Separation and Determination of Some of the Main Cholesterol-Related Compounds in Blood by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (Selected Ion Monitoring Mode)

Oxysterols are metabolites produced in the first step of cholesterol metabolism, which is related to neurodegenerative disorder. They can be detected by testing blood, plasma, serum, or cerebrospinal fluid. In this study, some cholesterol precursors and oxysterols were determined by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry. The selected cholesterol-related compounds were desmosterol, lathosterol, lanosterol, 7 -hydroxycholesterol, 7 -hydroxycholesterol, 24(S)-hydroxycholesterol, 25-hydroxycholesterol, 7-ketocholesterol, and 27-hydroxycholesterol. A powerful method was developed and validated considering various analytical parameters, such as linearity index, detection and quantification limits, selectivity and matrix effect, precision (repeatability), and trueness (recovery factor) for each cholesterol-related compound. 7 -hydroxycholesterol, 7 -hydroxycholesterol, and desmosterol exhibited the lowest detection and quantification limits, with 0.01 and 0.03 g/mL, respectively, in the three cases. 7-ketocholesterol and lathosterol showed matrix effect percentages between 95.5% and 104.8%, respectively (demonstrating a negligible matrix effect), and very satisfactory repeatability values (i.e., overall performance of the method). Next, the method was applied to the analysis of a very interesting selection of mouse plasma samples (9 plasma extracts of non-transgenic and transgenic mice that had been fed different diets). Although the number of samples was limited, the current study led to some biologically relevant conclusions regarding brain cholesterol metabolism.The authors are grateful for the interesting collaboration with the biotechnology-based company Neuron Bio. The research project was funded by CEI BioTic/University of Granad

Integrating and visualising primary data from prospective and legacy taxonomic literature.

Specimen data in taxonomic literature are among the highest quality primary biodiversity data. Innovative cybertaxonomic journals are using workflows that maintain data structure and disseminate electronic content to aggregators and other users; such structure is lost in traditional taxonomic publishing. Legacy taxonomic literature is a vast repository of knowledge about biodiversity. Currently, access to that resource is cumbersome, especially for non-specialist data consumers. Markup is a mechanism that makes this content more accessible, and is especially suited to machine analysis. Fine-grained XML (Extensible Markup Language) markup was applied to all (37) open-access articles published in the journal Zootaxa containing treatments on spiders (Order: Araneae). The markup approach was optimized to extract primary specimen data from legacy publications. These data were combined with data from articles containing treatments on spiders published in Biodiversity Data Journal where XML structure is part of the routine publication process. A series of charts was developed to visualize the content of specimen data in XML-tagged taxonomic treatments, either singly or in aggregate. The data can be filtered by several fields (including journal, taxon, institutional collection, collecting country, collector, author, article and treatment) to query particular aspects of the data. We demonstrate here that XML markup using GoldenGATE can address the challenge presented by unstructured legacy data, can extract structured primary biodiversity data which can be aggregated with and jointly queried with data from other Darwin Core-compatible sources, and show how visualization of these data can communicate key information contained in biodiversity literature. We complement recent studies on aspects of biodiversity knowledge using XML structured data to explore 1) the time lag between species discovery and description, and 2) the prevalence of rarity in species descriptions

