Risk Factors of Cardiovascular Disease as Predictors of Cardiomotor Profiles in Hispanic-Latinos Living with HIV

Background: People living with HIV are at increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease negatively impact cardiovascular and muscular function. Therefore, this study aims to determine if cardiovascular disease risk factors are predictors of cardiomotor profiles in Hispanic-Latinos living with HIV. Subjects: A total of 176 participants were enrolled in this study. There were 134 males and 42 females with a mean age of 53.34 +/- 10.31 years old. Methods: Data was collected retrospectively from people living with HIV in San Juan, Puerto Rico from 2000-2020. Cardiovascular disease risk factors were collected by interview. In addition, the cardiovascular and locomotor components were collected using the Ross submaximal exercise test. Results: Hyperlipidemia was a significant predictor of treadmill time (B= -1.882, p=.034) and heart rate (B= -6.878, p<.001), whereas hypertension was a predictor of heart rate (B= -12.903, p=.026) and systolic blood pressure (B=12.263, p<.001). Hyperlipidemia was also a significant predictor of inclination (B= -1.707, p=.034). In addition, 57.4 % of the sample had at least one cardiovascular disease risk factor. Conclusion: Hyperlipidemia and hypertension should be considered in managing people living with HIV. This study indicated that hyperlipidemia and hypertension negatively affect cardiovascular and locomotor performance during exercise. Clinicians should be aware that exercise tolerance may be reduced in people with HIV and CVD risk factors; therefore, exercise prescription should be tailored and monitored accordingly

Differences in Temporal Gait Parameters When Walking on Even Surface Walkway, Treadmill, and Pushing a Constant Resistant Sled

Motorized treadmills and weighted sleds are employed in clinical settings to improve lower extremity strength, power, and endurance. However, little is known about how the spatio-temporal parameters compare when walking on an even surface walkway, walking on a treadmill, or pushing a sled. This study aimed to examine the variations in spatial and temporal gait parameters when walking on an even surface walkway (EW), on a treadmill (TW), and while pushing a sled (SP). Forty healthy subjects participated in this pilot study. The mean age and BMI of all participants were 24.39 (± 2.86) years and 68.26 (± 13.92) kg/m^2, respectively. Spatio-temporal parameters were gathered using the Mobility Lab ADPM software and six sensors containing accelerometers and gyroscopes. Participants were directed to walk at a normal and comfortable speed for 7 m on an even surface walkway for two trials. Next, the subjects walked on the treadmill for two trials at a speed based on age. For males aged <30 and females 20-40 years of age, the speed was 1.3 m/s. While for males aged 30 or older, the speed was set to 1.4 m/s. Finally, participants were instructed to walk at their normal pace while pushing a 60 lb sled for 9.1 meters (m). Treadmill walking provoked a significant increase in temporal variables, whereas pushing a sled significantly reduced the temporal variables. Treadmill walking resulted in a decrease in double limb support time and an increase in single-limb support time compared with even surface walking. Although cadence was greater when walking on a treadmill versus an even surface walkway, the difference may be attributed to a fixed speed on the treadmill, which was determined by age. Treadmill gait training is recommended for subjects that could benefit from an increase single limb support time to improve dynamic balance such as Parkinson patients. On the other hand, for those participants that dynamic activities are challenging, such as concussion and vestibular patients, pushing the sled will slow down gait parameters allowing gait training with an added resistance benefit. Finally, it has been proposed that further investigation should focus on the differences in lower extremity muscle activation and recruitment patterns under various walking conditions

Challenges of docking in large, flexible and promiscuous binding sites

After decades of work, the correct determination of the binding mode of a small molecule into a target protein is still a challenging problem, whose difficulty depends on: (i) the sizes of the binding site and the ligand; (ii) the flexibility of both interacting partners, and (iii) the differential solvation of bound and unbound partners. We have evaluated the performance of standard rigid(receptor)/flexible(ligand) docking approaches with respect to last-generation fully flexible docking methods to obtain reasonable poses in a very challenging case: soluble Epoxide Hydrolase (sEH), a flexible protein showing different binding sites. We found that full description of the flexibility of both protein and ligand and accurate description of solvation leads to significant improvement in the ability of docking to reproduce well known binding modes, and at the same time capture the intrinsic binding promiscuity of the protein.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

New battlefields for costimulation

Costimulation regulates the activation of naive T cells as they first encounter antigens in the secondary lymphoid organs. But recently characterized costimulatory molecules of the B7 family appear to have roles beyond initial T cell activation. New evidence shows that negative costimulators expressed by tumors and normal tissues afford local protection from T cell–mediated attack

Education for the development, indispensable role of the University

This conference describes the concept of human and sustainable development, distinguishing of the merely economic thing. The University must be on the one hand an educator ( not only instructing) and on the other hand human (not only professional). The education for which one pleads implies the acquisition of Ethical values contributing the University activity to the human and sustainable development. What has been done in this line up to now? Some important experiences are announced, carried out for different entities compromised with the justice. What way must the University follow? The bases of a curricular system are showed with pupils and teachers like important elements; in the cognitive place, taking charge of the reality. From the attitudinal point of view, to face with the reality and from the procedural point of view, to take charge of the reality

