Suchergebnisse

Never strongly committed to public ownership, the Swedish Social Democrats have recently undertaken several privatization measures, which are distinguished by their limited & pragmatic character. Still, recent developments underline the paradoxical combination of Left dominance & a small state enterprise sector. Here, the Swedish paradox is analyzed in terms of the constraints on Social Democratic power & the strategic choices made by the Social Democrats in the face of such constraints. Modified HA

The consequences of consolidating EU representation at the IMF Executive Board by regrouping the 27 Member States into two EU constituencies, euro area and non-euro area, are discussed. In particular we contrast voting power as proposed by Penrose-Banzhaf (PBI) and Shapley-Shubik (SSI), and other respectively related measures of blocking (or veto) power and decision efficiency as proposed by Coleman and Paterson. Hitherto, IMF-specific literature is PBI-based. However, theoretical reasons and empirical plausibility arguments for the SSI are compelling. The (SSI) voting power of the two large constituencies - U.S.A. and euro area - reflects their corresponding voting shares over a range of majority thresholds, whereas PBI voting power reduces to only half of vote share at the majority threshold of 85% needed for some Executive Board decisions. SSI-related estimates of veto power are generally lower than the Coleman indices. Correspondingly, the efficiency of collective decision-making is considerably underestimated by the Coleman measure. -- International Monetary Fund ; European Union ; voting power analysis ; veto power

Protocol ; [Abstract] Reprogramming somatic cells toward pluripotency became possible over a decade ago. Since then, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have served as a versatile and powerful tool not only for basic research but also with the long-term goal of using them in human cell transplantation after differentiation. Nonetheless, downstream applications are frequently blurred by the difficulties that researchers have to face when working with iPSCs, such as trouble with clonal selection, in vitro culture and cryopreservation, adaptation to feeder-free conditions, or expansion of the cells. Therefore, in this article we aim to provide other researchers with practical and detailed information to successfully culture and adapt iPSCs. Specifically, we (1) describe the most common problems when in-vitro culturing iPSCs onto feeder cells as well as its possible troubleshooting, and (2) compare different matrices and culture media for adapting the iPSCs to feeder-free conditions. We believe that the troubleshooting and recommendations provided in this article can be of use to other researchers working with iPSCs and who may be experiencing similar issues, hopefully enhancing the appeal of this promising cell source to be used for biomedical investigations, such as tissue engineering or regenerative medicine applications. ; We thank the laboratory staff from INIBIC-CHUAC, the Radio Physics department from the Oncology Center of Galicia and the Servicio de Xenética (CHUAC) for their assistance. We also thank the staff from Oza University Library (University of A Coruña) for their collaboration. We also thank our funding agencies: Instituto de Salud Carlos III-General Subdirection of Assessment and Promotion of the Research—European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) "A way of making Europe" (PI17/02197 and PI20/00933); Rede Galega deTerapia Celular and Grupos con Potencial de Crecemento, Xunta de Galicia (R2016/036, R2014/050, CN2012/142, ED431B 2020/55, and GPC2014/048); the University of A Coruña; M.P.-R. and S.R.-F. are granted by a predoctoral fellowship from Xunta de Galicia and European Union (European Social Fund) and C.S.-R. was beneficiary of a postdoctoral fellowship from Xunta de Galicia ; Xunta de Galicia; R2016/036 ; Xunta de Galicia; R2014/050 ; Xunta de Galicia; CN2012/142 ; Xunta de Galicia; ED431B 2020/55 ; Xunta de Galicia; GPC2014/048

