Effectiveness of an intervention to reduce stigma towards people with a mental disorder diagnosis in university students of healthcare careers.

Students in healthcare careers present stigma towards people with psychiatric diagnoses, so the development of interventions to reduce it is essential. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention to reduce stigma towards people diagnosed with mental disorders in healthcare students in Chile. A randomized clinical trial with a before and after measurement was carried out. The intervention was part of a compulsory course and combined educational and contact strategies. A total of 244 fourth-semester students of medicine, nursing, dentistry, obstetrics, psychology, and social work participated. The intervention was effective in reducing stigmatizing attitudes and the desire for social distance. For almost all variables, the magnitude of the stigma reduction depended on the initial level of stigma, not on the profession. The intervention had positive effects on all careers. In conclusion, incorporating a stigma reduction intervention into mandatory professional training, with the active participation of the teacher in charge and experts by experience, can be a valuable tool to promote humanized and non-stigmatizing treatment.

Swirling Fluid Reduces the Bounce of Partially Filled Containers.

Certain spatial distributions of water inside partially filled containers can significantly reduce the bounce of the container. In experiments with containers filled to a volume fraction ϕ, we show that rotation offers control and high efficiency in setting such distributions and, consequently, in altering bounce markedly. High-speed imaging evidences the physics of the phenomenon and reveals a rich sequence of fluid-dynamics processes, which we translate into a model that captures our overall experimental findings.

Stability of a tilted granular monolayer: How many spheres can we pick before the collapse?

The triggering of avalanches is investigated using discrete element simulations for a process of random extraction of spheres. A monolayer, formed by identical spheres in a hexagonal configuration, is placed on a tilted plane surrounded by a small fence that sustains the spheres, mimicking the disposal of fruits in the market. Then, a random continuous extraction process of spheres is imposed until the collapse. For this simple numerical experiment, a phase diagram was obtained to visualize the occurrence of avalanches triggered by vacancies as a function of the tilting angle, system size, and friction coefficient. More importantly, a subzone was found where we can predict the critical number of extractions until the avalanche takes place. The prediction is made from an evolution model of the average coordination number based on statistical considerations. The theoretical prediction also gives a constant critical void fraction of spheres, which implies the system collapses at a critical packing fraction.

(2Z)-3-Hydroxy-3-(4-R-Phenyl)-Prop-2-Enedithioic Acids as New Antituberculosis Compounds.

BACKGROUND: Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Compounds including a sulfur-containing scaffold have been shown to be key scaffolds in various antituberculosis agents. Interestingly, the 3-hydroxy-3-phenyl-prop-2-enedithioic acids 11a-j have, to the best of our knowledge, not been previously described as antituberculosis agents. PURPOSE: In the present study, we investigated the role of substituents attached to the phenyl ring of a 3-hydroxy-3-phenyl-prop-2-enedithioic acid scaffold (compounds 11a-j) in inhibiting the growth of M. tuberculosis strain H37Rv. METHODS: (Z)-3-hydroxy-3-(4-R-phenyl)-prop-2-enedithioic acids 11b-j, with R groups including various electron-donating or electron-withdrawing groups, were designed by structurally modifying the lead compound 11a. The syntheses of 11a-j involved each one-step procedure starting from the corresponding substituted acetophenone. Compounds 11a-j were tested against M. tuberculosis strain H37Rv to evaluate their bacterial growth inhibitory activities. ADMET profiles were predicted by employing three different methods. In addition, molecular docking studies were carried out, based on the molecular similarities of the synthesized compounds with ethionamide (5), on the active site of the M. tuberculosis H37Rv (3R)-hydroxyacyl-ACP (HadAB) dehydratase heterodimer. RESULTS: The antituberculosis activities of compounds 11a-j could be explained in terms of the presence of electron-donating or electron-withdrawing substituents on the aromatic ring of the substituted 3-hydroxy-3-phenyl)-prop-2-enedithioic acid core. The activity and selectivity index (SI) value of (Z)-3-hydroxy-3-(4-nitrophenyl)-prop-2-enedithioic acid 11e suggested that this compound could be used for the design of novel antituberculosis agents. Most of the synthesized molecules showed an acceptable ADME profile and a low probability of being toxic. Docking studies of 11d and 11e showed them forming hydrogen bonds with the ACys61 residue of the HadAB enzyme. CONCLUSION: Our results suggested that the antituberculosis compound 11e could be used for the design of novel antituberculosis agents.

