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Science misinformation represents a significant challenge for the scientific community. Hispanic communities are particularly vulnerable due to language barriers and the lack of accessible information in Spanish. We identified that a key step toward enhancing the accessibility of information for non-native English-speaking communities involves imparting science communication education and training to Hispanic youth. Our goal was to provide them with the skills to become science ambassadors who can effectively engage with their communities and bridge communication gaps. To address this, we developed the first science communication training program in Spanish for Hispanic high school and undergraduate students in Puerto Rico. The program called "+Ciencia" aims to provide training and education on science communication for Hispanic minorities through experiential and collaborative learning. In the short term, our multifaceted approach works to counter misinformation and promote science literacy within the broader community. Over the long term, our grassroots efforts with students will evolve into a generation of professionals equipped with strong engagement skills and comprehensive training in science communication with a specific focus on Hispanic audiences. Herein, we describe the components of this educational program and provide open access to educational materials and articles developed by three cohorts.

Developing and adopting strategies that preserve soil health from degradation due to drastic changes in climate is critical for securing sustainable viticulture. For example, healthy soils promote water infiltration, nutrient cycling, and retention functions that support grape production. However, little research has evaluated drivers of growers' decision-making processes and actions towards soil management practices that impact soil health in vineyards. The objective of this study was to assess wine grape growers' perceptions and attitudes of soil health to identify grower's most important soil health functions and definition, and to understand how these might influence behavior related to soil management practices. Therefore, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 wine grape growers understand current barriers, motivations, and opportunities for adopting and/or maintaining practices for building soil health in vineyards. Most growers described healthy vineyard soils as balanced, biodiverse, self-sustaining, and resilient systems that provide nutrient, and water cycling functions and support high-quality wine grape production. Three categories of growers emerged based on soil health attitudes including Early Adopter (n = 3), Early Majority (n = 4) and Late Majority (n = 9) groups. The main barriers for adoption and maintenance of soil health practices were high costs, potential economic risks, and lack of information on how these practices influence grape production especially for the Late Majority group. Most growers were willing to adopt more soil heath practices if additional specific, practical information could be provided on outcomes of soil health practices for wine grape production systems—especially economic benefits. The outcomes of this study guide future soil health research and outreach activities to better support growers in building and protecting vineyard soil health while achieving viticultural goals.

PURPOSE: Identifying molecular and immune features to guide immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI)-based regimens remains an unmet clinical need. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: Tissue and longitudinal blood specimens from phase III trial S1400I in patients with metastatic squamous non-small cell carcinoma (SqNSCLC) treated with nivolumab monotherapy (nivo) or nivolumab plus ipilimumab (nivo+ipi) were subjected to multi-omics analyses including multiplex immunofluorescence (mIF), nCounter PanCancer Immune Profiling Panel, whole-exome sequencing, and Olink. RESULTS: Higher immune scores from immune gene expression profiling or immune cell infiltration by mIF were associated with response to ICIs and improved survival, except regulatory T cells, which were associated with worse overall survival (OS) for patients receiving nivo+ipi. Immune cell density and closer proximity of CD8+GZB+ T cells to malignant cells were associated with superior progression-free survival and OS. The cold immune landscape of NSCLC was associated with a higher level of chromosomal copy-number variation (CNV) burden. Patients with LRP1B-mutant tumors had a shorter survival than patients with LRP1B-wild-type tumors. Olink assays revealed soluble proteins such as LAMP3 increased in responders while IL6 and CXCL13 increased in nonresponders. Upregulation of serum CXCL13, MMP12, CSF-1, and IL8 were associated with worse survival before radiologic progression. CONCLUSIONS: The frequency, distribution, and clustering of immune cells relative to malignant ones can impact ICI efficacy in patients with SqNSCLC. High CNV burden may contribute to the cold immune microenvironment. Soluble inflammation/immune-related proteins in the blood have the potential to monitor therapeutic benefit from ICI treatment in patients with SqNSCLC.

Prostate cancer (PCa) poses a significant challenge because of the difficulty in identifying aggressive tumors, leading to overtreatment and missed personalized therapies. Although only 8% of cases progress beyond the prostate, the accurate prediction of aggressiveness remains crucial. Thus, this study focused on studying retinoblastoma phosphorylated at Serine 249 (Phospho-Rb S249), N-cadherin, β-catenin, and E-cadherin as biomarkers for identifying aggressive PCa using a logistic regression model and a classification and regression tree (CART). Using immunohistochemistry (IHC), we targeted the expression of these biomarkers in PCa tissues and correlated their expression with clinicopathological data of the tumor. The results showed a negative correlation between E-cadherin and β-catenin with aggressive tumor behavior, whereas Phospho-Rb S249 and N-cadherin positively correlated with increased tumor aggressiveness. Furthermore, patients were stratified based on Gleason scores and E-cadherin staining patterns to evaluate their capability for early identification of aggressive PCa. Our findings suggest that the classification tree is the most effective method for measuring the utility of these biomarkers in clinical practice, incorporating β-catenin, tumor grade, and Gleason grade as relevant determinants for identifying patients with Gleason scores ≥ 4 + 3. This study could potentially benefit patients with aggressive PCa by enabling early disease detection and closer monitoring.

