Publications by authors named "S L Luna"
Blood transfusion plays a vital role in modern medicine, but frequent shortages occur. Ex vivo manufacturing of red blood cells (RBCs) from universal donor cells offers a potential solution, yet the high cost of recombinant cytokines remains a barrier. Erythropoietin (EPO) signaling is crucial for RBC development, and EPO is among the most expensive media components.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study explores the question whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) can outperform human experts in animal pain recognition using sheep as a case study. It uses a dataset of N = 48 sheep undergoing surgery with video recordings taken before (no pain) and after (pain) surgery. Four veterinary experts used two types of pain scoring scales: the sheep facial expression scale (SFPES) and the Unesp-Botucatu composite behavioral scale (USAPS), which is the 'golden standard' in sheep pain assessment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFacial landmarks, widely studied in human affective computing, are beginning to gain interest in the animal domain. Specifically, landmark-based geometric morphometric methods have been used to objectively assess facial expressions in cats, focusing on pain recognition and the impact of breed-specific morphology on facial signaling. These methods employed a 48-landmark scheme grounded in cat facial anatomy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- Topical drug products are used to treat skin diseases but their pharmacokinetics are hard to study in live environments due to skin's complex barrier and lack of assessment methods.
- This study introduces a new method using stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy to analyze how blood flow (perfusion) affects the uptake of the drug tazarotene in mice.
- Results showed that perfusion increased tazarotene absorption in lipid-rich areas of the skin, while in non-perfused (ex vivo) conditions, the drug uptake was significantly slower, highlighting the importance of blood flow in drug delivery.
Unesp-Botucatu Cattle Pain Scale (UCAPS) is widely used in experimental settings, however the high number of UCAPS behaviors might represent a barrier to its implementation in the farm's or hospital's routine. We aimed to identify a smaller combination of UCAPS behaviors that could be used as behavioral red flags for optimizing the acute pain diagnosis in cattle. We hypothesize that a specific set of UCAPS behaviors might be used as behavioral red flags for pain.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF