The viscosity and crowding of biological environment are considered vital for the correct cellular function, and alterations in these parameters are known to underly a number of pathologies including ...diabetes, malaria, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, to name a few. Over the last decades, fluorescent molecular probes termed molecular rotors proved extremely useful for exploring viscosity, crowding, and underlying molecular interactions in biologically relevant settings. In this review, we will discuss the basic principles underpinning the functionality of these probes and will review advances in their use as sensors for lipid order, protein crowding and conformation, temperature and non‐canonical nucleic acid structures in live cells and other relevant biological settings.
In this review, we describe recent advances in the development of fluorescence‐based viscosity sensors, termed Molecular Rotors, and discuss how these dyes can be exploited to quantify the microviscosity of biological environment, probe lipid membranes and non‐canonical nucleic acid architectures and track dynamic processes, including protein aggregation.
Toward a life with dignity PÉREZ, MIGUEL
American ethnologist,
11/2018, Letnik:
45, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
ABSTRACT In the last decade, poor urban residents in Santiago, Chile, have powerfully struggled for the right to housing. They have done so by enrolling in neoliberal housing programs through which ...they seek to become homeowners by both saving money privately and applying for subsidies. In a context in which market‐based urban policies have contributed to the segregation of low‐income families in the city's peripheries, the right to la vida digna (life with dignity) has emerged as the new political horizon of these struggles. As a right based on a moral category like dignity, la vida digna reveals the actions and discourses through which the poor, while becoming ethical subjects, signify their everyday experiences with vulnerability in political terms. dignity, morality, housing struggles, vulnerability, Santiago , Chile
Abstracto En la última década, los residentes pobres de Santiago de Chile han luchado enérgicamente por el derecho a la vivienda. Estos habitantes han llevado a cabo sus luchas participando en políticas neoliberales de vivienda mediante las cuales, vía ahorro privado y la postulación a subsidios, buscan convertirse en propietarios. En un contexto donde las políticas urbanas neoliberales han promovido a la segregación de familias pobres en las periferias de la ciudad, el derecho a la vida digna ha emergido como el nuevo horizonte político de esas luchas. En tanto derecho basado en una categoría moral como la dignidad, la vida digna revela las acciones y discursos mediante las cuales los pobres significan políticamente sus experiencias cotidianas de vulnerabilidad al tiempo que se vuelven sujetos éticos. dignidad , moralidad , luchas por la vivienda , vulnerabilidad , Santiago de Chile
TiO2 anatase plays a central role in energy and environmental research. A major bottleneck toward developing artificial photosynthesis with TiO2 is that it only absorbs ultraviolet light, owing to ...its large bandgap of 3.2 eV. If one could reduce the bandgap of anatase to the visible region, TiO2-based photocatalysis could become a competitive clean energy source. Here, using scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy in conjunction with density functional theory calculations, we report the discovery of a highly reactive titanium-terminated anatase surface with a reduced bandgap of less than 2 eV, stretching into the red portion of the solar spectrum. By tuning the surface preparation conditions, we can reversibly switch between the standard anatase surface and the newly discovered low bandgap surface phase. The identification of a TiO2 anatase surface phase with a bandgap in the visible and high chemical reactivity has important implications for solar energy conversion, photocatalysis, and artificial photosynthesis.
We report the international experience in outcomes after related and unrelated hematopoietic transplantation for infantile osteopetrosis in 193 patients. Thirty-four percent of transplants used ...grafts from HLA-matched siblings, 13% from HLA-mismatched relatives, 12% from HLA-matched, and 41% from HLA-mismatched unrelated donors. The median age at transplantation was 12 months. Busulfan and cyclophosphamide was the most common conditioning regimen. Long-term survival was higher after HLA-matched sibling compared to alternative donor transplantation. There were no differences in survival after HLA-mismatched related, HLA-matched unrelated, or mismatched unrelated donor transplantation. The 5- and 10-year probabilities of survival were 62% and 62% after HLA-matched sibling and 42% and 39% after alternative donor transplantation (P = .01 and P = .002, respectively). Graft failure was the most common cause of death, accounting for 50% of deaths after HLA-matched sibling and 43% of deaths after alternative donor transplantation. The day-28 incidence of neutrophil recovery was 66% after HLA-matched sibling and 61% after alternative donor transplantation (P = .49). The median age of surviving patients is 7 years. Of evaluable surviving patients, 70% are visually impaired; 10% have impaired hearing and gross motor delay. Nevertheless, 65% reported performance scores of 90 or 100, and in 17%, a score of 80 at last contact. Most survivors >5 years are attending mainstream or specialized schools. Rates of veno-occlusive disease and interstitial pneumonitis were high at 20%. Though allogeneic transplantation results in long-term survival with acceptable social function, strategies to lower graft failure and hepatic and pulmonary toxicity are urgently needed.
