The role of platelet and plasma markers of antioxidant status and oxidative stress in thrombocytopenia among patients with vivax malaria

Malaria remains an important health problem in tropical countries like Brazil. Thrombocytopenia is the most common hematological disturbance seen in malarial infection. Oxidative stress (OS) has been implicated as a possible mediator of thrombocytopenia in patients with malaria. This study aimed to investigate the role of OS in the thrombocytopenia of Plasmodium vivax malaria through the measurement of oxidant and antioxidant biochemical markers in plasma and in isolated platelets. Eighty-six patients with P. vivax malaria were enrolled. Blood samples were analyzed for total antioxidant and oxidant status, albumin, total protein, uric acid, zinc, magnesium, bilirubin, total thiols, glutathione peroxidase (GPx), malondialdehyde (MDA), antibodies against mildly oxidized low-density lipoproteins (LDL-/nLDL ratio) and nitrite/nitrate levels in blood plasma and GPx and MDA in isolated platelets. Plasma MDA levels were higher in thrombocytopenic (TCP) (median 3.47; range 1.55-12.90 µmol/L) compared with the non-thrombocytopenic (NTCP) patients (median 2.57; range 1.95-8.60 µmol/L). Moreover, the LDL-/nLDL autoantibody ratio was lower in TCP (median 3.0; range 1.5-14.8) than in NTCP patients (median 4.0; range 1.9-35.5). Finally, GPx and MDA were higher in the platelets of TPC patients. These results suggest that oxidative damage of platelets might be important in the pathogenesis of thrombocytopenia found in P. vivax malaria as indicated by alterations of GPx and MDA.

Use of the pyrophosphatase activity as a reliable tonoplast marker in maize roots.

Membranes of maize (Zea mays L., cv LG 11) roots were fractionated by sucrose (in presence or absence of Mg2+) or dextran density gradient centrifugations and the locations of organelles were determined using marker enzymes. Latent UDPase was used as a Golgi marker, catalase for the peroxysomes, cytochrome c oxidase for the mitochondria, UDP-Gal-galactosyltransferase for the amyloplast membranes and NADH-cytochrome c reductase for the ER. Two markers were selected for the plasmalemma, the vanadate-sensitive ATPase and UDP-Glc-sterolglucosyltransferase. The distributions of the PPase and vacuolar ATPase were found to be similar after density gradient centrifugation. The PPase and vacuolar ATPase activities were clearly separated from almost all the other markers tested, however, a partial association of both activities with the ER cannot be completely ruled out. The PPase of maize roots is more active and easier to measure than the vacuolar ATPase and is therefore an excellent candidate for use as a tonoplast marker.

ACCEDA y BUSTREAMING : Integración de audio y video en el proceso de autoarchivo del Repositorio de la ULPGC en acceso abierto

Presentació de les dues noves plataformes desenvolupades per la Biblioteca de la Universitat de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: ACCEDA (documentació científica de la ULPGC en accés obert) i BUSTREAMING (documentació multimèdia). Aquestes són dues noves iniciatives de la Biblioteca Universitària emmarcades dins del moviment Open Access, que se sumen a la ja existent Memòria Digital de Canàries, que es va iniciar l'any 2003 amb molt d'èxit. Tot i que el programari utilitzat per al desenvolupament d'ACCEDA és DSpace, la Biblioteca Universitària ha implementat serveis als usuaris i administradors, com per exemple, la possibilitat de dipositar documents sense haver d'utilitzar l'autoarxivament i la incorporació de l'eina BUStreaming desenvolupada per la pròpia Biblioteca.

Disseny d'un cronòmetre i d'un freqüencímetre integrats en un NIOS controlats sobre μClinux

El projecte que es presenta permet analitzar els avantatges i inconvenients d’una programació orientada a hardware i d’una programació orientada a software a partir del desenvolupament de dos dissenys, un cronòmetre i un freqüencímetre en cadascun dels modes de programació. Donat que en les dues aplicacions es requereix alta precisió de temps (μs) i flexibilitat en el control, la solució final que es proposa és un disseny “mixt” amb dos mòduls hardware específics (cronòmetre i freqüencímetre) integrats en un NIOS/CPU sobre una FPGA. Els dos mòduls es controlen per software sobre un sistema Linux empotrat (μCLinux).

ICTINEUAUV wins the First SAUC-E competition

A pioneer team of students of the University of Girona decided to design and develop an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) called ICTINEU-AUV to face the Student Autonomous Underwater Challenge-Europe (SAUC-E). The prototype has evolved from the initial computer aided design (CAD) model to become an operative AUV in the short period of seven months. The open frame and modular design principles together with the compatibility with other robots previously developed at the lab have provided the main design philosophy. Hence, at the robot's core, two networked computers give access to a wide set of sensors and actuators. The Gentoo/Linux distribution was chosen as the onboard operating system. A software architecture based on a set of distributed objects with soft real time capabilities was developed and a hybrid control architecture including mission control, a behavioural layer and a robust map-based localization algorithm made ICTINEU-AUV the winning entry

Susceptibility and compatibility of Biomphalaria tenagophila from the Río de la Plata basin with Schistosoma mansoni from Brazil

Schistosomiasis has expanded to southern parts of Brazil. Between 2005-2007 the dispersion and the proliferation of Biomphalaria tenagophila was verified in the province of Corrientes near the Brazilian border. In order to study the possibility that schistosomiasis might spread into the basins of the Paraná and Uruguay Rivers, 440 B. tenagophila collected from 10 populations groups were experimentally exposed to infection with Schistosoma mansoni of the SJ2 strain. Snails from five localities were susceptible. Frandsen's index (TCP/100) shows that those snails from Mirungá (11%), Aguacerito (2%) and Curupicay (2%) were Class I and not very compatible. Meanwhile, snails from Copra (6%) and Pay-Ubre (22%), in the Paraná River basin, were Class II and poorly compatible.

