Graph analysis of dream reports is especially informative about psychosis

Early psychiatry investigated dreams to understand psychopathologies. Contemporary psychiatry, which neglects dreams, has been criticized for lack of objectivity. In search of quantitative insight into the structure of psychotic speech, we investigated speech graph attributes (SGA) in patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder type I, and non-psychotic controls as they reported waking and dream contents. Schizophrenic subjects spoke with reduced connectivity, in tight correlation with negative and cognitive symptoms measured by standard psychometric scales. Bipolar and control subjects were undistinguishable by waking reports, but in dream reports bipolar subjects showed significantly less connectivity. Dream-related SGA outperformed psychometric scores or waking-related data for group sorting. Altogether, the results indicate that online and offline processing, the two most fundamental modes of brain operation, produce nearly opposite effects on recollections: While dreaming exposes differences in the mnemonic records across individuals, waking dampens distinctions. The results also demonstrate the feasibility of the differential diagnosis of psychosis based on the analysis of dream graphs, pointing to a fast, low-cost and language-invariant tool for psychiatric diagnosis and the objective search for biomarkers. The Freudian notion that ‘‘dreams are the royal road to the unconscious’’ is clinically useful, after all.

Graph analysis of verbal fluency test discriminate between patients with Alzheimer’s disease, Mild Cognitive Impairment and normal elderly controls

Verbal fluency is the ability to produce a satisfying sequence of spoken words during a given time interval. The core of verbal fluency lies in the capacity to manage the executive aspects of language. The standard scores of the semantic verbal fluency test are broadly used in the neuropsychological assessment of the elderly, and different analytical methods are likely to extract even more information from the data generated in this test. Graph theory, a mathematical approach to analyze relations between items, represents a promising tool to understand a variety of neuropsychological states. This study reports a graph analysis of data generated by the semantic verbal fluency test by cognitively healthy elderly (NC), patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment – subtypes amnestic(aMCI) and amnestic multiple domain (a+mdMCI) - and patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Sequences of words were represented as a speech graph in which every word corresponded to a node and temporal links between words were represented by directed edges. To characterize the structure of the data we calculated 13 speech graph attributes (SGAs). The individuals were compared when divided in three (NC – MCI – AD) and four (NC – aMCI – a+mdMCI – AD) groups. When the three groups were compared, significant differences were found in the standard measure of correct words produced, and three SGA: diameter, average shortest path, and network density. SGA sorted the elderly groups with good specificity and sensitivity. When the four groups were compared, the groups differed significantly in network density, except between the two MCI subtypes and NC and aMCI. The diameter of the network and the average shortest path were significantly different between the NC and AD, and between aMCI and AD. SGA sorted the elderly in their groups with good specificity and sensitivity, performing better than the standard score of the task. These findings provide support for a new methodological frame to assess the strength of semantic memory through the verbal fluency task, with potential to amplify the predictive power of this test. Graph analysis is likely to become clinically relevant in neurology and psychiatry, and may be particularly useful for the differential diagnosis of the elderly.

Trabalho, educação e desenvolvimento: o norte da educação da CUT na Amazônia

This thesis is the result of a bibliographic and field research, with the purpose to answer in what way the process of education developed by the CUT, expressed in the experience of the Project Vento Norte, developed in the Amazônia has colaborated in the sense of the possibility of a articulation between work, education, and develpoment. The bibliographic reasearch was based in the studies of theoreticals like Gadotti (1999), Marx (1998, 1998a), Pochman (2002), Brandão (1985, 2002), Adorno (1999, 2000), Horkeimer (1976), reseachers that in the process of their studies, thinked about the theme, related to work, to education and to developement. The field research was done by the intervews with CUT s educators and managers from the states of Acre, Amazonas, Amapá, Pará, Rondônia and Roraima. The thesis s process of elaboration is done in a cobweb of elements articulated to socioculture values from the habitat of amazônia people. The conclusions point to us that the hypothesis of the CUT, by the Project Vento Norte, develops a propose of education that articulates Work, Education and Development that is confirmed. But, the partiality of the project is presented by the limitations of the CUT s possibility in continuation of the project. Thats why the thesis suports the idea of the project and it consolidation in the Amazônica Region, by the conception of the syndicate managers and educators

Uma metodologia para modelagem e avaliação da dependabilidade de redes industriais sem fio

