Towards an Ontological Modelling of Preference Relations

Preference relations are intensively studied in Economics, but they are also approached in AI, Knowledge Representation, and Conceptual Modelling, as they provide a key concept in a variety of domains of application. In this paper, we propose an ontological foundation of preference relations to formalise their essential aspects across domains. Firstly, we shall discuss what is the ontological status of the relata of a preference relation. Secondly, we investigate the place of preference relations within a rich taxonomy of relations (e.g. we ask whether they are internal or external, essential or contingent, descriptive or nondescriptive relations). Finally, we provide an ontological modelling of preference relation as a module of a foundational (or upper) ontology (viz. OntoUML). The aim of this paper is to provide a sharable foundational theory of preference relation that foster interoperability across the heterogeneous domains of application of preference relations

Optimization of an Injectable Hydrogel Depot System for the Controlled Release of Retinal-Targeted Hybrid Nanoparticles

A drawback in the development of treatments that can reach the retina is the presence of barriers in the eye that restrain compounds from reaching the target. Intravitreal injections hold promise for retinal delivery, but the natural defenses in the vitreous can rapidly degrade or eliminate therapeutic molecules. Injectable hydrogel implants, which act as a reservoir, can allow for long-term drug delivery with a single injection into the eye, but still suffer due to the fast clearance of the released drugs when traversing the vitreous and random diffusion that leads to lower pharmaceutic efficacy. A combination with HA-covered nanoparticles, which can be released from the gel and more readily pass through the vitreous to increase the delivery of therapeutic agents to the retina, represents an advanced and elegant way to overcome some of the limitations in eye drug delivery. In this article, we developed hybrid PLGA-Dotap NPs that, due to their hyaluronic acid coating, can improve in vivo distribution throughout the vitreous and delivery to retinal cells. Moreover, a hydrogel implant was developed to act as a depot for the hybrid NPs to better control and slow their release. These results are a first step to improve the treatment of retinal diseases by protecting and transporting the therapeutic treatment across the vitreous and to improve treatment options by creating a depot system for long-term treatments

Microfluidic technology for the production of hybrid nanomedicines

Microfluidic technologies have recently been applied as innovative methods for the production of a variety of nanomedicines (NMeds), demonstrating their potential on a global scale. The capacity to precisely control variables, such as the flow rate ratio, temperature, total flow rate, etc., allows for greater tunability of the NMed systems that are more standardized and automated than the ones obtained by well-known benchtop protocols. However, it is a crucial aspect to be able to obtain NMeds with the same characteristics of the previously optimized ones. In this study, we focused on the transfer of a production protocol for hybrid NMeds (H-NMeds) consisting of PLGA, Cholesterol, and Pluronic® F68 from a benchtop nanoprecipitation method to a microfluidic device. For this aim, we modified parameters such as the flow rate ratio, the concentration of core materials in the organic phase, and the ratio between PLGA and Cholesterol in the feeding organic phase. Outputs analysed were the chemico–physical properties, such as size, PDI, and surface charge, the composition in terms of %Cholesterol and residual %Pluronic® F68, their stability to lyophilization, and the morphology via atomic force and electron microscopy. On the basis of the results, even if microfluidic technology is one of the unique procedures to obtain industrial production of NMeds, we demonstrated that the translation from a benchtop method to a microfluidic one is not a simple transfer of already established parameters, with several variables to be taken into account and to be optimized

Fragility functions for tall URM buildings around early 20th century in Lisbon. Part 1: Methodology and application at building level

The article proposes a procedure for the derivation of fragility functions for unreinforced masonry buildings considering the in-plane and out-of-plane response. Different approaches are considered for the generation of the corresponding fragility functions and for the evaluation of the propagation of uncertainties. The contributions for the dispersion of the fragility functions account for the variability in the definition of the capacity, the aleatory uncertainty in the definition of the seismic demand and the aleatory uncertainty in the definition of the modified/floor response spectrum, when the local mechanisms are located in the upper level of the building. In the end, the individual fragility curves are properly combined in order to define a single fragility curve for the class of buildings. As a case study, the procedure is applied to the assessment of one of the most vulnerable unreinforced masonry buildings constructed in the early 20th century in Lisbon, considering a typical prototype building with five storeys high. Results for a seismic event, as defined in the earthquake-resistant code for Lisbon, indicate that the typical building has about 50% probability of having heavy damage and about 30% probability of collapse.The first author would like to acknowledge the financial support of Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT, Ministério da Educação e Ciência, Portugal) through the scholarship PD/BD/106076/2015 through the FCT Doctoral Program: Analysis and Mitigation of Risks in Infrastructures, INFRARISK- (http://infrarisk.tecnico.ulisboa.pt)

Repairing Socially Aggregated Ontologies Using Axiom Weakening

Ontologies represent principled, formalised descriptions of agents’ conceptualisations of a domain. For a community of agents, these descriptions may differ among agents. We propose an aggregative view of the integration of ontologies based on Judgement Aggregation (JA). Agents may vote on statements of the ontologies, and we aim at constructing a collective, integrated ontology, that reflects the individual conceptualisations as much as possible. As several results in JA show, many attractive and widely used aggregation procedures are prone to return inconsistent collective ontologies. We propose to solve the possible inconsistencies in the collective ontology by applying suitable weakenings of axioms that cause inconsistencies

What Does the Discursive Paradox Really Mean for Democracy?

Pettit\u2019s claim that the discovery of the so-called \u2018discursive paradox\u2019 bears important implications for the normative theory of deliberative democracy has been challenged on the ground that there are substantial structural differences between the fora of democratic deliberation and the judicial context in which the paradox first emerged. In this article I defend Pettit\u2019s claim against these objections, but I also reject the implications Pettit draws from his discussion of the paradox. Specifically, I argue against one of the key assumptions on which Pettit\u2019s discussion rests: that in order to function properly as a guarantee against tyranny deliberation requires consistency. The upshot of the discussion is that the discursive paradox is, indeed, relevant for the theory of deliberative democracy. However, contrary to what Pettit\u2019s argument suggests, the discursive paradox is not relevant because it reveals a conflict between deliberation and democracy. Rather, it is relevant because it reveals a conflict between deliberative democracy and the requirement of collective consistency