Search Results (127)

This research focuses on designing polymer membranes as biocompatible materials using home-built electrospinning equipment, offering alternative solutions for tissue regeneration applications. This technological development supports cell growth on biomaterial substrates, including hepatocellular carcinoma (Hep-G2) cells. This work researches the compatibility of polymer membranes (fiber mats) made of polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) for possible use in cellular engineering. A standard culture medium was employed to support the proliferation of Hep-G2 cells under controlled conditions (37 °C, 4.8% CO₂, and 100% relative humidity). Subsequently, after the incubation period, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) assays were conducted in a physiological environment to characterize the electrical cellular response, providing insights into the biocompatibility of the material. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was employed to evaluate cell adhesion, morphology, and growth on the PVDF polymer membranes. The results suggest that PVDF polymer membranes can be successfully produced through electrospinning technology, resulting in the formation of a dipole structure, including the possible presence of a polar β-phase, contributing to piezoelectric activity. EIS measurements, based on R_ct and C_dl values, are indicators of ion charge transfer and strong electrical interactions at the membrane interface. These findings suggest a favorable environment for cell proliferation, thereby enhancing cellular interactions at the fiber interface within the electrolyte. SEM observations displayed a consistent distribution of fibers with a distinctive spherical agglomeration on the entire PVDF surface. Finally, integrating piezoelectric properties into cell culture systems provides new opportunities for investigating the influence of electrical interactions on cellular behavior through electrochemical techniques. Based on the experimental results, this electrospun polymer demonstrates great potential as a promising candidate for next-generation biomaterials, with a probable application in tissue regeneration. Full article

Neural Architecture search (NAS) aims to automate the design process of Deep Neural Networks, reducing the Deep Learning (DL) expertise required and avoiding a trial-and-error process. Nonetheless, one of the main drawbacks of NAS is the high consumption of computational resources. Consequently, efficient evaluation methods (EEMs) to assess the quality of candidate architectures are an open research problem. This work tests various EEMs in the Deep Genetic Algorithm (DeepGA), including early stopping, population memory, and training-free proxies. The Fashion MNIST, CIFAR-10, and CIFAR-100 datasets were used for experimentation. The results show that population memory has a valuable impact on avoiding repeated evaluations. Additionally, early stopping achieved competitive performance while significantly reducing the computational cost of the search process. The training-free configurations using the Logsynflow and Linear Regions proxies, as well as a combination of both, were only partially competitive but dramatically reduced the search time. Finally, a comparison of the architectures and hyperparameters obtained with the different algorithm configurations is presented. The training-free search processes resulted in deeper architectures with more fully connected layers and skip connections than the ones obtained with accuracy-guided search configurations. Full article

Background: Reconstructing maxillofacial defects is important in dentistry, so efforts are being made to develop materials that promote cell migration and repair. Graphene oxide (GO) is used to enhance the biocompatibility of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) due to its nanostructure. Objective: to assess cytotoxicity, cell proliferation, and differentiation of human dental pulp stem cells (hDPSC) in response to a conventional PMMA (PMMA) and polymer enriched with GO (PMMA+GO). Methods: Experiments were carried out with primary hDPSC subcultures. The PMMA and PMMA+GO were tested in direct and indirect contact. Cytotoxicity (1 day) and proliferation (3, 7, and 14 days) were evaluated with an MTT bioassay. The osteogenic, adipogenic, and chondrogenic aspects were determinate with alizarin red, oil red, and safranine. Mean values, standard deviation, and percentages were calculated; data were analyzed with Shapiro–Wilks normality and Student’s t-test. Results: The cell viability of PMMA and PMMA+GO in direct contact correspond to 90.8 ± 6.2, 149.6 ± 14.5 (1 day); 99.9 ± 7.0, 95.7 ± 6.1 (3 days); 120.2 ± 14.6, 172.9 ± 16.2 (7 days); and 102.9 ± 17.3, 95.4 ± 22.8 (14 days). For indirect contact, 77.2 ± 8.4, 99 ± 21.4 (1 day); 64.8 ± 21.6, 67.0 ± 9.6 (3 days); 91.4 ± 16.5, 142 ± 18.7 (7 days); and 63 ± 15.8, 79.1 ± 3.1 (14 days). PMMA+GO samples showed enhanced adipogenic, chondrogenic, and osteogenic aspects. Conclusions: The integration of GO into PMMA biopolymers stimulates cell proliferation and differentiation, holding great promise for future applications in the field of biomedicine. Full article

