• After a thorough study, a research team of Universidad de Santiago found the transmitter that causes ejaculation in men: the ATP (adenosine 5’- triphosphate).The study was led by Dr Juan Pablo García-Huidobro, professor at the Faculty of Chemistry and Biology. This work means an important contribution to modern medicine and it has already been published by Biology of Reproduction (USA), one of the most renowned journals worldwide.

The journal Biology of Reproduction published an article submitted by Dr Juan Pablo García-Huidobro, professor at the Faculty of Chemistry and Biology. The article is the result of the study in which he determined that ATP (adenosine 5’- triphosphate) is in charge of contracting the smooth muscles that form the vas deferens (which is in charge of carrying the sperm) that, through its mechanism, contracts reflexively and propels sperm forward.

The study involved a multidisciplinary scientific team and it opens big opportunities for modern medicine.

The study also intended to define if the ATP was responsible for contracting the circular muscular layer, which is in charge of preventing retrograde ejaculation.

“The ATP acts as a cotransmitter in the longitudinal muscles, but not in the circular ones, and from a technical point of view, it is interesting, because it shows that the circular layer is controlled by other mechanisms that we could not precise during this study. We were able to show that the ATP works as a powerful sympathetic cotransmitter in the longitudinal layer,” Dr García-Huidobro said.

The biological material used for the laboratory tests was obtained by means of an agreement between the research team and Clínica Santa María. “The biopsy tissues were from young healthy men that wanted a vasectomy as a contraception method,” he explained.

In a vasectomy surgical procedure, the vas deference is tied and the central portion is severed.

“We were able to get very good material for the biological study, because it came from young and very healthy people. We had to comply with all the ethical requirements involved and the informed consent procedures to conduct our study,” he added. 

Impact on human physiology

The study conducted by Dr García-Huidobro determined the precise mechanism in which ATP is involved.

“We were able to establish that the ATP receptor is located in a very specific part of the membrane of the longitudinal smooth muscles called lipid rafts. Then, we could find specific details on where this receptor is functionally located,” he said.

In this way, the study results open several new questions and possibilities to understand human physiology and its relation with modern medicine.

He said that it is important to learn what is involved in this physiological process because it could be related to fertility disorders or it could contribute to masculine contraception.

Now we learned that ATP is the key transmitter in the ejaculation process, professor García-Huidobro says that it could help to develop ATP-targeted drugs for clinical cases that require fertility aids or control.

Professor García-Huidobro highlights the importance of having multidisciplinary research teams and the value of socializing the information of the studies, in order to improve the cultural and scientific capital in the country.

“There are many details of the studies that remain secret. Many of these research works were conducted with the participation of different research teams, and this is very important, because wherever a study is conducted, undergraduate, doctorate and post-doctorate students are required. This variety of people is able to develop very innovative methods that have a training-effect, resulting in very notable research people. It is not just a professor by himself: it is a team that makes all these findings possible,” he concluded.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• After four weeks of work in the Antarctica, Dr Raúl Cordero and Dr Alessandro Damiani, both researchers at the Department of Physics of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, were able to confirm that the extension of the hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctica reached more than 10 million km² in December 2015, i.e. more than twice the average of that period in the past three decades.

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The measurements were carried out during a campaign in the Antarctic Circle in the context of the Antarctic Scientific Expedition of the Chilean Antarctic Institute (Inach, in Spanish). Dr Raúl Cordero and Dr Alessandro Damiani, both professors at Universidad de Santiago de Chile, were part of the expedition.

The ozone measurement campaign at the Antarctica started on November 15^th and it continued until mid-December. Four researchers at Universidad de Santiago travelled to the heart of the White Continent, where about 600 kg of the best radiometric equipment available were sent.

The expedition was supported by Inach, what allowed the researchers to work at “Unión Glacier” Joint Polar Research Station located at 79 degrees South latitude, at about 1000 from the South Pole.

Constant monitoring

In spite of the negative results of this year, Dr Cordero expects that a process to recover the ozone layer starts in the short term, as a result of the actions taken worldwide to reduce the emissions of polluting gases. However, the information gathered highlights the need of adopting mitigation policies and conducting a constant monitoring of the area.

According to Dr Cordero, “the ozone layer depletion is mainly caused by the presence of ‘ozone destroying” chemicals in the polar stratosphere. These substances are generated by the industrial activity in mid-latitudes.”

Although these substances are everywhere in the planet, high latitudes are the most impacted areas by the layer depletion or destruction, particularly the Antarctica. During the southern spring, this area is affected by a massive destruction of the stratospheric ozone as a result of the particular weather conditions there.

