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Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), which makes up about 70% of the cholesterol in the blood, is critical in the formation of arteriosclerotic plaques, increasing the risk of heart disease. LDL-C levels are estimated using Friedewald, Martin and Sampson equations, though they have limitations with high triglycerides. Our aim is to compare the effectiveness of these equations versus the ultracentrifugation technique in individuals with and without dyslipidemia and identify precision. There were 113 participants, 59 healthy controls and 54 dyslipidemic patients. Samples were collected after fasting. LDL-C was estimated using the Friedewald, Martin and Sampson equations. The purified LDL-C, ultracentrifugated and dialysized control group without dyslipidemia vs. patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) showed differences in age, HDL-C, triglycerides and glucose non-HDL-C (p = 0.001 in all). There were correlations in CGWD between ultracentrifugation and Sampson R-squared (R2) = 0.791. In the dyslipidemia control group, ultracentrifugation and Friedewald R2 = 0.911. In patients with CAD, correlation between ultracentrifugation and Sampson R2 = 0.892; Bland–Altman confirmed agreement in controls without dyslipidemia. The Martin and Sampson equations are interchangeable with ultracentrifugation. Conclusion: The role of LDL analysis using precise techniques is necessary to obtain better control of disease outcomes after the use of precise therapies and suggests verifying its importance through clinical trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic tourism refers to travel activities in higher education contexts. This study has focused on the University of Barcelona (Spain) as an outbound market for international academic tourism. Three specific objectives were set to investigate the demographic profile of outgoing students, their tourist behaviour, and the impacts of their academic mobility. This mixed methods exploratory research entailed conducting a survey among a convenience sample of 70 outgoing students, whose responses were processed through descriptive and inferential SPSS statistical analyses. Additionally, a virtual focus group took place with 3 outgoing students and 3 members of staff from higher education international offices. Content analysis was carried out by means of QDA Miner Lite. The main results indicate that the major push factor was personal growth, followed by the search for new experiences, and linguistic-cultural development, while the principal pull factors were the local language, culture, and tourist attractions. Students mostly stayed at residence halls and rented apartments, used external catering services two or three times a week, and public transport was frequently used. Cultural, nightlife, and gastronomic activities were prioritised. For the majority, monthly expenditure on accommodation ranged between €200 and more than €800. Other additional expenses exceeded €200 for approximately half of our respondents, and nearly a third received some institutional financial support. Study-abroad sojourns enhanced students’ autonomy, self-confidence, responsibility, self-knowledge, tolerance, open-mindedness, and knowledge of the local culture. The international mobility experience predominantly met and even surpassed the participants’ previous expectations. In conclusion, our findings support the presumed sustainability of academic tourism in comparison to mass tourism. However, the limited representativeness of the sample must be acknowledged, so this study should be considered as a first step towards future expanded investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we evaluate how ChatGPT complements and enriches the traditional flipped learning strategy in higher education, particularly in engineering courses. Using an experimental design involving 356 students from basic programming courses in undergraduate engineering programs, we compared the normalized learning gain between groups that used the ChatGPT-assisted flipped learning strategy (focus groups) and those that followed a traditional video-based flipped learning methodology (control groups). The intervention lasted ten weeks, with two sessions of two hours each week. A pre-test–post-test analysis revealed that the focus groups showed significant improvement in normalized learning gain values compared to the control groups. These results confirm that incorporating ChatGPT into the flipped learning strategy can significantly enhance student performance by providing a more active, interactive, and personalized approach during the teaching–learning process. We conclude that the flipped learning strategy, upgraded with the assistance of ChatGPT, provides an effective means to improve understanding and application of complex concepts in programming courses, with potential to be extended to other areas of study in higher education. This study opens routes for future research on the integration of artificial intelligence