Combining adult stem cells and olfactory ensheating cells : the secretome effect

Adipose-derived adult stem cells (ASCs), bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (bmMSCs), and human umbilical cord perivascular cells (HUCPVCs) tissue have been widely tested for regenerative applications, such as bone regeneration. Moreover, olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) show promise in promoting spinal cord injury (SCI) regeneration. Our group recently proposed the use of a hybrid scaffold targeting both vertebral bone repair and SCI regeneration. According to this concept, both MSCs and OECs should be in close contact to be influenced by the factors that are involved in secretion. For this reason, here we studied the effects of the OEC secretome on the metabolic activity and proliferation of ASCs, bmMSCs, and HUCPVCs. The stem cells' secretome effects on metabolic activity and proliferation of the OECs were also considered. In co-cultures of OECs with ASCs, bmMSCs, or HUCPVCs, the metabolic activity/viability, proliferation, and total cell numbers were measured after 2 and 7 days of culture. The results demonstrated that the secretome of OECs has a positive effect on the metabolic activity and proliferation of MSCs from different origins, especially on ASCs. Furthermore, in general, the stem cells' secretome also had a positive effect on the OECs behavior, particularly when ASCs were in co-culture with OECs. These results suggest that the most suitable combination of cells to be used in our hybrid scaffold is the OECs with the ASCs. Finally, this work adds new knowledge to the cell therapy field, bringing new information about paracrine interactions between OECs and distinct mesenchymal stems

Wiinteraction: a study on smart spaces interaction using the Wiimote

This paper describes a study on the use of the Wiimote as a generic interaction device for smart spaces. We have identified the range of interaction possibilities that can be explored when creating Wii-based interfaces for smart spaces and we have explored the application of those interactive features in the context of a typical museum guide. While there are many features that can be explored creatively to sustain the use of the Wiimote as a generic interaction device, we also found that there is at least one critical requirement that is not supported. More specifically, we have identified the need to include access to rich information, such as the one provided by digital displays. We thus propose a shared control mechanism for public displays that enables a user equipped with a Wiimote to first gain control and then browse information in a public display. The results of our study show no major limitation in the proposed approach, but identify device discovery as one major technical flaw that still needs to be overcome before the wiimotemay realistically become a generic interaction alternative for smart spaces

Failure of Y-27632 to improve the culture of adult human adipose-derived stem cells

Y-27632 is a well-known inhibitor of the Rho-associated coiled kinase (ROCK) and has been shown to significantly improve the culture of a variety of multipotent stem cell types. However, the effects of Y-27632 on the expansion of adult human adipose-derived stem cell (hADSC) cultures remain to be established. Here, we aimed to characterize the effects of Y-27632 on the culture of hADSCs. Adult hADSCs were isolated from subjects submitted to elective plastic surgery procedures and cultivated in vitro under optimized conditions. Our results show that the continuous supplementation of hADSC cultures with Y-27632 led to decreased numbers of cells and decreased global metabolic viability of hADSC cultures when compared with control conditions. This effect appeared to be dependent on the continuous presence of the drug and was shown to be concentration-dependent and significant for 10 muM and 20 muM of Y-27632. Moreover, the Y-27632-induced decrease in hADSC numbers was not linked to a block in global cell proliferation, as cell numbers consistently increased from the moment of plating until passaging. In addition, Y-27632 was not able to increase the number of hADSCs present in culture 24 hours after passaging. Taken together, our results suggest that, in contrast to other stem cell types, Y-27632 supplementation is not a suitable strategy to enhance hADSC culture expansion.We thank Jeffrey M Gimble (Center for Stem Cell Research and Regenerative Medicine, Tulane University and LaCell LLC, New Orleans, LA, USA) for kindly isolating, characterizing, and sharing the cellular lines of hADSCs used in the present study and for critical input on the manuscript. We also would very much like to thank Laurent Roybon (Stem Cell Laboratory for CNS Disease Modeling, Department of Experimental Medical Science, Lund University, Lund, Sweden) for the utilization of Metamorph NX software for automated cell quantification. We are grateful to Miguel Carvalho, Ana Pires, Eduardo Gomes, Fabio Teixeira and Nuno Silva for technical assistance. This work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (predoctoral fellowship to NJL [SFRH/BD/33421/2008]; FCT Investigator Program to AJS) and the Luso-American Development Foundation

