Introduction The concept of “weekend effect”, that is, substandard healthcare during weekends, ha... more Introduction The concept of “weekend effect”, that is, substandard healthcare during weekends, has never been fully demonstrated, and the different outcomes of emergency surgical patients admitted during weekends may be due to different conditions at admission and/or different therapeutic approaches. Aim of this international audit was to identify any change of pattern of emergency surgical admissions and treatments during weekends. Furthermore, we aimed at investigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the alleged “weekend effect”. Methods The database of the CovidICE-International Study was interrogated, and 6263 patients were selected for analysis. Non-trauma, 18+ yo patients admitted to 45 emergency surgery units in Europe in the months of March–April 2019 and March–April 2020 were included. Demographic and clinical data were anonymised by the referring centre and centrally collected and analysed with a statistical package. This study was endorsed by the Association of Ita...
... Analysis of the Portuguese West Coast Morphology and Morphodynamics Correlation. A GIS Tool f... more ... Analysis of the Portuguese West Coast Morphology and Morphodynamics Correlation. A GIS Tool for Coastal Erosion Management. Artigo em Livro de Actas de Conferência Internacional. Autores: Joaquim Barbosa Fernando Veloso Gomes Francisco Taveira Pinto. ...
ABSTRACTPhytosanitary regulations and the provision of plant health certificates still rely mainl... more ABSTRACTPhytosanitary regulations and the provision of plant health certificates still rely mainly on long and laborious culture-based methods of diagnosis, which are frequently inconclusive. DNA-based methods of detection can circumvent many of the limitations of currently used screening methods, allowing a fast and accurate monitoring of samples. The genusXanthomonasincludes 13 phytopathogenic quarantine organisms for which improved methods of diagnosis are needed. In this work, we propose 21 newXanthomonas-specific molecular markers, within loci coding forXanthomonas-specific protein domains, useful for DNA-based methods of identification of xanthomonads. The specificity of these markers was assessed by a dot blot hybridization array using 23 non-Xanthomonasspecies, mostly soil dwelling and/or phytopathogens for the same host plants. In addition, the validation of these markers on 15Xanthomonasspp. suggested species-specific hybridization patterns, which allowed discrimination am...
ABSTRACT Ralstonia solanacearum (Rs) is a quarantine phytopathogenic bacterium accountable for he... more ABSTRACT Ralstonia solanacearum (Rs) is a quarantine phytopathogenic bacterium accountable for heavy economic losses worldwide. Monitoring and eradication programs required for this pathogen are dependent on the availability of time- and cost-efficient detection and typing methods. However, members of the Rs species complex are characterized by a high phenotypic and genetic diversity, which requires improved diagnostics methods.The currently available full genome sequences of several Rs strains allow for the selection of novel specific DNA markers using comparative genomics tools. In this work, seventeen novel markers were selected based on Rs-specific protein domains and thoroughly validated for specificity and stability, both in silico and using “wet lab” assays. PCR- and hybridization-based validation assays revealed that the DNA regions selected as markers were unevenly distributed amongst the tested strains, with nine markers present throughout the species complex. The distribution of the remaining eight markers was highly variable between the different analyzed strains and allowed to obtain strain-specific dot blot hybridization patterns particularly informative for typing. The average probability value of each strain being positive for each of the seventeen markers was calculated by an algorithm and used to obtain a dendrogram representing the hierarchical clustering analysis of Rs, according to the similarity of their hybridization patterns. We believe that this method can be a robust contribution for the straightforward genotyping of members from the Rs species complex. Furthermore, this quantitative hybridization approach would allow to construct databases increasingly informative to determine new Rs genotypes and infer epidemiological patterns.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Proceedings of the 31st Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society: Engineering the Future of Biomedicine, EMBC 2009, 2009
This paper presents a system for the automatic processing of Digital Images obtained from Gel Ele... more This paper presents a system for the automatic processing of Digital Images obtained from Gel Electrophoresis. The system identifies automatically the number and the location of lanes in the digital image, as well as the location of bands on each lane, without any intervention from the user. A reference lane with a know substance is used to compute the molecular weight of the observed (unknown) bands. The system performance was tested using 12 images, obtained from 4 gels with 3 different exposures. A total of 5443 bands were tested in 12 images, 672 reference / observed lane pairs. The average error in the estimation of molecular weight of 9.2%.
