University of Lisbon

About: University of Lisbon is a education organization based out in Lisbon, Lisboa, Portugal. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 19122 authors who have published 48503 publications receiving 1102623 citations. The organization is also known as: Universidade de Lisboa & Lisbon University.

An overview of ecological status, vulnerability and future perspectives of European large shallow, semi-enclosed coastal systems, lagoons and transitional waters

Abstract: The paper gives an overview of some of the large, shallow, semi-enclosed coastal systems (SECS) in Europe, These SECS are important both from the ecological and the economic perspective (socio-ecological systems) and provide many valuable ecosystem goods and services. Although some of the systems are transitional waters under the Water Framework Directive, this is not the case for all of the systems. The paper adopts a Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response approach to analyse the ecological status, vulnerability and future perspectives of these systems in the context of global change.

Quantiles for counts

Abstract: This article studies the estimation of conditional quantiles of counts Given the discreteness of the data, some smoothness must be artificially imposed on the problem We show that it is possible to smooth the data in a way that allows inference to be performed using standard quantile regression techniques The performance and implementation of the estimators are illustrated by simulations and an application

Activation of PI3K Is Indispensable for Interleukin 7–mediated Viability, Proliferation, Glucose Use, and Growth of T Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Cells

Abstract: Interleukin (IL)-7 is essential for normal T cell development. Previously, we have shown that IL-7 increases viability and proliferation of T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) cells by up-regulating Bcl-2 and down-regulating the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p27kip1. Here, we examined the signaling pathways via which IL-7 mediates these effects. We investigated mitogen-activated protein kinase (MEK)–extracellular signal-regulated kinase (Erk) and phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K)–Akt (protein kinase B) pathways, which have active roles in T cell expansion and have been implicated in tumorigenesis. IL-7 induced activation of the MEK–Erk pathway in T-ALL cells; however, inhibition of the MEK–Erk pathway by the use of the cell-permeable inhibitor PD98059, did not affect IL-7–mediated viability or cell cycle progression of leukemic cells. IL-7 induced PI3K-dependent phosphorylation of Akt and its downstream targets GSK-3, FOXO1, and FOXO3a. PI3K activation was mandatory for IL-7–mediated Bcl-2 up-regulation, p27kip1 down-regulation, Rb hyperphosphorylation, and consequent viability and cell cycle progression of T-ALL cells. PI3K signaling was also required for cell size increase, up-regulation of CD71, expression of the glucose transporter Glut1, uptake of glucose, and maintenance of mitochondrial integrity. Our results implicate PI3K as a major effector of IL-7–induced viability, metabolic activation, growth and proliferation of T-ALL cells, and suggest that PI3K and its downstream effectors may represent molecular targets for therapeutic intervention in T-ALL.

A Byzantine Fault-Tolerant Ordering Service for the Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain Platform

Abstract: Hyperledger Fabric is a flexible operating system for permissioned blockchains designed for business applications beyond the basic digital coin addressed by Bitcoin and other existing networks. A key property of this system is its extensibility, and in particular the support for multiple ordering services for building the blockchain. However, version 1 was launched in 2017 without an implementation of a Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) ordering service. To overcome this limitation, we designed, implemented, and evaluated a BFT ordering service for this system on top of the BFT-SMART state machine replication/consensus library, with optimizations for wide-area deployment. Our results show that our ordering service can process up to ten thousand transactions per second and write a transaction irrevocably in the blockchain in half a second, even with peers spread across different continents.

Clues for detecting irony in user-generated contents: oh...!! it's "so easy" ;-)

Abstract: We investigate the accuracy of a set of surface patterns in identifying ironic sentences in comments submitted by users to an on-line newspaper. The initial focus is on identifying irony in sentences containing positive predicates since these sentences are more exposed to irony, making their true polarity harder to recognize. We show that it is possible to find ironic sentences with relatively high precision (from 45% to 85%) by exploring certain oral or gestural clues in user comments, such as emoticons, onomatopoeic expressions for laughter, heavy punctuation marks, quotation marks and positive interjections. We also demonstrate that clues based on deeper linguistic information are relatively inefficient in capturing irony in user-generated content, which points to the need for exploring additional types of oral clues.