431 results match your criteria: "University Rovira I Virgili[Affiliation]"

Unveiling potential virulence determinants in isolates from through whole genome analyses.

Microbiol Spectr

February 2024

Applied Genomics Research Group, Vicerrectoría de Investigación y Creación, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.

The genus includes pathogenic bacteria able to cause disease in humans and aquatic organisms, leading to disease outbreaks and significant economic losses in the fishery industry. Despite much work on in several marine organisms, no specific studies have been conducted on . This is a commercially important bivalve species, known as "piangua hembra," along Colombia's Pacific coast.

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Fetoscopy laser photocoagulation is a widely adopted procedure for treating Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS). The procedure involves photocoagulation pathological anastomoses to restore a physiological blood exchange among twins. The procedure is particularly challenging, from the surgeon's side, due to the limited field of view, poor manoeuvrability of the fetoscope, poor visibility due to amniotic fluid turbidity, and variability in illumination.

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Scientific evidence of social impact demonstrates how violence against children is successfully prevented. Currently, the scientific research on social impact has a focus on the analysis of actions that succeed in the implementation of such scientific evidence. This article is based on scientific research that looks at which media actions help or hinder the implementation of evidence-based actions to solve the most sensitive social problems.

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The key to a successful C-B activation is to discriminate between two geminal boryl moieties that are exposed to the same reaction conditions. Here we describe a stereoselective C-B activation of β,β-diboryl acrylates forming exclusively the ()-α-borylalkenyl copper(I) key intermediate, for subsequent allylic alkylation reactions. The new borylated ()-skipped dienoates followed a feasible iodo-lactonization sequence for the preparation of borylated lactone cores, which can be used in drug discovery.

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Surface intermediate species and oxygen vacancy-assisted mechanism over CeO catalyst in the direct dimethyl carbonate (DMC) synthesis from carbon dioxide and methanol are suggested by means of transient spectroscopic methodologies in conjunction with multivariate spectral analysis. How the two reactants, CO and methanol, interact with the CeO surface and how they form decisive surface intermediates leading to DMC are unraveled by DFT-based molecular dynamics simulation by precise statistical sampling of various configurations of surface states and intermediates. The atomistic simulations and uncovered stability of different intermediate states perfectly explain the unique DMC formation profile experimentally observed upon transient operations, strongly supporting the proposed oxygen vacancy-assisted reaction mechanism.

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Bioinspired photocatalytic systems towards compartmentalized artificial photosynthesis.

Commun Chem

December 2023

Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Avinguda dels Països Catalans, 16, 43007, Tarragona, Spain.

Artificial photosynthesis aims to produce fuels and chemicals from simple building blocks (i.e. water and carbon dioxide) using sunlight as energy source.

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Medical devices are crucial for patient care, yet even the best biomaterials lead to infections and unwanted activation of blood coagulation, potentially being life-threatening. While hydrophilic polymer brushes are the best coatings to mitigate these issues, their reliance on fossil raw materials underscores the urgency of bio-based alternatives. In this work, we introduce polymer brushes of a green solvent-based monomer, prohibiting protein adsorption, bacterial colonization, and blood clot formation at the same level as fossil-based polymer brushes.

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Probable human origin of the SARS-CoV-2 polybasic furin cleavage motif.

BMC Genom Data

November 2023

Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain.

Background: The key evolutionary step leading to the pandemic virus was the acquisition of the PRRA furin cleavage motif at the spike glycoprotein S1/S2 junction by a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2. Two of its features draw attention: (i) it is absent in other known lineage B beta-coronaviruses, including the newly discovered coronaviruses in bats from Laos and Vietnam, which are the closest known relatives of the covid virus; and, (ii) it introduced the pair of arginine codons (CGG-CGG), whose usage is extremely rare in coronaviruses. With an occurrence rate of only 3%, the arginine CGG codon is considered a minority in SARS CoV-2.

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Multi-site, Multi-domain Airway Tree Modeling.