into innovative pedagogical strategies with the goal of scaffolding the learning experience and improving educational outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While literature suggests more aggressive cigarette tax reforms to reduce its affordability as well as the tobacco epidemic the tobacco industry argues that these measures, would affect the economy. The goal of this study is to analyze the size of the tobacco sector in Mexico through specific relevant variables on prices and brands and simulate different tobacco excise reforms. An increase in tobacco taxes would indeed decrease consumption and would increase revenues as well, when considering different and recent tobacco price elasticities. Elasticity was estimated for the year 2020 and changes on prices were computed by considering the most recent tobacco tax reforms in 2021 which updated the price according to rise on inflation and two additional reforms by using distinct cigarette brands. The results indicate that a specific tax of an additional peso and $1.50 pesos per cigarette would reduce consumption in the range from 21.7% to 27.7% and increase revenues from 13.4% to 22.7%. The novelty of this work is that the greatest reduction in consumption would be observed in lower-priced brands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residency and site fidelity are important parameters in population ecology for many species as they indicate the temporal and spatial use for individuals. Although both terms are clearly different, they are used interchangeably due to lack of clarity in their definitions and the ways to assess them, especially in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops spp.). Individuals with well-defined patterns of residency and site fidelity may be more vulnerable to anthropogenic disturbances; thus, the study of these parameters may help to better assess such impacts. However, interspecific differences and logistical restrictions for the study of dolphins have prevented consensus. We set out to investigate the factors that have influenced measurements of residency and site fidelity in bottlenose and a set of other dolphin species through a retrospective (~30 y: 1990 to 2019) literature review. We found 117 scientific papers with a two-fold increasing trend approximately every 15 years, with 50% published in only four journals. Most of the studies were developed in the United States, followed by Australia and Europe, likely due to strict policies for marine mammal conservation. Author collaboration network analysis showed highly atomized national groups in which North American organizations formed the biggest cluster, followed by Australia, Africa, and Europe. However, large worldwide gaps still exist, possibly because of the heterogeneity in marine mammal sampling efforts and limited information availability in the North Pacific, Central and South America, Africa, Asia, and the Indian Ocean. We found 30 different classification methods in which 12 were based on defined categories. We provide conceptual aid to distinguish between the use of both terms, as well as guidance to tackle the challenge of defining patterns of temporal use due to the variability of thresholds for classifying individuals. A paradigm shift is needed to create comprehensive, standardized, and generalized assessments of residency and site fidelity, which can be compared based on their performance across different populations of bottlenose dolphins around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Santo Domingo Diocesan School (Orihuela, SE Spain) is a singular case study that relates air quality monitoring and stone conservation. The monument suffers severe damage due to salt crystallization by rising damp, which is related to the indoor environment dynamics, high groundwater salt content, and microstructure, the building’s porous stone (biocalcarenite). Results revealed that 222Rn concentration in indoor air is low due to the building’s high ventilation rate, despite the medium-low geogenic radon potential in the area. Wavelets analysis showed that ventilation is caused by outdoor and indoor temperature variations and directly affects the 222Rn and CO2 dynamics inside the church. CO2, as well as relative humidity (RH), presented periodicities with intermediate frequencies (5–8 days) related to visits. These RH and temperature (T) variations intensified the salt damage by increasing the frequency of dissolution-crystallization cycles. The mineralogical characterization and geochemical calculations concluded that chlorides (halite and sylvite), sulfates (thenardite, epsomite, hexahydrite and aphthitalite) and nitrates (niter) present from dissolution forms to whiskers and hopper-type morphologies. This indicates high saturation values and, therefore, higher crystallization pressure values within the porous media of the biocalcarenite. On the contrary, the near-equilibrium crystal shape and incongruent precipitation reaction for humberstonite suggest a lower alteration for this salt on the building stone.

