SIRIS-Lab/unlabelled-sti-corpus huggingface dataset:
Biomechanical stimulation based on 4d printed magneto-active polymers

MAPs are polymer-based composites that respond to magnetic fields with large deformation or tuneable mechanical properties. I aim to apply heterogeneous 3D printed MAPs as modifiable substrates to support biological structures which can have their deformation state and stiffness controlled by the external application of magnetic stimuli. Such mechanical stimulation has an important role on biological structures leading to alterations in functional responses, morphological changes and activation of growth or healing processes. Current bottlenecks preventing progress in this field are a lack of: a) appropriate experimental methodologies to enable characterisation of the behaviour of these materials; b) fundamental theoretical underpinnings to support the design and application of these new materials. The first step is to undertake in depth characterisation and assessment of 4D printed MAPs to create a detailed understanding of the underlying physics controlling the interactions between the polymeric matrices and embedded magnetic particles during application of mechanical and/or magnetic loadings. I will then culture biological structures on the novel 4D printed MAPs to create a ‘designed’ biostructure with specified and controllable responses to a given magnetic stimulus. These novel biostructures will be assessed using three applications: a) astrocyte cellular networks, b) neuronal circuits and c) astrocyte-neuronal networks. The evaluation of cellular damage, morphological and physiological alterations will validate the performance of the new biostructures and also contribute new understanding to the effects of deformation and stiffness gradients during glial scarring on physiological functions of central nervous system cells. The resulting deep understanding of magneto-mechanics of MAPs and their further development for controllable stimulation devices, will enable the international consolidation of my research group within the mechanics and bioengineering fields.
Urea hydrolysis and lateral and vertical movement in the soil: effects of urease inhibitor and irrigation

A glasshouse-based study was conducted to investigate the effect of urease inhibitor N-(n-butyl) thiophosphoric triamide (‘Agrotain’) and irrigation on urea hydrolysis and its movement in a Typic Haplustept silt loam soil (in 72 repacked soil cores). Half (36) of these cores were adjusted to soil moisture contents of 80% field capacity (FC) and the remaining 36 cores to 50% FC. Granular urea with or without Agrotain was applied at a rate equivalent to 100 kg N ha−1. There were three replicates to these two sets of soil cores. After 1 day of treatment application, soil cores of the 50% FC were adjusted to 80% FC by applying surface irrigation. Twelve pots were destructively sampled at each day after 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 and 10 days of treatment application to determine urea hydrolysis and its lateral and vertical movement in different soil layers. Agrotain-treated urea delayed urea hydrolysis during the first 7 days after its application. This delay in urea hydrolysis caused by Agrotain enabled added urea, which is uncharged, to move away from the surface soil layer to the sub-surface soil layer both vertically and laterally. In contrast, most urea hydrolysed to soil NH4+ within 2 days of its application. Irrigation after 1 day resulted in further urea movement both laterally and vertically from the surface soil layer (0–10 mm) to the sub-soil layer (30–50 mm) in Agrotain-treated urea. These results suggest that Agrotain delayed urea hydrolysis and allowed more time for rainfall or irrigation to move added urea from the surface layer to sub-soil layers where it is likely to make good contact with plant roots. This distribution of urea in the rooting zone has the potential to enhance N use efficiency and minimize N losses associated with ammonia volatilization from surface-applied urea.
Discovery of bcl-3 inhibitors as potential chemopreventive agent for skin cancer

