se llevó a cabo una prospección en dos colecciones del Centro deInvestigación y Tecnología Agroalimentaria (CITA) de Aragón, que comprende diferentes especies e híbridos interespecíficos, de origen europeo y japonés, dentro del género Prunus. Se observaron síntomas de anticipo de floración y brotación en invierno y cierto decaimiento. Con objeto de identificar al posible fitoplasma causante de la enfermedad se aplicaron dos métodos en todos los árboles inspeccionados. El primero fue una PCR anidada con cebadores específicos del grupo 16Sr X seguida de un análisis de los fragmentos de restricción por RFLP. El segundo método fue una PCR con cebadores específicos de 'Ca P. prunorum' (Eca1/Eca2). En los árboles más sintomáticos se confirmó la presencia de los fitoplasmas por uno de los dos métodos, obteniéndose resultados negativos en los árboles asintomáticos. El primer método resultó ser más fiable que la PCR directa como método de diagnóstico rutinario

Background questionnaires of PISA: a study of the assessment indicators

The PISA assessment system has generated and continues to generate intense debate about its structure and usefulness. This article focuses on the context questionnaires as a way to analyze and understand the results properly. The objectives are to analyze the background indicators used in the different editions of the PISA tests, used in different studies and the results of these studies. An overview of the model used is provided to ensure that these indicators are no longer something that accompanies the performance test to reach their true meaning: jointly analyze the performance along with the variables that may be influencing the results. As methodology is used document analysis of publications related to PISA and results, as well as a semantic analysis of scientific work that has generated PISA. The results show that some indicators have remained throughout the various editions of PISA, while others have changed. The translation of a stable model in editions from PISA 2015 in which the most relevant items are included will undoubtedly facilitate the study of results at vertical and horizontal level. Thus, the importance of PISA context questionnaires established to properly understand their results and the need for more complex studies of multilevel or nested that normally used, generally based on descriptive statistics and / or percentagesThe PISA assessment system has generated and continues to generate intense debate about its structure and usefulness. This article focuses on the context questionnaires as a way to analyze and understand the results properly. The objectives are to analyze the context indicators used in the different editions of the PISA tests, used in different studies and the results of these studies. An overview of the model used is provided to ensure that these indicators are no longer something that accompanies the performance test to reach their true meaning: jointly analyze the performance along with the variables that may be influencing the results. As methodology is used document analysis of publications related to PISA and results, as well as a semantic analysis of scientific work that has generated PISA. The results show that some indicators have remained throughout the various editions of PISA, while others have changed. The translation of a stable model in editions from PISA 2015 in which the most relevant items are included will undoubtedly facilitate the study of results at vertical and horizontal level. Thus, the importance of PISA context questionnaires established to properly understand their results and the need for more complex studies of multilevel or nested that normally used, generally based on descriptive statistics and / or percentages

Enfermería : fármacos más utilizados en urgencias hospitalarias

El Servicio de Urgencias del C.H.G.U.V. cuenta con una plantilla de 84 Enfermeros/as. Una parte considerable de ellos es personal de nueva incorporación, de ahí que sea prioritaria la elaboración de protocolos de actuación. La administración de medicación intravenosa es sin duda una de las técnicas de mayor aplicación en los pacientes que acuden a Urgencias, que en nuestro Hospital oscila entre 550-600 atenciones diarias. Por ello nos planteamos, mediante la realización de reuniones de grupo, la elaboración del presente trabajo con el objetivo de elaborar un manual informativo sobre la medicación más habitual utilizada en nuestro Servicio de Urgencias; indicaciones, contraindicaciones, diluciones, cuidados y recomendaciones sobre la administración que nos ayude a visionar la practica en nuestro trabajo y la calidad del Servicio que prestamos a nuestros pacientes, y sirva de consulta sobre todo al personal de nueva incorporación.The First aid service of the C.H.G.U.V. Nurse is provided with a staff of 84, a considerable part of them is new staff, and therefore there is a priority of making of performance protocols. The administration of intravenous medication is undoubtedly one of the most used techniques in patients who come to the emergency room, which in our Hospital ranges between 550-600 daily attentions. For this reason, we considered that carrying out group meetings in order to elaborate the present essay. Our main objective is to prepare an informative guidebook about the most common used medicines in our first aid service: indications, contraindications, dilutions, care, and recommendations on the use. In this sense it will contribute to see the practice in our work and the service quality that we give to our patients. And what is more, it will serve as a reference particularly to the new [email protected]

A quantitative analysis of factors related to adolescent cybervictimization in Spain: A multilevel logistic regression approach

Building on ecological systems theory, this study seeks to explain cybervictimization as the result of interactions among microsystems (parents and close friends), mesosystems (the school environment), and potential vulnerability factors of adolescents. Internet addiction is proposed as a key risk factor that increases adolescents’ likelihood of suffering cyberbullying. A multilevel logistic regression is performed using data from a nationally representative sample of school students in Spain aged 14 to 18 years (n = 35,369). The survey was carried out by the Spanish Government’s Delegation for the National Plan on Drugs. Results show that high levels of Internet addiction and a lack of support from family and friends increase the probability of suffering cyberbullying. The association between being cyberbullied and Internet addiction is stronger when students lack support from family and friends. School factors such as academic grades and repetition as well as vulnerability factors such as parents’ employment and immigrant status are also associated with higher cybervictimization levels. Implications for policymakers and public health managers are highlighted

Evaluation and comparison of regional climate models over the Iberian Peninsula

Póster presentado en el 4th HyMeX workshop celebrado del 8-10 de junio de 2010 en Bolonia, Italia.Different relations between parameters involved in both water and energy land surface budgets are computed from daily ERA-Interim data for the months of July and November(representative of the dry and wet season) in the period 1989-2008 over an area within the Iberian Península covering most of Tajo and Guadiana basins (from 40.5N to 37.5N, and from 7.0W to 2.0W). The main objective of this work is to use the obtained relations for the evaluation and comparison of regional climate models (RCMs) participating in the ENSEMBLES project. This approach was first proposed by Betts (2004) for comparing and evaluating global climate models. He proposed the assessment of model surface components as a system with widely connected components. In this way, models are compared among themselves and evaluated against observational data. The work is mainly focused on the goodness of the representation of physical surface processes and their feedbacks. The obtained relationships among different parameters are therefore considered as imposed restrictions by physical processes which can be used to evaluate RCMs

Physically based evaluation of climate models over the Iberian Peninsula

A novel approach is proposed for evaluating regional climate models based on the comparison of empirical relationships among model outcome variables. The approach is actually a quantitative adaptation of the method for evaluating global climate models proposed by Betts (Bull Am Meteorol Soc 85:1673–1688, 2004). Three selected relationships among different magnitudes involved in water and energy land surface budgets are firstly established using daily re-analysis data. The selected relationships are obtained for an area encompassing two river basins in the southern Iberian Peninsula corresponding to 2 months, representative of dry and wet seasons. The same corresponding relations are also computed for each of the thirteen regional simulations of the ENSEMBLES project over the same area. The usage of a metric based on the Hellinger coefficient allows a quantitative estimation of how well models are performing in simulating the relations among surface magnitudes. Finally, a series of six rankings of the thirteen regional climate models participating in the ENSEMBLES project is obtained based on their ability to simulate such surface processes.The ENSEMBLES data used in this work was funded by the EU FP6 Integrated Project ENSEMBLES (Contract number 505539) whose support is gratefully acknowledged by the authors of the paper, without these data it would have been imposible to write this article

Effects of immobilized VEGF on endothelial progenitor cells cultured on silicon substituted and nanocrystalline hydroxyapatites

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) plays an essential role in angiogenesis and vascular homeostasis. Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) are primitive bone marrow cells participating in neovascularization and revascularization processes, which also promote bone regeneration. Synthetic hydroxyapatite (HA) has been widely used in bone repair and implant coatings. In HA-based materials, small levels of ionic substitution by silicon (Si) have significant effects on osteoclastic and osteoblastic responses. Moreover, nanocrystalline hydroxyapatites (nano-HA) display enhanced bioreactivity and beneficial effects in bone formation. In this work, the angiogenic potential of VEGF-121 adsorbed on crystalline and nanocrystalline HAs with different Si proportion is evaluated with endothelial-like cells derived from EPCs cultured on nano-HA, nano-SiHA0.25, nano-SiHA0.4, HA, SiHA0.25 and SiHA0.4 disks. The Si amount incorporated for x ¼ 0.25 is enough to yield changes in the textural parameters and surface charge without decomposing the HA phase. Si substitution for x ¼ 0.4 does not result in pure Si-substituted apatites. Si probably remains at the grain boundaries as amorphous silica in nano-SiHA0.4 and SiHA0.4 is decomposed in a-TCP and HA after 1150 �C treatment. Immobilized VEGF on nano-HA, nano-SiHA0.25, nano-SiHA0.4, HA, SiHA0.25 and SiHA0.4 maintains its function exerting a local regulation of the cell response. The crystallite size and topography of nanocrystalline HAs could produce insufficient and weak contacts with endothelial-like cells triggering anoikis. Concerning Si proportion, the best results are obtained with SiHA0.25/VEGF and nano- SiHA0.25/VEGF disks. All these results suggest the potential utility of SiHA0.25/VEGF and nano-SiHA0.25/VEGF for bone repair and tissue engineering by promoting angiogenesis

What are the dry eye questionnaires available in the scientific literature used for? A Scoping Review

Purpose: Dry eye disease (DED) is a frequent chronic ophthalmic condition. Its diagnosis includes tests and Patient Reported Outcomes (PRO) questionnaires. Although many PRO dry eye questionnaires (PRO-DEQ) are available, they differ greatly from each other and not all have been validated. The purpose of this study was to retrieve the PRO-DEQ present in the scientific literature by performing a descriptive analysis of them and identifying those with known validity and reliability characteristics and to perform a descriptive analysis of the geographical area, year of publication and characteristics of the target population of the clinical studies that have used validated PRO dry eye questionnaires. Design: Scoping review of the literature. Methods: Search was conducted in PubMed to retrieve PRO-DEQ published up to July 2018 and written in English, French, Italian or Spanish. Results: 1602 records were identified, 973 were finally included. Of these, 56 provided information on the design and validation of PRO-DEQ and 49 PRO-DEQ were identified. 22 PRO-DEQ were validated (17 original and 5 modified) and 27 had no associated design, validity, and reliability studies. Most of the validated PRO-DEQ have been designed in English, the number of items varies between 1-57, the dimensions are generally not specified, and they are self-administered. The greatest use of validated PRO-DEQ in clinical studies has been in Asia since 2010, with the Ocular Surface Disease Index (OSDI) being the most used. These questionnaires have been used mostly in adults, retired professionals and people with visual diseases to diagnose DED. Conclusions: This study aims to encourage the use of validated PRO-DEQ to guarantee the quality of the results obtained, as well as the comparability and replicability among studies.The authors thank the Vice-Rectorate of Research of the University of Alicante for the pre-doctoral training contract for the third author (UAFPU2019-08). Jose María Ramada receives a salary as head of the occupational health service at Hospital del Mar (Barcelona) and as associate professor at the University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona (Spain). Likewise, he has received competitive funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), through the Instituto de Salud Carlos III for the INTEVAL_Plus project (PI17/00779), of which he is the principal investigator

Rules governing metal coordination in Aβ–Zn(ii) complex models from quantum mechanical calculations

Transition metals directly contribute to the neurotoxicity of the aggregates of the amyloid-forming Aβ peptide. The understanding and rationalization of the coordination modes of metals to Aβ amyloid is, therefore, of paramount importance to understand the capacity of a given metal to promote peptide aggregation. Experimentally, multiple Aβ–metal structures have been resolved, which exhibit different modes of coordination in both the monomeric and oligomeric forms of Aβ. Although Zn(II) metalloproteins are very abundant and often involve cysteine residues in the first coordination shell, in the case of Aβ–Zn(II), though, Zn(II) is coordinated by glutamic/aspartic acid and/or histidine residues exclusively, making for an interesting case study. Here we present a systematic analysis of the underlying chemistry on Aβ–Zn(II) coordination, where relative stabilities of different coordination arrangements indicate that a mixture of Glu/Asp and His residues is favored. A detailed comparison between different coordination shell geometries shows that tetrahedral coordination is generally favored in the aqueous phase. Our calculations show an interplay between dative covalent interactions and electrostatics which explains the observed trends. Multiple structures deposited in the Protein Data Bank support our findings, suggesting that the trends found in our work may be transferable to other Zn(II) metalloproteins with this type of coordination.The authors gratefully acknowledge the financing of the MINECO project (PID2021-127907NB-I00) founded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and the financing from the Basque Government (IT1584-22). The authors also thank the IZO-SGI SGIker (UPV/EHU/ERDF,EU) and DIPC for technical and human support and for the allocation of computational resources. D. D. S. receives support from a Ramón y Cajal contract (RYC-2016-19590) from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. J. A. thankfully acknowledges the University of the Basque Country for the scholarship for the completion of a masters degree in the academic years 2020/2021–2021/2022 and the Donostia International Physics Center for a summer internship