Squamous cell carcinomas (SCC) represent the most aggressive type of nonmelanoma skin cancer. Although little is known about the causal alterations of SCCs, in organ-transplanted patients the E7 and ...E6 oncogenes of human papillomavirus, targeting the p53- and pRb-dependent pathways, have been widely involved. Here, we report the functional consequences of the simultaneous elimination of Trp53 and retinoblastoma (Rb) genes in epidermis using Cre-loxP system. Loss of p53, but not pRb, produces spontaneous tumor development, indicating that p53 is the predominant tumor suppressor acting in mouse epidermis. Although the simultaneous inactivation of pRb and p53 does not aggravate the phenotype observed in Rb-deficient epidermis in terms of proliferation and/or differentiation, spontaneous SCC development is severely accelerated in doubly deficient mice. The tumors are aggressive and undifferentiated and display a hair follicle origin. Detailed analysis indicates that the acceleration is mediated by premature activation of the epidermal growth factor receptor/Akt pathway, resulting in increased proliferation in normal and dysplastic hair follicles and augmented tumor angiogenesis. The molecular characteristics of this model provide valuable tools to understand epidermal tumor formation and may ultimately contribute to the development of therapies for the treatment of aggressive squamous cancer.
Social media is now a common context wherein people express their feelings in real time. These platforms are increasingly showing their potential to detect the mental health status of the population. ...Suicide prevention is a global health priority and efforts toward early detection are starting to develop, although there is a need for more robust research.
We aimed to explore the emotional content of Twitter posts in Spanish and their relationships with severity of the risk of suicide at the time of writing the tweet.
Tweets containing a specific lexicon relating to suicide were filtered through Twitter's public application programming interface. Expert psychologists were trained to independently evaluate these tweets. Each tweet was evaluated by 3 experts. Tweets were filtered by experts according to their relevance to the risk of suicide. In the tweets, the experts evaluated: (1) the severity of the general risk of suicide and the risk of suicide at the time of writing the tweet (2) the emotional valence and intensity of 5 basic emotions; (3) relevant personality traits; and (4) other relevant risk variables such as helplessness, desire to escape, perceived social support, and intensity of suicidal ideation. Correlation and multivariate analyses were performed.
Of 2509 tweets, 8.61% (n=216) were considered to indicate suicidality by most experts. Severity of the risk of suicide at the time was correlated with sadness (ρ=0.266; P<.001), joy (ρ=-0.234; P=.001), general risk (ρ=0.908; P<.001), and intensity of suicidal ideation (ρ=0.766; P<.001). The severity of risk at the time of the tweet was significantly higher in people who expressed feelings of defeat and rejection (P=.003), a desire to escape (P<.001), a lack of social support (P=.03), helplessness (P=.001), and daily recurrent thoughts (P=.007). In the multivariate analysis, the intensity of suicide ideation was a predictor for the severity of suicidal risk at the time (β=0.311; P=.001), as well as being a predictor for fear (β=-0.009; P=.01) and emotional valence (β=0.007; P=.009). The model explained 75% of the variance.
These findings suggest that it is possible to identify emotional content and other risk factors in suicidal tweets with a Spanish sample. Emotional analysis and, in particular, the detection of emotional variations may be key for real-time suicide prevention through social media.
Nowadays the consumption of essential carotenoids is reduced due to the lower intake of fruits and vegetables, being humans not capable of synthesizing these molecules. β-carotene is one of the most ...important carotenoids possessing anti-oxidation, anti-inflammation and anti-cancer properties. The aim of this work consists of preparing virgin olive oils enriched in β-carotene from fungi at different concentrations (0.041 and 0.082 mg/mL) in order to obtain new functional foods. Values of quality parameters (free acidity, peroxide value, coefficients of specific extinction and p-anisidine) have been obtained, showing that quality of olive oils was improved. Furthermore, the effect of β-carotene was evaluated as possible oxidative stabilizer during microwave heating and ultra violet-light exposure of the oils. As expected, the enrichment process brought changes in olive oils color, turning them orange-reddish. The use of natural antioxidants, in particular β-carotene could be an effective way to protect virgin olive oils from degradation and is a good strategy also to enhance the consumption of bioactive compounds improving olive oils shelf-life and nutritional value.