•Hematopoietic cell transplantation results in long-term survival.•Primary graft failure is very high and the predominant cause of death.
Background and Aims Forest trees directly contribute to carbon cycling in forest soils through the turnover of their fine roots. In this study we aimed to calculate root turnover rates of common ...European forest tree species and to compare them with most frequently published values. Methods We compiled available European data and applied various turnover rate calculation methods to the resulting database. We used Decision Matrix and Maximum-Minimum formula as suggested in the literature. Results Mean turnover rates obtained by the combination of sequential coring and Decision Matrix were 0.86 yr⁻¹ for Fagus sylvatica and 0.88 yr⁻¹ for Picea abies when maximum biomass data were used for the calculation, and 1.11 yr⁻¹ for both species when mean biomass data were used. Using mean biomass rather than maximum resulted in about 30 % higher values of root turnover. Using the Decision Matrix to calculate turnover rate doubled the rates when compared to the Maximum-Minimum formula. The Decision Matrix, however, makes use of more input information than the Maximum-Minimum formula. Conclusions We propose that calculations using the Decision Matrix with mean biomass give the most reliable estimates of root turnover rates in European forests and should preferentially be used in models and C reporting.
Since the early 1990s, Chilean democratic governments after Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship have made an effort to allocate publicly subsidized housing to the lower classes. Nevertheless, the ...dominance of market principles in urban policies has contributed to the formation of highly segregated neighborhoods and the gentrification of peripheral neighborhoods. As a result, Chilean public opinion is witnessing the rearticulation of what in the mid-twentieth century was known as the pobladores movement—social mobilizations demanding housing solutions for the poor. In the old working-class municipality of Peñalolén, severe gentrification since the late 1980s has triggered the appearance of autonomous grassroots organizations such as the Movimiento de Pobladores en Lucha (MPL). The movement has been able to fight social and spatial injustice in Santiago through a subversive appropriation of state policies. Its experience reveals the potentialities of such mobilizations for democratizing cities under a neoliberal regime. Desde principios de los noventa, los gobiernos democráticos chilenos que siguieron a la dictadura de Augusto Pinochet han intentado proveer vivienda social subsidiada a las clases populares. Sin embargo, el predominio de principios de libre mercado en las políticas urbanas ha contribuido a la formación de barrios altamente segregados y a la gentrificación (o "aburguesamiento") de los vecindarios periféricos. Por consiguiente, la opinión pública chilena está presenciando la reatriculación de lo que a mediados del siglo 20 se conoció como el movimiento de pobladores —movilizaciones sociales que demandaban soluciones habitacionales para los pobres. En el otrora municipio popular de Peñalolén, la importante gentrificación que se ha venido desarrollando desde finales de los 80 ha redundado en la aparición de organizaciones de base autónomas como el Movimiento de Pobladores en Lucha (MPL). Este movimiento ha sido capaz de combatir la injusticia social y espacial en Santiago mediante una apropiación subversiva de políticas estatales, experiencia que revela el potencial de dichas movilizaciones para la democratización de las ciudades bajo un régimen neoliberal.
