In this paper we report the first biosensor that is able to detect Staphylococcus aureus in real-time. A network of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) acts as an ion-to-electron potentiometric ...transducer and anti-S. aureus aptamers are the recognition element. Carbon nanotubes were functionalized with aptamers using two different approaches: (1) non-covalent adsorption of drop-casted pyrenil-modified aptamers onto the external walls of the SWCNTs; and (2) covalent bond formation between amine-modified aptamers and carboxylic groups previously introduced by oxidation at the ends of the SWCNTs. Both of these approaches yielded functional biosensors but there were large differences in the minimum detectable bacteria concentration and sensitivity values. With covalent functionalization, the minimum concentration detected was 8×102colony-forming units (CFU)/mL and the sensitivity was 0.36mV/Decade. With the non-covalent approach, the sensitivity was higher (1.52mV/Decade) but the minimum concentration detected was greatly affected (107CFU/mL). In both cases, potential as a function of Decade of bacteria concentration was linear. Functional biosensors were used to test real samples from freshly excised pig skin, contaminated with the target microorganism, as a surrogate for human skin.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Through the study of the documentation from the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino de Lisboa, this paper tries to understand the administrative process, the responsibilities and the importance of the ...royal control over the casting and recasting of Brazilian church bells, as a tool of direct control over the Brazilian Church and the development of territorial occupation. The documentation stands out the roll of the Conselho Ultramarino in the centralization of the kingdom’s bell casting, the weaknesses of this system, the general indifference on behalf of the royal power and the fragilities of the Brazilian church
The purpose of this study was to validate the Spanish version of the Berger HIV Stigma Scale in an urban Spanish-speaking population in Peru and create a valid and reliable abridged version of the ...scale. Participants were HIV-infected adults enrolled in an observational study to examine the effectiveness of a community-based antiretroviral therapy adherence intervention. Approximately half of participants were female, and the median age at enrollment was 30.5 years. The Spanish version of the full HIV Stigma Scale was internally reliable, demonstrated good construct validity, and was sensitive to change over time. The full HIV Stigma Scale was abbreviated by removing items that impaired subscale internal reliability, did not correlate with other subscale items, or demonstrated low factor correlations. The resulting abridged scale contained 21 of the 40 original items and revealed properties similar to the full Spanish version.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, VSZLJ, ZAGLJ
Introduction: Wounds are associated with ranges of simple to complex disruption or damage to anatomical structure and function. They are also associated with enormous economic and social costs, ...increasing yearly, resulting in a severe impact on the wellbeing of individuals and society. Technology that might accelerate wound healing is associated with many benefits to injured people. Methods: BALBc mice underwent symmetrical excisional wounds through the panniculus carnosus. They were divided into a treatment group placed on an autonomous ceramic far-field infrared blanket (cIFRB) and a control group maintained under standard conditions. We also expanded and cultured adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) on cIFRB and compared them to standard conditions subjected to a scratch injury to compare survival, proliferation, and wound healing. Results: The wound healing of the cIRFB treatment group was significantly faster than the control group of mice. The wound-healing effect of mesenchymal stem cells on cIRFB was also increased and associated with significant migration to the wound area. Conclusions: Wound healing is improved in a mouse model exposed to cFIRB. The ceramic blanket also promotes survival, proliferation, increased migration, and wound healing of MSCs without affecting their survival and proliferation. The utilization of cFIRB in cellular biology and medical applications may be promising in many situations currently explored in animal and human models. This technology needs no direct or battery power source and is entirely autonomous and noninvasive, making its application possible in any environment.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
We examined the relationship between food insufficiency and antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence. A cohort of HIV-infected adults in urban Peru was followed for a two-year period after ART ...initiation. ART adherence was measured using a 30-day self-report tool and classified as suboptimal if <95% adherence was reported. We conducted a repeated measures cohort analysis to examine whether food insufficiency was more common during months of suboptimal adherence relative to months with optimal adherence. 1,264 adherence interviews were conducted for 134 individuals. Participants who reported food insufficiency in the month prior to interview were more likely to experience suboptimal adherence than those who did not (odds ratio O.R.:2.4; 95% confidence interval C.I.:1.4, 4.1), even after adjusting for baseline social support score (O.R. per 5 point increase:0.91; C.I.:0.85, 0.98) and good baseline adherence self-efficacy (O.R.:0.25; C.I.:0.09, 0.69). Interventions that ensure food security for HIV-infected individuals may help sustain high levels of adherence.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, VSZLJ, ZAGLJ
Neural stem cells (NSCs), capable of self-renew and differentiate into neural cells, hold promise for use in studies and treatments for neurological diseases. However, current approaches to obtain ...NSCs from a live brain are risky and invasive, since NSCs reside in the subventricular zone and the in the hippocampus dentate gyrus. Alternatively, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) could be a more available cell source due to their abundance in tissues and easier to access. However, MSCs are committed to producing mesenchymal tissue and are not capable of spontaneously differentiating into neural cells. Thus, the process of reprogramming of MSCs into neural cells to use in clinical and scientific settings has significantly impacted the advancement of regenerative medicine. Previously, our laboratory reported trans-differentiation of MSCs to neural cells through the induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells state, which was produced by overexpression of the embryonic stem cell gene NANOG. In the current study, we demonstrate that treatment with exosomes derived from NSCs makes MSCs capable of expressing neural cell markers bypassing the generation of iPS cells. An epigenetic modifier, decitabine (5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine), enhanced the process. This novel Xeno and transgene-free trans-differentiation technology eliminates the issues associated with iPS cells, such as tumorigenesis. Thus, it may accelerate the development of neurodegenerative therapies and in vitro neurological disorder models for personalized medicine.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Perceiving the pain of others activates similar neural structures to those involved in the direct experience of pain, including sensory and affective-motivational areas. Empathic responses can be ...modulated by race, such that stronger neural activation is elicited by the perception of pain in people of the same race compared with another race. In the present study, we aimed to identify when racial bias occurs in the time course of neural empathic responses to pain. We also investigated whether group affiliation could modulate the race effect. Using the minimal group paradigm, we assigned participants to one of two mixed-race teams. We examined event-related potentials from participants when viewing members of their own and the other team receiving painful or non-painful touch. We identified a significant racial bias in early ERP components at N1 over frontal electrodes, where Painful stimuli elicited a greater negative shift relative to Non-Painful stimuli in response to own race faces only. A long latency empathic response was also found at P3, where there was significant differentiation between Painful and Non-Painful stimuli regardless of Race or Group. There was no evidence that empathy-related brain activity was modulated by minimal group manipulation. These results support a model of empathy for pain that consists of early, automatic bias towards own-race empathic responses and a later top-down cognitive evaluation that does not differentiate between races and may ultimately lead to unbiased behaviour.
