Valorization of industrial low-value side-streams are of great interest, contributing to boosts in the circular economy. In this context, lignin side-streams of the pulp and paper industry were ...oxypropylated to produce biobased polyols and tested in the synthesis of rigid polyurethane (RPU) foams. E. globulus lignins, namely a lignin isolated from an industrial Kraft black liquor and depolymerized lignins obtained as by-products of an oxidation process, were used. RPU foams, synthesized with 100% lignin-based polyols and using a 1.1 NCO/OH ratio, were characterized concerning apparent density, morphology, thermal conductivity, thermal stability, and heat release rate (HRR). Foams containing the lignin-based polyols presented densities varying from 44.7 to 112.2 kg/m3 and thermal conductivity in the range of 37.2–49.0 mW/mK. For the reference foam (sample produced with 100% wt. Daltofoam TP 32015 polyol), values of 70.9 kg/m3 and 41.1 mW/mK were obtained, respectively. The achieved results point out the viability of using the generated lignin-based polyols at 100% content in RPU foams, mainly when depolymerized lignins are used. Moreover, fire retardancy was favored when the lignin-based polyols were introduced. The proposed strategies can contribute to establishing the integrated pulp and paper biorefinery concept where material synthesis (polyols and RPU foams) can be combined with chemical production (vanillin and syringaldehyde).
This article provides a comprehensive survey on pioneer and state-of-the-art 3D scene geometry estimation methodologies based on single, two, or multiple images captured under omnidirectional optics. ...We first revisit the basic concepts of the spherical camera model and review the most common acquisition technologies and representation formats suitable for omnidirectional (also called 360°, spherical or panoramic) images and videos. We then survey monocular layout and depth inference approaches, highlighting the recent advances in learning-based solutions suited for spherical data. The classical stereo matching is then revised on the spherical domain, where methodologies for detecting and describing sparse and dense features become crucial. The stereo matching concepts are then extrapolated for multiple view camera setups, categorizing them among light fields, multi-view stereo, and structure from motion (or visual simultaneous localization and mapping). We also compile and discuss commonly adopted datasets and figures of merit indicated for each purpose and list recent results for completeness. We conclude this article by pointing out current and future trends.
Muslims have been shaping the Americas and the Caribbean for
more than five hundred years, yet this interplay is frequently
overlooked or misconstrued. Brimming with revelations that
synthesize area ...and ethnic studies, Crescent over Another
Horizon presents a portrait of Islam's unity as it evolved
through plural formulations of identity, power, and belonging.
Offering a Latino American perspective on a wider Islamic world,
the editors overturn the conventional perception of Muslim
communities in the New World, arguing that their characterization
as "minorities" obscures the interplay of ethnicity and religion
that continues to foster transnational ties.
Bringing together studies of Iberian colonists, enslaved
Africans, indentured South Asians, migrant Arabs, and Latino and
Latin American converts, the volume captures the power-laden
processes at work in religious conversion or resistance. Throughout
each analysis-spanning times of inquisition, conquest, repressive
nationalism, and anti-terror security protocols-the authors offer
innovative frameworks to probe the ways in which racialized Islam
has facilitated the building of new national identities while
fostering a double-edged marginalization. The subjects of the
essays transition from imperialism (with studies of
morisco converts to Christianity, West African slave
uprisings, and Muslim and Hindu South Asian indentured laborers in
Dutch Suriname) to the contemporary Muslim presence in Argentina,
Brazil, Mexico, and Trinidad, completed by a timely examination of
the United States, including Muslim communities in "Hispanicized"
South Florida and the agency of Latina conversion. The result is a
fresh perspective that opens new horizons for a vibrant range of
fields.
The neurotrophic hypothesis postulates that mood disorders such as bipolar disorder (BD) are associated with a lower expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). However, its role in ...peripheral blood as a biomarker of disease activity and of stage for BD, transcending pathophysiology, is still disputed. In the last few years an increasing number of clinical studies assessing BDNF in serum and plasma have been published. Therefore, it is now possible to analyse the association between BDNF levels and the severity of affective symptoms in BD as well as the effects of acute drug treatment of mood episodes on BDNF levels.
