Medições de longo termo, in situ à superfície, de propriedades ópticas dos aerossóis em Évora, Portuga

Ponencia presentada en: XXXI Jornadas Científicas de la AME y el XI Encuentro Hispano Luso de Meteorología celebrado en Sevilla, del 1 al 3 de marzo de 2010.This work was supported by the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia under grant (SFRH/BD/29008/2006)

Designing an ontology tool for the unification of biofilms data

Publicado em "8th International Conference on Practical Applications of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics (PACBB 2014)"The description of biofilm features presents a conceptual and practical challenge. Biofilm studies often encompass multidisciplinary approaches from Biology, Chemistry, Medicine, Material Science and Engineering, among other fields. Standardising biofilm data is essential to be able to accomplish large-scale collaborative and complementary analysis. To define a common standard format to exchange the heterogeneous biofilm data, it is first necessary to define a set of minimum information for the documentation of biofilm experiments. Then, data should be organised and semantically integrated. This paper describes the first ontology designed to share structured vocabulary for the annotation of the general biofilm experimental workflow – the Biofilm Ontology (BO). This ontology is intended for the broad research community, including bench microbiologists, clinical researchers, clinicians, curators and bioinformaticians

A serologia para avaliação do papel dos predadores em olival biológico

A oliveira, sendo uma planta mediterrânica, encontra-se bem adaptada em Portugal. Apesar de ser uma cultura com poucos problemas fitossanitários, por vezes e sujeita à acção de algumas pragas e doenças. De entre as pragas de artrópodos destacam-se a traça da oliveira, Prays oleae (Bern.), a mosca da azeitona, Bactrocera oleae (GmeL) e a cochonilha negra, Saissetia oleae (Oliv.). No entanto, as populações destes inimigos podem ser mantidas abaixo do nível económico de ataque por factores abióticos e/ou por outros artrópodos, espécies predadoras e parasitóides, que contribuem para a estabilidade da biocenose no olival A valorização destes auxiliaras é, assim, um factor preponderante na protecção contra pragas da oliveira, nomeadamente em modo de produção biológico

Produção de antissoros policlonais para detecção de predadores das principais pragas da oliveira

A oliveira está bem adaptada às áreas mediterrâneas mas por vezes é sujeita à acção de inimigos, nomeadamente a traça da oliveira, Prays oleae (Bern.), a mosca da azeitona, Bactrocera oleae (Gmel.) e a cochonilha negra, Saissetia oleae (Oliv.). No entanto, as populações destes inimigos podem ser mantidas abaixo do nível económico de ataque por factores abióticos e bióticos. Entre estes incluem-se espécies predadoras e parasitóides que contribuem para a estabilidade da biocenose. A valorização dos auxiliares artrópodos é, assim, factor preponderante na protecção contra pragas da oliveira, nomeadamente em modo de produção biológico. A utilização de técnicas serológicas, particularmente ELISA (enzyme linked immunosorbent assay), para avaliação da predação em artrópodos, já é bastante utilizada. Para futuramente se avaliar o papel dos predadores em olivais conduzidos de acordo com o modo de produção biológico, em Trás-os-Montes e no Alentejo, produziram-se antissoros policlonais para monitorizar as três pragas nos seus principais predadores. Este trabalho refere a preparação dos antigénios, o protocolo de imunização dos coelhos, a colheita dos antissoros e sua caracterização preliminar por ELISA

Computational approaches to standard-compliant biofilm data for reliable analysis and integration