According to the researcher, the ozone depletion process between September and December is favored by the low temperatures in the Antarctic stratosphere and by the Antarctic polar vortex that prevents the ozone from other latitudes from closing the hole.

“When temperatures increase at the end of spring, the ozone massive depletion stops and the weakening of the polar vortex allows the ozone from other latitudes to close the hole. The bad records this year are probably the result of unusually low stratospheric temperatures during last spring,” Dr Cordero said.

Recovery of the ozone layer

In spite of the negative results of this year, Dr Cordero expects that a process to recover the ozone layer continues until the middle of this century due to the actions taken worldwide to reduce the emissions of polluting gases. However, the information gathered highlights the need of adopting mitigation policies and conducting a constant monitoring of the area.

It is also worth to mention that this study included comparisons with databases of other months. According to this, the hole in the ozone layer reached 28 million km² in October, the fourth highest record since the satellite data is available. 

Dr Cordero also highlights the relation between ozone depletion and climate change. “The changes in the hole in the ozone layer could affect the energy balance of the Antarctica. Ozone depletion or exhaustion has affected the temperature of the stratosphere and it correlates with wind and surface temperature variations detected in the Antarctica in the past decades. Therefore, a better understanding of the relation between climate change and the hole in the ozone layer is required. This is the ultimate goal of our work,” he concluded.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• The purpose of the study conducted by Juan Fernando Mejía Calle, who graduated from a M.A. program of Universidad de Santiago, is that companies are able to automatically identify features in sophisticated files that are not recognized by common antivirus software. In this way, it will possible to manage the problem step by step and take remedial actions to be better prepared in the future.

John opens a file in his computer at work, and, unintentionally, he ends up infecting all databases in his company. How can he determine whether that file is effectively malicious or not? Although some of these pieces of software can only be detected by antivirus software, malicious codes evolve continuously until they cannot be recognized, making difficult to avoid them.

In this context, a model that allows to automatically detect the features of a malicious software or malware and then follow steps to combat them, taking remedial actions, was the result of a study conducted by Juan Fernando Mejía Calle, who graduated from the M.A. program in Security, Forensics and Auditing of IT Processes of Universidad de Santiago de Chile. Mejía Calle is an Ecuadorian expert, holder of a scholarship of the Government of his country to study this program.

His work, “Modelo de proceso para análisis, caracterización y clasificación de archivos ejecutables potencialmente maliciosos en un entorno organizacional con sistema operativo Windows,” will be a contribution to both the companies affected by these attacks and the organizations in charge of cyber forensics.

The study suggests a process to capture malware evidence based on the features of different types of programs, providing information “that allows to know if the file got connected to another site, executed other programs or became self-executable or if it got encrypted,” Mejía explained. After that, the files analyzed can be classified as clean or malicious.

“According to what I have studied, there is not any standard model for this purpose. Each author suggests a pattern based on his/her experience,” Mejía says. To conduct this study, he reviewed literature on malware and registered the features that he considered relevant to define it.

The model that he presented showed an effectiveness of 92% using the cross-validation method.

Mejía says that cyber-attacks in Chile are increasingly sophisticated. “New malware attacks or zero-day attacks can infect a computer because they have not been recognized yet. This type of attack cannot be prevented, but it can be analyzed to take future remedial actions,” he says.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• Universidad de Santiago was among the four national universities that will receive more funds from the National Fund for the Scientific and Technological Development (Fondecyt, its acronym in Spanish), according to the results of the 2014 Contest. Universidad de Chile, Universidad Católica and Universidad de Concepción were the other three universities.

• In order to develop more tolerable therapies, a research team at the Faculty of Chemistry and Biology of Universidad de Santiago de Chile studies the use of biodegradable nanoparticles to increase the Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) circulation time in the body to combat cancer.

In order to develop more tolerable therapies, a research team at the Faculty of Chemistry and Biology of Universidad de Santiago de Chile studies the use of biodegradable nanoparticles to increase the Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) circulation time in the body to combat cancer.

The study is led by Dr Patricia Díaz, professor at the Faculty of Chemistry and Biology and is being developed in the context of the 2016 Fondecyt Post Doc Project (3160837) "Uso de nanopartículas con circulación prolongada para la administración de ATP en tratamientos anticancerígenos." Dr Díaz and her team will test new nanotechnology-based applications to deliver cancer-fighting drugs into the body.

She explains that any drug delivered in the body for therapeutic purposes requires a circulation time to play its therapeutic role.

Some molecules, like ATP, are quickly degraded, so high constant drug doses are required to be therapeutically effective and this is not beneficial for patients.

