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Introduction and aims: Jackhammer esophagus is a recently identified motility disorder. Experience with the novel pathologic condition has been reported in different studies but there is little information on the subject in Latin America. Our case series conducted in Bogota, Colombia, describes the prevalence of jackhammer esophagus and its demographic, clinical, and manometric characteristics. Materials and methods: A retrospective, observational, cross-sectional study included consecutive patients diagnosed with jackhammer esophagus that were referred for high-resolution esophageal manometry. Their clinical and manometric records were reviewed, and the pertinent information for the present study was collected. Results: Within the study period, 6445 patients were evaluated through esophageal manometry, 27 of whom were diagnosed with jackhammer esophagus (prevalence of 0.42%). The majority of those patients were women (n = 17, 63%) in the sixth decade of life. The most common symptom was regurgitation (n = 17, 63%), followed by dysphagia (n = 15, 56%). The mean distal contractile integral was 9384 (5,095−18,546) mmHg·s·cm. Dysphagia was more common in patients > 60 years of age (79%, p 60 años y regurgitación más frecuente (92%, p

Resumen: Introducción y objetivos: «Jackhammer esophagus» (o esófago en «martillo hidráulico» en español), es un trastorno motor esofágico identificado recientemente. Diversos estudios han descrito su experiencia con este novel padecimiento. Sin embargo, no existe información al respecto en Latinoamérica. Nuestro trabajo describe la prevalencia, características demográficas, clínicas y manométricas en una serie de casos con «jackhammer esophagus» en Bogotá, Colombia. Materiales y métodos: Este es un trabajo observacional retrospectivo de corte transversal. Pacientes consecutivos referidos para manometría esofágica de alta resolución diagnosticados con «jackhammer esophagus» fueron considerados para el estudio. Los expedientes clínicos y manométricos de estos enfermos fueron revisados y la información pertinente extraída. Resultados: Durante el periodo de estudio, 6445 pacientes fueron evaluados con manometría esofágica, 27 fueron diagnosticados con «jackhammer esophagus» (prevalencia 0.42%). La mayor parte, fueron mujeres (n = 17,63%) en la sexta década. El síntoma más común fue la regurgitación (n = 17, 63%), seguido por disfagia (n = 15, 56%). El promedio de contracción distal integral observado fue 9,384 (5,095-18,546) mm Hg-s-cm. Disfagia fue más común (79% p 60 años y regurgitación más frecuente (92%, p 60 years of age (79%, p

The leaves of the olive tree (Olea europaea L.) are one of the major solid wastes from the olive industry. Globally, the European Union is the largest producer of olive by-products, with Spain, Italy, Greece, and Portugal accounting for almost the entire production. Many questions remain to be solved concerning olive leaves (OL), including those related to possible differences in composition and/or biological activities depending on their geographical origin. In the present work, OL from Spain, Italy, Greece, and Portugal have been characterized according to their phytochemical profile, antioxidant capacity, neuroprotective activity, and anti-inflammatory effects. The Spanish and Italian OL samples presented the highest antioxidant and neuroprotective activities, while the Greek OL showed the lowest. These results were strongly associated with the content of oleoside methyl ester and p-hydroxybenzoic acid for the Spanish and Italian samples, respectively, whereas the content of decarboxymethyl elenolic acid dialdehyde form (hydrated) was negatively associated with the mentioned biological activities of the Greek samples. No country-related effect was observed in the anti-inflammatory activity of OL. Comprehensively, this work could provide a useful tool for manufacturers and R&D departments in making environmentally friendly decisions on how OL can be used to generate nutraceutical products based on the composition and origin of this by-product.

Currently, the processes of obtaining and producing food as well as consumption habits give rise to new challenges for food safety. The presence of heavy metals in edible vegetable oils has harmful effects for humans. In this study, the scientific literature which reports the presence of heavy metals in different types of vegetable oils was analysed. More than 25 heavy metals are evaluated in 35 different oils from 24 countries. The widely studied metals are Cd, Pb, Cu, and Fe in olive oil, sunflower oil, rapeseed oil, and corn oils, mainly in Brazil, Turkey, China, Iran, and India. Likewise, the presence of Antimony (Sb) as a product of migration from PET containers to edible vegetable oils is a topic of great interest in recent years. Additionally, the different analytical techniques used for this purpose and the standards are analysed. This study highlights the main findings and challenges in this research field.

