Cultural hegemony today. From cultural studies to critical pedagogy

The concept of cultural hegemony is much broader than that of ideology, because it refers to the construction process of the collective experience, of the modelling of meanings, from the development of values, the creation of world conceptions and of the moral, cultural and intellectual direction of society through education. In this paper, the evolution of this concept is analysed from its origins to its configuration as a method of study in Cultural Studies by Antonio Gramsci and later, to its articulation through a system of representations, a discourse framed by political forces via an entire system of thought in Critical Pedagogy. According to Lorenzo Milani, this ´Pedagogy against Empire´ searches for an approach to learning for social justice, emphasises the collective dimension of learning and action, and reflects the struggle for school and social reform. This education will combine instruction or a purely technical approach with a humanistic education, brooking no differentiation or social division between manual and intellectual work where the union between theory and action is perceived as key to understanding reality and, at the same time, to transform it.peer-reviewe

Analysis of structural stability of human prosecretory mitogenic lacritin by circular dichroism

Purpose: Lacritin is a human tear glycoprotein that has high thermal stability. When cleaved, lacritin has antimicrobial activity resulting from the C-terminus amphipathic alpha helical region. The alpha helices contain three salt bridges; ionic bonds between neighboring oppositely charged amino acids. The purpose of this research was to investigate the hypothesis that the salt bridges within the alpha helices contribute to the high thermal stability. Methods: To determine the role of salt bridges in the thermal stability of lacritin, point mutants were prepared for each salt bridge by site directed mutagenesis that replaced the oppositely charged amino acids with serine. The point mutants were expressed in E. coli and purified. Western blot analysis confirmed the identity of lacritin proteins. Circular dichroism (CD) was used to study conformational changes in the secondary structure of these mutants compared to unaltered lacritin along with two controls, bovine serum albumin (BSA) and lysozyme. Data collected was analyzed with the alpha helix formula to determine the percent alpha helix structure at ten degree increments from 25-85⁰C, using poly-l-lysine as the standard. Results: The mutated proteins reacted with lacritin specific antibodies in Western blot analysis. Under thermal denaturation conditions, the control proteins both had a significant decrease in alpha helical structure while alpha helical structure of normal lacritin increased slightly. At 25⁰C, the mutants had 12-25% less alpha helix than unaltered lacritin. Increasing the temperature did not have a significant impact on alpha helix structure. Conclusions: The salt bridges play a role in formation of the alpha helices but not in overall thermal stability of lacritin

El gasto en salud de los hogares colombianos: un análisis descriptivo

From the Choice Theory we considered the way in which certain population characteristics affect the households health expenditure in Colombia. The approach of this paper is based on Deaton’s work (1980), where the choice set of the individuals is the intercession of the budgetary set and the consumption set. The analysis of the paths of the health expenditure for the Colombian households has a variance analysis approach taking data from the “Encuesta de Calidad de Vida de 1997 (ECV97)”. We fund that the households spend the 9,62% of their current income in health. The most important variables that explain the paths of the health expenditure are the geographic location; the social-economic level of the households; the affiliation’ type to the health system; the occupation and the educative level of the household head; and the epidemiologists characteristic of the households. ********************************************************************* A partir de la teoría de la elección se plantea la forma como ciertas características poblacionales afectan el gasto en salud de los hogares colombianos. El enfoque está basado en el trabajo de Deaton (1980), donde el conjunto de elección de los individuos es la intercesión del conjunto presupuestal y el conjunto de consumo. El análisis de los senderos de gasto en salud para los hogares colombianos utiliza un enfoque de análisis de varianza tomando datos de la Encuesta de Calidad de Vida de 1997 -ECV97. En general se encuentra que los hogares gastan el 9.62% de sus ingresos corrientes en salud, y que las variables más importantes para explicar el sendero de gasto son la ubicación geográfica; el estrato del hogar; el tipo de afiliación al sistema de salud, el tipo de ocupación y el nivel educativo del jefe del hogar; y las características epidemiológicas del hogar.análisis de varianza, gasto en salud, teoría de la elección

Modelos epidemiológicos clásicos y sobre redes

En este trabajo se analiza el entorno y la dinámica de los estados para una enfermedad dentro de una población constante y cerrada, representado por un sistema de ecuaciones diferenciales ordinarias, en que el individuo, además de tener la misma oportunidad de entrar en contacto con cualquier otro, se pueda o no recuperar, adquiriendo o no inmunidad a través del tiempo. Con estos lineamientos definidos, se compara las condiciones cuando la enfermedad se propaga a lo largo del tiempo entre dichos modelos con los representados por una red. Como la red puede ser representado por una matriz de adyacencia, la dinámica en los estados epidemiológicos depende, además de las condiciones en sus parámetros de los modelos clásicos, del valor propio más grande de dicha matriz

Modelos epidemiológicos clásicos y sobre redes

En este trabajo se analiza el entorno y la dinámica de los estados para una enfermedad dentro de una población constante y cerrada, representado por un sistema de ecuaciones diferenciales ordinarias, en que el individuo, además de tener la misma oportunidad de entrar en contacto con cualquier otro, se pueda o no recuperar, adquiriendo o no inmunidad a través del tiempo. Con estos lineamientos definidos, se compara las condiciones cuando la enfermedad se propaga a lo largo del tiempo entre dichos modelos con los representados por una red. Como la red puede ser representado por una matriz de adyacencia, la dinámica en los estados epidemiológicos depende, además de las condiciones en sus parámetros de los modelos clásicos, del valor propio más grande de dicha matriz

A brief-review of the risk factors for covid-19 severity

The World Health Organization has emphasized that one of the most important questions to address regarding the covid-19 pandemic is to understand risk factors for disease severity. We conducted a brief review that synthesizes the available evidence and provides a judgment on the consistency of the association between risk factors and a composite end-point of severe-fatal covid-19. Additionally, we also conducted a comparability analysis of risk factors across 17 studies. We found evidence supporting a total of 60 predictors for disease severity, of which seven were deemed of high consistency, 40 of medium and 13 of low. Among the factors with high consistency of association, we found age, C-reactive protein, D-dimer, albumin, body temperature, SOFA score and diabetes. The results suggest that diabetes might be the most consistent comorbidity predicting disease severity and that future research should carefully consider the comparability of reporting cases, factors, and outcomes along the different stages of the natural history of covid-19

Matching in vitro bioaccessibility of polyphenols and antioxidant capacity of soluble coffee by Boosted Regression Trees

The aim of this study was to evaluate changes in polyphenol profile and antioxidant capacity of five soluble coffees throughout a simulated gastro-intestinal digestion, including absorption through a dialysis membrane. Our results demonstrate that both polyphenol content and antioxidant capacity were characteristic for each type of studied coffee, showing a drop after dialysis. Twenty-seven compounds were identified in coffee by HPLC-MS, while only 14 of them were found after dialysis. Green+roasted coffee blend and chicory+coffee blend showed the highest and lowest content of polyphenols and antioxidant capacity before in vitro digestion and after dialysis, respectively. Canonical correlation analysis showed significant correlation between the antioxidant capacity and the polyphenol profile before digestion and after dialysis. Furthermore, boosted regression trees analysis (BRT) showed that only four polyphenol compounds (5-p-coumaroylquinic acid, quinic acid, coumaroyl tryptophan conjugated, and 5-O-caffeoylquinic acid) appear to be the most relevant to explain the antioxidant capacity after dialysis, these compounds being the most bioaccessible after dialysis. To our knowledge, this is the first report matching the antioxidant capacity of foods with the polyphenol profile by BRT, which opens an interesting method of analysis for future reports on the antioxidant capacity of foods.Fil: Podio, Natalia Soledad. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnología de Alimentos Córdoba. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Químicas. Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnología de Alimentos Córdoba; ArgentinaFil: López Froilán, Rebeca. Universidad Complutense de Madrid; EspañaFil: Ramirez Moreno, Esther. Universidad Autónoma de Estado de Hidalgo; México. Universidad Complutense de Madrid; EspañaFil: Bertrand, Lidwina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Córdoba. Centro de Investigaciones en Bioquímica Clínica e Inmunología; ArgentinaFil: Baroni, María Verónica. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnología de Alimentos Córdoba. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Químicas. Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnología de Alimentos Córdoba; ArgentinaFil: Pérez Rodríguez, María L.. Universidad Complutense de Madrid; EspañaFil: Sánchez Mata, María Cortes. Universidad Complutense de Madrid; EspañaFil: Wunderlin, Daniel A.. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnología de Alimentos Córdoba. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Químicas. Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnología de Alimentos Córdoba; Argentin