L’éthique de l’amour en tant que traduction de l’histoire et de la finitude. Un essai à partir de Paul Ricœur

Could an ethical reasoning give an answer to the crisis of historicity ? The scope of the present article is to address the question of ethics along with Paul Ricœur, by analyzing the relation between love and justice and by drawing a parallel between this relation and the way in which Jacques Derrida defines translation. Through the Ricœurien description of love as Christian love of enemies and through the description of justice as distributive justice, we show that love corresponds to an anhistorical dimension, which transgresses our facticity, while justice belongs to facticity, finitude and historicity. Their conflict is overcome by Ricœur, who shows that the two are reciprocally dependent. Their relation is nonetheless marked by an asymmetry which does not allows us to consider it as a mere dialectic. Along with Jacques Derrida, we may conceive this relation as a translation and we may thus hermeneutically reconsider the nature of translation itself. This approach sheds a new light both on the Ricœurien relation between love and justice and on the question of historicity. À une crise de l’historicité pouvons-nous répondre avec une démarche éthique ? Le but du présent travail est de repenser l’éthique à partir de Paul Ricœur. Nous analysons le rapport ricœurien entre l’amour et la justice, en mettant cette analyse en parallèle avec le sens donné par Jacques Derrida à la traduction. En décrivant, avec Ricœur, l’amour chrétien des ennemis et la justice distributive, nous montrons que l’amour correspond à une dimension anhistorique, qui dépasse la facticité, et que la justice relève de la facticité, de la finitude et de l’historicité. Leur conflit est surmonté par Ricœur, qui montre qu’il s’agit, en effet, d’une interdépendance. Celle-ci est marquée par une asymétrie qui interdit de la considérer comme une simple dialectique. Avec Jacques Derrida, nous pouvons la concevoir comme une traduction, tout en repensant, dans une démarche herméneutique, la nature de la traduction elle-même. Cela met également dans une nouvelle lumière le rapport entre amour et justice, tout comme la question de l’historicité

Design of bioorthogonal tools for bioconjugation and drug delivery

Trabalho Final de Mestrado Integrado, Ciências Farmacêuticas, 2020, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Farmácia.A bioconjugação aplicada a modificação de proteínas é uma tecnologia promissora para resolver várias lacunas bioterapeuticas existentes. Com o desenvolvimento de duas gerações de Antibody-Drug conjugates (ADCs) emergiram problemas com a obtenção de bioseletividade e bioestabilidade, dando origem a um desafio tremendo. As maleimidas, comumente usadas para estabelecer ligações covalentes entre o tiol do resíduo e o fármaco (reação de Michael), fazem parte deste problema, já que se veio a demonstrar que a ligação da tiosuccinimida é menos robusta do que outrora se pensava. Desta forma, em meio biologico as tiosuccinimidas podem ser sujeitas a duas reações competitivas: quebra da ligação atravez da eleminação de retro-Michael, que resulta numa libertação prematura do fármaco e troca com tióis biologicos, e hidrolise do anel, cujo produto se veio a demonstrar resistente a reação anterior. Ao fim de contornar o problema da estabilidade, a comunidade cientifica centrou-se no desenvolvimento de metodologias destinadas a tornar a ligação tiosuccinimida mais robusta, sendo um exemplo deste desenvolvimento a introdução na meleimida de grupos eletroatratores como substituintes N-α que visam a acelarar a hidrolise da tiosuccinimida. O objetivo deste trabalho de campo é síntese e realização de estudos comparativos entre 3 (etilo com substituinte N-α; Oxigénio com substituinte e Azoto com substituinte) maleimidas, ao fim de compreender a influencia do substituinte N-α na suscetibilidade a tanto a ocorrencia de adição e eleminação de Michael como da hidrólise, e definir se estas maleimidas seriam adequandas para bioncojugação.Bioconjugation applied to protein modification is a promising technology to address several existing biotherapeutic gaps. With the development of two generations of Antibody-Drug conjugates (ADCs), it became evident that bioselectivity and biostability is still far from intended, giving rise to a tremendous challenge. Maleimides, commonly used to establish covalent bonds between the residue's thiol and the drug by Michael addition , are part of this problem, since it has been shown that thiosuccinimide linkage is less robust than previously thought. Thus, in a biological environment, thiosuccinimides can undergo two competitive reactions: breaking the linkage of thiosuccinimide through the retro-Michael elimination, which results in a premature release of the drug and exchange with biological thiols, and hydrolysis of the ring, the product of which has been demonstrate resistance to the previous reaction. To circumvent the problem of stability, the scientific community focused on the development of designs aimed at making the thiosuccinimide bond more robust. An example of this development is the introduction of electrowithdrawing groups as N-α substituents that aims to accelerate the hydrolysis of thiosuccinimide. The purpose of this fieldwork is to synthesize and carry out comparative studies between 3 maleimides (ethyl as N-α substituent; Oxygen as N-α substituent and Nitrogen as N-α substituent), in order to understand the influence of the N-α substituent on susceptibility to hydrolysis, Michael addition and Michael elimination, and to define if these maleimides would be suitable for bioconjugation.Com o patrocínio do iMed

