El presente artículo parte del estudio de dos disputas judiciales relacionadas con la propiedad de la tierra, que fueron protagonizadas por los campesinos de las alturas de Huanta, en la región de ...Ayacucho en Perú. A partir del análisis hermenéutico de los expedientes judiciales de las disputas, plantea que dichos campesinos intervinieron en los pleitos estimulados por su experiencia proveniente de la guerra de la independencia y los conflictos caudillistas del siglo XIX, elaborando un argumento moral que funcionó como arma de combate para desbaratar al oponente en las instancias judiciales y lograr el reclamo. De este modo, participaron en el proceso de formación del Estado republicano, prolongando la violencia de la guerra al derecho y la justicia temprano-republicana.
This review is based on a systematic review of the literature relevant to clinical topics in osteoarthritis (OA) performed for the time period February 22, 2016 to April 1, 2017. A PubMed search ...using the terms “osteoarthritis” and “treatment or epidemiology” returned over 800 papers, of which 57 are reviewed here, with inclusion primarily based on relevance to clinical OA. Epidemiologic studies in this time frame focused on the incidence and prevalence of OA, comorbidities and mortality in relation to OA (particularly obesity and cardiovascular disease), and multiple joint involvement. Papers on therapeutic approaches to OA considered: non-pharmacologic options, a number of topical, oral, and intra-articular therapies, as well as the cost-effectiveness of some OA treatments. There an enormous need to identify novel strategies to reduce the impact of this highly prevalent and debilitating condition.
This review discusses the complex nature of the primary nonstarch polysaccharide (NSP) in corn with respect to the merit of debranching enzymes. Celluloses, hemicelluloses, and pectins comprise the 3 ...major categories of NSP that make up nearly 90% of plant cell walls. Across cereals, the hemicellulose arabinoxylan exists as the primary NSP, followed by cellulose, glucans, and others. Differences in arabinoxylan structure among cereals and cereal fractions are facilitated by cereal type, degree and pattern of substitution along the xylan backbone, phenol content, and cross-linkages. In particular, arabinoxylan (also called glucuronoarabinoxylan) in corn is heavily fortified with substituents, being more populated than in wheat and other cereal grains. Feed-grade xylanases – almost solely of the glycoside hydrolase (GH) 10 and GH 11 families – require at least 2 or 3 contiguous xylose units to be free of attachments to effectively attack the xylan chain. This canopy of attachments, along with a high phenol content and the insoluble nature of corn glucuronoarabinoxylan, confers a significant resistance to xylanase attack. Both in vitro and in vivo studies demonstrate that debranching enzymes appreciably increase xylanase access and fiber degradability by removing these attachments and breaking phenolic linkages. The enzymatic degradation of the highly branched arabinoxylan can facilitate disassembly of other fibers by increasing exposure to pertinent carbohydrases. For cereals, the arabinofuranosidases, α-glucuronidases, and esterases are some of the more germane debranching enzymes. Enzyme composites beyond the simple core mixes of xylanases, cellulases, and glucanases can exploit synergistic benefits generated by this class of enzymes. A broad scope of enzymatic activity in customized mixes can more effectively target the resilient NSP construct of cereal grains in commercial poultry diets, particularly those in corn-based feeds.
