Hepatic circadian clock oscillators and nuclear receptors integrate microbiome-derived signals.

The liver is a key organ of metabolic homeostasis with functions that oscillate in response to food intake. Although liver and gut microbiome crosstalk has been reported, microbiome-mediated effects on peripheral circadian clocks and their output genes are less well known. Here, we report that germ-free (GF) mice display altered daily oscillation of clock gene expression with a concomitant change in the expression of clock output regulators. Mice exposed to microbes typically exhibit characterized activities of nuclear receptors, some of which (PPARα, LXRβ) regulate specific liver gene expression networks, but these activities are profoundly changed in GF mice. These alterations in microbiome-sensitive gene expression patterns are associated with daily alterations in lipid, glucose, and xenobiotic metabolism, protein turnover, and redox balance, as revealed by hepatic metabolome analyses. Moreover, at the systemic level, daily changes in the abundance of biomarkers such as HDL cholesterol, free fatty acids, FGF21, bilirubin, and lactate depend on the microbiome. Altogether, our results indicate that the microbiome is required for integration of liver clock oscillations that tune output activators and their effectors, thereby regulating metabolic gene expression for optimal liver function.

Teachings of Integrate Epidemiology for the Health Sience Departments

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The TKT Teaching Knowledge Test. course : CLIL module ( Content and Language Integrate Learning).

El TKT es un examen que se centra en los conocimientos esenciales que requiere todo profesor de inglés como segunda lengua. Evalúa los conocimientos pedagógicos y no las habilidades didácticas. Quienes se preparan para él profundizan sus conocimientos sobre la enseñanza del inglés y mejoran su comprensión de los conceptos relacionados con la lengua y su uso, así como la teoría y la práctica del proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje. La prueba es adecuada para todos los profesores de Aprendizaje Integrado de Contenidos y Lenguas Extranjeras (AICLE) que trabajan en primaria y secundaria. Cubre las cuatro áreas claves de la prueba: conocimiento y principios de AICLE, preparación de la lección, entrega de la lección y evaluación La prueba también es adecuada para los profesores que trabajan en inglés como segunda lengua (EAL). Es una prueba de ochenta minutos que cuenta con ochenta preguntas. Éstas son una mezcla de distintas opciones verdadero - falso, selección múltiple, etc.

Qualified immigrants' success: exploring the motivation to migrate and to integrate

High-quality employees with international experience bring valuable advantages to internationally operating organizations. The growing number and importance of immigrants, and particularly qualified, university-educated immigrants, deserves more attention from international business practitioners and scholars. The market for highly qualified people within MNCs is increasingly becoming international, and ever more of them have migrated to a new country to advance their career. Such employees can be a source of competitive advantage for international firms. We use qualitative research with qualified immigrants (QIs) in France to argue that the success of QIs depends in large part on their motivation to integrate into their host country, which is largely explained by their motivation to migrate. From the qualitative data we derive four different types of qualified migrant, and suggest that the type will determine the success of the immigrant within, and outside, the organization. The relationship between the motivation to migrate and the motivation to integrate is moderated by “met expectations” and “organizational integration policies”, such that the effects of these, in turn, vary with type. Recognition of the types of QI and the moderating factors will be valuable for practitioners, as well as opening up research avenues for scholars.

Meta-analysis to integrate effect sizes within a paper: Possible misuse and Type-1 error inflation

In recent years an increasing number of papers have employed meta-analysis to integrate effect sizes of researchers’ own series of studies within a single paper (“internal meta-analysis”). Although this approach has the obvious advantage of obtaining narrower confidence intervals, we show that it could inadvertently inflate false-positive rates if researchers are motivated to use internal meta-analysis in order to obtain a significant overall effect. Specifically, if one decides whether to stop or continue a further replication experiment depending on the significance of the results in an internal meta-analysis, false-positive rates would increase beyond the nominal level. We conducted a set of Monte-Carlo simulations to demonstrate our argument, and provided a literature review to gauge awareness and prevalence of this issue. Furthermore, we made several recommendations when using internal meta-analysis to make a judgment on statistical significance.

