University transformation and quantification devices

Indexación: Scopus; Scielo.Las políticas de Educación Superior en Chile les demandan a las Universidades la instalación de dispositivos de gestión orientados a organizar, cuantificar y monitorear el trabajo académico. Pensando en las implicaciones del uso de estos dispositivos de gestión, este trabajo presenta los resultados de un análisis discursivo de 95 documentos de trabajo (Reglamentos, Bases de concurso, Formularios de acreditación) para conocer las interpelaciones que realiza a la labor universitaria. Mediante el método de análisis de discurso, se caracteriza la actuación de los documentos oficiales que regulan y transforman el trabajo académico. El estudio realizado evidencia que los dispositivos de gestión del Trabajo académico performan el trabajo mediante acciones tales como: establecer jerarquías entre las múltiples tareas de un académico y entre académicos, mediante criterios que no han sido discutidos por la comunidad profesional; objetivar procesos laborales y asumir consensos en torno a ello, desconociendo disputas y desacuerdos actuales; omitir el contexto de producción académica, construyendo una imagen del trabajo como proceso individual; y finalmente instando relaciones laborales individualizadas y competitivas.In Chile, higher education policies have required universities to adopt management tools related to the monitoring and quantification of academic work. Accordingly, this paper presents the results of a documentary study of 95 official documents concerning academic work (Regulations, Scholarship and Grant Application Guidelines and Accreditation Application Forms) in order to understand the regulations pertaining to academic work. Discourse analysis was used to determine how these documents are used in the university environment to regulate and transform the academic work. The present study shows that management tools adopted characterize the academic work through actions such as: establish hierarchies among the multiple tasks of a faculty member and among faculty members using criteria that have not been discussed by the academic community; objectify work processes and reach consensus over them, disregarding current disputes and disagreements; omit the context of academic production creating an image of work as an individual process; and finally urge the establishment of individualizing and competitive work relationships.http://ref.scielo.org/d2c4s

Antimicrobial and antibiofilm activities of new synthesized Silver Ultra-NanoClusters (SUNCs) against Helicobacter pylori

Helicobacter pylori colonizes approximately 50% of the world\u2019s population and it is the cause of chronic gastritis, peptic ulcer disease and gastric cancer. The increase of antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest challenges of our century due to its constant increase. In order to identify an alternative or adjuvant strategy to the standard antibiotic therapy, the in vitro activity of newly synthesized Silver Ultra-NanoClusters (SUNCs), characterized by an average size inferior to 5 nm, against clinical strains of Helicobacter pylori, with different antibiotic susceptibilities, was evaluated in this study. MICs and MBCs were determined by the broth microdilution method, whereas the effect of drug combinations by the checkerboard assay. The Minimum Biofilm Eradication Concentration (MBEC) was measured using AlamarBlue (AB) assay and Colony Forming Unit (CFU) counts. The cytotoxicity was evaluated by performing the MTT assay on AGS cell line. The inhibitory activity was expressed in terms of bacteriostatic and bactericidal potential, with MIC50, MIC90, and MBC50 of 0.33 mg/L against planktonic Helicobacter pylori strains. Using the fractional inhibitory concentration index, SUNCs showed synergism with metronidazole in one clinical strain, and very close to synergistic effect on the reference strain; the combination with clarythromicin evidenced an effect very close to synergism on both strains considered. The biofilm eradication was obtained after treatment with 2X, 3X and 4X MIC value. Moreover, SUNCs showed low toxicity on human cells and was effective in eradicating a mature biofilm produced by H. pylori. The data presented in this study demonstrate that SUNCs could represent a novel strategy for the treatment of H. pylori infections either alone or in combination with metronidazole

Gemcitabine-releasing mesenchymal stromal cells inhibit in vitro proliferation of human pancreatic carcinoma cells

BACKGROUND AIMS: Pancreatic cancer (pCa) is a tumor characterized by a fibrotic state and associated with a poor prognosis. The observation that mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) migrate toward inflammatory micro-environments and engraft into tumor stroma after systemic administration suggested new therapeutic approaches with the use of engineered MSCs to deliver and produce anti-cancer molecules directly within the tumor. Previously, we demonstrated that without any genetic modifications, MSCs are able to deliver anti-cancer drugs. MSCs loaded with paclitaxel by exposure to high concentrations release the drug both in vitro and in vivo, inhibiting tumor proliferation. On the basis of these observations, we evaluated the ability of MSCs (from bone marrow and pancreas) to uptake and release gemcitabine (GCB), a drug widely used in pCa treatment. METHODS: MSCs were primed by 24-h exposure to 2000 ng/mL of GCB. The anti-tumor potential of primed MSCs was then investigated by in vitro anti-proliferation assays with the use of CFPAC-1, a pancreatic tumor cell line sensitive to GCB. The uptake/release ability was confirmed by means of high-performance liquid chromatography analysis. A cell-cycle study and secretome evaluation were also conducted to better understand the characteristics of primed MSCs. RESULTS: GCB-releasing MSCs inhibit the growth of a human pCa cell line in vitro. CONCLUSIONS: The use of MSCs as a "trojan horse" can open the way to a new pCa therapeutic approach; GCB-loaded MSCs that integrate into the tumor mass could deliver much higher concentrations of the drug in situ than can be achieved by intravenous injection

Anti-Ro and anti-La autoantibodies induce TNF-α production by human salivary gland cells: an in vitro study

