Mast Cell Chymase and Kidney Disease

A sizable part (~2%) of the human genome encodes for proteases. They are involved in many physiological processes, such as development, reproduction and inflammation, but also play a role in pathology. Mast cells (MC) contain a variety of MC specific proteases, the expression of which may differ between various MC subtypes. Amongst these proteases, chymase represents up to 25% of the total proteins in the MC and is released from cytoplasmic granules upon activation. Once secreted, it cleaves the targets in the local tissue environment, but may also act in lymph nodes infiltrated by MC, or systemically, when reaching the circulation during an inflammatory response. MC have been recognized as important components in the development of kidney disease. Based on this observation, MC chymase has gained interest following the discovery that it contributes to the angiotensin-converting enzyme’s independent generation of angiotensin II, an important inflammatory mediator in the development of kidney disease. Hence, progress regarding its role has been made based on studies using inhibitors but also on mice deficient in MC protease 4 (mMCP-4), the functional murine counterpart of human chymase. In this review, we discuss the role and actions of chymase in kidney disease. While initially believed to contribute to pathogenesis, the accumulated data favor a more subtle view, indicating that chymase may also have beneficial actions.     

Transport Map sampling with PGD model reduction for fast dynamical Bayesian data assimilation

The motivation of this work is to address real-time sequential inference of parameters with a full Bayesian formulation. First, the proper generalized decomposition (PGD) is used to reduce the computational evaluation of the posterior density in the online phase. Second, Transport Map sampling is used to build a deterministic coupling between a reference measure and the posterior measure. The determination of the transport maps involves the solution of a minimization problem. As the PGD model is quasi-analytical and under a variable separation form, the use of gradient and Hessian information speeds up the minimization algorithm. Eventually, uncertainty quantification on outputs of interest of the model can be easily performed due to the global feature of the PGD solution over all coordinate domains. Numerical examples highlight the performance of the method.     

Baclofen: intestinal absorption mechanism in mice

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a multisystem organ disease, and involvement of the gastrointestinal system is relatively rare. We describe a 13-year-old girl who presented initially with abdominal pain, diarrhea, edema, and hypoalbuminemia. She was diagnosed with protein losing enteropathy (PLE) based on the significant increase of alpha 1-antitrypsin clearance in the stool. Two weeks after admission she developed clinical and serological findings that fulfilled the ACR criteria for SLE. Over 22 cases of lupus associated PLE have now been reported, but only 3 in children. Children with PLE should be evaluated for SLE. In addition, PLE should be suspected as a possible cause of unexplained edema and/or hypoalbuminemia in SLE.     

Influence of the intrinsic layer characteristics on a-Si:H p–i–n solar cell performance analysed by means of a computer simulation

In this paper a set of one-dimensional simulations of a-Si:H p–i–n junctions under different illumination conditions and with different intrinsic layer are presented. The simulation program ASCA permits the analysis of the internal electrical behaviour of the cell allowing a comparison among the different internal configurations determined by a change in the input set. Results about the internal electric configuration will be presented and discussed outlining their influence on the current tension characteristic curve. Considerations about the drift–diffusion and the generation–recombination balance distributions, outlined by the simulation, can be used to explain the correlation between the basic device output, the i-layer characteristics (thickness and DOS), the incident radiation intensity and photon energy.     

Study of the hydrolysis and condensation of γ-Aminopropyltriethoxysilane by FT-IR spectroscopy

The hydrolysis and condensation reactions of γ-APS have been studied in different acid content aqueous solution by using Fourier Transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. The hydrolysis of γ-APS under the studied conditions can be followed by the increase of the ethanol band located at 882 cm⁻¹ and the decrease of the band due to the ρ(CH₃) of γ-APS molecules located at 959 cm⁻¹. Hydrolysis reaction is faster by increasing both H₂O and acid concentrations, and it is completed when 3 moles of H₂O per mole of γ-APS are used. The increase of the vibrational band located at 1146 cm⁻¹ shows that condensation of the hydrolysed γ-APS molecules take place forming linear chains in poorly cross-linked structures. Besides, both 8-membered cyclic siloxane formations and poorly cross-linked structures are formed and increase as the water and acid content are increased. On the other hand, highly connected cross-linked structures do not appear due to the steric hindrance of the non-hydrolysable aminopropyl group. The silanol band shows that hydrolysis is faster than condensation except for samples with the lowest H₂O content.     

Health status of the over 60 years of age population and its relationship with sociodemographic factors (ANCO Project)

OBJECTIVE: To describe the health status of a population over 60 years and to study their relationship with several socio-demographic variables. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study, population based. SETTINGS: A community. PARTICIPANTS: A randomized sample of 1,103 non institutionalized people over 60 years living in the city of Cordoba (Spain). MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: By mean of a personal interview at home we used the OARS-MFAQ-VE questionnaire. Low self-rated health was associated with the age, to be female sex, a low cultural background, and a low income. Only 5.2% of the study people do not suffered any illness and 56% state that their health problems are major problems for doing their current activities. 4.9% declared to have some degree of physical incapacity. 3.7% of elderly population has an important cognitive deficit. CONCLUSIONS: The majority of elderly people has good health. Age is related with a poor health. Women have more health problems than men.     

Design and implementation of a 5×5 trits multiplier in aquasi-adiabatic ternary CMOS logic

Adiabatic switching is a technique to design low-power digital IC's. Fully adiabatic logics have expensive silicon area requirements. To solve this drawback, a quasi-adiabatic ternary logic is proposed. Its basis is presented, and to validate its performance, a 5×5 ternary digit multiplier is designed and implemented in a 0.7-μm CMOS technology. Results show a satisfactory power saving with respect to conventional and other quasi-adiabatic binary multipliers, and a decrease of the area needed with respect to a fully adiabatic binary one