2,259 results match your criteria: "NOVA School of Science and Technology | NOVA FCT[Affiliation]"

In recent decades, the requirements for implantable medical devices have increased, but the risks of implant rejection still exist. These issues are primarily associated with poor osseointegration, leading to biofilm formation on the implant surface. This study focuses on addressing these issues by developing a biomaterial for implant coatings.

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Rabbits as a Reservoir of Multidrug-Resistant : Clonal Lineages and Public Health Impact.

Antibiotics (Basel)

April 2024

Microbiology and Antibiotic Resistance Team (MicroART), Department of Veterinary Sciences, University of Traás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD), 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal.

Article Synopsis
  • This study highlights the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant strains in rabbit farming, particularly in Northern Portugal, where rabbits have the highest antibiotic use among food-producing animals.
  • Resistance was noted in several critical antibiotics, with some strains showing multidrug resistance and a prevalence of specific resistance genes, particularly the CTX-M variants.
  • The research emphasizes the importance of a One Health approach, uniting human, animal, and environmental health sectors in combatting antimicrobial resistance effectively.
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Marine litter weight estimation from UAV imagery: Three potential methodologies to advance macrolitter reports.

Mar Pollut Bull

May 2024

Research Institute for Value-Added-Information Generation (VAiG), Japan Agency for Marine - Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Yokohama, Japan; Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Department of Engineering, Ocean Civil Engineering Program, Kagoshima University, Kagoshima, Japan. Electronic address:

In the context of marine litter monitoring, reporting the weight of beached litter can contribute to a better understanding of pollution sources and support clean-up activities. However, the litter scaling task requires considerable effort and specific equipment. This experimental study proposes and evaluates three methods to estimate beached litter weight from aerial images, employing different levels of litter categorization.

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Genomic factors shape carbon and nitrogen metabolic niche breadth across Saccharomycotina yeasts.

Science

April 2024

Laboratory of Genetics, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA.

Organisms exhibit extensive variation in ecological niche breadth, from very narrow (specialists) to very broad (generalists). Two general paradigms have been proposed to explain this variation: (i) trade-offs between performance efficiency and breadth and (ii) the joint influence of extrinsic (environmental) and intrinsic (genomic) factors. We assembled genomic, metabolic, and ecological data from nearly all known species of the ancient fungal subphylum Saccharomycotina (1154 yeast strains from 1051 species), grown in 24 different environmental conditions, to examine niche breadth evolution.

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SRRM2 splicing factor modulates cell fate in early development.

Biol Open

April 2024

Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC), Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology (BIMSB), Epigenetic Regulation and Chromatin Structure Group, 10115 Berlin, Germany.

Embryo development is an orchestrated process that relies on tight regulation of gene expression to guide cell differentiation and fate decisions. The Srrm2 splicing factor has recently been implicated in developmental disorders and diseases, but its role in early mammalian development remains unexplored. Here, we show that Srrm2 dosage is critical for maintaining embryonic stem cell pluripotency and cell identity.

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The accumulation of manganese ions is crucial for scavenging reactive oxygen species and protecting the proteome of Deinococcus radiodurans (Dr). However, metal homeostasis still needs to be tightly regulated to avoid toxicity. DR2539, a dimeric transcription regulator, plays a key role in Dr manganese homeostasis.

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Revealing the mechanisms of semantic satiation with deep learning models.

Commun Biol

April 2024

School of Computer Science, Centre for Human Brain Health, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK.

Article Synopsis
  • - Semantic satiation is a psychological phenomenon where repeating a word or phrase leads to a temporary loss of its meaning, but the neural mechanisms behind it are not fully understood.
  • - This study uses a deep learning model to explore how semantic satiation works at the level of neural networks, suggesting it's a bottom-up process rather than the top-down process previously thought.
  • - The findings indicate that the process is similar to how networks learn to recognize objects, with neural connections influencing the degree of semantic satiation through continuous learning and interaction between elements.
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Isolation of acute myeloid leukemia blasts from blood using a microfluidic device.

Analyst

May 2024

International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL), Avda. Mestre José Veiga, 4715-310 Braga, Portugal.

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is the most common form of acute leukemia in adults and associated with poor prognosis. Unfortunately, most of the patients that achieve clinical complete remission after the treatment will ultimately relapse due to the persistence of minimal residual disease (MRD), that is not measurable using conventional technologies in the clinic. Microfluidics is a potential tool to improve the diagnosis by providing early detection of MRD.