Rett syndrome (RTT) is a rare neurological disorder mostly caused by a genetic variation in MECP2. Making new MECP2 variants and the related phenotypes available provides data for better understanding of disease mechanisms and faster identification of variants for diagnosis. This is, however, currently hampered by the lack of interoperability between genotype-phenotype databases. Here, we demonstrate on the example of MECP2 in RTT that by making the genotype-phenotype data more Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR), we can facilitate prioritization and analysis of variants. In total, 10,968 MECP2 variants were successfully integrated. Among these variants 863 unique confirmed RTT causing and 209 unique confirmed benign variants were found. This dataset was used for comparison of pathogenicity predicting tools, protein consequences, and identification of ambiguous variants. Prediction tools generally recognised the RTT causing and benign variants, however, there was a broad range of overlap Nineteen variants were identified that were annotated as both disease-causing and benign, suggesting that there are additional factors in these cases contributing to disease development. ; The authors would like to thank the Mutalyzer team for support and feedback, Henk van Kranen for support in liftover of ancient genetic variant descriptions, and Eric Smeets for collection of the Maastricht Rett dataset.This work was funded by ELIXIR (funded by the European Commission within the Research Infrastructures programme of Horizon 2020), the research infrastructure for life-science data (MolData2). FE and LC were also funded by The Dutch Rett Syndrome Foundation (Stichting Terre). CE, AJ, RK, AV, SCG, MB, MRi and MR also received funding from EXCELERATE (H2020, Grant No. 676559). AJ, RK, MR, MB, and SCG also received funding from RD-Connect, European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013, Grant No. 305444). FE, CE, AJ, RK, MR, MB, and SCG received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under grant agreement EJP RD N°825575. RK was also funded by NWO in project VWData (grant no. 400.17.605) and BBMRI-NL (NWO, National Roadmap for Large-Scale Research Facilities, grant no. 184.033.111). AV and SCG also received funding from INB Grant (Grant No. PT17/0009/0001 - ISCIII-SGEFI / ERDF). ; Peer Reviewed ; Postprint (published version)

Knowledge of the climate is essential to manage climate-related risks. Underpinning this knowledge is a huge range of climate research and climate service activities. There has been a marked expansion of such activities and while the numerous and diverse funding streams, activities and organizations involved means that climate service development is relatively well resourced in places, there is a risk that the landscape becomes fragmented, duplicative, confusing, and inefficient. To mitigate this, the European Commission established the Climateurope project to bring coordination to Europe's climate-related knowledge base. Climateurope created a managed network to share knowledge, improve synergies and reduce fragmentation among the stakeholders. As the network evolved, we proactively strove for equality, diversity and inclusion, for example for gender, under-represented regions, and under-represented stakeholder groups. Climateurope explored and adopted innovative approaches to engaging the network members, including face-to-face networking events (Festivals), virtual networking events (Webstivals and webinars), use of arts, social media, expert groups, publications, and an active website. The mix and integration of the traditional communications, such as website, publications and expert groups, with more innovative and varied approaches, such as the Festivals, Webstivals, social media and arts, proved popular and successful in making the network active and attractive. We describe how the network and collaboration was established and managed, and we offer some recommendations for others based on our experiences, including consideration of equality, diversity and inclusion, consider strategies for growing, managing and sustaining the network, and consider a mix of virtual and physical networking events. ; This work was funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union: Climateurope - Linking science and society, Project ref. 689029. The views expressed are purely those of the authors who were all involved in the project and may not under any circumstances be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission. Thank you to Rob Groenland and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on the paper ; Peer Reviewed ; "Article signat per 18 autors/es: Chris Hewitt, Janette Bessembinder, Mauro Buonocore, Tyrone Dunbar, Natalie Garrett, Lola Kotova, Stacey New, Paula Newton, Rebecca Parfitt, Carlo Buontempo, Francisco Doblas-Reyes, Francesca Guglielmo, Daniela Jacob, Erik Kjellström, Aleksandra Krzic, Helena Martins, Alessia Pietrosanti, Marta Terrado" ; Postprint (published version)

