Clinical Parameters and Epigenetic Biomarkers of Plaque Vulnerability in Patients with Carotid Stenosis

Atheromatous disease is the first cause of death and dependency in developed countries and carotid artery atherosclerosis is one of the main causes of severe ischaemic strokes. Current management strategies are mainly based on the degree of stenosis and patient selection has limited accuracy. This information could be complemented by the identification of biomarkers of plaque vulnerability, which would permit patients at greater and lesser risk of stroke to be distinguished, thus enabling a better selection of patients for surgical or intensive medical treatment. Although several circulating protein-based biomarkers with significance for both the diagnosis of carotid artery disease and its prognosis have been identified, at present, none have been clinically implemented. This review focuses especially on the most relevant clinical parameters to take into account in routine clinical practice and summarises the most up-to-date data on epigenetic biomarkers of carotid atherosclerosis and plaque vulnerability.     

Evaluation of the effect of probiotic cultures on two different yogurt brands over a known population of Staphylococcus aureus and the production of thermonuclease

The effect of probiotic cultures over known populations of Staphylococcus aureus inoculated in yogurt was studied; also the production and stability of its thermonuclease during yogurt storage was evaluated. In three different occasions, two different yogurt brands, one with additional probiotic cultures (Lactobacillus casei and L. acidophilus), were inoculated with known populations of S. aureus in high and low concentration (10(9) CFU/g and 10(7) CFU/g), respectively. These samples were stored for 28 days at 5 degrees C. Every four days the count of lactic bacteria, S. aureus and pH were evaluated, according to the methodology described in the Compendium of Methods for the Microbiological Examination of Foods, Vanderzant & Splittstoesser. The presence of thermonuclease was determined using petrifilm for S. aureus from 3M company. The pH and lactic bacteria population were constant during the testing period. Yogurt with additional probiotic cultures (high and low concentration) lowered the population of S. aureus to non detectable levels in 8 days; but, S. aureus could be cultured from yogurt without probiotics even after 24 days of incubation. Same time, the presence of thermonuclease was positive in all tests; it was not affected by probiotics. The presence of thermonuclease is related to the production of S. aureus enterotoxin. This work emphasizes again the beneficial effects of probiotic cultures in yogurt over bacteria and the importance of keeping hygienic practices in order to avoid the contamination of food with S. aureus and the eventual production of its enterotoxin, since it is not affected by probiotics.     

Low Communication Overhead Jacobi Algorithms for Eigenvalues Computation on Hypercubes

This paper presents some novel algorithms to implement the Jacobi method in hypercube multicomputers. The algorithms are based on the one-sided Jacobi method and use new Jacobi orderings, which are one of the contributions of this paper. The second contribution of this paper is the use of a systematic algorithm transformation, which is referred to as communication pipelining, and is aimed at reducing the communication overhead by exploiting parallelism in the communication operations. The proposed schemes are evaluated by means of analytical models and compared with previous proposals. The results show a significant reduction in the communication overhead, which in some cases can be by a factor almost as great as the number of dimensions of the hypercube.     

The ordered weighted average in the theory of expertons

This work presents a data-fusion mathematical object that incorporates the optimism level of a decision-making agent. The new fusion object is constructed by extending the ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator in the process of creating an experton. The main advantage of this approach is that it can represent the attitudinal character of the decision maker in the construction of the experton. Therefore, this approach represents a new method for addressing multiperson problems by using optimistic and pessimistic perspectives. The work presents different practical examples based on the absolute hierarchical relationships of the “minimum of the bottom end of the intervals,” “minimum of the top end of the intervals,” and “minimum size of the interval.” The work also considers a wide range of particular cases of the OWA-experton, including the minimum experton, the maximum experton, the average experton, and the olympic experton. In addition, the study presents software for the calculation of OWA-expertons. Finally, the paper ends with an application in business decision-making regarding the calculation of expected benefits.     

ITO‐Free and Flexible Organic Photovoltaic Device Based on High Transparent and Conductive Polyaniline/Carbon Nanotube Thin Films

The synthesis and characterization of thin films of polyaniline/carbon nanotubes nanocomposites is reported, as well as their utilization as transparent electrodes in ITO‐free organic photovoltaic devices. These films are generated by interfacial synthesis, which provides them with the unique ability to be deposited onto any substrate as transparent films, thus enabling the production of flexible solar cells using substrates like PET. Very high carbon nanotube loadings can be achieved using these films without significantly affecting their transparency (≈80–90% transmittance at 550 nm). Sheet resistances as low as 300 Ω/□ are obtained using secondary polyaniline doping in the presence of carbon nanotubes. These films present excellent mechanical stability, exhibiting no lack in performance after 100 bend cycles. Flexible and completely ITO‐free organic photovoltaic devices are built using these films as transparent electrodes, and high efficiencies (up to 2.27%) are achieved.