O risco dos bancos, regulação e a crise financeira internacional

Dissertação de Mestrado, Ciências Económicas e Empresariais, 13 de Julho de 2016, Universidade dos Açores.

Correlação entre o sinal mecanomiográfico e a escala modificada de Ashworth durante avaliação clínica da espasticidade

Spasticity is a common disorder in people who have upper motor neuron injury. The involvement may occur at different levels. The Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS) is the most used method to measure involvement levels. But it corresponds to a subjective evaluation. Mechanomyography (MMG) is an objective technique that quantifies the muscle vibration during the contraction and stretching events. So, it may assess the level of spasticity accurately. This study aimed to investigate the correlation between spasticity levels determined by MAS with MMG signal in spastic and not spastic muscles. In the experimental protocol, we evaluated 34 members of 22 volunteers, of both genders, with a mean age of 39.91 ± 13.77 years. We evaluated the levels of spasticity by MAS in flexor and extensor muscle groups of the knee and/or elbow, where one muscle group was the agonist and one antagonist. Simultaneously the assessment by the MAS, caught up the MMG signals. We used a custom MMG equipment to register and record the signals, configured in LabView platform. Using the MatLab computer program, it was processed the MMG signals in the time domain (median energy) and spectral domain (median frequency) for the three motion axes: X (transversal), Y (longitudinal) and Z (perpendicular). For bandwidth delimitation, we used a 3rd order Butterworth filter, acting in the range of 5-50 Hz. Statistical tests as Spearman's correlation coefficient, Kruskal-Wallis test and linear correlation test were applied. As results in the time domain, the Kruskal-Wallis test showed differences in median energy (MMGME) between MAS groups. The linear correlation test showed high linear correlation between MAS and MMGME for the agonist muscle as well as for the antagonist group. The largest linear correlation occurred between the MAS and MMG ME for the Z axis of the agonist muscle group (R2 = 0.9557) and the lowest correlation occurred in the X axis, for the antagonist muscle group (R2 = 0.8862). The Spearman correlation test also confirmed high correlation for all axes in the time domain analysis. In the spectral domain, the analysis showed an increase in the median frequency (MMGMF) in MAS’ greater levels. The highest correlation coefficient between MAS and MMGMF signal occurred in the Z axis for the agonist muscle group (R2 = 0.4883), and the lowest value occurred on the Y axis for the antagonist group (R2 = 0.1657). By means of the Spearman correlation test, the highest correlation occurred between the Y axis of the agonist group (0.6951; p <0.001) and the lowest value on the X axis of the antagonist group (0.3592; p <0.001). We conclude that there was a significantly high correlation between the MMGME and MAS in both muscle groups. Also between MMG and MAS occurred a significant correlation, however moderate for the agonist group, and low for the antagonist group. So, the MMGME proved to be more an appropriate descriptor to correlate with the degree of spasticity defined by the MAS.

Reactive Attachment Disorder in infants in foster care and associated mental health and cognitive functioning

Background: Reactive attachment disorder (RAD) has been described as one of the least researched and most poorly understood psychiatric disorders (Chaffin et al., 2006). Despite this, given what is known about maltreatment and attachment, it is likely that RAD has profound consequences for child development. Very little is known about the prevalence and stability of RAD symptoms over time. Until recently it has been difficult to investigate the presence of RAD due to limited measures for informing a diagnosis. However this study utilised a new observational tool Method: A cross sectional study design with a one-year follow-up explored RAD symptoms in maltreated infants in Scotland (n=55, age range= 16-62 months) and associated mental health and cognitive functioning. The study utilised the Rating of Inhibited Attachment Behavior Scale (Corval, et al., unpublished 2014) that has recently been developed by experts in the field along side The Disturbances of Attachment Interview (Smyke & Zeanah, 1999). Children were recruited as part of the BeST trial, whereby all infants who came in to the care of the local authority in Glasgow due to child protection concerns were invited to participate. The study sample was representative of the larger pool of data in terms of age, gender, mental health and cognitive functioning. Results: The sample was found to be representative of the population of maltreated children from which it was derived. Prevalence of RAD was found to be 7.3% (n=3, 95% CI [0.43 – 14.17]) at T1, when children are first placed in to foster care. At T2, following one year in improved care conditions, 4.3% (n=2, 95% CI [below 0 – 10.16]) met a borderline RAD diagnosis. Levels of observed RAD symptoms decreased significantly at T2 in comparison to T1 but carer reported symptoms of RAD did not. Children whose RAD symptoms did not improve were found to be significantly older and showed less prosocial behaviour. RAD was associated with some mental health and cognitive difficulties. Lower Verbal IQ and unexpectedly, prosocial behaviour were found to predict RAD symptoms. Conclusions: The preliminary findings have added to the developing understanding of RAD symptoms and associated difficulties however further exploration of RAD in larger samples would be invaluable.