Abstract Recent advances in spatial transcriptomics (ST) techniques provide valuable insights into cellular interactions within the tumor microenvironment (TME). However, most analytical tools lack consideration of histological features and rely on matched single-cell RNA sequencing data, limiting their effectiveness in TME studies. To address this, we introduce the Morphology-Enhanced Spatial Transcriptome Analysis Integrator (METI), an end-to-end framework that maps cancer cells and TME components, stratifies cell types and states, and analyzes cell co-localization. By integrating spatial transcriptomics, cell morphology, and curated gene signatures, METI enhances our understanding of the molecular landscape and cellular interactions within the tissue. We evaluate the performance of METI on ST data generated from various tumor tissues, including gastric, lung, and bladder cancers, as well as premalignant tissues. We also conduct a quantitative comparison of METI with existing clustering and cell deconvolution tools, demonstrating METI’s robust and consistent performance.

El artículo examina la franquicia como modo de expansión internacional. Mediante la revisión de la literatura de impacto se analiza la adopción de un tipo de franquicia específico de acuerdo con el control ejercido por el franquiciador. En concreto, siguiendo la metodología del estudio de caso, se estudia la viabilidad comercial de la apertura de una franquicia de 100 Montaditos en Argentina, habida cuenta de esta oportunidad. Se concluye que se trata de un modelo de negocio innovador cuyos activos tangibles e intangibles brindan la solidez necesaria para que el proyecto pueda salir adelante. Asimismo, las condiciones y características del mercado gastronómico argentino suponen un segmento potencial de interés. Dado lo anterior, se sugiere la franquicia maestra para esta expansión.

Abstract Background and aims Stroke is the leading cause of adult-onset disability. Although clinical factors influence stroke outcome, there is a significant variability among individuals that may be attributed to genetics and epigenetics, including DNA methylation (DNAm). We aimed to study the association between DNAm and stroke prognosis. Methods and results To that aim, we conducted a two-phase study (discovery-replication and meta-analysis) in Caucasian patients with ischemic stroke from two independent centers (BasicMar [discovery, N = 316] and St. Pau [replication, N = 92]). Functional outcome was assessed using the modified Rankin Scale (mRS) at three months after stroke, being poor outcome defined as mRS > 2. DNAm was determined using the 450K and EPIC BeadChips in whole-blood samples collected within the first 24 h. We searched for differentially methylated positions (DMPs) in 370,344 CpGs, and candidates below p-value

The massive arrival of pelagic Sargassum on the coasts of several countries of the Atlantic Ocean began in 2011 and to date continues to generate social and environmental challenges for the region. Therefore, knowing the distribution and quantity of Sargassum in the ocean, coasts, and beaches is necessary to understand the phenomenon and develop protocols for its management, use, and final disposal. In this context, the present study proposes a methodology to calculate the area Sargassum occupies on beaches in square meters, based on the semantic segmentation of aerial images using the pix2pix architecture. For training and testing the algorithm, a unique dataset was built from scratch, consisting of 15,268 aerial images segmented into three classes. The images correspond to beaches in the cities of Mahahual and Puerto Morelos, located in Quintana Roo, Mexico. To analyze the results the fβ-score metric was used. The results for the Sargassum class indicate that there is a balance between false positives and false negatives, with a slight bias towards false negatives, which means that the algorithm tends to underestimate the Sargassum pixels in the images. To know the confidence intervals within which the algorithm performs better, the results of the f0.5-score metric were resampled by bootstrapping considering all classes and considering only the Sargassum class. From the above, we found that the algorithm offers better performance when segmenting Sargassum images on the sand. From the results, maps showing the Sargassum coverage area along the beach were designed to complement the previous ones and provide insight into the field of study.

Resumo O artigo discute as tensões que surgem no processo da migração e da imersão linguística, através de uma autoetnografia. A partir da experiência da autora, migrante latino-americana no Brasil, discute-se o quanto uma certa ideia de “domínio da língua” que rejeita certos sotaques e formas de expressividade, pode ser um instrumento de poder e espaço da colonialidade sobre sujeito migrante e sua identidade híbrida. Como a identidade migrante e sua “fala com sotaque” nos interpela? Qual o estranhamento que gera e por quê? São algumas das perguntas-incitações que orientam as reflexões. Como parte da discussão analisa-se a necessidade de reivindicar a língua como um lugar diverso, que pode acolher ou (des)acolher, bem como propor novas formas de pensar e politizar a diversidade cultural, viabilizando uma ideia de interculturalidade. Estabelecendo-se como uma política cultural crítica aos modelos de Estado, Democracia e Nação que pretendem apagar a diversidade dos povos e nacionalidades.