Ensuring the dependability requirements is essential for the industrial applications since faults may cause failures whose consequences result in economic losses, environmental damage or hurting people. Therefore, faced from the relevance of topic, this thesis proposes a methodology for the dependability evaluation of industrial wireless networks (WirelessHART, ISA100.11a, WIA-PA) on early design phase. However, the proposal can be easily adapted to maintenance and expansion stages of network. The proposal uses graph theory and fault tree formalism to create automatically an analytical model from a given wireless industrial network topology, where the dependability can be evaluated. The evaluation metrics supported are the reliability, availability, MTTF (mean time to failure), importance measures of devices, redundancy aspects and common cause failures. It must be emphasized that the proposal is independent of any tool to evaluate quantitatively the target metrics. However, due to validation issues it was used a tool widely accepted on academy for this purpose (SHARPE). In addition, an algorithm to generate the minimal cut sets, originally applied on graph theory, was adapted to fault tree formalism to guarantee the scalability of methodology in wireless industrial network environments (< 100 devices). Finally, the proposed methodology was validate from typical scenarios found in industrial environments, as star, line, cluster and mesh topologies. It was also evaluated scenarios with common cause failures and best practices to guide the design of an industrial wireless network. For guarantee scalability requirements, it was analyzed the performance of methodology in different scenarios where the results shown the applicability of proposal for networks typically found in industrial environments

A Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT) no embate das contrarreformas da previdência social: contraposição ou consenso?

The provident rights were results of intense fights in between the capital and work, claiming the interventions of the state for the creation of an ample social protection system. In Brazil the law, Providence Social mark, dated 1923, from then on, the advances and extensions were many, of this diverse categories of politics. Mean while, in the 1990 s, the Brazilian government adopted the examples of other developed countries, the new pattern that hinted the realization of substantial changes on the states purpose, the reached rights and the proper organization of working classes. For the Social Providence, the principal loses turned out in 1998 and 2003; respectively in FHC governments and Lula, with the realization of two counter reforms that restricted the provident rights and motivated the privatization of public providence. In the scenery, the CUT, one of the representative organizations from working classes, founded in 1983, that has always itself with changed direction, from fighting to negotiating. This inflection determined the proposition of the center before the offers of the counter reforms, of Social Providence. The present work has the objective to analyze the social politic content of the fights from Brazilian union movement in the period of the conquests and disassembled rights and, to analyze the proposition, acting and offers from CUT in the counter reform period from Providence in the Government FHC and Lula. To perform this study beyond the essential bibliographical revision to found and deepen the subject, we use, the documental search through the internet pages, resolutions, informations and others publications from CUT. Using CUT in the governments worked in an elegant way, the FHC government against-reforms, showed itself through diverse actions, even though they didn t have homogeneous inside, contrary the neoliberalists politicians from this government, also the offers and precaution changers. While during the reign of Lula it shoved itself priority negociative and propositive

Graph analysis of verbal fluency test discriminate between patients with Alzheimer’s disease, Mild Cognitive Impairment and normal elderly controls

Verbal fluency is the ability to produce a satisfying sequence of spoken words during a given time interval. The core of verbal fluency lies in the capacity to manage the executive aspects of language. The standard scores of the semantic verbal fluency test are broadly used in the neuropsychological assessment of the elderly, and different analytical methods are likely to extract even more information from the data generated in this test. Graph theory, a mathematical approach to analyze relations between items, represents a promising tool to understand a variety of neuropsychological states. This study reports a graph analysis of data generated by the semantic verbal fluency test by cognitively healthy elderly (NC), patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment – subtypes amnestic(aMCI) and amnestic multiple domain (a+mdMCI) - and patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Sequences of words were represented as a speech graph in which every word corresponded to a node and temporal links between words were represented by directed edges. To characterize the structure of the data we calculated 13 speech graph attributes (SGAs). The individuals were compared when divided in three (NC – MCI – AD) and four (NC – aMCI – a+mdMCI – AD) groups. When the three groups were compared, significant differences were found in the standard measure of correct words produced, and three SGA: diameter, average shortest path, and network density. SGA sorted the elderly groups with good specificity and sensitivity. When the four groups were compared, the groups differed significantly in network density, except between the two MCI subtypes and NC and aMCI. The diameter of the network and the average shortest path were significantly different between the NC and AD, and between aMCI and AD. SGA sorted the elderly in their groups with good specificity and sensitivity, performing better than the standard score of the task. These findings provide support for a new methodological frame to assess the strength of semantic memory through the verbal fluency task, with potential to amplify the predictive power of this test. Graph analysis is likely to become clinically relevant in neurology and psychiatry, and may be particularly useful for the differential diagnosis of the elderly.