Emerging biosensing technologies for neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative disease diagnostics

Neuroinflammation plays a critical role in the onset and progression of many neurological disorders, including Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. In these clinical conditions the underlying neuroinflammatory processes are significantly heterogeneous. Nevertheless, a common link is the chronic activation of innate immune responses and imbalanced secretion of pro and anti-inflammatory mediators. In light of this, the discovery of robust biomarkers is crucial for screening, early diagnosis, and monitoring of neurological diseases. However, the difficulty to investigate biochemical processes directly in the central nervous system (CNS) is challenging. In recent years, biomarkers of CNS inflammatory responses have been identified in different body fluids, such as blood, cerebrospinal fluid, and tears. In addition, progress in micro and nanotechnology has enabled the development of biosensing platforms capable of detecting in real-time, multiple biomarkers in clinically relevant samples. Biosensing technologies are approaching maturity where they will become deployed in community settings, at which point screening programs and personalized medicine will become a reality. In this multidisciplinary review, our goal is to highlight both clinical and recent technological advances toward the development of multiplex-based solutions for effective neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative disease diagnostics and monitoring.IM and AC acknowledge the financial support from the Marie Curie COFUND Programme Nano TRAIN for Growth from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 600375. This article is a result of the project Nanotechnology based functional solutions (FEDERNORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000019), co-financed by Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). PM acknowledges the Ph.D. fellowship from Fundação para a Ci?ncia e Tecnologia, Portugal (PD/BD/105751/2014)

Using Crowdsourcing for Fine-Grained Entity Type Completion in Knowledge Bases

Recent years have witnessed the proliferation of large-scale Knowledge Bases (KBs). However, many entities in KBs have incomplete type information, and some are totally untyped. Even worse, fine-grained types (e.g., BasketballPlayer) containing rich semantic meanings are more likely to be incomplete, as they are more difficult to be obtained. Existing machine-based algorithms use predicates (e.g., birthPlace) of entities to infer their missing types, and they have limitations that the predicates may be insufficient to infer fine-grained types. In this paper, we utilize crowdsourcing to solve the problem, and address the challenge of controlling crowdsourcing cost. To this end, we propose a hybrid machine-crowdsourcing approach for fine-grained entity type completion. It firstly determines the types of some “representative” entities via crowdsourcing and then infers the types for remaining entities based on the crowdsourcing results. To support this approach, we first propose an embedding-based influence for type inference which considers not only the distance between entity embeddings but also the distances between entity and type embeddings. Second, we propose a new difficulty model for entity selection which can better capture the uncertainty of the machine algorithm when identifying the entity types. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through experiments on real crowdsourcing platforms. The results show that our method outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithms by improving the effectiveness of fine-grained type completion at affordable crowdsourcing cost.Peer reviewe

O aluno público alvo da educação especial no ensino médio: as relações entre família e escola

This qualitative study aims to analyze the family-school relationship with the participation of four mothers of Special Education Students (PAEE) enrolled in high school at a public school in the state of São Paulo. Data from semi-structured interviews were analyzed and grouped into themes: inclusion; PAEE students in regular schools; family and school; PAEE and student in high school. The results show the importance of informing the families about the educational rights that the law provides PAEE students in the process of inclusion in regular education; changes in the family-school relationship; report on the special education teacher's role within the school to families, and on the potential and limitations of PAEE students in front of the school. It considers the need to improve communication between family-school, proposing alternatives that benefit from this partnership. Thus, it was evident gaps for further research in this area.Este estudo de abordagem qualitativa visa analisar a relação família-escola contando com a participação de quatro mães de alunos Público Alvo da Educação Especial (PAEE) matriculados no ensino médio de uma escola pública do interior do estado de São Paulo. Os dados das entrevistas semi-estruturadas foram analisadas e agrupadas nos eixos temáticos: inclusão; alunos PAEE na escola regular; família e escola; e aluno PAEE no ensino médio. Os resultados apontam a importância de informar às famílias sobre os direitos educacionais que a lei assegura aos alunos PAEE no processo de inclusão no ensino regular; de mudanças na relação família-escola; informar sobre o papel do professor da educação especial dentro da escola às famílias, e sobre as potencialidades e limitações dos alunos PAEE diante da escolarização. Considera-se a necessidade de melhorar a comunicação entre família-escola, propondo-se alternativas que beneficiem essa parceria. Assim, foi evidenciado lacunas para novas pesquisas nessa área