The study of microorganism consortia, also known as biofilms, is associated to a number of applications in biotechnology, ecotechnology and clinical domains. Nowadays, biofilm studies are heterogeneous and data-intensive, encompassing different levels of analysis. Computational modelling of biofilm studies has become thus a requirement to make sense of these vast and ever-expanding biofilm data volumes. The rationale of the present work is a machine-readable format for representing biofilm studies and supporting biofilm data interchange and data integration. This format is supported by the Biofilm Science Ontology (BSO), the first ontology on biofilms information. The ontology is decomposed into a number of areas of interest, namely: the Experimental Procedure Ontology (EPO) which describes biofilm experimental procedures; the Colony Morphology Ontology (CMO) which characterises morphologically microorganism colonies; and other modules concerning biofilm phenotype, antimicrobial susceptibility and virulence traits. The overall objective behind BSO is to develop semantic resources to capture, represent and share data on biofilms and related experiments in a regularized fashion manner. Furthermore, the present work also introduces a framework in assistance of biofilm data interchange and analysis – BiofOmics (http://biofomics.org) – and a public repository on colony morphology signatures – MorphoCol (http://stardust.deb.uminho.pt/morphocol).The authors thank, among others, Rosario Oliveira, Maria Joao Vieira, Idalina Machado, Nuno Cerca, Mariana Henriques, Pilar Teixeira, Douglas Monteiro, Melissa Negri, Susana Lopes, Carina Almeida, Alexandrina Rodrigues, Tom Coenye, Paul Stoodley and Helder Lopes, for submitting their data and participating in the aforementioned standardisation initiatives. The financial support from the Institute of Biotechnology and Bioengineering Center of Biological Engineering (IBB-CEB), the Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT) and European Community fund FEDER (Program COMPETE), projects PTDC/SAU-ESA/646091/2006/ and FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-007480, and the PhD grant of Ana Margarida Sousa (SFRH/BD/31065/2006) are also gratefully acknowledged

Callus Induction in Baru (Dipteryx alata Vog.) Explants

Baru (Dipteryx alata Vog.) is a species with great economic and environmental potential; it has popular acceptance, besides being a very productive species. Alternative propagation methods are important for species maintenance and exploration. Thus, micropropagation emerged as an alternative technique, providing genetic stability and the production of a large number of seedlings. The aim of the present investigation was to develop a callus induction protocol for in vitro baru explants. The tested explants were nodal, internodal and foliar segments. The explants were disinfected for 30 seconds in 70% alcohol (v/v) and 2 minutes in sodium hypochlorite (1.25% active chlorine). This was followed by triple washing. The inoculation was carried out in test tubes containing 15 mL MS medium (30 g L-1 sucrose, 6 g L-1 agar and 100 mg L-1 ascorbic acid) supplemented with 2.0 mg L-1 naphthalene acetic acid (NAA). The solution also contained 0.0, 2.5 or 5.0 mg L-1 of 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP) with the pH adjusted to 5.8. In the incubation phase, the explants were cultured for seven days in the dark and then subjected to a photoperiod of 16 hours (43 µmol m-2 s-1) at 25 ± 2 °C. The treatments were studied with 2.5, 5.0, 7.5 or 10.0 mg L-1 BAP additions to the MS. Callus formation, contamination and oxidation evaluations were undertaken. The results obtained when using 2.0 mg L-1 NAA concluded that such a treatment should be used to induce callogenesis from nodal explants, while for the tested baru leaf explants, the best results for callus formation were given by the combination of 2.0 mg L-1 NAA with 2.5 mg L-1 of BAP to

Evaluation of fucoxanthin contents in seaweed biomass by vortex-assisted solid-liquid microextraction using high-performance liquid chromatography with photodiode array detection

Fucoxanthin is considered an important marine bioactive compound with biological properties with promising effects, namely on health. A simple and efficient analytical methodology is proposed for its quantification in seaweed biomass by using vortex-assisted solid-liquid microextraction (VASLME) followed by reversed phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) photodiode array detection (PDA) analysis. This microextraction uses reduced quantities of sample (25 mg) and solvent (300 μL of ethanol) to efficiently extract this high-valued xanthophyll, in a vortex time of 15 min. These extraction parameters were optimized performing a Central Composite Design (CCD) analysis, running 32 individual experiments. In turn, the method validation was assessed. The linearity of the method was confirmed (R2 = 0.99998) in a concentration range from 12 to 3600 μg·g−1 dw. Also, good sensitivity and accuracy results were observed through the LOD (3.33 μg·g−1 ), LOQ (10.09 μg·g−1 ) and recovery (varied from 95 to 97%) assessments. Good precision was also verified, with intra-day variation within 2.0–3.3%, and inter-day within 1.0–3.8%. Matrix effect was also evaluated and an acceptable variation of 3.4% was found. The method applicability was confirmed by the analysis of 22 seaweed biomass samples and fucoxanthin content was found to vary from about 10 to 853 μg·g−1 dw. This method demonstrated a good performance and can be successfully implemented for a rapid, reliable and accurate screening of fucoxanthin in seaweed biomass.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Fast building – increasing the geometrical freedom of textile reinforced concrete systems

Apresentação efetuada na 9th International Conference Mechanics and Materials in Design - Theory, Experiments and Applications in Engineering (M2D2021), no Funchal, Portugal, 2022[Excerpt] Introduction Textile technology is highly innovative, and several techniques are already being used to act as building parts for fast building, interior design, architectural details and offshore structures. However, such potential still fails when complex geometrical structures or multifunctionality are required.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia - grant SFRH/BD/144201/2019European Regional Development Fund (FEDER), Operational Program for Competitiveness Factors (COMPETE) POCI-01-0247-312 FEDER-03973

Investigation of potential respiratory adverse effects of micro/nanofibrillated cellulose and cellulose nanocrystals using human lung cell lines.