Medical imaging is essential for the proper diagnosis and treatment of many diseases. The literature has found that medical imaging generally accounts for a significant percentage of total healthcare spending. We analyzed a national database between 2013 and 2021, with more than 19 million patients on average, to review which health conditions account for the highest spending on medical imaging in the Colombian health system. We segmented the analysis by type of medical imaging, life cycles, health condition and sex. Our findings indicate that cardiac and mental illnesses account for the highest per capita spending on medical imaging, especially for the elderly. As a proportion of total expenditure, hypertension and tuberculosis are added, with special emphasis on the infancy-childhood life cycle., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this research., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: Colombia is a Latin American country with a very complex social and political context that has not allowed the allocation of sufficient resources to the fields of science, technology, and innovation (STI). This is particularly worrying for the area of health since not enough resources are allocated for public health, research, or education., Methods: The so-called "Great Survey in Health 2019" was administered online through the SurveyMonkey platform to 5298 people in different regions of the country, representing the public, private, and academic sectors. The questionnaire consisted of 46 open and closed questions, including demographic inquiries. Data analysis involved textual analytics and sentiment analysis., Results: Overall, 56% of those surveyed were women within the adult life cycle. Most respondents had a postgraduate education. Greater participation was observed in the Oriental, Bogotá, and Antioquia regions, which also concentrate the largest number of resources for STI. Among the main recommendations derived from the results, priorities include investing in research, personalised medicine, promoting the social appropriation of knowledge, addressing mental health, regulating research through a statute, promoting undergraduate research, and establishing recertification exams to pursue excellence., Conclusion: The results of this original study serve as a fundamental input to promote and strengthen the STI processes in life sciences and health. They serve as a guide to generate public policies and actions that guarantee better health and well-being for the Colombian population, strategically proposing a clear roadmap for the next 20 years., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest., (© 2024 The Authors. Health Care Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Tsinghua University Press.)

Prenatally malnourished rats develop hypertension in adulthood, in part through increased α 1 -adrenoceptor-mediated outflow from the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) to the sympathetic system. We studied whether both α 1 -adrenoceptor-mediated noradrenergic excitatory pathways from the locus coeruleus (LC) to the PVN and their reciprocal excitatory CRFergic connections contribute to prenatal undernutrition-induced hypertension. For that purpose, we microinjected either α 1 -adrenoceptor or CRH receptor agonists and/or antagonists in the PVN or the LC, respectively. We also determined the α 1 -adrenoceptor density in whole hypothalamus and the expression levels of α 1A -adrenoceptor mRNA in the PVN. The results showed that: (i) agonists microinjection increased systolic blood pressure and heart rate in normotensive eutrophic rats, but not in prenatally malnourished subjects; (ii) antagonists microinjection reduced hypertension and tachycardia in undernourished rats, but not in eutrophic controls; (iii) in undernourished animals, antagonist administration to one nuclei allowed the agonists recover full efficacy in the complementary nucleus, inducing hypertension and tachycardia; (iv) early undernutrition did not modify the number of α 1 -adrenoceptor binding sites in hypothalamus, but reduced the number of cells expressing α 1A -adrenoceptor mRNA in the PVN. These results support the hypothesis that systolic pressure and heart rate are increased by tonic reciprocal paraventricular-coerulear excitatory interactions in prenatally undernourished young-adult rats.

The present pilot study focuses on the adaptive processes of babies who are placed during their first months of life. It used an ethological approach to explore the behavioural adjustment of 19 infants from their arrival in placement through their first 6 weeks in Residential Care (RC; France), a Foster Family (FF; Québec) or an Infant-Mother Centre (IMC; Québec). Direct observations were conducted once a week during feeding sessions. Observed behaviours were as follows: sleep-wake state, self-soothing, burp, visual exploration, motor activity, facial and vocal expressions. Then, a Kruskal-Wallis test was conducted to examine differences in babies' adaption as a function of placement setting. Results showed that, in RC, the duration of the post-feeding phase is the shortest. Moreover, these institutionalized babies showed the most modes of self-protection and the fewest vocalizations. By contrast, babies placed in the IMC spent the least time in withdrawal, expressed motor activity more regularly and were never placed back in their recliner before burping. Larger differences appear comparing placement in RC and that in the IMC, the placement in FF showing intermediate results., (© 2020 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.)

