Normative data for 148 Spanish emotional words in terms of attributions of humanity / Datos normativos de 148 términos afectivos en dimensiones relacionadas con la atribución de humanidad

Research on outgroup infrahumanization is based on the subtle and not deliberate distinction of secondary emotions, an exclusively human emotion, and primary emotions, which are shared by animals and human beings. According to prior studies, people attribute more secondary emotions to the ingroup than to the outgroup which they deny or restrict the ability to experience them. This study presents normative measures for 148 emotional words viewed by Spanish people in seven dimensions related to humanity assessments. Two factors were revealed by the principal components analysis (PCA). The first component was loaded on dimensions that differentiate the emotions depending on the cognitive demands (cognition, moral quality and duration) whereas the second one was loaded on their expressive profile (visibility, age at which they are acquired, universality and causal locus). These dimensions were analyzed in relation to desirability, familiarity and explicit humanity

Las investigaciones sobre la infrahumanización del exogrupo se apoyan en la distinción sutil y no deliberada que existe entre los sentimientos, una emoción exclusivamente humana, y las emociones, que son compartidas por animales y humanos. De acuerdo con esos estudios, las personas atribuyen más sentimientos al endogrupo que al exogrupo al que niegan o restringen la capacidad para experimentarlos. Este estudio presenta los datos normativos relativos a 148 términos afectivos en siete dimensiones relacionadas con las evaluaciones de humanidad. El Análisis de Componentes Principales calculado sobre las respuestas dio lugar a dos factores. El primero agrupó las dimensiones que diferencian los términos afectivos en función de las demandas cognitivas requeridas (cognición, naturaleza moral y duración), mientras que el segundo las diferenció en función de su perfil expresivo (visibilidad, edad a la que se adquiere, universalidad y foco causal). Estas dimensiones se analizaron en relación a la valencia, la familiaridad y la humanidad explicita

Structural pattern matching of nonribosomal peptides.

BACKGROUND: Nonribosomal peptides (NRPs), bioactive secondary metabolites produced by many microorganisms, show a broad range of important biological activities (e.g. antibiotics, immunosuppressants, antitumor agents). NRPs are mainly composed of amino acids but their primary structure is not always linear and can contain cycles or branchings. Furthermore, there are several hundred different monomers that can be incorporated into NRPs. The NORINE database, the first resource entirely dedicated to NRPs, currently stores more than 700 NRPs annotated with their monomeric peptide structure encoded by undirected labeled graphs. This opens a way to a systematic analysis of structural patterns occurring in NRPs. Such studies can investigate the functional role of some monomeric chains, or analyse NRPs that have been computationally predicted from the synthetase protein sequence. A basic operation in such analyses is the search for a given structural pattern in the database. RESULTS: We developed an efficient method that allows for a quick search for a structural pattern in the NORINE database. The method identifies all peptides containing a pattern substructure of a given size. This amounts to solving a variant of the maximum common subgraph problem on pattern and peptide graphs, which is done by computing cliques in an appropriate compatibility graph. CONCLUSION: The method has been incorporated into the NORINE database, available at http://bioinfo.lifl.fr/norine. Less than one second is needed to search for a pattern in the entire database.

Impact of Topoisomerase II alpha and spermine on the clinical outcome of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

It has been reported in the literature that a leukemic cell may be (or become) resistant to anti-cancer treatment because many mechanisms, such as efflux membrane pump (multi-drug resistance, MDR-P170), intracellular transport (LRP, MRP), or different detoxification systems (glutathione transferases, methallothioneines) may be implicated. Topoisomerase II alpha (TopoII) are also reported as responsible for resistance since their main action is to repair DNA breakage. Polyamines are described as having a protective DNA action by stabilizing the double stranded DNA helix. For these reasons we investigated 65 children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia using an immunocytochemical method to elucidate the potential role of Topoisomerase and polyamines in drug resistance. Most children (60/65) were treated with the French (acute lymphoblastic leukemia, ALL) protocol (FRALLE-93) in which B and C arms include (at least) VP16. Children with cytoplasmic TopoII positivity (18 cases) were more resistant since their overall survival was 34 months compared to more than 110 months for negative cases ( P = 0.0003). Polyamines may be associated with drug resistance since the overall survivals were 51 months and 92 months for positive and negative patients, respectively, but the P-value is only 0.13. We conclude that Topoisomerase and polyamines must be tested at diagnosis as new possible markers for chemo-resistance. Larger series are needed to confirm these preliminary results and to verify if the use of anti epipodophillotoxin agents (as it is the case for FRALLE B or C) should be excluded for positive cases.