Hipoacusia asociada con exposición al ruido en adultos jóvenes colombianos / Hearing loss associated with noise exposure in colombian young adults

Los resultados acá obtenidos sugieren que la prueba de audiometría de alta frecuencia y la prueba de otoemisiones de alta frecuencia son complementarias para la detección precoz de hipoacusia inducida por ruido, y deben ser incluidas en los estudios sobre la pérdida auditiva en jóvenes; esto permite determinar qué grupos de esos individuos son particularmente vulnerables a la pérdida auditiva y, así, enfocar las medidas preventivas

La psicología del consumidor en Colombia: una revisión bibliométrica de las publicaciones científicas indexadas / Consumer psychology in Colombia: A bibliometric review of the indexed scholarly publications

Resumen La psicología del consumidor es un campo aplicado que se vale de las aproximaciones teóricas de la ciencia psicológica para entender el comportamiento del consumidor. Históricamente, la psicología del consumidor se ha desarrollado fundamentalmente en Estados Unidos y, en la actualidad, se ha fortalecido en otros países. Sin embargo, aún no se ha estudiado la contribución de Colombia al campo de la psicología del consumidor. Por tal motivo, se efectuó un análisis bibliométrico de la producción científica en psicología del consumidor publicada en español por investigadores afiliados a instituciones colombianas. Se seleccionó una muestra de 74 artículos académicos que abordan algún aspecto del área, publicados en revistas científicas indexadas en las siguientes bases de datos: Redalyc, DOAJ, Psicodoc, Scopus, Scielo, Web of Science y Google Scholar. Se utilizaron los siguientes descriptores de búsqueda: psicología, consumidor, Colombia, psicología del consumidor, comportamiento del consumidor y consumo. Se evidenció que la producción nacional ha crecido sostenidamente en las últimas décadas y que ya comienza a tener impacto por número de citaciones; no obstante, aún requiere de mayor colaboración internacional para su consolidación.

Abstract Consumer psychology is an applied field that uses theoretical approaches to psychological science to understand consumer behavior. Historically, consumer psychology has been developed primarily in the United States and now strengthened in other countries. However, the contribution of Colombia to the field has not been studied yet. For this reason, a bibliometric analysis of the academic production in consumer psychology was carried out in Spanish by authors affiliated to Colombian institutions. It was selected a sample of 74 academic articles that addressed certain aspect of the field, published in scientific journals indexed in the following databases: Redalyc, DOAJ, Psicodoc, Scopus, Scielo, Web of Science and Google Scholar. The following descriptors were used in the search: psychology, consumer, Colombia, consumer psychology, consumer behavior and consumption. It was showed that production has grown steadily in recent decades and this starts to impact by means of citations. However, this is a national production that still requires greater international collaboration for its consolidation.

Plants use macronutrients accumulated in leaf-cutting ant nests.

Leaf-cutting ants (Atta spp.) are known for their extensive defoliation in neo-tropical forests and savannahs. Debate about the costs and benefits of their activities has been largely dominated by their detrimental effects on agriculture and agroforestry. However, the large accumulation of nutrients and changes in soil properties near their nests might benefit plants growing near them. Here, we test whether trees use nutrients that accumulate in debris piles near, or refuse chambers within, leaf-cutting ant nests. At two tropical sites (a moist tropical forest site in Panama and a savannah site in Brazil), we fed leaves labelled with the stable isotope 15N to two species of leaf-cutting ants (Atta colombica and Atta laevigata) and traced the stable isotope label in plants surrounding the two nests. Thus, we show that plants in both sites access resources associated with Atta nests. In addition, leaf tissue of trees near the nests labelled with 15N had significantly higher calcium concentrations than those of distal, unlabelled conspecifics. It has been documented that calcium is a limiting macronutrient in tropical forests and savannahs. Atta may thus play an important ecological role through their long-distance transport, redistribution and concentration of critical macronutrients.

Variation in oxygen isotope fractionation during cellulose synthesis: intramolecular and biosynthetic effects.

The oxygen isotopic composition of plant cellulose is commonly used for the interpretations of climate, ecophysiology and dendrochronology in both modern and palaeoenvironments. Further applications of this analytical tool depends on our in-depth knowledge of the isotopic fractionations associated with the biochemical pathways leading to cellulose. Here, we test two important assumptions regarding isotopic effects resulting from the location of oxygen in the carbohydrate moiety and the biosynthetic pathway towards cellulose synthesis. We show that the oxygen isotopic fractionation of the oxygen attached to carbon 2 of the glucose moieties differs from the average fractionation of the oxygens attached to carbons 3-6 from cellulose by at least 9%, for cellulose synthesized within seedlings of two different species (Triticum aestivum L. and Ricinus communis L.). The fractionation for a given oxygen in cellulose synthesized by the Triticum seedlings, which have starch as their primary carbon source, is different than the corresponding fractionation in Ricinus seedlings, within which lipids are the primary carbon source. This observation shows that the biosynthetic pathway towards cellulose affects oxygen isotope partitioning, a fact heretofore undemonstrated. Our findings may explain the species-dependent variability in the overall oxygen isotope fractionation during cellulose synthesis, and may provide much-needed insight for palaeoclimate reconstruction using fossil cellulose.