Factores asociados a enterobiosis en niños de dos comunidades nativas Ese'Eja del departamento Madre de Dios, Perú / Factors associated with enterobiosis in children of the Ese'Eja native communities in department of Madre de Dios, Peru

Introducción: La enterobiosis es una de las principales infecciones intestinales del mundo. Objetivo: Determinar los factores asociados a la infección por Enterobius vermicularis en niños de dos comunidades nativas Ese'Eja en Madre de Dios, Perú. Métodos: Estudio transversal analítico. Se trabajó con niños (77) de 1 a 11 años durante los meses de febrero a marzo de 2014. Para diagnosticar la enterobiosis se usó el test de Graham. Las manifestaciones clínicas fueron evaluadas por un médico y los factores asociados mediante una encuesta aplicada a los padres de los niños evaluados. Se usó estadística descriptiva y analítica, se utilizaron razones de prevalencia crudas y ajustadas con un IC 95 por ciento se consideró p< 0,05 como significativo. Resultados: La prevalencia de enterobiosis fue de 32,47 por ciento (25). Los factores asociados (RP e IC 95 por ciento) en el análisis bivariado fueron onicofagia 2,1 (1,1-3,9), chuparse los dedos 5,4 (2,1-2,7), uñas largas 7 (2,6-18,6), intercambio de ropa 2,3 (1,1-3,7), cambio de ropa interior 3,3 (1,8-5,9), uso de calzado 7 (2,6-18,4), juego con tierra 6,9 (1,7-27,3), juego con mascotas 6,4 (2,1-19,7), lavado de manos antes de comer 7,9 (3,6-17,1), lavado de manos después de comer 1,9 (1,7-3,66), 6 o más personas en la casa 3,9 (1,9-7,9), disposición de excretas a campo abierto 3,3 (1,7-6,2) y el menor nivel socioeconómico 2,6 (1,3-5,4). No hubo asociaciones en el análisis multivariado. Conclusiones: Existe una alta prevalencia de enterobiosis en la población estudiada y los factores de riesgo son similares a los antecedentes locales. Urge hacer programas de prevención y promoción de salud respecto al tema para reducir este problema(AU)

Introduction: Enterobiasis is one of the main intestinal infections worldwide. Objective: Determine the factors associated to Enterobius vermicularis infection in children from two native Ese'Eja communities in Madre de Dios, Peru. Methods: An analytical cross-sectional study was conducted in February-March 2014 of 77 children aged 1-11 years. Enterobiasis diagnosis was based on Graham's test. Clinical manifestations were evaluated by a physician, whereas associated factors were determined through a survey applied to the parents of the children studied. Use was made of descriptive and analytical statistical analysis, and crude and adjusted prevalence ratios with a CI of 95 percent. A p value of 0.05 was considered significant. Results: Enterobiasis prevalence was 32.47 percent (25). The associated factors (PR and CI 95 percent) in the bivariate analysis were onychophagia 2.1 (1.1-3.9), finger sucking 5.4 (2.1-2.7), long nails 7 (2.6-18.6), exchanging clothes 2.3 (1.1-3.7), changing underwear 3.3 (1.8-5.9), wearing shoes 7 (2.6-18.4), playing with earth 6.9 (1.7-27.3), playing with pets 6.4 (2.1-19.7), handwashing before eating 7.9 (3.6-17.1), handwashing after eating 1.9 (1.7-3.66), six or more people in the household 3.9 (1.9-7.9), feces disposal in open areas 3.3 (1.7-6.2) and a lower socioeconomic level 2.6 (1.3-5.4). Multivariate analysis did not find any association. Conclusions: Enterobiasis prevalence is high in the population studied, and the risk factors are similar to the local antecedents. It is urgent to develop health prevention and promotion programs about the topic to reduce this problem(AU)

Triggering avalanches by transverse perturbations in a rotating drum.

We study the role of small-scale perturbations in the onset of avalanches in a rotating drum in the stick-slip regime. By vibrating the system along the axis of rotation with an amplitude orders of magnitude smaller than the particles' diameter, we found that the order parameter that properly describes the system is the kinetic energy. We also show that, for high enough frequencies, the onset of the avalanche is determined by the amplitude of the oscillation, contrary to previous studies that showed that either acceleration or velocity was the governing parameter. Finally, we present a theoretical model that explains the transition between the continuous and discrete avalanche regimes as a supercritical Hopf bifurcation.

Tuning the distance to equipartition by controlling the collision rate in a driven granular gas experiment.

In a granular gas experiment of magnetized particles confined in a thin layer, the rate of dissipative collisions is tuned by adjusting the amplitude of an external magnetic field. The velocity statistics are analyzed using the dynamic and static structure factors of transverse velocity modes. Using the fluctuating hydrodynamics theory, we measure the deviation from kinetic energy equipartition in this out-of-equilibrium system as a function of the dissipative collision rate. When the collision rate is decreased, the distance to equipartition becomes smaller, meaning that the dynamical properties of this granular gas approach by analogy those of a molecular gas in thermal equilibrium.

