A PIMS Development Kit for New Personal Data Platforms

The web ecosystem is based on a market where stakeholders collect and sell personal data, but nowadays users expect stronger guarantees of transparency and privacy. With the PIMCity personal information management system (PIMS) development kit, we provide an open-source development kit for building PIMSs to foster the development of open and user-centric data markets

A new methodology to measure faultlines at scale leveraging digital traces

The definition of society is tight with human group-level behavior. Group faultlines defined as hypothetical lines splitting groups into homogeneous subgroups based on members' attributes have been proposed as a theoretical method to identify conflicts within groups. For instance, crusades and women's rights protests are the consequences of strong faultlines in societies with diverse cultures. Measuring the presence and strength of faultlines represents an important challenge. Existing literature resorts in questionnaires as traditional tool to find group-level behavioral attributes and thus identify faultlines. However, questionnaire data usually come with limitations and biases, especially for large-scale human group-level research. On top of that, questionnaires limit faultline research due to the possibility of dishonest answers, unconscientious responses, and differences in understanding and interpretation. In this paper, we propose a new methodology for measuring faultlines in large-scale groups, which leverages data readily available from online social networks' marketing platforms. Our methodology overcomes the limitations of traditional methods to measure group-level attributes and group faultlines at scale. To prove the applicability of our methodology, we analyzed the faultlines between people living in Spain, grouped by geographical regions. We collected data on 67,270 interest topics from Facebook users living in Spain, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. We computed existing metrics to measure faultlines' distance and strenght using our data to identify potential faultlines existing among Spanish regions. The results reveal that the strongest faultlines in Spain belong to Spanish Islands (the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands), Catalonia, and Basque regions. These findings are aligned with the historical secessionist movements and cultural diversity reports supporting the validity of our methodology.This research received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 innovation action program under the PIMCITY (Grant 871370) and TESTABLE (101019206) projects. The Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) under the ACHILLES project (Grant PID2019-104207RB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033). The Madrid Government (Comunidad de Madrid-Spain) under the Multiannual Agreement with UC3M ("Fostering Young Doctors Research"). Finally, the Fundación BBVA under the project AERIS

Biomimetic VEGF-loaded bilayer scaffold fabricated by 3D printing and electrospinning techniques for skin regeneration

Among the fabrication methods, 3D printing due to excellent accuracy, reproducibility and customizability as well as electrospinning due to the ability to mimic the extracellular matrix structure have received many attentions. Herein, we used the combination of both mentioned techniques to produce a biomimetic bilayer scaffold for skin tissue regeneration. The upper layer of the scaffold was made of 3D printed dextran-vascular endothelial growth factor (Dex-VEGF) to stimulate angiogenesis and cell migration, and the bottom layer was made of electrospun gelatin-keratin (Gel-Kr) nanofibers to induce cell attachment. The tensile strength and elastic modulus of the scaffolds were measured in the range of 0.26 – 0.33 MPa and 5.8 – 7.2 MPa, respectively. The investigations revealed that the release of VEGF lasted up to 7 days. The bilayer VEGF-loaded scaffold demonstrated the best cellular behaviour. Chicken chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) assay confirmed the highest angiogenic potential in the presence of the bilayer VEGF-loaded scaffold. Also, based on in vivo animal studies and histopathological and immunohistochemical examinations, the highest wound healing rate was related to the bilayer VEGF-loaded scaffold within 14 days. The obtained promising results introduce the prepared bilayer scaffold as a perfect construct to accelerate wound healing