Induced pluripotent stem cells, a giant leap for mankind therapeutic applications

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) technology has propelled the field of stem cells biology, providing new cells to explore the molecular mechanisms of pluripotency, cancer biology and aging. A major advantage of human iPSC, compared to the pluripotent embryonic stem cells, is that they can be generated from virtually any embryonic or adult somatic cell type without destruction of human blastocysts. In addition, iPSC can be generated from somatic cells harvested from normal individuals or patients, and used as a cellular tool to unravel mechanisms of human development and to model diseases in a manner not possible before. Besides these fundamental aspects of human biology and physiology that are revealed using iPSC or iPSC-derived cells, these cells hold an immense potential for cell-based therapies, and for the discovery of new or personalized pharmacological treatments for many disorders. Here, we review some of the current challenges and concerns about iPSC technology. We introduce the potential held by iPSC for research and development of novel health-related applications. We briefly present the efforts made by the scientific and clinical communities to create the necessary guidelines and regulations to achieve the highest quality standards in the procedures for iPSC generation, characterization and long-term preservation. Finally, we present some of the audacious and pioneer clinical trials in progress with iPSC-derived cells.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Multifunctional metal-organic frameworks : from academia to industrial applications

After three decades of intense and fundamental research on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), is there anything left to say or to explain? The synthesis and properties of MOFs have already been comprehensively described elsewhere. It is time, however, to prove the nature of their true usability: technological applications based on these extended materials require development and implementation as a natural consequence of the up-to-known intensive research focused on their design and preparation. The current large number of reviews on MOFs emphasizes practical strategies to develop novel networks with varied crystal size, shape and topology, being mainly devoted to academic concerns. The present survey intends to push the boundaries and summarise the state-of-the-art on the preparation of promising (multi) functional MOFs in worldwide laboratories and their use as materials for industrial implementation. This review starts, on the one hand, to describe several tools and striking examples of remarkable and recent (multi) functional MOFs exhibiting outstanding properties (e.g., in gas adsorption and separation, selective sorption of harmful compounds, heterogeneous catalysis, luminescent and corrosion protectants). On the other hand, and in a second part, it intends to use these examples of MOFs to incite scientists to move towards the transference of knowledge from the laboratories to the industry. Within this context, we exhaustively review the many efforts of several worldwide commercial companies to bring functional MOFs towards the daily use, analysing the various patents and applications reported to date. Overall, this review goes from the very basic concepts of functional MOF engineering and preparation ending up in their industrial production on a large scale and direct applications in society

Robot orientation with histograms on MSL

One of the most important tasks on robot soccer is localization. The team robots should self-localize on the 18 x 12 meters soccer field. Since a few years ago the soccer field has increased and the corner posts were removed and that increased the localization task complexity. One important aspect to take care for a proper localization is to find out the robot orientation. This paper proposes a new technique to calculate the robot orientation. The proposed method consists of using a histogram of white-green transitions (to detect the lines on the field) to know the robot orientation. This technique does not take much computational time and proves to be very reliable.(undefined

Adaptive spatial combining for passive time-reversed communications

Passive time reversal has aroused considerable interest in underwater communications as a computationally inexpensive means of mitigating the intersymbol interference introduced by the channel using a receiver array. In this paper the basic technique is extended by adaptively weighting sensor contributions to partially compensate for degraded focusing due to mismatch between the assumed and actual medium impulse responses. Two algorithms are proposed, one of which restores constructive interference between sensors, and the other one minimizes the output residual as in widely used equalization schemes. These are compared with plain time reversal and variants that employ postequalization and channel tracking. They are shown to improve the residual error and temporal stability of basic time reversal with very little added complexity. Results are presented for data collected in a passive time-reversal experiment that was conducted during the MREA’04 sea trial. In that experiment a single acoustic projector generated a 2/4-PSK phase-shift keyed stream at 200/400 baud, modulated at 3.6 kHz, and received at a range of about 2 km on a sparse vertical array with eight hydrophones. The data were found to exhibit significant Doppler scaling, and a resampling-based preprocessing method is also proposed here to compensate for that scaling

Joint passive time reversal and multichannel equalization for underwater communications

Time reversal has aroused considerable interest in communications applications as a means of partially compensating for the intersymbol interference introduced by the channel. This paper presents experimental results for a passive time reversal experiment conducted off the west coast of Portugal during the MREA’2004 mission. A single acoustic projector generated a 2/4-PSK stream at 200 and 400 baud, modulated around a carrier frequency of 3600 Hz. The signals were received at a range of about 2 Km from the source on a sparse vertical array with 8 hydrophones. We examine several strategies for demodulating the data, including equalization, time-reversal, and combinations of both techniques. This work emphasizes the use of low-complexity multichannel combining algorithms for tracking channel variations prior to generating a passively focused signal.This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (ISR/IST plurianual funding) through the POS– Conhecimento Program that includes FEDER fund

Minho MSL: a new generation of soccer robots

This paper describes the new generation of Minho Team robots since the last RoboCup participation. Robots have been rebuilt from top to bottom, keeping the essence of the previous generation, but lighter, faster, improved sight, new algorithms and new technology. The demands of RoboCup MSL are very high and a new breed of robots was necessary to cope with it. This paper describes a bottom-up view of the robot, the hardware used, the vision head, the high level software and some conclusions

