Effects of ultraviolet radiation to Solea senegalensis during early development

Ultraviolet radiation (UVR) reaching the Earth surface is increasing and scarce information is available regarding effects of this stressor to early life stages of marine vertebrates. Therefore, this work aims to study the effects of UVR exposure during early development stages of the flatfish Solea senegalensis. Firstly, fish were exposed to UVR (six daily doses between 3.4 ± 0.08 and 8.6 ± 0.14 kJ m-2) at the following moments: gastrula stage (24 h post fertilization, hpf), 1 and 2 days after hatching (dah, 48 and 72 hpf, respectively). In a second bioassay, fish at the beginning of metamorphosis were exposed to UVR (one or two daily doses of 7.2 ± 0.39 or 11.1 ± 0.49 kJ m-2) and then maintained until the end of metamorphosis. Mortality and effects on development, growth and behaviour were evaluated at the end of both bioassays (3 dah and 18 dah, respectively). Biomarkers of neurotransmission (acetylcholinesterase, AChE), oxidative stress (catalase, CAT) and biotransformation (glutathione S-transferase, GST) were also determined at the end of the early larvae bioassay, and metamorphosis progression was evaluated during the second bioassay. UVR exposure caused distinct effects depending on life stage. Altered pigmentation, decreased growth, impaired fish behaviour and AChE and GST inhibition were observed at the earlier larval phase. Whereas, decrease in growth was the main effect observed at the metamorphosis stage. In summary, the exposure of S. senegalensis early stages to environmentally relevant UVR doses led to adverse responses at different levels of biological organization, which might lead to implications in later life stages.publishe

Preference rules for label ranking: Mining patterns in multi-target relations

In this paper, we investigate two variants of association rules for preference data, Label Ranking Association Rules and Pairwise Association Rules. Label Ranking Association Rules (LRAR) are the equivalent of Class Association Rules (CAR) for the Label Ranking task. In CAR, the consequent is a single class, to which the example is expected to belong to. In LRAR, the consequent is a ranking of the labels. The generation of LRAR requires special support and confidence measures to assess the similarity of rankings. In this work, we carry out a sensitivity analysis of these similarity-based measures. We want to understand which datasets benefit more from such measures and which parameters have more influence in the accuracy of the model. Furthermore, we propose an alternative type of rules, the Pairwise Association Rules (PAR), which are defined as association rules with a set of pairwise preferences in the consequent. While PAR can be used both as descriptive and predictive models, they are essentially descriptive models. Experimental results show the potential of both approaches.This research has received funding from the ECSEL Joint Undertaking, the framework programme for research and innovation horizon 2020 (2014-2020) under grant agreement number 662189-MANTIS-2014-1, and by National Funds through the FCT — Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) as part of project UID/EEA/50014/2013

Phenotypic and proliferative modulation of human mesenchymal stem cells via crosstalk with endothelial cells

AbstractThe purpose of this work was to investigate if a coculture system of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSC) with endothelial cells (human umbilical vein endothelial cells, HUVEC) could modulate the phenotype and proliferation of harvested MSCs. In addition to previous investigations on the crosstalk between these two cell types, in the present work different relative cell ratios were analyzed for long, therapeutically relevant, culture periods. Moreover, MSCs osteogenic commitment was assessed in a non-osteogenic medium and in the presence of HUVECs through magnetic cell separation, cell quantification by flow cytometry, morphology by fluorescent microscopy, metabolic activity and gene expression of osteogenic markers. Collectively, the present findings demonstrate that, by coculturing MSCs with HUVECs, there was not only the promotion of osteogenic differentiation (and its enhancement, depending on the relative cell ratios used), but also a significant increase on MSCs proliferation. This augmentation in cell proliferation occurred independently of relative cell ratios, but was favored by higher relative amounts of HUVECs. Taken together, this data suggests that HUVECs not only modulate MSC phenotype but also their proliferation rate. Therefore, a coculture system of MSCs and HUVECs can a have a broad impact on bone tissue engineering approaches

Monitoring Arthropods in maize and pasture fields in São Miguel and São Jorge Islands: IPM-Popillia Project

ABSTRACT: The dataset presented here is an achievement of the H2020 European project "Integrated Pest Management of the Invasive Japanese Beetle, Popillia japonica (IPM-Popillia)". This project addresses the challenge of a new risk to plant health in Europe, the invasion of the Japanese beetle, Popillia japonica (Newman, 1838) (Coleoptera, Rutelidae) and provides an environmentally friendly IPM Toolbox to control the expanding pest populations across Europe. This study aims to present the records of terrestrial arthropod diversity with a special focus on four groups belonging to Carabids and Staphylinid beetles (Coleoptera), Opiliones and Anisolabididae (Dermaptera), collected with the potential to be used as biocontrol agents against P. japonica in future Integrated Pest Management programmes. A thorough sampling programme was conducted in maize and pasture fields in two Islands of the Azores (São Miguel and São Jorge) in the summer of 2022.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Gold in the Lousal mine, Iberian Pyrite Belt, Portugal

