The Mount Penha (Guimarães) : a scenery of incorporation and commemoration of space in the Prehistory of the Ave basin

A perspectiva de que o espaço natural foi simplesmente palco de acções económicas e aproveitado em termos da optimização dos recursos será questionada, pois as comunidades estão imersas num mundo que desperta nelas a capacidade de atingir uma percepção espacial, simultaneamente produto da sua história social e da informação sensorial com o qual estruturam a realidade circundante (Thomas 2001). Desta forma, o espaço natural não existe enquanto entidade isolada, pois ele é permanentemente humanizado e recriado pelas comunidades que o vivenciam e o percepcionam quer através de histórias, lendas e memórias quer através de acções que deixam evidências materiais. Com base nas premissas enunciadas escolhemos estudar o Monte de Nossa Senhora da Penha, em Guimarães, com o objectivo de interpretarmos a sua importância simbólica durante a Pré-História Recente. Trata-se de um relevo predominantemente de natureza granítica, com amplo domínio visual sobre a região e que se destaca na paisagem a quilómetros de distância, pela sua posição na bacia do rio Ave. De salientar, igualmente, além das inúmeras geoformas graníticas, de escala diversa, por vezes constituindo abrigos naturais, as nascentes e os cursos de água que ali proliferam. Trata-se de um lugar lendário no imaginário popular, sacralizado por um santuário e por diversas capelas, pelo menos a partir do séc. XVI, e frequentado na Pré-História, principalmente entre os finais do IV/inícios do III e os finais do I milénios AC. A metodologia de trabalho partiu da revisão das materialidades arqueológicas aí descobertas dando especial relevância ao tipo de objectos encontrados, às “matérias-primas” com que foram efectuados e aos seus contextos de deposição para interpretarmos as acções e as motivações que lhes estiveram subjacentes e o modo como as comunidades se teriam articulado com este “espaço natural”, na longa diacronia. Refutámos, assim, a hipótese de que este local teria sido um povoado, durante o Calcolítico e a Idade do Bronze, para o interpretarmos como um “lugar”, no sentido de J. Thomas (2001), de grande importância simbólica e religiosa para as comunidades pré-históricas que terão vivido nas planícies e colinas existentes nas suas imediações e que o terão vivenciado e incorporado no seu universo cognitivo, frequentando-o, provavelmente para acções e cerimónias públicas que terão culminado em deposições de artefactos metálicos, cerâmicos, líticos e, talvez, ósseos.The perspective that natural space was a merely scenario of economical actions and profited on account of optimization of resources will be questioned, as communities are immersed in a world that arise their interest in a capacity to achieve a spatial perception, product of their social history and sensorial information, how they structure the surrounding reality (Thomas 2001). In this manner, natural space does not exist whilst isolated identity, since it is permanently humanized and recreated by communities which experience and apprehend it, either using histories, legends and memories, or through actions that leave material evidences. Based on the uttered premises we chose to study the Nossa Senhora da Penha Mount, in Guimarães, with the objective of trying to interpret its symbolic importance during recent Prehistory. This mount it is a predominant relief of granite nature, with ample visual domain among the region, detachable in the landscape, from kilometres, by its position in the Ave basin. To enhance, among the diverse granitic geoforms of various scales, some of them constituting natural shelters, the springs and the water courses that proliferate there. It is a legendary place in people’s imaginary, sacralised by a sanctuary and diverse chapels and frequented in Prehistory, specially, between the end of IV/beginning of III and the end of I millenniums AC. The methodology applied covered the revision of the archaeological materialities discovered there, giving special relevance to the type of objects found, to the “raw materials” used on their production and to their “natural” contexts of deposition, having essayed new interpretations about the actions and motivations inherent to them and how communities may have been articulated with this “natural space”, in its long diachrony. We no longer consider this site as a settlement used during the Calcolithic and Bronze Age, to interpret it as a “place”, in the same sense of J. Thomas (2001), of great social and symbolic importance to the prehistoric communities that may have lived in the immediacy plains and hills, who surely have dwelled and incorporated it in their cognitive universe, using it, probably for public actions and ceremonies which may have culminated in depositions of metallic, ceramics, lithic artefacts and, perhaps, osteologic remains

Ground penetrating radar mapping in rescue archaeology: a study from pego late Bronze Age settlement, Braga (NW Portugal)

Rescue archaeology, sometimes called preventive or salvage archaeology, is archaeological survey and excavation carried out in areas threatened by, or revealed by, construction or other development. Unlike traditional survey and excavation, these works must be undertaken in the shortest possible time. In these scenarios the use of ground penetrating radar (GPR) allows field archaeologists to quickly discover and map buried archaeological features. This paper describes the use of GPR during a rescue archaeology campaign at the Pego Late Bronze Age settlement, near the city of Braga (NW Portugal). Closely spaced GPR transects were collected in a grid-based approach, covering three different areas from the site, using GSSI Sir 3000 System, with antennae frequency of 400MHz. Wave velocities were determined by reflected wave and Hyperbola-Fitting methods. Measured velocities ranged between 0.12-0.14 m/ns. Amplitude slice-maps of the surveyed grids were produced. The interpretation of these maps indicates the existence of several cultural features from Bronze Age (post holes, pits, small trenches and flat graves) at an approximated depth of 50 cm. The information obtained with this GPR survey proved to be very useful. Amplitude slice-maps produced act as primary data that is going to be used to guide the rescue archaeological excavation. These results are significant because they can provide a template for interpretation of future GPR surveys of Late Bronze Age sites in NW Portugal and even in NW Iberia

Leveraging deep neural networks for automatic and standardised wound image acquisition

Wound monitoring is a time-consuming and error-prone activity performed daily by healthcare professionals. Capturing wound images is crucial in the current clinical practice, though image inadequacy can undermine further assessments. To provide sufficient information for wound analysis, the images should also contain a minimal periwound area. This work proposes an automatic wound image acquisition methodology that exploits deep learning models to guarantee compliance with the mentioned adequacy requirements, using a marker as a metric reference. A RetinaNet model detects the wound and marker regions, further analysed by a post-processing module that validates if both structures are present and verifies that a periwound radius of 4 centimetres is included. This pipeline was integrated into a mobile application that processes the camera frames and automatically acquires the image once the adequacy requirements are met. The detection model achieved [email protected] values of 0.39 and 0.95 for wound and marker detection, exhibiting a robust detection performance for varying acquisition conditions. Mobile tests demonstrated that the application is responsive, requiring 1.4 seconds on average to acquire an image. The robustness of this solution for real-time smartphone-based usage evidences its capability to standardise the acquisition of adequate wound images, providing a powerful tool for healthcare professionals.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Gone with the wind: huts or tree wind-throws at Late Prehistoric open-air settlements of NW Iberia

Until the 80’s of the 20th century, the archaeological research from Neolithic to Bronze Age in NW Iberia was focused on burial sites and rock art. Since then, several research projects and rescue excavations brought new data on housing and domestic contexts during Late Prehistory. In some of the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age open-air settlements studied, together with pits, post holes, hut floors and anthropic hedges, excavations have been recorded oval or circular hollows measuring 1.9 to 3.5 metres wide and 1metre of depth, usually with an irregular section. These have been considered huts remains built on perishable materials. These structures were commonly filled with two different deposits, an organic and dark brownish layer, and another light and inorganic. From the organic deposits there has been recovered a high concentration of fungal sclerotia that have a symbiotic relationship with roots of trees or bushes. Finally, we would like to highlight that inside these openings are uncommon archaeological evidences, such as sherds or lithic artefacts. The morphology of the hollows and the lack of archaeological evidences related to these structures, together with the repeated absence of hearths inside them or in their immediate surroundings, lead us to question their anthropic origin. For that reason, new interpretations must be proposed. In fact, in terms of sedimentological events, there is a great similarity between these structures and natural features, such as wind-throw hollows (Dziegielewski 2007; Goldberg and Macphail 2006; Langohr 1993). The archaeobotanical assemblages recovered from these contexts, also can provide valuable information to interpret them as natural features and to understand the natural processes involved in their formation (Schiffer 1987). There have been developed sedimentological and archaeobotanical studies of samples recovered from hollows related to tree wind-throws. Their results have been compared to the supposed anthropogenic contexts. The distinction between natural and anthropic features in these open-air settlements is crucial to avoid any interpretative distortions of these contexts.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Design of kinematic connectors for microstructured materials produced by additive manufacturing

