Selecting and Customizing a Mereology Ontology for its Reuse in a Pharmaceutical Product Ontology

This paper presents our experience in reusing mereology ontologies in a Pharmaceutical Product ontology, an ontology built by the EU NeOn project. It shows a set of mereology ontologies implemented in different machine interpretable languages and analyzes them according to the different types of mereology identified by Varzi. Then, it describes the specifications of mereology modeling necessities for Pharmaceutical Product. Finally, it presents the ontology which fits best with the specifications. One of the results of this work is a procedure to reuse general (also called common) ontologies

Methodological guidelines for reusing general ontologies

Currently, there is a great deal of well-founded explicit knowledge formalizing general notions, such as time concepts and the part_of relation. Yet, it is often the case that instead of reusing ontologies that implement such notions (the so-called general ontologies), engineers create procedural programs that implicitly implement this knowledge. They do not save time and code by reusing explicit knowledge, and devote effort to solve problems that other people have already adequately solved. Consequently, we have developed a methodology that helps engineers to: (a) identify the type of general ontology to be reused; (b) find out which axioms and definitions should be reused; (c) make a decision, using formal concept analysis, on what general ontology is going to be reused; and (d) adapt and integrate the selected general ontology in the domain ontology to be developed. To illustrate our approach we have employed use-cases. For each use case, we provide a set of heuristics with examples. Each of these heuristics has been tested in either OWL or Prolog. Our methodology has been applied to develop a pharmaceutical product ontology. Additionally, we have carried out a controlled experiment with graduated students doing a MCs in Artificial Intelligence. This experiment has yielded some interesting findings concerning what kind of features the future extensions of the methodology should have

Endothelial Aging Associated with Oxidative Stress Can Be Modulated by a Healthy Mediterranean Diet

Aging is a condition which favors the development of atherosclerosis, which has been associated with a breakdown in repair processes that occurs in response to cell damage. The dysregulation of the biological systems associated with aging are produced partly through damage which accumulates over time. One major source of this injury is oxidative stress, which can impair biological structures and the mechanisms by which they are repaired. These mechanisms are based on the pathogenesis of endothelial dysfunction, which in turn is associated with cardiovascular disease, carcinogenesis and aging. The dependent dysfunction of aging has been correlated with a reduction in the number and/or functional activity of endothelial progenitor cells, which could hinder the repair and regeneration of the endothelium. In addition, aging, inflammation and oxidative stress are endogenous factors that cause telomere shortening, which is dependent on oxidative cell damage. Moreover, telomere length correlates with lifestyle and the consumption of a healthy diet. Thus, diseases associated with aging and age may be caused by the long-term effects of oxidative damage, which are modified by genetic and environmental factors. Considering that diet is a very important source of antioxidants, in this review we will analyze the relationship between oxidative stress, aging, and the mechanisms which may be involved in a higher survival rate and a lower incidence of the diseases associated with aging in populations which follow a healthy diet

Bioconservación de alimentos cárnicos

Las bacteriocinas, así como las cepas bacterianas que las producen, han sido ampliamente estudiadas para la conservación de los alimentos por métodos naturales (bioconservación). En productos cárnicos (abarcando toda la gama, desde la materia prima hasta productos elaborados) se han desarrollado numerosos estudios empleando bacteriocinas como nisina, pediocinas y otras, bien solas o aplicadas con otros antimicrobianos (como ácidos orgánicos o agentes quelantes) o tratamientos (como el calor, las altas presiones o la luz pulsada) para la inactivación de bacterias patógenas o alterantes. Los resultados de muchos de estos tratamientos son bastante prometedores, como por ejemplo el empleo de bacteriocinas como recubrimientos protectores en salchichas. Las cepas de bacterias lácticas seleccionadas por su capacidad productora de bacteriocinas ofrecen buenas perspectivas como cultivos protectores, pero sobre todo como cultivos iniciadores en la elaboración de productos cárnicos fermentados, mejorando la seguridad microbiológica de los mismos. El empleo de cultivos iniciadores bacteriocinogénicos con propiedades funcionales definidas abre nuevas vías para la innovación y el desarrollo de nuevos productos cárnicos fermentados.Bacteriocins as well as their producer strains have been widely investigated for application in natural food preservation processes (biopreservation). Numerous studies have been carried out on application of bacteriocins such as nisin, pediocin and others in different types of meat products, either singly or in combination with other antimicrobials (such as organic acids or chelating agents) or treatments (such as heat, pulsed light or high hydrostatic pressure). Many of the results reported are highly promising, like for example the application of bacteriocins in edible coatings for sausages. Bacteriocin-producing lactic acid bacteria are also interesting, in view of their possible applications as protective cultures or as starter cultures in fermented meat products, increasing the product safety. Bacteriocin-producing starter cultures with additional functional properties open new possibilities for innovation and development of new fermented meat products

Surface phosphorylation of chitosan significantly improves osteoblast cell viability, attachment and proliferation

