HPS2 - Demonstration of Molten-Salt in Parabolic Trough Plants -Simulation Results from System Advisor Model

High-Performance-Solar-2 (HPS2) is a parabolic trough demo project that is being built by a European consortium of research institutions (German Aerospace Center DLR, University of Évora) and companies (TSK-Flagsol, Rioglass, innogy SE, Steinmüller Engineering, Yara, eltherm) on the Evora Molten Salt Platform (EMSP). The purpose of this plant is to demonstrate the viability of using molten salts as heat transfer fluid in parabolic trough power plants, while performing research and development on such technology. Commissioning of the power plant is foreseen for the end of 2020. Meanwhile, a theoretical study consisting of an annual simulation with NREL’s System Advisor Model (SAM) has been performed to support consolidate the test plan of the platform with possible operation strategies to avoid freezing of the salts

Methods for evaluation of the antimicrobial activity and determination of Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) of plant extracts

Várias pesquisas vêm sendo desenvolvidas e direcionadas no descobrimento de novos agentes antimicrobianos provenientes de extratos de plantas e outros produtos naturais, para serem aplicados em produtos farmacêuticos e cosméticos. Atualmente, existem vários métodos para avaliar a atividade antibacteriana e antifúngica dos extratos vegetais. Os mais conhecidos incluem método de difusão em ágar, método de macrodiluição e microdiluição. A proposta dessa revisão é apresentar diferentes métodos comumente utilizados na pesquisa de novos agentes antimicrobianos, provenientes de extratos vegetais, e elucidar os principais fatores interferentes. Dessa maneira, contribuir como fonte de pesquisa para o desenvolvimento de futuros trabalhos relacionado ao estudo de atividade antimicrobiana de produtos naturais.Several researches have been developed to search for new antimicrobial agents from extracts of plants and other natural products to be used in pharmaceutical and cosmetic products. Nowadays there are many methods to evaluate the antibacterial and antifungal activity of the plant extracts. The most known assays have been based on diffusion in agar; and micro and macrodilution methods. The purpose of this review is to describe the different methods commonly used for the determination of new antimicrobial agents from the plants extracts and elucidate the main interference factors. Moreover, this contributes as research source for future development of investigations related to the study of antimicrobial activity from natural products.Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior (CAPES)CNP

Predicting progression of mild cognitive impairment to dementia using neuropsychological data: a supervised learning approach using time windows

Background: Predicting progression from a stage of Mild Cognitive Impairment to dementia is a major pursuit in current research. It is broadly accepted that cognition declines with a continuum between MCI and dementia. As such, cohorts of MCI patients are usually heterogeneous, containing patients at different stages of the neurodegenerative process. This hampers the prognostic task. Nevertheless, when learning prognostic models, most studies use the entire cohort of MCI patients regardless of their disease stages. In this paper, we propose a Time Windows approach to predict conversion to dementia, learning with patients stratified using time windows, thus fine-tuning the prognosis regarding the time to conversion. Methods: In the proposed Time Windows approach, we grouped patients based on the clinical information of whether they converted (converter MCI) or remained MCI (stable MCI) within a specific time window. We tested time windows of 2, 3, 4 and 5 years. We developed a prognostic model for each time window using clinical and neuropsychological data and compared this approach with the commonly used in the literature, where all patients are used to learn the models, named as First Last approach. This enables to move from the traditional question "Will a MCI patient convert to dementia somewhere in the future" to the question "Will a MCI patient convert to dementia in a specific time window". Results: The proposed Time Windows approach outperformed the First Last approach. The results showed that we can predict conversion to dementia as early as 5 years before the event with an AUC of 0.88 in the cross-validation set and 0.76 in an independent validation set. Conclusions: Prognostic models using time windows have higher performance when predicting progression from MCI to dementia, when compared to the prognostic approach commonly used in the literature. Furthermore, the proposed Time Windows approach is more relevant from a clinical point of view, predicting conversion within a temporal interval rather than sometime in the future and allowing clinicians to timely adjust treatments and clinical appointments.FCT under the Neuroclinomics2 project [PTDC/EEI-SII/1937/2014, SFRH/BD/95846/2013]; INESC-ID plurianual [UID/CEC/50021/2013]; LASIGE Research Unit [UID/CEC/00408/2013

Real-time monitoring shows substantial excess all-cause mortality during second wave of COVID-19 in Europe, October to December 2020.

The European monitoring of excess mortality for public health action (EuroMOMO) network monitors weekly excess all-cause mortality in 27 European countries or subnational areas. During the first wave of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in Europe in spring 2020, several countries experienced extraordinarily high levels of excess mortality. Europe is currently seeing another upsurge in COVID-19 cases, and EuroMOMO is again witnessing a substantial excess all-cause mortality attributable to COVID-19.Funding statement: The EuroMOMO network hub at Statens Serum Institut receives funding from European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Solna, Sweden, through a framework contract 2017-2020.S