Alternatives exist: analysis of scientific literature in two Brazilian journals about the pedagogical work of Physical Education

Considering that the process of teacher training in universities takes into account the confrontation of knowledge produced by the scientific methods, the current study intended to identify what are the main contributions of the Brazilian scientific production of Physical Education teaching. Therefore, an exploratory study was done from the articles published on the subject in the two main periodicals of the area. The data analyzes allowed us to verify the relevancy of the knowledge produced and to suggest alternatives to its inclusion in the docent training programs.

Using Prior Information from the Medical Literature in GWAS of Oral Cancer Identifies Novel Susceptibility Variant on Chromosome 4-the AdAPT Method

Background: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) require large sample sizes to obtain adequate statistical power, but it may be possible to increase the power by incorporating complementary data. In this study we investigated the feasibility of automatically retrieving information from the medical literature and leveraging this information in GWAS. Methods: We developed a method that searches through PubMed abstracts for pre-assigned keywords and key concepts, and uses this information to assign prior probabilities of association for each single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) with the phenotype of interest - the Adjusting Association Priors with Text (AdAPT) method. Association results from a GWAS can subsequently be ranked in the context of these priors using the Bayes False Discovery Probability (BFDP) framework. We initially tested AdAPT by comparing rankings of known susceptibility alleles in a previous lung cancer GWAS, and subsequently applied it in a two-phase GWAS of oral cancer. Results: Known lung cancer susceptibility SNPs were consistently ranked higher by AdAPT BFDPs than by p-values. In the oral cancer GWAS, we sought to replicate the top five SNPs as ranked by AdAPT BFDPs, of which rs991316, located in the ADH gene region of 4q23, displayed a statistically significant association with oral cancer risk in the replication phase (per-rare-allele log additive p-value [p(trend)] = 2.5 x 10(-3)). The combined OR for having one additional rare allele was 0.83 (95% CI: 0.76-0.90), and this association was independent of previously identified susceptibility SNPs that are associated with overall UADT cancer in this gene region. We also investigated if rs991316 was associated with other cancers of the upper aerodigestive tract (UADT), but no additional association signal was found. Conclusion: This study highlights the potential utility of systematically incorporating prior knowledge from the medical literature in genome-wide analyses using the AdAPT methodology. AdAPT is available online (url: http://services.gate.ac.uk/lld/gwas/service/config).

The potentially toxic diatom Pseudo-nitzschia H. Peragallo in the Parana and Santa Catarina States, Southern Brazil

A taxonomic survey of the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia H. Peragallo was carried out in the Parana and Santa Catarina coasts, Southern Brazil. Samples were taken in various localities along the coastline using vertical hauls from the bottom to the surface. Electron microscopy revealed five species: the potentially toxic P. australis Frenguelli, P calliantha Lundholm, Moestrup & Has le, P multiseries (Has le) Has le and P pungens (Grunow ex Cleve) Has le (plus P pungens var. cingulata Villac), and the non-toxic P linea Lundholm, Has le & G. A. Fryxell. Southern Brazilian strains of P. calliantha and P multiseries have previously been shown to be toxic, raising concerns about a potential contamination of mussels and oysters being commercially grounded in the region. High morphological variability was observed in valve characters of P calliantha and P pungens, in some cases confirmed in the literature. In P calliantha there was a conspicuous differentiation in two morphotypes separated from each other by the width and the shape of the valve, and the density of the poroids. P linea has not previously been found in Brazilian waters, and P pungens var. cingulata is a new record in Western Atlantic waters. Future investigations using molecular techniques will elucidate whether the genetic variability corresponds to the morphological variation and unveil the possible existence of semicryptic species of Pseudo-nitzschia inhabiting the South Brazilian coast.

Universality in bibliometrics

Many discussions have enlarged the literature in Bibliometrics since the Hirsch proposal, the so called h-index. Ranking papers according to their citations, this index quantifies a researcher only by its greatest possible number of papers that are cited at least h times. A closed formula for h-index distribution that can be applied for distinct databases is not yet known. In fact, to obtain such distribution, the knowledge of citation distribution of the authors and its specificities are required. Instead of dealing with researchers randomly chosen, here we address different groups based on distinct databases. The first group is composed of physicists and biologists, with data extracted from Institute of Scientific Information (IS!). The second group is composed of computer scientists, in which data were extracted from Google-Scholar system. In this paper, we obtain a general formula for the h-index probability density function (pdf) for groups of authors by using generalized exponentials in the context of escort probability. Our analysis includes the use of several statistical methods to estimate the necessary parameters. Also an exhaustive comparison among the possible candidate distributions are used to describe the way the citations are distributed among authors. The h-index pdf should be used to classify groups of researchers from a quantitative point of view, which is meaningfully interesting to eliminate obscure qualitative methods. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The workers role in knowledge management and sustainability policies

