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Within the insensitization by electronarcosis and the bleeding processes performed at the pig’s slaughterhouses, there are some factors that hinder the achievement of an adequate slaughter of these animals, being this a critical phase in which animal welfare must be guaranteed; the objective of this study was to evaluate and compare the efficiency of insensitization by electronarcosis and two types of bleeding direction (horizontal and vertical). Dependent variables were measured as indicators of animal welfare (absence of the corneal reflex, absence of reflex of sensitivity to painful stimuli, attempts to reinstatement or posture recovery and vocalization), after the stunning and bleeding process, in four slaughterhouses of national category in “Eje Cafetero”, Colombia. The methodological approach included the binomial distribution, descriptive statistics, hypothesis testing and statistical significance. The results show that the efficiency of the insensitization procedures and type of bleeding direction depends on multiple aspects, including the tranquility of the animals during their handling, the correct position of the insensitization clamps, the amperage used and the time between insensitization and bleeding. In this way, the analysis of possible preventive and/or corrective measures includes Continuous training and supervision of the personnel in charge of carrying out the procedures, the need to immobilize pigs prior to their insensitization process, the continuous monitoring of process variables and the appropriate vascular cutting that ensures animal’s death prior to their entrance into the scalding machine.Cutaneous melanoma is the most aggressive type of skin cancer. Although cutaneous melanoma accounts for a minority of all types of skin cancer, it causes the greatest number of skin cancer related deaths worldwide. Oxidative stress and redox homeostasis have been shown to be involved at each stage of a malignant melanocyte transformation, called melanomagenesis, as well as during drug resistance. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) play an important and diverse role that regulate many aspects of skin cell behaviors ranging from proliferation and stemness, to oxidative damage and cell death. On the other hand, antioxidants are associated with melanoma spread and metastasis. Overall, the contribution of redox homeostasis to melanoma development and progression is controversial and highly complex. The aim of this study is to examine the association between redox homeostasis and the melanomagenic process. To this purpose we are presenting what is currently known about the role of ROS in melanoma initiation and progression. In addition, we are discussing the role of antioxidant mechanisms during the spread of the disease and in cases of melanoma drug resistance. Although challenging, targeting redox homeostasis in melanoma progression remains to be a promising therapeutic approach, especially valid during melanoma drug resistance.Tissue engineering technology requires porous scaffolds, based on biomaterials, which have to mimic as closely as possible the morphological and anisotropic mechanical properties of the native tissue to substitute. Anisotropic fibrous scaffolds fabricated by template-assisted electrospinning are investigated in this study. Fibers of electrospun Polycaprolactone (PCL) were successfully arranged spatially into honeycomb structures by using well-shaped 3D micro-architected metal collectors. Fibrous scaffolds present 2 × 4 mm2 wide elementary patterns with low and high fiber density areas. Distinct regions of the honeycomb patterns were analyzed through SEM images revealing different fiber diameters with specific fiber orientation depending on the regions of interest. learn more Tensile test experiments were carried out with an optical observation of the local deformation at the pattern scale, allowing the determination and analysis, at small and large deformation, of the axial and transverse local strains. The honeycomb patterned mats showed significantly different mechanical properties along the two orthogonal directions probing an anisotropic ratio of 4.2. Stress relaxation test was performed on scaffolds at 15% of strain. This measurement pointed out the low contribution of the viscosity of about 20% in the mechanical response of the scaffold. An orthotropic linear elastic model was consequently proposed to characterize the anisotropic behavior of the produced patterned membranes. This new versatile method to produce architected porous materials, adjustable to several polymers and structures, will provide appealing benefits for soft regenerative medicine application and the development of custom-made scaffolds.In computational neuroscience, as well as in machine learning, neuromorphic devices promise an accelerated and scalable alternative to neural network simulations. Their neural connectivity and synaptic capacity depend on their specific design choices, but is always intrinsically limited. Here, we present a strategy to achieve structural plasticity that optimizes resource allocation under these constraints by constantly rewiring the pre- and postsynaptic partners while keeping the neuronal fan-in constant and the connectome sparse. In particular, we implemented this algorithm on the analog neuromorphic system BrainScaleS-2. It was executed on a custom embedded digital processor located on chip, accompanying the mixed-signal substrate of spiking neurons and synapse circuits. We evaluated our implementation in a simple supervised learning scenario, showing its ability to optimize the network topology with respect to the nature of its training data, as well as its overall computational efficiency.

Patients with cancer are at increased risk of complicated severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, but it is still unclear if the risk of mortality is influenced by cancer type or ongoing anti-cancer treatments. An interesting debate concerning the potential relationship between androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) and SARS-CoV-2 infection has recently been opened in the case of prostate cancer (PC), and the aim of this multi-centre cohort study was to investigate the incidence and outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostrate cancer (mCRPC).

We retrospectively reviewed the clinical records of patients with mCRPC who developed SARS-CoV-2 infection, and recorded their baseline clinical characteristics, their history of PC and SARS-CoV-2 infection, and their oncological status and treatment at the time of infection. The primary study end point was the death rate and the possible impact of the patients’ PC-related history and treatments on mortality.