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Art generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) is currently having great repercussion online. The reason for this is the fact that it allows people without creative talent to produce outstanding works by just typing in the description of what they want to illustrate. However, the appearance of this technology has also caused some discomfort among artists and graphic designers, who see their craft threatened by a service that is available to anyone free of charge. In this article, the capability of some of these platforms to process figurative language will be assessed with the help of five well-known proverbs found in almost identical terms across a number of Western languages. These proverbs were used as the prompts on five of the most popular AI art generators accessible at present. After analyzing the results, our experiment concludes that AI evidences significant deficiencies in the processing of proverbs and, therefore, of figurative language. Consequently, AI does not seem able to substitute human agency completely in artistic creation yet. This exposes an aspect that needs improvement not just for the creative applications of AI but for other applications that it may have in the future. To achieve this, disciplines such as psycholinguistics should be integrated into the teams that develop AI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proverbs are found in the most varied means of communication. In relation to their use in comic books, they show a creative use that can only take place in certain circumstances: the visual representation of a literal interpretation of the message they convey. Comic books in general are an excellent medium for this, and the works under examination, the adventures of Asterix the Gaul, is the ideal subject of analysis for a study like the present, thanks to the linguistic inclination that its authors have shown. For this paper, the 38 volumes of the adventures have been surveyed for their use of paremiology with the intention of presenting and analysing cases of the use of paremias that seemed of relevance in connection to the graphic side of comic books. On the following pages, some of the most remarkable cases will be dissected in order to determine how this phenomenon works. Moreover, a cross-linguistic analysis of the use of said proverbs will be carried out, presenting the original version in French and comparing it with five other languages to assess how translators deal with the complicated task of translating idiomatic expressions and how the visual content of comic books determines this practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the first work in the fantasy literature series, titled A Song of Ice and Fire: A Game of Thrones, by George R. R. Martin will be analyzed in relation to the author's use of proverbs, in order to determine the role that these play in the narration and what their features are. This choice seems appropriate for the analysis of folklore elements, such as proverbs, given the popularity of the series and its presumed contribution to the spread of phraseology. In the analysis of this text, a rather interesting approach to proverbs emerges, one in which the author makes use of proverbs existing in the real world, as well as creates his own, ad hoc, for this literary composition. These occurrences seem particularly interesting and will be analyzed in detail to determine whether they produce the desired effect and whether they follow the expected use of proverbs in real life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of blood samples as liquid biopsy is a label-free method for cancer diagnosis that offers benefits over traditional invasive biopsy techniques. Cell sorting by acoustic waves offers a means to separate rare cells from blood samples based on their physical properties in a label-free, contactless and biocompatible manner. Herein, we describe a flow-through separation approach that provides an efficient separation of tumor cells (TCs) from white blood cells (WBCs) in a microfluidic device, "THINUS-Chip&" (Thin-Ultrasonic-Separator-Chip), actuated by ultrasounds. We introduce for the first time the concept of plate acoustic waves (PAW) applied to acoustophoresis as a new strategy. It lies in the geometrical chip design: different to other microseparators based on either bulk acoustic waves (BAW) or surface waves (SAW, SSAW and tSAW), it allows the use of polymeric materials without restrictions in the frequency of work. We demonstrate its ability to perform high-throughput isolation of TCs from WBCs, allowing a recovery rate of 84% ± 8% of TCs with a purity higher than 80% and combined viability of 85% at a flow rate of 80 βL/min (4.8 mL/h). The THINUS-Chip performs cell fractionation with low-cost manufacturing processes, opening the door to possible easy printing fabrication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chemoresistance and invasion properties are severe limitations to efficient glioma therapy. Therefore, development of glioma in vivo models that more accurately resemble the situation observed in patients emerges. Previously, we established RC6 rat glioma cell line resistant to DNA damaging agents including antiglioma approved therapies such as 3-bis(2-chloroethyl)-1-nitrosourea (BCNU) and temozolomide (TMZ). Herein, we evaluated the invasiveness of RC6 cells in vitro and in a new orthotopic animal model. For comparison, we used C6 cells from which RC6 cells originated. Differences in cell growth properties were assessed by real-time cell analyzer. Cells' invasive potential in vitro was studied in fluorescently labeled gelatin and by formation of multicellular spheroids in hydrogel. For animal studies, fluorescently labeled cells were inoculated into adult male Wistar rat brains. Consecutive coronal and sagittal brain sections were analyzed 10 and 25 days post-inoculation, while rats' behavior was recorded during three days in the open field test starting from 25th day post-inoculation. We demonstrated that development of chemoresistance induced invasive phenotype of RC6 cells with significant behavioral impediments implying usefulness of orthotopic RC6 glioma allograft in preclinical studies for the examination of new approaches to counteract both chemoresistance and invasion of glioma cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An online open access test (CREAX self-assessment) has been used in this work so that students from degrees in engineering in the Universidad Politecnica of Madrid (UPM) could self-assess their creative competence after several classroom activities. Different groups from the first year course have been statistically compared using data from their assessment. These first year students had different professors in the subject 'Technical Drawing' and belonged to several degrees in the UPM. They were as well compared regarding sex and a group of first year students was also compared to another last year group of the degree so as to observe possible differences in the achievement of this competence. Only one difference was detected concerning sex in one of the degrees. Among degrees, the higher marks obtained by students who had done specific exercises for the development of creativity in class is highlighted. Finally, a significantly high mark was observed in students during their last year of degree with respect to first year students. The tool CREAX has become very useful in the assessment of this competence in the UPM degrees in which it has been implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Apo2-ligand/TRAIL, a member of the TNF cytokine superfamily capable of inducing apoptosis on tumor cells while sparing normal cells, is a promising anti-tumor agent. However, about 50% of human cancer are TRAIL resistant. Consequently, future TRAIL-based therapies will require the use of novel highly bioactive forms of TRAIL and/or the addition of sensitizing agents to TRAIL-induced apoptosis. Recently, we demonstrated that artificial lipid nanoparticles coated with bioactive TRAIL (LUV-TRAIL) greatly improved TRAIL activity and were able to induce apoptosis in chemoresistant hematological tumor cells., Objective: In this study, we have tested LUV-TRAIL-pro-apoptotic potential in human breast cancer., Method: Comparative analysis of cytotoxicity induced by sTRAIL and LUV-TRAIL was performed using several human breast tumor cell lines with different sensitivity to TRAIL. In vivo anti-tumor activity of LUV-TRAIL was also studied using a xeno-graft tumor model., Results: LUV-TRAIL improved not only sTRAIL in vitro cytotoxicity in all breast tumor cell lines tested but also showed more anti-tumor activity than sTRAIL in an in vivo xeno-graft tumor model. On the other hand, the concomitant treatment of LUV-TRAIL with the sensitizing agent flavopiridol (FVP) induced a higher level of cell death in TRAIL-resistant cell lines. TRAIL-sensitization induced by FVP was mediated by DR5 up-regulation, and interestingly TRAIL-apoptotic signaling was completely shifted towards DR5 upon FVP treatment. LUV-TRAIL could especially take advantage of this DR5 up-regulation, while sTRAIL was not able., Conclusion: To date, no special attention had been paid to this aspect of FVP-induced TRAIL-sensitization, may be because sTRAIL used were not able to take advantage of this DR5 up-regulation. Hence, LUV-TRAIL could be a better choice than sTRAIL to be used in combination with anti-tumor drugs inducing DR5 over-expression, since LUV-TRAIL is especially effective activating this death-receptor.