Editorial. Relações Internacionais e Redes Sociais

O presente dossier temático sistematiza as grandes linhas de reflexão apresentadas no painel das Relações Internacionais do II Congresso Internacional de Comunicação e Redes Sociais na Sociedade da Informação, que decorreu na Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa entre os dias 31 de Março e 1 de Abril de 2021

Comparative evaluation of therapeutic DNA vaccines against Trypanosoma cruzi in mice

Chagas disease, caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, is a major public health problem in most of Latin America. A key priority is the development of new treatments, due to the poor efficacy of current ones. We report here the comparative evaluation of therapeutic DNA vaccines encoding various T. cruzi antigens. ICR mice infected with 500 parasites intraperitoneally were treated at 5 and 12 days postinfection with 20 mu g of plasmid DNA encoding T. cruzi antigens TSA-1, TS, ASP-2-like, Tc52 or Tc24. Treatment with plasmid encoding TS and/or ASP-2-like antigens had no significant effect on parasitemia or survival. Treatment with Tc52 DNA significantly reduced parasitemia, as well as cardiac parasite burden, and improved survival, although myocarditis was not significantly affected. Finally, treatment with plasmids encoding Tc24 and TSA-1 induced the most complete control of disease as evidenced by significant reductions in parasitemia, mortality, myocarditis and heart parasite burden. These data demonstrate that therapeutic vaccine efficacy is dependent on the antigen and suggest that DNA vaccines encoding Tc24, TSA-1, and Tc52 represent the best candidates for further studies of a therapeutic vaccine against Chagas disease.Univ Autonoma Yucatan, Parasitol Lab, Ctr Invest Reg Dr Hideyo Noguchi, Merida, Yucatan, MexicoINSERM, IRD, UR 008, Ctr IRD Montpellier, Montpellier, FranceUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, CINTERGEN, Dept Microbiol Inmunol & Parasitol, São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, CINTERGEN, Dept Microbiol Inmunol & Parasitol, São Paulo, BrazilWeb of Scienc

PLAN DE RESPONSABILIDAD SOCIAL EMPRESARIAL HIDRINCO S A S

https://youtu.be/9wWkRL0hw74Hoy en día las empresas están luchando por ser más eficientes y tener mayor participación en su industria, para que suceda esto, las organizaciones necesitan de un crecimiento constante, lo que las obliga a canalizar sus recursos financieros de la mejor forma. Las finanzas juegan un papel muy importante dentro de las empresa, así mismo otros factores que intervienen de manera significativa en la organización es el plan de responsabilidad social y empresarial RSE. Crear consciencia de cómo estamos impactando todo el sistema en el que opera la empresa, la hace exitosa y diferenciadora de las demás en el mercado, así mismo se hace imperativo tener definida, gestionada y mejorada la estrategia de RSE e integrada a las demás estrategias, esto permite que la organización sea concebida como una empresa que contribuye a su crecimiento y a la vez al crecimiento de todo el sistema en el que opera. Hemos seleccionado para esta actividad una empresa colombiana que lleva en el mercado 9 años de constante y esforzado trabajo, Hidrinco S.A.S, es una empresa de ingeniería en sistemas de protección contra incendio mediante agua nebulizada Hifog además de otras actividades como diseño, interventora y consultoría. Esta pequeña organización es un gran ejemplo de cómo hacer responsabilidad social y ambiental en una misma idea.Today companies are struggling to be more efficient and have greater participation in their industry, for this to happen, organizations need constant growth, which forces them to channel their financial resources in the best way. Finance plays a very important role within the company, likewise other factors that intervene in a significant way in the organization is the social and business responsibility plan RSE Creating awareness of how we are impacting the entire system in which the company operates, makes it successful and differentiating from others in the market, likewise it is imperative to have defined, managed and improved the CSR strategy and integrated to the other strategies, This allows the organization to be conceived as a company that contributes to its growth and at the same time to the growth of the entire system in which it operates. We have selected for this activity a Colombian company that has been in the market for 9 years of constant and hard work, Hidrinco s.a.s is an engineering company in fire protection systems using Hifog nebulized water, as well as other activities such as design, supervision and consulting. This small organization is a great example of how to make social and environmental responsibility in the same idea

Unconstrained and Contactless Hand Geometry Biometrics

This paper presents a hand biometric system for contact-less, platform-free scenarios, proposing innovative methods in feature extraction, template creation and template matching. The evaluation of the proposed method considers both the use of three contact-less publicly available hand databases, and the comparison of the performance to two competitive pattern recognition techniques existing in literature: namely Support Vector Machines (SVM) and k-Nearest Neighbour (k-NN). Results highlight the fact that the proposed method outcomes existing approaches in literature in terms of computational cost, accuracy in human identification, number of extracted features and number of samples for template creation. The proposed method is a suitable solution for human identification in contact-less scenarios based on hand biometrics, providing a feasible solution to devices with limited hardware requirements like mobile devices