High performance maleated lignocellulose epicarp fibers for copper ion removal

Natural lignocellulosic fiber epicarp extracted from the babassu coconut (Orbignya speciosa) was chemically modified through reaction with molten maleic anhydride without solvent, with incorporation of 189.34 mg g-1 of carboxylic acid groups into the biopolymer structure. The success of this reaction was also confirmed by the presence of carboxylic acid bands at 1741 and 1164 cm-1 in the infrared spectrum. Identically, the same group is observed through 13C NMR CP/MAS in the solid state, via high field signals in the 167 pm region. Both the precursor and the immobilized maleated biopolymers presented nearly the same thermal stability and similar crystallinity to cellulose. However, the pendant carboxylic groups have the ability to remove copper with maximum sorption through a batchwise process at pH 6.0, as expected from the point of zero charge, determined to be 6.45. The sorption kinetic data were fitted to pseudo-first order, pseudo-second order, Elovich-chemisorption and intra-particle diffusion models and the equilibrium data were fitted to the Langmuir, the Freundlich and Tenkim isotherm models. Taking into account a statistical error function and determination coefficients, the data were fit to the pseudo-first and pseudo-second order kinetic and Langmuir isotherm models, with a maximum sorption capacity of copper ions of 55.09 mg g-1. This value suggests the application of this biopolymer with incorporated carboxylate groups as a favorable agent for copper removal from appropriate systems31118319

Analysis of binding properties and specificity through identification of the interface forming residues (IFR) for serine proteases in silico docked to different inhibitors

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Enzymes belonging to the same super family of proteins in general operate on variety of substrates and are inhibited by wide selection of inhibitors. In this work our main objective was to expand the scope of studies that consider only the catalytic and binding pocket amino acids while analyzing enzyme specificity and instead, include a wider category which we have named the Interface Forming Residues (IFR). We were motivated to identify those amino acids with decreased accessibility to solvent after docking of different types of inhibitors to sub classes of serine proteases and then create a table (matrix) of all amino acid positions at the interface as well as their respective occupancies. Our goal is to establish a platform for analysis of the relationship between IFR characteristics and binding properties/specificity for bi-molecular complexes.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We propose a novel method for describing binding properties and delineating serine proteases specificity by compiling an exhaustive table of interface forming residues (IFR) for serine proteases and their inhibitors. Currently, the Protein Data Bank (PDB) does not contain all the data that our analysis would require. Therefore, an <it>in silico </it>approach was designed for building corresponding complexes</p> <p>The IFRs are obtained by "rigid body docking" among 70 structurally aligned, sequence wise non-redundant, serine protease structures with 3 inhibitors: bovine pancreatic trypsin inhibitor (BPTI), ecotine and ovomucoid third domain inhibitor. The table (matrix) of all amino acid positions at the interface and their respective occupancy is created. We also developed a new computational protocol for predicting IFRs for those complexes which were not deciphered experimentally so far, achieving accuracy of at least 0.97.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The serine proteases interfaces prefer polar (including glycine) residues (with some exceptions). Charged residues were found to be uniquely prevalent at the interfaces between the "miscellaneous-virus" subfamily and the three inhibitors. This prompts speculation about how important this difference in IFR characteristics is for maintaining virulence of those organisms.</p> <p>Our work here provides a unique tool for both structure/function relationship analysis as well as a compilation of indicators detailing how the specificity of various serine proteases may have been achieved and/or could be altered. It also indicates that the interface forming residues which also determine specificity of serine protease subfamily can not be presented in a canonical way but rather as a matrix of alternative populations of amino acids occupying variety of IFR positions.</p

Efeito do reposicionamento otolítico e da reabilitação vestibular no zumbido: Uma revisão de literatura / Effect of otolytic repositioning and vestibular rehabilitation on tinnitus: A literature review

O zumbido é a percepção de um estímulo sonoro sem que tenha uma fonte geradora no meio ambiente. Pacientes vertiginosos podem também apresentar o zumbido como sintoma otoneurológico. Nos casos diagnosticados como Vertigem Posicional Paroxística Benigna (VPPB) o tratamento é denominado de reposicionamento otolítico e para tonturas crônicas a intervenção é intitulada reabilitação vestibular. Em ambos os quadros, pode existir sintomatologia associada de tontura com zumbido, pois uma alteração no sistema vestibular pode desencadear quaisquer outros sintomas otoneurológicos. Vertigem e zumbido podem acarretar problemas como ansiedade, irritabilidade e desequilíbrio emocional. Frente essa problemática, o presente estudo objetivou verificar a percepção do zumbido pelo paciente que realiza o reposicionamento otolítico e/ou reabilitação vestibular, antes e após o tratamento por meio de revisão da literatura. Assim, foi realizado um levantamento bibliográfico com auxílio dos bancos de dados SciELO, Lilacs, BVS, MedLine, Bireme, CAPES e Google Acadêmico, utilizando palavras-chave e descritores específicos na busca de estudos pertinentes à questão proposta. Sendo ela limitada a artigos publicados entre janeiro de 2010 a dezembro de 2020 e selecionados materiais nos idiomas português, inglês e espanhol. Após os critérios de exclusão dos artigos científicos, foi realizado uma correlação daqueles selecionados. O estudo mostrou que ambos, reposicionamento otolítico e reabilitação vestibular, diminuem a percepção do zumbido pelo indivíduo afetado. Apesar dos resultados positivos quanto a eficácia dos tratamentos abordados, percebeu-se a necessidade de aprofundamento em conhecimentos científicos, visto que nos últimos anos a literatura foi sutil em abordar o tema, que é de importância para a qualidade de vida.