Enriched biodiversity data as a resource and service

Background: Recent years have seen a surge in projects that produce large volumes of structured, machine-readable biodiversity data. To make these data amenable to processing by generic, open source “data enrichment” workflows, they are increasingly being represented in a variety of standards-compliant interchange formats. Here, we report on an initiative in which software developers and taxonomists came together to address the challenges and highlight the opportunities in the enrichment of such biodiversity data by engaging in intensive, collaborative software development: The Biodiversity Data Enrichment Hackathon. Results: The hackathon brought together 37 participants (including developers and taxonomists, i.e. scientific professionals that gather, identify, name and classify species) from 10 countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the UK, and the US. The participants brought expertise in processing structured data, text mining, development of ontologies, digital identification keys, geographic information systems, niche modeling, natural language processing, provenance annotation, semantic integration, taxonomic name resolution, web service interfaces, workflow tools and visualisation. Most use cases and exemplar data were provided by taxonomists. One goal of the meeting was to facilitate re-use and enhancement of biodiversity knowledge by a broad range of stakeholders, such as taxonomists, systematists, ecologists, niche modelers, informaticians and ontologists. The suggested use cases resulted in nine breakout groups addressing three main themes: i) mobilising heritage biodiversity knowledge; ii) formalising and linking concepts; and iii) addressing interoperability between service platforms. Another goal was to further foster a community of experts in biodiversity informatics and to build human links between research projects and institutions, in response to recent calls to further such integration in this research domain. Conclusions: Beyond deriving prototype solutions for each use case, areas of inadequacy were discussed and are being pursued further. It was striking how many possible applications for biodiversity data there were and how quickly solutions could be put together when the normal constraints to collaboration were broken down for a week. Conversely, mobilising biodiversity knowledge from their silos in heritage literature and natural history collections will continue to require formalisation of the concepts (and the links between them) that define the research domain, as well as increased interoperability between the software platforms that operate on these concepts

Community engagement: The ‘last mile’ challenge for European research e-infrastructures

Europe is building its Open Science Cloud; a set of robust and interoperable e-infrastructures with the capacity to provide data and computational solutions through cloud-based services. The development and sustainable operation of such e-infrastructures are at the forefront of European funding priorities. The research community, however, is still reluctant to engage at the scale required to signal a Europe-wide change in the mode of operation of scientific practices. The striking differences in uptake rates between researchers from different scientific domains indicate that communities do not equally share the benefits of the above European investments. We highlight the need to support research communities in organically engaging with the European Open Science Cloud through the development of trustworthy and interoperable Virtual Research Environments. These domain-specific solutions can support communities in gradually bridging technical and socio-cultural gaps between traditional and open digital science practice, better diffusing the benefits of European e-infrastructures

The flora phenotype ontology (FLOPO):tool for integrating morphological traits and phenotypes of vascular plants

Background: The systematic analysis of a large number of comparable plant trait data can support investigations into phylogenetics and ecological adaptation, with broad applications in evolutionary biology, agriculture, conservation, and the functioning of ecosystems. Floras, i.e., books collecting the information on all known plant species found within a region, are a potentially rich source of such plant trait data. Floras describe plant traits with a focus on morphology and other traits relevant for species identification in addition to other characteristics of plant species, such as ecological affinities, distribution, economic value, health applications, traditional uses, and so on. However, a key limitation in systematically analyzing information in Floras is the lack of a standardized vocabulary for the described traits as well as the difficulties in extracting structured information from free text. Results: We have developed the Flora Phenotype Ontology (FLOPO), an ontology for describing traits of plant species found in Floras. We used the Plant Ontology (PO) and the Phenotype And Trait Ontology (PATO) to extract entity-quality relationships from digitized taxon descriptions in Floras, and used a formal ontological approach based on phenotype description patterns and automated reasoning to generate the FLOPO. The resulting ontology consists of 25,407 classes and is based on the PO and PATO. The classified ontology closely follows the structure of Plant Ontology in that the primary axis of classification is the observed plant anatomical structure, and more specific traits are then classified based on parthood and subclass relations between anatomical structures as well as subclass relations between phenotypic qualities. Conclusions: The FLOPO is primarily intended as a framework based on which plant traits can be integrated computationally across all species and higher taxa of flowering plants. Importantly, it is not intended to replace established vocabularies or ontologies, but rather serve as an overarching framework based on which different application- and domain-specific ontologies, thesauri and vocabularies of phenotypes observed in flowering plants can be integrated

Horizon 2020: a call to forge biodiversity links

For the upcoming calls for Horizon 2020 research funding, the European Commission has said that it would prefer bids from open, collaborative consortia rather than the competitive bids seen in previous funding programmes. To this end, the organizers of 18 European biodiversity informatics projects agreed at a meeting in Rome

