Cookies Policy
The website need some cookies and similar means to function. If you permit us, we will use those means to collect data on your visits for aggregated statistics to improve our service. Find out More
Accept Reject
  • Menu
Publications

Publications by LIAAD

2024

The molecular impact of cigarette smoking resembles aging across tissues

Authors
Ramirez, JM; Ribeiro, R; Soldatkina, O; Moraes, A; García-Pérez, R; Ferreira, PG; Melé, M;

Publication

Abstract
AbstractTobacco smoke is the main cause of preventable mortality worldwide. Smoking increases the risk of developing many diseases and has been proposed as an aging accelerator. Yet, the molecular mechanisms driving smoking-related health decline and aging acceleration in most tissues remain unexplored. Here, we characterize gene expression, alternative splicing, DNA methylation and histological alterations induced by cigarette smoking across human tissues. We show that smoking impacts tissue architecture and triggers systemic inflammation. We find that in many tissues, the effects of smoking significantly overlap those of aging in the same direction. Specifically, both age and smoking upregulate inflammatory genes and drive hypomethylation at enhancers. In addition, we observe widespread smoking-driven hypermethylation at target regions of the Polycomb repressive complex, which is a well-known aging effect. Smoking-induced epigenetic changes overlap causal aging CpGs, suggesting that these methylation changes may directly mediate aging acceleration observed in smokers. Finally, we find that smoking effects that are shared with aging are more persistent over time. Overall, our multi-tissue and multi-omic analysis of the effects of cigarette smoking provides an extensive characterization of the impact of tobacco smoke across tissues and unravels the molecular mechanisms driving smoking-induced tissue homeostasis decline and aging acceleration.

2024

APAtizer: a tool for alternative polyadenylation analysis of RNA-Seq data

Authors
Sousa, B; Bessa, M; de Mendonca, FL; Ferreira, PG; Moreira, A; Pereira-Castro, I;

Publication
BIOINFORMATICS

Abstract
APAtizer is a tool designed to analyze alternative polyadenylation events on RNA-sequencing data. The tool handles different file formats, including BAM, htseq, and DaPars bedGraph files. It provides a user-friendly interface that allows users to generate informative visualizations, including Volcano plots, heatmaps, and gene lists. These outputs allow the user to retrieve useful biological insights such as the occurrence of polyadenylation events when comparing two biological conditions. In addition, it can perform differential gene expression, gene ontology analysis, visualization of Venn diagram intersections, and correlation analysis.

2024

Identification of Participants of Narratives Using Knowledge Bases

Authors
Juliana Machado; Evelin Amorim;

Publication
Anais do XXXIX Simpósio Brasileiro de Banco de Dados (SBBD 2024)

Abstract
Identifying participants in narratives is important to understand and extract meaning from unstructured texts. This paper investigates the use of DBpedia and Wikifier for this task. We tested these two knowledge base platforms to evaluate their performance in recognizing and extracting entities in Portuguese-language journalistic narrative texts. The results show that both DBpedia and Wikifier present similar results in identifying participants, around 0.40 in the f1-score. The objective of this paper is to study the potential of knowledge bases to improve the understanding of narratives, in addition to suggesting directions for future research in this domain.

2024

ISO 24617-8 Applied: Insights from Multilingual Discourse Relations Annotation in English, Polish, and Portuguese

Authors
Tomaszewska, A; Silvano, P; Leal, A; Amorim, E;

Publication
ISA 2024: 20th Joint ACL - ISO Workshop on Interoperable Semantic Annotation at LREC-COLING 2024, Workshop Proceedings

Abstract
The main objective of this study is to contribute to multilingual discourse research by employing ISO-24617 Part 8 (Semantic Relations in Discourse, Core Annotation Schema – DR-core) for annotating discourse relations. Centering around a parallel discourse relations corpus that includes English, Polish, and European Portuguese, we initiate one of the few ISO-based comparative analyses through a multilingual corpus that aligns discourse relations across these languages. In this paper, we discuss the project’s contributions, including the annotated corpus, research findings, and statistics related to the use of discourse relations. The paper further discusses the challenges encountered in complying with the ISO standard, such as defining the scope of arguments and annotating specific relation types like Expansion. Our findings highlight the necessity for clearer definitions of certain discourse relations and more precise guidelines for argument spans, especially concerning the inclusion of connectives. Additionally, the study underscores the importance of ongoing collaborative efforts to broaden the inclusion of languages and more comprehensive datasets, with the objective of widening the reach of ISO-guided multilingual discourse research. © 2024 ELRA Language Resource Association: CC BY-NC 4.0.

2024

A Legal Framework for Natural Language Processing Model Training in Portugal

Authors
Almeida, R; Amorim, E;

Publication
Legal and Ethical Issues in Human Language Technologies 2024, LEGAL 2024 at LREC-COLING 2024 - Workshop Proceedings

Abstract
Recent advances in deep learning have promoted the advent of many computational systems capable of performing intelligent actions that, until then, were restricted to the human intellect. In the particular case of human languages, these advances allowed the introduction of applications like ChatGPT that are capable of generating coherent text without being explicitly programmed to do so. Instead, these models use large volumes of textual data to learn meaningful representations of human languages. Associated with these advances, concerns about copyright and data privacy infringements caused by these applications have emerged. Despite these concerns, the pace at which new natural language processing applications continued to be developed largely outperformed the introduction of new regulations. Today, communication barriers between legal experts and computer scientists motivate many unintentional legal infringements during the development of such applications. In this paper, a multidisciplinary team intends to bridge this communication gap and promote more compliant Portuguese NLP research by presenting a series of everyday NLP use cases, while highlighting the Portuguese legislation that may arise during its development. © 2024 ELRA Language Resource Association.

2024

KDBI special issue: Time-series pattern verification in CNC turning-A comparative study of one-class and binary classification

Authors
da Silva, JP; Nogueira, AR; Pinto, J; Curral, M; Alves, AC; Sousa, R;

Publication
EXPERT SYSTEMS

Abstract
Integrating Industry 4.0 and Quality 4.0 optimises manufacturing through IoT and ML, improving processes and product quality. The primary challenge involves identifying patterns in computer numerical control (CNC) machining time-series data to boost manufacturing quality control. The proposed solution involves an experimental study comparing one-class and binary classification algorithms. This study aims to classify time-series data from CNC turning machines, offering insight into monitoring and adjusting tool wear to maintain product quality. The methodology entails extracting spectral features from time-series data to train both one-class and binary classification algorithms, assessing their effectiveness and computational efficiency. Although certain models consistently outperform others, determining the best performing is not possible, as a trade-off between classification and computational performance is observed, with gradient boosting standing out for effectively balancing both aspects. Thus, the choice between one-class and binary classification ultimately relies on dataset's features and task objectives.

  • 29
  • 467