The relevance of this work lies in the fact that it is the first time that corn steep liquor (CSL) has been proposed as a unique source of nutrients for producing biosurfactants in a controlled ...fermentation and Aneurinibacillus aneurinilyticus, isolated from CSL, has been evaluated for producing extracellular and cell-bound biosurfactants in a controlled fermentation, using secondary raw materials as a source of nutrients. In the present study, A. aneurinilyticus was inoculated into the culture medium containing sterilized CSL solutions (100–400 g L−1) and incubated using different temperatures (20–60 °C) and fermentation times (8–30 days). The dependent variables under study were the concentration of extracellular biosurfactants and cell-bound biosurfactant production in terms of critical micellar concentration (CMC), as well as the C/N ratio for cell-bound biosurfactant extracts. It was observed that CSL could increase the concentration of extracellular biosurfactants produced by A. aneurinilyticus if these were fermented during 19 days at 40 °C, using 250 g L−1 of CSL; a mean value of 6 g L−1 for extracellular biosurfactants and favorable CMC concentrations enabled the detection of cell-bound biosurfactant extracts under these conditions. Hence, these conditions could be considered optimal for producing both extracellular and cell-bound biosurfactants from CSL.
President Bouteflika’s resignation in April 2019, in response to large public demonstrations, opened a democratic window of opportunity for regime change in Algeria. Nevertheless, despite widespread ...disaffection with the regime, opposition parties have been incapable of triggering a democratic transition in Algeria. The military took control of the situation and imposed its own roadmap to put an end to the political crisis, pushing for presidential elections in December 2019. The elected president, Tebboune, a former prime minister under Bouteflika’s presidency, introduced a constitutional amendment in 2020 and called for parliamentary elections to be held on June 12th, 2021. This article analyzes the political stances and actions by the Algerian political parties regarding these political processes that were intended to be the foundations of the new republic. The case study of the Algerian crisis contributes to the theories on democratization and authoritarian resilience. It does so by showing that, even under favourable conditions of intense social pressure for democratic change and widespread disaffection with the authoritarian regime, political parties cannot be a democratizing agent if: (1) the opposition remains divided; (2) the parties do not build broad opposition alliances, not only between parties but also with civil society; and (3) the political regime retains the support of a number of loyal political parties.
LEl aprendizaje activo se ha ido integrando en los planes de estudio de Ciencias Políticas. Estudiantes y profesores se divierten, pero necesitamos evidencia para sustentar el nexo entre aprendizaje y juego para asegurarnos de que los alumnos aprenden más, o al menos lo mismo, que con las metodologías tradicionales. En este trabajo se comprueba el efecto del aprendizaje basado en el juego en la adquisición de conocimientos sobre los sistemas políticos. Llevamos a cabo un cuasi experimento en una universidad española con estudiantes de segundo curso de la carrera de Ciencias Políticas. Dos grupos fueron expuestos al tratamiento (juego de rol), y el tercero a una clase tradicional. Realizamos un análisis multimétodo para explorar los datos. Los resultados confirman que los expuestos a los juegos de rol tienen una mayor retención de conocimiento a corto plazo sobre los sistemas políticos que aquellos que recibieron solo clases tradicionales. El principal factor sociodemográfico asociado con la retención de conocimientos es la nota media. El análisis cualitativo revela que los estudiantes perciben un refuerzo de sus competencias y reconocen la utilidad de los juegos de rol en la enseñanza de las fórmulas electorales, los beneficios de la redistribución y el comercio y la toma de decisiones en los sistemas políticos.
Is there an association between SARS-CoV-2 infection and first-trimester miscarriage?
This multicentre prospective study included a cohort of women with first-trimester miscarriages registered ...consecutively by seven Spanish hospitals where universal PCR screening for SARS-CoV-2 infection was implemented with both miscarriages and deliveries. The incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection among women with first-trimester miscarriages was compared with the rate registered in women on admission to the delivery ward within the same time frame using a mixed-effects Poisson regression analysis, considering ‘hospital’ as random effect. The characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 positive and negative patients who miscarried were compared through two-sided univariable analyses.
A total of 301 miscarriages were registered, 11 (3.7%) to SARS-CoV-2 infected and 290 to non-infected women. In the same time frame as the miscarriages, 1936 deliveries were registered, 44 2.3% of them were SARS-CoV-2 infected. No differences in terms of SARS-CoV-2 infection incidence were observed between infected miscarriages and infected deliveries (P = 0.233). Regarding the differences observed between miscarriages in SARS-CoV-2 positive and negative women, more inevitable miscarriages occurred in the group of infected women (36.4% versus 16.5% in non-infected women; P = 0.004), and there was greater surgical management of miscarriages (27.3% versus 8.2% in non-infected women; P = 0.036), probably in line with the greater number of inevitable miscarriages observed in this group.