This paper presents a method (GEIAS) for the automatic processing of digital images obtained from... more This paper presents a method (GEIAS) for the automatic processing of digital images obtained from Gel Electrophoresis. The performance of GEIAS was tested using 12 images, obtained from 4 gels with 3 different exposures with a total of 1082 bands, comparing the results provided by GEIAS and 3 other software tools. The GEIAS is able to fully automatically detect DNA
Introduction The concept of “weekend effect”, that is, substandard healthcare during weekends, ha... more Introduction The concept of “weekend effect”, that is, substandard healthcare during weekends, has never been fully demonstrated, and the different outcomes of emergency surgical patients admitted during weekends may be due to different conditions at admission and/or different therapeutic approaches. Aim of this international audit was to identify any change of pattern of emergency surgical admissions and treatments during weekends. Furthermore, we aimed at investigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the alleged “weekend effect”. Methods The database of the CovidICE-International Study was interrogated, and 6263 patients were selected for analysis. Non-trauma, 18+ yo patients admitted to 45 emergency surgery units in Europe in the months of March–April 2019 and March–April 2020 were included. Demographic and clinical data were anonymised by the referring centre and centrally collected and analysed with a statistical package. This study was endorsed by the Association of Ita...
... Analysis of the Portuguese West Coast Morphology and Morphodynamics Correlation. A GIS Tool f... more ... Analysis of the Portuguese West Coast Morphology and Morphodynamics Correlation. A GIS Tool for Coastal Erosion Management. Artigo em Livro de Actas de Conferência Internacional. Autores: Joaquim Barbosa Fernando Veloso Gomes Francisco Taveira Pinto. ...
ABSTRACTPhytosanitary regulations and the provision of plant health certificates still rely mainl... more ABSTRACTPhytosanitary regulations and the provision of plant health certificates still rely mainly on long and laborious culture-based methods of diagnosis, which are frequently inconclusive. DNA-based methods of detection can circumvent many of the limitations of currently used screening methods, allowing a fast and accurate monitoring of samples. The genusXanthomonasincludes 13 phytopathogenic quarantine organisms for which improved methods of diagnosis are needed. In this work, we propose 21 newXanthomonas-specific molecular markers, within loci coding forXanthomonas-specific protein domains, useful for DNA-based methods of identification of xanthomonads. The specificity of these markers was assessed by a dot blot hybridization array using 23 non-Xanthomonasspecies, mostly soil dwelling and/or phytopathogens for the same host plants. In addition, the validation of these markers on 15Xanthomonasspp. suggested species-specific hybridization patterns, which allowed discrimination am...
ABSTRACT Ralstonia solanacearum (Rs) is a quarantine phytopathogenic bacterium accountable for he... more ABSTRACT Ralstonia solanacearum (Rs) is a quarantine phytopathogenic bacterium accountable for heavy economic losses worldwide. Monitoring and eradication programs required for this pathogen are dependent on the availability of time- and cost-efficient detection and typing methods. However, members of the Rs species complex are characterized by a high phenotypic and genetic diversity, which requires improved diagnostics methods.The currently available full genome sequences of several Rs strains allow for the selection of novel specific DNA markers using comparative genomics tools. In this work, seventeen novel markers were selected based on Rs-specific protein domains and thoroughly validated for specificity and stability, both in silico and using “wet lab” assays. PCR- and hybridization-based validation assays revealed that the DNA regions selected as markers were unevenly distributed amongst the tested strains, with nine markers present throughout the species complex. The distribution of the remaining eight markers was highly variable between the different analyzed strains and allowed to obtain strain-specific dot blot hybridization patterns particularly informative for typing. The average probability value of each strain being positive for each of the seventeen markers was calculated by an algorithm and used to obtain a dendrogram representing the hierarchical clustering analysis of Rs, according to the similarity of their hybridization patterns. We believe that this method can be a robust contribution for the straightforward genotyping of members from the Rs species complex. Furthermore, this quantitative hybridization approach would allow to construct databases increasingly informative to determine new Rs genotypes and infer epidemiological patterns.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Proceedings of the 31st Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society: Engineering the Future of Biomedicine, EMBC 2009, 2009
This paper presents a system for the automatic processing of Digital Images obtained from Gel Ele... more This paper presents a system for the automatic processing of Digital Images obtained from Gel Electrophoresis. The system identifies automatically the number and the location of lanes in the digital image, as well as the location of bands on each lane, without any intervention from the user. A reference lane with a know substance is used to compute the molecular weight of the observed (unknown) bands. The system performance was tested using 12 images, obtained from 4 gels with 3 different exposures. A total of 5443 bands were tested in 12 images, 672 reference / observed lane pairs. The average error in the estimation of molecular weight of 9.2%.
This paper presents a method (GEIAS) for the automatic processing of digital images obtained from... more This paper presents a method (GEIAS) for the automatic processing of digital images obtained from Gel Electrophoresis. The performance of GEIAS was tested using 12 images, obtained from 4 gels with 3 different exposures with a total of 1082 bands, comparing the results provided by GEIAS and 3 other software tools. The GEIAS is able to fully automatically detect DNA
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Papers by A. Marcal