Synthesis and antituberculosis activity of new acylthiosemicarbazides designed by structural modification.

Acylthiosemicarbazides 8a-n were designed by structural modification of lead Compound 7. The syntheses of 8a-n involve a five-step procedure starting from carboxylic acids. Compounds 8a-n were tested against three Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains to measure their inhibitory antituberculosis activities. These activities could be explained according to the presence or absence of the chlorine substituent in the aromatic ring of the amide joined to the thiosemicarbazide core. Thiosemicarbazide derivative 8n is a candidate for the development of novel antitubercular agents. Ongoing studies are focused on exploring the mechanism by which these compounds inhibit M. tuberculosis cell growth.

Hyperuniform states generated by a critical friction field.

Hyperuniform states are an efficient way to fill up space for disordered systems. In these states the particle distribution is disordered at the short scale but becomes increasingly uniform when looked at large scales. Hyperuniformity appears in several systems, in static or quasistatic regimes, as well as close to transitions to absorbing states. Here, we show that a vibrated granular layer, at the critical point of the liquid-to-solid transition, displays dynamic hyperuniformity. Prior to the transition, patches of the solid phase form, with length scales and mean lifetimes that diverge critically at the transition point. When reducing the wave number, density fluctuations encounter increasingly more patches that block their propagation, resulting in a static structure factor that tends to zero for small wave numbers at the critical point, which is a signature of hyperuniformity. A simple model demonstrates that this coupling of a density field to a highly fluctuating scalar friction field gives rise to dynamic hyperuniform states. Finally, we show that the structure factor detects better the emergence of hyperuniformity, compared to the particle number variance.

Generation of intermittent gravitocapillary waves via parametric forcing.

We report on the generation of an intermittent wave field driven by a horizontally moving wave maker interacting with Faraday waves. The spectrum of the local gravitocapillary surface wave fluctuations displays a power law in frequency for a wide range of forcing parameters. We compute the probability density function of the local surface height increments, which show that they change strongly across time scales. The structure functions of these increments are shown to display power laws as a function of the time lag, with exponents that are nonlinear functions of the order of the structure function. We argue that the origin of this scale-invariant intermittent spectrum is the Faraday wave pattern breakup due to its advection by the propagating gravity waves. Finally, some interpretations are proposed to explain the appearance of this intermittent spectrum.

Universality and criticality of a second-order granular solid-liquid-like phase transition.

We experimentally study the critical properties of the nonequilibrium solid-liquid-like transition that takes place in vibrated granular matter. The critical dynamics is characterized by the coupling of the density field with the bond-orientational order parameter Q(4), which measures the degree of local crystallization. Two setups are compared, which present the transition at different critical accelerations as a result of modifying the energy dissipation parameters. In both setups five independent critical exponents are measured, associated to different properties of Q(4): the correlation length, relaxation time, vanishing wavenumber limit (static susceptibility), the hydrodynamic regime of the pair correlation function, and the amplitude of the order parameter. The respective critical exponents agree in both setups and are given by ν(⊥)=1,ν(∥)=2,γ=1,η≈0.6-0.67, and ß=1/2, whereas the dynamical critical exponent is z=ν(∥)/ν(⊥)=2. The agreement on five exponents is an exigent test for the universality of the transition. Thus, while dissipation is strictly necessary to form the crystal, the path the system undergoes toward the phase separation is part of a well-defined universality class. In fact, the local order shows critical properties while density does not. Being the later conserved, the appropriate model that couples both is model C in the Hohenberg and Halperin classification. The measured exponents are in accord with the nonequilibrium extension to model C if we assume that α, the exponent associated in equilibrium to the specific heat divergence but with no counterpart in this nonequilibrium experiment, vanishes.

Características de la sepsis neonatal en el Hospital Almanzor Aguinaga Asenjo durante los años 2011- 2012 / Features of neonatal sepsis in the Hospital Almanzor Aguinaga Asenjo over the years 2011 - 2012