Hybrid query optimization for hard-to-compress bit-vectors

Bit-vectors are widely used for indexing and summarizing data due to their efficient processing in modern computers. Sparse bit-vectors can be further compressed to reduce their space requirement. Special compression schemes based on run-length encoders have been designed to avoid explicit decompression and minimize the decoding overhead during query execution. Moreover, highly compressed bit-vectors can exhibit a faster query time than the non-compressed ones. However, for hard-to-compress bit-vectors, compression does not speed up queries and can add considerable overhead. In these cases, bit-vectors are often stored verbatim (non-compressed). On the other hand, queries are answered by executing a cascade of bit-wise operations involving indexed bit-vectors and intermediate results. Often, even when the original bit-vectors are hard to compress, the intermediate results become sparse. It could be feasible to improve query performance by compressing these bit-vectors as the query is executed. In this scenario, it would be necessary to operate verbatim and compressed bit-vectors together. In this paper, we propose a hybrid framework where compressed and verbatim bitmaps can coexist and design algorithms to execute queries under this hybrid model. Our query optimizer is able to decide at run time when to compress or decompress a bit-vector. Our heuristics show that the applications using higher-density bitmaps can benefit from using this hybrid model, improving both their query time and memory utilization

Distributed query-aware quantization for high-dimensional similarity searches

The concept of similarity is used as the basis for many data exploration and data mining tasks. Nearest Neighbor (NN) queries identify the most similar items, or in terms of distance the closest points to a query point. Similarity is traditionally characterized using a distance function between multi-dimensional feature vectors. However, when the data is high-dimensional, traditional distance functions fail to significantly distinguish between the closest and furthest points, as few dissimilar dimensions dominate the distance function. Localized similarity functions, i.e. functions that only consider dimensions close to the query, quantize each dimension independently and only compute similarity for the dimensions where the query and the points fall into the same bin. These quantizations are query-agnostic. There is potential to improve accuracy when a query-dependent quantization is used. In this paper we propose a Query dependent Equi-Depth (QED) on-the-fly quantization method to improve high-dimensional similarity searches. The quantization is done for each dimension at query time and localized scores are generated for the closest p fraction of the points while a constant penalty is applied for the rest of the points. QED not only improves the quality of the distance metric, but also improves query time performance by filtering out non relevant data. We propose a distributed indexing and query algorithm to efficiently compute QED. Our experimental results show improvements in classification accuracy as well as query performance up to one order of magnitude faster than Manhattan-based sequential scan NN queries over datasets with hundreds of dimensions

