scholarly journals Building A Biofoundry

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maciej B Holowko ◽  
Emma K Frow ◽  
Janet C Reid ◽  
Michelle Rourke ◽  
Claudia E Vickers

Abstract A biofoundry provides automation and analytics infrastructure to support the engineering of biological systems. It allows scientists to perform synthetic biology and aligned experimentation on a high-throughput scale, massively increasing the solution space that can be examined for any given problem or question. However, establishing a biofoundry is a challenging undertaking, with numerous technical and operational considerations that must be addressed. Using collated learnings, here we outline several considerations that should be addressed prior to and during establishment. These include drivers for establishment, institutional models, funding and revenue models, personnel, hardware and software, data management, interoperability, client engagement, and biosecurity issues. The high cost of establishment and operation means that developing a long-term business model for biofoundry sustainability in the context of funding frameworks, actual and potential client base, and costing structure is critical. Moreover, since biofoundries are leading a conceptual shift in experimental design for bioengineering, sustained outreach and engagement with the research community is needed to grow the client base. Recognition of the significant, long-term financial investment required and an understanding of the complexities of operationalization is critical for a sustainable biofoundry venture. To ensure state-of-the-art technology is integrated into planning, extensive engagement with existing facilities and community groups, such as the Global Biofoundries Alliance, is recommended.

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 1915-1960 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolf Brázdil ◽  
Andrea Kiss ◽  
Jürg Luterbacher ◽  
David J. Nash ◽  
Ladislava Řezníčková

Abstract. The use of documentary evidence to investigate past climatic trends and events has become a recognised approach in recent decades. This contribution presents the state of the art in its application to droughts. The range of documentary evidence is very wide, including general annals, chronicles, memoirs and diaries kept by missionaries, travellers and those specifically interested in the weather; records kept by administrators tasked with keeping accounts and other financial and economic records; legal-administrative evidence; religious sources; letters; songs; newspapers and journals; pictographic evidence; chronograms; epigraphic evidence; early instrumental observations; society commentaries; and compilations and books. These are available from many parts of the world. This variety of documentary information is evaluated with respect to the reconstruction of hydroclimatic conditions (precipitation, drought frequency and drought indices). Documentary-based drought reconstructions are then addressed in terms of long-term spatio-temporal fluctuations, major drought events, relationships with external forcing and large-scale climate drivers, socio-economic impacts and human responses. Documentary-based drought series are also considered from the viewpoint of spatio-temporal variability for certain continents, and their employment together with hydroclimate reconstructions from other proxies (in particular tree rings) is discussed. Finally, conclusions are drawn, and challenges for the future use of documentary evidence in the study of droughts are presented.


Biomedicines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 844
Author(s):  
Armando Tripodi

Lupus anticoagulant (LA) is one of the three laboratory parameters (the others being antibodies to either cardiolipin or β2-glycoprotein I) which defines the rare but potentially devastating condition known as antiphospholipid syndrome (APS). Testing for LA is a challenging task for the clinical laboratory because specific tests for its detection are not available. However, proper LA detection is paramount for patients’ management, as its persistent positivity in the presence of (previous or current) thrombotic events, candidate for long term anticoagulation. Guidelines for LA detection have been established and updated over the last two decades. Implementation of these guidelines across laboratories and participation to external quality assessment schemes are required to help standardize the diagnostic procedures and help clinicians for appropriate management of APS. This article aims to review the current state of the art and the challenges that clinical laboratories incur in the detection of LA.


Author(s):  
Jose A. Gallud ◽  
Monica Carreño ◽  
Ricardo Tesoriero ◽  
Andrés Sandoval ◽  
María D. Lozano ◽  
...  

AbstractTechnology-based education of children with special needs has become the focus of many research works in recent years. The wide range of different disabilities that are encompassed by the term “special needs”, together with the educational requirements of the children affected, represent an enormous multidisciplinary challenge for the research community. In this article, we present a systematic literature review of technology-enhanced and game-based learning systems and methods applied on children with special needs. The article analyzes the state-of-the-art of the research in this field by selecting a group of primary studies and answering a set of research questions. Although there are some previous systematic reviews, it is still not clear what the best tools, games or academic subjects (with technology-enhanced, game-based learning) are, out of those that have obtained good results with children with special needs. The 18 articles selected (carefully filtered out of 614 contributions) have been used to reveal the most frequent disabilities, the different technologies used in the prototypes, the number of learning subjects, and the kind of learning games used. The article also summarizes research opportunities identified in the primary studies.


2016 ◽  
Vol 138 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi Ren ◽  
Alparslan Emrah Bayrak ◽  
Panos Y. Papalambros

We compare the performance of human players against that of the efficient global optimization (EGO) algorithm for an NP-complete powertrain design and control problem. Specifically, we cast this optimization problem as an online competition and received 2391 game plays by 124 anonymous players during the first month from launch. We found that while only a small portion of human players can outperform the algorithm in the long term, players tend to formulate good heuristics early on that can be used to constrain the solution space. Such constraining of the search enhances algorithm efficiency, even for different game settings. These findings indicate that human-assisted computational searches are promising in solving comprehensible yet computationally hard optimal design and control problems, when human players can outperform the algorithm in a short term.


