Search results for " Applications"

In Vitro Assessment of the Genotoxic Hazard of Novel Hydroxamic Acid- and Benzamide-Type Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors (HDACi)

2020

Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi) are already approved for the therapy of leukemias. Since they are also emerging candidate compounds for the treatment of non-malignant diseases, HDACi with a wide therapeutic window and low hazard potential are desirable. Here, we investigated a panel of 12 novel hydroxamic acid- and benzamide-type HDACi employing non-malignant V79 hamster cells as toxicology guideline-conform in vitro model. HDACi causing a &ge

2019

From the very beginnings of radiotherapy, a crucial question persists with how to target the radiation effectiveness into the tumor while preserving surrounding tissues as undamaged as possible. One promising approach is to selectively pre-sensitize tumor cells by metallic nanoparticles. However, though the “physics” behind nanoparticle-mediated radio-interaction has been well elaborated, practical applications in medicine remain challenging and often disappointing because of limited knowledge on biological mechanisms leading to cell damage enhancement and eventually cell death. In the present study, we analyzed the influence of different nanoparticle materials (platinum (Pt), and gold (Au)…

Evaluation of different InSAR multi-baseline construction methods over a dam in southern Italy

2018

Monitoring dam displacements using different techniques allows an evaluation of their structural behaviour over time. In this study, dam displacements (for the Castello dam, Agrigento, Italy) have been investigated using different Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) techniques exploiting a freely available dataset from the EU Copernicus Sentinel-1 SAR built by the European Space Agency (ESA). The dataset includes Sentinel 1A (S1A) images acquired in dual-polarization and Interferometric Wide (IW) swath using the Terrain Observation with Progressive Scans SAR (TOPSAR) mode. Three main Multi-Baseline Construction methods based on the identification of Persistent Scatterers (PS) h…

Towards Low-Cost Pavement Condition Health Monitoring and Analysis Using Deep Learning

2020

Governments are faced with countless challenges to maintain conditions of road networks. This is due to financial and physical resource deficiencies of road authorities. Therefore, low-cost automated systems are sought after to alleviate these issues and deliver adequate road conditions for citizens. There have been several attempts at creating such systems and integrating them within Pavement management systems. This paper utilizes replicable deep learning techniques to carry out hotspot analyses on urban road networks highlighting important pavement distress types and associated severities. Following this, analyses were performed illustrating how the hotspot analysis can be carried out to…

UVPAR: fast detection of functional shifts in duplicate genes.

2006

Abstract Background The imprint of natural selection on gene sequences is often difficult to detect. A plethora of methods have been devised to detect genetic changes due to selective processes. However, many of those methods depend heavily on underlying assumptions regarding the mode of change of DNA sequences and often require sophisticated mathematical treatments that made them computationally slow. The development of fast and effective methods to detect modifications in the selective constraints of genes is therefore of great interest. Results We describe UVPAR, a program designed to quickly test for changes in the functional constraints of duplicate genes. Starting with alignments of t…

Analyzing big datasets of genomic sequences: fast and scalable collection of k-mer statistics

2019

Abstract Background Distributed approaches based on the MapReduce programming paradigm have started to be proposed in the Bioinformatics domain, due to the large amount of data produced by the next-generation sequencing techniques. However, the use of MapReduce and related Big Data technologies and frameworks (e.g., Apache Hadoop and Spark) does not necessarily produce satisfactory results, in terms of both efficiency and effectiveness. We discuss how the development of distributed and Big Data management technologies has affected the analysis of large datasets of biological sequences. Moreover, we show how the choice of different parameter configurations and the careful engineering of the …

Global data on earthworm abundance, biomass, diversity and corresponding environmental properties

2021

Earthworms are an important soil taxon as ecosystem engineers, providing a variety of crucial ecosystem functions and services. Little is known about their diversity and distribution at large spatial scales, despite the availability of considerable amounts of local-scale data. Earthworm diversity data, obtained from the primary literature or provided directly by authors, were collated with information on site locations, including coordinates, habitat cover, and soil properties. Datasets were required, at a minimum, to include abundance or biomass of earthworms at a site. Where possible, site-level species lists were included, as well as the abundance and biomass of individual species and ec…

Controlling false match rates in record linkage using extreme value theory

2011

AbstractCleansing data from synonyms and homonyms is a relevant task in fields where high quality of data is crucial, for example in disease registries and medical research networks. Record linkage provides methods for minimizing synonym and homonym errors thereby improving data quality. We focus our attention to the case of homonym errors (in the following denoted as ‘false matches’), in which records belonging to different entities are wrongly classified as equal. Synonym errors (‘false non-matches’) occur when a single entity maps to multiple records in the linkage result. They are not considered in this study because in our application domain they are not as crucial as false matches. Fa…

Social Media Monitoring for Crisis Communication: Process, Methods and Trends in the Scientific Literature

2014

This literature review study aims at clarifying current knowledge on social media monitoring from the perspective of organizational communication and public relations. It also contributes to crisis communication by shedding light on how fast developing social media discourse can be followed and analysed in order to understand citizens’ needs throughout all the phases of a crisis. The findings of this study reveal a number of insights in the scientific literature on the concept of monitoring, the monitoring process, methods, tools and solutions, methodological issues and trends covering the years 2009–2012. In the literature, social media monitoring is described as a process which comprises …

Active learning in a real-world bioengineering problem: A pilot-study on ophthalmologic data processing

2019

Active learning is a format alternative to the conventional lecture/recitation/laboratory; research results have reported that it is suitable to encourage student inquiry and foster peer mentoring. Although the availability of computer-based learning materials in biomedical sciences is increasing, there are relatively few studies aimed to integrate traditional methods of teaching with inquiry-based approaches utilizing these Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tools. This paper describes a pilot-study on a comprehensive active laboratory course about digital ophthalmologic signal classification, experienced by a group of undergraduates in Bio-Electronic Engineering. During the …