Faster Multidimensional Data Queries on Infrastructure Monitoring Systems

The analytics in online performance monitoring systems have often been limited due to the query performance of large scale multidimensional data. In this paper, we introduce a faster query approach using the bit-sliced index (BSI). Our study covers multidimensional grouping and preference top-k queries with the BSI, algorithms design, time complexity evaluation, and the query time comparison on a real-time production performance monitoring system. Our research work extended the BSI algorithms to cover attributes filtering and multidimensional grouping. We evaluated the query time with the single attribute, multiple attributes, feature filtering, and multidimensional grouping. To compare with the existing prior arts, we made a benchmarking comparison with the bitmap indexing, sequential scan, and collection streaming grouping. In the result of our experiments with large scale production data, the proposed BSI approach outperforms the existing prior arts: 3 times faster than the bitmap indexing approach on single attribute top-k queries, 10 times faster than the collection stream approach on the multidimensional grouping. While comparing with the baseline sequential scan approach, our proposed algorithm BSI approach outperforms the sequential scan approach with a factor of 10 on multiple attributes queries and a factor of 100 on single attribute queries. In the previous research, we had evaluated the BSI time complexity and space complexity on simulation data with various distributions, this research work further studied, evaluated, and concluded the BSI approach query performance with real production data

USE OF CRITERIA FOR INTRACEREBRAL THROMBOSIS AFTER COVID-19 INFECTION: SERIES OF CASES

Universitatea de Stat de Medicină şi Farmacie „Nicolae Testemiţanu”, Chişinău, Republica MoldovaIntroducere. În diagnosticul trombozei sinusurilor și a venelor cerebrale (CVST) post-COVID-19 la maturi rolul primordial îl dețin criteriile: (1) vârsta ≥18 ani; (2) CVST confirmată imagistic sau la autopsie; (3) COVID-19 confirmat prin test PCR cu 90 zile înainte de diagnosticare CVST sau în timpul internării. Scopul lucrării. Analiza utilității criteriilor de diagnostic pentru stabilirea diagnosticului de tromboză cerebrală post-COVID-19. Material și metode. Au fost evaluate cazurile tuturor pacienților suspecți de CVST, internați în Institutul de Neurologie și Neurochirurgie „Diomid Gherman” în anii 2020–2023. Au fost identificați 5 pacienți cu vârsta 30-66 ani, diagnosticați cu CVST post-COVID-19 confirmat prin test PCR. Acuze prezentate de pacienți la internare: cefalee severă instalată brusc, diplopie, dureri retroorbitale, exoftalm, ataxie. Rezultate. Investigații efectuate au fost: angio-tomografie computerizată (CT), imagistică prin rezonanță magnetică (IRM) cerebrală cu contrast, angiografie cu substracție digitală a capului, angiografie clasică. Tromboza venoasă cerebrală a fost determinată la nivelul sinusului transvers și cavernos. Timpul mediu de la confirmarea COVID-19 la debut CVST a fost 93 zile. Dintre acești pacienți, unul a prezentat AVC de tip ischemic cu transformare hemoragică în sistemul vertebro-bazilar, utilizator de contraceptive orale; altul a prezentat meningită secundară bacteriană. Inițiat tratament anticoagulant, unor pacienți suplimentar antibiotice. Starea pacienților la externare cu ameliorare cu prescrierea tratamentului anticoagulant de durată. Concluzii. Tromboza venoasă cerebrală trebuie suspectată în cazurile tuturor pacienților post-COVID-19. Utilizarea criteriilor de diagnostic poate facilita diagnosticul precoce și abordarea terapeutică promptă și corectă a pacienților.Background. In the diagnostics of the post-COVID-19 cerebral vein sinus thrombosis (CVST) in adults, the following criteria are primary: (1) age ≥ 18; (2) CVST confirmed imagistically or at autopsy; (3) COVID-19 confirmed by PCR test 90 days before CVST diagnostics or during the hospitalization. Objective of the study. Analysis of the utility of the diagnostic criteria for establishing the diagnosis of post-COVID-19 cerebral thrombosis. Material and methods. All the cases of patients hospitalized in the Diomid Gherman Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery during period 2020–2023 were screened and identified 5 patients aged 30-66 years, being diagnosed with CVST after having COVID-19 confirmed by PCR test. The complaints presented by the patients at admission were a sudden severe headache, diplopia, retroorbital pain, exophthalmos, and ataxia. Results. The investigations performed were computed angiotomography (CT), contrast cerebral magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), angiography with digital subtraction of the head, classic angiography. CVST was determined at the level of the transverse and cavernous sinuses. The average time from COVID-19 confirmation until CVST onset was of 93 days. Among these patients, one presented ischemic stroke with hemorrhagic transformation in the vertebro-basilar system, user of oral contraceptives; another presented secondary bacterial meningitis. Anticoagulant treatment was initiated; some patients were additionally given antibiotics. The patients’ condition at discharge was improved with the prescription of long-term anticoagulant treatment. Conclusion. Cerebral venous thrombosis must be suspected in the cases of all the post-COVID-19 patients. Using the diagnostic criteria can facilitate early diagnosis and the prompt and correct therapeutic approach of patients

