Challenges and Opportunities for Adult Vaccine Coverage: Insights for Healthcare Professionals Focusing on Herpes Zoster in Mexico.

Herpes zoster (HZ) is a common disease in older adults and immunocompromised patients, and is frequently associated with long-term complications that impact quality of life. Fortunately, more than one vaccine against HZ is now available in Mexico. Two expert consensus groups discussed adult vaccination strategies in Mexico, focusing on HZ in older adults and immunocompromised individuals; their insights are reported here.

Alpha Oscillations During Effortful Continuous Speech: From Scalp EEG to Ear-EEG.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate alpha power as an objective measure of effortful listening in continuous speech with scalp and ear-EEG.

Methods: Scalp and ear-EEG were recorded simultaneously during presentation of a 33-s news clip in the presence of 16-talker babble noise. Four different signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) were used to manipulate task demand.

High Throughput Screening to Identify Selective and Nonpeptidomimetic Proteasome Inhibitors As Antimalarials.

The Ubiquitin Proteasome System is the main proteolytic pathway in eukaryotic cells, playing a role in key cellular processes. The essentiality of the proteasome is well validated, underlying its potential as an antimalarial target, but selective compounds are required to avoid cytotoxic effects in humans. Almost 550000 compounds were tested for the inhibition of the chymotrypsin-like activity of the proteasome using a Proteasome-GLO luminescence assay.

Collaborative drug discovery and the Tres Cantos Antimalarial Set (TCAMS).

Malaria affects a population of over 200 million people worldwide. New drugs are needed because of widespread resistance, and the hunt for such drugs involves a coordinated research effort from the scientific community. The release of the Tres Cantos Antimalarial Set (TCAMS) in 2010 represented a landmark in the field of collaborative drug discovery for malaria.

Active learning strategies with COMBINE analysis: new tricks for an old dog.

The COMBINE method was designed to study congeneric series of compounds including structural information of ligand-protein complexes. Although very successful, the method has not received the same level of attention than other alternatives to study Quantitative Structure Active Relationships (QSAR) mainly because lack of ways to measure the uncertainty of the predictions and the need for large datasets. Active learning, a semi-supervised learning approach that makes use of uncertainty to enhance models' performance while reducing the size of the training sets, has been used in this work to address both problems.

HtrA1 Mediated Intracellular Effects on Tubulin Using a Polarized RPE Disease Model.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of irreversible vision loss. The protein HtrA1 is enriched in retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells isolated from AMD patients and in drusen deposits. However, it is poorly understood how increased levels of HtrA1 affect the physiological function of the RPE at the intracellular level.

HtrA1 activation is driven by an allosteric mechanism of inter-monomer communication.

The human protease family HtrA is responsible for preventing protein misfolding and mislocalization, and a key player in several cellular processes. Among these, HtrA1 is implicated in several cancers, cerebrovascular disease and age-related macular degeneration. Currently, HtrA1 activation is not fully characterized and relevant for drug-targeting this protease.

Single-trial classification of auditory event-related potentials elicited by stimuli from different spatial directions.

This study is focused on the single-trial classification of auditory event-related potentials elicited by sound stimuli from different spatial directions. Five naϊve subjects were asked to localize a sound stimulus reproduced over one of 8 loudspeakers placed in a circular array, equally spaced by 45°. The subject was seating in the center of the circular array.

Comparison of feature selection and classification methods for a brain-computer interface driven by non-motor imagery.

The aim of this study was to compare methods for feature extraction and classification of EEG signals for a brain-computer interface (BCI) driven by auditory and spatial navigation imagery. Features were extracted using autoregressive modeling and optimized discrete wavelet transform. The features were selected with exhaustive search, from the combination of features of two and three channels, and with a discriminative measure (r (2)).

Auditory and spatial navigation imagery in Brain-Computer Interface using optimized wavelets.

Features extracted with optimized wavelets were compared with standard methods for a Brain-Computer Interface driven by non-motor imagery tasks. Two non-motor imagery tasks were used, Auditory Imagery of a familiar tune and Spatial Navigation Imagery through a familiar environment. The aims of this study were to evaluate which method extracts features that could be best differentiated and determine which channels are best suited for classification.

Phytoplankton carbon fixation gene (RuBisCO) transcripts and air-sea CO(2) flux in the Mississippi River plume.

River plumes deliver large quantities of nutrients to oligotrophic oceans, often resulting in significant CO(2) drawdown. To determine the relationship between expression of the major gene in carbon fixation (large subunit of ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase, RuBisCO) and CO(2) dynamics, we evaluated rbcL mRNA abundance using novel quantitative PCR assays, phytoplankton cell analyses, photophysiological parameters, and pCO(2) in and around the Mississippi River plume (MRP) in the Gulf of Mexico. Lower salinity (30-32) stations were dominated by rbcL mRNA concentrations from heterokonts, such as diatoms and pelagophytes, which were at least an order of magnitude greater than haptophytes, alpha-Synechococcus or high-light Prochlorococcus.

EEG based BCI-towards a better control. Brain-computer interface research at Aalborg University.

This paper summarizes the brain-computer interface (BCI)-related research being conducted at Aalborg University. Namely, an online synchronized BCI system using steady-state visual evoked potentials, and investigations on cortical modulation of movement-related parameters are presented.