Partitioned Bremer support and multiple trees

Partitioned Bremer support (PBS) is a valuable means of assessing congruence in combined data sets, but some aspects require clarification. When more than one equally parsimonious tree is found during the constrained search for trees lacking the node of interest, averaging PBS for each data set across these trees can conceal conflict, and PBS should ideally be examined for each constrained tree. Similarly, when multiple most parsimonious trees (MPTs) are generated during analysis of the combined data, PBS is usually calculated on the consensus tree. However, extra information can be obtained if PBS is calculated on each of the MPTs or even suboptimal trees. (C) 2002 The Willi Hennig Society. Published by Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.

Three-dimensional space-borne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging with multiple pass processing

Three-dimensional (3D) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging via multiple-pass processing is an extension of interferometric SAR imaging. It exploits more than two flight passes to achieve a desired resolution in elevation. In this paper, a novel approach is developed to reconstruct a 3D space-borne SAR image with multiple-pass processing. It involves image registration, phase correction and elevational imaging. An image model matching is developed for multiple image registration, an eigenvector method is proposed for the phase correction and the elevational imaging is conducted using a Fourier transform or a super-resolution method for enhancement of elevational resolution. 3D SAR images are obtained by processing simulated data and real data from the first European Remote Sensing satellite (ERS-1) with the proposed approaches.

Development of a measure of coping with multiple sclerosis caregiving

Development of a self-report measure of coping specific to multiple sclerosis (MS) caregiving is needed to advance our understanding of the role of coping in adaptation to caring for a person with MS and to contribute to a lack of empirical data on MS caregiving. A total of 213 MS caregivers and their care recipients completed a Coping with MS Caregiving Inventory (CMSCI) and measures of adjustment (psychological distress), appraisal and illness. A subsample (n = 64) also completed the Ways of Coping Checklist (WCC) and additional adjustment measures (depression, caregiving impact. dyadic adjustment, and relationship conflict and reciprocity). Factor analyses revealed 5 factors: Supportive Engagement, Criticism and Coercion, Practical Assistance, Avoidance, and Positive Reframing. Subscales had internal reliabilities comparable to similar scales and were empirically distinct. Preliminary construct validation data are consistent with recent MS caregiving research that links passive avoidant emotion-focused coping with poorer adjustment, and relationship-focused coping caregiving research that links greater reliance on positive relationship-focused coping and less reliance on criticism with better adjustment. Results extend this research by revealing new relations between coping and adaptation to MS caregiving. Convergent validation data suggest that although the inventory differs from the WCC, it does share certain conceptual similarities with this scale.

Paid employment of mothers and fathers of an adult child with multiple disabilities

Background Paid employment is increasingly undertaken by mothers as their children age, with the majority of women being in employment by the time their offspring are adult. Opportunities to engage in employment appear to be reduced for mothers of children with disabilities; however, little is known about the employment of mothers or fathers of adults with disabilities. Method Data were collected regarding the employment decisions of parents of a young adult with multiple disabilities and contrasted with those of parents whose children were all developing normally. Twenty-five mothers and 12 fathers of a young adult with multiple disabilities were interviewed, as were 25 comparison mothers and 19 comparison fathers. Data collected included hours of work, reasons for employment status, attitudes towards work and child care, and psychological well-being. Results Clear differences were found between the two groups. Mothers and fathers of a child with multiple disabilities showed different engagement patterns with the paid workforce from comparison parents. Hours of work for fathers of a young adult with multiple disabilities showed a bi-modal distribution, with some fathers working fewer hours than usual and others working very long hours. For mothers in both groups, the number of hours in paid employment was negatively associated with reports of psychological problems. Conclusions Increased attention needs to be given to the employment opportunities of parents of children with disabilities since employment appears to play a protective role for mothers, in particular. Services provided to adults with disabilities will need to change if parents are to have the same life chances as parents without adult offspring with a disability.