“As drugs are encapsulated in nanoparticles, the enzymes that metabolize them cannot bind to them. This is why they are protected against degradation. Consequently, drugs’ half-life is increased, prolonging its therapeutic efficacy,” she explains. 

Improved treatments

The advantage of using ATP as a cancer-fighting drug is that it has minor side effects if compared to other drugs. But ATP degrades very quickly when it is recognized by the enzymes in the body. Therefore, different drug administration methods are required, like the use of nanoparticles with biodegradable and biocompatible properties.

“For this reason, we want to encapsulate ATP into biocompatible nanoparticles to increase its half-life. We will also use other strategies to make them invisible to the immune system, so that they can circulate longer. The idea is to prevent them from binding to the cell and to avoid extracellular release of ATP. In this way, we expect to have a higher amount of drug available in the body for a prolonged anti-cancer effect,” she explains.

According to Dr Díaz, the main objective of the study is to test the effectiveness of ATP-carrying nanoparticles in cancer treatment. “I expect to demonstrate that nanoparticle-encapsulated drugs increase their bioavailability when compared with conventional administration methods. Besides, we also expect to analyze the potential synergistic effect of administrating ATP in combination with other drugs frequently used in cancer treatment.”

“This synergistic effect could destroy a higher number of cancer cells, benefiting patients with advanced cancer,” she adds.

Another advantage of this type of treatment is that, as it allows a sustained release of drugs in time, patients could receive the treatment once a week or every two or more weeks, depending on the drug encapsulation capacity and its circulation time,” she concludes. 

Dr Juan Pablo García-Huidobro, researcher at the Faculty of Chemistry and Biology, is also participating in the study, which is being conducted at the Pharmacology Laboratory.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• With a space of 2,755 m², the five-floored building will be home to the Center for the Development of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, the Aquaculture Biotechnology Center and the Soft Matter Center. The cost of the building construction amounted to about CLP 5,000 million.

In a context in which Chile only invests 0.39 of its GDP in research, the President of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Dr Juan Manuel Zolezzi, highlighted the importance of this new space that will contribute to research and development in the country.

“This is one of the state-of-the arts buildings in Chile with regard to university research and it is an incentive for new researchers to continue innovating in key areas for the development of Chile,” he said. He added that Universidad de Santiago de Chile is a leader in technology transfer.

Senator Guido Girardi, who heads the Challenges for the Future. Science, Technology and Innovation Commission of the Upper House, valued the work done by public universities.

“These universities take charge of basic sciences on their own. Particularly, Universidad de Santiago has had the wisdom to connect basic sciences to the problems of the country and to generate innovation to solve these problems,” he said.

A few months ago, Dr Girardi visited the Center for the Development of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (Cedenna, in Spanish) where he met with professionals in this significant research field. After the opening ceremony he congratulated the university on the new facilities.

The centers

Representatives of the centers that will occupy the new facilities expressed their satisfaction with the architectural configuration of the building that facilitates research development.

Dr Francisco Melo, Head of the Soft Matter Center that gathers together scientists in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Engineering, said that the new space will offer endless opportunities for a better science development and for positioning the university at an international level.

For her part, Dr Dora Altbir, Head of the Cedenna, said that the possibility of bringing together scientists from different fields will allow a more active collaboration than the one that the university has now.

Eugenio Spencer Ossa, Head of the Aquaculture Biotechnology Center (CBA, in Spanish) said that the new building will allow to further scientific research and contribute to improve domestic industrial production, like salmon farming.

Architecture

The Rector Eduardo Morales Santos Research Building, with a total surface of 2,755.15 m², is located in the central campus of the university. Its design is a geometric reinterpretation of the heritage buildings of the institution designed by the architects Héctor Valdés, Fernando Castillo Velasco, Carlos García Huidobro and Carlos Bresciani and built between 1957 and 1967. The building’s name is a tribute to the first democratically-elected university president after the dictatorship.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• The project led by Dr Silvia Matiacevich, professor at the Department of Food Science and Technology of the Technological Faculty, seeks to renew food industry by developing a compound with antimicrobial and antioxidant properties to prolong shelf life of dairy products. The project is funded through a Fondecyt Regular project 2016.

Nowadays, fresh, healthy and natural food consumption has increased, particularly, the intake of dairy products. According to the Chilean Bureau for Agricultural Studies and Policies (ODEPA; in Spanish), in 2013 the intake per capita was 146.5 liter, a national record in the country. 

However, these products require additives for their preservation that are not always natural and that do not allow a balanced and healthy diet.