A network of integrate and fire neurons for visual selection

Biological systems have facility to capture salient object(s) in a given scene, but it is still a difficult task to be accomplished by artificial vision systems. In this paper a visual selection mechanism based on the integrate and fire neural network is proposed. The model not only can discriminate objects in a given visual scene, but also can deliver focus of attention to the salient object. Moreover, it processes a combination of relevant features of an input scene, such as intensity, color, orientation, and the contrast of them. In comparison to other visual selection approaches, this model presents several interesting features. It is able to capture attention of objects in complex forms, including those linearly nonseparable. Moreover, computer simulations show that the model produces results similar to those observed in natural vision systems.

A simple approach to integrate the ecotoxicological and chemical data for the establishment of environmental risk levels

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Conception of wheeled mobile robots with reconfigurable control using integrate prototyping

With the fast innovation of the hardware and software technologies using rapid prototyping devices, with application in the robotics and automation, more and more it becomes necessary the development of applications based on methodologies that facilitate future modifications, updates and enhancements in the original projected system. This paper presents a conception of mobile robots using rapid prototyping, distributing the several control actions in growing levels of complexity and using resources of reconfigurable computing proposal oriented to embed systems implementation. Software and the hardware are structuralized in independents blocks, with connection through common bus. The study and applications of new structures control that permits good performance in relation to the parameter variations. This kind of controller can be tested on different platform representing the wheeled mobile robots using reprogrammable logic components (FPGA). © 2006 IEEE.

STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS: THE TRANSITION FROM NONEQUILIBRIUM TO EQUILIBRIUM IN INTEGRATE-AND-FIRE DYNAMICS

The transient and equilibrium properties of dynamics unfolding in complex systems can depend critically on specific topological features of the underlying interconnections. In this work, we investigate such a relationship with respect to the integrate-and-fire dynamics emanating from a source node and an extended network model that allows control of the small-world feature as well as the length of the long-range connections. A systematic approach to investigate the local and global correlations between structural and dynamical features of the networks was adopted that involved extensive simulations (one and a half million cases) so as to obtain two-dimensional correlation maps. Smooth, but diverse surfaces of correlation values were obtained in all cases. Regarding the global cases, it has been verified that the onset avalanche time (but not its intensity) can be accurately predicted from the structural features within specific regions of the map (i.e. networks with specific structural properties). The analysis at local level revealed that the dynamical features before the avalanches can also be accurately predicted from structural features. This is not possible for the dynamical features after the avalanches take place. This is so because the overall topology of the network predominates over the local topology around the source at the stationary state.

Innovazione e governance delle reti di assistenza integrate: il caso delle cure palliative

In ambito oncologico il dolore affligge la maggior parte dei pazienti (incidenza riportata dal 53 al 90%), in tutte le fasi della malattia: nonostante l’esistenza di Linee Guida (OMS), l’attuale “undertreatment” del sintomo dolore oncologico, legato a un inappropriato uso degli oppioidi, in Italia raggiunge stime fino al 40% dei casi. Segnalazioni recenti sul consumo degli oppioidi in Italia riportano un aumento imputabile a un solo farmaco (fentanil TTS), il che suggerisce un comportamento prescrittivo inappropriato. Letteratura in merito alle valutazioni di efficacia delle terapie di controllo del dolore sia in fase iniziale – quando la terapia medica oncologica è attiva- sia in fase avanzata di malattia – quando il controllo del dolore si configura come una delle principali terapie di supporto- è ormai disponibile , con un buon livello di affidabilità. Quello che è necessario è aumentare la capacità del Servizio Sanitario di trasferire nella pratica clinica e assistenziale i risultati della ricerca sulla efficacia delle cure. Questi i quesiti ai quali la ricerca ha inteso rispondere: a. Le competenze globalmente espresse dal servizio sanitario dell’Emilia Romagna sono adeguate per consentire un tempestivo, globale, appropriato ed efficace controllo del dolore oncologico, in tutte le fasi della malattia e lungo tutto il percorso di assistenza si a domiciliare che ospedaliero, per tutti i malati che ne hanno bisogno? b. Quali raccomandazioni possiamo fornire, basate sulle evidenze di efficacia, a clinici e gestori per migliorare l’identificazione del bisogno, la scelta del trattamento, il suo monitoraggio, la possibilità di garantirne l’accesso e la disponibilità non solo in ospedale ma anche a domicilio? c. Quale efficacia hanno dimostrato i percorsi di formazione relativi al riconoscimento e al controllo del dolore messi in atto finora? d. Quali percorsi possono essere raccomandati per mettere a disposizione dei cittadini le conoscenze scientifiche sul controllo del dolore oncologico?