Expert Consideration on Regulatory Aspects for Perinatal Derivatives in Clinical Settings.

Perinatal derivatives (PnD) are drawing growing interest among the scientific community as an unrestricted source of multipotent stem cells, secretome, and biological matrices. They are useful for the treatment of diseases that currently have limited or no effective therapeutic options, but they require the development of regenerative approaches. With this development, the question of regulation of donation, processing, and distribution has therefore become more important. Within the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) community, we compiled a group of international experts on PnD technologies, who revised and compared existing EU national regulations. Notably, despite clear European directives, each EU Country has developed their own implementation and standard levels for cell- and tissue-based therapies. To enable extended applications of PnD treatments within the EU community and worldwide, harmonization is highly recommended. This paper aims to provide an overview of the various options available to introduce PnD into clinical practice. For this purpose, the different aspects resulting from (1) the type of PnD, (2) the amount of available data, (3) the degree of manipulation, and (4) the intended application and the process toward a possible commercialization will be presented. In the future, it will be important to find a balance between regulatory requirements and the best medical quality of the PnD product

Melancholy, nostalgia and saudade: on Portuguese national identity

Artykuł unaocznia kluczowe znaczenie historii w procesie kształtowania tożsamości narodowej Portugalczyków. Artykuł analizuje m.in. portugalską tożsamość imperialną, mit sebastianizmu oraz fenomen saudade, a także podobieństwa i różnice w postrzeganiu historii w Portugalii i w Polsce.The article demonstrates the significance of history in the process of creating Portuguese national identity. It analyzes e.g. Portuguese imperial identity, the myth of King Sebastian (Sebastianism), the specificity of saudade, as well as similarities and differences in historical perception in Portugal and Poland

Bootstrapping the empirical bounds on the variability of sample entropy in 24-hours ECG recordings for 1 hour segments

We investigate the variability of one of the most often used complexity measures in the analysis of the time series of RR intervals, i.e. Sample Entropy. The analysis is carried out for a dense matrix of possible r thresholds in 79 24h recordings, for segments consisting of 5000 consecutive beats, randomly selected from the whole recording. It is repeated for the same recordings in random order. This study is made possible by the novel NCM algorithm which is many orders of magnitude faster than the alternative approaches. We find that the bootstrapped standard errors for Sample entropy are large for RR intervals in physiological order compared to the standard errors for shuffled data which correspond to the maximum available entropy. This result indicates that Sample Entropy varies widely over the circadian period. This paper is purely methodological and no physiological interpretations are attempted

Lab-on-Chip Culturing System for Fungi—Towards Nanosatellite Missions

In this paper, a lab-on-chip system dedicated to fungi cultivation in Earth’s gravity and simulated microgravity, being a solution that could be used in future nanosatellite missions, is shown. For the first time, a fully glass lab-on-chip structure enabling the proper environment for cultivation of fungi species—Fusarium culmorum—is presented. Apart from the biological validation of the fungi cultures with the use of the lab-on-chip system, tests were carried out under induced microgravity utilising a Rotary Wall Vessel. Correct functioning of the lab-on-chip system was obtained, enabling the growth of fungi spores both in ground and in simulated microgravity conditions. Interestingly, culturing tests have shown that microgravity stimulates the growth of fungi notably, compared to the ground-based experimentation performed simultaneously. The findings of this study can provide substantial new knowledge on microscopic fungi cultivation in lab-on-chip devices, other soil organisms, as well as a potential behavior of these species in microgravity conditions. Culturing system shown in this work can help mycologists to provide better understanding of microscopic fungi nature and their development mechanisms at a single spore level. This opens the way towards regular usage of microfluidic tools in agriculture and horticulture fields and more importantly, in future research on microscopic fungi in space, e.g., as a part of nanosatellite missions

Lab-on-Chip Culturing System for Fungi—Towards Nanosatellite Missions

In this paper, a lab-on-chip system dedicated to fungi cultivation in Earth’s gravity and simulated microgravity, being a solution that could be used in future nanosatellite missions, is shown. For the first time, a fully glass lab-on-chip structure enabling the proper environment for cultivation of fungi species—Fusarium culmorum—is presented. Apart from the biological validation of the fungi cultures with the use of the lab-on-chip system, tests were carried out under induced microgravity utilising a Rotary Wall Vessel. Correct functioning of the lab-on-chip system was obtained, enabling the growth of fungi spores both in ground and in simulated microgravity conditions. Interestingly, culturing tests have shown that microgravity stimulates the growth of fungi notably, compared to the ground-based experimentation performed simultaneously. The findings of this study can provide substantial new knowledge on microscopic fungi cultivation in lab-on-chip devices, other soil organisms, as well as a potential behavior of these species in microgravity conditions. Culturing system shown in this work can help mycologists to provide better understanding of microscopic fungi nature and their development mechanisms at a single spore level. This opens the way towards regular usage of microfluidic tools in agriculture and horticulture fields and more importantly, in future research on microscopic fungi in space, e.g., as a part of nanosatellite missions