An enhanced model for stochastic coordination

Publicado em "Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Formal Methods for and on the Cloud, iFMCloud@IFM 2016, Reykjavik, Iceland, 4th June 2016"Applications developed over the cloud coordinate several, often anonymous, computational resources, distributed over different execution nodes, within flexible architectures. Coordination models able to represent quantitative data provide a powerful basis for their analysis and validation. This paper extends IMCreo, a semantic model for Stochastic reo based on interactive Markov chains, to enhance its scalability, by regarding each channel and node, as well as interface components, as independent stochastic processes that may (or may not) synchronise with the rest of the coordination circuit.Luis S. Barbosa is supported by grant SFRH/BSAB/113890/2015 from FCT, the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Tecnhology. This research is financed by the ERDF COMPETE 2020 Programme within project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-00696, and by National Funds through FCT as part of project UID/EEA/50014/2013

Sistema de controle de iluminação pública utilizando comunicações LoRaWAN

Este trabalho descreve a criação de um protótipo para prova de conceito de uma solução de transmissão e controlo, através de uma Internet das Coisas LoRaWAN, substituindo as comunicações GSM, de um sistema de comunicação e gestão com painéis de visualização e análise de dados, de uma solução de iluminação LED para iluminação pública. Desenvolveu-se uma interface de comunicação LoRa e LoRaWAN e uma camada de comunicação, considerando, a limitação do tamanho das mensagens, a comunicação bidirecional, o número de transmissões e o número de dispositivos de iluminação presentes num sistema de iluminação pública. Implementou-se também um dos primeiros sistemas utilizando comunicação LoRaWAN Classe C.This work describes an implementation of prototype towards the development of a Led Lighting System for Public illumination with a transmission and control solution with an Internet of Things LoRaWAN communication and management system with dashboard for data visualization and data analytics. It was developed a LoRaWAN communication interface and communication layer considering the message size limitation, two-way communication and the number of transmissions taking into account the number of lighting devices present in a street illumination system. A management system was developed with data analytics and visualization to make savings and improve process management. Also, we implemented one of the first commercial systems using a Class C LoRaWAN

Uma agradável surpresa: o Evangelho segundo Pilatos

1. A descoberta que Jesus faz de si mesmo2. A Grande luz: a Ressurreição3. Breves considerações sobre este Romanc

Painéis pré-fabricados para soluções de construção modular em Cabo Verde

A carência de habitação condigna em países africanos subdesenvolvidos torna indispensável uma mudança de mentalidade no que toca à abordagem a esta problemática. De forma a encontrar soluções que respondam a esta realidade urgente, é necessário criar soluções rápidas e economicamente viáveis. Cabo Verde é um destes países. O seu clima único subtropical seco, torna indispensável uma resolução cuidada da habitação, de forma a garantir o conforto dos ocupantes. A pensar nesta problemática, esta dissertação aborda o tema da pré-fabricação e da construção modular, como uma possível solução para o caso de Cabo verde, mais concretamente para a cidade de Praia onde se encontra o maior bairro informal de todo o país. A presente dissertação promove uma avaliação das condições técnicas e de conforto exigidas a um painel de parede pré-fabricado, de forma que este possa dar origem a uma solução modular que cumpra os requisitos de uma habitação condigna e possa conduzir gradualmente ao desaparecimento dos bairros informais. Após a avaliação dos requisitos e das condições de conforto impostas ao painel pré-fabricado, foi efectuada uma síntese dos materiais endémicos do arquipélago de Cabo-Verde, assim como a sua disponibilidade como recursos com capacidade de dar resposta às exigências funcionais dos painéis de parede, permitindo desta forma a criação de um painel composto por materiais locais, não gerando necessidades de importação de material para a sua produção. Estudados os referidos pontos, é proposto um modelo de construção modular evolutiva, apontando a composição mínima dos elementos constituintes do painel pré-fabricado, de encontro às necessidades e exigências vinculadas ao painel. A dissertação pretende abrir caminho ao desenvolvimento e dimensionamento de um módulo habitacional técnica, económica e socialmente ponderado, de forma a alcançar uma solução viável para a construção de habitação social, com condições mínimas à habitabilidade, promovendo um desmantelamento progressivo das habitações de génese informal

