The influence of carbohydrates in the interaction of Paracoccidioides brasiliensis with CCL-6 cells in vitro

INTRODUCTION: Little is known about the early events in the interaction between Paracoccidioides brasiliensis and its host. To understand the effect of carbohydrates in the interaction between the fungus and epithelial cell in culture, we analyzed the influence of different carbohydrate solutions on the adhesion of P. brasiliensis yeast cells to CCL-6 cells in culture. METHODS: Fungal cells were cultivated with the epithelial cell line, and different concentrations of D-fucose, N-acetyl-glucosamine, D-mannose, D-glucosamine, D-galactosamine, sorbitol and fructose were added at the beginning of the experiment. Six hours after the treatment, the cells were fixed and observed by light microscopy. The number of P. brasiliensis cells that were adhered to the CCL-6 monolayer was estimated. RESULTS: The number of adhesion events was diminished following treatments with D-fucose, N-acetyl-glucosamine, D-mannose, D-glucosamine and D-galactosamine as compared to the untreated controls. Sorbitol and fructose-treated cells had the same adhesion behavior as the observed in the control. P. brasiliensis propagules were treated with fluorescent lectins. The FITC-labeled lectins WGA and Con-A bound to P. brasiliensis yeast cells, while SBA and PNA did not. CONCLUSIONS: The perceptual of adhesion between P. brasiliensis and CCL-6 cells decreased with the use of D-mannose, N-acetyl-glucosamine and D-glucosamine. The assay using FITC-labeled lectins suggests the presence of N-acetyl-glucosamine, α-mannose and α-glucose on the P. brasiliensis cell surface. An enhanced knowledge of the mediators of adhesion on P. brasiliensis could be useful in the future for the development of more efficient and less harmful methods for disease treatment and control.

Evaluation of two sweeping methods for estimating the number of immature Aedes aegypti (Diptera: Culicidae) in large containers

Introduction Here, we evaluated sweeping methods used to estimate the number of immature Aedes aegypti in large containers. Methods III/IV instars and pupae at a 9:1 ratio were placed in three types of containers with, each one with three different water levels. Two sweeping methods were tested: water-surface sweeping and five-sweep netting. The data were analyzed using linear regression. Results The five-sweep netting technique was more suitable for drums and water-tanks, while the water-surface sweeping method provided the best results for swimming pools. Conclusions Both sweeping methods are useful tools in epidemiological surveillance programs for the control of Aedes aegypti.

Tegumentary leishmaniasis in the State of Amazonas: what have we learned and what do we need?

This study evaluated the occurrence of American tegumentary leishmaniasis (ATL) in the State of Amazonas, Brazil, in the last 30 years with emphasis on the last 10 years (2001 to 2010). The disease was predominantly observed in males (76.2%), in the 21- to 30-year-old age group (26.6%) and in extractive workers (43.7%); 3.3% of the cases were the mucosal form. The endemic channel shows the disease seasonality, with a predominance of cases at the beginning and end of each year. The number of cases by municipality in the period of 2001-2010 shows the maintenance of the endemic in the localities where the highest numbers of cases have always been registered, namely, Manaus, Rio Preto da Eva, Itacoatiara and Presidente Figueiredo. The comparison of data from 2001 to 2005 and from 2006 to 2010 showed the emergence of this disease in municipalities that had been previously unaffected. In the last years, there has been a significant increase in the activities of control, diagnosis and treatment of leishmaniasis in the State of Amazonas. In conclusion, the historical series of ATL analyzed in this study suggests that the transmission foci remain and are even expanding, though without continuous transmission in the intra- or peridomicile settings. Moreover, the disease will persist in the Amazon while the factors associated with infection acquisition relative to forest exploitation continue to have economic appeal. There is a real expectation of wide variations in disease incidence that can be influenced by climate and economic aspects.

