Search results for "systems"

Paving the way for synthetic biology-based bioremediation in Europe

2009

Synthetic biology (SB) has a dual definition. It is both the design and construction of new biological parts, devices and systems, and also the re‐design of existing, natural systems for useful purposes. The latter field is maybe one of the major challenges within this discipline, since the promising prospect that biological systems may be used as biomachines will certainly be exploited in the near future. Synthetic biology has challenging conceptual possibilities (Moya et al., 2009a) and impressive progress has already been made in biotechnology following SB approaches (de Lorenzo and Danchin, 2008). Much more is expected in the near future from current efforts aiming to make synthetic gen…

The Software Crisis of Synthetic Biology

2016

In fifteen years, Synthetic Biology (SB) has moved from proof-of-concept designs to several flagship achievements. Standardisation efforts are still under way, basic engineering concepts such as modularity and orthogonality are still controversial in biology, and making predictions from computer models is still unreliable. A deep characterization in the pattern of re-use of biological blocks in SB has not been attempted to date. We have compared the topological organisation of two different technological networks, one associated to a standard, large-scale software repository and the second provided by the Registry of Standard Biological Parts (RSBP). Our results strongly suggest that softwa…

Development of new food and pharmaceutical products: Nutraceuticals and food additives

2020

The market of nutraceuticals and foods elaborated with natural additives are constantly growing and leading researchers and professionals of pharmaceutical and food industry to develop new products and reconsider the formulation of processed food. However, these products can only be insert into the market after extensive and well-performed scientific studies that clarify the mechanisms by which bioactive compounds can improve health status beyond nutrition or can replace conventional food additives perceived as "unhealthy" or "unfamiliar" by consumers. Therefore, scientific evidence regarding the actual health benefits and preservation/enhancement of food attributes are the crucial step in …

2020

Hierarchy and centrality are two popular notions used to characterize the importance of entities in complex systems. Indeed, many complex systems exhibit a natural hierarchical structure, and centrality is a fundamental characteristic allowing to identify key constituents. Several measures based on various aspects of network topology have been proposed in order to quantify these concepts. While numerous studies have investigated whether centrality measures convey redundant information, how centrality and hierarchy measures are related is still an open issue. In this paper, we investigate the association between centrality and hierarchy using several correlation and similarity evaluation mea…

Did you hear? Auditory prospective memory cues are more beneficial for autistic than for non-autistic children and adolescents

2021

Item does not contain fulltext Background: The transition from primary to secondary school is particularly difficult for autistic children, a transition underpinned by an increase in prospective memory (PM) demands. Aims: To better understand PM in autistic children of the relevant age range and its underlying processes, the current study investigated the impact of cue salience (distinctiveness) on PM in autistic and non-autistic children and adolescents. The study was unique in manipulating the visual and auditory salience of PM cues. Salient cues are assumed to put lower demands on executive control resources as compared to cues that blend in with the ongoing activity. Methods and procedu…

EMERGENCE: WHAT DOES IT MEAN AND HOW IS IT RELEVANT TO COMPUTER ENGINEERING?

2018

Comunicación política y discursos sobre el poder

2017

Se analizan los principales enfoques teoricos vinculados con el estudio de la comunicacion politica, entendida como la interaccion entre partidos politicos, medios de comunicacion y ciudadanos. Se resumen en dos grandes corrientes: por un lado, los estudios que ponen el enfasis en la mediatizacion de la politica, esto es, la adecuacion de los mensajes politicos al discurso, estrategias, intereses y logica de los medios de comunicacion. Por otro, las escuelas y enfoques que advierten de la dependencia de los medios de comunicacion respecto de actores externos, asi como de su perdida de influencia y peso especifico en los ultimos anos.

How Long Did You Look At Me? The Influence of Gaze Direction on Perceived Duration and Temporal Sensitivity.

2016

Faces that exhibit emotionally negative expressions in mutual gaze have been shown to induce a dilation of perceived duration. The influence of gaze by itself on duration judgments, however, has rarely been investigated. We argue for a social interaction hypothesis, according to which humans should be highly accurate and precise (sensitive) when processing the temporal dynamics of mutual gaze. In three experiments, we investigated whether the direction of observed gaze affects perceived duration and temporal sensitivity. In Experiment 1, subjects did indeed estimate the duration of direct gaze more accurately as compared to the duration of averted gaze. In Experiments 2 and 3, subjects had…

Methodological Approach for Identifying Mechanisms in ICT4D: A Critical Realism Perspective

2017

Part 4: Social Mechanisms of ICT-Enabled Development; International audience; The ontological questions ‘What is ICT?’ and ‘What is development?’ are described and documented in literature. Similarly, methodological approaches for understanding how ICT leads to development or for measuring the impact of ICT are described. However, explaining ‘why’ ICT works or not in the contexts of developing countries needs further investigation. We propose a critical realism based methodological approach for answering the above mentioned ‘why’-question. The core of a critical realism based approach is to identify the underlying mechanism(s) that may explain a phenomenon of why ICT leads to development. W…

Vigilar y castigar: el papel de militares, policías y guardias civiles en la comunicación de la crisis del Covid-19 en España

2020

Se analiza el papel de las Fuerzas Armadas y las Fuerzas y Cuerpos de Seguridad del Estado españolas como actores y como recurso discursivo en la comunicación del Gobierno español durante la crisis del Covid-19. El análisis abarca dos cuestiones complementarias. Por una parte, la presencia de militares, policías y guardias civiles en los medios de comunicación y en las ruedas de prensa diarias del Comité de Gestión Técnica de la crisis del coronavirus desde el Gobierno español. Por otra parte, el discurso en Twitter de los principales protagonistas políticos de la crisis en España: los líderes de los cinco partidos de ámbito nacional con grupo parlamentario (PSOE, PP, Vox, Unidas Podemos y …