Med Image Anal

December 2023

Institute of Medical Robotics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China; Institute of Image Processing and Pattern Recognition, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China; Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China. Electronic address:

Article Synopsis
  • Open international challenges are now the main way to evaluate algorithms for computer vision and image analysis, especially in pulmonary airway segmentation.
  • A new challenge, ATM'22, was organized to provide a large-scale dataset of 500 annotated CT scans to help improve algorithm performance in this area.
  • The results showed that deep learning models that enhanced topological continuity performed best, and the challenge offers an open-call design for accessing data and evaluations.
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Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization Mass Spectrometry Imaging (MALDI-MSI) spatially resolves the chemical composition of tissues. Lipids are of particular interest, as they influence important biological processes in health and disease. However, the identification of lipids in MALDI-MSI remains a challenge due to the lack of chromatographic separation or untargeted tandem mass spectrometry.

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Diagnosis and clinical management of thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP): a consensus statement from the TTP Catalan group.

Blood Transfus

March 2024

Medical Direction, Banc de Sang i Teixits, Càtedra UAB de Medicina Transfusional i Teràpia Cel·lular i Tissular, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.

Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) is a low prevalence disease characterized by severe deficiency of the enzyme ADAMTS13, leading to the development of thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA) and often resulting in severe organ disfunction. TTP is an extremely serious condition and, therefore, timely and appropriate treatment is critical to prevent life-threatening complications.Over the past 25 years, significant advances in the understanding of the pathophysiology of immune TTP have led to the development of readily available techniques for measuring ADAMTS13 levels, as well as new drugs that are particularly effective in the acute phase and in preventing relapses.

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The bone extracellular matrix (ECM) contains minerals deposited on highly crosslinked collagen fibrils and hundreds of non-collagenous proteins. Some of these proteins are key to the regulation of bone formation and regeneration via signaling pathways, and play important regulatory and structural roles. However, the complete list of bone extracellular matrix proteins, their roles, and the extent of individual and cross-species variations have not been fully captured in both humans and model organisms.

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This work demonstrates for the first-time biobased, temperature-responsive diblock copolymer nanoparticles synthesized by reversible addition-fragmentation chain-transfer (RAFT) aqueous emulsion polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA). Here, monomers derived from green solvents of the lactic acid portfolio, -dimethyl lactamide acrylate (DMLA) and ethyl lactate acrylate (ELA), were used. First, DMLA was polymerized by RAFT aqueous solution polymerization to produce a hydrophilic PDMLA macromolecular chain transfer agent (macro-CTA), which was chain extended with ELA in water to form amphiphilic PDMLA--PELA diblock copolymer nanoparticles by RAFT aqueous emulsion polymerization.

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Synthesis and characterization of highly diluted polyanionic iron(II) spin crossover systems.

STAR Protoc

September 2023

Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST), Av. Països Catalans 16, 43007 Tarragona, Spain; ICREA, Passeig Lluís Companys, 23, 08010 Barcelona, Spain. Electronic address:

Spin crossover (SCO) complexes, through their reversible spin transition under external stimuli, can work as switchable memory materials. Here, we present a protocol for the synthesis and characterization of a specific polyanionic iron SCO complex and its diluted systems. We describe steps for its synthesis and the determination of crystallographic structure of the SCO complex in diluted systems.

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Changes in light/dark cycles and obesogenic diets are related to the disruption of circadian rhythms and metabolic disorders. Grape seed flavanols have shown beneficial effects on metabolic diseases and, recently, a circadian system modulation has been suggested to mediate their health-enhancing properties. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the grape seed (poly)phenol extract (GSPE) effects in healthy and obese rats after a light/dark cycle disruption.

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Fetal brain tissue annotation and segmentation challenge results.

Med Image Anal

August 2023

Center for MR Research, University Children's Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; Neuroscience Center Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; University Research Priority Project Adaptive Brain Circuits in Development and Learning (AdaBD), University of Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland.

Article Synopsis
  • In-utero fetal MRI is becoming a crucial method for diagnosing and analyzing the developing brain, but manually segmenting cerebral structures is slow and error-prone.
  • The Fetal Tissue Annotation (FeTA) Challenge was established in 2021 to promote the creation of automatic segmentation algorithms, utilizing a dataset with seven segmented fetal brain tissue types.
  • The challenge saw 20 international teams submit algorithms, primarily based on deep learning techniques like U-Nets, with one team's asymmetrical U-Net architecture significantly outperforming others, establishing a benchmark for future segmentation efforts.
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Food insecurity can be understood as a manifestation of health inequality and thus a deprivation of the right to health. This paper explores the strategies followed in primary health care centers in Spain to care for people struggling to regularly access healthy, safe, and sufficient food. Ethnographically based, our study analyzes, on the one hand, the resources available to primary health care teams to assess the social determinants of health and, on the other, the importance that professionals give to food in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of diseases related to inequality.