Introduction and Aims: Jackhammer esophagus is a recently identified motility disorder. Experience with the novel pathologic condition has been reported in different studies but there is little information on the subject in Latin America. Our case series conducted in Bogota, Colombia, describes the prevalence of jackhammer esophagus and its demographic, clinical, and manometric characteristics., Materials and Methods: A retrospective, observational, cross-sectional study included consecutive patients diagnosed with jackhammer esophagus that were referred for high-resolution esophageal manometry. Their clinical and manometric records were reviewed, and the pertinent information for the present study was collected., Results: Within the study period, 6,445 patients were evaluated with esophageal manometry, 27 of whom were diagnosed with jackhammer esophagus (prevalence of 0.42%). The majority of those patients were women (n=17, 63%) in the sixth decade of life. The most common symptom was regurgitation (n=17, 63%), followed by dysphagia (n=15, 56%). The mean distal contractile integral was 9,384 (5,095-18,546) mmHg·s·cm. Dysphagia was more common in patients >60 years of age (79%, p <.01) and regurgitation was more frequent in patients <60 years of age (92%, p <.03)., Conclusions: The present study is the first to characterize the prevalence of jackhammer esophagus and its demographic, clinical, and manometric characteristics in Latin American patients. The prevalence of jackhammer esophagus in our study population was considerably lower than that reported in international case series. Our findings suggest that there are important geographic differences in the epidemiology and clinical presentation of jackhammer esophagus, compared with data from other international centers., (Copyright © 2019 Asociación Mexicana de Gastroenterología. Publicado por Masson Doyma México S.A. All rights reserved.)

Moderate reduction of dietary protein (from 25% to 8% casein) in pregnant rats, calorically compensated by carbohydrates, gives rise to 'hidden prenatal malnutrition' (HPM) in the offspring since it does not alter body and brain weights of pups at birth. However, this dietary treatment leads to decreased β-adrenoceptor signaling and brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels in the pup' brain, altogether with defective cortical long-term potentiation (LTP) and lowered visuospatial memory performance. Since early postnatal environmental enrichment (EE) has been shown to exert plastic effects on the developing brain and neuroprotection both on cognition and on structural properties of the neocortex, in the present study we addressed the question of whether early postnatal EE during the lactation period could exert compensatory changes in the expression of ®-adrenergic receptors and BDNF in the neocortex of HPM rats, and if these effects are associated with an improvement or even a restore of both neocortical LTP in vivo and cognitive performance induced by HPM. The results obtained show that EE restored β-adrenoceptor density, BDNF expression and the ability to support LTP at prefrontal and occipital cortices of HPM rats. Besides, EE improved learning performance in visuospatial and operant conditioning tasks. The latter support the notion that adequate maternal protein nutrition during pregnancy is required for proper brain development and function. Further, the results highlight the role of environmental enrichment during early postnatal life in increasing later brain plasticity and exerting neuroprotection against brain deficits induced by prenatal malnutrition., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Achalasia in pregnancy is an infrequent, poorly understood condition and its treatment is not clearly defined. The repercussions on the patients nutritional status are serious and in a pregnant woman have serious implications for the course of gestation, with high risk of intrauterine growth restriction, preterm delivery and even fetal loss; there are symptoms that can be confused with hyperemesis gravidarum delaying the diagnosis. The therapeutic options are medical treatment, endoscopic and surgical interventions; to decide what is the best treatment, we should be taken into account the severity, gestational age and patient conditions. Within the spectrum mentioned in the management include calcium antagonists and nitrates, however these have restrictions in pregnancy, another options are botulinum toxin, endoscopic pneumatic dilation, laparoscopic Heller myotomy and recently POEM. In pregnancy there is a few evidence in the literature and in this moment there are about 40 reported cases, some with complications such as fetal loss and maternal death. We present our experience at the San Ignacio University Hospital in Bogotá, Colombia, with a 26-year-old woman with a novo diagnosis of achalasia type II during the first trimester of pregnancy, with a clinical history of severe dysphagia associated with malnutrition. She was management with enteral nutrition support with nasogastric tube to achieve repletion of the body mass index (BMI) and after that, she had a endoscopic management with Rigiflex balloon dilation. It allowed to successfully carry out pregnancy without adverse effects on the mother or the fetus, with adequate evolution and oral tolerance without dysphagia. We consider that nutritional support is important prior to taking a desicion with this type of patient, in addition that endoscopic management with balloon dilation can be safe and effective for the management of achalasia in pregnancy.