En el presente texto se aborda la relevancia de la teoría del valor de Marx, el concepto de trabajo y la crítica a la sociedad capitalista, el concepto de socialismo como organización racional de la sociedad y la economía, de cara a la cuestión queer y las luchas feministas. Inicialmente, se explora el ensayo “Marxismo y feminismo” de Marcuse, en relación con su teoría crítica; se resaltan los aspectos en donde Marcuse, autor de la teoría crítica, adoptó un enfoque feminista. Se exponen elementos fundamentales sobre la perspectiva de género y teoría queer encontrados en la obra de Marcuse y, en un momento conclusivo, se responde a una cuestión concreta generada en el diálogo con el texto: ¿Qué es el marxismo queer? Se resalta el valor de la obra de Marcuse para los estudios de género y queer.

In recent years, the World Languages field has witnessed an increased interest in service-learning (SL) initiatives. Many SL projects focus on the potential that Spanish-speaking communities offer students of Spanish, as a foreign language, to increase their language skills and cultural understanding of these communities. Some authors, however, have expressed reservations about the instrumentalist perspective of the community that some SL initiatives adopt. In addition, the presence of Spanish heritage language learners (HLL) in Spanish classrooms has driven researchers and instructors to rethink the learning objectives of SL. In recent years, some SL proposals have appeared around the critical examination of the social construction of language issues and dominant language ideologies. Despite the benefits for the linguistic, sociolinguistic, and cultural self-esteem and empowerment of Spanish HLL, one of the main challenges and limitations that has been identified in SL courses is the reinforcement of critical attitudes about the Latino community and the resilience of standard language ideologies. The goal of this study was to explore the ways Spanish HLL interact with language issues in their own community and to examine how students negotiate the critical perspective of language acquired in the classroom with language ideologies generally assumed and expressed by the community.

Transcriptional elongation requires the concerted action of several factors that allow RNA polymerase II to advance through chromatin in a highly processive manner. In order to identify novel elongation factors, we performed systematic yeast genetic screen

Marcuse, como miembro espiritual de la Escuela de Fráncfort, o como impulsor de la teoría crítica, en textos como Eros y civilización, Ensayo sobre la liberación y Tolerancia represiva, elabora una crítica materialista a la civilización occidental, partiendo de la dialéctica de Hegel, la crítica a la economía política de Marx, la ontología existencial de Heidegger, la crítica dionisíaca de Nietzsche a Occi- dente, y el psicoanálisis de Freud. La excesiva represión y el ordenamiento de lo económico para la mera consolidación de una economía de producción, circu- lación y consumo de bienes capitalistas son el motivo material que conduce a Marcuse a concebir la necesidad de estrategias contraculturales que respondan a la violencia extrema y barbárica que impone la modernidad capitalista en lo social.

En este trabajo se analiza la novela El cielo de Madrid de Julio Llamazares como una crónica sobre la Transición española que se construye mediante una (re)significación de los espacios. Esta ficción forma parte de las novelas de la memoria que cuestionan el discurso oficial que ha construido la historia española, en particular el periodo de la Transición, como una realidad inalterable; la nueva interpretación del tiempo y de la historia que la novela propone se basa en una perspectiva postmoderna de la realidad y del individuo quien, en su intento de reconstruir su pasado, se enfrenta a tensiones en torno a la verdad y al significado del tiempo. En su deseo de definir el periodo de la Transición y de luchar contra la amnesia que padece la nueva sociedad española, el protagonista de la novela concluye que la memoria es la única vía posible de recrear su pasado y su identidad como sujeto histórico. Es, además un espacio subjetivo que se re-inventa constantemente y presenta una visión propia de la historia. La escritura de la memoria, por lo tanto, no es solamente el medio para para afirmar, transgredir y cuestionar los discursos y mitos que la construyen, sino también se convierte en puente o entre-espacio entre la realidad y la imaginación al realizar los mismos procesos.

Advanced gastric cancer is one of the most thrombogenic neoplasms. However, genetic mechanisms underlying this complication remain obscure, and the molecular and histological heterogeneity of this neoplasm hinder the identification of thrombotic biomarkers. Therefore, our main objective was to identify genes related to thrombosis regardless of Lauren subtypes. Furthermore, in a secondary exploratory study, we seek to discover thrombosis-associated genes that were specific to each TCGA molecular subtype. We designed a nested case-control study using the cohort of the AGAMENON national advanced gastric cancer registry. Ninety-seven patients were selected—48 with and 49 without venous thromboembolism (using propensity score matching to adjust for confounding factors)—and a differential gene expression array stratified by Lauren histopathological subtypes was carried out in primary tumor samples. For the secondary objective, the aforementioned differential expression analysis was conducted for each TCGA group. Fifteen genes were determined to be associated with thrombosis with the same expression trend in both the intestinal and diffuse subtypes. In thrombotic subjects, CRELD1, KCNH8, CRYGN, MAGEB16, SAA1, ARL11, CCDC169, TRMT61A, RIPPLY3 and PLA2G6 were underexpressed (adjusted-p < 0.05), while PRKD3, MIR5683, SDCBP, EPS8 and CDC45 were overexpressed (adjusted-p < 0.05), and correlated, by logistic regression, with lower or higher thrombotic risk, respectively, in the overall cohort. In each TCGA molecular subtype, we identified a series of genes differentially expressed in thrombosis that appear to be subtype-specific. We have identified several genes associated with venous thromboembolism in advanced gastric cancer that are common to Lauren intestinal and diffuse subtypes. Should these genetic factors be validated in the future, they could be complemented with existing clinical models to bolster the ability to predict thrombotic risk in individuals with advanced gastric adenocarcinoma.