The main characteristic of materials with a functional gradient is the progressive composition or the structure variation across its geometry. This results in the properties variation in one or more specific directions, according to the functional application requirements. Cellular structure flexibility in tailoring properties is employed frequently to design functionally-graded materials. Topology optimisation methods are powerful tools to functionally graded materials design with cellular structure geometry, although continuity between adjacent unit-cells in gradient directions remains a restriction. It is mandatory to attain a manufacturable part to guarantee the connectedness between adjoining microstructures, namely by ensuring that the solid regions on the microstructure’s borders i.e., kinematic connectors) match the neighboring cells that share the same boundary. This study assesses the kinematic connectors generated by imposing local density restrictions in the initial design domain (i.e., nucleation) between topologically optimised representative unit-cells. Several kinematic connector examples are presented for two representatives unit-cells topology optimised for maximum bulk and shear moduli with different volume fractions restrictions and graduated Young’s modulus. Experimental mechanical tests (compression) were performed, and comparison studies were carried out between experimental and numerical Young’s modulus. The results for the single maximum bulk for the mean values for experimental compressive Young’s modulus (Ex¯) with 60%Vf show a deviation of 9.15%. The single maximum shear for the experimental compressive Young’s modulus mean values (Ex¯) with 60%Vf, exhibit a deviation of 11.73%. For graded structures, the experimental mean values of compressive Young’s moduli (Ex¯), compared with predicted total Young’s moduli (ESe), show a deviation of 6.96 for the bulk graded structure. The main results show that the single type representative unit-cell experimental Young’s modulus with higher volume fraction presents a minor deviation compared with homogenized data. Both (i.e., bulk and shear moduli) graded microstructures show continuity between adjacent cells. The proposed method proved to be suitable for generating kinematic connections for the design of shear and bulk graduated microstructured materials.This research was funded by the Portuguese Science Funding Foundation FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Grant No. SFRH/BD/130908/2017); PAMI—Portuguese Additive Manufacturing Initiative (Project nº22158—SAICT—AAC—01/SAICT/2016), CDRSP (UIDB/04044/2020), (UIDP/04044/2020); Add.Additive—add additive manufacturing to Portuguese industry (POCI-01- 0247-FEDER-024533)

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy as a complementary treatment in neuroblastoma — a narrative review

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

CFD parametric study of thermal performance of different fruit packaging box designs

Air temperature and relative humidity values of cold storage conditions are the major factor affecting the perishability of fresh fruits. The sooner the field heat is extracted from the products and the proper temperature is maintained consistency throughout the cold chain, larger it will be shelf life of these products. Forced air cooling is the most commonly used technique to remove the field heat in post-harvest storage. Energy-efficient and quality-oriented cold storage mainly depends on the time to remove the heat. This time can be reduced by optimizing the configuration of the vent holes of the packaging box, namely it dimension (area), it shape, alignment and position. This paper shows the numerical predictions of air temperature and velocity by a CFD parametric study of eight different vent hole configurations. These configurations consider a packaging box with double wall. The vent holes of each wall have different dimension and shape. The vent holes of both walls can be also aligned or unaligned. The analysis of results aims to determine the best configurations that improve the cooling rate, the airflow and temperature uniformity. The numerical predictions of the air temperature show close values, but three configurations can be identified as predicting the lowest air temperature values with lowest standard deviation. These results may help on the development of new configuration for fruit boxes that promote the extension of the fruits shelflife.(undefined

Proteolytic systems and AMP-activated protein kinase are critical targets of acute myeloid leukemia therapeutic approaches

The therapeutic strategies against acute myeloid leukemia (AML) have hardly been modified over four decades. Although resulting in a favorable outcome in young patients, older individuals, the most affected population, do not respond adequately to therapy. Intriguingly, the mechanisms responsible for AML cells chemoresistance/ susceptibility are still elusive. Mounting evidence has shed light on the relevance of proteolytic systems (autophagy and ubiquitin-proteasome system, UPS), as well as the AMPK pathway, in AML biology and treatment, but their exact role is still controversial. Herein, two AML cell lines (HL-60 and KG-1) were exposed to conventional chemotherapeutic agents (cytarabine and/or doxorubicin) to assess the relevance of autophagy and UPS on AML cells’ response to antileukemia drugs. Our results clearly showed that the antileukemia agents target both proteolytic systems and the AMPK pathway. Doxorubicin enhanced UPS activity while drugs’ combination blocked autophagy specifically on HL-60 cells. In contrast, KG-1 cells responded in a more subtle manner to the drugs tested consistent with the higher UPS activity of these cells. In addition, the data demonstrates that autophagy may play a protective role depending on AML subtype. Specific modulators of autophagy and UPS are, therefore, promising targets for combining with standard therapeutic interventions in some AML subtypes.We would like to acknowledge Dr. Agostinho Carvalho and Dr. Manuel Guerreiro (Hospital da Arrabida, Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal) for the critical review and discussion of the manuscript and for the work support. This work was supported by FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (PTDC/BIA-MIC/114116/2009). A.F., O.P. and B.S.M. have fellowships from FCT (SFRH/BD/51991/2012, SFRH/BD/52292/2013, and SFRH/BPD/90533/2012, respectively). M.M.A. was supported by CCDR-N (QREN) in the scope of the project "Integration of cutting-edge health science research and ground-breaking technologies for the development of new clinically useful therapies, tissue regeneration strategies, advanced prophylactic measures and diagnosis methods - (N-01-01-01-24-01-07) - RL5" (UMINHO/BI/245/2013)