•We assigned participants to one of two mixed-race teams.•We studied ERP of participants watching team members in pain or neutral situation.•Early neural responses to pain at N1 are biased by race but not by broader groups.•Later neural responses to pain at P3 are not biased neither by race nor by group.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Introduction
. The possibility of reinfection by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a widely proven fact and may have clinical implications.
Hypothesis /Gap Statement
. ...It is not known whether there have been cases of reinfection by SARS-CoV-2 in La Ribera Health Department.
Aim.
To determine whether there have been cases of reinfection by SARS-CoV-2 in La Ribera Health Department and to identify their characteristics.
Methodology
. Retrospective cross-sectional observational study of cases of reinfection by SARS-CoV-2 in the population of La Ribera Department between March 2020 and February 2021. The positive baseline cohort includes all cases positive by RT-PCR for SARS-CoV-2, with reinfection cases being those that, after resolution of the first episode according to the World Health Organization (WHO) criteria, presented a new positive RT-PCR result.
Results
. Out of a total of 15 687 cases with positive RT-PCR, 40 were considered to be reinfections, which meant a cumulative incidence of 0.255 % and an incidence density of 5.05 cases per 100 000 person-days. Most of the cases occurred during the highest incidence peaks of the pandemic in the department. Seventy-five per cent of the patients in these cases were older than 40 years, 42.5 % were healthcare professionals or nursing home residents and 12.5 % had an immunosuppressive comorbidity. There were no severe, critical or death cases. In the reinfection episodes, with respect to the first episode, there was a tendency to be milder, they required fewer days of hospitalization, their RT-PCR became negative earlier, they developed a greater humoral response and the sick leave period was shorter. The median period between the RT-PCR in the first episode and the RT-PCR in the second episode was 127.5 days (range: 48–301; IQR: 89.5–256.25)
Conclusions
. SARS-CoV-2 reinfection cases are rare, tend to be mild and can occur within a median period of 127.5 days.
A Kalman filter can be used to fill space-state reconstruction dynamics based on knowledge of a system and partial measurements. However, its performance relies on accurate modeling of the system ...dynamics and a proper characterization of the uncertainties, which can be hard to obtain in real-life scenarios. In this work, we explore how the values of a Kalman gain matrix can be estimated by using spiking neural networks through a combination of biologically plausible neuron models with spike-time-dependent plasticity learning algorithms. The performance of proposed neural architecture is verified with simulations of some representative nonlinear systems, which show promising results. This approach traces a path for its implementation in neuromorphic analog hardware that can learn and reconstruct partial and changing dynamics of a system without the massive power consumption that is typically needed in a Von Neumann-based computer architecture.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Este trabajo aborda la antigua relación entre ciudades y comunicación digital a la luz de las aceleradas transformaciones tanto en la emergencia social, económica y sanitaria del Covid-19 como en la ...pospandemia. Con el objetivo de advertir cambios significativos en la agenda de nuestro campo y sus relaciones con dimensiones y teorías urbanísticas, nos aproximaremos desde una estrategia de revisión de la literatura académica a tres instancias fundamentales. En primer lugar, atenderemos a las condiciones que han hecho posible comprender las realidades urbanas en vinculación con máquinas de información tanto a través de aproximaciones morfológicas como en la historia concreta de las ciudades digitales a inicios de nuestra centuria. A continuación, nos detendremos en las definiciones y en las críticas a las smart cities cuya fuerza se hace legible como marco interpretativo para muchas de las tecnologías digitales en las ciudades de nuestra región y en el contexto particular de la crisis global. Finalmente, abordaremos el urbanismo de plataformas como perspectiva para indagar la proliferación y reconstrucción de espacios metropolitanos a través de la plataformización y de ecosistemas de aplicaciones. En estos aspectos descubriremos posibles líneas y temáticas de investigación para nuestro campo que--si no esperaron a la emergencia sanitaria para comenzar--guardan capacidad heurística para comprender y explicar las futuras realidades de las ciudades iberoamericanas a la luz de las mutaciones derivadas de la nueva normalización.
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