Bioassays against pinewood nematode: assessment of a suitable dilution agent and screening for bioactive essential oils

Acetone was investigated and found to be an appropriate alternative to Triton X-100 as a solvent of essential oils in bioassays aimed to investigate their effects on pinewood nematode (Bursaphelenchus xylophilus) mortality. Therefore it was used as dilution agent to screen the effectiveness of fifty two essential oils against this pest. Thirteen essential oils were highly effective, resulting in more than 90% pinewood nematode mortality at 2 mg/mL, with six of them resulting in 100% mortality. LC100 values ranged between 0.50 mg/mL and 0.83 mg/mL for the essential oils of Origanum vulgare and Satureja montana, respectively. Essential oils were submitted to gas chromatography and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis and their chemical composition established. Data from essential oils with 100% mortality at 2 mg/mL and other essential oils previously found to have LC100 ≤ 2 mg/mL was combined, their chemical profiles investigated by correspondences analysis plus automatic classification.

Screening a Case Base for Stroke Disease Detection

Stroke stands for one of the most frequent causes of death, without distinguishing age or genders. Despite representing an expressive mortality fig-ure, the disease also causes long-term disabilities with a huge recovery time, which goes in parallel with costs. However, stroke and health diseases may also be prevented considering illness evidence. Therefore, the present work will start with the development of a decision support system to assess stroke risk, centered on a formal framework based on Logic Programming for knowledge rep-resentation and reasoning, complemented with a Case Based Reasoning (CBR) approach to computing. Indeed, and in order to target practically the CBR cycle, a normalization and an optimization phases were introduced, and clustering methods were used, then reducing the search space and enhancing the cases re-trieval one. On the other hand, and aiming at an improvement of the CBR theo-retical basis, the predicates` attributes were normalized to the interval 0…1, and the extensions of the predicates that match the universe of discourse were re-written, and set not only in terms of an evaluation of its Quality-of-Information (QoI), but also in terms of an assessment of a Degree-of-Confidence (DoC), a measure of one`s confidence that they fit into a given interval, taking into account their domains, i.e., each predicate attribute will be given in terms of a pair (QoI, DoC), a simple and elegant way to represent data or knowledge of the type incomplete, self-contradictory, or even unknown.

Waiting Time Screening in Diagnostic Medical Imaging - A Case-Based View

Due to the high standards expected from diagnostic medical imaging, the analysis of information regarding waiting lists via different information systems is of utmost importance. Such analysis, on the one hand, may improve the diagnostic quality and, on the other hand, may lead to the reduction of waiting times, with the concomitant increase of the quality of services and the reduction of the inherent financial costs. Hence, the purpose of this study is to assess the waiting time in the delivery of diagnostic medical imaging services, like computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. Thereby, this work is focused on the development of a decision support system to assess waiting times in diagnostic medical imaging with recourse to operational data of selected attributes extracted from distinct information systems. The computational framework is built on top of a Logic Programming Case-base Reasoning approach to Knowledge Representation and Reasoning that caters for the handling of in-complete, unknown, or even self-contradictory information.

Portuguese Version of the Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire-Revised: Validation Data and the Establishment of a Cut-Score for Screening Purposes

The aim of the present study is to provide validation data regarding the Portuguese version of the Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire Revised in nonclinical individuals. Two studies were undertaken with two different nonclinical samples in order to demonstrate reliability, concurrent, predictive, and construct validity, and in order to establish an appropriate cut-score for nonclinical individuals. A sample of 810 community adults participated in Study 1. Results from this study provided information regarding scale internal consistency, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and concurrent validity. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis established a cut-off score to be used for screening purposes with nonclinical individuals. A sample of 440 young adults participated in Study 2, which demonstrated scale score internal consistency and 5-month predictive validity. Further, 5-month test-retest reliability was also evaluated and the correlations of SBQ-R scale scores with two other measures that assess constructs related to suicidality, depression and psychache, were also performed. In addition, confirmatory factor analysis was undertaken to demonstrate the robustness of the result obtained in Study 1. Overall, findings supported the psychometric appropriateness of the Portuguese Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire-Revise