Maltose and maltotriose are the most abundant sugars in brewing wort, and their transport represent a critical bottleneck in the fermentation process. This transport relies on specific transmembrane proteins; however, many yeast strains exhibit inefficient uptake of these sugars, particularly maltotriose. Addressing this limitation requires a comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing the transport of maltose and maltotriose. This review provides a detailed synthesis of the key characteristics and functions of the maltose and maltotriose transmembrane transporters identified in brewer’s Saccharomyces yeasts. Critical amino acid residues involved in transporter activity are also highlighted, and the impact of specific polymorphisms and sequence variations on sugar preference and uptake efficiency is examined. Furthermore, a thorough discussion of the most important reported residues is presented, underscoring the need to closely examine their amino acid composition to better understand transporter mechanisms, optimize their performance, and enhance fermentation outcomes. Full article

Specialized mental health services (SMHS) should be accessible to all populations. This study investigated the accessibility of public SMHS for children and adolescent patients, as well as their caregivers, in Mexico. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 400 patient–caregiver dyads receiving care at two primary SMHS facilities. The survey included indicators within four dimensions of accessibility: (1) organizational entry into SMHS; (2) organizational processes within SMHS; (3) ecological factors; (4) financial aspects. Additionally, six outcome variables were explored, including perceived health conditions and quality of care indicators. A principal component analysis (PCA) was utilized to construct four accessibility indices. Subsequently, multiple linear regression models were applied to examine the relationship between these accessibility indices and the outcome variables. Several indicators yielded notable results. The average emergency ward waiting time was 74.3 min (SD = 95.99), the post-hospitalization wait time was 1.28 weeks (SD = 1.85), and the average medical costs amounted to 962.6 Mexican pesos (SD = 2555.1). Several of the tested relationships between accessibility indices and outcome variables were statistically significant; organizational processes within SMHS and financial indices had a higher number of these significant relationships. These findings highlight the significant challenges in improving accessibility to public SMHS for children and adolescents in Mexico. Full article

The whitefly is among the main pests of crops, especially solanaceous and cucurbitaceous plants. The massive use of pesticides for its control has led to an increase in the pest’s resistance to different groups of insecticides and to environmental contamination. The use of biopesticides for its control is a sustainable alternative for the environment. The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of two biopesticides based on entomopathogenic fungi against eggs, nymphs, and adults of whitefly in eggplant in a greenhouse. The treatments consisted of Cordyceps javanica, Beauveria bassiana, a commercial insecticide (i.e., Spirotetramat), and a control (no application). A completely randomized design was used with 16 repetitions per treatment, and the non-parametric Kruskal–Wallis test was applied. Mortality was recorded on five dates after application (DAA). The sampling data were transformed to efficiency (%). The biopesticides were found to be effective in controlling whiteflies in all developmental stages during the evaluation days. Full article

Within the medical field, computer vision has an important role in different tasks, such as health anomaly detection, diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring medical conditions. Image segmentation is one of the most used techniques for medical support to identify regions of interest in different organs. However, performing accurate segmentation is difficult due to image variations. In this way, this work proposes an automated multiple-feature construction approach for image segmentation, working with magnetic resonance images, computed tomography, and RGB digital images. Genetic programming is used to automatically create and construct pipelines to extract meaningful features for segmentation tasks. Additionally, a co-evolution strategy is proposed within the evolution process to increase diversity without affecting segmentation performance. The segmentation is addressed as a pixel classification task; in this way, a wrapper approach is used, and the classification model’s segmentation performance determines the fitness. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, four datasets were used to measure the capability of the proposal to deal with different types of medical images. The results demonstrate that the proposal achieves values of the DICE similarity coefficient of more than 0.6 in MRI and C.T. images. Additionally, the proposal is compared with SOTA GP-based methods and the convolutional neural networks used within the medical field. The method proposed outperforms these methods, achieving improvements greater than $20\%$ in DICE, specificity, and sensitivity. Additionally, the qualitative results demonstrate that the proposal accurately identifies the region of interest. Full article

Objectives: This study aims to examine the ecological-level association between active and passive tobacco use and periodontal disease in Latin America from 2000 to 2024. Methods: A cross-sectional ecological study was conducted using secondary data from the Global Burden of Disease Study. Data from 20 Latin American countries were analyzed, stratified by country, sex, and age group. Multiple regression models were used to assess the relationship between tobacco consumption and periodontal disease prevalence, adjusted for age and sex. Results: The prevalence of periodontal disease was high in both sexes, particularly among individuals older than 55 years. The countries with the highest age-standardized rates were Colombia, Panama, and Costa Rica, with nearly 35,000 cases per 100,000 population. Regression models indicated that passive tobacco exposure explained 90.4% of the variability in women (R² = 0.9041) and 92.5% in men (R² = 0.9253). Active tobacco use showed weaker associations, with R² values of 0.3721 in women and 0.4601 in men. Passive exposure demonstrated better predictive accuracy, with lower Root MSE values (3192.8 and 3261.7). Conclusions: There is a significant ecological-level association between tobacco use and periodontal disease in Latin America, particularly for passive exposure. These findings highlight the need to strengthen tobacco control policies and preventive strategies targeting environmental exposure. However, due to the ecological nature of the study, these associations do not imply causality at the individual level. Longitudinal studies with individual-level data are needed to explore the underlying biological and contextual factors. Full article