Promiscuous CTL recognition of viral epitopes on multiple human leukocyte antigens: Biological validation of the proposed HLA A24 supertype

Multiple HLA class I alleles can bind peptides with common sequence motifs due to structural similarities in the peptide binding cleft, and these groups of alleles have been classified into supertypes. Nine major HLA supertypes have been proposed, including an A24 supertype that includes A*2301, A*2402, and A*3001. Evidence for this A24 supertype is limited to HLA sequence homology and/or similarity in peptide binding motifs for the alleles. To investigate the immunological relevance of this proposed supertype, we have examined two viral epitopes (from EBV and CMV) initially defined as HLA-A*2301-binding peptides. The data clearly demonstrate that each peptide could be recognized by CTL clones in the context of A*2301 or A*2402; thus validating the inclusion of these three alleles within an A24 supertype. Furthermore, CTL responses to the EBV epitope were detectable in both A*2301(+) and A*2402(+) individuals who had been previously exposed to this virus. These data substantiate the biological relevance of the A24 supertype, and the identification of viral epitopes with the capacity to bind promiscuously across this supertype could aid efforts to develop CTL-based vaccines or immunotherapy. The degeneracy in HLA restriction displayed by some T cells in this study also suggests that the dogma of self-MHC restriction needs some refinement to accommodate foreign peptide recognition in the context of multiple supertype alleles.

Estimates of global and regional potential health gains from reducing multiple major risk factors

Background Estimates of the disease burden due to multiple risk factors can show the potential gain from combined preventive measures. But few such investigations have been attempted, and none on a global scale. Our aim was to estimate the potential health benefits from removal of multiple major risk factors. Methods We assessed the burden of disease and injury attributable to the joint effects of 20 selected leading risk factors in 14 epidemiological subregions of the world. We estimated population attributable fractions, defined as the proportional reduction in disease or mortality that would occur if exposure to a risk factor were reduced to an alternative level, from data for risk factor prevalence and hazard size. For every disease, we estimated joint population attributable fractions, for multiple risk factors, by age and sex, from the direct contributions of individual risk factors. To obtain the direct hazards, we reviewed publications and re-analysed cohort data to account for that part of hazard that is mediated through other risks. Results Globally, an estimated 47% of premature deaths and 39% of total disease burden in 2000 resulted from the joint effects of the risk factors considered. These risks caused a substantial proportion of important diseases, including diarrhoea (92%-94%), lower respiratory infections (55-62%), lung cancer (72%), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (60%), ischaemic heart disease (83-89%), and stroke (70-76%). Removal of these risks would have increased global healthy life expectancy by 9.3 years (17%) ranging from 4.4 years (6%) in the developed countries of the western Pacific to 16.1 years (43%) in parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Interpretation Removal of major risk factors would not only increase healthy life expectancy in every region, but also reduce some of the differences between regions, The potential for disease prevention and health gain from tackling major known risks simultaneously would be substantial.

Multiple centroid method to evaluate the adaptability of alfalfa genotypes

This study aimed to evaluate the efficiency of multiple centroids to study the adaptability of alfalfa genotypes (Medicago sativa L.). In this method, the genotypes are compared with ideotypes defined by the bissegmented regression model, according to the researcher's interest. Thus, genotype classification is carried out as determined by the objective of the researcher and the proposed recommendation strategy. Despite the great potential of the method, it needs to be evaluated under the biological context (with real data). In this context, we used data on the evaluation of dry matter production of 92 alfalfa cultivars, with 20 cuttings, from an experiment in randomized blocks with two repetitions carried out from November 2004 to June 2006. The multiple centroid method proved efficient for classifying alfalfa genotypes. Moreover, it showed no unambiguous indications and provided that ideotypes were defined according to the researcher's interest, facilitating data interpretation.

Risk assessment of exposure to multiple mycotoxins in food

Moulds may produce a diversity of toxins such as aflatoxins, ochratoxins, trichothecenes, zearalenone, fumonisins and others. Although toxicological, environmental and epidemiological studies have addressed the problem of these toxins one by one, more than one mycotoxin are found usually in the same contaminated food. Risk assessment for humans potentially exposed to multimycotoxins suffers very much from the lack of adequate food consumption data. Furthermore, for a given mycotoxin, synergism and antagonism with other mycotoxins, found in the same food commodities, are not taken into account. Aflatoxin B1 and ochratoxin A belong to the most frequently occurring mycotoxins. This has repeatedly been demonstrated, however, normally, the risk resulting from their simultaneous occurrence is not considered. A descriptive study was developed to monitor air fungal contamination in one hospital food unit.

eTourism – Mobile Data Interface (Sistema de Apoio On-Line ao Turista em Dispositivos Móveis com Adaptação de Tours Personalizados)