Author(s):  
Marcos Sanchez Sanchez ◽  
John Iliff

<p>This paper describes the key elements from early planning to completion of a new bridge over the River Barrow which is part of the New Ross bypass in the south of Ireland. The structure has a total length of 887m, with a span arrangement of 36-45-95-230-230-95-70-50-36m. The two central twin spans are the longest of its kind in the world (extrados with a full concrete deck). The bridge carries a dual carriageway with a cable arrangement consisting of a single plane of cables located in the central axis of the deck. The design and construction focused in providing a structure with long term durability, resilience, and a robust approach to design scenarios using the Eurocodes and state of the art analysis techniques, including extreme events such as fire and ship impact<i>.</i></p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1821) ◽  
pp. 20190765 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Pezzulo ◽  
Joshua LaPalme ◽  
Fallon Durant ◽  
Michael Levin

Nervous systems’ computational abilities are an evolutionary innovation, specializing and speed-optimizing ancient biophysical dynamics. Bioelectric signalling originated in cells' communication with the outside world and with each other, enabling cooperation towards adaptive construction and repair of multicellular bodies. Here, we review the emerging field of developmental bioelectricity, which links the field of basal cognition to state-of-the-art questions in regenerative medicine, synthetic bioengineering and even artificial intelligence. One of the predictions of this view is that regeneration and regulative development can restore correct large-scale anatomies from diverse starting states because, like the brain, they exploit bioelectric encoding of distributed goal states—in this case, pattern memories. We propose a new interpretation of recent stochastic regenerative phenotypes in planaria, by appealing to computational models of memory representation and processing in the brain. Moreover, we discuss novel findings showing that bioelectric changes induced in planaria can be stored in tissue for over a week, thus revealing that somatic bioelectric circuits in vivo can implement a long-term, re-writable memory medium. A consideration of the mechanisms, evolution and functionality of basal cognition makes novel predictions and provides an integrative perspective on the evolution, physiology and biomedicine of information processing in vivo . This article is part of the theme issue ‘Basal cognition: multicellularity, neurons and the cognitive lens’.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Gesoon j.k Al-Abass ◽  
Huda R. ALkifaey

"Internet of things (IoT) domain targets human with smart resolutions through the connection of “M2M” in all over the world, effectively. It was difficult to ignore domain importance field of IoT with the new deployment of applications such as smartphone in recent days. The most important layer in architecture of IoT is network layer, because of various systems (perform of cloud computing, switching, hub, gateway, so on), different technologies of connection (Long-Term Evolution (LTE), WIFI, Bluetooth, etc.) gathered in layer. Network layers should transfer the information from or to various applications/objects, via gateways/interfaces between networks that are heterogeneous, therefore utilizing different connection technologies, protocols. Recent work highlighted IoT technologies state-of-the-art utilized in architectures of IoT, some variations among them in addition to the applications of them in life."


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cedric Twardzik ◽  
Mathilde Vergnolle ◽  
Anthony Sladen ◽  
Louisa L. H. Tsang

Abstract. It is well-established that the post-seismic slip results from the combined contribution of seismic slip and aseismic slip. However, the partitioning between these two modes of slip remains unclear due to the difficulty to infer detailed and robust descriptions of how both evolve in space and time. This is particularly true just after a mainshock when both processes are expected to be the strongest. Using state-of-the-art sub-daily processing of GNSS data, along with dense catalogs of aftershocks obtained from template-matching techniques, we unravel the spatiotemporal evolution of post-seismic slip and aftershocks over the first 12 hours following the 2015 Mw8.3 Illapel, Chile, earthquake. We show that the very early post-seismic activity occurs over two regions with distinct behaviors. To the north, post-seismic slip appears to be purely aseismic and precedes the occurrence of late aftershocks. To the south, aftershocks are the primary cause of the post-seismic slip. We suggest that this difference in behavior could be inferred only few hours after the mainshock, and thus could contribute to a more data-driven forecasts of long-term aftershocks.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (23) ◽  
pp. 11344
Author(s):  
Wei Ke ◽  
Ka-Hou Chan

Paragraph-based datasets are hard to analyze by a simple RNN, because a long sequence always contains lengthy problems of long-term dependencies. In this work, we propose a Multilayer Content-Adaptive Recurrent Unit (CARU) network for paragraph information extraction. In addition, we present a type of CNN-based model as an extractor to explore and capture useful features in the hidden state, which represent the content of the entire paragraph. In particular, we introduce the Chebyshev pooling to connect to the end of the CNN-based extractor instead of using the maximum pooling. This can project the features into a probability distribution so as to provide an interpretable evaluation for the final analysis. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach, being compared to the state-of-the-art models.


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