Abstract publicado em: Environ Mol Mutagen. 2022 Aug;63(Suppl 1):72-73. (Abstracts from the 13th International Conference on Environmental Mutagens and 53rd Annual Meeting of the Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Society). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/10982280/2022/63/S1Micro/nanofibrillated (CMF/CNF) and nanocrystalline (CNC) celluloses are innovative materials with enormous potential for industrial and biomedical applications. Their expanding production/application urges the investigation of their safety for human health. This study aimed at investigating the potential respiratory outcomes of two CMF/CNF and one CNC produced from bleached Eucalyptus globulus kraft pulp using human alveolar epithelial (A549) cells grown in monoculture or co-cultured with THP-1 monocyte-derived macrophages, by assessing their cellular uptake, cytotoxic, immunotoxic, genotoxic, and epigenetic effects. The nanocelluloses were characterized for their physicochemical properties: CMF displays a low percentage of nanofibrils while CNF comprises 100% fibrils with a diameter (D) circa 11 nm; CNC consists of nanorods with D of 4-5 nm and aspect ratio around 42. TEM analysis evidenced that CMF and CNF were internalised into A549 cells whereas CNC were not. Neither cytotoxicity (colorimetric and clonogenic assays) nor ROS induction was observed for any of the nanocelluloses. CMF caused chromosomal alterations (in vitro micronucleus assay) in A549 cells while negative results were obtained in co-culture and for the other micro/nanocelluloses in mono- or co-culture. Results in progress of DNA damage and gene mutation analyses will complement mutagenesis assessment. Additionally, potential inflammatory and epigenetic effects are being evaluated. These results contribute to the weight of evidence of nanocelluloses biological effects and knowledge of the underlying molecular mechanisms. Such information will drive the synthesis of the safest nanocelluloses,thus minimising potential negative impacts of their use on human and environmental health.FCT/MCTES through nacional funds (PTDC/SAU-PUB/32587/2017; UIDP/00009/2020; UIDB/00009/2020; 020.07168.BD)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Active neutralizing mats for corrosive chemical storage

Laboratories and industries that handle chemicals are ubiquitously prone to leakages. These may occur in storage rooms, cabinets or even in temporary locations, such as workbenches and shelves. A relevant number of these chemicals are corrosive, thus commercial products already exist to prevent material damage and injuries. One strategy consists of the use of absorbing mats, where few display neutralizing properties, and even less a controlled neutralization. Nevertheless, to the authors’ knowledge, the commercially available neutralizing mats are solely dedicated to neutralizing acid or alkali solutions, never both. Therefore, this work describes the development and proof of a completely novel concept, where a dual component active mat (DCAM) is able to perform a controlled simultaneous neutralization of acid and alkali leakages by using microencapsulated active components. Moreover, its active components comprise food-grade ingredients, embedded in nonwoven polypropylene. The acid neutralizing mats contain sodium carbonate (Na2CO3 ) encapsulated in sodium alginate microcapsules (MC-ASC). Alkali neutralizing mats possess commercial encapsulated citric acid in hydrogenated palm oil (MIRCAP CT 85-H). A DCAM encompasses both MC-ASC and MIRCAP CT 85-H and was able to neutralize solutions up to 10% (v/v) of hydrochloric acid (HCl) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH). The efficacy of the neutralization was assessed by direct titration and using pH strip measurement tests to simulate the leakages. Due to the complexity of neutralization efficacy evaluation based solely on pH value, a thorough conductivity study was performed. DCAM reduced the conductivity of HCl and NaOH (1% and 2% (v/v)) in over 70%. The composites were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), differential calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The size of MC-ASC microcapsules ranged from 2 µm to 8 µm. Finally, all mat components displayed thermal stability above 150 ◦C