Melanoma is one of the fastest growing cancers worldwide, especially in regions with a high number of Caucasians such as Europe. Currently, 100,000 diagnoses and 5,000 deaths from melanoma are registered in Europe every year. This increase in melanoma incidence is a serious health problem and poses an economic as well as societal concern. The survival in patients with malignant melanoma is very poor with a five year survival rate of about 10%. Indeed, the current clinical therapies against malignant and metastatic melanoma have a relatively low efficacy and are associated with significant adverse events. Therefore there is an urgent need for development of novel drugs that can cure or prolong the survival of these patients. Molecular targeted therapy by using a drug that reduces the growth and spread of cancer cells via inhibition of a specific protein is a foundation stone of precision medicine and treatment. We have identified a lead molecule that inhibits proliferation and metastasis of human malignant melanoma cells. The present proof-of-concept proposal aims at lead optimization, preclinical verification, IPR positioning, market assessment, and other commercial activities including go to market strategy and dialogue with potential collaborators. This will make a unique medical and commercial opportunity to develop a highly specific drug against a disease in urgent need of new treatment options.
« À nous d’ouvrir les yeux des autres »

C’est à la suite de la médiatisation de l’accident vasculaire cérébral (AVC), attribué à la pilule, de Marion Larat qu’éclate, en France en 2012, la « crise de la pilule ». Cet article entend contribuer à la compréhension de ce phénomène, en explorant les témoignages publiés sur le site internet de l’Association des victimes d’embolie pulmonaire et d’AVC liés à la contraception hormonale (Avep). L’article les explore en se focalisant sur les stratégies discursives déployées pour rendre visibles des risques qui sont minimisés, voire cachés, par le discours médical (Turrini & Bourgain, 2021a). Cette prise de parole de femmes vise à critiquer le discours médical en produisant un savoir éminemment expérientiel, qui met en avant les émotions et les détails médicaux. Ces stratégies discursives préfigurent le témoignage autobiographique en ligne comme une nouvelle forme d’activisme non-représentative orienté vers la diffusion d’actions individuelles de contre-information.
INTER GET UP - an interregional approach for the stimulation of techology-oriented start-ups in Europe

Technology-oriented start-ups are important for regional development in terms of job creation and attracting new investment to the region. Many regions and cities, therefore, try to boost spin-offs and encourage related job-creation. While most of these approaches are local or regional in character, international cooperation should help to identify good practices and transfer successful policy instruments. The EU partners of INTERGETUP are all located in Objective 1 and 2 regions and have received support by the EU Structural Funds in the past. They can, thus, offer valuable experience and know-how on the effective use of these funds to their partners in the new Member States and in Third Countries. Overall objective / Objectif général The operation focuses on improving the climate for technology-oriented start-ups based on the collaboration of national, regional and local public authorities, incubation centres, regional development agencies and universities from nine different countries. A major sub-goal is to further spread and refine existing regional economic development instruments such as the “Start-up Passport” and “Business Plan Competitions” and to make these tools more accessible. Expected results / Résultats attendus The operation supports partner regions in increasing the number and quality of technology-oriented business start-ups and associated highly qualified jobs. It results in new or improved economic development concepts and tools. For instance, each region establishes a specific "Start-up Passport", an instrument for training, qualification and assistance for technology-oriented start-ups. This tool covers the whole range of issues important for start-up entrepreneurs such as financing and accounting, marketing and sales, legislation, and communication and negotiation skills. Activities include an inventory and evaluation of existing concepts and tools to promote technology-oriented start-ups based on partners’ experiences. Partners conduct topic-related and interdisciplinary workshops for the exchange of experience and best practice and to support intensive discussion. Workshops and training seminars address technology-oriented entrepreneurs and provide access to European best practice.
A regenerative medicine approach in diabetes.

