Fortalecimiento de los agricultores familiares periurbanos del partido de Moreno: experiencia participativa para la implementación de un equipo de maquinaria comunitaria itinerante

El presente trabajo pretende contar la experiencia que se está realizando desde el Instituto municipal de Desarrollo Económico Local (IMDEL), del Municipio de Moreno, con familias productoras de hortalizas del partido. A partir de la labor territorial de los técnicos del IMDEL se detectaron necesidades comunes entre productores. El objetivo de la intervención fue la elaboración de un proyecto conjunto con todos los actores involucrados para aportar al fortalecimiento de los productores familiares del partido. Es así, que a través de un diagnóstico participativo impulsado por los técnicos, la fuerte vinculación interinstitucional existente entre distintos organismos del estado (nacional, provincial y municipal) que intervienen en este territorio y las organizaciones de productores, se formula un proyecto para la implementación de un equipo de maquinaria comunitaria itinerante tendiente a resolver una de las problemáticas mas sentidas.Territorios y estrategias de intervención.Universidad Nacional de La Plat

Fortalecimiento de los agricultores familiares periurbanos del partido de Moreno: experiencia participativa para la implementación de un equipo de maquinaria comunitaria itinerante

El presente trabajo pretende contar la experiencia que se está realizando desde el Instituto municipal de Desarrollo Económico Local (IMDEL), del Municipio de Moreno, con familias productoras de hortalizas del partido. A partir de la labor territorial de los técnicos del IMDEL se detectaron necesidades comunes entre productores. El objetivo de la intervención fue la elaboración de un proyecto conjunto con todos los actores involucrados para aportar al fortalecimiento de los productores familiares del partido. Es así, que a través de un diagnóstico participativo impulsado por los técnicos, la fuerte vinculación interinstitucional existente entre distintos organismos del estado (nacional, provincial y municipal) que intervienen en este territorio y las organizaciones de productores, se formula un proyecto para la implementación de un equipo de maquinaria comunitaria itinerante tendiente a resolver una de las problemáticas mas sentidas.Territorios y estrategias de intervención.Universidad Nacional de La Plat

Artificial Pancreas: First Clinical Trials in Argentina

The first clinical trials using an Artificial Pancreas (AP) in Latin America have been defined in 2 stages. The first stage was carried out in November 2016 with the UVA controller (developed by the Center for Diabetes Technology and already clinically tested), and the second will be performed during the first semester of 2017 with the ARG (Automatic Regulation of Glucose) algorithm (developed by ITBA, UNQ, and UNLP in Argentina). Both tests are based on the DiAs (Diabetes Assistant) from the UVA, and are performed in the HIBA on 5 patients with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM), for 36 hours. For the first stage, Open-Loop (OL) insulin boluses were applied before meals and patient’s physical activity was included. On the other hand, for the second stage, patients will not be involved in physical activity, but no OL insulin boluses will be injected before meals. In this work, experimental results from the first stage with the UVA controller, and preliminary results with the ARG control algorithm tested on the UVA/Padova simulator are presented. Due to the final paper deadline, the experimental results from the second stage are not included here, but will be presented at the IFAC World Congress.Facultad de IngenieríaInstituto de Investigaciones en Electrónica, Control y Procesamiento de Señale

A Randomized Trial of Convalescent Plasma in Covid-19 Severe Pneumonia

BACKGROUND:Convalescent plasma is frequently administered to patients with Covid-19 and hasbeen reported, largely on the basis of observational data, to improve clinical outcomes.Minimal data are available from adequately powered randomized, controlled trials. METHODS:We randomly assigned hospitalized adult patients with severe Covid-19 pneumoniain a 2:1 ratio to receive convalescent plasma or placebo. The primary outcome wasthe patient?s clinical status 30 days after the intervention, as measured on a six-pointordinal scale ranging from total recovery to death. RESULTS:A total of 228 patients were assigned to receive convalescent plasma and 105 toreceive placebo. The median time from the onset of symptoms to enrollment inthe trial was 8 days (interquartile range, 5 to 10), and hypoxemia was the mostfrequent severity criterion for enrollment. The infused convalescent plasma had amedian titer of 1:3200 of total SARS-CoV-2 antibodies (interquartile range, 1:800 to1:3200]. No patients were lost to follow-up. At day 30 day, no significant differencewas noted between the convalescent plasma group and the placebo group in thedistribution of clinical outcomes according to the ordinal scale (odds ratio, 0.83(95% confidence interval [CI], 0.52 to 1.35; P=0.46). Overall mortality was 10.96%in the convalescent plasma group and 11.43% in the placebo group, for a risk difference of −0.46 percentage points (95% CI, −7.8 to 6.8). Total SARS-CoV-2 antibodytiters tended to be higher in the convalescent plasma group at day 2 after the intervention. Adverse events and serious adverse events were similar in the two groups. CONCLUSIONS:no significant differences were observed in clinical status or overall mortality between patients treated with convalescent plasma and those who received placebo.(PlasmAr ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT04383535.)Fil: Simonovich, Ventura A.. Hospital Italiano. Departamento de Medicina. Servicio de Clinica Medica.; ArgentinaFil: Burgos Pratx, Leandro D.. Hospital Italiano. Departamento de Medicina. Servicio de Clinica Medica.; ArgentinaFil: Scibona, Paula. Hospital Italiano. Departamento de Medicina. Servicio de Clinica Medica.; ArgentinaFil: Beruto, Maria Valeria. No especifíca;Fil: Vallone, Miguel Gabriel. No especifíca;Fil: Vázquez, C.. No especifíca;Fil: Savoy, N.. No especifíca;Fil: Giunta, Diego Hernan. No especifíca;Fil: Pérez, L.G.. No especifíca;Fil: Sánchez, M.L.. No especifíca;Fil: Gamarnik, Andrea Vanesa. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires. Fundación Instituto Leloir. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Ojeda, D.S.. No especifíca;Fil: Santoro, D.M.. No especifíca;Fil: Camino, P. J.. No especifíca;Fil: Antelo, S.. No especifíca;Fil: Rainero, K.. No especifíca;Fil: Vidiella, G. P.. No especifíca;Fil: Miyazaki, E. A.. No especifíca;Fil: Cornistein, W.. No especifíca;Fil: Trabadelo, O. A.. No especifíca;Fil: Ross, F. M.. No especifíca;Fil: Spotti, M.. No especifíca;Fil: Funtowicz, G.. No especifíca;Fil: Scordo, W. E.. No especifíca;Fil: Losso, M. H.. No especifíca;Fil: Ferniot, I.. No especifíca;Fil: Pardo, P. E.. No especifíca;Fil: Rodriguez, E.. No especifíca;Fil: Rucci, P.. No especifíca;Fil: Pasquali, J.. No especifíca;Fil: Fuentes, N. A.. No especifíca;Fil: Esperatti, M.. No especifíca;Fil: Speroni, G. A.. No especifíca;Fil: Nannini, Esteban. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Rosario. Instituto de Inmunología Clinica y Experimental de Rosario. Universidad Nacional de Rosario. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas. Instituto de Inmunología Clinica y Experimental de Rosario; ArgentinaFil: Matteaccio, A.. No especifíca;Fil: Michelangelo, H.G.. No especifíca;Fil: Follmann, D.. No especifíca;Fil: Lane, H. Clifford. No especifíca;Fil: Belloso, Waldo Horacio. Hospital Italiano. Departamento de Medicina. Servicio de Clinica Medica.; Argentin

