Search results for " Applications"
showing 10 items of 4541 documents
On the Choice of the Extracellular Vesicles for Therapeutic Purposes
2019
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are lipid membrane vesicles released by all human cells and are widely recognized to be involved in many cellular processes, both in physiological and pathological conditions. They are mediators of cell-cell communication, at both paracrine and systemic levels, and therefore they are active players in cell differentiation, tissue homeostasis, and organ remodeling. Due to their ability to serve as a cargo for proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids, which often reflects the cellular source, they should be considered the future of the natural nanodelivery of bio-compounds. To date, natural nanovesicles, such as exosomes, have been shown to represent a source of diseas…
Interactive Tools for the Preservation, Dissemination and Study of Silk Heritage—An Introduction to the SILKNOW Project
2018
Silk was a major factor for progress in Europe, mostly along the Western Silk Road’s network of production and market centers. The silk trade also allowed for the exchange of ideas and innovations, having impacts at economic, technical, functional, cultural and symbolic levels. However, silk has today become a seriously endangered heritage. Although many European specialized museums are devoted to its preservation, they usually lack the size and resources to take advantage of state-of-the-art digital technologies. The aim of this paper is twofold; firstly, we introduce SILKNOW, an interdisciplinary project that has been recently funded by the H2020 Programme of the European Union in order t…
Protein tyrosine nitration and thiol oxidation by peroxynitrite-strategies to prevent these oxidative modifications.
2013
The reaction product of nitric oxide and superoxide, peroxynitrite, is a potent biological oxidant. The most important oxidative protein modifications described for peroxynitrite are cysteine-thiol oxidation and tyrosine nitration. We have previously demonstrated that intrinsic heme-thiolate (P450)-dependent enzymatic catalysis increases the nitration of tyrosine 430 in prostacyclin synthase and results in loss of activity which contributes to endothelial dysfunction. We here report the sensitive peroxynitrite-dependent nitration of an over-expressed and partially purified human prostacyclin synthase (3.3 μM) with an EC50 value of 5 μM. Microsomal thiols in these preparations effectively co…
Can we automate expert-based journal rankings? Analysis of the Finnish publication indicator
2020
The publication indicator of the Finnish research funding system is based on a manual ranking of scholarly publication channels. These ranks, which represent the evaluated quality of the channels, are continuously kept up to date and thoroughly reevaluated every four years by groups of nominated scholars belonging to different disciplinary panels. This expert-based decision-making process is informed by available citation-based metrics and other relevant metadata characterizing the publication channels. The purpose of this paper is to introduce various approaches that can explain the basis and evolution of the quality of publication channels, i.e., ranks. This is important for the academic …
Prosody and fluency of Finland Swedish as a second language: Investigating global parameters for automated speaking assessment
2023
This study investigates prosody and fluency of Finland Swedish as a second language (L2). The main objective is to investigate global measures of prosody and fluency as predictors of overall oral proficiency, fluency, and pronunciation ratings. We analyzed parameters related to temporal fluency, timing (based on syllable durations), and f0 change from spontaneous speech produced by 30 native and 235 non-native speakers of Finland Swedish representing proficiency levels from beginner to intermediate. We used pairwise comparisons to investigate the differences between native speech (L1) and L2 samples from different proficiency levels. To study the predictability of ratings with acoustic para…
An Overview on the Use of miRNAs as Possible Forensic Biomarkers for the Diagnosis of Traumatic Brain Injury
2023
Determining the cause of death is one of the main goals of forensic pathology. However, conditions can occur in which common approaches—external inspection, autopsy, histology, etc.—might not be conclusive. With the advancement of molecular biology, several investigative techniques have been developed over the years, and the application as approaches complementary to routine procedures has proved useful in these cases. In this context, microRNA (miRNA) profiling has attracted increasing interest due to these molecules’ ability to regulate physiological and pathological processes. The evidence of differential miRNA expression in both animal models and human samples of traumatic brain injury …
Stationary, Second Use Battery Energy Storage Systems and Their Applications: A Research Review
2021
The global demand for electricity is rising due to the increased electrification of multiple sectors of economic activity and an increased focus on sustainable consumption. Simultaneously, the share of cleaner electricity generated by transient, renewable sources such as wind and solar energy is increasing. This has made additional buffer capacities for electrical grids necessary. Battery energy storage systems have been investigated as storage solutions due to their responsiveness, efficiency, and scalability. Storage systems based on the second use of discarded electric vehicle batteries have been identified as cost-efficient and sustainable alternatives to first use battery storage syste…
Hydro-mechanical modelling of a natural slope affected by a multiple slip surface failure mechanism
2009
A coupled hydro-mechanical formulation is presented for the analysis of landslide motion during crisis episodes. The mathematical formulation is used to model a natural slope affected by a multiple slip surface failure mechanism, in which pore water pressure evolution was identified as the main cause for movement accelerations. An elasto-plastic constitutive model is adopted for the behaviour of slip surfaces. Material parameters are obtained by combining the available laboratory tests and the back analysis of some crisis episodes. After being calibrated and validated, the model is applied to improve the understanding of the physical processes involved and to predict the landslide behaviour…
Application of the Information Bottleneck method to discover user profiles in a Web store
2018
The paper deals with the problem of discovering groups of Web users with similar behavioral patterns on an e-commerce site. We introduce a novel approach to the unsupervised classification of user sessions, based on session attributes related to the user click-stream behavior, to gain insight into characteristics of various user profiles. The approach uses the agglomerative Information Bottleneck (IB) algorithm. Based on log data for a real online store, efficiency of the approach in terms of its ability to differentiate between buying and non-buying sessions was validated, indicating some possible practical applications of the our method. Experiments performed for a number of session sampl…
StartCards — A method for early-stage software startups
2023
Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s) Context: Software startups are important drivers of economy on a global scale, and have become associated with innovation and high growth. However, the overwhelming majority of startups ends in failure. Many of these startup failures ultimately stem from software engineering issues, and requirements engineering (RE) ones in particular. Despite the emphasis placed on the importance of RE activities in the startup context, many startups continue to develop software without a clear market or customer, having never had meaningful contact with their would-be customer. Objective: We develop a method aimed at early-stage startups that is intended to help s…