Analysis of pattern recognition techniques for in-air signature biometrics

As a result of advances in mobile technology, new services which benefit from the ubiquity of these devices are appearing. Some of these services require the identification of the subject since they may access private user information. In this paper, we propose to identify each user by drawing his/her handwritten signature in the air (in-airsignature). In order to assess the feasibility of an in-airsignature as a biometric feature, we have analysed the performance of several well-known patternrecognitiontechniques—Hidden Markov Models, Bayes classifiers and dynamic time warping—to cope with this problem. Each technique has been tested in the identification of the signatures of 96 individuals. Furthermore, the robustness of each method against spoofing attacks has also been analysed using six impostors who attempted to emulate every signature. The best results in both experiments have been reached by using a technique based on dynamic time warping which carries out the recognition by calculating distances to an average template extracted from several training instances. Finally, a permanence analysis has been carried out in order to assess the stability of in-airsignature over time

Qué necesitan los estudiantes de Periodismo para su inserción laboral. Análisis de la demanda del mercado laboral de las empresas de comunicación.

PIMCD nº 176, realizado por el grupo Research and Learning of Media and Communications Management. Investigación y Enseñanza de la Gestión de los Medios y la Comunicación (MediaCom UCM) www.ccinf.es/mediacom/Primera fase de trabajo para fijar descriptores que identifiquen comportamientos formativos de entrada en el mercado laboral. En esta fase se han encontrado 442 oferentes de contratos en prácticas para estudiantes de Periodismo. Los datos obtenidos se articulan de acuerdo a dos subsecciones: sectores empresariales y empresas; a su vez, cada subsector, atendiendo al índice de recepción de alumnos y la descripción cualitativa de los puestos.Depto. de Periodismo y Comunicación GlobalFac. de Ciencias de la InformaciónFALSEsubmitte

Efficacy of a Strategy for Implementing Guidelines for the Control of Cardiovascular Risk in Primary Healthcare

Background: A number of strategies exist for the implementation of clinical practice guides (CPGs). Aim: To assess the efficacy of implementing a cardiovascular risk CPG based on an educational method involving opinion leaders, and the habitual method of dissemination among primary healthcare teams. Design and Setting: Controlled, blinded, community intervention trial randomised by clusters. Methods: 21 primary healthcare centres were randomly assigned to either the intervention arm (n = 11) or the control arm (n = 10). The study subjects were patients aged ≥45 years assigned to the centres. The overall impact of the intervention was measured as the difference between the increase in the proportion of patients whose medical records showed the recording of all the variables necessary to calculate cardiovascular risk in both arms. Analyses were performed with Generalized Lineal Model on an intention-to-treat basis. Results: 917 subjects were included at the beginning of the trial (437 in the intervention arm and 480 in the control arm). 826 subjects were included in the final evaluation (436 in the intervention group and 390 in the control arm). At the end of the trial, the recording of the variables necessary for the calculation of the cardiovascular risk in the intervention group had increased more than in the control group (difference between increases 7.49% (95% CI 4.62 - 10.35)) after adjusting for confounding variables. Conclusions: Compared to the habitual method of dissemination, the implementation of this CPG using an educational method involving opinion leaders, improved the recording of the variables needed to calculate patients’ cardiovascular risk.Funding for the trial was provided by the Plan Nacional de Investigación Científica, Desarrollo e Innovación Tecnológica (I+D+I). Instituto de Salud Carlos III—Fondo de Investigación Sanitaria. Expediente N˚ 031216.S

La desigualdad frente al espejo: una herramienta para el aprendizaje de la estratificación social a través del autoanálisis sociológico 2

Elaboración de una aplicación para el aprendizaje de la desigualdad social a partir de una intervención experiencial en el aula en la que se visualiza la comparación de las situaciones y percepciones del estudiantado con la realidad social general

Sympathetic nervous activation, mitochondrial dysfunction and outcome in acutely decompensated cirrhosis: the metabolomic prognostic models (CLIF-C MET)

