Photodynamic therapy for colorectal cancer: an update and a look to the future

This review provides an update on the current state of photodynamic therapy (PDT) for colorectal cancer (CRC) and explores potential future directions in this field. PDT has emerged as a promising minimally invasive treatment modality that utilizes photosensitizers and specific light wavelengths to induce cell death in targeted tumor tissues. In recent years, significant progress has been made in understanding the underlying mechanisms, optimizing treatment protocols, and improving the efficacy of PDT for CRC. This article highlights key advancements in PDT techniques, including novel photosensitizers, light sources, and delivery methods. Furthermore, it discusses ongoing research efforts and potential future directions, such as combination therapies and nanotechnology-based approaches. By elucidating the current landscape and providing insights into future directions, this review aims to guide researchers and clinicians in harnessing the full potential of PDT for the effective management of CRC.(PTDC/FIS-OTI/1259/2020

A telemedicina em Cabo Verde: desafio de integração na rotina de prestação de cuidados e perspectivas de desenvolvimento

A telemedicina tem sido considerada como um dos instrumentos para a minimização de problemas de acesso a cuidados de saúde. Ao vencer barreiras geográficas, aproxima os cuidados de saúde do cidadão e permite às organizações de saúde uma melhor utilização de recursos e a revisão e modernização dos processos e métodos de trabalho. No entanto, apesar dos avanços na implementação, a telemedicina, ainda, não é utilizada em larga escala, por dificuldades contextuais várias, de natureza gestionária, estratégica, organizacional, de legislação e técnica. Em Cabo Verde, por decisão do governo, a implementação desta intervenção está em curso, sendo o assunto muito relevante e prioritário na agenda pública. Assim, é crucial compreender os factores que determinam a sua implantação, de modo a se obter respostas estratégicas mais adaptadas ao contexto, para o desenvolvimento do Programa Nacional de Telemedicina. Esta pesquisa avaliativa permitirá que o “caso de Cabo Verde” contribua para uma melhor compreensão de factores influenciadores e de processos e serviços de telemedicina. Assim, “Estudar os factores contextuais determinantes e o potencial de desenvolvimento dos serviços de telemedicina, com vista à sua integração na rotina do sistema de prestação de cuidados de saúde em Cabo Verde” foi o objectivo geral desta pesquisa. Trata-se de um estudo de caso múltiplo, com abordagens qualitativa e quantitativa, através de recolha documental, entrevistas, grupos focais, conversas informais, questionários e um workshop para o envolvimento dos actores. Para uma melhor compreensão do PNT e dos factores que influenciam a sua implementação e desenvolvimento, a par do estudo principal, realizou-se 5 estudos complementares: a auto-avaliação do PNT, o balanço da utilização dos serviços de telemedicina em Cabo Verde, a avaliabilidade (pré-avaliação), a análise da implantação do PNT e a satisfação do utente. A população participante foi constituída por profissionais de saúde, utentes e actores de outros sectores relacionados com a telemedicina. Os dados das entrevistas e grupos focais foram tratados e analisados através da análise de conteúdo, e os dos questionários através dos programas informáticos excel e SPSS. Os resultados da pesquisa mostram que o PNT está implantado em Cabo Verde, nas dimensões nacional e regional. Contudo, existe um conjunto de factores contextuais, de natureza limitante e facilitadora, que influencia a integração da telemedicina, no sistema de prestação de cuidados. De entre os limitantes destacam-se: uma certa resistência à mudança, deficiências na articulação entre os serviços, a mobilidade de profissionais, algum risco de quebra de privacidade e avarias pontuais nos sistemas de comunicação. De entre os facilitadores destacam-se: a existência de uma rede de fibra óptica a ligar as ilhas, a existência de alta taxa de cobertura de internet e de rede móvel, a existência de infra-estrutura técnica de telemedicina, a comunicação melhorada entre os profissionais, as potencialidades para o seguimento de doentes crónicos e de doentes evacuados à distância, a possibilidade de realização de teleformações, de cariz nacional e internacional, o potencial de diminuição de custos e a alta taxa de satisfação dos profissionais e utentes.Telemedicine has been considered as one of the instruments for minimizing access problems to health care. By overcoming geographical barriers, it brings health care closer to the citizen and enables health organizations to make better use of resources and review and modernize processes and methods of work. However, despite advances in implementation, telemedicine is still not used on a large scale, due to various contextual difficulties, of a managerial, strategic, organizational, legislative and technical nature. In Cape Verde, by decision of the government, the implementation of this intervention is under way, being the subject very relevant and priority in the public agenda. Thus, it is crucial to understand the factors that determine its implementation, in order to obtain strategic responses more adapted to the context, for the development of the National Telemedicine Program. This evaluative research will allow the "Cape Verde case" to contribute to a better understanding of influencing factors and processes and telemedicine services. Thus, "the study of the contextual determinants and the development potential of telemedicine services with a view to their integration into the routine of the health care system in Cape Verde" was the general objective of this research. This is a multiple case study, with qualitative and quantitative approaches, through documentary collection, interviews, focus groups, informal conversations, questionnaires and a workshop for stakeholder engagement. For a better understanding of the PNT and the factors that influence its implementation and development, alongside the main study, five complementary studies were carried out: The self-evaluation of the PNT, the assessment of the use of telemedicine services in Cape Verde, the pre-evaluation of the PNT, the analysis of the implementation of the PNT and the satisfaction of the user. The participating population was made up of health professionals, users and actors from other sectors related to telemedicine. Data from the interviews and focus groups were treated and analyzed through content analysis, and questionnaires through excel and SPSS software. The research results show that the PNT is implemented in Cape Verde, in the national and regional levels. However, there is a set of contextual factors, both limiting and facilitating, that influence the integration of telemedicine into the care system. Among the limitations are: a certain resistance to change, deficiencies in the articulation between services, the mobility of professionals, some risk of privacy breach and occasional malfunctions in the communication systems. Among the facilitators are: the existence of a fiber optic network linking the islands, the existence of a high rate of Internet and mobile network coverage, the existence of telemedicine technical infrastructure, improved communication among Professionals, the potential for the follow-up of chronically ill patients and remotely evacuated patients, the possibility of carrying out national and international teletraining, the potential for cost reduction and the high rate of satisfaction of professionals and users

