Virtual libraries of tissue and clinical samples: potential role of a 3-D microscope.

Our international innovative teaching group from different European Universities (De Montfort University, DMU, UK; and the Spanish University of Alcalá, University Miguel Hernández and University of San Pablo CEU), in conjunction with practicing biomedical scientists in the National Health Service (UK) and biomedical researchers, are developing two complete e-learning packages for teaching and learning medical parasitology, named DMU e-Parasitology (accessible at: http://parasitology.dmu.ac.uk), and biology and chemistry, named DMU e-Biology (accessible at: http://parasitology.dmu.ac.uk/ebiology/index.htm), respectively. Both packages will include a virtual microscope with a complete library of digitised tissue images, clinical slides and cell culture slides/mini-videos for enhancing the teaching and learning of a myriad of techniques applicable to health science undergraduate and postgraduate students. Thus, these packages include detecting human parasites, by becoming familiar with their infective structures and/or organs (e.g. eggs, cysts) and/or explore pathogenic tissues stained with traditional (e.g. haematoxylin & eosin) or more modern (e.g. immunohistochemistry) techniques. The Virtual Microscope (VM) module in the DMU e-Parasitology package is almost completed (accessible at: http://parasitology.dmu.ac.uk/learn/microscope.htm) and contains a section for the three major groups of human-pathogenic parasites (Peña-Fernández et al., 2018) [1]. Digitised slides are provided with the functionality of a microscope by using the gadget Zoomify®, and we consider that they can enhance learning, as previous studies reported in the literature have reported similar sensitivity and specificity rates for identification of parasites for both digitised and real slides. The DMU e-Biology’s VM, currently in development, will provide healthy and pathological tissue samples from a range of mammalian tissues and organs. This communication will provide a description of both virtual libraries and the process of developing them. In conjunction, we will use a three-dimensional (3D) super-resolution microscopy, 3D Cell Explorer (Nanolive, Lausanne, Switzerland), to incorporate potential 3D microscopic photographs/short videos of cells to provide students with information about the spatial arrangement and morphologies of cells that are essential for life

How we move is universal: scaling in the average shape of human activity

Human motor activity is constrained by the rhythmicity of the 24 hours circadian cycle, including the usual 12-15 hours sleep-wake cycle. However, activity fluctuations also appear over a wide range of temporal scales, from days to a few seconds, resulting from the concatenation of a myriad of individual smaller motor events. Furthermore, individuals present different propensity to wakefulness and thus to motor activity throughout the circadian cycle. Are activity fluctuations across temporal scales intrinsically different, or is there a universal description encompassing them? Is this description also universal across individuals, considering the aforementioned variability? Here we establish the presence of universality in motor activity fluctuations based on the empirical study of a month of continuous wristwatch accelerometer recordings. We study the scaling of average fluctuations across temporal scales and determine a universal law characterized by critical exponents $\alpha$, $\tau$ and $1/{\mu}$. Results are highly reminiscent of the universality described for the average shape of avalanches in systems exhibiting crackling noise. Beyond its theoretical relevance, the present results can be important for developing objective markers of healthy as well as pathological human motor behavior.Comment: Communicated to the Granada Seminar, "Physics Meets the Social Sciences: Emergent cooperative phenomena, from bacterial to human group behavior". June 14-19, 2015. La Herradura, Spai

Peptide platforms for metal ion sensing

Naturally occurring motifs have been redesigned to product fluorescent peptidyl-chemosensors that sensitively and selectively recognize Cu(II) or Fe(III). The modular nature of peptide architecture allows preparation and evaluation of potential sensors on solid supports

Antibacterial bioadhesive layer-by-layer coatings for orthopedic applications

In this study, thin LbL films were produced by combining the adhesive properties of the hyaluronic acidâ dopamine conjugate with the bioactivity and bactericidal properties of silver doped bioactive glass nanoparticles. The build-up of these films was investigated by quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring. LbL coatings were then constructed on a glass substrate for further characterization. We found that these antimicrobial bioinspired films display enhanced adhesive strength. In vitro bioactivity tests were performed by immersing them in simulated body fluid solution for 14 days where the constructed films promoted the formation of a bone-like apatite layer. From microbiological assays, it was found that coatings containing silver doped nanoparticles exhibited a remarkable antibacterial effect against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli cultures. Finally, in vitro cellular behavior tests showed enhanced cell adhesion, proliferation and viability for these antibacterial bioadhesive films. Therefore, the constructed thin films showed promising properties and evidenced great potential to be used as coatings for orthopedic implants.The authors acknowledge the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the European program FEDER/COMPETE for the financial support through project BioSeaGlue: EXPL/CTM-BIO/0646/2013 (FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER041105). This work was co-funded by ‘‘Programa Operacional Regional do Norte’’ (ON.2-O Novo Norte) under the ‘‘Quadro de Referência Estratégico Nacional’’ (QREN), through the ‘‘Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional’’ (FEDER). E. T. also thanks the FCT investigator grant (IF/01390/2014)

Fast pseudo-CT synthesis from MRI T1-weighted images using a patch-based approach

MRI-based bone segmentation is a challenging task because bone tissue and air both present low signal intensity on MR images, making it difficult to accurately delimit the bone boundaries. However, estimating bone from MRI images may allow decreasing patient ionization by removing the need of patient-specific CT acquisition in several applications. In this work, we propose a fast GPU-based pseudo-CT generation from a patient-specific MRI T1-weighted image using a group-wise patch-based approach and a limited MRI and CT atlas dictionary. For every voxel in the input MR image, we compute the similarity of the patch containing that voxel with the patches of all MR images in the database, which lie in a certain anatomical neighborhood. The pseudo-CT is obtained as a local weighted linear combination of the CT values of the corresponding patches. The algorithm was implemented in a GPU. The use of patch-based techniques allows a fast and accurate estimation of the pseudo-CT from MR T1-weighted images, with a similar accuracy as the patient-specific CT. The experimental normalized cross correlation reaches 0.9324±0.0048 for an atlas with 10 datasets. The high NCC values indicate how our method can accurately approximate the patient-specific CT. The GPU implementation led to a substantial decrease in computational time making the approach suitable for real applications