Background and aims: Current prognostic scores of patients with acutely decompensated cirrhosis (AD), particularly those with acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF), underestimate the risk of mortality. This is probably because systemic inflammation (SI), the major driver of AD/ACLF, is not reflected in the scores. SI induces metabolic changes, which impair delivery of the necessary energy for the immune reaction. This investigation aimed to identify metabolites associated with short-term (28-day) death and to design metabolomic prognostic models. Methods: Two prospective multicentre large cohorts from Europe for investigating ACLF and development of ACLF, CANONIC (discovery, n=831) and PREDICT (validation, n=851), were explored by untargeted serum metabolomics to identify and validate metabolites which could allow improved prognostic modelling. Results: Three prognostic metabolites strongly associated with death were selected to build the models. 4-Hydroxy-3-methoxyphenylglycol sulfate is a norepinephrine derivative, which may be derived from the brainstem response to SI. Additionally, galacturonic acid and hexanoylcarnitine are associated with mitochondrial dysfunction. Model 1 included only these three prognostic metabolites and age. Model 2 was built around 4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenylglycol sulfate, hexanoylcarnitine, bilirubin, international normalised ratio (INR) and age. In the discovery cohort, both models were more accurate in predicting death within 7, 14 and 28 days after admission compared with MELDNa score (C-index: 0.9267, 0.9002 and 0.8424, and 0.9369, 0.9206 and 0.8529, with model 1 and model 2, respectively). Similar results were found in the validation cohort (C-index: 0.940, 0.834 and 0.791, and 0.947, 0.857 and 0.810, with model 1 and model 2, respectively). Also, in ACLF, model 1 and model 2 outperformed MELDNa 7, 14 and 28 days after admission for prediction of mortality. Conclusions: Models including metabolites (CLIF-C MET) reflecting SI, mitochondrial dysfunction and sympathetic system activation are better predictors of short-term mortality than scores based only on organ dysfunction (eg, MELDNa), especially in patients with ACLF

Antimicrobial resistance among migrants in Europe: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are rising globally and there is concern that increased migration is contributing to the burden of antibiotic resistance in Europe. However, the effect of migration on the burden of AMR in Europe has not yet been comprehensively examined. Therefore, we did a systematic review and meta-analysis to identify and synthesise data for AMR carriage or infection in migrants to Europe to examine differences in patterns of AMR across migrant groups and in different settings. METHODS: For this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched MEDLINE, Embase, PubMed, and Scopus with no language restrictions from Jan 1, 2000, to Jan 18, 2017, for primary data from observational studies reporting antibacterial resistance in common bacterial pathogens among migrants to 21 European Union-15 and European Economic Area countries. To be eligible for inclusion, studies had to report data on carriage or infection with laboratory-confirmed antibiotic-resistant organisms in migrant populations. We extracted data from eligible studies and assessed quality using piloted, standardised forms. We did not examine drug resistance in tuberculosis and excluded articles solely reporting on this parameter. We also excluded articles in which migrant status was determined by ethnicity, country of birth of participants' parents, or was not defined, and articles in which data were not disaggregated by migrant status. Outcomes were carriage of or infection with antibiotic-resistant organisms. We used random-effects models to calculate the pooled prevalence of each outcome. The study protocol is registered with PROSPERO, number CRD42016043681. FINDINGS: We identified 2274 articles, of which 23 observational studies reporting on antibiotic resistance in 2319 migrants were included. The pooled prevalence of any AMR carriage or AMR infection in migrants was 25·4% (95% CI 19·1-31·8; I2 =98%), including meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (7·8%, 4·8-10·7; I2 =92%) and antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative bacteria (27·2%, 17·6-36·8; I2 =94%). The pooled prevalence of any AMR carriage or infection was higher in refugees and asylum seekers (33·0%, 18·3-47·6; I2 =98%) than in other migrant groups (6·6%, 1·8-11·3; I2 =92%). The pooled prevalence of antibiotic-resistant organisms was slightly higher in high-migrant community settings (33·1%, 11·1-55·1; I2 =96%) than in migrants in hospitals (24·3%, 16·1-32·6; I2 =98%). We did not find evidence of high rates of transmission of AMR from migrant to host populations. INTERPRETATION: Migrants are exposed to conditions favouring the emergence of drug resistance during transit and in host countries in Europe. Increased antibiotic resistance among refugees and asylum seekers and in high-migrant community settings (such as refugee camps and detention facilities) highlights the need for improved living conditions, access to health care, and initiatives to facilitate detection of and appropriate high-quality treatment for antibiotic-resistant infections during transit and in host countries. Protocols for the prevention and control of infection and for antibiotic surveillance need to be integrated in all aspects of health care, which should be accessible for all migrant groups, and should target determinants of AMR before, during, and after migration. FUNDING: UK National Institute for Health Research Imperial Biomedical Research Centre, Imperial College Healthcare Charity, the Wellcome Trust, and UK National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Unit in Healthcare-associated Infections and Antimictobial Resistance at Imperial College London