Ohmic heating as a new tool for protein scaffold engineering

Ohmic heating (OH) is recognised as an emerging processing technology which recently is gaining increasing attention due to its ability to induce and control protein functionality. In this study, OH was used for the first time in the production of scaffolds for tissue engineering. BSA/casein solutions were processed by OH, promoting protein denaturation and aggregation, followed by cold-gelation through the addition of Ca2+. The formation of stable scaffolds was mostly dependent on the temperature and treatment time during OH processing. The variations of the electric field (EF) induced changes in the functional properties of both gel forming solutions and final scaffolds (contact angle, swelling, porosity, compressive modulus and degradation rate). The scaffolds biological performance was evaluated regarding their ability to support the adhesion and proliferation of human fibroblast cells. The production process resulted in a non-cytotoxic material and the changes imposed by the presence of the EF during the scaffolds production improved cellular proliferation and metabolic activity. Protein functionalization assisted by OH presents a promising new alternative for the production of improved and tuneable protein-based scaffolds for tissue engineering.This study was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UIDB/04469/2020 unit and BioTecNorte operation (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER000004) funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020 - Programa Operacional Regional do Norte.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Parallel improved Schnorr-Euchner enumeration SE++ on shared and distributed memory systems, with and without extreme pruning

The security of lattice-based cryptography relies on the hardness of problems based on lattices, such as the Shortest Vector Problem (SVP) and the Closest Vector Problem (CVP). This paper presents two parallel implementations for the SE++ with and without extreme pruning. The SE++ is an enumeration-based CVP-solver, which can be easily adapted to solve the SVP. We improved the SVP version of the SE++ with an optimization that avoids symmetric branches, improving its performance by a factor of ≈ 50%, and applied the extreme pruning technique to this improved version. The extreme pruning technique is the fastest way to compute the SVP with enumeration known to date. It solves the SVP for lattices in much higher dimensions in less time than implementations without extreme pruning. Our parallel implementation of the SE++ with extreme pruning targets distributed memory multi-core CPU systems, while our SE++ without extreme pruning is designed for shared memory multi-core CPU systems. These implementations address load balancing problems for optimal performance, with a master-slave mechanism on the distributed memory implementation, and specific bounds for task creation on the shared memory implementation. The parallel implementation for the SE++ without extreme pruning scales linearly for up to 8 threads and almost linearly for 16 threads. In addition, it also achieves super-linear speedups on some instances, as the workload may be shortened, since some threads may find shorter vectors at earlier points in time, compared to the sequential implementation. Tests with our Improved SE++ implementation showed that it outperforms the state of the art implementation by a factor of between 35% and 60%, while maintaining a scalability similar to the SE++ implementation. Our parallel implementation of the SE++ with extreme pruning achieves linear speedups for up to 8 (working) processes and speedups of up to 13x for 16 (working) processes(undefined)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Paralelização de algoritmos de enumeração para o problema do vector mais curto em sistemas de memória partilhada e distribuída

