La evaluación de la calidad de vida en personas con demencia

Quality of life (QoL) is one of the most important outcome variables in the study of the efficacy of interventions with people with dementia. However, its assessment is difficult 1) because it is a complex construct for which there is no unified theoretical or conceptual approach, and 2) because of the inherent difficulties in the cognitive impairments of the people under study. In this work different methods and instruments to this end are reviewed, and related findings are discussed. It is important to take into account the subjective view of the assessed person, as assessments done by proxies tend to underestimate QoL. In spite of the need for further development in this field, it is concluded that the instrument of choice is the QOL-AD, as it is change-sensitive, it correlates with health measurements, it is translated into several languages and it can be administered to people with low MMSE scores.     

Pond Acoustic Sampling Scheme: A draft protocol for rapid acoustic data collection in small waterbodies

1. Freshwater conservation is vital to the maintenance of global biodiversity. Ponds are a critical, yet often under‐recognized, part of this, contributing to overall ecosystem functioning and diversity. They provide habitats for a range of aquatic, terrestrial, and amphibious life, often including rare and declining species.
2. Effective, rapid, and accessible survey methods are needed to enable evidence‐based conservation action, but freshwater taxa are often viewed as “difficult”—and few specialist surveyors are available. Datasets on ponds are therefore limited in their spatiotemporal coverage.
3. With the advent of new recording technologies, acoustic survey methods are becoming increasingly available to researchers, citizen scientists, and conservation practitioners. They can be an effective and noninvasive approach for gathering data on target species, assemblages, and environmental variables. However, freshwater applications are lagging behind those in terrestrial and marine spheres, and as an emergent method, research studies have employed a multitude of different sampling protocols.
4. We propose the Pond Acoustic Sampling Scheme (PASS), a simple protocol to allow a standardized minimal sample to be collected rapidly from small waterbodies, alongside environmental and methodological metadata. This sampling scheme can be incorporated into a variety of survey designs and is intended to allow access to a wide range of participants, without requiring complicated or prohibitively expensive equipment.
5. Adoption of this sampling protocol would enable consistent sound recordings to be gathered by researchers and conservation organizations, and allow the development of landscape‐scale surveys, data sharing, and collaboration within an expanding freshwater ecoacoustic community—rather than individual approaches that produce incompatible datasets. The compilation of standardized data would improve the prospects for effective research into the soundscapes of small waterbodies and aid freshwater conservation efforts.

     

Phosphate starvation affects the synthesis of outer membrane proteins in Thiobacillus ferrooxidans

The outer membrane protein (omp40) component from the chemolithoautotrophic acidophilic Thiobacillus ferrooxidans is apparently regulated by the external pH and the concentration of phosphorus. Its amino-terminal sequence showed little identity with the Escherichia coli OmpC, OmpF or PhoE porins, but was 38.5% identical to the outer membrane channel-forming protein NosA from Pseudomonas stutzeri, whose expression is also regulated environmentally. In addition, the partial amino acid sequence of T. ferrooxidans omp40 showed between 34 and 38% identity with the amino-terminal end of the small outer membrane proteins Rck and PagC from Salmonella typhimurium and OmpX from Enterobacter cloacae.     

Recent origin,active speciation and dispersal for the lichen genus Nephroma (Peltigerales) in Macaronesia

Aim We reconstructed the phylogeny of the lichen genus Nephroma (Peltigerales) to assess the relationships of species endemic to Macaronesia. We estimated dates of divergences to test the hypothesis that the species arose in Macaronesia (neo‐endemism) versus the oceanic archipelagos serving as refugia for formerly widespread taxa (palaeo‐endemism). Location Cosmopolitan with a special focus on the archipelagos of the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands. Methods DNA sequences were obtained from 18 species for three loci and analysed using maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood and Bayesian inferences. Divergence dates were estimated for the internal transcribed spacer (ITS)‐based phylogeny using a relaxed molecular clock. Reconstruction of the ancestral geographical range was conducted using the Bayesian 50% majority rule consensus tree under a parsimony method. Results The backbone phylogenetic tree was fully supported, with Nephroma plumbeum as sister to all other species. Four strongly supported clades were detected: the Nephroma helveticum, the N. bellum, the N. laevigatum and the N. parile clades. The latter two share a common ancestor and each includes a widespread Holarctic species (N. laevigatum and N. parile, respectively) and all species endemic to Macaronesia. The data suggest a neo‐endemic origin of Macaronesian taxa, a recent range expansion from Macaronesia of both widespread species, a range expansion limited to the Mediteranean Basin and south‐western Europe for another taxon, and a long dispersal event that resulted in a speciation event in the western parts of North America. Main conclusions The Macaronesian endemic species belong to two sister clades and originated from a most recent common ancestor (MRCA) shared with one widely distributed taxon, either N. parile or N. laevigatum. Estimates of the mean divergence dates suggest that the endemics originated in the archipelagos after the rise of the volcanic islands, along with the ancestor to the now widespread species, which probably expanded their range beyond Macaronesia via long‐distance dispersal. This study provides the first phylogenetic evidence of Macaronesian neo‐endemism in lichenized fungi and provides support for the hypothesis that oceanic islands may serve as a source for the colonization of continents. However, further data are needed to properly assess the alternative hypothesis, namely colonization from western North America.     

Ultrastructural changes in naturally aged Pinus pinea seeds

The decline of germination observed after storage of Pinus pinea L. seeds up to 35 years at room temperature was accompanied by an increase in their ability to leak reducing sugars, probably as a consequence of membrane alterations due to senescence. Results of studies of the cell ultrastructure of viable and non-viable seeds before and after imbibition indicate that such is the case. Noticeable changes occurred in the ultrastructure of endosperm and embryo cells with germinability loss, even in the unimbibed condition. The main alterations were spherosome coalescence, plasmalemma separation from the cell wall and chromatin aggregation.     

Pharmacological screening and transcriptomic functional analyses identify a synergistic interaction between dasatinib and olaparib in triple-negative breast cancer

Identification of druggable vulnerabilities is a main objective in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), where no curative therapies exist. Gene set enrichment analyses (GSEA) and a pharmacological evaluation using a library of compounds were used to select potential druggable combinations. MTT and studies with semi-solid media were performed to explore the activity of the combinations. TNBC cell lines (MDAMB-231, BT549, HS-578T and HCC3153) and an additional panel of 16 cell lines were used to assess the activity of the two compounds. Flow cytometry experiments and biochemical studies were also performed to explore the mechanism of action. GSEA were performed using several data sets (GSE21422, GSE26910, GSE3744, GSE65194 and GSE42568), and more than 35 compounds against the identified functions were evaluated to discover druggable opportunities. Analyses done with the Chou and Talalay algorithm confirmed the synergy of dasatinib and olaparib. The combination of both agents significantly induced apoptosis in a caspase-dependent manner and revealed a pleotropic effect on cell cycle: Dasatinib arrested cells in G0/G1 and olaparib in G2/M. Dasatinib inhibited pChk1 and induced DNA damage measured by pH2AX, and olaparib increased pH3. Finally, the effect of the combination was also evaluated in a panel of 18 cell lines representative of the most frequent solid tumours, observing a particularly synergism in ovarian cancer. Breast cancer, triple negative, dasatinib, olaparib, screening.