OFDM demodulation in underwater time-reversed shortned channels

This work addresses the problem of OFDM transmission in dispersive underwater channels where impulse responses lasting tens of miliseconds cannot be reliably handled by recently proposed methods due to limitations of channel estimation algorithms. The proposed approach relies on passive time reversal for multichannel combining of observed waveforms at an array of sensors prior to OFDM processing, which produces an equivalent channel with a shorter impulse response that can be handled much more easily. A method for tracking the narrowband residual phase variations of the channel after Doppler preprocessing is proposed. This is a variation of an existing technique that can improve the spectral efficiency of OFDM by reducing the need for pilot symbols. This work also examines techniques to handle sparse impulse responses and proposes a channel estimation method where an l1 norm is added to the standard least-squares cost function to transparently induce sparseness in the vector of channel coefficients. Algorithms are assessed using data collected during the UAB’07 experiment, which was conducted in Trondheim fjord, Norway, in September 2007. Data were transmitted with bandwidths of 1.5 and 4.5 kHz, and recorded at a range of about 800 m in a 16-hydrophone array. Significant multipath was observed over a period of at least 30 ms.FC

Context aware advisor for public transportation

This paper presents an Android-based mobile app designed to provide real time context aware public transportation information and advice to its users through the combination of the user's preferences and geographic context with data retrieved from a public transportation information system called XTraN Passenger. Thus, this mobile app contributes to fulfill the necessities of the passengers, and also provides an incentive for people to use the public transportation infrastructure more frequently. The proposed mobile app allows the users to benefit from the access to real time public transportation data in a simple and intuitive way. The validation of the features and operation of the developed app was assessed with results from use cases and real-world experimental tests using public transportation data from a Brazilian bus fleet operator.This work is supported by FCT with the reference project UID/EEA/04436/2013, by FEDER funds through the COMPETE 2020 –Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI) with the reference project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006941

Interacting Microsoft Visual Basic Procedures (Macros) and GIS tools in order to access optimal location and maximum use of railways and railway infrastructures

Some parts of the Portuguese railway infrastructure have been neglected through time: Rural lines have been abandoned, investment in new infrastructure is sometimes delayed, and marketing strategies to keep or attract more users have not been pursued. Simultaneously, problems with urban congestion, pollution and mobility for the young, the elderly, the poor, and the handicapped are putting forward the discussion about new or more sustainable modes of transportation. Common sense of public officials, other lobbying groups, and the locals demand new, trendy train lines. And while some axes may have the potential to justify rail lines, others seem to lack population or funding to be enabled. One major problem in order to evaluate the worthiness of these rail projects has been the fact that very often the studies of travel demand and physical implantation are done separately. Travel demand analysis is done based on the four-step model (trip generation, distribution, modal split, and network assignment) using survey data and the network system, using a relatively wide zoning. The importance of interacting with other, finer, information (i.e. slope, density of population, environmental sensitivity, or other socio-economic and land use information) with the development of the travel analysis demand will enhance the analysis/results and increase the chance of proposing lines that are both optimal in location and will have the maximum use by the citizens. Off the shelf software is still unable to perform this kind of operations. Some perform the analysis using existing networks, and no information on the land is available besides the zoning system, other software propose lines accordingly to land slopes, but no trip information is included. GIS packages have the capacity to include the land information and some have some transportation analysis, but are lacking computation capabilities and algorithms to perform analysis similar to off-the-shelf transportation software. In order to develop this kind of integrated analysis it is important to have a good knowledge of the algorithms and analysis required by transportation and of the tools/opportunities offered by the GIS packages. This paper presents a methodology that integrates the transportation algorithms with the GIS functionalities, using excel macro-language. The result is an interaction of both travel demand analysis and site selection. The characteristics of the place constrain the travel demand analysis, but on its own the travel demand analysis define not only the buffer of the train line, but systematically enhance the shape of the line and the location of the stops each time the results of a phase of the travel demand analysis is outputted. This paper offers guidelines for those developing travel demand analysis including some site selection criteria, and it can be a starting point for those of whom intend to develop further application of in the GIS fields.

It's about THYME: On the design and implementation of a time-aware reactive storage system for pervasive edge computing environments

This work was partially supported by Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT-MCTES) through project DeDuCe (PTDC/CCI-COM/32166/2017), NOVA LINCS UIDB/04516/2020, and grant SFRH/BD/99486/2014; and by the European Union through project LightKone (grant agreement n. 732505).Nowadays, smart mobile devices generate huge amounts of data in all sorts of gatherings. Much of that data has localized and ephemeral interest, but can be of great use if shared among co-located devices. However, mobile devices often experience poor connectivity, leading to availability issues if application storage and logic are fully delegated to a remote cloud infrastructure. In turn, the edge computing paradigm pushes computations and storage beyond the data center, closer to end-user devices where data is generated and consumed, enabling the execution of certain components of edge-enabled systems directly and cooperatively on edge devices. In this article, we address the challenge of supporting reliable and efficient data storage and dissemination among co-located wireless mobile devices without resorting to centralized services or network infrastructures. We propose THYME, a novel time-aware reactive data storage system for pervasive edge computing environments, that exploits synergies between the storage substrate and the publish/subscribe paradigm. We present the design of THYME and elaborate a three-fold evaluation, through an analytical study, and both simulation and real world experimentations, characterizing the scenarios best suited for its use. The evaluation shows that THYME allows the notification and retrieval of relevant data with low overhead and latency, and also with low energy consumption, proving to be a practical solution in a variety of situations.publishersversionpublishe