Distribution of hepatitis B infection in Brazil: the epidemiological situation at the beginning of the 21 st century

Abstract Brazil was formerly considered a country with intermediate hepatitis B endemicity, with large heterogeneity between Brazilian regions and areas of high prevalence, especially in the Amazon basin. Systematic vaccination of children was initiated in 1998. Between 2004 and 2009, a large population-based study reported decreased prevalence in all regions of Brazil. This review analyzed the current hepatitis B epidemiological situation in Brazil through a systematic search of the scientific literature in MEDLINE, LILACS, and CAPES thesis database, as well as disease notifications to the Information System for Notifiable Diseases. The search strategy identified 87 articles and 13 theses, resulting in 100 total publications. The most recent results indicate reduced hepatitis B prevalence nationwide, classifying Brazil as having low endemicity. Most studies showed HBV carrier prevalence less than 1%. However, there are still isolated regions with increased prevalence, particularly the Amazon, as well as specific groups, such as homeless people in large cities and isolated Afro-descendant communities in the center of the country. This review alsao detected successful vaccination coverage reported in a few studies around the country. The prevalence of anti-HBs alone ranged from 50% to 90%. However, isolated and distant localities still have low coverage rates. This review reinforces the downward trend of hepatitis B prevalence in Brazil and the need to intensify vaccination strategies for young people and adults in specific regions with persisting higher HBV infection prevalence.

Relatório de estágio na Caixa Geral de Depósitos

This report will describe the activities undertaken during my internship at the Personnel Department (DPE-UPE4.1) in Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD), Lisbon, between September 22, 2014, and February 28, 2015. I consider that it is important to note from the outset i) that the subject of my training was suggested by my supervisor in the DPE and accepted by me; and ii) that the internship consisted essentially of carrying out research and information gathering into the different social systems that coexist within the bank and the application of each legal system in solving concrete situations of the CGD employees. The research and analysis of information was important not only for my study but for the CGD itself, as it enables the department to have such an important matter, full of specific characteristics, condensed into a single document, i.e. this report. This is a complex reality. The various welfare systems differ according to the contractual agreement linking the employee to the employer at the date when the labour contract is signed, and also the unique/singular characteristics of the CGD. In the early stage I started by trying to understand the financial institution and its organization and role and the department where I worked. So I analyzed the CGD Statutes and the legal measures that crystallized the scheme for its employees and I also researched its domestic and international operations. The first month was devoted to the research and analysis of such legislation to understand the creation of the CGD and its path to date. In the second and third months I studied the legal social systems that are applied to different groups of CGD workers. This period was quite important to identify and understand the differences between those regimes of CGD employees as well as the procedure inherent in each case. I highlighted the non-implementation of “the social protection regime of convergence” to the workers of this institution; the differences regarding the allocation of sickness subsidies paid to workers who belong to Social Security and CGA contributors, as well as the enforcement of internal rules to all the workers when a work-related accident happens.Then I focused on to assessing and examining external legislation and several internal regulations in order to obtain solutions to questions raised and situations involving by the workers, in order to understand how the DPE solves these situations. Over the last three months of internship, after this more theoretical work, I began the analysis of concrete situations involving employees carrying out their duties in Portugal and abroad. Some of these situations had been received by the department before the beginning of my internship and others over this period. When I was “working” in the DPE I analyzed “cases” that had been solved and some others without a final solution because they were still in courts. As for the last ones (new cases) I was able to follow their assessment and sometimes their outcome. Some of them became study cases for me. Over these five months of my internship, several cases were analyzed and discussed by legal experts of DPE in which I could participate. I always worked hard. I know that this action contributed to elucidate me about the treatment of the issues, and allowed me to have a direct contact with some workers and be part of a dynamic work team. For these reasons, my internship report is not merely descriptive of activities. It consists of an analysis of rules (legislation) and a regulatory framework of activities and it is also a description of several specific situations solved or in a solution process. Through this work I intend to make known the particular reality of a modern Portuguese financial institution not only because of its importance in our country but also such a large number of employees work here (in Portugal and abroad). I should add that throughout my internship I was allowed to attend conferences, within the scope of the bank in order to get a broader view of some issues related to the daily life of the DPE and the CGD. So, I participated in I Jornadas Bancárias and the Conferência Internacional do Contrato a Termo, given that the CGD is a bank and the DPE deals with legal and labour relations.