Improving program comprehension tools for domain specific languages

Dissertação de Mestrado em InformáticaSince the dawn of times, curiosity and necessity to improve the quality of their life, led humans to find means to understand everything surrounding them, aiming at improving it. Whereas the creating abilities of some was growing, the capacity to comprehend of others follow their steps. Disassembling physical objects to comprehend the connections between the pieces in order to understand how they work together is a common human behavior. With the computers arrival, humans felt the necessity of applying the same techniques (disassemble to comprehend) to their programs. Traditionally, these programs are written resorting to general-purpose programming languages. Hence, techniques and artifacts, used to aid on program comprehension, were built to facilitate the work of software programmers on maintaining and improving programs that were developed by others. Generally, these generic languages deal with concepts at a level that the human brain can hardly understand. So understanding programs written in this languages is an hard task, because the distance between the concepts at the program level and the concepts at the problem level is too big. Thus, as in politics, justice, medicine, etc. groups of words are regularly used facilitating the comprehension between people, also in programming, languages that address a specific domain were created. These programming languages raise the abstraction of the program domain, shortening the gap to the concepts of the problem domain. Tools and techniques for program comprehension commonly address the program domain and they took little advantage of the problem domain. In this master’s thesis, the hypothesis that it is easier to comprehend a program when the underlying problem and program domains are known and a bridge between them is established, is assumed. Then, a program comprehension technique for domain specific languages, is conceived, proposed and discussed. The main objective is to take advantage from the large knowledge about the problem domain inherent to the domain specific language, and to improve traditional program comprehension tools that only dealt, until then, with the program domain. This will create connections between both program and problem domains. The final result will show, visually, what happens internally at the program domain level, synchronized with what happens externally, at problem level.Desde o início dos tempos a curiosidade e a necessidade de melhorar a qualidade de vida impeliram o humano a arranjar meios para compreender o que o rodeia com o objectivo de melhorar. À medida que a habilidade de uns foi aumentando, a capacidade de compreensão de outros seguiu-lhe os passos. Desmontar algo físico de modo a compreender as ligações entre as peças e assim perceber como funcionam num todo, é um acto bastante normal dos humanos. Com o advento dos computadores e os programas para ele codificados, o homem sentiu a necessidade de aplicar as mesmas técnicas (desmontar para compreender) ao código desses programas. Tradicionalmente, a codificação de tais programas é feita usando linguagens genéricas de programação. Desde logo técnicas e artefactos que ajudam na compreensão desses programas (nessas linguagens) foram produzidas para auxiliar o trabalho de engenheiros de software que necessitam de manter ou alterar programas previamente construídos por outros. De um modo geral estas linguagens mais genéricas lidam com conceitos a um nível bastante abaixo daquele que o cérebro humano, facilmente, consegue captar. Previsivelmente, compreender programas neste tipo de linguagens é uma tarefa complexa pois a distância entre os conceitos ao nível do programa e os conceitos ao nível do problema (que o programa aborda) é bastante grande. Deste modo, tal como no dia-a-dia foram surgindo nichos como a política, a justiça, a informática, etc. onde grupos de palavras são usadas com maior regularidade para facilitar a compreensão entre as pessoas, também na programação foram surgindo linguagens que focam em domínios específicos, aumentando a abstracção em relação ao nível do programa, aproximando este do nível dos conceitos subjacentes ao problema. Ferramentas e técnicas de compreensão de programas abordam, geralmente, o domínio do programa, tirando pouco partido do domínio do problema. Na presente tese assume-se a hipótese de que será mais fácil compreender um programa quando os domínios do problema e do programa são conhecidos, e entre eles é estabelecida uma ponte de ligação; e parte-se em busca de uma técnica de compreensão de programas para linguagens de domínio específico, baseada em técnicas já conhecidas para linguagens de carácter geral. O objectivo prende-se com aproveitar o conhecimento sobre o domínio do problema e melhorar as ferramentas de compreensão de programas existentes para as linguagens genéricas, de forma a estabelecer ligações entre domínio do programa e domínio do problema. O resultado será mostrar, visualmente, o que acontece internamente ao nível do programa, sincronizadamente com o que acontece externamente ao nível do problema

Adipose tissue derived stem cells secretome: soluble factors and their roles in regenerative medicine

Stem cells have been long looked at as possible therapeutic vehicles for different health related problems. Among the different existing stem cell populations, Adipose derived Stem Cells (ASCs) have been gathering attention in the last 10 years. When compared to other stem cells populations and sources, ASCs can be easily isolated while providing higher yields upon the processing of adipose tissue. Similar to other stem cell populations, it was initially thought that the main potential of ASCs for regenerative medicine approaches was intimately related to their differentiation capability. Although this is true, there has been an increasing body of literature describing the trophic effects of ASCs on the protection, survival and differentiation of a variety of endogenous cells/tissues. Moreover, they have also shown to possess an immunomodulatory character. This effect is closely related to the ASCs’ secretome and the soluble factors found within it. Molecules such as hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), granulocyte and macrophage colony stimulating factors, interleukins (ILs) 6, 7, 8 and 11, tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), nerve growth factor (NGF), adipokines and others have been identified within the ASCs’ secretome. Due to its importance regarding future applications for the field of regenerative medicine, we aim, in the present review, to make a comprehensive analysis of the literature relating to the ASCs’ secretome and its relevance to the immune and central nervous system, vascularization and cardiac regeneration. The concluding section will highlight some of the major challenges that remain before ASCs can be used for future clinical applications