We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of all studies on serum and plasma BDNF levels in bipolar disorder.
Through a series of meta-analyses including a total of 52 studies with 6,481 participants, we show that, compared to healthy controls, peripheral BDNF levels are reduced to the same extent in manic (Hedges' g = -0.57, P = 0.010) and depressive (Hedges' g = -0.93, P = 0.001) episodes, while BDNF levels are not significantly altered in euthymia. In meta-regression analyses, BDNF levels additionally negatively correlate with the severity of both manic and depressive symptoms. We found no evidence for a significant impact of illness duration on BDNF levels. In addition, in plasma, but not serum, peripheral BDNF levels increase after the successful treatment of an acute mania episode, but not of a depressive one.
In summary, our data suggest that peripheral BDNF levels, more clearly in plasma than in serum, is a potential biomarker of disease activity in BD, but not a biomarker of stage. We suggest that peripheral BDNF may, in future, be used as a part of a blood protein composite measure to assess disease activity in BD.
Ethnographies of Islam Dupret, Baudouin; Pierret, Thomas; Pinto, Paulo G ...
07/2012
eBook, Book
Odprti dostop
Explores the impact of the ethnographic method on the representation of Islam in anthropology.This comparative approach to the various uses of the ethnographic method in research about Islam in ...anthropology and other social sciences is particularly relevant in the current climate. Political discourses and stereotypical media portrayals of Islam as a monolithic civilisation have prevented the emergence of cultural pluralism and individual freedom. Such discourses are countered by the contributors who show the diversity and plurality of Muslim societies and promote a reflection on how the ethnographic method allows the description, representation and analysis of the social and cultural complexity of Muslim societies in the discourse of anthropology.Key Features: shows the benefit of using ethnography as a method to engage with and relate to specific empirical realitiesincludes case studies on rituals and symbols in Syria, Tunisia, Damascus, Algeria, Britain, Pakistan, Brazil and Lebanoncovers practices such as veiling, students' religious practices, charitable activities, law, and scholarship in Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Yemen
Methylmercury (MeHg) is highly toxic to the human brain. Although much is known about MeHg neurotoxic effects, less is known about how chronic MeHg affects hippocampal amino acids and other ...neurochemical markers in adult mice. In this study, we evaluated the MeHg effects on systemic lipids and inflammation, hippocampal oxidative stress, amino acid levels, neuroinflammation, and behavior in adult male mice. Challenged mice received MeHg in drinking water (2 mg/L) for 30 days. We assessed weight gain, total plasma cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), endotoxin, and TNF levels. Hippocampal myeloperoxidase (MPO), malondialdehyde (MDA), acetylcholinesterase (AChE), amino acid levels, and cytokine transcripts were evaluated. Mice underwent open field, object recognition, Y, and Barnes maze tests. MeHg-intoxicated mice had higher weight gain and increased the TG and TC plasma levels. Elevated circulating TNF and LPS confirmed systemic inflammation. Higher levels of MPO and MDA and a reduction in IL-4 transcripts were found in the hippocampus. MeHg-intoxication led to increased GABA and glycine, reduced hippocampal taurine levels, delayed acquisition in the Barnes maze, and poor locomotor activity. No significant changes were found in AChE activity and object recognition. Altogether, our findings highlight chronic MeHg-induced effects that may have long-term mental health consequences in prolonged exposed human populations.
Based fieldwork in Aleppo between 1999 and 2010, this article analyzes how secrecy and revelation, two forms of codification, maintenance and transmission of religious knowledge central to the ...mystical tradition of Sufism in contemporary Syria were constructed and enacted in the process of initiation (
tarbiyya
) into the mystical path in two Sufi
zawiyas
(ritual lodges) in pre-war Aleppo. Access to the unseen spheres of divine reality through initiation created both structures of charismatic power in the Sufi communities and religious subjectivities that empowered its holders as moral agents in the pre-civil war Syrian public sphere. I argue that Sufi practices of initiation that gradually revealed the divine reality to students while simultaneously also enhanced the mystery of this reality enabled Sufi practitioners to cope with the opacity of power and contradictions of everyday life of late-Ba‘thist modernity in Syria.