Obiettivo: Lo scopo di questo studio e stato valutare la produzione di TNF-α, induttore della via estrinseca del processo apoptotico, in seguito al trattamento con gli autoanticorpi anti-Ro ed anti-La isolati da pazienti con sindrome di Sjogren primaria in un modello sperimentale rappresentato dalla linea cellulare di ghiandole salivari umane, A- 253. E stata, inoltre, valutata la presenza sulla superficie di tali cellule di recettori specifici per tale induttore, TNFR1 e TNFR2. Materiali e metodi: Gli autoanticorpi anti-La ed anti-Ro sono stati purificati su una colonna cromatografia ad alta affinita. Le metodiche utilizzate per la valutazione della produzione di TNF-α e lo studio dei recettori di superficie sono state immunofluorescenza, RT-PCR e saggi immunoenzimatici. Risultati: I nostri risultati hanno dimostrato che le cellule A-253 esprimono in superficie i recettori TNFR1 e TNFR2 e che gli autoanticorpi anti-Ro e anti-La sono in grado di indurre la produzione di TNF-α nelle stesse cellule. Conclusioni: Il trattamento con gli autoanticorpi anti-Ro ed anti-La induce la produzione di TNF-α in cellule di ghiandole salivari umane e questo potrebbe spiegare la attivazione della via estrinseca della apoptosi

Laser Pressure Catapulting (LPC): Optimization LPC-System and Genotyping of Colorectal Carcinomas

Genotype analysis is becoming more and more useful in clinical practice, since specific mutations in tumors often correlate with prognosis and/or therapeutic response. Unfortunately, current molecular analytical techniques often require time-consuming and costly steps of analysis, thus making their routine clinical use difficult. Moreover, one of the most difficult problems arising during tumor research is that of their cell heterogeneity, which depends on their clear molecular heterogeneity. SSCP analysis discriminates by means of aberrant electrophoresis migration bands, mutated alleles which may represent as little as 15-20% of their total number. Nevertheless, in order to identify by sequencing the type of alteration revealed by this technique, only the mutated allele must be isolated. The advent of laser microdissection is a procedure which easily solves these problems of accuracy, costs, and time. The aims of this study were to perfect the system of laser pressure catapulting (LPC) laser microdissection for the assessment of the mutational status of p53 and k-ras genes in a consecutive series of 67 patients with colorectal carcinomas (CRC), in order to compare this technique with that involving hand-dissection and to demonstrate that since the LPC system guarantees more accurate biomolecular analyses, it should become part of clinical routine in this field. The LPC-system was perfected with the use of mineral oil and the LPC-membrane. To compare the techniques of hand- and LPC-microdissection, alcohol-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue from 67 cases of CRC were both hand- and laser-microdissected. In either case, dissected samples were analyzed by SSCP/sequencing and direct sequencing for k-ras and p53 gene mutations. LPC-microdissection made it possible to pick up mutations by direct sequencing or SSCP/sequencing, whereas hand-microdissection mutations were identified only by means of SSCP followed by sequencing; direct sequencing did not reveal any mutation. In the 67 patients examined by either method, 36% (24/67) showed p53 mutations, 32 of which identified. Seventy-eight percent (25/32) were found in the conserved areas of the gene, while 12% (4/32) were in the L2 loop, 50% (16/32) were in the L3 loop, and 12% (4/32) in the LSH motif of the protein. Moreover, of the 67 cases examined, 40% (27/67) showed mutations in k-ras, with a total of 29 mutations identified. Of these, 14 (48%) were found in codon 12 and 15 (52%) in codon 13. The modifications which we brought to the LPC system led to a vast improvement of the technique, making it an ideal substitution for hand-microdissection and guaranteeing a considerable number of advantages regarding facility, accuracy, time, and cost. Furthermore, the data obtained from the mutational analyses performed confirm that the LPC system is more efficient and rapid than hand-microdissection for acquiring useful information regarding molecular profile and can therefore be used with success in clinical routine

26 Validation of A New Clinical Pain Scale for Full-Term Babies

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Formal Verification of Security Protocol Implementations: A Survey

Automated formal verification of security protocols has been mostly focused on analyzing high-level abstract models which, however, are significantly different from real protocol implementations written in programming languages. Recently, some researchers have started investigating techniques that bring automated formal proofs closer to real implementations. This paper surveys these attempts, focusing on approaches that target the application code that implements protocol logic, rather than the libraries that implement cryptography. According to these approaches, libraries are assumed to correctly implement some models. The aim is to derive formal proofs that, under this assumption, give assurance about the application code that implements the protocol logic. The two main approaches of model extraction and code generation are presented, along with the main techniques adopted for each approac

Uptake-release by MSCs of a cationic platinum(II) complex active in vitro on human malignant cancer cell lines

In this study, the in vitro stability of cisplatin (CisPt) and cationic platinum(II)-complex (caPt(II)-complex) and their in vitro activity (antiproliferative and anti-angiogenic properties) were investigated against three aggressive human tumor cell lines. caPt(II)-complex shown a high stability until 9 days of treatment and displayed a significant and higher activity than CisPt against both NCI-H28 mesothelioma (19.37 \ub1 9.57 \u3bcM versus 34.66 \ub1 7.65 \u3bcM for CisPt) and U87 MG glioblastoma (19.85 \ub1 0.97 \u3bcM versus 54.14 \ub1 3.19 for CisPt). Mesenchymal Stromal Cells (AT-MSCs) showed a significant different sensitivity (IC50=71.9 \ub1 15.1 \u3bcM for caPt(II)-complex and 8.7 \ub1 4.5 \u3bcM for CisPt) to the antiproliferative activity of caPt(II)-complex and CisPt. The ability of MSCs to uptake both the drugs in a similar amount of 2.49 pM /cell, suggested a possible development of new therapies based on cell mediated drug delivery