Pancreatic islet transplantation is essential for diabetes treatment. Outcome varies due to transplantation site, quality of islets and the fact that transplanted islets are affected by the same challenges as in situ islets. Tailor-making islets for transplantation by tissue engineering combined with a more favorable transplantation site that allows for both monitoring and local modulation of islet cells is thus instrumental. We have established the anterior chamber of the eye (ACE) as a favorable environment for long term survival of islet grafts and the cornea as a natural body window for non-invasive, longitudinal optical monitoring of islet function. ACE engrafted islets are able to maintain blood glucose homeostasis in diabetic animals. In addition to studies in non-human primates we are performing human clinical trials, the first patient already being transplanted. Tissue engineering of native islets is technically difficult. We will therefore apply genetically engineered islet organoids. This allows us to generate i) standardized material optimized for transplantation, function and survival, as well as ii) islet organoids suitable for monitoring (sensor islet organoids) and treating (metabolic islet organoids) insulin-dependent diabetes. We hypothesize that genetically engineered islet organoids transplanted to the ACE are superior to native pancreatic islets to monitor and treat insulin-dependent diabetes. Our overall aim is to create a platform allowing monitoring and treatment of insulin-dependent diabetes in mice that can be transferred to large animals for validation. The objective is to combine tissue engineering of islet cell organoids, transplantation to the ACE, synthetic biology, local pharmacological treatment strategies and the development of novel micro electronic/micro optical readout systems for islet cells. This regenerative medicine approach will follow our clinical trial programs and be transferred into the clinic to combat diabetes.
Commentary: Swapping or Dropping? Electrophysiological Measures of Difficulty during Multiple Object Tracking

Within cognitive psychology it is widely accepted that the human visual system represents the numerical sameness of objects. In particular, we are able to perceive an object as being the same despite movement and qualitative changes (Pylyshyn, 2007). Empirical research concerning visual sameness has focused on the conditions under which sameness is perceived (Odic et al., 2012) and the nature of mechanisms engaged in representing sameness (Makovski and Jiang, 2009).

However, the relation of visual sameness itself has not attracted as much attention and no detailed description of this relation is yet available. One of the most important questions is whether this relation can be understood as classical identity, and thus whether it is an equivalence relation, i.e., reflexive (object is the same as itself), symmetric (if A is the same as B, then B is the same as A), and transitive (if A is the same as B and B is the same as C, then A is the same as C).

While the topic of relations' formal properties is not completely alien to psychological research—see classical investigations by Tversky (1977) or more recent by Rips (2011)—there are no investigations that address the equivalence of visual sameness.

Despite this research gap, I intend to show that results of some psychological works can be interpreted as having a high relevance for the question of equivalence. I demonstrate this by analyzing a study by Drew et al. (2013) that is not explicitly concerned with the equivalence of visual sameness, but in fact has important implications for this question.
Transnational ENhancement of ECOPORT8 network

In the recent years the ports are the hub-point of the Core Regional Transport Networks, as precursors for the TEN-T comprehensive network in the South East Europe. In this direction, a great responsibility was entrusted to the port authorities: they are the authority appointed for the Control and the real application of the Environmental Manage System, being the nodes that ensure the environmental sustainability of the intermodal transport networks, to them is entrust the management of the public area in which operate a lot of external enterprises that ensure the economic development of the cities and their environmental quality. There are two steps to ensure the sustainable development of the sea-corridors: firstly working on sustainability of the process - the implementation of common policies creating same opportunities in the involved countries and not affecting the concurrency among ports - and secondly verifying the quality of process' results. This second step is harder to achieve than the first one because of the difficulty in defining the link between implemented processes and the foreseen results. The consideration makes necessary to follow up the process step by step, monitoring intermediate results and identifying the critical points in order to modify, over time, the implemented programs through a closed chain approach. It is necessary the involvement of all stakeholders managing activities related with ports, in order to have timely responses and shared possible solutions in a peer relationship with Port Authorities. The present project, enlarging the existing network established among the ECOPORT8 ports, is focused on the creation of a permanent discussion platform organized on two levels: the first one among the port authorities - aimed to establish common rules - and a second one between ports and stakeholders operating within port area, aimed to verify the process results and to propose amending over time of the Environmental protocols.
SYNCHRONIZING MULTIPLE PROCESSING SYSTEMS