Numerical methods for the design and description of in vitro expansion processes of human mesenchymal stem cells

Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) are a valuable source of cells for clinical applications (e.g., treatment of acute myocardial infarction or inflammatory diseases), especially in the field of regenerative medicine. However, for autologous (patient-specific) and allogeneic (off-the-shelf) hMSC-based therapies, in vitro expansion is necessary prior to the clinical application in order to achieve the required cell numbers. Safe, reproducible, and economic in vitro expansion of hMSCs for autologous and allogeneic therapies can be problematic because the cell material is restricted and the cells are sensitive to environmental changes. It is beneficial to collect detailed information on the hydrodynamic conditions and cell growth behavior in a bioreactor system, in order to develop a so called “Digital Twin” of the cultivation system and expansion process. Numerical methods, such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) which has become widely used in the biotech industry for studying local characteristics within bioreactors or kinetic growth modelling, provide possible solutions for such tasks. In this review, we will present the current state-of-the-art for the in vitro expansion of hMSCs. Different numerical tools, including numerical fluid flow simulations and cell growth modelling approaches for hMSCs, will be presented. In addition, a case study demonstrating the applicability of CFD and kinetic growth modelling for the development of an microcarrier-based hMSC process will be shown

Liquid membrane potential in nonisothermal systems.

Electrical membrane potential equations for liquid ion exchange membranes, characterized by the presence of uncharged associated species and by exclusion of co-ions (no electrolyte uptake) have been derived. The irreversible thermodynamic theories already developed for solid membranes with fixed charged site density have been extended to include the different physicochemical aspects of the liquid membranes. To this purpose the dissipation function has been written with reference to the fluxes of all the species present in the membrane. It has been found that the mobile charged site, the counterions, and the uncharged associated species contribute to the electrical membrane potential through their phenomenological coefficients. The electrical membrane potential equations have been integrated in isothermal and nonisothermal conditions for monoionic and biionic systems. The theoretical predictions have been experimentally tested by studying the electrical potential of liquid membranes formed with solutions of tetraheptylammonium salts in omicron-dichlorobenzene

Decoupling of silica, nitrogen and phosphorus cycling in a meromictic subalpine lake (Lake Iseo, Italy)

Silica (Si), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) loads and stoichiometry are key factors controlling the trophic status of lakes and coastal seas. In the hydrographic network, lakes also act as biogeochemical reactors, controlling both nutrient retention and fluxes. This work aimed to examine the coupling of Si, N and P cycling, together with their stoichiometry in a deep meromictic subalpine lake (Lake Iseo, Northern Italy). Si, N and P mass budgets were calculated by quantifying loads in the inlets and in the outlet over a period of 30 months (May 2016-October 2018), in-lake sedimentation rates and net nutrients accumulation in the water body. Lake Iseo acts as a biogeochemical filter, which differentially retains the external Si, N and P loads. Retention of Si and P was similar (75-79%), but considerably higher than N (45%), evidencing a decoupling of their fate due to in-lake processes. This differential retention is likely to be exacerbated by meromixis which enhances Si and P accumulation in the monimolimnion, while impairing denitrification, thus limiting N removal. Such decoupling resulted in an increase of the N:Si and N:P ratios in both the epilimnion and in the outlet compared to the inlets, whereas the ratios decreased in the monimolimnion. As a result, there may be a stronger Si and P limitation of the photic zone, leading to a shift towards more oligotrophic conditions. This transient equilibrium could be impaired in the case of water overturn produced by extreme climate events-a highly relevant issue, considering that a growing number of deep lakes are turning from holo-oligomictic to meromictic as a result of combined eutrophication and climate change