Aguena, M., et al. ; We present a new (2+1)D galaxy cluster finder based on photometric redshifts called Wavelet Z Photometric (WaZP) applied to DES first year (Y1A1) data. The results are compared to clusters detected by the South Pole Telescope (SPT) survey and the redMaPPer cluster finder, the latter based on the same photometric data. WaZP searches for clusters in wavelet-based density maps of galaxies selected in photometric redshift space without any assumption on the cluster galaxy populations. The comparison to other cluster samples was performed with a matching algorithm based on angular proximity and redshift difference of the clusters. It led to the development of a new approach to match two optical cluster samples, following an iterative approach to minimize incorrect associations. The WaZP cluster finder applied to DES Y1A1 galaxy survey (1511.13 deg2 up to mi = 23 mag) led to the detection of 60 547 galaxy clusters with redshifts 0.05 < z < 0.9 and richness Ngals ≥ 5. Considering the overlapping regions and redshift ranges between the DES Y1A1 and SPT cluster surveys, all sz based SPT clusters are recovered by the WaZP sample. The comparison between WaZP and redMaPPer cluster samples showed an excellent overall agreement for clusters with richness Ngals (λ for redMaPPer) greater than 25 (20), with 95 per cent recovery on both directions. Based on the cluster cross-match, we explore the relative fragmentation of the two cluster samples and investigate the possible signatures of unmatched clusters. ; The DES data management system is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Numbers AST-1138766 and AST-1536171. The DES participants from Spanish institutions are partially supported by MICINN under grants ESP2017-89838, PGC2018-094773, PGC2018-102021, SEV-2016-0588, SEV-2016-0597, and MDM-2015-0509, some of which include ERDF funds from the European Union. IFAE is partially funded by the CERCA program of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013) including ERC grant agreements 240672, 291329, and 306478. We acknowledge support from the Brazilian Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia (INCT) do e-Universo (CNPq grant 465376/2014-2).

The total damage inflicted on the liver before transplantation is associated with several surgical manipulations, such as organ recovery, washout of the graft, cold conservation in organ preservation solutions (UW, Celsior, HTK, IGL-1), and rinsing of the organ before implantation. Polyethylene glycol 35 (PEG35) is the oncotic agent present in the IGL-1 solution, which is an alternative to UW and Celsior solutions in liver clinical transplantation. In a model of cold preservation in rats (4C; 24 h), we evaluated the effects induced by PEG35 on detoxifying enzymes and nitric oxide, comparing IGL-1 to IGL-0 (which is the same as IGL-1 without PEG). The benefits were also assessed in a new IGL-2 solution characterized by increased concentrations of PEG35 (from 1 g/L to 5 g/L) and glutathione (from 3 mmol/L to 9 mmol/L) compared to IGL-1. We demonstrated that PEG35 promoted the mitochondrial enzyme ALDH2, and in combination with glutathione, prevented the formation of toxic aldehyde adducts (measured as 4-hydroxynonenal) and oxidized proteins (AOPP). In addition, PEG35 promoted the vasodilator factor nitric oxide, which may improve the microcirculatory disturbances in steatotic grafts during preservation and revascularization. All of these results lead to a reduction in damage inflicted on the fatty liver graft during the cold storage preservation. In this communication, we report on the benefits of IGL-2 in hypothermic static preservation, which has already been proved to confer benefits in hypothermic oxygenated dynamic preservation. Hence, the data reported here reinforce the fact that IGL-2 is a suitable alternative to be used as a unique solution/perfusate when hypothermic static and preservation strategies are used, either separately or combined, easing the logistics and avoiding the mixture of different solutions/perfusates, especially when fatty liver grafts are used. Further research regarding new therapeutic and pharmacological insights is needed to explore the underlying mitochondrial mechanisms exerted by PEG35 in static and dynamic graft preservation strategies for clinical liver transplantation purposes. ; This research was funded by Instituto de Salud Carlos III through FIS project PI 15/00110 co-funded by FEDER from Regional Development European Funds (European Union) and the FOIE GRAS project, which has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant (Agreement No. 722619).

