Design of Intervention Program for Preventing of Alcohol Misuse in University Students

In the Universidad de Oriente of Santiago de Cuba, recent diagnoses showed there is currently an increase in the rate of young people who consume alcoholic beverages. Therefore, the present research has like General Objective: To design a psychoeducational intervention program to prevent the undue consumption of alcohol in the Student Residence of the University of the East of Santiago de Cuba. Techniques such as Composition, Risk Perception Questionnaire on Alcohol Consumption, Social Skills Questionnaire and Preference Questionnaire for leisure time have used. The main results were that 94% of these young people had a low perception of risk on alcohol consumption and only 15% were able to identify the main negative consequences associated with consumption. 96% had insufficient development of social skills, which is associated with the poor ability to resist the pressure of the group

Influence of strand rupture on flexural behavior of reduced-scale prestressed concrete bridge girders with different prestressing levels

In prestressed concrete (PC) bridges, high-strength prestressing steel plays a key role in the flexural response of girders. In both pre-stressed and post-tensioned PC bridge girders, damage induced by corrosion or impact of under-passing high vehicles may led to rupture of one or more strands, significantly affecting the load-carrying capacity against dead and traffic loads. This paper presents an experimental study on the response of PC girders affected by strand rupture at different locations. Four reduced-scale post-tensioned concrete girders with different levels of initial prestressing force were tested under four-point bending. Two specimens with a different level of prestress were initially tested in undamaged configuration to provide a basis for the assessment of damage effects. The other pair of specimens were intentionally damaged - having the same initial prestressing level of their undamaged counterparts - in the lower tendon to investigate their limited flexural response under different performance levels including serviceability and collapse. Damage turned into a different critical cross section outside the loading region, i.e. both cracking and collapse were attained 1.1 m away from midspan. In the last section of the paper, a cross sectional analysis of the girder was developed at cracking and ultimate conditions for the prediction of damage impact on failure mechanisms, thus validating the experimental findings

Cyclic Behavior of HPFRCC Coupling Beams with Bundled Diagonal Bars

Coupled shear walls are efficient in resisting lateral forces induced by winds and earthquakes. However, it is difficult to construct coupled shear walls particularly because current design codes require complex reinforcing details within coupling beams. The objective of this study was to develop simple reinforcement details for diagonally reinforced coupling beams; reducing transverse steel by use of high-performance fiber-reinforced cementitious composites (HPFRCCs) and bundling diagonal bars are explored. Four coupling beam specimens with length-to-depth aspect ratios of 2.0 or 3.5 were fabricated and tested under cyclic lateral displacements. The test results revealed that HPFRCC coupling beams with bundled diagonal bars and widely spaced transverse reinforcement (one-half the amount of reinforcement required by current seismic codes) exhibited excellent seismic performance compared with ordinary concrete coupling beams having code-required distributed diagonal reinforcement and transverse reinforcement

Learning progressions: An overview and how-to guide for researchers in physics education

Learning progressions are a well established model in science education research to represent the learning process. It lies at the heart of the learning progressions the idea that students develop their knowledge of a subject from naive conceptions and, through a series of intermediate stages of increasingly sophisticated understanding, come to master a scientifically correct body of knowledge. Starting from a learning progression, it is possible to develop entire curricula and large-scale evaluation tools based on empirical data. We will present a review of the literature on learning progressions and discuss possible implications for research in physics education and teaching practice

F4-Neuroprostane Effects on Human Sperm

Swim-up selected human sperm were incubated with 7 ng F4-neuroprostanes (F4-NeuroPs) for 2 and 4 h. Sperm motility and membrane mitochondrial potential (MMP) were evaluated. The percentage of reacted acrosome was assessed by pisum sativum agglutinin (PSA). Chromatin integrity was detected using the acridine orange (AO) assay and localization of the ryanodine receptor was performed by immunofluorescence analysis. Sperm progressive motility (p = 0.02) and the percentage of sperm showing a strong MMP signal (p = 0.012) significantly increased after 2 h F4-NeuroP incubation compared to control samples. The AO assay did not show differences in the percentage of sperm with dsDNA between treated or control samples. Meanwhile, a significantly higher number of sperm with reacted acrosomes was highlighted by PSA localization after 4 h F4-NeuroP incubation. Finally, using an anti-ryanodine antibody, the immunofluorescence signal was differentially distributed at 2 and 4 h: a strong signal was evident in the midpiece and postacrosomal sheath (70% of sperm) at 2 h, whereas a dotted one appeared at 4 h (53% of sperm). A defined concentration of F4-NeuroPs in seminal fluid may induce sperm capacitation via channel ions present in sperm cells, representing an aid during in vitro sperm preparation that may increase the positive outcome of assisted fertilization