Systems and methods are directed to a device comprising a product status synchronization device. Examples of the product status synchronization device comprise a plurality of input ports and an encoder input, each of the input ports coupled to one of a plurality of registers and configured to receive a signal indicative of a status assigned to a product by one of a plurality of process stations, and to register the status assigned to the product into the one of the plurality of registers coupled to the input port, wherein one or more of the plurality of process stations are located at different distances from a predetermined location along a processing line and are configured to asynchronously process one or more products moving through the processing line.
Retratos setecentistas em Oeiras: contributos para o estudo da genealogia iconográfica do Marquês de Pombal

O presente artigo tem como objectivos centrais o de estudar a iconografia do 1.º Marquês de Pombal e o de estabelecer uma genealogia de imagens que nos permita entender melhor a evolução da retratística pombalina. A inexistência de um trabalho monográfico sobre a retratística de Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo (1699-1782) é facto singular dada a relevância histórica e cultural desta personagem histórica. Os esforços empreendidos por outros autores no passado, de que destacamos Ernesto Soares, José Augusto França e, mais recentemente, Luísa Arruda, não esgotaram o tema e, por esse motivo, muito há a investigar sobre esta temática no contexto mais alargado da segunda metade do século XVIII. Não sendo o momento presente propício a tal empresa, que exige investigação de maior fôlego dado o número considerável de retratos a ter em conta, procurámos neste artigo traçar uma breve panorâmica sobre a genealogia da iconografia pombalina, integrando-a no espaço e no tempo e destacando os exemplos presentes no Palácio Pombal de Oeiras, nomeadamente a magnífica tela de Louis-Michel Van Loo (1707-1771) e Claude Vernet (1714-1789), hoje na Câmara Municipal de Oeiras, e a pintura da Concordia Fratrum de Joana Inácia Monteiro (1711-1781), habitualmente designada por Joana do Salitre.
NOVEL PHARMACEUTICAL COMPOSITION

The invention relates to a new pharmaceutical composition containing clindamycin and clotrimazol used for the treatment of vaginal infections.
Normative Impulsivity: Adorno on Ethics and the Body

AbstractAdorno’s commitment to anti-foundationalism generates a concern over how his ethically normative appraisals of social phenomena can be founded. Drawing on both Kohlmann and Bernstein’s account, I produce a new reading which contends somatic impulses are capable of bearing intrinsically normative epistemic and moral content. This entails a new way of understanding Adorno’s contention that Auschwitz produced a new categorical imperative. Working with Bernstein’s account, I claim that Auschwitz makes manifest the hostility of the instrumentalization of reason to the somatic grounds of reason. One’s mimetic identification with the victims of Auschwitz arouses a self-preserving desire to intercede in and re-orient the progress of reason itself, for the sake of one’s own somatic integrity. In closing, I claim – contra Zuidervaart – that this reading allows us to place the ethical as primary in Adorno, without reducing the political to it.
Irminger Sea deep convection injects oxygen and anthropogenic carbon to the ocean interior

Deep convection in the subpolar North Atlantic ventilates the ocean for atmospheric gases through the formation of deep water masses. Variability in the intensity of deep convection is believed to have caused large variations in North Atlantic anthropogenic carbon storage over the past decades, but observations of the properties during active convection are missing. Here we document the origin, extent and chemical properties of the deepest winter mixed layers directly observed in the Irminger Sea. As a result of the deep convection in winter 2014-2015, driven by large oceanic heat loss, mid-depth oxygen concentrations were replenished and anthropogenic carbon storage rates almost tripled compared with Irminger Sea hydrographic section data in 1997 and 2003. Our observations provide unequivocal evidence that ocean ventilation and anthropogenic carbon uptake take place in the Irminger Sea and that their efficiency can be directly linked to atmospheric forcing.
Control of postharvest soft rot caused by Erwinia carotovora of vegetables by a strain of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens and its potential modes of action