Scheduling Mandatory-Optional Real-Time Tasks in Homogeneous Multi-Core Systems with Energy Constraints Using Bio-Inspired Meta-Heuristics

In this paper we present meta-heuristics to solve the energy aware reward based scheduling of real-time tasks with mandatory and optional parts in homogeneous multi-core processors. The problem is NP-Hard. An objective function to maximize the performance of the system considering the execution of optional parts, the benefits of slowing down the processor and a penalty for changing the operation power-mode is introduced together with a set of constraints that guarantee the real-time performance of the system. The meta-heuristics are the bio-inspired methods Particle Swarm Optimization and Genetic Algorithm. Experiments are made to evaluate the proposed algorithms using a set of synthetic systems of tasks. As these have been used previously with an Integer Lineal Programming approach, the results are compared and show that the solutions obtained with bio-inspired methods are within the Pareto frontier and obtained in less time. Finally, precedence related tasks systems are analyzed and the meta-heuristics proposed are extended to solve also this kind of systems. The evaluation is made by solving a traditional example of the real-time precedence related tasks systems on multiprocessors. The solutions obtained through the methods proposed in this paper are good and show that the methods are competitive. In all cases, the solutions are similar to the ones provided by other methods but obtained in less time and with fewer iterations.Fil: Micheletto, Matías Javier. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Instituto de Ciencias e Ingeniería de la Computación; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ingeniería Eléctrica y de Computadoras; ArgentinaFil: Santos, Rodrigo Martin. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Instituto de Ciencias e Ingeniería de la Computación; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ingeniería Eléctrica y de Computadoras; ArgentinaFil: Orozco, Javier Dario. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Instituto de Ciencias e Ingeniería de la Computación; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ingeniería Eléctrica y de Computadoras; Argentin

Evaluation of spectral induced polarization field measurements in time and frequency domain

Spectral induced polarization (SIP) measurements have been demonstrated to correlate with important parame-ters in hydrogeological and environmental investigations. Although SIP measurements were often collected in thefrequency domain (FDIP), recent developments have demonstrated the capabilities to solve for the frequency-de-pendence of the complex conductivity through measurements collected in the time domain (TDIP). Therefore,the aim of our field investigations is a comparison of the measured frequency-dependence at a broad frequencyrange resolved through FDIP and TDIP. In contrast to previous studies, we conducted measurements with dif-ferent instruments and measuring technologies for both FDIP and TDIP. This allows for investigating the robust-ness of different measurements and assessing various sources of errors, for the assessment of the advantages anddrawbacks from different measuring techniques. Our results demonstrate that data collected through differentinstruments are consistent. Apparent resistivity measurements as well as the inversion results revealed quantita-tively the same values for all instruments. The measurements of the IP effect are also comparable, particularlyFDIP readings in the low frequencies ( 0.1 s).However, data quality for higher frequencies in FDIP (i.e., early times in TDIP) show larger variations, whichreflects the differences between the instruments to deal with the electromagnetic contamination of the IP data.Concluded in general, the different instruments and measuring techniques can provide consistent responses forvarying signal-to-noise ratio and measuring configurations

Novel rheumatoid arthritis susceptibility locus at 22q12 identified in an extended UK genome-wide association study

© 2014 The Authors. Arthritis & Rheumatology is published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of the American College of Rheumatology.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Simultaneous biodegradation of bisphenol A and a biogenic substrate in semi-continuous activated sludge reactors

In this work, the simultaneous degradation of BPA and cheese whey (CW) in semi-continuous activated sludge reactors was studied. The acclimation process and microbial growth on BPA, CW and BPA + CW were analyzed. In addition, the effect of increasing CW concentration on the BPA degradation by acclimated activated sludge was also studied. In order to reduce the factors involved in the analysis of the simultaneous degradation of BPA and CW, the effect of bisphenol A (BPA) on activated sludge not previously exposed to BPA (native activated sludge) was studied. Results demonstrate that BPA concentrations lower than 40 mg l−1 had a negligible effect on the growth of native activated sludge. In the semi-continuous reactors, the presence of CW increased the acclimation time to 40 mg l−1 of BPA. Once the capability of degrading BPA was acquired, the removal of BPA was not affected by the presence of CW. Increasing the CW concentration did not affect the removal of BPA by the acclimated activated sludge. Additionally, the CW consumption was not modified by the presence of BPA. Kinetic and stoichiometric coefficients reported in the present work can be useful in developing mathematical models to describe the simultaneous aerobic biodegradation of a biogenic substrate, such as CW, and BPA by activated sludge.Fil: Ferro Orozco, Ana Micaela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ciencia y Tecnología de Materiales. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ingeniería. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ciencia y Tecnología de Materiales; ArgentinaFil: Contreras, Edgardo Martin. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ciencia y Tecnología de Materiales. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ingeniería. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ciencia y Tecnología de Materiales; ArgentinaFil: Zaritzky, Noemi Elisabet. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ingenieria; Argentina. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Gobernación. Comisión de Investigaciones Científicas. Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Criotecnología de Alimentos. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Criotecnología de Alimentos. Universidad Nacional de la Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Criotecnología de Alimentos; Argentin