RoboCup Soccer Leagues

RoboCup was created in 1996 by a group of Japanese, American, and European Artificial Intelligence and Robotics researchers with a formidable, visionary long-term challenge: “By 2050 a team of robot soccer players will beat the human World Cup champion team.” At that time, in the mid 90s, when there were very few effective mobile robots and the Honda P2 humanoid robot was presented to a stunning public for the first time also in 1996, the RoboCup challenge, set as an adversarial game between teams of autonomous robots, was fascinating and exciting. RoboCup enthusiastically and concretely introduced three robot soccer leagues, namely “Simulation,” “Small-Size,” and “Middle-Size,” as we explain below, and organized its first competitions at IJCAI’97 in Nagoya with a surprising number of 100 participants [RC97]. It was the beginning of what became a continously growing research community. RoboCup established itself as a structured organization (the RoboCup Federation www.RoboCup.org). RoboCup fosters annual competition events, where the scientific challenges faced by the researchers are addressed in a setting that is attractive also to the general public. and the RoboCup events are the ones most popular and attended in the research fields of AI and Robotics.RoboCup further includes a technical symposium with contributions relevant to the RoboCup competitions and beyond to the general AI and robotics.

Dynamic group formation in mobile computer supported collaborative learning environment

Forming suitable learning groups is one of the factors that determine the efficiency of collaborative learning activities. However, only a few studies were carried out to address this problem in the mobile learning environments. In this paper, we propose a new approach for an automatic, customized, and dynamic group formation in Mobile Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (MCSCL) contexts. The proposed solution is based on the combination of three types of grouping criteria: learner’s personal characteristics, learner’s behaviours, and context information. The instructors can freely select the type, the number, and the weight of grouping criteria, together with other settings such as the number, the size, and the type of learning groups (homogeneous or heterogeneous). Apart from a grouping mechanism, the proposed approach represents a flexible tool to control each learner, and to manage the learning processes from the beginning to the end of collaborative learning activities. In order to evaluate the quality of the implemented group formation algorithm, we compare its Average Intra-cluster Distance (AID) with the one of a random group formation method. The results show a higher effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in forming homogenous and heterogeneous groups compared to the random method.

Public service culture collections of microorganisms: are they important for biotechnology?

Microbiology as a scientific discipline recognised the need to preserve microorganisms for scientific studies establishing from its very beginning research culture collections (CC). Later on, to better serve different scientific fields and bioindustries with the increasing number of strains of scientific, medical, ecological and biotechnological importance public service CC were established with the specific aims to support their user communities. Currently, the more developed public service CC are recognised as microBiological Resources Centres (mBRC). mBRC are considered to be one of the key elements for sustainable international scientific infrastructure, which is necessary to underpin successful delivery of the benefits of biotechnology, whether within the health sector, the industrial sector or other sectors, and in turn ensure that these advances help drive economic growth. In more detail, mBRCs are defined by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as service providers and repositories of the living cells, genomes of organisms, and information relating to heredity and functions of biological systems. mBRCs contain collections of culturable organisms (e.g., microorganisms, plant, animal cells), replicable parts of these (e.g. genomes, plasmids, virus, cDNAs), viable but not yet culturable organisms, cells and tissues, as well as database containing molecular, physiological and structural information relevant to these collections and related bioinformatics. Thus mBRCs are fundamental to harnessing and preserving the world’s microbial biodiversity and genetic resources and serve as an essential element of the infrastructure for research and development. mBRCs serve a multitude of functions and assume a range of shapes and forms. Some are large national centres performing a comprehensive role providing access to diverse organisms. Other centres play much narrower, yet important, roles supplying limited but crucial specialised resources. In the era of the knowledge-based bio-economy mBRCs are recognised as vital element to underpinning the biotechnology.