This study presents the green synthesis and comprehensive characterization of ZnO–Ag nanocomposites using an eco-friendly approach that incorporates aqueous Tagetes erecta extract via the co-precipitation method. The research systematically evaluates the effect of silver concentration (0.1–0.5%) on material properties and dual applications: solar photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue and antibacterial activity against both Gram-positive (Staphylococcus aureus) and Gram-negative (Escherichia coli) bacteria. Advanced characterization techniques, including UV-Vis, XRD, TEM, FTIR, and TGA, confirmed the successful formation of crystalline nanocomposites with spherical and hemispherical morphologies, consisting of hexagonal wurtzite ZnO and face-centered cubic Ag phases. Results demonstrate that strategic silver incorporation significantly enhances ZnO photocatalytic activity by improving charge separation and reducing recombination rates, with the ZnO–Ag (0.3%) nanocomposite exhibiting optimal performance, achieving complete methylene blue degradation within 25 min under solar irradiation. Antibacterial assays showed efficacy against the bacteria used, with a significantly stronger bactericidal effect against S. aureus than E. coli, especially for ZnO–Ag (0.2%) at a 250 μg/mL concentration. This study highlights the synergistic effect between ZnO, Ag, and bioactive compounds from Tagetes erecta, offering a sustainable approach for developing multifunctional nanomaterials with significant potential in environmental remediation and antibacterial applications. Full article

Computer vision and image processing have become relevant in recent years due to their capabilities to support different tasks in several areas. Image classification, segmentation, and estimation are relevant issues addressed using various techniques. Imaging estimation is very important and helpful in biological applications. This work proposes a new approach for estimating the damages in the livers of the Wistar rats, using high-resolution RGB images. Instead of using invasive methods to determine the level of damage, the proposal allows us to measure the damage in the livers. The proposal is based on Genetic Programming (GP), the paradigm of evolutionary computing, which has become relevant in recent years for image-processing tasks. It provides flexibility, which allows the use of image processing functions to extract meaningful information from raw images. Furthermore, it allows the configuration of the regression model by performing a hyperparameter tuning to improve estimation performance. The approach includes a new set of functions through which the regression model is configured. Additionally, a set of functions is included to change the color spaces of the images to extract meaningful features from them. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach when making the hyperparameter tuning and the efficiency in dealing with different color spaces, thus achieving the promised results when estimating according to the $R^2$, Mean Average Error (MAE), Mean Squared Error (MSE) and Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) indicators. The proposed method achieves values higher than 0.5 of $R^2$ and lower than 0.51 of MSE, using different regression models. Additionally, the approach demonstrates that image preprocessing is necessary for improving the model’s performance, which is better than only using raw data where the values of RMSE are greater than 1.5. The lowest MSE value of our proposed method was 0.51, outperforming the methods without preprocessing. Full article

Microplastics (MPs) are of great interest for study because they accumulate in environmental systems, such as terrestrial ones, which include agricultural soils. Unfortunately, in recent years, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many face masks have been discarded in the environment, causing an increase in this type of MP. This accumulation can influence the physicochemical and biological properties of soil derived from its microbial activity. In the present study, different concentrations of MPs from commercial polypropylene (PP) face masks were mixed with agricultural soil. Four different treatments with the following MP concentrations were studied: T1: 0%, T2: 0.5%, T3: 1%, and T4: 5% w w⁻¹. C and N mineralization experiments were carried out over time at the microcosm level, where physicochemical, enzymatic and ecophysiological indicators were analyzed. Based on the analyzed indicators, a soil quality index called the Unified Weighted Additive Index (SQI_u) was developed. The resulting SQI_u showed N_min as the indicator with the closest relationship to the quality of the soils with MPs. Once the SQI_u was determined, the T4 treatment showed significant differences $(p\le 0.05)$ with respect to the control, presenting a higher quality value. The importance of conducting more research on the dynamics of C and N in different soils with different types, sizes, and concentrations of MPs can help to establish strategies to measure the effects of MPs on soils at the local, national, and international levels. Full article