Background: The prognosis in patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) depends, in large part, on the frequency of exacerbations. Cardiovascular diseases, including heart failure (HF), are the risk factors for exacerbations. However, the importance of HF type over the exacerbations in COPD patients is unknown., Objective: To determine whether right heart failure (RHF) is an independent risk factor for severe exacerbations in patients with COPD., Methods: A prospective cohort study of 133 patients diagnosed with COPD with a follow-up period from 2010 to 2016. Patients with bronchial hyperreactivity, asthma, or pulmonary embolism were excluded., Results: The mean age was 74.7 ± 8.2 years and 43.6% were men, 69.9% had severe exacerbations during follow-up. Subjects with RHF had lower FEV 1 (50.2 ± 19.9 vs 57.4 ± 16.9, P = .006) and greater incidence of stroke (15.4% vs 1.8%, P = .009) compared to those without RHF. Subjects with RHF were at higher risk of severe exacerbations (HR, 2.46; CI 95%, 1.32-4.58, P = .005) compared to those without RHF after adjusting for confounding variables., Conclusion: In patients with COPD, RHF is an independent risk factor for suffering severe exacerbations., (© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The photonic spin Hall effect in transmission is a transverse beam shift of the out-coming beam depending on polarization of the incoming beam. The effect can be significantly enhanced by materials with high anisotropy. We report, to the best of our knowledge, the first experimental demonstration of the photonic spin Hall effect in a multilayer hyperbolic metamaterial at visible wavelengths (wavelengths of 520 and 633 nm). The metamaterial is composed of alternating layers of gold and alumina with deeply subwavelength thicknesses, exhibiting extremely large anisotropy. The angle-resolved polarimetric measurements showed the shift of 165 μm for the metamaterial of 176 nm in thickness. Additionally, the transverse beam shift is extremely sensitive to the variations of the incident angle changing theoretically by 270 μm with 1 milli-radian (0.057°). These features can lead to minituarized spin Hall switches and filters with high angular resolution.

We present a review of photonic implementations of discrete-time quantum walks (DTQW) in the spatial and temporal domains, based on spatial- and time-multiplexing techniques, respectively. Additionally, we propose a detailed novel scheme for photonic DTQW, using transverse spatial modes of single photons and programmable spatial light modulators (SLM) to manipulate them. Unlike all previous mode-multiplexed implementations, this scheme enables simulation of an arbitrary step of the walker, only limited, in principle, by the SLM resolution. We discuss current applications of such photonic DTQW architectures in quantum simulation of topological effects and the use of non-local coin operations based on two-photon hybrid entanglement.

We demonstrate experimentally the lateral circular birefringence of a tunable birefringent polymer, the first example of the spin Hall effect of light in a polymeric material, and we demonstrate that this light shift can be significantly enhanced by tuning the effective birefringence in the polymer. We report experimental observations of this effect using polarimetric techniques and quantum-weak-measurement techniques, reporting a weak amplification factor of 200.

We study the generation of planar quantum squeezed (PQS) states by quantum nondemolition (QND) measurement of an ensemble of ^{87}Rb atoms with a Poisson distributed atom number. Precise calibration of the QND measurement allows us to infer the conditional covariance matrix describing the F&#95;{y} and F&#95;{z} components of the PQS states, revealing the dual squeezing characteristic of PQS states. PQS states have been proposed for single-shot phase estimation without prior knowledge of the likely values of the phase. We show that for an arbitrary phase, the generated PQS states can give a metrological advantage of at least 3.1 dB relative to classical states. The PQS state also beats, for most phase angles, single-component-squeezed states generated by QND measurement with the same resources and atom number statistics. Using spin squeezing inequalities, we show that spin-spin entanglement is responsible for the metrological advantage.

Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond is a promising quantum metrology tool finding applications across disciplines. The spin sensor measures magnetic fields, electric fields and temperature with nano-scale precision and is fully operable under ambient conditions. Moreover, it achieves precision scaling inversely with total measurement time σB ∝ 1/T (Heisenberg scaling) rather than as the inverse of the square root of T, with σB = √T the Shot-Noise limit. This scaling can be achieved by means of phase estimation algorithms (PEAs), in combination with single-shot read-out. Despite their accuracy, the range of applicability of PEAs is limited to sensing single frequencies with negligible temporal fluctuations. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) signals from molecules often contain multifrequency components and sensing them using PEA is ruled out. Here we propose an alternative method for precision magnetometry in frequency multiplexed signals via compressive sensing (CS) techniques focusing on nanoscale NMR. We show that CS can provide for precision scaling approximately as σB ≈ 1/T, as well as for a 5-fold increase in sensitivity over dynamic-range gain, in addition to reducing the total number of resources required. We illustrate our method by taking model solid-state spectra of Glycine acquired under Magic Angle Spinning conditions.