This article proposes a systematic analysis of the main articles relevant to the topic of quality of life published in the Journal Quality of Life, in the period 1990−2020. The aim is to provide a better understanding of the development of this field of research after 1990, in the context of the post-socialist transition, and subsequent integration in the European Union and alignment with European standards. The Quality of Life Journal was one of the most important ways to disseminate the results of the research conducted in Romania; therefore, it can provide a general overview of the social issues addressed in the context of social and economic changes that Romania has gone through in the last 30 years. The conclusions suggest that the period 1990−2000 is one in which the quality of life research is institutionalized, and consolidated after 2000. Since Romania was included in the quality of life European surveys, it was constantly at the end of the EU rankings on most of the quality of life indicators. Keywords: Quality of life research; quality of life indicators; Romania; Research Institute for Quality of Life; Quality of life Journal. ●●●●● Acest articol realizează o analiză sistematică a principalelor articole relevante pentru temati calității vieții publicate în revista Calitatea vieții, în intervalul 1990−2020. Scopul este de a înțelege modalitatea în care domeniul de cercetare s-a dezvoltat în România după 1990, în contextul tranziției post-socialiste și ulterior integrării în Uniunea Europeană și alinierii la standardele europene. Publicarea în revista Calitatea vieții a reprezentat una dintre cele mai importante modalități de diseminare a rezultatelor cercetărilor desfășurate în domeniu în România, astfel că poate oferi o imagine de ansamblu cu privire la tematicile abordate în contextul transformărilor sociale și economice prin care a trecut România în ultimii 30 de ani. Concluziile sugerează faptul că perioada 1990−2000 este una în care se instituționalizează domeniul de cercetare a calității vieții, după 2000 urmând o perioadă de consolidare. Din momentul includerii în anchetele europene privind calitatea vieții, România s-a aflat pe ultimele locuri în Uniunea Europeană la majoritatea indicatorilor privind calitatea vieții. Cuvinte-cheie: Cercetarea calității vieții; indicatori ai calității vieții; România; Institutul de Cercetare a Calității Vieții; Revista Calitatea vieții.

[Abstract] Knowledge and research results about hand osteoarthritis (hOA) are limited due to the lack of samples and animal models of the disease. Here, we report the generation of two induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-lines from patients with radiographic hOA. Furthermore, we wondered whether these iPSC-lines carried single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within genes that have been associated with hOA. Finally, we performed chondrogenic differentiation of the iPSCs in order to prove their usefulness as cellular models of the disease. We performed a non-integrative reprogramming of dermal fibroblasts obtained from two patients with radiographic rhizarthrosis and non-erosive hOA by introducing the transcriptional factors Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc using Sendai virus. After reprogramming, embryonic stem cell-like colonies emerged in culture, which fulfilled all the criteria to be considered iPSCs. Both iPSC-lines carried variants associated with hOA in the four studied genes and showed differences in their chondrogenic capacity when compared with a healthy control iPSC-line. To our knowledge this is the first time that the generation of iPSC-lines from patients with rhizarthrosis and non-erosive hOA is reported. The obtained iPSC-lines might enable us to model the disease in vitro, and to deeper study both the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying hOA. ; This study was carried out thanks to the funding from Fundación Española de Reumatología (Proyectos 2014), Proyectos de Investigación 2016 (PI16/02124) and 2017 (PI17/02197) from Instituto de Salud Carlos III-General Subdirection of Assesment and Promotion of the Research – European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) "A way of making Europe", Rede Galega de Terapia Celular and Grupos con Potencial de Crecemento, Xunta de Galicia (R2016/036, R2014/050, CN2012/142 and GPC2014/048); Deputación da Coruña (BINV-CS/2015); University of A Coruña; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red-Bioingeniería, Biomateriales y Nanomedicina (CIBER-BBN). Rocío Castro-Viñuelas, María Piñeiro-Ramil and Silvia Rodríguez-Fernández are granted by a predoctoral fellowship from Xunta de Galicia and European Union (European Social Fund) and Clara Sanjurjo-Rodríguez is beneficiary of a postdoctoral fellowship from Xunta de Galicia ; Xunta de Galicia; R2016/036 ; Deputación da Coruña; BINV-CS/2015 ; Xunta de Galicia; R2014/050 ; Xunta de Galicia; CN2012/142 ; Xunta de Galicia; GPC2014/048

