Finding Funding and Understanding Logistics for Community-engaged Practice: Strategies for Overcoming Institutional Barriers

Institutional barriers can hinder the effective development of projects and practices that foster community partnerships and promote the co-development of impactful research and experiences. Barriers such as funding, institutional approvals, and community access to institutional resources, can derail the best of intentions and projects. This interactive session will provide attendees with strategies to deal with common barriers to effective practices and will provide tools for finding funding, resource development, and troubleshooting context specific problems

Bacteriophage: Bioengineered Bacterial Detection and Applications

Bacteria are ubiquitous and vital constituents of our environment, our foods, and our bodies. A small percentage of this vast, microbial population is pathogenic to humans, but represents a significant burden on public health. There is a current public health focus on two subgroups: foodborne pathogenic bacteria and antibiotic resistance bacteria. A key challenge for public health is the rapid identification of these bacteria to prevent their consumption and to ensure proper treatment for infections. This challenge calls for the development of novel, low-cost diagnostics that combine sensitivity and accuracy with speed and ease-of-use. Bacteriophages represent rapid, readily targeted, and easily produced probes for the detection of bacterial pathogens. Furthermore, modern molecular tools have allowed researchers to make significant advances in the bioengineering of bacteriophage to further improve speed and sensitivity of detection. Our work here demonstrates the successful bioengineering of bacteriophage to create platforms that: (i) enable multiplex detection of bacterial pathogens; (ii) allow for the rapid detection of antibiotic resistant bacteria; (iii) and can be used synergistically with other diagnostic platforms, like paper-fluidics, plate readers, and MALDI-TOF. In particular we demonstrate: (i) the modification of T7 bacteriophage to carry TEV protease enabling proof-of-principle detection of E. coli in 3 hours after a primary enrichment via TEV protease activity using a fluorescent peptide and using a designed target peptide for MALDI-TOF MS analysis; (ii) the development and use of a phage amplification-based lateral flow assay for the detection of low levels of E. coli in less than 7 hours in both broth and water; and (iii) the modification of T7 phage to carry phoA; enabling the rapid detect of low levels of bacteria and their antibiotic susceptibility in under 6 hours. These phage-based platforms could be readily adopted in many labs without significant capital investments and can be translated to other phage-bacteria pairs for further detection. Further research into the bioengineering of phage-based reporters and demonstrating their incorporation into common and novel diagnostics platforms, will highlight their potential and ideally result in the creation of diagnostics that impact public health

ALFONSO EL SABIO: Prosa histórica.

Sin resume

Investigar en el medio rural : ¿una misión imposible?

La factibilidad de la investigación ha sido un tema recurrente en nuestro país. Aunque la creación de la rediapp ha facilitado la participación de los profesionales en proyectos multicéntricos de investigación, investigar sobre el medio rural sigue siendo bastante difícil. En un medio rural tradicionalmente disperso, con grados variables de aislamiento, y cada vez más heterogéneo y cambiante se dan condicionantes específicos para la práctica de la medicina que requieren de preguntas y soluciones específicas. Sin embargo, sigue siendo muy difícil investigar en nuestro contexto; problemas de formación, asesoría metodológica, financiación, alicientes y del propio entorno del profesional son difíciles de superar. La investigación rural en otros países se ha desarrollado, bien integrándose dentro de los propios sistemas sanitarios, o bien a iniciativa de los propios investigadores aunque con la colaboración las universidades. En este artículo, se desarrollan una serie de puntos clave, desde la perspectiva del autor para el desarrollo de grupos rurales de investigación. Conclusión: El desarrollo de la investigación rural, en estos momentos, depende de la conjunción de una serie de circunstancias cuya ocurrencia espontánea es poco probable. La planificación de una estrategia coordinada de investigadores y gestores, la búsqueda de alianzas con la universidad e investigadores consolidados, y el desarrollo de estructuras de soporte podría cambiar de forma sostenida la dinámica actual

El sistema pronominal átono en la variedad de español en contacto con maya yucateco

En esta investigación analizamos el sistema pronominal átono (tercera persona) de hablantes de español en contacto con maya yucateco a partir de un corpus compuesto por entrevistas y una tarea lingüística realizadas a 27 participantes, clasificados por su grado de mono/bilingüismo y nivel de instrucción. Mediante un análisis multivariado, se determinaron relaciones de dependencia entre las variables, con cruces entre variables internas y externas. Mostramos que este sistema evidencia una tendencia similar a la que constatamos en otras variedades de español en situación de contacto lingüístico intenso: las formas pronominales átonas de acusativo tienden a no especificar los rasgos de género y número. Argumentamos que al proceso de gramaticalización de las formas pronominales como concordancias de objeto que se desarrolla desde el español antiguo, se unen las características de la lengua de contacto, el maya, que actúa como un acelerador del cambio y que posibilita la reorganización y recategorización del sistema pronominal átono de tercera persona, prácticamente completada en el grupo de los bilingües consecutivos de español como L2. Y a partir de este grupo el cambio se va expandiendo al resto de los grupos, precisamente en las entidades más prototípicas de objeto (definidas, inanimadas y continuas) en contextos de alta accesibilidad, donde el referente está más activo en la mente del hablante y del oyenteIn this paper we examine the atonic pronominal system (third person) of Spanish speakers in contact with Yucatec Maya. The corpus included interviews and a language task from 27 participants, who were classified according to their degree of mono/bilinguism and their education level. By means of a multivariate analysis, dependence relations between the variables, with crossings between internal and external ones, were determined. We demonstrate that this system evidences a tendency similar to the one found in other varieties of Spanish in intense language contact: the atonic pronominal forms of accusative tend not to specify the features of gender and number. We argue that along with the process of grammaticalization of the pronominal forms as object agreement, the Maya language acts as an accelerator of the change and enables the reorganization and recategorization of the atonic pronominal system of third person. This change has been completed in the consecutive bilinguals of Spanish as L2; and from this group, the change is spreading to the others displayed precisely in the most prototypical object entities (defined, inanimate and continuous), and in highly accessible contexts, where the referent is more active in the speaker and the interlocutor’s min

