Attitudes toward mental illness among college students in Nuevo Leon, México = Actitudes hacia las enfermedades mentales en estudiantes universitarios de Nuevo León, México

Stigma associated with mental illness has detrimental effects on the treatment and prevention of these diseases. The aim of this study was to analyze attitudes toward mental illness in a sample of university students in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. Results. Nine hundred and forty-three students were surveyed, 66.9% believe that genetic and familial factors are the cause of mental illness. Among 20-30% believe that people with mental illness are a nuisance for people; between 12-14% would be ashamed of having a family member with mental illness and people know it; and 61.8% would be able to maintain a friendship with a person who have mental illness. Conclusions. Over 50% of respondents have favorable attitudes towards patients with mental illness and less than 30% attitudes of social distancing

Estimating the intensity of price and non-price competition in banking

We model bank oligopoly behaviour using price and non-price competition as strategic variables in an expanded conjectural variations framework. Rivals can respond to changes in both loan and deposit market prices as well as (non-price) branch market shares. The model is illustrated using data for Spain which, over 1986-2002, eliminated interest rate and branching restrictions and set off a competitive race to lock-in expanded market shares. Banks use both interest rates and branches as strategic variables and both have changed over time. We illustrate the results using a regional vs. a national specification for the relevant markets.non-price competition, banking, market shares

Patogenia de la inflamación: discurso para los ejercicios del grado de Doctor de Santiago Ramón y Cajal

Tesis de doctorado leída en la Universidad Central el 26 de junio de 1877También disponible la reproducción digitalManuscrito firmadoTesis Doctorales históricasTesis Complutenses históricasmanuscritoFacultad de MedicinaFacultad de Medicinatruepu

Estimating the intensity of price and non-price competition in banking: an application to the Spanish case

We model bank oligopoly behaviour using price and non-price competition as strategic variables in an expanded conjectural variations framework. Rivals can respond to changes in both loan and deposit market prices as well as (non-price) branch market shares. The model is illustrated using data for Spain which, over 1986-2002, eliminated interest rate and branching restrictions and set off a competitive race to lock-in expanded market shares. Banks use both interest rates and branches as strategic variables and both have changed over time. We illustrate the results using a regional vs. a national specification for the relevant markets. (97 words)non-price competition, banking, market shares

Unbiased Shape Compactness for Segmentation

We propose to constrain segmentation functionals with a dimensionless, unbiased and position-independent shape compactness prior, which we solve efficiently with an alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). Involving a squared sum of pairwise potentials, our prior results in a challenging high-order optimization problem, which involves dense (fully connected) graphs. We split the problem into a sequence of easier sub-problems, each performed efficiently at each iteration: (i) a sparse-matrix inversion based on Woodbury identity, (ii) a closed-form solution of a cubic equation and (iii) a graph-cut update of a sub-modular pairwise sub-problem with a sparse graph. We deploy our prior in an energy minimization, in conjunction with a supervised classifier term based on CNNs and standard regularization constraints. We demonstrate the usefulness of our energy in several medical applications. In particular, we report comprehensive evaluations of our fully automated algorithm over 40 subjects, showing a competitive performance for the challenging task of abdominal aorta segmentation in MRI.Comment: Accepted at MICCAI 201

Serine 26 in early growth response-1 is critical for endothelial proliferation, migration, and network formation

BACKGROUND: Vascular endothelial cell proliferation, migration, and network formation are key proangiogenic processes involving the prototypic immediate early gene product, Egr-1 (early growth response-1). Egr-1 undergoes phosphorylation at a conserved Ser26 but its function is completely unknown in endothelial cells or any other cell type. METHODS AND RESULTS: A CRISPR/Cas9 strategy was used to introduce a homozygous Ser26>Ala mutation into endogenous Egr-1 in human microvascular endothelial cells. In the course of generating mutant cells, we produced cells with homozygous deletion in Egr-1 caused by frameshift and premature termination. We found that Ser26 mutation in Egr-1, or Egr-1 deletion, perturbed endothelial cell proliferation in models of cell counting or real-time growth using the xCELLigence System. We found that Ser26 mutation or Egr-1 deletion ameliorated endothelial cell migration toward VEGF-A165 (vascular endothelial growth factor-A) in a dual-chamber model. On solubilized basement membrane preparations, Ser26 mutation or Egr-1 deletion pre-vented endothelial network (or tubule) formation, an in vitro model of angiogenesis. Flow cytometry further revealed that Ser26 mutation or Egr-1 deletion elevated early and late apoptosis. Finally, we demonstrated that Ser26 mutation or Egr-1 deletion increased VE-cadherin (vascular endothelial cadherin) expression, a regulator of endothelial adhesion and signaling, perme-ability, and angiogenesis. CONCLUSIONS: These findings not only indicate that Egr-1 is essential for endothelial cell proliferation, migration, and network formation, but also show that point mutation in Ser26 is sufficient to impair each of these processes and trigger apoptosis as effectively as the absence of Egr-1. This highlights the importance of Ser26 in Egr-1 for a range of proangiogenic processes