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Aim: Biological rhythms are endogenously generated natural cycles that act as pacemakers of different physiological mechanisms and homeostasis in the organism, and whose disruption increases metabolic risk. The circadian rhythm is not only reset by light but it is also regulated by behavioral cues such as timing of food intake. This study investigates whether the chronic consumption of a sweet treat before sleeping can disrupt diurnal rhythmicity and metabolism in healthy rats.

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(1) Background: AF-related strokes will triple by 2060, are associated with an increased risk of cognitive decline, and alone or in combination, will be one of the main health and economic burdens on the European population. The main goal of this paper is to describe the incidence of new AF associated with stroke, cognitive decline and mortality among people at high risk for AF. (2) Methods: Multicenter, observational, retrospective, community-based studies were conducted from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2021.

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Over the last years, the susceptibility activity of the most common microorganisms causing community-acquired infections has significantly changed in Spain. Based on the susceptibility rates of Streptococcus pyogenes, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, Escherichia coli, and Klebsiella pneumoniae collected from outpatients aged 15 or older with symptoms of respiratory or urinary tract infections in several Microbiology Departments in Catalonia in 2021, penicillin V should be first choice for most respiratory tract infections, amoxicillin and clavulanate for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease exacerbations and a single dose of fosfomycin or a short-course nitrofurantoin should remain first-line treatments for uncomplicated urinary tract infections. Updated information on antimicrobial resistance for general practitioners is crucial for achieving appropriate empirical management of the most common infections by promoting more rational antibiotic use.

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Use of operational research techniques for concrete mix design: A systematic review.

Heliyon

April 2023

Programa de Engenharia Ambiental, UFRJ, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 21941-901, Brazil.

Traditional methods for designing concrete mixtures provide good results; however, they do not guarantee the optimum composition. Consequently, applying operational research techniques is motivated by an increasing need for designers to proportion the concrete's raw materials that satisfy the concrete performance requirements such as mechanical properties, chemical properties, workability, sustainability, and cost. For this reason, many authors have been looking for mathematical programming and machine learning solutions to predict concrete mix properties and optimise concrete mixtures.

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Serum metabolomics profiling by proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy reveals sexual dimorphism and masculinization of intermediate metabolism in women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).

Biol Sex Differ

April 2023

Diabetes Obesity and Human Reproduction Research Group, Hospital Universitario Ramón y Cajal, Universidad de Alcalá, Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red Diabetes y Enfermedades Metabólicas Asociadas (CIBERDEM), Instituto Ramón y Cajal de Investigación Sanitaria (IRYCIS), Carretera de Colmenar km 9.1, 28034, Madrid, Spain.

Background: The polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is associated with insulin resistance, obesity and cardiometabolic comorbidities. We here challenged the hypothesis, using state-of-the art proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy metabolomics profiling, that androgen excess in women induces also a certain masculinization of intermediate metabolism that is modulated by obesity.

Methods: Participants were 53 Caucasian young adults, including 17 women with classic PCOS consisting of hyperandrogenism and ovulatory dysfunction, 17 non-hyperandrogenic women presenting with regular menses, and 19 healthy men, selected in order to be similar in terms of age and body mass index (BMI).

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Background: Metacognitive Training for Depression in older adults (MCT-Silver; www.uke.de/mct-silver) is a cognitive-behavioral based group intervention that aims at reducing depression by targeting (meta)cognitive beliefs and rumination.

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(Lp) colonizes aquatic environments and is a potential pathogen to humans, causing outbreaks of Legionnaire's disease. It is mainly associated with contaminated cooling towers (CTs). Several regulations, including Spanish legislation (Sl), have introduced the analysis of heterotrophic plate count (HPC) bacteria and spp.

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