Business intelligence in banking: A literature analysis from 2002 to 2013 using Text Mining and latent Dirichlet allocation

telligence applications for the banking industry. Searches were performed in relevant journals resulting in 219 articles published between 2002 and 2013. To analyze such a large number of manuscripts, text mining techniques were used in pursuit for relevant terms on both business intelligence and banking domains. Moreover, the latent Dirichlet allocation modeling was used in or- der to group articles in several relevant topics. The analysis was conducted using a dictionary of terms belonging to both banking and business intelli- gence domains. Such procedure allowed for the identification of relationships between terms and topics grouping articles, enabling to emerge hypotheses regarding research directions. To confirm such hypotheses, relevant articles were collected and scrutinized, allowing to validate the text mining proce- dure. The results show that credit in banking is clearly the main application trend, particularly predicting risk and thus supporting credit approval or de- nial. There is also a relevant interest in bankruptcy and fraud prediction. Customer retention seems to be associated, although weakly, with targeting, justifying bank offers to reduce churn. In addition, a large number of ar- ticles focused more on business intelligence techniques and its applications, using the banking industry just for evaluation, thus, not clearly acclaiming for benefits in the banking business. By identifying these current research topics, this study also highlights opportunities for future research.

Attachment to parents: the mediating role of inhibition of exploration and individuality on health behaviors

This study’s goal was to analyze whether the quality of university students’ relationship with their parents mediated the association between mental health and physical symptoms and health behavior. Participants were 250 university students (66% female and 34% male), aged between 17 and 29 years old (M = 20.88, SD = 2.03) that answered the Father/Mother Attachment Questionnaire (FMAQ), the Physical Symptoms Scale from the Rotterdam Symptom Checklist (RSCL), the Health Behavior Questionnaire (HBQ), and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). The results showed that the indirect effect of physical symptoms on health behavior was significantly mediated by the father’s and mother’s inhibition of exploration and individuality (IEI). Also the indirect effect of psychological distress on health behavior was significantly mediated by the father’s and mother’s IEI. These results suggest that young adults who had more restrictions to their individuality show worse health behaviors. Separation Anxiety and Dependence (SAD) and Quality of Emotional Bond (QEB), the other 2 attachment scales, were not mediators of the relationship between physical symptoms/ psychological distress and health behavior. This study shows the importance of promoting positive parenting practices that contribute to healthier behavior choices and less risky behaviors, as well as the need for more studies that clearly identify these practices in young adult populations.

Synthesis of polyhydroxylated compounds from Derythrose: enzymatic inhibition studies

Dissertação de mestrado em Química Medicinal

Monocarboxylate transport inhibition potentiates the cytotoxic effect of 5-fluorouracil in colorectal cancer cells

Cancer cells rely mostly on glycolysis to meet their energetic demands, producing large amounts of lactate that are extruded to the tumour microenvironment by monocarboxylate transporters (MCTs). The role of MCTs in the survival of colorectal cancer (CRC) cells is scarce and poorly understood. In this study, we aimed to better understand this issue and exploit these transporters as novel therapeutic targets alone or in combination with the CRC classical chemotherapeutic drug 5-Fluorouracil. For that purpose, we characterized the effects of MCT activity inhibition in normal and CRC derived cell lines and assessed the effect of MCT inhibition in combination with 5-FU. Here, we demonstrated that MCT inhibition using CHC (a-cyano-4-hydroxycinnamic acid), DIDS (4,4'-diisothiocyanatostilbene-2,2'-disulphonic acid) and quercetin decreased cell viability, disrupted the glycolytic phenotype, inhibited proliferation and enhanced cell death in CRC cells. These results were confirmed by specific inhibition of MCT1/4 by RNA interference. Notably, we showed that 5-FU cytotoxicity was potentiated by lactate transport inhibition in CRC cells, either by activity inhibition or expression silencing. These findings provide novel evidence for the pivotal role of MCTs in CRC maintenance and survival, as well as for the use of these transporters as potential new therapeutic targets in combination with CRC conventional therapy.

Determination of catalase activity and its inhibition by a simple manometric method

[Excerpt] Introduction: There has been a considerable amount of controversy about the use of manometric methods to measure catalase activity. As Maehly and Chance point out in their excellent review] the advantages of these methods is "... that they can be used for any kind of biological material, and purification of the enzyme is not required. The assay is independent of small amounts of peroxidase activity. It is fairly simple to perform, it is rapid and it can be adapted to continuous reading of the reaction". A variety of drawbacks are also listed by the same authors, viz, the inactivation of the enzyme under the experimental conditions and the time lag before a constant rate of oxygen evolution is reached. [...]