Roads play a crucial role in transporting people and goods and providing access to services; however, their construction involve harmful environmental impacts due to the carbon emissions stemming ...from their bitumen content. Under this premise, this research aimed at adding three different types of polystyrene (PS) wastes to asphalt concrete to substitute bitumen: General Purpose Polystyrene (GPPS) also known as Crystal Polystyrene, High Impact Polystyrene (HIPS) and Polystyrene from hangers (HPS). Hence, a reference Asphalt Concrete mixture (AC 16 S, named REF in the article) was designed and dosed for comparing it with the experimental mixtures in which bitumen was reduced by different percentages and replaced by polymers. Every sample was tested separately for comparison purposes, so that the addition of residual polystyrene was found to modify several mixture properties: there was an increase in voids content and a significant decrease in plastic deformations, whilst other characteristics remained in the order of magnitude of conventional values. Once the mechanical properties of the modified mixtures were validated, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was undertaken to compare their environmental performance with that of conventional asphalt mixtures. The results achieved suggested that substituting part of the bitumen by polymers might reduce the environmental impacts of asphalt mixtures, taking into account the expected increase in their lifecycle provided by the presence of plastics.
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Most current models of research on emotion recognize
valence
(how pleasant a stimulus is) and
arousal
(the level of activation or intensity that a stimulus elicits) as important components in the ...classification of affective experiences (Barrett,
1998
; Kuppens, Tuerlinckx, Russell, & Barrett,
2012
). Here we present a set of norms for valence and arousal for a very large set of Spanish words, including items from a variety of frequencies, semantic categories, and parts of speech, including a subset of conjugated verbs. In this regard, we found that there were significant but very small differences between the ratings for conjugations of the same verb, validating the practice of applying the ratings for infinitives to all derived forms of the verb. Our norms show a high degree of reliability and are strongly correlated with those of Redondo, Fraga, Padrón, and Comesaña’s (
2007
) Spanish version of the influential Affective Norms for English Words (Bradley & Lang,
1999
), as well as those from Warriner, Kuperman, and Brysbaert (
2013
), the largest available set of emotional norms for English words. Additionally, we included measures of word prevalence—that is, the percentage of participants that knew a particular word—for each variable (Keuleers, Stevens, Mandera, & Brysbaert,
2015
). Our large set of norms in Spanish not only will facilitate the creation of stimuli and the analysis of texts in that language, but also will be useful for cross-language comparisons and research on emotional aspects of bilingualism. The norms can be downloaded and available as a
supplementary materials
to this article.
•Exploration of various snow representations offered by SWAT.•Remote sensing and in situ data have been used to validate the snow simulation.•Benefits of each one on the discharge simulation have ...been assess.•Impact of melting dynamics on other hydrological components.
Snow is an important hydrological reservoir within the water cycle, particularly when the watershed includes a mountainous area. Modellers often overlook water stocked in snow pack and its influence on water distribution, especially when only some portions of the watershed is snow dominated. Snow is usually considered to improve hydrological modelling statistics, but without any regard for the realism of its representation or its influence on the hydrological cycle. This is all the more true when semi-distributed models are used, often considered inadequate for spatially representing such phenomena. On the other hand, semi-distributed models are being increasingly used to realise water budget assessment at a regional scale and such studies should not be realised without a good representation of the snow pack. Lack of field measurements is also a frequent justification for avoiding validating simulated snow packs. In this study, remote sensing data provided by MODIS is combined with in situ data, enabling the validation of the snow pack simulated by the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), a semi-distributed, physically-based model, implemented over a partly snow-dominated watershed. Snow simulation was performed without complex algorithms or calibration procedures, using the elevation bands option included in the model and related snow parameters. Representation of snow cover and hydrological simulation were achieved by a standard automatic calibration of the model, over the 2000–2010 period, performed by SWAT-Cup/SUFI2, using six hydrological gauging stations along the fluvial continuum downstream of the snow-dominated area. Results highlight three important points: (i) Set-up of elevation bands over mountainous headwater improved hydrological simulation performance, even well downstream of the snow-dominated area. (ii) SWAT produced a good spatial and temporal representation of the snow cover, using MODIS data, despite a slight overestimation at the end of the snow season on the highest elevation bands. A comparison of the model estimate of snowpack water content with in situ data revealed an underestimation in water content in the lower part of the watershed and a slight overestimation in its upper part. Those errors are linked and originate from difficulties of the model to incorporate very local spatial and temporal variations of the precipitation lapse rate. (iii) Elevation bands brought consistent changes in water distribution within the hydrological cycle of implemented watersheds, which are more in line with expected flow paths.
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