[Abstract] Data scarcity represents an important constraint for the training of deep neural networks in medical imaging. Medical image labeling, especially if pixel-level annotations are required, is an expensive task that needs expert intervention and usually results in a reduced number of annotated samples. In contrast, extensive amounts of unlabeled data are produced in the daily clinical practice, including paired multimodal images from patients that were subjected to multiple imaging tests. This work proposes a novel self-supervised multimodal reconstruction task that takes advantage of this unlabeled multimodal data for learning about the domain without human supervision. Paired multimodal data is a rich source of clinical information that can be naturally exploited by trying to estimate one image modality from others. This multimodal reconstruction requires the recognition of domain-specific patterns that can be used to complement the training of image analysis tasks in the same domain for which annotated data is scarce. In this work, a set of experiments is performed using a multimodal setting of retinography and fluorescein angiography pairs that offer complementary information about the eye fundus. The evaluations performed on different public datasets, which include pathological and healthy data samples, demonstrate that a network trained for self-supervised multimodal reconstruction of angiography from retinography achieves unsupervised recognition of important retinal structures. These results indicate that the proposed self-supervised task provides relevant cues for image analysis tasks in the same domain. ; This work is supported by Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Government of Spain, and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) of the European Union (EU) through the DTS18/00136 research project, and by Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, Government of Spain, through the DPI2015-69948-R research project. The authors of this work also receive financial support from the ERDF and Xunta de Galicia through Grupo de Referencia Competitiva, Ref. ED431C 2016-047, and from the European Social Fund (ESF) of the EU and Xunta de Galicia through the predoctoral grant contract Ref. ED481A-2017/328. CITIC, Centro de Investigación de Galicia Ref. ED431G 2019/01, receives financial support from Consellería de Educación, Universidade e Formación Profesional, Xunta de Galicia, through the ERDF (80%) and Secretaría Xeral de Universidades (20%) ; Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2016-047 ; Xunta de Galicia; ED481A-2017/328 ; Xunta de Galicia; ED431G 2019/01

Microfluidic technologies are highly adept at generating controllable compositional gradients in fluids, a feature that has accelerated the understanding of the importance of chemical gradients in biological processes. That said, the development of versatile methods to generate controllable compositional gradients in the solid‐state has been far more elusive. The ability to produce such gradients would provide access to extensive compositional libraries, thus enabling the high‐throughput exploration of the parametric landscape of functional solids and devices in a resource‐, time‐, and cost‐efficient manner. Herein, the synergic integration of microfluidic technologies is reported with blade coating to enable the controlled formation of compositional lateral gradients in solution. Subsequently, the transformation of liquid‐based compositional gradients into solid‐state thin films using this method is demonstrated. To demonstrate efficacy of the approach, microfluidic‐assisted blade coating is used to optimize blending ratios in organic solar cells. Importantly, this novel technology can be easily extended to other solution processable systems that require the formation of solid‐state compositional lateral gradients. ; The authors would like to acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness through the "Severo Ochoa" Programme for Centers of Excellence in R&D (SEV‐2015‐0496) and project reference PGC2018‐095411‐B‐I00 as well as the European Research Council (ERC) under grant agreement no. 648901. J.P.‐L. acknowledges the European Research Council Starting Grant microCrysFact (ERC‐2015‐STG No. 677020) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (200021_181988) and ETH Zürich. R. R.‐T. acknowledges the support from Generalitat de Catalunya and the COFUND programme of the Marie Curie Actions of the 7th R&D Framework Programme of the European Union (BP‐B 00256). X.R.‐M. acknowledges the departments of Physics, Chemistry and Geology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) as coordinators of the PhD programme in Materials Science. X.R.‐M. and C.F. acknowledge Nicole Kleger‐Schai from ETH Zürich for her valuable help in using the rheometer. X.R.‐M. and M.C.‐Q. acknowledge Dr. Joan M. Cabot from the University of Tasmania for fruitful discussions on 3D printing. D.B.A. thanks the University of Nottingham Beacon Propulsion Futures. ; Peer reviewed