A criptografia baseada em retículos tem vindo a tornar-se um tópico central ao longo da última década, uma vez que se acredita que este tipo de criptografia seja resistente a ataques infligidos com computadores quânticos. A segurança desta criptografia é medida pela eficácia e praticabilidade dos algoritmos que resolvem problemas centrais em retículos, como o problema do vector mais curto (PVC), e é, por isso, importante determinar qual o desempenho máximo destes algoritmos em arquitecturas computacionais de alto rendimento. Neste sentido, este artigo apresenta, pela primeira vez, um estudo detalhado sobre o desempenho dos dois mais promissores algoritmos de resolução do PVC, o ENUM e uma variante eficiente da enumeração de Schnorr-Euchner, com e sem poda extrema. Em particular, são propostas versões paralelas destes algoritmos, desenvolvidas para óptimo balanço de carga e, consequentemente, melhor desempenho. Conduziu-se uma extensa série de testes, quer em memória partilhada, para as variantes sem poda, quer em memória distribuída, para as variantes com poda. Os resultados mostram que as implementações em memória partilhada atingem, em certos casos, acelerações lineares até 16 \textit{threads}. As implementações em memória distribuída, por seu turno, são aceleradas em cerca de 13 vezes para 16 processos, permitindo a resolução do PVC em retículos em dimensão 80 em menos de 250 segundos.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Non-contact optical analysis of the viscoelastic properties for food quality using Brillouin spectroscopy

Brillouin spectroscopy probes the viscoelastic properties of materials by observing the scattered light spectrum from a laser source incident on a given sample. The peak contained in the Brillouin scattering region of the spectrum can be directly correlated to the storage and loss modulus, providing a complex analysis of the physical properties of the study subject (Figure1a) [1]. For the food industry, where the traditional and contact-based rheological measurement techniques dominate the characterization of the physical characteristics of products from raw material to finished foods, Brillouin spectroscopy brings a new and relevant noncontact alternative [2]. Also, this technique is useful for measurement of products inside of sealed packages, allowing the characterization of samples through a transparent window without any violation of the package. In this study, we explored the potential of the Brillouin spectroscopy to infer changes in viscoelastic properties that occur in different food products when submitted to heating and cooling cycles, freezing and unfreezing cycles, and normal time-based decay [3]. The data was acquired using the setup described in Figure 1b. Significant changes were already observed in the viscoelastic properties of cow’s milk after every day of room temperature and fridge storage, and in cooking oil after consecutive cooling and heating cycles (170 ºC). We also obtained spectrums for meat and fish after every day of fridge storage and after freezing and unfreezing cycles. For non-uniform samples, the acquisition location affects the peak obtained, so different approaches to the acquisition method are still being investigated. These results hint at a future in which we can check if a product was handled with care and transported under the right conditions, if the frozen products have only been frozen once or if meat and fish are really fresh and safe to consume, without ever opening a package or touching/handling the product. This will increase consumer safety and confidence and provide the industry with the necessary tools to ensure and improve the quality of their products without waste.This work was supported by FCT with the project MPhotonBiopsy, PTDC/FIS-OTI/1259/2020. B. Esteves thanks to FCT for the Ph.D. grant with the reference 2021.07239.BD

O processo de formação do acervo e da instituição NovoMuseu/MON

O objeto de pesquisa é o NovoMuseu, fundado em 2002, que passa a se chamar Museu Oscar Niemeyer no ano seguinte. Este museu inicia suas atividades com um acervo já formado, constituí­do com mais de 1000 obras e o foco da pesquisa está na constituição deste conjunto de obras, pois reuniu acervos de outros locais já extintos, como o Museu de Arte do Paraná – MAP, e os trabalhos reunidos em Salões ou doações de clientes do banco Banestado. Afirma-se no decorrer do artigo que o museu é hí­brido por várias vertentes, especialmente pelo processo de formação do acervo cuja investigação através da história da cultura e da instituição artí­stica encontra-se neste texto. Adiante, é apresentado um exemplo com duas obras da coleção juntamente com considerações sobre o uso do acervo como tática. Finalmente, conclui-se que o caráter hí­brido do Museu Oscar Niemeyer é fundado na formação do acervo e que é preciso, como público, fazer novos usos diante das suas exposições e de sua arquitetura