Oxygen radical-mediated oxidation reactions of an alanine peptide motif - density functional theory and transition state theory study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Oxygen-base (O-base) oxidation in protein backbone is important in the protein backbone fragmentation due to the attack from reactive oxygen species (ROS). In this study, an alanine peptide was used model system to investigate this O-base oxidation by employing density functional theory (DFT) calculations combining with continuum solvent model. Detailed reaction steps were analyzed along with their reaction rate constants.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Most of the O-base oxidation reactions for this alanine peptide are exothermic except for the bond-breakage of the C_α-N bond to form hydroperoxy alanine radical. Among the reactions investigated in this study, the activated energy of OH α-H abstraction is the lowest one, while the generation of alkylperoxy peptide radical must overcome the highest energy barrier. The aqueous situation facilitates the oxidation reactions to generate hydroxyl alanine peptide derivatives except for the fragmentations of alkoxyl alanine peptide radical. The C_α-C_βbond of the alkoxyl alanine peptide radical is more labile than the peptide bond.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>the rate-determining step of oxidation in protein backbone is the generation of hydroperoxy peptide radical via the reaction of alkylperoxy peptide radical with HO₂. The stabilities of alkylperoxy peptide radical and complex of alkylperoxy peptide radical with HO₂are crucial in this O-base oxidation reaction.</p

A pyrene-inhibitor fluorescent probe with large stokes shift for the staining of Aβ1–42, α-synuclein, and amylin amyloid fibrils as well as amyloid-containing staphylococcus aureus biofilms

Amyloid fibrils formed by a variety of peptides are biological markers of different human diseases, such as Alzheimer, Parkinson or Type II diabetes, and are structural constituents of bacterial biofilms. Novel fluorescent probes offering improved sensitivity or specificity towards that diversity of amyloid fibrils, or providing alternative spectral windows are needed to improve the detection or the identification of amyloid structures. One potential source for such new probes is offered by molecules known to interact with fibrils, such as the inhibitors of amyloid aggregation found in drug discovery projects. Here, we show the feasibility of the approach by designing, synthesizing and testing several pyrene-based fluorescent derivatives of a previously discovered inhibitor of the aggregation of the Aβ1-42 peptide. All the derivatives tested retain the interaction with the amyloid architecture and allow its staining. The more soluble derivative, compound 1D, stains similarly well amyloid fibrils formed by Aβ1-42, α-synuclein or amylin, provides a sensitivity only slightly lower than that of Thioflavin T, displays a large Stokes shift, allows an efficient excitation in the UV spectral region,and it is not cytotoxic. Compound 1D can also stain amyloid fibrils formed by Staphylococcal peptides present in biofilm matrices and can be used to distinguish, by direct staining,S. aureus biofilms containing amyloid forming phenol soluble modulins from those lacking them.IL is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness grant BIO2014-53530-R. SVis supported by grant BIO2016-783-78310-R and by ICREA (ICREA Academia 2015). MDD is supported by the Government of Aragon (GA E-102). JS is supported by grants BFU2016-78232-P (MINECO, Spain) and E45_17R (Gobierno de Aragón, Spain). JS and IL acknowledge financial support from grant CI-2017/001-3 (Campus Iberus, Spain). AM was a recipient of a predoctoral FPU fellowship from the Spanish Government

MS-based targeted profiling of oxylipins in COVID-19: A new insight into inflammation regulation

The key role of inflammation in COVID-19 induced many authors to study the cytokine storm, whereas the role of other inflammatory mediators such as oxylipins is still poorly understood. IMPRECOVID was a monocentric retrospective observational pilot study with COVID-19 related pneumonia patients (n = 52) admitted to Pisa University Hospital between March and April 2020. Our MS-based analytical platform permitted the simultaneous determination of sixty plasma oxylipins in a single run at ppt levels for a comprehensive characterisation of the inflammatory cascade in COVID-19 patients. The datasets containing oxylipin and cytokine plasma levels were analysed by principal component analysis (PCA), computation of Fisher's canonical variable, and a multivariate receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Differently from cytokines, the panel of oxylipins clearly differentiated samples collected in COVID-19 wards (n = 43) and Intensive Care Units (ICUs) (n = 27), as shown by the PCA and the multivariate ROC curve with a resulting AUC equal to 0.92. ICU patients showed lower (down to two orders of magnitude) plasma concentrations of anti-inflammatory and pro-resolving lipid mediators, suggesting an impaired inflammation response as part of a prolonged and unsolvable pro-inflammatory status. In conclusion, our targeted oxylipidomics platform helped shedding new light in this field. Targeting the lipid mediator class switching is extremely important for a timely picture of a patient's ability to respond to the viral attack. A prediction model exploiting selected lipid mediators as biomarkers seems to have good chances to classify patients at risk of severe COVID-19