Chitosan biocompatibility is often associated with the structural similarities with glycosaminoglycans (GAGs). Although all of the GAGs are built from repeating disaccharide units and some of them contain N-glucosamine (the main hexosamine in the chitosan backbone), all of them also contain negatively charged functional groups. These charged units are believed to have a crucial role for the formation of proteoglycans and hence for key biochemical processes/signaling related to cell functionality and survival. Lack of these groups in chitosan structure could be the reason for the previously observed poor cell adhesion to this material. Herein, we report that plasma induced grafting of negatively charged phosphonic groups can induce remarkably distinguishable cell response and significantly improve the adhesion, proliferation and viability of osteoblast cells. The proposed plasma induced polymerization is a very simple and versatile method and can be easily adapted to other materials and different negatively charged units.The authors acknowledge funding from EU Marie Curie Actions, Alea Jacta Est (MEST-CT-2004-008104) and Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT)(SFRH/BPD/34545/2007). This work was carried out under the scope of the European NoE EXPERTISSUES (NMP3-CT-2004-500283)

El gasto regional por funciones: Análisis y clasificación de las ccaa

El objetivo de la financiación autonómica es dotar a las regiones de los recursos para financiar las competencias transferidas, sin embargo, nos parecía que una cuestión que había sido poco tratada por la literatura era el comportamiento del gasto autonómico por funciones, por esta razón el objetivo principal de este trabajo es el análisis de los gastos de las CCA según dicha clasificación, durante el período comprendido entre los años 1989 y 2002. El estudio se estructura en dos partes diferenciadas, aunque complementarias: por una parte se calcula un índice de disimilitud, en concreto el que emplean Sanz y Velázquez (2002) para, en una segunda parte, realizar una clasificación de las CCA de régimen común según la estructura funcional del gasto. El estudio nos permite extraer conclusiones sobre las siguientes cuestiones: qué gastos explican las similitudes entre CCAA , qué regiones se asemejan en cuanto a la composición del gasto, y si en el periodo analizado se ha producido una convergencia de las regiones por tipos de gasto o si, por el contrario, las diferencias han ido aumentando

Organizational culture and performance in Spanish-Moroccan strategic alliances

This study was funded by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for Development through the "Interuniversity Cooperation and Scientific Research" for the years 2007 and 2008 for the project A/021477/98 "Survey of Business Relationships between Spain and Morocco: the case of strategic alliances.”Strategic alliances have been used by companies to expand its business to emerging economies, specifically to countries with Arabic culture. Organizational culture is an issue that affects the management of the alliance and their performance, particularly affects the member satisfaction. These issues have been widely discussed in the doctrine in large companies, but not in SMEs and even less in the field of business relations between developed and emerging countries. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to characterize the organizational culture that rules on Spanish-Moroccan SME’s strategic alliances and analyze the impact that the choice of a particular organizational culture has on the whole partner’s satisfaction. The results indicated that the greater involvement of staff and the more centralized decision making, the more satisfied the partners are in these strategic alliances

The educational e-portfolio: preliminary evidence of its relationship with student\u2019s self-efficacy and engagement

The educational use of portfolios has been increasing in the last few years, especially as technology has also developed electronic versions of portfolios. Although there is abundant information about their benefits and practice description, few studies provide empirical evidence of their implementation. The objective of this study was to provide initial evidence about the use of the portfolio in higher education. Concretely, we aimed 1) to explore the correlation between students’ performance on the portfolio and their performance on more traditional assessment methods 2) to explore whether student’s personal variables predict performance in key elements of the e-portfolio, such as individual reflections, and if these contribute to general academic performance in the course, and 3) to evaluate whether the use of the e-portfolio during a semester changes the students’ self-efficacy and engagement. For this purpose, an initial sample of 73 students were recruited, and an e-portfolio (based on Mahara) was implemented over a semester. The results showed that performance on the portfolio correlated with the score obtained on multiple choice tests. There was an increase in self-efficacy after one semester of e-portfolio implementation, and engagement proved to be an important predictor of the final course grade through the mediation of individual reflections. These results offer preliminary and promising evidence about the relationship of a specific element of e-portfolios, individual reflections with several variables related to academic achievement such as self-efficacy and engagement

A MAUT approach for reusing ontologies

Knowledge resource reuse has become a popular approach within the ontology engineering field, mainly because it can speed up the ontology development process, saving time and money and promoting the application of good practices. The NeOn Methodology provides guidelines for reuse. These guidelines include the selection of the most appropriate knowledge resources for reuse in ontology development. This is a complex decision-making problem where different conflicting objectives, like the reuse cost, understandability, integration workload and reliability, have to be taken into account simultaneously. GMAA is a PC-based decision support system based on an additive multi-attribute utility model that is intended to allay the operational difficulties involved in the Decision Analysis methodology. The paper illustrates how it can be applied to select multimedia ontologies for reuse to develop a new ontology in the multimedia domain. It also demonstrates that the sensitivity analyses provided by GMAA are useful tools for making a final recommendation