Structural Silicone Glazing - Design & Modelling

The use of Structural silicone glazing (SSG) systems in large commercial glazed facades is well established in current practice, mainly due to the architectural aspiration of having a continuous smooth glass surface across the building elevation. Enhanced thermal and security (blast) performance are typically listed as an advantage for this particular type of systems. SSG façade systems are structurally complex due to the fact that multiple load-paths can be identified within the system. It is accepted as good practice to detail façade panels so that the dead load of the glass is not carried through the structural silicone. But can this be achieved in reality? The aim of this paper is to identify and discuss challenges with the assumption that the SSG is isolated from the glass self weight and provide a better understanding on the complexity of SSG systems. The influence of stress/strain and creep due to the long-term load on the system capacity will be investigated. Some degree of long term loads are usually present due to detailing and real system behaviour. Real project examples will be used to identify opportunities for improvement and findings will be summarised at the end of the paper

Percepción del ciberacoso en la comunidad educativa: comparativa entre el alumnado, los docentes y las familias

This study aims to find out how the groups that form the education community (students, teachers, families) differ in terms of the various characteristics surrounding the cyberbullying phenomenon. To do this, we conducted research using a selective correlational and cross-sectional design to analyze relationships and differences among variables: defining cyberbullying, typology, involved roles, possible causes and coping strategies in the different groups. The study recruited 116 participants as follows: 51% were year-6 Primary Education students; 29% were students’ family members; 20% were school teachers. We collected data through an ad hoc questionnaire that a group of experts had previously validated. The results of the data analysis showed that significant differences appeared in terms of: how typologies were perceived; the importance of roles; coping strategies for cyberbullying.El objetivo de este trabajo es conocer en qué difieren los distintos grupos que conforman la comunidad educativa (alumnado, profesorado y familias) respecto a diversas características que envuelven al fenómeno ciberacoso. Para ello, se realiza este estudio de diseño selectivo transversal correlacional que pretende analizar las relaciones y diferencias entre las variables: definición de ciberacoso, tipología, roles implicados, posibles causas y estrategias de afrontamiento en los distintos grupos. Se contó con un total de 116 participantes, de los cuales un 51% era alumnado de 6º de primaria, un 29% familiares del alumnado y un 20% docentes de un centro educativo. Los datos fueron recogidos través de un mismo cuestionario ad hoc previamente validado por un conjunto de jueces expertos. Tras el análisis de los datos, los resultados muestran la existencia de diferencias significativas en la manera de percibir las tipologías, la importancia de los roles y las estrategias de afrontamiento del ciberacoso

Characterization of Atrial Propagation Patterns and Fibrotic Substrate With a Modified Omnipolar Electrogram Strategy in Multi-Electrode Arrays

[EN] Introduction: The omnipolar electrogram method was recently proposed to try to generate orientation-independent electrograms. It estimates the electric field from the bipolar electrograms of a clique, under the assumption of locally plane and homogeneous propagation. The local electric field evolution over time describes a loop trajectory from which omnipolar signals in the propagation direction, substrate and propagation features, are derived. In this work, we propose substrate and conduction velocity mapping modalities based on a modified version of the omnipolar electrogram method, which aims to reduce orientation-dependent residual components in the standard approach. Methods: A simulated electrical propagation in 2D, with a tissue including a circular patch of diffuse fibrosis, was used for validation. Unipolar electrograms were calculated in a multi-electrode array, also deriving bipolar electrograms along the two main directions of the grid. Simulated bipolar electrograms were also contaminated with real noise, to assess the robustness of the mapping strategies against noise. The performance of the maps in identifying fibrosis and in reproducing unipolar reference voltage maps was evaluated. Bipolar voltage maps were also considered for performance comparison. Results: Results show that the modified omnipolar mapping strategies are more accurate and robust against noise than bipolar and standard omnipolar maps in fibrosis detection (accuracies higher than 85 vs. 80% and 70%, respectively). They present better correlation with unipolar reference voltage maps than bipolar and original omnipolar maps (Pearson's correlations higher than 0.75 vs. 0.60 and 0.70, respectively). Conclusion: The modified omnipolar method improves fibrosis detection, characterization of substrate and propagation, also reducing the residual sensitivity to directionality over the standard approach and improving robustness against noise. Nevertheless, studies with real electrograms will elucidate its impact in catheter ablation interventions.This study has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 766082 (MY-ATRIA project), from projects PID2019-104881RB-I00, and PID2019-105674RB-I00 from MICINN, Spain, from Gobierno de Aragon (BSICoS Group T39-20R) cofunded by FEDER 20142020 Building Europe from Aragon and from Generalitat Valenciana through the fellowship ACIF/2018/174 and the grant PROMETEO/2020/043.Riccio, J.; Alcaine, A.; Rocher-Ventura, S.; Martínez-Mateu, L.; Laranjo, S.; Saiz Rodríguez, FJ.; Laguna, P.... (2021). Characterization of Atrial Propagation Patterns and Fibrotic Substrate With a Modified Omnipolar Electrogram Strategy in Multi-Electrode Arrays. Frontiers in Physiology. 12:1-21. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2021.674223S1211