Matemáticas en contexto

El libro compila estrategias didácticas derivadas del programa de formación complementario escritas por instructores técnicos de diferentes regionales del país, describe la forma en que se incorpora el conocimiento matemático en campos específicos de diferentes áreas de formación laboral basado en las teorías didácticas y reflexiones pedagógicas de instructores.The book compiles the didactic strategies derived from the complementary training program by the technical instructors of the regional media of the country, describes the way in which mathematical knowledge is incorporated in the fields of different areas of work training based on theories didactic and pedagogical reflections of instructors.Consideraciones frente al aprendizaje de las matemáticas -- Perspectiva constructivista -- Teoría de las situaciones didácticas -- Modelación matemática -- Mediación tecnológica -- Pensamiento numérico variacional -- Pensamiento numérico -- Pensamiento variacional -- Diseño de modelo matemático con aplicación de costos de producción -- Modelo matemático del consumo de gas en un artefacto afectado por su presión de trabajo -- Planeación de la producción agrícola: Caso plan óptimo de siembra que permita alcanzar la máxima rentabilidad del cultivo -- Estudio del Álgebra de Boole -- Diseño de un modelo de inventarios para una pequeña empresa de calzado de dotación -- Estudio de la Ley de Ohm mediante herramienta interactiva -- Pensamiento métrico-geométrico -- Pensamiento geométrico -- Pensamiento métrico -- Caso de optimización de recursos en el sector industrial de la confección -- Optimización de espacios para huertas urbanas -- Optimización de los costos del espacio de almacenamiento en microempresas y pequeñas empresas de acuerdo con las normas de seguridad vigentes -- Unidad de medida métrica para confección de ropa exterior femenina -- Optimización de recursos aplicando el proceso administrativo -- Pensamiento aleatorio -- Estadística Básica para Articulación con la Media -- Evaluación del impacto de la accidentalidad en la implementación del Sistema de Gestión de Seguridad y Salud en el Trabajo (sg-sst) por medio de indicadores -- Identificar los aspectos de la declaración de renta para una persona natural no obligada a llevar contabilidad -- Fortalecimiento de la estadística: caso de las unidades productivas del Centro de Biotecnología Agropecuaria -- Estadística dinámica -- Resultados preliminaresna[270 páginas

COVID-19 outbreaks in a transmission control scenario: challenges posed by social and leisure activities, and for workers in vulnerable conditions, Spain, early summer 2020

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 community-wide transmission declined in Spain by early May 2020, being replaced by outbreaks and sporadic cases. From mid-June to 2 August, excluding single household outbreaks, 673 outbreaks were notified nationally, 551 active (>6,200 cases) at the time. More than half of these outbreaks and cases coincided with: (i) social (family/friends’ gatherings or leisure venues) and (ii) occupational (mainly involving workers in vulnerable conditions) settings. Control measures were accordingly applied

Violencia contra la pareja : ¿qué sucede con las decisiones judiciales?

A pesar de que el maltrato en el ámbito del a pareja es una del as formas de violencia contra la mujer que a menudo se manifiestan en Colombia, la mayor parte de las decisiones judiciales no reflejan un enfoque de género. Por ello, en la actualidad estas presentan vacíos y fallas que llevan a que los decretos de las mujeres víctimas de este tipo de violencia no sean protegidos efectivamente. Al respecto, el Grupo de Investigación en Derechos Humanos de la Facultad de Jurisprudencia de la universidad del Rosario y el Programa Integral contra Violencias de Género, en asocio con otras instituciones, realizó una investigación con el propósito de analizar los principales problemas de este fenómeno. Dicho estudio permitió concluir que, en la actualidad, la violencia contra la pareja se reconoce como una manifestación de la violencia “doméstica”, pero no como una forma de violencia especifica contra la mujer. Asimismo, demostró que hay una fuerte cultura machista que justifica la violencia: “te maltrato porque te amo”. Debido a ello, es necesario que las decisiones judiciales estén encaminadas no sólo a la privación de la libertad, sino también a la resocialización del agresor, para que este entienda que su comportamiento es errado y no vuelva a cometer este tipo de actos