Search results for "Computer Science Application"

Reactome pathway analysis: a high-performance in-memory approach

2016

Reactome aims to provide bioinformatics tools for visualisation, interpretation and analysis of pathway knowledge to support basic research, genome analysis, modelling, systems biology and education. Pathway analysis methods have a broad range of applications in physiological and biomedical research; one of the main problems, from the analysis methods performance point of view, is the constantly increasing size of the data samples. Here, we present a new high-performance in-memory implementation of the well-established over-representation analysis method. To achieve the target, the over-representation analysis method is divided in four different steps and, for each of them, specific data st…

Alterations in Tau Protein Level and Phosphorylation State in the Brain of the Autistic-Like Rats Induced by Prenatal Exposure to Valproic Acid

2021

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by deficient social interaction and communication besides repetitive, stereotyped behaviours. A characteristic feature of ASD is altered dendritic spine density and morphology associated with synaptic plasticity disturbances. Since microtubules (MTs) regulate dendritic spine morphology and play an important role in spine development and plasticity the aim of the present study was to investigate the alterations in the content of neuronal α/β-tubulin and Tau protein level as well as phosphorylation state in the valproic acid (VPA)-induced rat model of autism. Our results indicated that maternal exposure to VPA indu…

A framework for data-driven adaptive GUI generation based on DICOM

2018

Computer applications for diagnostic medical imaging provide generally a wide range of tools to support physicians in their daily diagnosis activities. Unfortunately, some functionalities are specialized for specific diseases or imaging modalities, while other ones are useless for the images under investigation. Nevertheless, the corresponding Graphical User Interface (GUI) widgets are still present on the screen reducing the image visualization area. As a consequence, the physician may be affected by cognitive overload and visual stress causing a degradation of performances, mainly due to unuseful widgets. In clinical environments, a GUI must represent a sequence of steps for image investi…

2021

Mutations in TSC1 or TSC2 genes are linked to alterations in neuronal function which ultimately lead to the development of a complex neurological phenotype. Here we review current research on the effects that reduction in TSC1 or TSC2 can produce on the developing neural network. A crucial feature of the disease pathophysiology appears to be an early deviation from typical neurodevelopment, in the form of structural abnormalities. Epileptic seizures are one of the primary early manifestation of the disease in the CNS, followed by intellectual deficits and autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Research using mouse models suggests that morphological brain alterations might arise from the interacti…

2020

Skeletal muscle injuries in competitive sports cause lengthy absences of athletes from tournaments. This is of tremendous competitive and economic relevance for both the athletes and their respective clubs. Therapy for structural muscle lesions aims to promote regeneration and fast-track return-to-play. A common clinical treatment strategy for muscle injuries is the intramuscular injection of calf blood compound and the homeopathic drug, Tr14. Although the combination of these two agents was reported to reduce recovery time, the regulatory mechanism whereby this occurs remains unknown. In this in vivo study, we selected a rat model of mechanical muscle injury to investigate the effect of th…

In Situ Representations and Access Consciousness in Neural Blackboard or Workspace Architectures

2018

Phenomenal theories of consciousness assert that consciousness is based on specific neural correlates in the brain, which can be separated from all cognitive functions we can perform. If so, the search for robot consciousness seems to be doomed. By contrast, theories of functional or access consciousness assert that consciousness can be studied only with forms of cognitive access, given by cognitive processes. Consequently, consciousness and cognitive access cannot be fully dissociated. Here, the global features of cognitive access of consciousness are discussed based on neural blackboard or (global) workspace architectures, combined with content addressable or "in situ" representations as …

Receptor Activator of Nuclear Factor Kappa B (RANK) and Clinicopathological Variables in Endometrial Cancer: A Study at Protein and Gene Level

2018

The system integrated by the receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa B (RANK) and its ligand, RANKL, modulates the role of hormones in the genesis and progression of breast tumors. We investigated whether the expression of RANK was related with clinicopathological features of primary endometrial tumors. Immunohistochemistry was used in an endometrial cancer tissue array containing samples from 36 tumors. The amount of RANK mRNA was examined in a tissue scan cDNA array containing cDNA from 40 tumors. Normal endometrium was examined for comparison. Immunohistochemical analyses showed that RANK expression was higher in malignant than in normal endometrium (p &lt

Strategies for structuring interdisciplinary education in Systems Biology: an European perspective

2016

Systems Biology is an approach to biology and medicine that has the potential to lead to a better understanding of how biological properties emerge from the interaction of genes, proteins, molecules, cells and organisms. The approach aims at elucidating how these interactions govern biological function by employing experimental data, mathematical models and computational simulations. As Systems Biology is inherently multidisciplinary, education within this field meets numerous hurdles including departmental barriers, availability of all required expertise locally, appropriate teaching material and example curricula. As university education at the Bachelor’s level is traditionally built upon…

Informational and linguistic analysis of large genomic sequence collections via efficient Hadoop cluster algorithms

2018

Abstract Motivation Information theoretic and compositional/linguistic analysis of genomes have a central role in bioinformatics, even more so since the associated methodologies are becoming very valuable also for epigenomic and meta-genomic studies. The kernel of those methods is based on the collection of k-mer statistics, i.e. how many times each k-mer in {A,C,G,T}k occurs in a DNA sequence. Although this problem is computationally very simple and efficiently solvable on a conventional computer, the sheer amount of data available now in applications demands to resort to parallel and distributed computing. Indeed, those type of algorithms have been developed to collect k-mer statistics in…

miRNA as New Regulatory Mechanism of Estrogen Vascular Action

2018

The beneficial effects of estrogen on the cardiovascular system have been reported extensively. In fact, the incidence of cardiovascular diseases in women is lower than in age-matched men during their fertile stage of life, a benefit that disappears after menopause. These sex-related differences point to sexual hormones, mainly estrogen, as possible cardiovascular protective factors. The regulation of vascular function by estrogen is mainly related to the maintenance of normal endothelial function and is mediated by both direct and indirect gene transcription through the activity of specific estrogen receptors. Some of these mechanisms are known, but many remain to be elucidated. In recent …