11 Pags.- 1 Tabl.- 4 Figs. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. ; We present a long-term assessment of precipitation trends in Southwestern Europe (1850–2018) using data from multiple sources, including observations, gridded datasets and global climate model experiments. Contrary to previous investigations based on shorter records, we demonstrate, using new long-term, quality controlled precipitation series, the lack of statistically significant long-term decreasing trends in precipitation for the region. Rather, significant trends were mostly found for shorter periods, highlighting the prevalence of interdecadal and interannual variability at these time-scales. Global climate model outputs from three CMIP experiments are evaluated for periods concurrent with observations. Both the CMIP3 and CMIP5 ensembles show precipitation decline, with only CMIP6 showing agreement with long term trends in observations. However, for both CMIP3 and CMIP5 large interannual and internal variability among ensemble members makes it difficult to identify a trend that is statistically different from observations. Across both observations and models, our results make it difficult to associate any declining trends in precipitation in Southwestern Europe to anthropogenic forcing at this stage. ; This work was supported by the research projects CGL2017-82216-R, CGL2017-83866-C3-3-R and PCI2019-103631, financed by the Spanish Commission of Science and Technology and FEDER; CROSSDRO project financed by the AXIS (Assessment of Cross(X)—sectoral climate Impacts and pathways for Sustainable transformation), JPI-Climate co-funded call of the European Commission and INDECIS which is part of ERA4CS, an ERA-NET initiated by JPI Climate, and funded by FORMAS (SE), DLR (DE), BMWFW (AT), IFD (DK), MINECO (ES), ANR (FR) with co-funding by the European Union (Grant 690462). Dhais Peña-Angulo received a 'Juan de la Cierva' postdoctoral contract (FJCI-2017-33652 Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, MEC). Conor Murphy was supported by the Irish Environmental Protection Agency (Grant Nos. 2019-CCRP-MS.60). Marco Turco has received funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities through the project PREDFIRE (RTI2018-099711-J-I00), which is co-financed with the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF/FEDER). ; Peer reviewed

This work describes the growth of thin epitaxial films of the layered perovskite material GdBaCo2O5.5±δ (GBCO) on different single crystal substrates SrTiO3 (STO), (LaAlO3)0.3(Sr2TaAlO6)0.7 (LSAT) and LaAlO3 (LAO) as an approach to study changes in the thermoelectric properties by means of the induced epitaxial strain. In addition to strain changes, the films grow with considerably different preferred orientations and domain microstructures: GBCO films on STO are purely c-axis oriented (c⊥) with an average 0.18% in-plane tensile strain; GBCO on LSAT is composed of domains with a mixed orientation (c‖ and c⊥) with an average 0.71% in-plane compressive strain; while on LAO it is b-axis oriented (c‖) with an average 0.89% in-plane compressive strain. These differences result in important cell volume changes, as well as in the orthorhombicity of the a–b plane of the GBCO structure, which in turn induce a change in the sign and temperature dependence of the thermopower, while the electrical conductivity remains almost unchanged. In general, compressively strained films show negative S thermopower (n-type) while tensile strained films show a positive S (p-type) at low temperatures, probing the adaptive nature of the GdBaCo2O5.5±δ compound. These results point to the spontaneous generation of oxygen vacancies to partially accommodate the epitaxial stress as the main cause for this effect. ; This work was supported by the projects: MINECO ref. MAT2016-77100-C2-1-P and CNRS-CSIC PICS Project ref. 261091, the EU for funding through project H2020-MSCA-RISE-2014 ref. 645658, and the AGAUR agency for 2017SGR327. ICN2 is funded by the CERCA programme/Generalitat de Catalunya and by the Severo Ochoa programme of the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (MINECO, grant no. SEV-2017-0706). CMS and ECA acknowledge support from the support from the Spanish MICINN project SIP (PGC2018-101743-B-I00). AC particularly acknowledges the support of the Severo Ochoa programme and ICN2 for his PhD grant. FR acknowledges support from MAT2016-80762-R, Xunta de Galicia (Centro singular de investigación de Galicia accreditation 2016–2019, ED431G/09), by the European Union (European Regional Development Fund-ERDF) and the European Commission through the Horizon H2020 funding by H2020-MSCA-RISE-2016-Project No. 734187 – SPICOLOST. ; Peer reviewed