O intuito principal desta Tese é criar um interface de Dados entre uma fonte de informação e fornecimento de Rotas para turistas e disponibilizar essa informação através de um sistema móvel interactivo de navegação e visualização desses mesmos dados. O formato tecnológico será portátil e orientado à mobilidade (PDA) e deverá ser prático, intuitivo e multi-facetado, permitindo boa usabilidade a públicos de várias faixas etárias. Haverá uma componente de IA (Inteligência Artificial), que irá usar a informação fornecida para tomar decisões ponderadas tendo em conta uma diversidade de aspectos. O Sistema a desenvolver deverá ser, assim, capaz de lidar com imponderáveis (alterações de rota, gestão de horários, cancelamento de pontos de visita, novos pontos de visita) e, finalmente, deverá ajudar o turista a gerir o seu tempo entre Pontos de Interesse (POI – Points os Interest). Deverá também permitir seguir ou não um dado percurso pré-definido, havendo possibilidade de cenários de exploração de POIs, sugeridos a partir de sugestões in loco, similares a Locais incluídos no trajecto, que se enquadravam no perfil dos Utilizadores. O âmbito geográfico de teste deste projecto será a zona ribeirinha do porto, por ser um ex-líbris da cidade e, simultaneamente, uma zona com muitos desafios ao nível geográfico (com a inclinação) e ao nível do grande número de Eventos e Locais a visitar.

Does independent component analysis play a role in unmixing hyperspectral data?

Independent component analysis (ICA) has recently been proposed as a tool to unmix hyperspectral data. ICA is founded on two assumptions: 1) the observed spectrum vector is a linear mixture of the constituent spectra (endmember spectra) weighted by the correspondent abundance fractions (sources); 2)sources are statistically independent. Independent factor analysis (IFA) extends ICA to linear mixtures of independent sources immersed in noise. Concerning hyperspectral data, the first assumption is valid whenever the multiple scattering among the distinct constituent substances (endmembers) is negligible, and the surface is partitioned according to the fractional abundances. The second assumption, however, is violated, since the sum of abundance fractions associated to each pixel is constant due to physical constraints in the data acquisition process. Thus, sources cannot be statistically independent, this compromising the performance of ICA/IFA algorithms in hyperspectral unmixing. This paper studies the impact of hyperspectral source statistical dependence on ICA and IFA performances. We conclude that the accuracy of these methods tends to improve with the increase of the signature variability, of the number of endmembers, and of the signal-to-noise ratio. In any case, there are always endmembers incorrectly unmixed. We arrive to this conclusion by minimizing the mutual information of simulated and real hyperspectral mixtures. The computation of mutual information is based on fitting mixtures of Gaussians to the observed data. A method to sort ICA and IFA estimates in terms of the likelihood of being correctly unmixed is proposed.

Data analytics in the cloud with flexible mapreduced workflows

Data analytic applications are characterized by large data sets that are subject to a series of processing phases. Some of these phases are executed sequentially but others can be executed concurrently or in parallel on clusters, grids or clouds. The MapReduce programming model has been applied to process large data sets in cluster and cloud environments. For developing an application using MapReduce there is a need to install/configure/access specific frameworks such as Apache Hadoop or Elastic MapReduce in Amazon Cloud. It would be desirable to provide more flexibility in adjusting such configurations according to the application characteristics. Furthermore the composition of the multiple phases of a data analytic application requires the specification of all the phases and their orchestration. The original MapReduce model and environment lacks flexible support for such configuration and composition. Recognizing that scientific workflows have been successfully applied to modeling complex applications, this paper describes our experiments on implementing MapReduce as subworkflows in the AWARD framework (Autonomic Workflow Activities Reconfigurable and Dynamic). A text mining data analytic application is modeled as a complex workflow with multiple phases, where individual workflow nodes support MapReduce computations. As in typical MapReduce environments, the end user only needs to define the application algorithms for input data processing and for the map and reduce functions. In the paper we present experimental results when using the AWARD framework to execute MapReduce workflows deployed over multiple Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) instances.

Quality indicators in the education of children with profound Intellectual and multiple disabilities

Todas as crianças, independentemente das suas necessidades, deveriam ter acesso a uma educação de qualidade e a serem incluídas nas suas famílias e comunidades. Esta afirmação inclui as crianças mais vulneráveis, em particular as crianças com dificuldades intelectuais e multideficiência. Os resultados da investigação sobre a educação de crianças com dificuldades intelectuais e multideficiência ainda não produziram até ao momento informação suficiente que possa ser usada para desenvolver indicadores de qualidade para a avaliação das práticas e dos serviços. A investigação nesta área é limitada por constrangimentos éticos, dificuldades na determinação de amostras e desafios metodológicos, sendo reduzido o número de estudos capaz de produzir a informação necessária. Este artigo tem como objetivo discutir fatores que contribuam para a qualidade do envolvimento de crianças com dificuldades intelectuais e multideficiência em atividades educativas, com base na experiência das autoras e na informação disponível que tem sido publicada sobre este assunto. Com base nesta discussão é sugerido um conjunto de indicadores que poderão ajudar os profissionais a dirigir as suas observações para a qualidade da oferta educativa e para aspetos significativos dos desempenhos das crianças quando envolvidas em atividades curriculares.