Rex & Lex Abogados

Proyecto de migración y diseño de la infraestructura informática en una PYME, recogiendo sistemas diversos como son la publicación web junto a un gestor de contenidos, servicio de correo electrónico, etc.

Genetic variations in drug-induced liver injury (DILI): resolving the puzzle.

Despite stringent requirements for drug development imposed by regulatory agencies, drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is an increasing health problem and a significant cause for failure to approve drugs, market withdrawal of commercialized medications, and adoption of regulatory measures. The pathogenesis is yet undefined, though the rare occurrence of idiosyncratic DILI (1/100,000–1/10,000) and the fact that hepatotoxicity often recurs after re-exposure to the culprit drug under different environmental conditions strongly points toward a major role for genetic variations in the underlying mechanism and susceptibility. Pharmacogenetic studies in DILI have to a large extent focused on genes involved in drug metabolism, as polymorphisms in these genes may generate increased plasma drug concentrations as well as lower clearance rates when treated with standard medication doses. A range of studies have identified a number of genetic variants in drug metabolism Phase I, II, and III genes, including cytochrome P450 (CYP) 2E1, N-acetyltransferase 2, UDP-glucuronosyltransferase 2B7, glutathione S-transferase M1/T1, ABCB11, and ABCC2, that enhance DILI susceptibility (Andrade et al., 2009; Agundez et al., 2011). Several metabolic gene variants, such as CYP2E1c1 and NAT2 slow, have been associated with DILI induced by specific drugs based on individual drug metabolism information. Others, such as GSTM1 and T1 null alleles have been associated with enhanced risk of DILI development induced by a large range of drugs. Hence, these variants appear to have a more general role in DILI susceptibility due to their role in reducing the cell's antioxidative capacity (Lucena et al., 2008). Mitochondrial superoxide dismutase (SOD2) and glutathione peroxidase 1 (GPX1) are two additional enzymes involved in combating oxidative stress, with specific genetic variants shown to enhance the risk of developing DILI

Aplicació de visió per dispositius mòbils

En aquest projecte es presenta l’aplicació per a dispositius mòbils Doppelganger. La seva funció és, a partir d’una fotografia, detectar la cara i mostrar la persona famosa de la nostra base de dades que més s’assembla a la persona en la fotografia. Per la implementació s’han utilitzat algoritmes de visió per computador i d’aprenentatge automàtic com per exemple el PCA i el K-Nearest Neighbor, tot utilitzant llibreries gratuïtes com són les OpenCV.

Finanval

El objetivo de este TFC se centrará en la construcción de una calculadora especializada en la valoración de productos financieros (que hasta la fecha han estado restringidos a las tesorerías de banca o de algunas sociedades de inversión) en la plataforma GNU/Linux.

Optimización de los recursos de red de una organización mediante el uso de un servidor dedicado basado en software libre

Estudio de optimización de recursos de red basado en la utilización de un servidor dedicado gestionado mediante software libre.

Context switching accounting mechanism

How many times a given process p preempts, either voluntarily or involuntarily, is an important threat to computer's processes throughput. Whenever running cpu-bound processes on a multi-core system without an actual system grid engine as commonly found on Grid Clusters, their performance and stability are directly related to their accurate implementation and the system reliability which is, to an extend, an important caveat most of the times so difficult to detect. Context Switching is time-consuming. Thus, if we could develop a tool capable of detecting it and gather data from every single performed Context Switch, we would beable to study this data and present some results that should pin-point at whatever their main cause could be.

Catalogador de música MP3 y reproductor de música vía Web con búsquedas de música basadas en la definición de unas observaciones y emociones personales

El principal objetivo del proyecto es romper las fronteras de las búsquedas de canciones en las discotecas de los usuarios domésticos guardadas en los discos duros de sus PC's. Se pretende buscar canciones en base a unas observaciones personales (amigos, lugares, comentarios...) que habrán sido definidas previamente por el usuario, y el segundo tipo buscará canciones en base a las "emociones personales" que también serán definidas por el usuario.Como objetivos secundarios se plantea organizar automáticamente los archivos de audio MP3 almacenados en los ordenadores personales, reproducir los archivos de audio MP3 mediante streaming, un servicio que buscará enlaces web que contengan información/noticias de artistasálbumes, etc., y una agenda musical en la cual los usuarios podrán programar el aviso de observaciones personales

Aplicación de gestión de ficheros de configuración de Asterisk : Conexión de Asterisk con Google App corportativo

El objetivo de este trabajo es desarrollar una aplicación web que sirva de gestión de los aparatos conectados a la centralita Asterisk y generar los ficheros de configuración, tanto para los terminales como para el correcto funcionamiento de la centralita. Además, se instalará un servidor que conecte centralita y Google Apps para que los usuarios puedan usar el videochat de Gmail como softphone, permitiéndoles enviar y recibir llamadas a través de la centralita de la universidad en cualquier parte del mundo.

Búsqueda, selección e implantación de un sistema online de software libre para revisión por pares en congresos científicos

Este proyecto tiene como objetivo implementar un sistema libre bajo GNU/Linux para la recepción y evaluación de trabajos presentados a un congreso argentino sobre sistemas embebidos. Además, se piensa en un futuro en organizar un evento de software libre con revisión de pares, para lo cual sería coherente utilizar un sistema con licencia de software libre.