La renovación de la palabra en el bicentenario de la Argentina : los colores de la mirada lingüística

El libro reúne trabajos en los que se exponen resultados de investigaciones presentadas por investigadores de Argentina, Chile, Brasil, España, Italia y Alemania en el XII Congreso de la Sociedad Argentina de Lingüística (SAL), Bicentenario: la renovación de la palabra, realizado en Mendoza, Argentina, entre el 6 y el 9 de abril de 2010. Las temáticas abordadas en los 167 capítulos muestran las grandes líneas de investigación que se desarrollan fundamentalmente en nuestro país, pero también en los otros países mencionados arriba, y señalan además las áreas que recién se inician, con poca tradición en nuestro país y que deberían fomentarse. Los trabajos aquí publicados se enmarcan dentro de las siguientes disciplinas y/o campos de investigación: Fonología, Sintaxis, Semántica y Pragmática, Lingüística Cognitiva, Análisis del Discurso, Psicolingüística, Adquisición de la Lengua, Sociolingüística y Dialectología, Didáctica de la lengua, Lingüística Aplicada, Lingüística Computacional, Historia de la Lengua y la Lingüística, Lenguas Aborígenes, Filosofía del Lenguaje, Lexicología y Terminología

Thermodynamics and kinetics of protonated merocyanine photoacids in water

Metastable-state photoacids (mPAHs) are chemical species whose photo-activated state is long-lived enough to allow for proton diffusion. Liao's photoacid (1) represents the archetype of mPAHs, and is being widely used on account of its unique capability to change the acidity of aqueous solutions reversibly. The behavior of 1 in water, however, still remains poorly understood. Herein, we provide in-depth insights on the thermodynamics and kinetics of 1 in water through a series of comparative 1H NMR and UV-Vis studies and relative modelling. Under dark conditions, we quantified a three-component equilibrium system where the dissociation (Ka) of the open protonated form (MCH) is followed by isomerization (Kc) of the open deprotonated form (MC) to the closed spiropyran form (SP)-i.e., in the absence of light, the ground state acidity can be expressed as KGSa = Ka(1 + Kc). On the other hand, under powerful and continuous light irradiation we were able to assess, for the first time experimentally, the dissociation constant (KMSa) of the protonated metastable state (cis-MCH). In addition, we found that thermal ring-opening of SP is always rate-determining regardless of pH, whereas hydrolysis is reminiscent of what is found for Schiff bases. The proposed methodology is general, and it was applied to two other compounds bearing a shorter (ethyl, 2) and a longer (butyl, 3) alkyl-1-sulfonate bridge. We found that the pKa remains constant, whereas both pKc and pKMSa linearly increase with the length of the alkyl bridge. Importantly, all results are consistent with a four-component model cycle, which describes perfectly the full dynamics of proton release/uptake of 1-3 in water. The superior hydrolytic stability and water solubility of compound 3, together with its relatively high pKGSa (low Kc), allowed us to achieve fully reversible jumps of 2.5 pH units over 18 consecutive cycles (6 hours). This journal i

Joint Modeling of Efficacy, Dropout, and Tolerability in Flexible-Dose Trials: A Case Study in Depression

Many difficulties may arise during the modeling of the time course of Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAM D) scores in clinical trials for the evaluation of antidepressant drugs: (i) flexible designs, used to increase the chance of selecting more efficacious doses, (ii) dropout events, and (iii) adverse effects related to the experimental compound. It is crucial to take into account all these factors when designing an appropriate model of the HAM D time course and to obtain a realistic description of the dropout process. In this work, we propose an integrated approach to the modeling of a double-blind, flexible-dose, placebo-controlled, phase II depression trial that comprises response, tolerability, and dropout. We investigate three different dropout mechanisms in terms of informativeness. Goodness of fit is quantitatively assessed with respect to response (HAM D score) and dropout data. We show that dropout is a complex phenomenon that may be influenced by HAM D evolution, dose changes, and occurrence of drug-related adverse effects