No association between SARS-CoV-2 infection and risk of first-trimester miscarriage was observed; however, the type of miscarriage seems to differ between SARS-CoV-2 positive and negative women, with inevitable miscarriage being more frequent among infected women.
In this work, grapes were coated with a multifunctional biosurfactant extract obtained from corn steep liquor after liquid–liquid extraction with ethyl acetate. This biosurfactant extract has been ...demonstrated to not only possess a surfactant capacity but also antimicrobial activity. Hence, it could be an excellent preservative for fruits, as it is more biodegradable and more biocompatible than chemically synthetized preservatives. However, before applying this biosurfactant as a preservative on fruits, it is necessary to study the changes in the surface properties of fruits produced by the addition of this bioactive compound. Therefore, in this work, grapes coated with an aqueous solution containing 1 g/L of the biosurfactant extract were subjected to surface analysis using non-invasive technologies, including profilometry. 2D digital photographs of the surface and parametric roughness of grapes were obtained. They revealed that the biosurfactant extract decreased the roughness of the grape surface compared with non-coated grapes and reduced the changes in the shape of the grapes over time. Moreover, it was observed that the biosurfactant extract increased the hydrophobicity of the grape surface observing higher contact angle compared with non-coated grapes.
In this work, an aqueous corn kernel stream (CKS) fermented in the presence of Aneurinibacillus aneurinilyticus was subjected to an extraction process with phosphate buffer saline (PBS) to evaluate ...the conditions that promote the production of Gramicidin (GR) in this aqueous stream. To do so, a fast and simple technique was used based on Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis combined with a statistical correlation treatment of the spectra in comparison with a standard spectrum of Gramicidin A (GR-A) and Gramicidin S (GR-S). The correlation analysis employed made it possible to obtain a similarity index using Pearson (PP) and Spearman (PS) coefficients for pairs of FTIR transmittance spectra, associated to different fermentation conditions. More favorable PPand PS similarity indices were obtained for pairs with GR-S rather than GR-A when compared with the samples under evaluation, observing that production of GR-S was promoted under high concentration of CKS (400 g/L) with similarity index of 0.752 and 0.813 for PPand PS, respectively, considering the FTIR spectra between 400 and 4000 cm−1, whereas low concentration of CKS (100 g/L) provided non favorable correlation factors (PP similarity indices lower than 0.4). The same behavior was observed when the study was considered between 1450 and 1750 cm−1 corresponding with the interval absorbance of amide I, amide II, and ammonium dominate bands in GR-S. Finally, matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS) corroborated this correlation study, proving that FTIR could be an interesting tool for establishing the optimal conditions of biotechnological processes.
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•FTIR is an interesting tool for optimizing biotechnological production of Gramicidin S.•Good correlation regarding FTIR pair of data of Gramicidin S and Aneurinibacillus corn extracts.•Gramicidin S purity increased when using high corn kernel extract concentrations.•Gramicidin S purity increased with a longer fermentation time.
OBJECTIVESTo assess the plasma apolipoprotein B/apolipoprotein A1 ratio and its potential association with cardiovascular events (CVE) in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODSA baseline ...analysis was made of the CARdiovascular in rheuMAtology Project (CARMA), a 10-year prospective study evaluating the presence of at least one CVE in 775 Spanish patients with RA. Of them, 29 had already experienced CVE prior to the inclusion in the study. We assessed the association between the elevation of the apoB/apoA1 ratio with the presence of CVE according to a logistic regression model for possible confounding factors. We also analysed the main parameters of activity of RA and parameters related to lipid metabolism. RA patients were classified according to treatment: patients treated with disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs without biologics and those undergoing biologic therapy (anti-TNF-α, anti-IL-6 receptor, and other biologic agents). RESULTSThe apoB/apoA1 ratio of patients who had experienced CVE was higher than that of patients without previous CVE (0.65 vs. 0.60). However, the difference between both subgroups did not reach statistical significance (p=0.197). It was also the case after the multivariate analysis OR: 1.48 (95% CI: 0.15-14.4); p=0.735. RA patients from the group with CVE were more commonly receiving lipid-lowering treatment with statins than those without CVE history (41.4% vs. 20%, p=0.005). High HAQ and high atherogenic index were significantly associated with the presence of CVE. There was no statistical association between the type of biologic therapy used in RA and the presence of CVE. CONCLUSIONSNo association between ApoB/apoA1 ratio and CVE was found at the baseline visit of patients with RA from the CARMA study.
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