Search results for "Opinion Article"
showing 10 items of 14 documents
Retract p < 0.005 and propose using JASP, instead
2018
Seeking to address the lack of research reproducibility in science, including psychology and the life sciences, a pragmatic solution has been raised recently: to use a stricter p < 0.005 standard for statistical significance when claiming evidence of new discoveries. Notwithstanding its potential impact, the proposal has motivated a large mass of authors to dispute it from different philosophical and methodological angles. This article reflects on the original argument and the consequent counterarguments, and concludes with a simpler and better-suited alternative that the authors of the proposal knew about and, perhaps, should have made from their Jeffresian perspective: to use a Bayes …
Innate and Adaptive Immunity in Aging and Longevity: The Foundation of Resilience
2020
The interrelation of the processes of immunity and senescence now receives an unprecedented emphasis during the COVID-19 pandemic, which brings to the fore the critical need to combat immunosenescence and improve the immune function and resilience of older persons. Here we review the historical origins and the current state of the science of innate and adaptive immunity in aging and longevity. From the modern point of view, innate and adaptive immunity are not only affected by aging but also are important parts of its underlying mechanisms. Excessive levels or activity of antimicrobial peptides, C-reactive protein, complement system, TLR/NF-κB, cGAS/STING/IFN 1,3 and AGEs/RAGE pathways, mye…
Is erythropoietin a worthy candidate for traumatic brain injury or are we heading the wrong way?
2016
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of death and disability in the modern society. Although primary prevention is the only strategy that can counteract the primary brain damage, numerous preclinical studies have been accumulated in order to find therapeutic strategies against the secondary damage. In this scenario erythropoietin (EPO) has been shown to be a promising candidate as neuroprotective agent. A recent clinical trial, however, has shown that EPO has not an overall effect on outcomes following TBI thus renewing old concerns. However, the results of a prespecified sensitivity analysis indicate that the effect of EPO on mortality remains still unclear. In the light of the…
Pitfalls to be considered on the metabolomic analysis of biological samples by HR-MAS
2014
HR-MAS (High-Resolution Magic AngleSpinning) is considered a powerfultechnique for metabolomic studies ofbiological samples that provides “intact”tissue spectra (Cheng et al., 1998; Waterset al., 2000; Sitter et al., 2002; Martinez-Bisbal et al., 2004; Payne et al., 2006;Coen et al., 2007; Bathen et al., 2010).The performance of HR-MAS, fol-lowed by quantitative histopathology hasdemonstrated that, despite some changes,HR-MAS can preserve approximately thetissue histopathologic features producingwell-resolved spectra of cellular metabo-lites (Cheng et al., 2000). Nevertheless,therearesomeaspectsarousedintheliter-ature about the possible biochemical andstructural changes that can occur durin…
The Stability-Plasticity Dilemma: Investigating the Continuum from Catastrophic Forgetting to Age-Limited Learning Effects
2013
The stability-plasticity dilemma is a well-know constraint for artificial and biological neural systems. The basic idea is that learning in a parallel and distributed system requires plasticity for the integration of new knowledge, but also stability in order to prevent the forgetting of previous knowledge. Too much plasticity will result in previously encoded data being constantly forgotten, whereas too much stability will impede the efficient coding of this data at the level of the synapses. However, for the most part, neural computation has addressed the problems related to excessive plasticity or excessive stability as two different fields in the literature.
New Molecular Targets and Lifestyle Interventions to Delay Aging Sarcopenia
2014
The term sarcopenia was originally created to refer age-related loss of muscle mass with consequent loss of strength (Morley et al., 2001). There are now four international definitions of sarcopenia (Cruz-Jentoft et al., 2010; Muscaritoli et al., 2010; Morley et al., 2011). In essence they all agree, requiring a measure of walking capability [either low gait speed or a limited endurance (distance) in a 6-min walk], together with an appendicular lean mass of <2 SDs of a sex and ethnically corrected normal level for individuals 20–30 years old. Sarcopenia is a prevalent health problem among the elderly. On average, 5–13 and 11–50% of people aged 60−70 years and ≥80 years, respectively suffer …
Reflections on the 25th Congress of the European Society for Pediatric Urology Part 1
2014
The 25th annual meeting of the European Society for Pediatric Urology (ESPU) took place in Innsbruck, Austria from the 7th to 10th of May 2014. The Specialty Chief Editor and nine Associate editors of Frontiers in Pediatrics, Pediatric Urology were in attendance. Each was asked to select the two presentations that they considered most significant. Here, we highlight some of the papers that we found of particular interest and that may impact our practices. This report reflects personal preferences of the authors and does not pretend to be comprehensive or to rank the quality of the presentations. We are aware that some important presentations may not be included. Our selections are presented…
Obsolescence and intervention: on synthetic-biological entities.
2014
Oftentimes, topics that might fall outside of science’s remit seem to end up becoming a part of it, sooner or later. This appears to be the case of synthetic biology, a new biological science (although some maintain that it is a form of engineering, or treat it as such; Endy, 2005), which seems to have become essential to the understanding of living beings and their extreme manipulation. I believe it to be a new form of biology. In truth, synthetic biology has a long history and, conceptually speaking, may well have formed part of the interests and research efforts of our illustrious predecessors throughout the first half of the twentieth century and even earlier. In any event, and broadly …
Cardiac tissue engineering: a reflection after a decade of hurry
2014
The heart is a perfect machine whose mass is mainly composed of cardiomyocytes, but also fibroblasts, endothelial, smooth muscle, nervous, and immune cells are represented. One thousand million cardiomyocytes are estimated to be lost after myocardial infarction, their loss being responsible for the impairment in heart contractile function (Laflamme and Murry, 2005). The potential success of cardiac cell therapy relies almost completely on the ability of the implanted cells to differentiate toward mature cardiomyocytes. These cells must be able to reinforce the pumping activity of the injured heart in the absence of life-threatening arrhythmias due to electrophysiological incompatibility. Th…
Maintenance of glutathione levels and its importance in epigenetic regulation.
2014
Glutathione (GSH) is present in almost all cell types playing an important function in organisms. It is the main antioxidant in many cell types and it also regulates the function of proteins, including transcription factors (reviewed in Pallardo et al., 2009; Markovic et al., 2010; Garcia-Gimenez et al., 2013a). Over recent years, growing evidence has suggested a link between GSH metabolism and the control of epigenetic mechanisms. Epigenetics is defined as the mitotically/meiotically heritable changes in gene expression that are not due to changes in the primary DNA sequence. This link between GSH and epigenetics occurs at different levels. Hence, GSH can affect DNA and histone methylation…