Recent exploration boreholes in the Lousal Mine, located within the Portuguese sector of the Iberian Pyrite Belt (IPB) yielded marked concentrations in gold/electrum in a section of core consisting of banded metasediments with massive pyrite. Preliminary research indicates that the gold is associated with native bismuth and bismuthinite and is clearly late in the paragenetic sequence occurring in fine chalcopyrite (± covellite)-bismuthinite-gold filled veinlets within the dominant and more massive pyrite. The pale yellow gold grains are fine, seldom reaching more than 6 ..m in length and half of that in thickness. EPMA results indicate that silver concentrations in gold grains can be as high as 27 wt.%. The results show similarities with conclusions drawn from the IPB on the Spanish side where gold of Co-Bi geochemical association is found as electrum with abundant to common Co and Bi minerals. These associated with pyrite and/or chalcopyrite are characterized by an abundance of sedimentary facies and show that the gold association formed at high temperature (>300 °C) during the initial phases of massive sulphide formation

Wear behavior of a new composite formulation, with TEOS addition, for abrasive vitrified grinding wheels

Vitrified grinding wheels are used in many manufacturing industries to shape and finish metals and other materials in an efficient way. This work addresses a new approach with the use of tetraethyl orthosilicate solution (TEOS solution or silica sol), as an additive, in vitrified abrasive composites for grinding wheels. Different types of composite were produced using always the same materials and processing methods, but with different TEOS contents. Compared with a reference abrasive grinding wheel, the addition of TEOS promoted an improvement in the abrasive tool performance. The new formulation for vitrified abrasive composites showed better dimensional stability during processing (drying and sintering), and could be applied to the production of grinding tools with high dimensional accuracy. With the addition of 3.75 wt% of TEOS there was an increase in the strength of the matrix bonds. The porosity of the composite increased by 7% (from 43.6 to 46.9%), also improving its wear properties, with the quadrupling of the grinding ratio of the abrasive composite. In addition, the surface roughness of the composite decreased (from Ra = 22.9 to 8.4 μm) allowing to improve the surface finish of the workpieces.This work was supported by Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização , with the code POCI-01-0247-FEDER-038492. This work was supported by FCT national funds, under the national support to R&D units grant, through the reference project UIDB/04436/ 2020 and UIDP/04436/2020

Discovering a taste for the unusual: exceptional models for preference mining

Exceptional preferences mining (EPM) is a crossover between two subfields of data mining: local pattern mining and preference learning. EPM can be seen as a local pattern mining task that finds subsets of observations where some preference relations between labels significantly deviate from the norm. It is a variant of subgroup discovery, with rankings of labels as the target concept. We employ several quality measures that highlight subgroups featuring exceptional preferences, where the focus of what constitutes exceptional' varies with the quality measure: two measures look for exceptional overall ranking behavior, one measure indicates whether a particular label stands out from the rest, and a fourth measure highlights subgroups with unusual pairwise label ranking behavior. We explore a few datasets and compare with existing techniques. The results confirm that the new task EPM can deliver interesting knowledge.This research has received funding from the ECSEL Joint Undertaking, the framework programme for research and innovation Horizon 2020 (2014-2020) under Grant Agreement Number 662189-MANTIS-2014-1

A study protocol to evaluate the relationship between outdoor air pollution and pregnancy outcomes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The present study protocol is designed to assess the relationship between outdoor air pollution and low birth weight and preterm births outcomes performing a semi-ecological analysis. Semi-ecological design studies are widely used to assess effects of air pollution in humans. In this type of analysis, health outcomes and covariates are measured in individuals and exposure assignments are usually based on air quality monitor stations. Therefore, estimating individual exposures are one of the major challenges when investigating these relationships with a semi-ecologic design.</p> <p>Methods/Design</p> <p>Semi-ecologic study consisting of a retrospective cohort study with ecologic assignment of exposure is applied. Health outcomes and covariates are collected at Primary Health Care Center. Data from pregnant registry, clinical record and specific questionnaire administered orally to the mothers of children born in period 2007-2010 in Portuguese Alentejo Litoral region, are collected by the research team. Outdoor air pollution data are collected with a lichen diversity biomonitoring program, and individual pregnancy exposures are assessed with spatial geostatistical simulation, which provides the basis for uncertainty analysis of individual exposures. Awareness of outdoor air pollution uncertainty will improve validity of individual exposures assignments for further statistical analysis with multivariate regression models.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Exposure misclassification is an issue of concern in semi-ecological design. In this study, personal exposures are assigned to each pregnant using geocoded addresses data. A stochastic simulation method is applied to lichen diversity values index measured at biomonitoring survey locations, in order to assess spatial uncertainty of lichen diversity value index at each geocoded address. These methods assume a model for spatial autocorrelation of exposure and provide a distribution of exposures in each study location. We believe that variability of simulated exposure values at geocoded addresses will improve knowledge on variability of exposures, improving therefore validity of individual exposures to input in posterior statistical analysis.</p