Objetivo: Conocer las principales características de la sepsis neonatal en el servicio de neonatología del Hospital Nacional Almanzor Aguinaga Asenjo en los años 2011-2012. Material y métodos: Estudio es descriptivo transversal. Se analizaron 410 historias clínicas de sepsis probable, encontrando 95 casos de sepsis neonatal confirmada a través de un hemocultivo. Los datos obtenidos a fueron procesados en el SPSS V.17 usando frecuencias absolutas y absolutas, media, desviación estándar. Resultados: Se tuvieron 95 casos de sepsis confirmada, de los cuales el 38,9 % fueron de sexo femenino, 12,6% fallecieron. La incidencia de sepsis neonatal fue de 34 casos por mil nacidos vivos durante el año 2011 y 24 casos en el 2012. El 49,5% de madres gestantes cursaron con infección, siendo la más común ITU en el III trimestre de embarazo 42,11% y con enfermedad materna el 37,9. La mayoría tuvo parto por cesárea 51,6%. El promedio de la edad gestacional fue 34,58 semanas. La mayoría fueron prematuros 56,84%. El modo de transmisión de sepsis más frecuente fue el nosocomial (E.coli, S. epidermidis, Klebsiella pneumoniae y Candida sp, S. pneumoniae, S. hominis, S.haemolitycus, S. haemophilus, C, neoformans y Serratia liquefaciens) presentándose en un 56,8% y de modo vertical en un 51,6% de los casos (E.coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Candida Sp y S. hominis, S. hamophylus). Conclusiones: La sepsis neonatal en el hospital Almanzor Aguinaga Asenjo es ocasionada por Staphylococcus epidermidis. El grupo etáreo, fue en pretérminos.

Concentración de mercurio en cabello de mujeres en una comunidad nativa de Perú / Mercury concentrations in women's hair in a native community of Peru

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Capillarylike fluctuations of a solid-liquid interface in a noncohesive granular system.

One of the most noticeable collective motion of noncohesive granular matter is clustering under certain conditions. In particular, when a quasi-two-dimensional monolayer of monodispersed noncohesive particles is vertically vibrated, a solid-liquid-like transition occurs when the driving amplitude exceeds a critical value. Here the physical mechanism underlying particle clustering relies on the strong interactions mediated by grain collisions, rather than on grain-grain cohesive forces. In average, the solid cluster resembles a drop, with a striking circular shape. We experimentally investigate the coarse-grained solid-liquid interface fluctuations, which are characterized through the static and dynamic correlation functions in the Fourier space. These fluctuations turn out to be well described by the capillary wave theory, which allows us to measure the solid-liquid interface surface tension and mobility once the granular "thermal" kinetic energy is determined. Despite that the system is strongly out of equilibrium and that the granular temperature is not uniform, there is energy equipartition at the solid-liquid interface, for a relatively large range of angular wave numbers. Furthermore, both surface tension and mobility are consistent with a simple order of magnitude estimation considering the characteristic energy, length, and time scales, which is very similar to what can be done for atomic systems.

Fluctuations and criticality of a granular solid-liquid-like phase transition.

We present an experimental study of density and order fluctuations in the vicinity of the solid-liquid-like transition that occurs in a vibrated quasi-two-dimensional granular system. The two-dimensional projected static and dynamic correlation functions are studied. We show that density fluctuations, characterized through the structure factor, increase in size and intensity as the transition is approached, but they do not change significantly at the transition itself. The dense, metastable clusters, which present square symmetry, also increase their local order in the vicinity of the transition. This is characterized through the bond-orientational order parameter Q4, which in Fourier space shows an Ornstein-Zernike-like behavior. Depending on the filling density and vertical height, the transition can be of first- or second-order type. In the latter case, the associated correlation length ξ4, the relaxation time τ4, the zero k limit of Q4 fluctuations (static susceptibility), the pair correlation function of Q4, and the amplitude of the order parameter obey critical power laws, with saturations due to finite size effects. Their respective critical exponents are ν(perpendicular))=1, ν(parallel)=2, γ=1, η=0.67, and ß=1/2, whereas the dynamical critical exponent z=ν(parallel)/ν(perpendicular)=2. These results are consistent with model C of dynamical critical phenomena, valid for a nonconserved critical order parameter (bond-orientation order) coupled to a conserved field (density).

Do over 200 million healthy altitude residents really suffer from chronic Acid-base disorders?

As the oxygen tension of inspired air falls with increasing altitude in normal subjects, hyperventilation ensues. This acute respiratory alkalosis, induces increased renal excretion of bicarbonate, returning the pH back to normal, giving rise to compensated respiratory alkalosis or chronic hypocapnia. It seems a contradiction that so many normal people at high altitude should permanently live as chronic acid-base patients. Blood gas analyses of 1,865 subjects at 3,510 m, reported a P(a)CO(2) (arterial carbon dioxide tension ± SEM) = 29.4 ± 0.16 mmHg and pH = 7.40 ± 0.005. Base excess, calculated with the Van Slyke sea level equation, is -5 mM (milliMolar or mmol/l) as an average, suggesting chronic hypocapnia. THID, a new term replacing "Base Excess" is determined by titration to a pH of 7.40 at a P(a)CO(2) of 5.33 kPa (40 mmHg) at sea level, oxygen saturated and at 37°C blood temperature. Since our new modified Van Slyke equations operate with normal values for P(a)CO(2) at the actual altitude, a calculation of THID will always result in normal values-that is, zero.