Liver morphology with emphasis on bile ducts changes and survival analysis in mice submitted to multiple Schistosoma mansoni infections and chemotherapy

In an attempt to be as close as possible to the infected and treated patients of the endemic areas of schistosomiasis (S. mansoni) and in order to achieve a long period of follow-up, mice were repeatedly infected with a low number of cercariae. Survival data and histological variables such as schistosomal granuloma, portal changes, hepatocellular necrosis, hepatocellular regeneration, schistosomotic pigment, periductal fibrosis and chiefly bile ducts changes were analysed in the infected treated and non treated mice. Oxamniquine chemotherapy in repeatedly infected mice prolonged survival significantly when compared to non-treated animals (chi-square 9.24, p = 0.0024), thus confirming previous results with a similar experimental model but with a shorter term follow-up. Furthermore, mortality decreased rapidly after treatment suggesting an abrupt reduction in the severity of hepatic lesions. A morphological and immunohistochemical study of the liver was carried out. Portal fibrosis, with a pattern resembling human Symmers fibrosis was present at a late phase in the infected animals. Bile duct lesions were quite close to those described in human Mansonian schistosomiasis. Schistosomal antigen was observed in one isolated altered bile duct cell. The pathogenesis of the bile duct changes and its relation to the parasite infection and/or their antigens are discussed.

Multiple linear and principal component regressions for modelling ecotoxicity bioassay response

The ecotoxicological response of the living organisms in an aquatic system depends on the physical, chemical and bacteriological variables, as well as the interactions between them. An important challenge to scientists is to understand the interaction and behaviour of factors involved in a multidimensional process such as the ecotoxicological response.With this aim, multiple linear regression (MLR) and principal component regression were applied to the ecotoxicity bioassay response of Chlorella vulgaris and Vibrio fischeri in water collected at seven sites of Leça river during five monitoring campaigns (February, May, June, August and September of 2006). The river water characterization included the analysis of 22 physicochemical and 3 microbiological parameters. The model that best fitted the data was MLR, which shows: (i) a negative correlation with dissolved organic carbon, zinc and manganese, and a positive one with turbidity and arsenic, regarding C. vulgaris toxic response; (ii) a negative correlation with conductivity and turbidity and a positive one with phosphorus, hardness, iron, mercury, arsenic and faecal coliforms, concerning V. fischeri toxic response. This integrated assessment may allow the evaluation of the effect of future pollution abatement measures over the water quality of Leça River.

Deterministic approach for multiple-source tsunami hazard assessment for Sines, Portugal

In this paper, we present a deterministic approach to tsunami hazard assessment for the city and harbour of Sines, Portugal, one of the test sites of project ASTARTE (Assessment, STrategy And Risk Reduction for Tsunamis in Europe). Sines has one of the most important deep-water ports, which has oil-bearing, petrochemical, liquid-bulk, coal, and container terminals. The port and its industrial infrastructures face the ocean southwest towards the main seismogenic sources. This work considers two different seismic zones: the Southwest Iberian Margin and the Gloria Fault. Within these two regions, we selected a total of six scenarios to assess the tsunami impact at the test site. The tsunami simulations are computed using NSWING, a Non-linear Shallow Water model wIth Nested Grids. In this study, the static effect of tides is analysed for three different tidal stages: MLLW (mean lower low water), MSL (mean sea level), and MHHW (mean higher high water). For each scenario, the tsunami hazard is described by maximum values of wave height, flow depth, drawback, maximum inundation area and run-up. Synthetic waveforms are computed at virtual tide gauges at specific locations outside and inside the harbour. The final results describe the impact at the Sines test site considering the single scenarios at mean sea level, the aggregate scenario, and the influence of the tide on the aggregate scenario. The results confirm the composite source of Horseshoe and Marques de Pombal faults as the worst-case scenario, with wave heights of over 10 m, which reach the coast approximately 22 min after the rupture. It dominates the aggregate scenario by about 60 % of the impact area at the test site, considering maximum wave height and maximum flow depth. The HSMPF scenario inundates a total area of 3.5 km2. © Author(s) 2015.