Street Flowers: Urban Survivors of the Privileged Land Conference Paper

I have presented papers about Street Flowers: Urban Survivors of the Privileged Land at 'Duration’ - an international, interdisciplinary conference exploring the temporality of contemporary public arts practice

Non-Normality as a Predictor of Participation in Bullying: Valuation in Victims and Aggressors

Bullying is related to several variables, including diversity and variables that place the victim outside of normality. However, it is not easy to find a single meaning of normality. The present study has two main objectives: to find out whether victims are evaluated as non-normal and to find out whether aggressors are evaluated as non-normal. A cross-sectional, correlational, and quantitative study was designed, focusing on a representative sample of secondary school students from the Community of Madrid. The sample consisted of 2076 participants and was constructed using a stratified, proportional, and random sampling technique. To gather this information, a questionnaire was constructed. It includes a first section where sociodemographic and normality information is collected, and a second section made up of the Defensor del pueblo-UNICEF Bullying Questionnaire. The reliability and consistency of the questionnaire are acceptable (Cronbach’s alpha 0.91). For the comparison of means between groups, a Student’s t-test was applied, and the correlation between variables was calculated by applying the bivariate correlation test. Results show that victims are evaluated as non-normal while aggressors are perceived as normal. This implies that the risk of being involved in bullying situations as a victim can be predicted. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

Differentiation of Citrus tristeza virus (CTV) isolates by cleavase fragment length polymorphism (CFLP) analysis of the major coat protein gene

A panel of Citrus tristeza virus (CTV, genus Closterovirus, family Closteroviridae) isolates of different origins and with different biological properties were compared for polymorphisms in the major coat protein (CP) gene by cleavase fragment length polymorphism (CFLP) and single stranded conformation polymorphism (SSCP) analysis. The similarity between the CFLP patterns, which consisted of 15 to 20 bands, was estimated by the Pearson coefficient. The clustering patterns from the CFLP data were very similar to those from sequence data in an experiment with 16 cloned standards of the CP gene. By SSCP analysis on the other hand, most of the clones were not clustered in the same way. To assess the ability of CFLP to analyse biological samples, which may consist of a mixture of genomic variants, the CP gene of 12 CTV isolates was obtained directly from infected plants by immunocapture/RT-PCR and analysed. With few exceptions, the isolates were correctly clustered according to the sequences of the variants composing the isolates. In artificial mixed infections of mild and severe isolates the patterns obtained were more closely related to the severe isolate. Thus the CFLP method was an accurate method for the identification, typing and clustering of CTV isolates. The usefulness of this technique as an alternative to SSCP analysis is suggested and discussed

Metalloids in origin and evolution of life

Metalloids in origin and evolution of life. Metalloids have characteristics between metals and non-metals which give them, in some cases, specific properties. At least two of this chemical elements, boron and silicon, are essential to a significant number of living organisms and since some years ago it has been observed that the same metalloids may be involved in the synthesis and stabilization of some molecules relevant to the origin of life

Instability and Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Alternans in Paced Cardiac Tissue

We derive an equation that governs the spatiotemporal dynamics of small amplitude alternans in paced cardiac tissue. We show that a pattern-forming linear instability leads to the spontaneous formation of stationary or traveling waves whose nodes divide the tissue into regions with opposite phase of oscillation of action potential duration. This instability is important because it creates dynamically an heterogeneous electrical substrate for inducing fibrillation if the tissue size exceeds a fraction of the pattern wavelength. We compute this wavelength analytically as a function of three basic length scales characterizing dispersion and inter-cellular electrical coupling.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to PR

Impact of RIFLE Classification in Liver Transplantation

Acute renal failure (ARF) is common after orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT). The aim of this study was to evaluate the prognostic value of RIFLE classification in the development of CKD, hemodialysis requirement, and mortality. Patients were categorized as risk (R), injury (I) or failure (F) according to renal function at day 1, 7 and 21. Final renal function was classified according to K/DIGO guidelines. We studied 708 OLT recipients, transplanted between September 1992 and March 2007; mean age 44 +/- 12.6 yr, mean follow-up 3.6 yr (28.8% > or = 5 yr). Renal dysfunction before OLT was known in 21.6%. According to the RIFLE classification, ARF occurred in 33.2%: 16.8% were R class, 8.5% I class and 7.9% F class. CKD developed in 45.6%, with stages 4 or 5d in 11.3%. Mortality for R, I and F classes were, respectively, 10.9%, 13.3% and 39.3%. Severity of ARF correlated with development of CKD: stage 3 was associated with all classes of ARF, stages 4 and 5d only with severe ARF. Hemodialysis requirement (23%) and mortality were only correlated with the most severe form of ARF (F class). In conclusion, RIFLE classification is a useful tool to stratify the severity of early ARF providing a prognostic indicator for the risk of CKD occurrence and death