This study aimed to assess the stability of the performance, pace and turn parameters of elite long-distance male swimmers during an 800 m freestyle race. The sample was composed by 38 male swimmers, participating in the 800 m event at the 2016 LEN European Aquatic Championships (long course meter). The performance, and a set of pace and turn parameters were analyzed. A customized software was used to perform each race analysis. Swimmers spent 64.05 ± 0.50% and 35.95 ± 0.49% of the final race time in the clean swim and turns, respectively. In the pace parameters, the clean swim was the only one that did not differ between the first and second half of the race (1.63 ± 0.05 vs 1.62 ± 0.05 m·s−1), and in the turn parameters, the water break distance was also similar (5.13 ± 1.17 vs 5.06 ± 0.98 m). A significant and moderate-strong variation was verified for the performance (total race lap effect: p < 0.001, η2 = 0.62), and a significant and moderate variation for the pace parameters (total race: p < 0.001, 0.15 ≤ η2 ≤ 0.33), and for the turn parameters (total race: p < 0.01, 0.15 ≤ η2 ≤ 0.33). Present data (pace and turn variation) shows that elite long-distance male swimmers do not maintain a similar pattern during an 800 m freestyle race. Future research is need to understand if this lack of pace and turn stability is the best way to enhance the performance, or if swimmers should be advised to control their pace and turn. Nevertheless, coaches are advised to help swimmers with feedback about their pace (i.e., controlling the intermediate 30 m) and turn performances (i.e., controlling the 5 m in and 15 m out), leading to a positive effect in their final race time. ; To LEN (Ligue Européenne de Natation) and Spiideo AB for providing the videos. This project was supported by the National Funds through FCT – Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology ( UID/DTP/04045/2013 ) – and the European Fund for regional development ( FEDER ) allocated by European Union through the COMPETE 2020 Programme (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006969). We would like also to thank the support of the University of Beira Interior and Santander Universities (Bolsa BIPD/ICIFCSH-Santander Universidades-UBI/2017). ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Homologous recombination (HR) enables the exchange of genetic material between and within species. Recent studies suggest that this process plays a major role in the microevolution of microbial genomes, contributing to core genome homogenization and to the maintenance of cohesive population structures. However, we still have a very poor understanding of the possible adaptive roles of intraspecific HR and of the factors that determine its differential impact across clades and lifestyles. Here we used a unified methodological framework to assess HR in 338 complete genomes from 54 phylogenetically diverse and representative prokaryotic species, encompassing different lifestyles and a broad phylogenetic distribution. Our results indicate that lifestyle and presence of restriction-modification (RM) machineries are among the main factors shaping HR patterns, with symbionts and intracellular pathogens having the lowest HR levels. Similarly, the size of exchanged genomic fragments correlated with the presence of RM and competence machineries. Finally, genes exchanged by HR showed functional enrichments which could be related to adaptations to different environments and ecological strategies. Taken together, our results clarify the factors underlying HR impact and suggest important adaptive roles of genes exchanged through this mechanism. Our results also revealed that the extent of genetic exchange correlated with lifestyle and some genomic features. Moreover, the genes in exchanged regions were enriched for functions that reflected specific adaptations, supporting identification of HR as one of the main evolutionary mechanisms shaping prokaryotic core genomes. ; The group of J.A. is funded by grant CLG2015_66686-C3-03 from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO), which is cofinanced with FEDER support from the European Union. P.G.-T. was an FPI-MINECO fellow associated with project CGL2012-39627-C03-01 (to J.A.). The T.G. group acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (grants "Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa 2013-2017" SEV-2012-0208 and BFU2015-67107; cofounded by European Regional Development Fund [ERDF]); from the CERCA Program/Generalitat de Catalunya; from the Catalan Research Agency (AGAUR) (grant SGR857); and from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement ERC-2016-724173 (Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no. H2020-MSCA-ITN-2014-642095).