A participação da Força Aérea Portuguesa nas guerras em África (1961-1974)

Este trabalho visa determinar o contributo da Força Aérea Portuguesa para o esforço de guerra em África, entre 1961-74. Começamos por caracterizar a realidade política que acabou por levar à saída de Portugal de África, isto é, ao movimento descolonizador. Este, em consequência das circunstâncias que resultaram da Segunda Guerra Mundial, ganhou uma força tal que, no início da década de 1960, já tinha provocado o fim da quase totalidade dos impérios coloniais europeus, à excepção do português. O governo de Lisboa, apesar de todos os indícios, optou por resistir à descolonização em todos os quadrantes possíveis e manter a soberania sobre os territórios africanos. Quando todas as tentativas jurídicas e diplomáticas falharam, mantendo-se o regime ideologicamente intransigente na manutenção do Ultramar, a única opção sobrante foi a resistência militar. Assim, sendo este trabalho sobre a prestação da força aérea na guerra, procuramos saber como a aviação entrou na realidade militar portuguesa e, acima de tudo, que força aérea foi a partir de 1961 combater em África. Analisamos também outros conflitos semelhantes em que os meios aéreos foram empregues, de forma a estabelecer pontos de comparação e, mais importante, como os meios aéreos devem ser empregues na guerra assimétrica. Posto isto, apontamos as vantagens dos meios aéreos na guerra assimétrica e as limitações que a força aérea teve na realização da sua missão, para, no final, identificarmos quanto, e como, esta contribuiu para o esforço de guerra, fazendo uma análise independente de cada teatro de operações.This study aims to determine the contribution of Portuguese Air Force for the war effort in Africa, between 1961-74. We begin by characterize the political reality that eventually led to the departure of Portugal from Africa, this is, the decolonization movement. This, as a product of circumstances that resulted from World War II, acquired such an authority that, in the early sixties, had caused the end of almost all the European colonial empires, except the Portuguese. The Lisbon government, despite all the evidences, chose to resist decolonization in every possible ways, and maintain sovereignty over African territories. So, when all legal and diplomatic attempts to do it failed, and the government remained ideologically uncompromising about the maintenance of Ultramar, the only option leftover was military resistance. So, since this work focuses on the contribution of air force to the war, we begin with the study of military aviation evolution in Portugal and, above all, the characterization of the air force in the beginning of 1961. We also analyzed other similar conflicts where air power was used, in order to establish a comparison with the Portuguese case and, more importantly, to identify how the aircraft should be employed in asymmetric warfare. This done, we pointed out the advantages of air assets in African war and the limitations that the air force had in carrying out its missions, to identify, at the end, how much, and how, she contributed to the war effort, making an independent analysis on each operations theater

M-GIS - Mobile and interoperable access to geographic information

This paper describes an architecture which can be used toaccess geographic information from mobile devices with limited displayand processing characteristics, such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDA)or Mobile Phones. The information may come from different sourcesleading to an interoperable solution.M-GIS obtains geographic information from sources described using GeogxraphyMarkup Language (GML) from one or more Web FeatureServers allowing an access independent from its format or physical location,as long as the information is according to the specification.Using XSLT, GML is transformed to a graphical format in Scalable VectorGraphics (SVG) which can then be manipulated in the mobile device.M-GIS follows a client/server architecture and the client application wasdeveloped using Java Mobile Information Device Profile technology.The results enable us to conclude that the mobile system, designed anddeveloped with the use of open standards and representation formats toaccess geographic information, is a viable solution with some limitations.The main limitations of this approach have to do with the amount ofinformation which the client can, at the moment, accommodate

M-GIS - Mobile and interoperable access to geographic information

This paper describes an architecture which can be used toaccess geographic information from mobile devices with limited displayand processing characteristics, such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDA)or Mobile Phones. The information may come from different sourcesleading to an interoperable solution.M-GIS obtains geographic information from sources described using GeogxraphyMarkup Language (GML) from one or more Web FeatureServers allowing an access independent from its format or physical location,as long as the information is according to the specification.Using XSLT, GML is transformed to a graphical format in Scalable VectorGraphics (SVG) which can then be manipulated in the mobile device.M-GIS follows a client/server architecture and the client application wasdeveloped using Java Mobile Information Device Profile technology.The results enable us to conclude that the mobile system, designed anddeveloped with the use of open standards and representation formats toaccess geographic information, is a viable solution with some limitations.The main limitations of this approach have to do with the amount ofinformation which the client can, at the moment, accommodate