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has drastically overwhelmed most countries in the last two years, and image-based approaches using computerized tomography (CT) have been used to identify ...pulmonary infections. Recent methods based on deep learning either require time-consuming per-slice annotations (2D) or are highly data- and hardware-demanding (3D). This work proposes a novel omnidirectional 2.5D representation of volumetric chest CTs that allows exploring efficient 2D deep learning architectures while requiring volume-level annotations only. Our learning approach uses a siamese feature extraction backbone applied to each lung. It combines these features into a classification head that explores a novel combination of Squeeze-and-Excite strategies with Class Activation Maps. We experimented with public and in-house datasets and compared our results with state-of-the-art techniques. Our analyses show that our method provides better or comparable prediction quality and accurately distinguishes COVID-19 infections from other kinds of pneumonia and healthy lungs.
•We propose a 2.5D omnidirectional CT lung representation for COVID-19 classification.•We combine Squeeze-and-Excite with Class Activation Maps for explainability.•We explore the efficiency of 2D processing while requiring patient-level annotations.•We obtain state-of-the-art results in binary and ternary COVID-19 diagnosis from CTs.
Computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing (CAD-CAM) has enhanced the physicomechanical stability of ceramics. However, various factors in the oral cavity may impair the longevity of ...restorations by negatively affecting their properties. Appropriate surface treatments such as glaze application or mechanical polishing are necessary to diminish these effects.
The purpose of this in vitro study was to evaluate the influence of common beverages and toothbrushing on the surface roughness, microhardness, and color stainability of a vitreous CAD-CAM lithium disilicate ceramic with a glazed or mechanically polished surface.
Specimens (N=160) were divided into 2 groups according to the surface treatment method: polishing with abrasive disks or glaze application. Each group was subdivided (n=8) according to the immersion solution and toothbrushing: distilled water and distilled water plus brushing; coffee and coffee plus brushing; black tea and black tea plus brushing; red wine and red wine plus brushing; and cola and cola plus brushing. Before and after simulating a 5-year period of immersion and toothbrushing, a contact profilometer and a Vickers microhardness tester were used to measure the surface roughness and microhardness. CIELab parameters were assessed by using a portable spectrophotometer, and color differences were calculated by using the CIEDE2000 formula (ΔE00). Data were compared by using 3-way ANOVA/Bonferroni test for post hoc analysis (α=.05).
Surface roughness increased irrespective of solution (P=.763), being influenced by surface treatment (P<.001), with the glazed groups presenting higher values. Microhardness decrease was influenced by solutions (P<.038) and surface treatment (P<.001), and glazing was associated with lower values. Irrespective of the surface treatment, color stainability was influenced by solutions (P<.001), with ΔE00 values for red wine being above the perceptibility threshold (ΔE00>1.30). No influence of toothbrushing was found for any parameter (P>.05).
Despite its excellent mechanical properties, CAD-CAM lithium disilicate ceramic degraded after exposure to commonly consumed beverages. Irrespective of surface treatment, beverages decreased microhardness and caused color changes. Surface roughness increased, showing higher variation for glazed groups. Toothbrushing was unable to potentiate or diminish the observed effects. In general, the results showed that proper mechanical polishing can produce a surface with desirable properties.
This work identifies the cause of sticking of granules in an industrial process of tableting. Retrospective multivariate statistical analysis of industrial scale batches' records (PLS, properties and ...manufacturing conditions of granules and tablets) identified the air flow rate in both granulation and drying operations as the critical parameter impacting on sticking. Scaling down the manufacture of tablets to the laboratory scale has allowed the evaluation of the granules' behaviour, that have deformed and fragmented (main mechanism), while converting into tablets. Fragments of granules with high water content in their cores (>2.20%, confirmed by tomography) promoted the sticking of tablets to both dies and punches. In conclusion, the combination of a retrospective analysis of batch records, combined with complementary analysis in the laboratory enabled the identification of the cause of sticking with an increase on manufacture yield from ca 78% in many batches up to >98% for all batches.
Display omitted
•Re-evaluation of medicines that have been granted a valid marketing authorization.•Complementary mechanistic analysis to population analysis of data.•Computational model of the yield of production based on critical process attributes.•Structures of granules clarified by computational tomographic analysis.
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