Performance evaluation of word-aligned compression methods for bitmap indices

Bitmap indices are a widely used scheme for large read-only repositories in data warehouses and scientific databases. This binary representation allows the use of bit-wise operations for fast query processing and is typically compressed using run-length encoding techniques. Most bitmap compression techniques are aligned using a fixed encoding length (32 or 64 bits) to avoid explicit decompression during query time. They have been proposed to extend or enhance word-aligned hybrid (WAH) compression. This paper presents a comparative study of four bitmap compression techniques: WAH, PLWAH, CONCISE, and EWAH. Experiments are targeted to identify the conditions under which each method should be applied and quantify the overhead incurred during query processing. Performance in terms of compression ratio and query time is evaluated over synthetic-generated bitmap indices, and results are validated over bitmap indices generated from real data sets. Different query optimizations are explored, query time estimation formulas are defined, and the conditions under which one method should be preferred over another are formalized

Correlation between spinal nerves, anterolateral abdominal wall muscle tone and inguinal hernia

Department of Topographic Anatomy and Operative Surgery, Nicolae Testemitsanu State University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Chisinau, the Republic MoldovaBackground: The complete diagnosis of pathomorphological disorders in case of diseases of the spine determines the choice of effective treatment, pathogenetically argued in various diseases which, according to modern classifications, do not have a direct link with it. Continuous improvement of diagnostic and treatment methods in some pathologies, both surgical and therapeutical requires a more detailed study of clinical anatomy and spinal biomechanics. Thus, perhaps even revising concepts are well-rooted in the consciousness of scientists and modern practitioners. As we will try to analyze the anatomical-clinical component of the appearance and recovery of antero-lateral abdominal wall hernias, we will limit ourselves to some analysis and discussion of one of the predisposing factors, namely the lack of resistance or insufficient resistance of the abdominal muscles. This is closely related to the condition of the constituent elements of the abdominal wall, and in particular depends on the innervation and vascularization of the musculoaponeurotic layers, which determine the strength and muscle tone. Conclusions: One of the causes of inguinal hernias is the decrease in the tone of the abdominal muscles. It depends on several factors: the elasticity of the muscular tissue, state of neuro-muscular transmission, the state of peripheral nerve fibers and motor neurons in the spinal cord, superior motion control centers. Thus, the causes of muscle tone decrease can be both muscular in origin and generated by pathology of the nervous system at different levels. Because the causes are multiple, the treatment is different at certain stages of hernia development. In this way, our treatment – qualitative nutrition, vitamins, special exercises, spinal region work, paravertebral muscles massage fit perfectly into hernia etiology and pathogenesis. This treatment is physiologically accessible and can be performed and supervised by physicians with non-surgical specialties in stationary or outpatient settings, after prior consultation with the surgeon

