Establishment of a integrative multi-omics expression database CKDdb in the context of chronic kidney disease (CKD)

Complex human traits such as chronic kidney disease (CKD) are a major health and financial burden in modern societies. Currently, the description of the CKD onset and progression at the molecular level is still not fully understood. Meanwhile, the prolific use of high-throughput omic technologies in disease biomarker discovery studies yielded a vast amount of disjointed data that cannot be easily collated. Therefore, we aimed to develop a molecule-centric database featuring CKD-related experiments from available literature publications. We established the Chronic Kidney Disease database CKDdb, an integrated and clustered information resource that covers multi-omic studies (microRNAs, genomics, peptidomics, proteomics and metabolomics) of CKD and related disorders by performing literature data mining and manual curation. The CKDdb database contains differential expression data from 49395 molecule entries (redundant), of which 16885 are unique molecules (non-redundant) from 377 manually curated studies of 230 publications. This database was intentionally built to allow disease pathway analysis through a systems approach in order to yield biological meaning by integrating all existing information and therefore has the potential to unravel and gain an in-depth understanding of the key molecular events that modulate CKD pathogenesis

Are Price Limits on Futures Markets That Cool? Evidence from the Brazilian Mercantile and Futures Exchange

This paper investigates the impact of price limits on the Brazilian futures markets using high frequency data. The aim is to identify whether there is a cool-off or a magnet effect. For that purpose, we examine a tick-by-tick data set that includes all contracts on the S�o Paulo stock index futures traded on the Brazilian Mercantile and Futures Exchange from January 1997 to December 1999. The results indicate that the conditional mean features a floor cool-off effect, whereas the conditional variance significantly increases as the price approaches the upper limit. We then build a trading strategy that accounts for the cool-off effect in the conditional mean so as to demonstrate that the latter has not only statistical, but also economic significance. The in-sample Sharpe ratio indeed is way superior to the buy-and-hold benchmarks we consider, whereas out-of-sample results evince similar performances.Cool-off effect, Futures markets, Magnet effect, Price limits, Transactions data

Caracterização do comportamento à fadiga da conexão aço-betão em elementos mistos

No presente trabalho, procura-se avaliar o comportamento de conectores de tipo perno inseridos em lajes maciças de betão leve de elevada resistência e sujeitos a carregamentos cícli-cos. O estudo realizado é de carácter experimental e tem como objectivo geral avaliar e caracterizar o comportamento à fadiga da conexão entre aço e betão leve em elementos mistos. No desenvolvimento deste estudo fabricaram-se 2 provetes de tipo push-out (definido a partir da NP EN 1994-1 [1]) que foram ensaiados sob carregamento monotónico com controlo de deformação e 12 provetes de tipo push-out, que foram ensaiados sob ciclos de carga e descarga de várias amplitudes

DomeView : a tool for digital planetariums

The content produced for fulldome projection is usually made in a frame (the master) with a format corresponding to a projection of the dome on a plane, commonly the fisheye projection. Due to the distortions involved, looking at the master does not give a clear idea of the final result once projectedon a planetarium dome. The common solution when creating and composing content is to go through an iterative process, making successive projections on a planetarium until the desired result is achieved. However, repeatedaccess to a planetarium is difficult, costly, and time consuming. So there is a need for an application that can provide theuser with a clear notion of the final result in the planetarium. In addition, if the application could be used to show content in a small (single projector) planetarium, like a portable one, its versatility would increase substantially. This paper reports on such an application: Domeview

Decision support in Big Data contexts: a business intelligence solution

In the last few years we all have witnessed an enormous growth in the production of data. According to some estimates, ninety percent of the existing world’s data was created over the past two years! Indeed, we are in the era of Big Data which is characterized by the continuous creation of vast amounts of data, originated from different sources, and with different formats. First, with the rise of smart devices, mobile applications, cloud computing, and social networks and, more recently, with the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), data with enormous potential for organizations is being continuously generated. In order to be more competitive, organizations want to access and explore all the richness that is present in those data, which is the main purpose of Business Intelligence. In this paper we continue the presentation of an experiment in which data obtained from a NoSQL database (database technology explicitly developed to deal with the specificities of Big Data) is used to feed a Business Intelligence solution.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Groupoid symmetry and constraints in general relativity

When the vacuum Einstein equations are cast in the form of hamiltonian evolution equations, the initial data lie in the cotangent bundle of the manifold M\Sigma\ of riemannian metrics on a Cauchy hypersurface \Sigma. As in every lagrangian field theory with symmetries, the initial data must satisfy constraints. But, unlike those of gauge theories, the constraints of general relativity do not arise as momenta of any hamiltonian group action. In this paper, we show that the bracket relations among the constraints of general relativity are identical to the bracket relations in the Lie algebroid of a groupoid consisting of diffeomorphisms between space-like hypersurfaces in spacetimes. A direct connection is still missing between the constraints themselves, whose definition is closely related to the Einstein equations, and our groupoid, in which the Einstein equations play no role at all. We discuss some of the difficulties involved in making such a connection.Comment: 22 pages, major revisio

Extrato de alho melhora a superação da dormência de videiras ‘Niagara Rosada’em regiões subtropicais.

Nas regiões com invernos amenos, normalmente as exigências de frio para a quebra de dormência de gemas de videiras não são atendidas, e apenas os produtos altamente tóxicos CaCN2 e H2CN2 são recomendados na viticultura convencional para quebra de dormência. A proposta deste estudo foi verificar o efeito do extrato de alho na quebra de dormência de videiras ‘Niagara Rosada’, em dois diferentes vinhedos. A dose mais elevada de extrato de alho (70mL L-1)demonstrou ter um grande potencial para a quebra de dormência na produção orgânica, apresentando efeitos similares aos das cianamidas, na quebra de dormência. Este tratamento aumentou a porcentagem de brotação e o número de cachos, antecipou o começo da brotação e reduziu o ciclo entre poda e colheita

PeptiCKDdb-peptide- and protein-centric database for the investigation of genesis and progression of chronic kidney disease

The peptiCKDdb is a publicly available database platform dedicated to support research in the field of chronic kidney disease (CKD) through identification of novel biomarkers and molecular features of this complex pathology. PeptiCKDdb collects peptidomics and proteomics datasets manually extracted from published studies related to CKD. Datasets from peptidomics or proteomics, human case/control studies on CKD and kidney or urine profiling were included. Data from 114 publications (studies of body fluids and kidney tissue: 26 peptidomics and 76 proteomics manuscripts on human CKD, and 12 focusing on healthy proteome profiling) are currently deposited and the content is quarterly updated. Extracted datasets include information about the experimental setup, clinical study design, discovery-validation sample sizes and list of differentially expressed proteins (P-value < 0.05). A dedicated interactive web interface, equipped with multiparametric search engine, data export and visualization tools, enables easy browsing of the data and comprehensive analysis. In conclusion, this repository might serve as a source of data for integrative analysis or a knowledgebase for scientists seeking confirmation of their findings and as such, is expected to facilitate the modeling of molecular mechanisms underlying CKD and identification of biologically relevant biomarkers.Database URL: www.peptickddb.com