In this context, Dr Silvia Matiacevich, professor at the Department of Food Science and Technology of the Technological Faculty; Dr Rubén Bustos, professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering, and students at both units formed an interdisciplinary research team that will work on the study “Prolonged release of natural active compounds for improving shelf life of a dairy food matrix: Effect of structure obtained by different encapsulation process”. The project is funded by a Fondecyt Regular project (1160463) and it seeks to find a new active compound to preserve dairy products by means of nanotechnology. 

“We want to develop a new active ingredient with antimicrobial and antioxidant properties for dairy foods, in such a way that the compound has a prolonged release during storage, extending the product’s shelf life,” Dr Matiacevich says.

With this in mind, the researchers intend to study how the structure generated in this active ingredient- a powder developed through two different techniques- modifies its prolonged release in time in a real matrix,” she adds.

Food innovation and collaborative work

The objective of the study is to evaluate the effect of the structure obtained through “different encapsulation processes in prolonged release during storage of an encapsulated active agent,” in order to prolong the shelf life of a milk-based food matrix.

“By using encapsulation processes it is possible to obtain nanometric-sized particles, so the principles of nanotechnology are involved in this development,” favoring the compound prolonged release,” Dr Rubén Bustos, co-researcher of this study, says.

Food innovation research has increased worldwide. In Latin America, there are several research groups. For example, there are centers in Argentina, Colombia and Brazil, which professionals will collaborate in this project.

According to Dr Matiacevich, the main contribution of this study lies in that they will work directly with foods, so the study will not only provide basic knowledge but it will be applied to a real matrix.

For his part, Dr Bustos stresses the importance of their work with nanotechnology by saying: “At some point, microencapsulated ingredients were the greatest breakthrough, but now we will work with nanoencapsulated compounds, with much smaller and innovative structures.”

For the research team, the most important fact in relation to this project is that it involves the collaborative work of two departments of two different faculties of Universidad de Santiago de Chile. They also value the support of the Vice Presidency of Research, Development and Innovation, and the collaborative work with national and foreign universities. 

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• Dr Daniel Serafini and Dr Álvaro San Martín, both professors at the Department of Physics, have developed an innovative solution that allows to store energy as hydrogen. One of the advantages of this technology is that it is not intermittent as current non-conventional energy sources (NCES), like solar and wind energy. This project is a contribution of Universidad de Santiago de Chile to the energy industry.

An innovative technology to store energy as hydrogen is being developed by Dr Daniel Serafini and Dr Álvaro San Martín, both professors at the Department of Physics of Universidad de Santiago de Chile.

According to Dr Serafini, one of the advantages of this technology is that it is not intermittent as current non-conventional energy sources (NCES), like solar and wind energy.

Hydrogen is generated during off-peak periods via water electrolysis. Then, depending on the needs, electric power is generated using the hydrogen stored in an electrochemical device called fuel cell. This system is very efficient and is environmentally friendly, because hydrogen combustion only generates water vapour, free of greenhouse gases and particulate matter.

Storing energy as hydrogen is a better solution in comparison to lithium batteries. “We compete with lithium batteries and they are much more expensive and heavier and they have technological problems regarding their size, i.e., at equal size, they have a more reduced capacity,” Dr Serafini says.

According to the expert, with current battery technology, lithium reserves in the world “are enough to cover only 40% of the cars in the Unites States.”

It is also worth to mention that this solution is particularly attractive to settlements in remote areas that do not receive power supply from the interconnected grid system.

The researchers implemented a demonstration module at the Minera San Pedro mining camp, in Til Til (at the north of the Metropolitan Region), where the pilot project has been working since mid-2015.

The CLP150 million project has been funded by the Innova Chile program of the Chilean Economic Development Agency (CLP132 million) and Minera San Pedro.

Greater involvement of the private sector

For his part, Dr San Martín stresses that the project has been well received by the Government and that now, a greater involvement of the private sector is required. “In developed countries, different public and private programs to develop hydrogen technologies have been funded with millions of dollars for a long time,” he says.

State-run bodies in Chile have already recognized the importance of hydrogen in the future for a clean non-polluting public transport. Both researchers agree that this is an essential starting point. 

Target market

One of the benefits of implementing this type of technology in Chile is that we have enormous ENCS resources of all kinds (solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric and tidal power), but they are intermittent, so the use of hydrogen would be highly convenient. 

The researchers say that this project “is not targeted at large companies for now, but remote places, like small settlements or fishing villages away from interconnected grid systems, little mine sites and road construction zones, etc.”