Phases of matter with nontrivial topological order are predicted to exhibit a variety of exotic phenomena, such as robust localized bound states in 1D systems, and edge states in 2D systems, which are expected to display spin helicity, immunity to backscattering, and weak antilocalization. In this Letter, we present an experimental observation of topological structures generated via the controlled implementation of two consecutive noncommuting rotations in photonic discrete-time quantum walks. The second rotation introduces valleylike Dirac points in the system, allowing us to create the nontrivial topological pattern. By choosing specific values for the rotations, it is possible to coherently drive the system between topological sectors characterized by different topological invariants. We probe the full topological landscape, demonstrating the emergence of localized bound states hosted at the topological boundaries, and the existence of extremely localized or delocalized non-Gaussian quantum states. Our results pave the way for the study of valley polarization and applications of topological mechanisms in robust optical-device engineering.

Weak amplification is a signal enhancement technique which is used to measure tiny changes that otherwise cannot be determined because of technical limitations. It is based on: a) the existence of a weak interaction which couples a property of a system (the system) with a separate degree of freedom (the pointer), and b) the measurement of an anomalously large mean value of the pointer state (weak mean value), after appropriate pre-and post-selection of the state of the system. Unfortunately, the weak amplification process is generally accompanied by severe losses of the detected signal, which limits its applicability. However, we will show here that since weak amplification is essentially the result of an interference phenomena, it should be possible to use the degree of interference (weak interference) to get relevant information about the physical system under study in a more general scenario, where the signal is not severely depleted (high-signal regime).

Weak measurements are a unique tool for accessing information about weakly interacting quantum systems with minimal back action. Joint weak measurements of single-particle operators with pointer states characterized by a two-dimensional Gaussian distribution can provide, in turn, key information about quantum correlations that can be relevant for quantum information applications. Here we demonstrate that by employing two-dimensional pointer states endowed with orbital angular momentum (OAM), it is possible to extract weak values of the higher order moments of single-particle operators, an inaccessible quantity with Gaussian pointer states only. We provide a specific example that illustrates the advantages of our method both in terms of signal enhancement and information retrieval.

We have observed Bragg scattering of photons from quantum degenerate ^{87}Rb atoms in a three-dimensional optical lattice. Bragg scattered light directly probes the microscopic crystal structure and atomic wave function whose position and momentum width is Heisenberg limited. The spatial coherence of the wave function leads to revivals in the Bragg scattered light due to the atomic Talbot effect. The decay of revivals across the superfluid to Mott insulator transition indicates the loss of superfluid coherence., (© 2011 American Physical Society)

Modafinil is a novel wake-promoting agent whose effects on cognitive performance have begun to be addressed at both preclinical and clinical level. The present study was designed to investigate in rats the effects of chronic modafinil administration on cognitive performance by evaluating: (i) working and reference memories in an Olton 4×4 maze, and (ii) learning of a complex operant conditioning task in a Skinner box. In addition, the effect of modafinil on the ability of the rat frontal cortex to develop long-term potentiation (LTP) was also studied. Chronic modafinil did not significantly modify working memory errors but decreased long-term memory errors on the Olton 4×4 maze, meaning that the drug may have a favourable profile on performance of visuo-spatial tasks (typically, a hippocampus-dependent task) when chronically administered. On the other hand, chronic modafinil resulted in a marked decrease of successful responses in a complex operant conditioning learning, which means that repeated administration of the drug influences negatively problem-solving abilities when confronting the rat to a sequencing task (typically, a prefrontal cortex-dependent task). In addition, in vivo electrophysiology showed that modafinil resulted in impaired capacity of the rat prefrontal cortex to develop LTP following tetanization. It is concluded that modafinil can improve the performance of spatial tasks that depend almost exclusively on hippocampal functioning, but not the performance in tasks including a temporal factor where the prefrontal cortex plays an important role. The fact that modafinil together with preventing operant conditioning learning was also able to block LTP induction in the prefrontal cortex, suggests that the drug could interfere some critical component required for LTP can be developed, thereby altering neuroplastic capabilities of the prefrontal cortex., (Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

We experimentally control the spectral structure of photon pairs created via spontaneous four-wave mixing in microstructured fibers. By fabricating fibers with designed dispersion, one can manipulate the photons' wavelengths, joint spectrum, and, thus, entanglement. As an example, we produce photon pairs with no spectral correlations, allowing direct heralding of single photons in pure-state wave packets without filtering. We achieve an experimental purity of (85.9+/-1.6)%, while theoretical analysis and preliminary tests suggest that 94.5% purity is possible with a much longer fiber.