La sociedad se encuentra en la cuarta revolución industrial, caracterizada por la transformación digital y la interconexión de sistemas inteligentes. Este cambio ha impactado en diversos ámbitos, como lo económico, político, social y educativo, fusionando tecnologías y desdibujando las fronteras entre lo físico, lo digital y lo biológico. La pandemia de COVID-19 ha acelerado el proceso, dando paso a lo que se ha denominado “la nueva normalidad”. En el contexto argentino, este fenómeno está en una etapa incipiente, con una adopción parcial y limitada de tecnologías, especialmente en áreas comerciales y administrativas, en particular en PYMES. Para lograr una imagen completa del fenómeno, esta revisión exploratoria tiene como objetivo identificar y presentar la información empírica disponible sobre cuál es el impacto de la transformación digital en la gestión o modelos de negocios utilizados por empresas argentinas. Se realizó una revisión de alcance o scoping review, que nos permitió describir y mapear artículos publicados en revistas científicas, apoyado en un Diagrama PRISMA. Se concluye que los desafíos para iniciar procesos de transformación digital son múltiples, destacando la necesidad de cambios estructurales en las organizaciones, la formación digital de los trabajadores y profesionales, así como la promoción de la cultura de innovación.

Abstract Barth syndrome (BTHS) is a rare disorder caused by mutations in the TAFAZZIN gene. Previous studies from both patients and model systems have established metabolic dysregulation as a core component of BTHS pathology. In particular, features such as lactic acidosis, pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) deficiency, and aberrant fatty acid and glucose oxidation have been identified. However, the lack of a mechanistic understanding of what causes these conditions in the context of BTHS remains a significant knowledge gap, and this has hindered the development of effective therapeutic strategies for treating the associated metabolic problems. In the current study, we utilized tafazzin-knockout C2C12 mouse myoblasts (TAZ-KO) and cardiac and skeletal muscle tissue from tafazzin-knockout mice to identify an upstream mechanism underlying impaired PDH activity in BTHS. This mechanism centers around robust upregulation of pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase 4 (PDK4), resulting from hyperactivation of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and subsequent transcriptional upregulation by forkhead box protein O1 (FOXO1). Upregulation of PDK4 in tafazzin-deficient cells causes direct phospho-inhibition of PDH activity accompanied by increased glucose uptake and elevated intracellular glucose concentration. Collectively, our findings provide a novel mechanistic framework whereby impaired tafazzin function ultimately results in robust PDK4 upregulation, leading to impaired PDH activity and likely linked to dysregulated metabolic substrate utilization. This mechanism may underlie previously reported findings of BTHS-associated metabolic dysregulation.

The adjusted precision of economic values is essential in the global economy. In recent years, researchers have increased their interest in making accurate predictions in this type of time series; one of the reasons is that the characteristics of this type of time series makes predicting a complicated task due to its non-linear nature. The evolution of artificial neural network models enables us to research the suitability of models generated for other purposes, applying their potential to time series prediction with promising results. Specifically, in this field, the application of transformer models is assuming an innovative approach with great results. To improve the performance of this type of networks, in this work, the empirical model decomposition (EMD) methodology was used as data preprocessing for prediction with a transformer type network. The results confirmed a better performance of this approach compared to networks widely used in this field, the bidirectional long short term memory (BiLSTM), and long short term memory (LSTM) networks using and without EMD preprocessing, as well as the comparison of a Transformer network without applying EMD to the data, with a lower error in all the error metrics used: The root mean square error (RMSE), the root mean square error (MSE), the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), and the R-square (R2). Finding a model that provides results that improve the literature allows for a greater adjustment in the predictions with minimal preprocessing.

La hipertensión pulmonar tromboembólica crónica (HPTEC) es un subtipo de hipertensión pulmonar caracterizada por la obstrucción de las arterias pulmonares secundaria a tromboembolias crónicas. La cirugía de tromboendarterectomía pulmonar (TEAP) es el tratamiento principal para los pacientes con HPTEC, elimina los trombos crónicos de las arterias pulmonares. El síndrome de reperfusión pulmonar es una complicación común de la cirugía, se trata del desarrollo de edema pulmonar en el área en la que la perfusión sanguínea mejora después de la cirugía. La incidencia del síndrome varía del 8 al 91% según los criterios utilizados para diagnosticarlo y es una de las complicaciones más graves de la tromboendarterectomía pulmonar. En tales casos, el soporte circulatorio con oxigenación por membrana extracorpórea (ECMO) se ha convertido en una valiosa modalidad terapéutica. Presentamos el caso de una paciente de 60 años de edad con antecedente de tromboembolia pulmonar aguda secundaria a trombosis venosa profunda de miembro pélvico derecho a quien durante el seguimiento se realizó el diagnóstico de HPTEC e ingresó de manera programada para tratamiento quirúrgico con realización de TEAP bilateral, sin embargo durante el posquirúrgico inmediato presentó choque cardiogénico e hipoxemia refractaria secundarios a síndrome de reperfusión pulmonar, por lo cual requirió soporte circulatorio con ECMO venovenosa durante seis días, con resolución del cuadro pulmonar y mejoría clínica.