Erwinia carotovora subsp. carotovora (Ecc), the causal agent of bacterial soft rot, is one of the destructive pathogens of postharvest vegetables. In this study, a bacterial isolate (BGP20) from the vegetable farm soil showed strong antagonistic activity against Ecc in vitro, and its twofold cell-free culture filtrate showed excellent biocontrol effect in controlling the postharvest bacterial soft rot of potatoes at 25 °C. The anti-Ecc metabolites produced by the isolate BGP20 had a high resistance to high temperature, UV-light and protease K. Based on the colonial morphology, cellular morphology, sporulation, and partial nucleotide sequences of 16S rRNA and gyrB gene, the isolate BGP20 was identified as Bacillus amyloliquefaciens subsp. plantarum. Further in vivo assays showed that the BGP20 cell culture was more effective in controlling the postharvest bacterial soft rot of green peppers and Chinese cabbages than its twofold cell-free culture filtrate. In contrast, the biocontrol effect and safety of the BGP20 cell culture were very poor on potatoes. In the wounds of potatoes treated with both the antagonist BGP20 and the pathogen Ecc, the viable count of Ecc was 31,746 times that of BGP20 at 48 h of incubation at 25 °C. But in the wounds of green peppers, the viable count of BGP20 increased 182.3 times within 48 h, and that of Ecc increased only 51.3 %. In addition, the treatment with both BGP20 and Ecc induced higher activity of phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL) than others in potatoes. But the same treatment did not induce an increase of PAL activity in green peppers. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated that the isolate BGP20 is a promising candidate in biological control of postharvest bacterial soft rot of vegetables, but its main mode of action is different among various vegetables.
Cost Information Retrieval Model Based on Open Sources for Students Learning of Construction Cost Management

AbstractConstruction cost management course is currently one of the core courses in construction colleges. Since any construction project is so unique and complex that it is difficult for students to find out the right price in a short time during their learning of construction cost management course. This paper presents a cost information retrieval model based on distributed database which would search all kinds of construction cost and price data based on open online resources. By converting information from distributed database to data warehouse and data mining technique, the useful cost information from massive data is collected automatically and the trend of future prices and rates of construction can be predicted. This retrieval model can provide students more construction cost and price information than ever, and students can eventually estimate construction cost rapidly and correctly that is the core of construction cost management course.Keywordsconstruction cost managementinformation retrievalopen sourceslearning
Van der waals heterostructures for innovative photocatalysts

Engineering of atomic (two-dimensional (2D)) layered solids is receiving immense attention from the scientific community due to the possibilities of tuning the optical, mechanical, electronic and electrochemical properties by combinatorial stacking of different atomic layers as novel candidates for energy and environmental applications. Van der Waals solids (vdW) of Semiconducting Transition Metal Dichalcogenides (STMD) have been largely investigating 2D materials, where its physico-chemical properties show a drastic contrast in comparison to its bulk. Visible light absorption, indirect to direct bandgap transition, layer dependent photoluminescence (PL) etc. are some of the stark contrasts in atomically layered STMD vdW crystals from bulk, making them unique for photocatalysis and photo-(electro) catalysis (PEC) applications. In this work, Fabrication of variety of novel heterogeneous STMD clusters with combinations of different transition metal (TM): Mo, W and V and chalcogenide (C): S, Se and Te by cluster beam deposition will be carried out for the efficient visible light photocatalysis and PEC applications. Size and edge termination dependent photophysical properties will be investigated and further implemented for the efficient visible light PEC from this kind of vdW solids. A dual-target, magnetron-sputtering gas condensation cluster source will be used to deposit pristine combinatorial stacked nanoclusters of TMs and Cs onto various substrates. The photocatatlytic reaction kinetics will be estimated from the visible light absorption, Raman/PL spectroscopy and photoconductivity studies. Further PEC activity towards HER/oxygen reduction reaction (ORR)/oxygen evolution reaction (OER) from the STMD vdW nanoclusters will be evaluated from linear sweep voltammetry and cyclic voltammetry in acidic and basic electrolytes in dark and light conditions.