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Antagonistic effects of a COX1/2 inhibitor drug in human HepG2 cells exposed to an environmental carcinogen.

Environ Toxicol Pharmacol

June 2024

Unit of Biochemical Toxicology, Institute of Environmental Medicine,  Karolinska Institutet, Box 210, Stockholm SE-171 77, Sweden. Electronic address:

Understanding interactions between legacy and emerging environmental contaminants has important implications for risk assessment, especially when mutagens and carcinogens are involved, whose critical effects are chronic and therefore difficult to predict. The current work aimed to investigate potential interactions between benzo[a]pyrene (B[a]P), a carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon and legacy pollutant, and diclofenac (DFC), a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug and pollutant of emerging concern, and how DFC affects B[a]P toxicity. Exposure to binary mixtures of these chemicals resulted in substantially reduced cytotoxicity in human HepG2 cells compared to single-chemical exposures.

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Background: Detailed, comprehensive, and timely reporting on population health by underlying causes of disability and premature death is crucial to understanding and responding to complex patterns of disease and injury burden over time and across age groups, sexes, and locations. The availability of disease burden estimates can promote evidence-based interventions that enable public health researchers, policy makers, and other professionals to implement strategies that can mitigate diseases. It can also facilitate more rigorous monitoring of progress towards national and international health targets, such as the Sustainable Development Goals.

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REBCO has been used extensively as coated conductors applied to superconducting magnets due to its exceptional superconducting properties. As a REBCO superconductor, YbBaCuO (Yb123) has a low melting temperature, making it suitable for use as an intermediate medium connector while preparing the superconducting joint. However, there is still uncertainty about the formation mechanism of Yb123 and the synthesis of this superconductor has not been fully understood.

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Exploring the biotechnological potential of ANG344B: A novel bacterium for 2-phenylethanol production.

Biotechnol Rep (Amst)

June 2024

UCIBIO - Applied Molecular Biosciences Unit, Faculty of Pharmacy, Department of Biological Sciences, Laboratory of Microbiology, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal.

A bacterium, ANG344B, isolated from river water, exhibited an exceptional capacity to produce 2-phenylethanol (2-PE) using L-phenylalanine (L-Phe) as a precursor-a capability typically observed in yeasts rather than bacteria. Bioreactor experiments were conducted to evaluate the production performance, using glucose as the carbon source for cellular growth and L-Phe as the precursor for 2-PE production. Remarkably, ANG344B achieved a 2-PE concentration of 2.

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The long-term performance of metal halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) can be significantly improved by tuning the surface characteristics of the perovskite layers. Herein, low-temperature-processed ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA)-complexed SnO (E-SnO) is successfully employed as an electron transport layer (ETL) in PSCs, enhancing the efficiency and stability of the devices. The effects of EDTA treatment on SnO are investigated for different concentrations: comparing the solar cells' response with 15%-2.

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Global ground-level measurements of elements in ambient particulate matter (PM) can provide valuable information to understand the distribution of dust and trace elements, assess health impacts, and investigate emission sources. We use X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy to characterize the elemental composition of PM samples collected from 27 globally distributed sites in the Surface PARTiculate mAtter Network (SPARTAN) over 2019-2023. Consistent protocols are applied to collect all samples and analyze them at one central laboratory, which facilitates comparison across different sites.

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Importance: Purinergic receptor P2Y12 (P2Y12) inhibitor monotherapy after a certain period of dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) may be an attractive option of maintenance antiplatelet treatment for patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) who are at both high bleeding and ischemic risk (birisk).

Objective: To determine if extended P2Y12 inhibitor monotherapy with clopidogrel is superior to ongoing DAPT with aspirin and clopidogrel after 9 to 12 months of DAPT after PCI in birisk patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS).

Design, Setting, And Participants: This was a multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial including birisk patients with ACS who had completed 9 to 12 months of DAPT after drug-eluting stent implantation and were free from adverse events for at least 6 months at 101 China centers between February 2018 and December 2020.

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Aquatic risk assessment is essential to guarantee the sustainable use of pesticides and the conservation of water resources near agricultural fields. This article discusses a proposal for a tiered regulatory framework for the aquatic risk assessment of pesticides in Brazil. The first step is problem formulation, which includes establishing general and specific protection goals.

