Breast Cancer Progression and Phytoestrogen Interactions with Estrogen Receptors

Breast cancer is one of the most common diseases affecting women and approximately 1.3 million females are diagnosed each year with this disease worldwide. Breast cancer is a multi-factorial disease and it is difficult to predict or control the physiopathology, to date one of the major risk factors alongside the patient’s genetic background is life time exposure to estrogen. Understanding the estrogen receptor (ER) has been a milestone in elucidating breast cancer biology, leading to advances in disease management. Alongside this, evidence from epidemiological studies suggests that dietary consumption of phytoestrogens may modulate disease progression. This study hypothesises that the interaction between some phytoestrogens (present in the pre-diagnosis diet or in the new diet adopted by breast cancer patients) and specific ER isoforms displayed in breast tumours influences the action of synthetic and endogenous estrogen in breast cancer cells. This study aimed to understand the interaction between estrogen, hormone drugs and phytoestrogens on the ER. In silico modelling of the ER focused on the wild type isoforms ERα and ERβ and different ligands (SWISS MODEL and docked through AutoDock Vina). Subsequently, isoforms of ERα and ERβ and different ligands (E1, E2, E3, PE, Tamoxifen, ICI 182,780) were modelled and tested by docking against the same set of ligands (E1, E2, E3, PE, Tamoxifen, ICI 182,780). The system described here highlighted the main amino acid residues of the LBD of ERα and ERβ along with ligand interactions for both agonists and antagonists, described in previous X-ray crystallography experiments. All of the phytoestrogens studied using AutoDock Vina interacted with the hormone binding site of both ERα and ERβ, due the phenolic ring of the studied structure which favoured the interaction with the hydrophobic environment of LBD amino acids. All of the dietary phytoestrogens showed lower binding affinity (<9.1 Kcal/mol) compared with estradiol (-10.6 Kcal/mol) in all the isoforms and isotypes studied, suggesting that phytoestrogens should not displace estradiol from the LBD, however it remains unclear if PE can act as an agonist compound in the ER pathways. Also, some phytoestrogens appeared to have greater affinity to the ERα and ERβ than Tamoxifen (antagonist models), but it is uncertain as to whether the resulting structure will interfere with subsequent interactions. Further laboratory experiments will be necessary to understand the impact of the PE in the ERs structure and the respective role in the ER pathway. The data from this computer modelling approach has provided an insight into the interactions between endogenous estrogens, drugs, phytoestrogens and ER. The in silico studies generated a system that recapitulated data obtained by other research groups (experimentally) and will be of value as a screening tool for further studies of new drugs and exogenous estrogens and their potential role in ER-induced breast cancer pathophysiology

Modelación hidrológica de una cuenca en los Andes del sur del Ecuador utilizando datos estimados por sensores remotos

El objetivo de esta investigación fue modelar los escurrimientos diarios en una cuenca hidrográfica utilizando datos de sensores remotos (SR) en el modelo CEQUEAU a 0.05°/~5 km, 0.125°/~13.5 km y 0.25°/~27.5 km de resolución espacial. El área de estudio comprende la cuenca del río Catamayo, ubicada en el sur del Ecuador (4.094°S / 79.569°W). La parte alta de la cuenca se caracteriza por recibir aportes frecuentes de lluvia, influenciada por los vientos alisios, humedad de la cuenca amazónica y orografía irregular de la cordillera de los Andes. Mientras que en la parte baja, las lluvias son estacionales entre diciembre y mayo, y es afectada por eventos climáticos como El Niño y La Niña. Los datos de lluvia se obtuvieron de los productos de precipitación estimados por satélite (PPES): CMORPH, PERSIANN-CDR y TRMM-3B42 por un lado, y radar meteorológico (LAWR) y pluviómetros por otro lado. La variable temperatura fue tomada del proyecto ERA-Interim y temperatura observada de estaciones meteorológicas. El producto ERA-Interim se utilizó con los PPES y la temperatura observada con los pluviómetros y la combinación [LAWR + pluviómetros]. Los SR se validaron con los datos observados, y posteriormente se realizaron correcciones de sesgo (BIAS). El modelo CEQUEAU se implementó en tres estaciones hidrométricas del río Catamayo, la calibración se realizó primero por prueba y error, y luego por optimización. Las funciones objetivo: NSE, PBIAS y r2 se utilizaron como criterios de evaluación de los modelos. Los resultados de las modelaciones en los periodos de calibración y validación fueron satisfactorios en dos de las tres subcuencas del río Catamayo, usando PPES/ERA-Interim, [LAWR + pluviómetros] y pluviómetros. En conclusión, CMORPH, PERSIANN-CDR y TRMM-3B42 se pueden implementar en modelos hidrológicos sobre cuencas andinas con similares condiciones climáticas de la cuenca Catamayo. Además, estos productos pueden ser útiles en lugares con baja densidad de estaciones meteorológicas y de ayuda en los sistemas de alerta temprana cuando los tiempos de concentración de las cuencas son alrededor de un día.Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México (UAEM) Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT

The Relationship Between Parental Leave Policies and Infant Mortality: Global Policies, Local Practices

Study objective: Increased maternity leave has been shown to have a positive impact on maternal and child health, and increases the length of time that mothers breastfeed their infants. After childbirth, working women must decide if/when they will return to the workforce. These decisions are based on many factors. The purpose of this project is to determine the impact of current United States’ (US) family leave policies on Mississippi mothers’ decisions to return to work after the birth of their first child. Study Design and Methods: A comprehensive survey was developed to collect information about mothers’ decisions to return to work after the birth of their first child. The survey consisted of 100 questions, collected eligibility information, demographics, education and income level, length of maternity leave taken, breastfeeding practices, and household composition from participants. Additionally, the attitudes toward US family leave polices and their impacts were assessed. The survey was distributed online via Qualtrics (Qualtrics, Provo, UT). Participants were recruited via an informational card containing a link to the survey that was distributed at local major retailers, child-care facilities, and Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) Distribution Centers. Results of the study: Mississippi mothers were negatively impacted financially by their first pregnancies. The majority of women’s maternity leave was limited by the amount of paid time off they had accrued on their jobs. Most would have taken longer maternity leave if they had been financially able to do so. Results may be used to promote maternity leave awareness and educate policy makers about the need for paid maternity leave in the United States

Religion, Spirituality, and the Workplace: A Meta-analytic Study on Outcomes of Job Satisfaction, Job Performance, and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors

Research indicates behavioral and attitudinal manifestations of religion and spirituality exert cross-domain impact across cognitive, intrapersonal, biological, industrial-organizational, and behavioral domains (Calman, 2008; Ngunjiri & Miller, 2004). The present study conducted a meta-analysis of both religious and spirituality (RS) as predictors on outcomes of job satisfaction, job performance, and organizational citizenship behavior. The present study seeks to delineate and distinguish religious faiths from spirituality by comparing the pooled effect size of religion studies with spirituality studies. A random effects model was analyzed for two subgroups on each dependent variable. Next, a subgroup fixed effects (plural) model was utilized to detect differences between subgroups. For outcomes of job satisfaction, job performance, and OCBs, no statistically significant differences between subgroups was found, p \u3e .05. The findings of this study show that religion and spirituality are equally competent predictors of these workplace outcomes. Implications and limitations are discussed

Capacity Building and Empowerment: A panacea and a challenge for agency-university engagement

Capacity building is an effective strategy for promoting organizational change and/or improving the quality of social services. In this article I present an empowerment approach to capacity building. In doing so I propose a number of principles that can promote capacity building and collaboration between social service agencies and universities from an empowerment perspective: keeping the control of the capacity building process in the agency; developing competencies that matter to the people in the agency; engaging in supportive roles; maintaining a strengths-based approach to capacity building; focusing on sustainability, institutionalization and utilization of acquired skills; and paying attention to cultural and contextual issues. Further, the challenges and benefits of the empowerment approach to university-agency collaboration are discussed in this article

Treatment of masochistic dynamics in the character disorders : the victim-aggressor introject.

This work is a theoretical exploration of the functions and meanings of masochism across individuals with varying character pathology. Aspects of moral masochism are viewed from a psychoanalytic, object relations perspective. An historical overview of psychoanalytic writings on moral masochism is provided and advances in object relations theory are outlined, with emphasis on how the nature of one\u27s early experiences can evolve into an internal sense of self in relation to others. From this perspective, the inner world of the moral masochist may be seen as featuring an ongoing tension between self/other as victim or aggressor. A theoretical construct of the victim-aggressor introject is introduced as a means of conceptualizing masochistic dynamics as they unfold in the treatment setting. As in-depth qualitative analysis of masochistic dynamics was obtained through a study of verbatim transcripts of the long-term psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapies of three patients with moral masochistic features. The cases are presented and discussed in terms of the functions and meaning of their masochistic features, particularly in the context of their specific character pathology (i.e.: borderline, narcissistic). Special emphasis is placed on how the victim-aggressor introject was externalized and manifested in the patient-therapist relationship. A central conclusion of this investigation is that masochism is a complex and multi-determined phenomenon, serving a variety of functions within and across individuals, and conforming to the unique structural organization and developmental level of the individual. Although the cases differ in terms of character pathology, certain commonalities are noted: (1) early object relationships were characterized by closeness in association with suffering; (2) there was significant emotional deprivation in childhood, such that the need for closeness was intense enough to warrant an acceptance of suffering along with it; (3) rageful and self-destructive affects co-existed and were split into polar dyads, with one affect being projected while the other was experienced internally

Principales restricciones asociadas a la performance del mercado avícola en Colombia : pertubaciones en la transacción : sector primario - alimentos balanceados

Durante la última década el sector avícola colombiano ha evolucionado de manera favorable, sin embargo, aún no alcanza los niveles de competitividad suficientes como para llegar a rivalizar con los grandes oferentes internacionales como Estados Unidos, China y Brasil que concentran el 50 por ciento de la producción mundial; esto, debido principalmente a problemas internos de competitividad, entre ellos, la alta dependencia que tiene la industria de los alimentos balanceados sobre la materia prima importada (Maíz y Soya), que sumado a la continua volatilidad del mercado granario y las continuas fluctuaciones del tipo de cambio influyen directamente sobre el precio de los bienes finales de la cadena. Esta fuerte dependencia del componente importado, se genera por la debilidad actual que presenta el sector productivo de soya y maíz, resultado de los bajos niveles de tecnificación en cultivos y tecnología, contrastando con la industria de alimentos balanceados, quien cuenta con una alta inversión en activos específicos de tipo físico como las tecnologías de punta aplicadas a sus procesos y de tipo temporal por los altos rendimientos en su producción, aspecto que limita a la producción nacional, obligando a los productores de alimentos balanceados a importar de Argentina y Estados Unidos la mayoría de sus materias primas para satisfacer su demanda de materia prima, en este sentido, también se ha observado que ante la crisis mundial de alimentos estos países han modificado los precios del mercado y por ende se han visto diezmados los márgenes de utilidad de los productores avícolas colombianos. Aunado a lo anterior, se observan problemas de competitividad en la cadena avícola, representados en la ausencia de coordinación vertical entre todos sus eslabones, puesto que cada eslabón trabaja de manera independiente buscando fortalecerse a sí mismo, aumentando el oportunismo, el poder de mercado y por ende diezmando las capacidades del eslabón anterior. De otro lado; se observa una deficiencia en la formación de capital social y un mercado de tipo oligopólico, que retrasan el desarrollo del sector. A través del desarrollo de este trabajo se pretende describir el funcionamiento del eslabón primario y el eslabón producción alimentos balanceados, como principales generadores de conflicto en la cadena avícola colombiana, para hacerlo se describirá a la cadena, y se realiza un análisis estructural discreto, sumado a un análisis de las transacciones encontradas en cada uno de los eslabone

Kaqchikel and Spanish Language Contact: The Case of Bilingual Mayan Children

The University of Kansas has long historical connections with Central America and the many Central Americans who have earned graduate degrees at KU. This work is part of the Central American Theses and Dissertations collection in KU ScholarWorks and is being made freely available with permission of the author through the efforts of Professor Emeritus Charles Stansifer of the History department and the staff of the Scholarly Communications program at the University of Kansas Libraries’ Center for Digital Scholarship.This study examined the lexical and morphosyntactic knowledge of Kaqchikel Maya children in the Kaqchikel and Spanish languages. Eight bilingual children, who acquired Kaqchikel at home and Spanish at school participated in this study, whose main methodology was the elicited production method. The collection and recording of the data were conducted during three visits to Tecpan, Guatemala. My inquiry into the lexical knowledge of these children showed that their lexicons were not twice as large as that of a monolingual. Generally, they knew more Spanish lexical items than Kaqchikel ones. All the children borrowed from Spanish to various degrees from core and noncore semantic domains. The children's bilingual lexicons were organizationally complex and fluid, e.g., lexical items in lexical pairs were polysemous. Other major findings are that LI lexical items were subordinated to L2 lexical items and that Spanish loanwords in the bilingual lexicon undergo cycles of phonological and lexical change. Regarding verb morphology, it was found that the children were more productive at inflecting ergative case than absolutive case. Moreover, they were more productive at inflecting ergative singular prefixes than their plural counterparts. The children were found to be at different interlanguage levels in Spanish, but generally they had better knowledge of accusative cliticization than reflexive or dative cliticization. An important finding is that the children's scores for both reflexive and dative clitics increased with the number of years in school. The data demonstrated that the children acquired the properties of L2 verbs in stages and that they transferred the morphosyntactic properties of specific Kaqchikel transitive verbs onto their Spanish equivalents. It was found that the younger the child was when she or he started school, the weaker this child was in Kaqchikel, while the older the child was, the stronger knowledge she or he had in Kaqchikel. Spanish and Kaqchikel dominant levels of bilingual competence were documented. The children with two years of school were Kaqchikel dominant, those between 3 and 5 years were Spanish dominant, while the one child with six years had reached a state of equilibrium in her levels of competence in both languages