An algorithmic approach to estimating the minimal number of periodic points for smooth self-maps of simply-connected manifolds

For a given self-map f of M, a closed smooth connected and simply-connected manifold of dimension m ≥ 4, we provide an algorithm for estimating the values of the topological invariant Dm r [f], which equals the minimal number of r-periodic points in the smooth homotopy class of f. Our results are based on the combinatorial scheme for computing Dm r [f] introduced by G. Graff and J. Jezierski [J. Fixed Point Theory Appl. 13 (2013), 63–84]. An open-source implementation of the algorithm programmed in C++ is publicly available at http://www.pawelpilarczyk.com/combtop/.

Low f-number microlenses for integration on optical microsystems

This paper presents microlenses (MLs) with low f-number made of AZ4562 photoresist for integration on optical microsystems. The fabrication process was based on the thermal reflow and rehydration. Large series of MLs were fabricated with a width of 35 μm, a thickness of 5 μm, and spaced apart by 3 μm. The MLs were fabricated directly on the surface of a die with type n+/p-substrate junction photodiode fabricated in a standard CMOS process. The measured focal length was 49 μm with a tolerance of ±2 μm (maximum error of ±4%), resulting in a numerical aperture of 33.6 × 10-2 (±1.3 × 10-2). The measurements also revealed an f-number of 1.4.

Microstructural evolution of Au/TiO2 nanocomposite films: The influence of Au concentration and thermal annealing

Nanocomposite thin films consisting of a dielectric matrix, such as titanium oxide (TiO2), with embedded gold (Au) nanoparticles were prepared and will be analysed and discussed in detail in the present work. The evolution of morphological and structural features was studied for a wide range of Au concentrations and for annealing treatments in air, for temperatures ranging from 200 to 800 °C. Major findings revealed that for low Au atomic concentrations (at.%), there are only traces of clustering, and just for relatively high annealing temperatures, T ≥ 500 °C. Furthermore, the number of Au nanoparticles is extremely low, even for the highest annealing temperature, T = 800 °C. It is noteworthy that the TiO2 matrix also crystallizes in the anatase phase for annealing temperatures above 300 °C. For intermediate Au contents (5 at.% ≤ CAu ≤ 15 at.%), the formation of gold nanoclusters was much more evident, beginning at lower annealing temperatures (T ≥ 200 °C) with sizes ranging from 2 to 25 nm as the temperature increased. A change in the matrix crystallization from anatase to rutile was also observed in this intermediate range of compositions. For the highest Au concentrations (> 20 at.%), the films tended to form relatively larger clusters, with sizes above 20 nm (for T ≥ 400 °C). It is demonstrated that the structural and morphological characteristics of the films are strongly affected by the annealing temperature, as well as by the particular amounts, size and distribution of the Au nanoparticles dispersed in the TiO2 matrix.

Design of mechatronic system for handling bedridden people

Dissertação de mestrado em Engenharia Mecatrónica

Velhas e novas drogas: impactos da toxicodependência: estudo de caso na cidade de Braga

Dissertação de mestrado em Sociologia (área de especialização em Organizações e Trabalho)

Enhancing longevity of pacemakers through reprogramming. Underutilization and cost-effectiveness

OBJECTIVE: This study was performed to observe the number of pacemakers that had never been reprogrammed after implantation, and the effect of optimised output programming on estimated longevity of pulse generators in patients with pacemaker METHODS: Sixty patients with Teletronics Reflex pacemakers were evaluated in a pacemaker clinic, from the time of the beginning of its activities, in June 1998, until March 1999. Telemetry was performed during the first clinic visit, and we observed how many pulse generators retained nominal output settings of the manufactures indicating the absence of reprogramming until that date. After evaluation of the capture threshold, reprogramming of pacemakers was performed with a safety margin of 2 to 2.5:1, and we compared the estimated longevity based on battery current at the manufacturer's settings with that based on settings achieved after reprogramming. RESULTS: In 95% of the cases, the original programmed setting was never reprogrammed before the patients attended the pacemaker clinic. Reprogramming the pacemaker prolonged estimated pulse generator life by 19.7±15.6 months (35.5%). CONCLUSION: The majority of the pacemakers evaluated had never been reprogrammed. Estimated pulse generator longevity can be prolonged significantly, using this simple, safe, efficacious, and cost-effective procedure.