Bochdalek hernia – a rare clinical case of adult age

Catedra chirurgie generală și semiologie, USMF „Nicolae Testemițanu”, Chișinău, Republica Moldova, Conferința stiințifică „Nicolae Anestiadi – nume etern al chirurgiei basarabene” consacrată centenarului de la nașterea profesorului Nicolae Anestiadi 26 august 2016Introducere. Hernia Bochdalek (HB) este cel mai frecvent tip de hernie diafragmală congenitală și reprezintă un defect diafragmal postero-lateral, în 85% cazuri fiind afectat hemidiafragmul stâng. Totuși, HB se întâlnește foarte rar la adulți, frecvența raportată fiind 0,17-6% dintre toate herniile diafragmale. Caz clinic. Prezentăm cazul unui pacient de 52 ani, cu un anamnestic de 2 ani și acuze la dispnee ușoară, disconfort periodic în regiunea hipocondrului stâng, fără date de traumatism toraco-abdominal în antecedente. Radiografia toracică efectuată în ortostatism nu a detectat careva date patologice. Astfel, a fost impusă efectuarea CT cu contrast i/v, care a relevat hernierea splinei, cozii pancreasului, rinichiului stîng și anselor intestinale prin hemidiafragmul stîng în mediastinul posterior, fără modificări patologice ale organelor herniate. Rezultate. Pacientul a fost operat prin abord laparotomic. Intraoperator – un defect de 7 cm al hemidiafragmului postero-lateral stîng, cu o suprafață netedă, margini bine definite, fără prezența sacului herniar, sugestiv pentru origine non-traumatică. Organele herniate fără fixare, alunecând liber în cavitatea toracică. A fost efectuată reducerea organelor în cavitatea abdominală și plastia defectului hemidiafragmal stîng cu plasă sintetică din polipropilenă 8x10 cm. Perioada postoperatorie a decurs fără particularități, pacientul fiiind externat la a 10-a zi după intervenție. Supravegherea la distanța de 3 ani nu a detectat recidiva herniei, cu remisie clinică completă și tablou imagistic normal. Concluzii. HB reprezintă o raritate printre populația adultă. Tabloul clinic este nespecific, o bună parte din pacienți fiind total asimptomatici, solicitând un înalt grad de suspiciune clinică. Rolul esențial în diagnosticarea HB îi revine CT-contrast, iar abordul chirurgical este variabil și depinde de prezența și severitatea complicațiilor, cît și de experiența chirurgului.Introduction. Bochdalek hernia (BH) is the most common type of congenital diaphragmatic hernia and represents a latero-posterior congenital defect of the diaphragm, 85% cases on the left hemidiafragm. However, BH is very rare in adults with a reported frequency of 0.17-6% among all diaphragmatic hernias. Presentation of case. We present a 52-year-old man with a 2-year history of mild dyspnea and periodic discomfort in the left hypochondrium, without history of thoraco-abdominal trauma. Upright performed chest radiography did not detect any pathological data. Contrast-enhanced CT revealed herniation of spleen, the tail of the pancreas, left kidney and intestinal loops through the left hemidiaphragm in the posterior mediastinum, without pathological changes of herniated organs. Results. The patient was operated via laparotomy approach. At operation – a smooth, well-defined, nontraumatic, 7 cm in size defect in the left mid-diaphragm was found. No hernial sac could be identified. The herniated organs were not fixed, sliding freely into the chest cavity. It was performed the reduction of herniated organs in the abdominal cavity and left hemidiaphragm defect repair using 8x10cm polypropylene synthetic mesh. Postoperative period was uneventful and the patient was discharged on the 10-th day. A 3-years followup did not detect the recurence of BH with complete clinical remission and normal imaging. Conclusions. BH is a rarity among adult population. The clinical presentation is non-specific and a lot of patients are totally asymptomatic, demanding a high degree of clinical suspicion. Contrast-enhanced CT has the essential role in the diagnosis of BH in adult age. Surgical approach is variable and depends on the presence and severity of visceral complications, as well as the experience of the surgeon

MASS-MEDIA ȘI CULTURA POLITICĂ

În contextul realităților politice din ultima perioadă de timp problema „culturii politice” devine una de o actualitate majoră, atât în aspect practic, adică al felului „cum se traduce în viață”, cât și în plan conceptual. Noțiunea ca atare a fost introdusă în circuitul științific de politologul american contemporan Herman Finer (1956) și dezvoltată de Gabriel A.Almond și Sidney Verba (1963). Misiunea de formare a culturii politice şi-au asumat-o mai multe instituții şi organizații din segmentul public, sectorului mediatic revenindu-i rolul de monitorizare şi cunoaştere a proceselor ce se produc în diferite domenii ale vieţii social-politice şi economice, de formare a noilor valori democratice, de lichidare a handicapului pe care-l au „noile democrații” în corelaţie cu țările dezvoltate. În prezentul studiu autorul și-a propus să identifice în ce măsură presa, în special cea din Republica Moldova, își îndeplinește rolul de formator al culturii politice