Con el objetivo de describir los casos de cáncer de tiroides en Manizales, Colombia, se realizó un estudio que describe las características de los pacientes y de los tumores según el tamaño, la ...lateralidad, la focalización, el compromiso ganglionar, la invasión contigua, la metástatisis y la estadificación TNM. Se analizaron 672 casos, el 84,8% de ellos fueron mujeres entre 40 y 64 años. El 34,1% de los casos fueron diagnosticados en estadios tempranos y el 15% de los tumores tuvieron un tamaño 20 mm. El compromiso ganglionar y de tejidos adyacentes estuvo presente en el 33% y el 3% de los casos, respectivamente. Se registró un 1% de metástasis a distancia. El carcinoma papilar se presentó en el 82% de los casos. El cáncer de tiroides en Manizales es más frecuente en mujeres adultas; el estadio temprano y el tamaño tumoral sugieren mejora en la detección temprana.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of healthcare services worldwide, especially in underdeveloped countries. There is a clear need to develop novel computer-assisted diagnosis tools ...to provide rapid and cost-effective screening in places where massive traditional testing is not feasible. Lung ultrasound is a portable, easy to disinfect, low cost and non-invasive tool that can be used to identify lung diseases. Computer-assisted analysis of lung ultrasound imagery is a relatively recent approach that has shown great potential for diagnosing pulmonary conditions, being a viable alternative for screening and diagnosing COVID-19. To evaluate and compare the performance of deep-learning techniques for detecting COVID-19 infections from lung ultrasound imagery. We adapted different pre-trained deep learning architectures, including VGG19, InceptionV3, Xception, and ResNet50. We used the publicly available POCUS dataset comprising 3326 lung ultrasound frames of healthy, COVID-19, and pneumonia patients for training and fine-tuning. We conducted two experiments considering three classes (COVID-19, pneumonia, and healthy) and two classes (COVID-19 versus pneumonia and COVID-19 versus non-COVID-19) of predictive models. The obtained results were also compared with the POCOVID-net model. For performance evaluation, we calculated per-class classification metrics (Precision, Recall, and F1-score) and overall metrics (Accuracy, Balanced Accuracy, and Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve). Lastly, we performed a statistical analysis of performance results using ANOVA and Friedman tests followed by post-hoc analysis using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test with the Holm's step-down correction. InceptionV3 network achieved the best average accuracy (89.1%), balanced accuracy (89.3%), and area under the receiver operating curve (97.1%) for COVID-19 detection from bacterial pneumonia and healthy lung ultrasound data. The ANOVA and Friedman tests found statistically significant performance differences between models for accuracy, balanced accuracy and area under the receiver operating curve. Post-hoc analysis showed statistically significant differences between the performance obtained with the InceptionV3-based model and POCOVID-net, VGG19-, and ResNet50-based models. No statistically significant differences were found in the performance obtained with InceptionV3- and Xception-based models. Deep learning techniques for computer-assisted analysis of lung ultrasound imagery provide a promising avenue for COVID-19 screening and diagnosis. Particularly, we found that the InceptionV3 network provides the most promising predictive results from all AI-based techniques evaluated in this work. InceptionV3- and Xception-based models can be used to further develop a viable computer-assisted screening tool for COVID-19 based on ultrasound imagery.
The analysis of single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq) data plays an important role in understanding the intrinsic and extrinsic cellular processes in biological and biomedical research. One ...significant effort in this area is the detection of differentially expressed (DE) genes. scRNAseq data, however, are highly heterogeneous and have a large number of zero counts, which introduces challenges in detecting DE genes. Addressing these challenges requires employing new approaches beyond the conventional ones, which are based on a nonzero difference in average expression. Several methods have been developed for differential gene expression analysis of scRNAseq data. To provide guidance on choosing an appropriate tool or developing a new one, it is necessary to evaluate and compare the performance of differential gene expression analysis methods for scRNAseq data.
In this study, we conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the performance of eleven differential gene expression analysis software tools, which are designed for scRNAseq data or can be applied to them. We used simulated and real data to evaluate the accuracy and precision of detection. Using simulated data, we investigated the effect of sample size on the detection accuracy of the tools. Using real data, we examined the agreement among the tools in identifying DE genes, the run time of the tools, and the biological relevance of the detected DE genes.
In general, agreement among the tools in calling DE genes is not high. There is a trade-off between true-positive rates and the precision of calling DE genes. Methods with higher true positive rates tend to show low precision due to their introducing false positives, whereas methods with high precision show low true positive rates due to identifying few DE genes. We observed that current methods designed for scRNAseq data do not tend to show better performance compared to methods designed for bulk RNAseq data. Data multimodality and abundance of zero read counts are the main characteristics of scRNAseq data, which play important roles in the performance of differential gene expression analysis methods and need to be considered in terms of the development of new methods.
