Our acknowledgment to San Pablo Catholic University for sponsoring the publication of this article and support the development of this work and the Presidency of the Council of Ministers of Peru through the Science and Technology Fund (FINCyT) and Council for Science, Technology and Innovation of Peru (CONCYTEC) for support of this work through the doctoral fellowships for Roxana Flores and Yuber Velazco".

To characterize the association between altitude and urbanization and lipid profile among Peruvian adults aged $35 years.

Geographical and environmental features such as urbanization and altitude may influence individual's lipid profiles because of the diversity of human-environment interactions including lifestyles.

MAX phase thin films have been synthesized by thermal treatment of a Ti-Al-C multilayer system. The preparation of the multilayer system was carried out via magnetron sputtering. Based on the thickness ratio among the individual nanoscale monolayers (Ti, Al, C), the resulting MAX phase stoichiometry can be controlled. This paper describes the synthesis of both Ti2AlC and Ti3AlC2 MAX phases from the same precursor multilayer system which is composed of a sequence of Ti/Al/C pure elemental single layers with thicknesses of 14, 6, and 3.5 nm, respectively. This sequence is repeated 22 times with a total thickness of around 500 nm. Rapid thermal treatment tests were performed to study the phase development. The Ti2AlC MAX phase forms in a temperature range below 850 °C, whereas the Ti3AlC2 MAX phase starts to form at temperatures above 850 °C and reaches its highest phase purity at 950 °C...

This work was partially funded by the AECID (Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo) grant numbers A/3795/05, A/4892/06, A/9727/07 A/4817/06; ACCD (Agència Catalana de Cooperació al Desenvolupament, Generalitat de Catalunya) grant U2006; CCD-UPC (Centre de Cooperació per al Desenvolupament, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya) to LJdV; and by the CONCYTEC (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación Tecnológica, Perú) grant 189-2005-CONCYTEC-OAJ. JR's research is supported by grant CP05/0130 of the FIS (Fondo de Investigaciones Sanitarias). The authors thank M.J. Pons and Donna Pringle for assistance in the preparation of the final version of the manuscript. Conflict of interest: No conflict of interest to declare.

Objective: To determine the ameliorative effect of the ethanolic extract of Chuquiraga spinosa (ChS) on 7,12-Dimethylbenz[a]anthracene (DMBA)-induced breast cancer in rats. Methods: 36 female Holztman rats were divided into 6 groups. I) The negative control group received physiological saline (PS). II) ChS-200 group received 200 mg/kg of ChS. III) DMBA group was induced with DMBA (20 mg/Kg) dissolved in PS and administrated orally for 15 weeks. IV) DMBA + ChS-50 group, V) DMBA + ChS-250 group, and VI) DMBA + ChS-500 group, which received the extract orally for 15 weeks after DMBA induction. All data were expressed as mean and standard deviation. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by Dunnet test was carried out to compare the mean value of different groups Histopathological analysis was evaluated by using Image J software. Results: Hematology showed that the triglyceride level ...