Based on the concepts of sustainability and knowledge management, this article seeks to identify points of contact between the two themes through an exploratory study of existing literature. The first objective is to find, in international literature, the largest number of papers jointly related to the theme of knowledge management and sustainability. In these documents, the authors looked at the kind of relationship existing between the two themes and what the benefits introduced in organizations are. Based on an ergonomic point of view, the second objective of this article is to analyze the role of the worker (whether at the strategic or operational level) and his importance in this context. The results demonstrate that there is very little literature that addresses the two themes together. The few papers found, however, can be said to show the many advantages of introducing sustainability policies supported by adequate knowledge management. Very little has been studied with regards to the role of workers, which could be interpreted as meaning that little importance is given to the proactive role they may play. On the other hand, there is a high potential for future research in these areas, based on the high level of consideration of workers in knowledge management and sustainability literature, as well as in literature in the areas of ergonomics and sociology.

Urticaria and dermographism in patients with adult-onset Still's disease

Adult-onset Still's disease (AOSD) patients typically present with arthralgia, fever, lymphadenopathy and a transient salmon maculopapular rash. Only approximately 25 cases of AOSD with urticaria were described in the literature. In this article, the authors report three additional cases of AOSD with urticarial and dermographic lesions who had a good clinical response to glucocorticoid and antihistamines. A review of the literature concerning this issue is also herein written.

MYLIP p.N342S polymorphism is not associated with lipid profile in the Brazilian population

Background: A recent study investigated the MYLIP region in the Mexican population in order to fine-map the actual susceptibility variants of this locus. The p.N342S polymorphism was identified as the underlying functional variant accounting for one of the previous signals of genome-wide association studies and the N342 allele was associated with higher cholesterol concentrations in Mexican dyslipidemic individuals. To date, there is no further evaluation on this genotype-phenotype association in the literature. In this scenario, and because of a possible pharmacotherapeutic target of dyslipidemia, the main aim of this study was to assess the influence of the MYLIP p.N342S polymorphism on lipid profile in Brazilian individuals. Methods: 1295 subjects of the general population and 1425 consecutive patients submitted to coronary angiography were selected. General characteristics, biochemical tests, blood pressures, pulse wave velocity, and coronary artery disease scores were analyzed. Genotypes for the MYLIP rs9370867 (p.N342S, c.G1025A) polymorphism were detected by high resolution melting analysis. Results: No association of the MYLIP rs9370867 genotypes with lipid profile, hemodynamic data, and coronary angiographic data was found. Analysis stratified by hyperlipidemia, gender, and ethnicity was also performed and the sub-groups presented similar results. In both general population and patient samples, the MYLIP rs9370867 polymorphism was differently distributed according to ethnicity. In the general population, subjects carrying GG genotypes had higher systolic blood pressure (BP), diastolic BP, and mean BP values (129.0 +/- 23.3; 84.9 +/- 14.6; 99.5 +/- 16.8 mmHg) compared with subjects carrying AA genotypes (123.7 +/- 19.5; 81.6 +/- 11.8; 95.6 +/- 13.6 mmHg) (p = 0.01; p = 0.02; p = 0.01, respectively), even after adjustment for covariates. However, in analysis stratified by ethnicity, this finding was not found and there is no evidence that the polymorphism influences BP. Conclusion: Our findings indicate that association studies involving this MYLIP variant can present distinct results according to the studied population. In this moment, further studies are needed to reaffirm if the MYLIP p.N342S polymorphism is functional or not, and to identify other functional markers within this gene.

SINGULARLY PERTURBED DISCOUNTED MARKOV CONTROL PROCESSES IN A GENERAL STATE SPACE

This paper studies the asymptotic optimality of discrete-time Markov decision processes (MDPs) with general state space and action space and having weak and strong interactions. By using a similar approach as developed by Liu, Zhang, and Yin [Appl. Math. Optim., 44 (2001), pp. 105-129], the idea in this paper is to consider an MDP with general state and action spaces and to reduce the dimension of the state space by considering an averaged model. This formulation is often described by introducing a small parameter epsilon > 0 in the definition of the transition kernel, leading to a singularly perturbed Markov model with two time scales. Our objective is twofold. First it is shown that the value function of the control problem for the perturbed system converges to the value function of a limit averaged control problem as epsilon goes to zero. In the second part of the paper, it is proved that a feedback control policy for the original control problem defined by using an optimal feedback policy for the limit problem is asymptotically optimal. Our work extends existing results of the literature in the following two directions: the underlying MDP is defined on general state and action spaces and we do not impose strong conditions on the recurrence structure of the MDP such as Doeblin's condition.