(1) Background: Although all severe calcific aortic stenosis (SCAS) patients have decreased sympathetic compensation to active standing, it has not been studied in patients who underwent aortic valve replacement (AVR). The objective was to assess the association of the heart rate variability (HRV) response to an active orthostatic challenge before AVR with the risk of complications or death during the AVR postoperative period in patients with SCAS. (2) Methods: This observational study included 49 patients. The cardiac autonomic activity was assessed by HRV analysis during supine position and active standing (five minutes each). (3) Results: Twenty-four patients (48.9%) who presented outcomes (complication or death) had a greater left ventricular (LV) mass and a smaller magnitude of change during active standing in both the mean cardiac period and sympathetic predominance. Poor sympathetic compensation to active standing and LV mass were independently associated with the outcome odds ratio (OR) = 4.8 [(1.06, 21.8), p < 0.041] and 1.03 [(1.007, 1.062), p < 0.013], respectively. (4) Conclusions: In SCAS patients, poor sympathetic compensation in the face of orthostatic challenge and greater LV mass are associated with complications or death after AVR surgery. This approach offers an opportunity to find new criteria to reduce the surgical risk of these patients. Full article

Spodoptera frugiperda (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) and Tenebrio molitor (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) are two prominent pests of maize and its stored grains, respectively. Botanical pesticides have been proposed as an alternative for their management. This study evaluated the insecticidal activity of Salvia connivens (Lamiaceae) methanolic extract and rosmarinic acid against S. frugiperda and T. molitor by adding them to an artificial diet, as well as their ecotoxicological effects on Poecilia reticulata (Cyprinodontiformes: Poeciliidae) and Danio rerio (Cypriniformes: Danionidae) through acute toxicity tests. The methanolic extract showed higher mortality activity against S. frugiperda (LC₅₀ = 874.28 ppm) than against T. molitor (LC₅₀ = 1856.94 ppm) and was non-toxic to fish. Rosmarinic acid, the most abundant compound in the extract (80.45 mg g⁻¹), showed higher activity against S. frugiperda (LC₅₀ = 176.81 ppm). This compound did not cause a toxic effect on adult P. reticulata at the tested concentrations. However, in P. reticulata fingerlings and D. rerio adults, it was non-toxic, except in D. rerio embryos, where it was slightly toxic. These findings suggest that S. connivens methanolic extract has potential as a botanical product for the management of S. frugiperda and T. molitor with low ecotoxicological impact, while rosmarinic acid may be a useful compound for the management of S. frugiperda. Full article

Celiac disease is attributable to a combination of genetic predisposition and exposure to dietary gluten, with immune system involvement. The incidence is increasing globally, and the societal economic burden of celiac disease stretches beyond the cost of gluten-free food. This enteropathy that affects the small intestine has been related to different disorders and comorbidities. Thus, the implications of suffering from this disease are multidimensional and need further consideration. Celiac disease is a serious condition that remains under-recognized, resulting in an increased need for programs for better management. This review aims to summarize the current evidence regarding celiac diseases, with special emphasis on clinical implications, diagnosis, dietary management, socioeconomical aspects, and future perspectives. Full article

Neonatal sepsis is a major cause of mortality in preterm infants, with Escherichia coli as one of the leading pathogens. Few studies have examined the interplay between virulence factors, resistance profiles, phylogroups, and clinical outcomes in this population. We analyzed 52 E. coli strains isolated from 49 preterm neonates diagnosed with sepsis at a tertiary-level hospital in Mexico. Strains underwent phylogenetic classification, virulence gene profiling, and antimicrobial resistance testing. PFGE was used to assess genetic relatedness and outbreak clusters. Clinical data were correlated with molecular findings. Phylogroups A and B2 accounted for 46% of strains. Phylogroup A exhibited notable virulence, with high prevalence of the pathogenicity island described in virulent extra-intestinal E. coli strains (PAI), aerobactin siderophore receptor AerJ (iutA), and yersiniabactin siderophore receptor (fyuA) genes, alongside significant resistance profiles. PFGE identified two dominating branches. Branch A, comprising phylogroups A and B2, displayed high resistance and was prevalent in the neonatal intensive care unit. Branch C, with phylogroups A and D, showed less multidrug resistance but was significantly associated with maternal chorioamnionitis. This study redefines E. coli pathogenicity in neonatal sepsis, highlighting the virulence of traditionally non-pathogenic phylogroups. High virulence strains were associated with more severe outcomes. These findings underscore the need for enhanced strategies in targeted prevention, improved diagnostics, and tailored treatments for high-risk preterm populations. Full article