Many biological processes are RNA-mediated, but higher-order structures for most RNAs are unknown, which makes it difficult to understand how RNA structure governs function. Here we describe ...selective 2'-hydroxyl acylation analyzed by primer extension and mutational profiling (SHAPE-MaP) that makes possible de novo and large-scale identification of RNA functional motifs. Sites of 2'-hydroxyl acylation by SHAPE are encoded as noncomplementary nucleotides during cDNA synthesis, as measured by massively parallel sequencing. SHAPE-MaP-guided modeling identified greater than 90% of accepted base pairs in complex RNAs of known structure, and we used it to define a new model for the HIV-1 RNA genome. The HIV-1 model contains all known structured motifs and previously unknown elements, including experimentally validated pseudoknots. SHAPE-MaP yields accurate and high-resolution secondary-structure models, enables analysis of low-abundance RNAs, disentangles sequence polymorphisms in single experiments and will ultimately democratize RNA-structure analysis.
The Oral Microbiome of Children Gomez, Andres; Nelson, Karen E.
Microbial Ecology,
02/2017, Volume:
73, Issue:
2
Journal Article, Book Review
Peer reviewed
Open access
In the era of applied meta-omics and personalized medicine, the oral microbiome is a valuable asset. From biomarker discovery to being a powerful source of therapeutic targets and to presenting an ...opportunity for developing noninvasive approaches to health care, it has become clear that oral microbes may hold the answer for understanding disease, even beyond the oral cavity. Although our understanding of oral microbiome diversity has come a long way in the past 50 years, there are still many areas that need to be fine-tuned for better risk assessment and diagnosis, especially in early developmental stages of human life. Here, we discuss the factors that impact development of the oral microbiome and explore oral markers of disease, with a focus on the early oral cavity. Our ultimate goal is to put different experimental and methodological views into perspective for better assessment of early oral and systemic disease at an early age and discuss how oral microbiomes—at the community level—could provide improved assessment in individuals and populations at risk.
The translocation of bacteria and bacterial products into the circulation contributes to alcoholic liver disease. Intestinal bacterial overgrowth is common in patients with alcoholic liver disease. ...The aims of our study were to investigate bacterial translocation, changes in the enteric microbiome, and its regulation by mucosal antimicrobial proteins in alcoholic liver disease. We used a mouse model of continuous intragastric feeding of alcohol or an isocaloric diet. Bacterial translocation occurred prior to changes observed in the microbiome. Quantitative changes in the intestinal microflora of these animals were assessed first using conventional culture techniques in the small and large intestine. Although we found no difference after 1 day or 1 week, intestinal bacterial overgrowth was observed in the gastrointestinal tract of mice fed alcohol for 3 weeks compared with control mice fed an isocaloric liquid diet. Because <20% of all gastrointestinal bacteria can be cultured using conventional methodologies, we performed massively parallel pyrosequencing to further assess the qualitative changes in the intestinal microbiome following alcohol exposure. Sequencing of 16S ribosomal RNA genes revealed a relative abundance of Bacteroidetes and Verrucomicrobia bacteria in mice fed alcohol compared with a relative predominance of Firmicutes bacteria in control mice. With respect to the host's transcriptome, alcohol feeding was associated with down‐regulation in gene and protein expression of bactericidal c‐type lectins Reg3b and Reg3g in the small intestine. Treatment with prebiotics partially restored Reg3g protein levels, reduced bacterial overgrowth, and lessened alcoholic steatohepatitis. Conclusion: Alcohol feeding is associated with intestinal bacterial overgrowth and enteric dysbiosis. Intestinal antimicrobial molecules are dysregulated following chronic alcohol feeding contributing to changes in the enteric microbiome and to alcoholic steatohepatitis. (HEPATOLOGY 2011)
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