They expect to fully implement the project by mid-2016. Although they acknowledge that it is necessary to make this technology more price competitive, they say that costs have significantly fallen in recent times due to the huge development of fuel cell vehicles.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• Dr Erick Saavedra Flores, researcher at the Department of Civil Works Engineering of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, is studying new mathematical techniques to computer simulate the performance of wood at extreme ranges of deformation, cracking and ductile processes and its possible progressive collapse.

Wooden structures in a seismic country like Chile require constant inspection to check on its resistance in case of critical events such as earthquakes.

Dr Erick Saavedra Flores, researcher at the Department of Civil Works Engineering of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, is studying new mathematical techniques to computer simulate the performance of wood at extreme ranges of deformation, cracking and ductile processes and, eventually, in a progressive collapse.

Dr Saavedra explains that failures in wooden structures are divided into two groups: brittle and ductile failures. Both will determine the time before wood collapses. “Usually, structures fail abruptly, without previous notice. This type of failure is classified as ‘brittle’. However, at a local level, close to metal joints or fittings, wood fails in a “ductile” manner, i.e., it fails gradually in time. This latter type of failure is very common in very high buildings made of wood,” he says.

With the resources provided by a Fondecyt Regular project, Dr Saavedra will present a new model based on a mathematical technique called “homogenization”, which seeks to detect cracking and irreversible deformation processes at different spatial scales.

Worldwide efforts

“Achieving this goal will be a big challenge, because we require to extend the existing theory to incorporate the damage factor, i.e., degradation, loss of material stiffness and cracks into the multi-scale mechanical response of the material. In the past few years, big efforts have been made worldwide; however, predicting the mechanical performance of materials in this context remains to be a problem without a solution that is fully accepted by the scientific community,” he says.

He explains that he intends to incorporate this new material model to the advanced analysis of large-scale structures, because the big challenge posed by this goal is to computer simulate the progressive collapse of structures during seismic events.

In this regard, modeling this problem is extremely difficult as it involves extreme deformation processes, the interaction of elements that fall during the collapse process and their consequent fragmentation.

The project also considers experimental testing to validate the numerical predictions obtained during the study. Running these tests will be possible with the acquisition of a vibrating table for the Department of Civil Works Engineering.

As a final result of this study, the researcher expects to have material advanced models able to capture extreme deformation processes that allow to calculate ductility measures.

“I believe that the major impact my project may have is in the area of design and construction of buildings and large-scale structures. In the case of wood, particularly, it is possible to promote the use of radiata pine to construct tall buildings if we have a more precise knowledge of its performance during failures or eventual structural collapse,” Dr Saavedra explains. 

The study will be conducted in the context of the Fondecyt Regular project 2016 (1160691), “Advanced Modelling of Ductility and Damage in Mass Timber Structures by Computational Homogenization.”

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• With the funding of a Fondecyt Postdoctoral Project 2016, Dr Baptiste Darbois, professor at the Faculty of Science of Universidad de Santiago, will be able to accurately determine how lizards move in granular soils in order to produce results that allow to create a robot able to move easily in different types of soil.

With the funding of a Fondecyt Postdoctoral Project 2016, Dr Baptiste Darbois, professor at the Faculty of Science of Universidad de Santiago, will be able to accurately determine how lizards move in granular soils in order to produce results that allow to create a robot able to move easily in different types of soil. This would mean a significant contribution to robotics.

Based on previous research that found that once lizards dive in the sand, they move by wriggling their bodies and not by using their legs, Dr Darbois will study the interaction between a vibrating elastic structure and the granular environment.

The Fondecyt Postdoctoral project (3160167) is called “Locomoción ondulatoria de nadadores suaves dentro de los medios granulares.”

Experimental challenge

The experimental challenge of the study is to control the movement of grains and the forces they undergo when lizards move. This would help to establish guidelines for developing robots able to adapt themselves to different environments. The way of moving of different animals has inspired engineers in this field.

“We expect the compression produced by lizards’ undulating movements in the desert’s sub-surface to help us to develop efficient robots by incorporating this mechanism,” Dr Darbois explained.

Likewise, professor Darbois intends to develop, in the long term, a robot based on the best features lizards show when moving in a granular environment.

“Through this project, we expect to define the optimal conditions: the dimensions, elasticity, frequency and amplitude of vibrations to move forward in waves through a granular environment,” the researcher said.

The relationship between lizards and the development of robots is not odd; on the contrary, it can benefit technological development and improve people´s quality of life. For example, it can be used in critical situations.

“With regard to its applications, developing robots able to efficiently move in granular environments could help to detect anti-personnel mines in the deserts and find people trapped under avalanches,” Dr Darbois concluded.

Translated by Marcela Contreras