Voltage-gated calcium channels are key regulators of brain function, and their dysfunction has been associated with multiple conditions and neurodegenerative diseases because they couple membrane depolarization to the influx of calcium-and other processes such as gene expression-in excitable cells. L-type calcium channels, one of the three major classes and probably the best characterized of the voltage-gated calcium channels, act as an essential calcium binding proteins with a significant biological relevance. It is well known that estradiol can activate rapidly brain signaling pathways and modulatory/regulatory proteins through non-genomic (or non-transcriptional) mechanisms, which lead to an increase of intracellular calcium that activate multiple kinases and signaling cascades, in the same way as L-type calcium channels responses. In this context, estrogens-L-type calcium channels signaling raises intracellular calcium levels and activates the same signaling cascades in the brain probably through estrogen receptor-independent modulatory mechanisms. In this review, we discuss the available literature on this area, which seems to suggest that estradiol exerts dual effects/modulation on these channels in a concentration-dependent manner (as a potentiator of these channels in pM concentrations and as an inhibitor in nM concentrations). Indeed, estradiol may orchestrate multiple neurotrophic responses, which open a new avenue for the development of novel estrogen-based therapies to alleviate different neuropathologies. We also highlight that it is essential to determine through computational and/or experimental approaches the interaction between estradiol and L-type calcium channels to assist these developments, which is an interesting area of research that deserves a closer look in future biomedical research.

Traditional measurement techniques “in situ” sometimes fail to magnify the spatial distribution of floods. For these cases, the remote sensors provide methodologies of very low economic cost and high reliability when mapping flooded areas and quantifying the damages. Due to the dynamic nature of these phenomena, it is necessary to use satellite images of high temporal resolution, however this type of images usually have a low spatial resolution. In relation to this problem, traditional classification techniques are not reliable enough for flood delineation and monitoring since they use “hard methods” of classification, where the coarse pixel is assigned a single type of coverage. On the other hand, “smoothed methods” have the ability to assign different kinds of coverage to the interior of the thick pixel. The present investigation makes the application of a sub-pixel analysis methodology (sub-pixel analysis - SA) for the monitoring of flooded areas. The improvement of the delimitation is achieved with the use of topographic attributes provided by a digital terrain model (DTM). The methodology was applied to the monitoring in the Great Depression Momposina, specifically to delineate the swamp of Zapatosa.