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Background And Objectives: Although the association between self-reported and capacity-based mobility outcomes is prominently researched, the pathways through which self-reported measures affect capacity-based measures remains poorly understood. Therefore, our study examines the association between self-reported and capacity-based mobility measures and explores which mobility determinants mediate the association in Nigerian community-dwelling older adults.

Research Design And Methods: This cross-sectional study included 169 older adults [mean age () = 67.

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Constructing amorphous/intermetallic (A/IMC) heterophase structures by breaking the highly ordered IMC phase with disordered amorphous phase is an effective way to improve the electrocatalytic performance of noble metal-based IMC electrocatalysts because of the optimized electronic structure and abundant heterophase boundaries as active sites. In this study, we report the synthesis of ultrathin A/IMC PtPbBi nanosheets (NSs) for boosting hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and alcohol oxidation reactions. The resulting A/IMC PtPbBi NSs exhibit a remarkably low overpotential of only 25 mV at 10 mA cm for the HER in an acidic electrolyte, together with outstanding stability for 100 h.

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Due to specific bacterial microbiota, raw milk cheeses have appreciated sensory properties. However, they may pose a threat to consumer safety due to potential pathogens presence. This study evaluated the microbiological contamination of 98 raw milk cheeses from Beira Baixa, Portugal.

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The combined morphological features of (Hydrocharitaceae) pollen, observed with light and electron microscopy, make it unique among all angiosperm pollen types and easy to identify. Unfortunately, the plant is (and most likely was) insect-pollinated and produces relatively few pollen grains per flower, contributing to its apparent absence in the paleopalynological record. Here, we present fossil pollen from the Eocene of Germany (Europe) and Kenya (Africa), representing the first reliable pre-Pleistocene pollen records of this genus worldwide and the only fossils of this family discovered so far in Africa.

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Stretchable neuromorphic optoelectronics present tantalizing opportunities for intelligent vision applications that necessitate high spatial resolution and multimodal interaction. Existing neuromorphic devices are either stretchable but not reconcilable with multifunctionality, or discrete but with low-end neurological function and limited flexibility. Herein, we propose a defect-tunable viscoelastic perovskite film that is assembled into strain-insensitive quasi-continuous microsphere morphologies for intrinsically stretchable neuromorphic vision-adaptive transistors.

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The interaction between oxygen species and metal sites of various orbitals exhibits intimate correlation with the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) kinetics. Herein, a new approach for boosting the inherent ORR activity of atomically dispersed Fe-N-C matrix is represented by implanting Fe atomic clusters nearby. The as-prepared catalyst delivers excellent ORR activity with half-wave potentials of 0.

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Identification of Apple Fruit-Skin Constitutive Laws by Full-Field Methods Using Uniaxial Tensile Loading.

Materials (Basel)

February 2024

CITAB/UTAD, Departamento de Engenharias, Quinta de Prados, 5001-801 Vila Real, Portugal.

The protective and preservative role of apple skin in maintaining the integrity of the fruit is well-known, with its mechanical behaviour playing a pivotal role in determining fruit storage capacity. This study employs a combination of experimental and numerical methodologies, specifically utilising the digital image correlation (DIC) technique. A specially devised inverse strategy is applied to evaluate the mechanical behaviour of apple skin under uniaxial tensile loading.

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Background: When healthcare students witness, engage in, or are involved in an adverse event, it often leads to a second victim experience, impacting their mental well-being and influencing their future professional practice. This study aimed to describe the efforts, methods, and outcomes of interventions to help students in healthcare disciplines cope with the emotional experience of being involved in or witnessing a mistake causing harm to a patient during their clerkships or training.

Methods: This systematic review followed the PRISMA guidelines and includes the synthesis of eighteen studies, published in diverse languages from 2011 to 2023, identified from the databases MEDLINE, EMBASE, SCOPUS and APS PsycInfo.

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Can (Natural) deep eutectic systems increase the efficacy of ocular therapeutics?

Eur J Pharm Biopharm

May 2024

LAQV-REQUIMTE, Chemistry Department, NOVA - School of Science and Technology, 2829-516 Caparica, Portugal. Electronic address:

The eye is one of the most complex organs in the human body, with a unique anatomy and physiology, being divided into anterior and posterior segments. Ocular diseases can occur in both segments, but different diseases affect different segments. Glaucoma and cataracts affect the anterior segment, while macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy occur in the posterior segment.

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