The structure of information in the internationalization processes of universities

In this work we were interested in the relation between internationalization of universities and the information demands associated with it. The internationalization process of universities is accompanied by a process of dissemination of information, which fulfills several purposes. The aim of this work was to evaluate, in a systematic way, the international indicators and rankings that are proposed in the literature and that are used by the higher education institutions (HEI), and to propose an information model based on that analysis. The research methodology was based on a literature review, documental analysis, informal interviews and observation of events related to internationalization of universities. An exercise of compilation, analysis and synthesis of indicators of the internationalization process of universities resulted in the proposal of a structure of information that includes the most common used indicators, and that can be related to the various perspectives that drive the internationalization process. The structure can be used to guide the process of construction of models of information by universities, particularly in the process of design of web pages, which is nowadays a preferred vehicle of information dissemination from the part of the universities and of information gathering from the part of entities interested in universities.This work has been supported by FCT -Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020

BioDR : semantic indexing networks for biomedical document retrieval

In Biomedical research, retrieving documents that match an interesting query is a task performed quite frequently. Typically, the set of obtained results is extensive containing many non-interesting documents and consists in a flat list, i.e., not organized or indexed in any way. This work proposes BioDR, a novel approach that allows the semantic indexing of the results of a query, by identifying relevant terms in the documents. These terms emerge from a process of Named Entity Recognition that annotates occurrences of biological terms (e.g. genes or proteins) in abstracts or full-texts. The system is based on a learning process that builds an Enhanced Instance Retrieval Network (EIRN) from a set of manually classified documents, regarding their relevance to a given problem. The resulting EIRN implements the semantic indexing of documents and terms, allowing for enhanced navigation and visualization tools, as well as the assessment of relevance for new documents.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)Maria Barbeito” contract XuntaHUELLA financed by the Consellería de Sanidade (Xunta de Galicia de Galicia

Biomedical text mining applied to document retrieval and semantic indexing

In Biomedical research, the ability to retrieve the adequate information from the ever growing literature is an extremely important asset. This work provides an enhanced and general purpose approach to the process of document retrieval that enables the filtering of PubMed query results. The system is based on semantic indexing providing, for each set of retrieved documents, a network that links documents and relevant terms obtained by the annotation of biological entities (e.g. genes or proteins). This network provides distinct user perspectives and allows navigation over documents with similar terms and is also used to assess document relevance. A network learning procedure, based on previous work from e-mail spam filtering, is proposed, receiving as input a training set of manually classified documents

Investigation of insulin nucleation kinetics under oscillatory flow mixing

Crystallization can represent a cost-effective and scalable alternative for protein separation and purification. However, it is still not widely implemented in biopharmaceutical industry due to limited understanding of the underlying phenomena. Herein, insulin crystallization was investigated in an oscillatory flow reactor in the presence and absence of acetone. The results show the impact of both supersaturation (i.e., insulin concentration) and acetone on nucleation kinetics and crystal size distribution (CSD). As supersaturation increases, the nucleation rate increases and mean crystal size decreases. In its turn, acetone allows faster nucleation, a narrower CSD and larger mean crystal size. The kinetic parameter A derived from the classical nucleation theory (CNT) also indicate the acceleration of the kinetics of molecular attachment in the presence of acetone. These findings contribute to the better understanding of insulin crystallization mechanism under oscillatory flow mixing.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Morphogenesis and Defoliation Frequency of Italian Ryegrass (\u3ci\u3eLolium multiflorum\u3c/i\u3e) and \u3ci\u3ePaspalum urvillei\u3c/i\u3e in Lowland under Three Levels of P and K

This trial was conducted to evaluate growth dynamics and defoliation frequency of Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum) and Paspalum urvillei in a lowland area under three levels of P and K. Using randomization tests we observed that, in a general way, fertilizer treatments were not the determinant factors of leaf appearance and elongation rates for both species. Only the leaf appearance rate of Paspalum urvillei at 100 % of recommendation level and the elongation rate for Italian ryegrass, in the same treatment, was different. Probably other factors, like drainage, are contributing to these results. I. ryegrass phyllochron ranged from 57.3 to 72.6 degree-days. Paspalum urvillei presented higher grazing frequency in almost all evaluated periods, revealing a high preference by the grazing animals

Pyrazoles as potential modulators of inflammation through the inhibition of COX2 activity and human leukocytes' oxidative burst

The inflammatory process is a complex and tightly regulated cascade of events that involves the production of prostaglandins (PG) by the inducible isoform cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2) and the production of reactive pro-oxidant species. When the production of these mediators becomes excessive, it can lead to chronic inflammation and associated diseases such as diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and cancer. Unfortunately, many existing anti-inflammatory agents are associated with unwanted side effects. Therefore, there is a critical need to discover new and effective compounds that can modulate the inflammatory cascade. In this study, an extensive panel of structurally related pyrazoles holding diverse structures and substitutions were tested in vitro against human COX-2, and ex vivo in human whole blood, through the measurement of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) production. Their potential inhibitory effect against human leukocytes’ oxidative burst was also studied. The results showed that some of the tested compounds had a significant inhibitory effect on COX2 activity, and pyrazoles 4 and 11 (Figure 1) excelled as the most potent inhibitors, with IC50 < 25 µM. Nonetheless, among the tested compounds only 1 was able to inhibit both the COX-2 activity and the PGE2 production. The tested pyrazoles, namely pyrazole 4, also demonstrated a potential inhibitory effect (IC50 < 5 µM) against human leukocytes’ oxidative burst. These results represent a significant contribution for the design and development of new anti-inflammatory molecules.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Key components of the eight classes of type IV secretion systems involved in bacterial conjugation or protein secretion

Conjugation of DNA through a type IV secretion system (T4SS) drives horizontal gene transfer. Yet little is known on the diversity of these nanomachines. We previously found that T4SS can be divided in eight classes based on the phylogeny of the only ubiquitous protein of T4SS (VirB4). Here, we use an ab initio approach to identify protein families systematically and specifically associated with VirB4 in each class. We built profiles for these proteins and used them to scan 2262 genomes for the presence of T4SS. Our analysis led to the identification of thousands of occurrences of 116 protein families for a total of 1623 T4SS. Importantly, we could identify almost always in our profiles the essential genes of well-studied T4SS. This allowed us to build a database with the largest number of T4SS described to date. Using profile-profile alignments, we reveal many new cases of homology between components of distant classes of T4SS. We mapped these similarities on the T4SS phylogenetic tree and thus obtained the patterns of acquisition and loss of these protein families in the history of T4SS. The identification of the key VirB4-associated proteins paves the way toward experimental analysis of poorly characterized T4SS classes.Funding. Spanish Ministry of Economy [BFU2011-26608]; European Seventh Framework Program [282004/FP7-HEALTH.2011, 612146/FP7-ICT-2013]; European Research Council Grant [EVOMOBILOME no. 281605]. Source of open access funding: European Research Council grant to the PI

Comunicação científica e o protocolo OAI: uma proposta na área das Ciências da Comunicação

A comunicação científica se mostra imprescindível para o desenvolvimento da ciência e das atividades dos cientistas. Neste contexto, este trabalho busca analisar um novo formato de publicação eletrônica (mais especificamente o repositório digital ‘open archives’), partindo de uma reflexão sobre o sistema tradicional de comunicação científica, de modo a definir um projeto de planejamento e implementação de um repositório temático na área de Ciências da Comunicação. Em síntese, descreve-se o caminho percorrido pela equipe da PORTCOM (Rede de Informação em Ciências da Comunicação dos Países de Língua Portuguesa) durante a fase inicial de concepção do projeto Arena Científica junto aos pesquisadores dos núcleos de pesquisa da INTERCOM (Sociedade Brasileira de Estudos Interdisciplinares da Comunicação). Neste texto, apresenta-se resumidamente conceitos e definições que norteiam a estrutura dos arquivos abertos

A Brazilian Portuguese cross-cultural adaptation of the modified JOA scale for myelopathy

OBJECTIVES: To develop a version of the modified Japanese Orthopaedic Association (mJOA) scale that had been translated into Portuguese and cross-culturally adapted for the Brazilian population. METHODS: The well-established process of forward-backward translation was employed along with cross-cultural adaptation. RESULTS: Three bilingual translators (English and native Portuguese) performed the forward translation of the mJOA scale from English to Portuguese based on iterative discussions used to reach a consensus translation. The translated version of the mJOA scale was then back-translated into English by a native English-speaking translator unaware of the concepts involved with the mJOA scale. The original mJOA scale and the back-translated version were compared by a native North American neurosurgeon, and as they were considered equivalent, the final version of the mJOA scale that had been translated into Portuguese and cross-culturally adapted was defined. CONCLUSION: To facilitate global and cross-cultural comparisons of the severity of cervical myelopathy, this study presents a version of the mJOA scale that was translated into Portuguese and cross-culturally adapted for the Brazilian population