Sexualidade na adolescência

O presente relatório, foi elaborado, no âmbito do III Mestrado em Enfermagem com área de especialização de saúde comunitária. Neste documento, pretendemos descrever, analisar e reflectir, sobre as actividades desenvolvidas durante o estágio, que teve por objectivo desenvolver competências técnicas, científicas e relacionais, através da interacção da teoria e da prática na construção do nosso perfil de enfermeiro especialista em saúde comunitária. O trabalho de campo foi realizado numa escola secundaria do distrito de Portalegre, junto dos alunos do 8.º e 11.º ano de escolaridade. Foram assim realizadas sessões de educação para a saúde no âmbito da educação sexual a 214 alunos, que relativamente ao grau de satisfação geral, 60,5% dos jovens s dis-seram muito satisfeitos e 37,6% satisfeitos, sendo que este critério teve uma avaliação posi-tiva de 98,1%.

Sexualidade na adolescência

O presente relatório, surge no âmbito, do 3.º Curso de Mestrado em Enfermagem com Área de Especialização em Enfermagem Comunitária realizado na Escola Superior de Saúde de Portalegre – Instituto Politécnico de Portalegre. A partir da Metodologia de Planeamento em Saúde, descrevemos, analisamos e re-flectimos com base nas competências definidas para o enfermeiro especialista de saúde comunitária sobre um conjunto de acções de educação para a saúde, relacionadas com a sexualidade na adolescência e implementadas em contexto escolar. Deste modo, com base nos problemas e necessidades identificadas, interviemos jun-to de 205 alunos a frequentar o 8.º e o 11.º de Escolaridade e com idades compreendidas entre os 13 e os 20 anos. Foram realizadas nove sessões de educação para a saúde, que tiveram uma avalia-ção positiva de 98,1%.

Individual Child Cognitive Behavioral Treatment versus Child-Parent Cognitive Behavioral Treatments for Anxiety Disorders in Children and Adolescents: Comparative Outcomes

Anxiety disorders; such as separation anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia and specific phobia, are widespread in children and adolescents. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has been shown to be effective in reducing excessive fears and anxieties in children and adolescents. Research has produced equivocal findings that involving parents in treatment of child anxiety enhances effects over individual CBT (ICBT). The present dissertation study examined whether parental involvement can enhance individual treatment effect if the parent conditions are streamlined by targeting specific parental variables. The first parent condition, Parent Reinforcement Skills Training (RFST), involved increasing mothers’ use of positive reinforcement and decreasing use of negative reinforcement. The second parent condition, Parent Relationship Skill Training (RLST), involved increasing maternal child acceptance and decreasing maternal control (or increasing autonomy granting). Results of the present dissertation findings support the use of all three treatment conditions (ICBT, RLST, RFST) for child anxiety; that is, significant reductions in anxiety were found in each of the three treatment conditions. No significant differences were found between treatment conditions with respect to diagnostic recovery rate, clinician rating, and parent rating of child anxiety. Significant differences between conditions were found on child self rating of anxiety, with some evidence to support the superiority of RLST and RFST to ICBT. These findings support the efficacy of individual, as well as parent involved CBT, and provide mixed evidence with respect to the superiority of parent involved CBT over ICBT. The conceptual, empirical, and clinical implications of the findings are discussed.

Collaborative filtering and deep learning based hybrid recommendation for cold start problem

Recommender systems (RS) are used by many social networking applications and online e-commercial services. Collaborative filtering (CF) is one of the most popular approaches used for RS. However traditional CF approach suffers from sparsity and cold start problems. In this paper, we propose a hybrid recommendation model to address the cold start problem, which explores the item content features learned from a deep learning neural network and applies them to the timeSVD++ CF model. Extensive experiments are run on a large Netflix rating dataset for movies. Experiment results show that the proposed hybrid recommendation model provides a good prediction for cold start items, and performs better than four existing recommendation models for rating of non-cold start items.

Efetividade de técnicas de fisioterapia no equilíbrio em pacientes com Acidente Vascular Cerebral

Projeto de Graduação apresentado à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para obtenção do grau de Licenciada em Fisioterapia

Efeitos da realidade virtual na reabilitação em indivíduos pós-AVE

Projeto de Graduação apresentado à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para obtenção do grau de Licenciada em Fisioterapia

Caracterización de patologías del hombro relacionadas con el origen y prestaciones asistenciales y económicas en una EPS, Bogotá, 2012 a 2014

Introducción: Las patologías del hombro suelen ser una de las causas de mayor solicitud de consulta en el ámbito laboral, con generación de incapacidad y pérdidas económicas, tanto para el afectado como para la empresa e incluso, la Entidad Promotora de Salud responsable de la atención y tratamiento. Entre las patologías de hombro más frecuentes se hallan el síndrome del manguito rotador, bursitis del hombro, síndrome de abducción dolorosa del hombro, tendinitis del bíceps, traumatismos del tendón del manguito rotador y tendinitis calcificante del hombro. Objetivo: Determinar y caracterizar las patologías del hombro de origen común y laboral, las prestaciones asistenciales y económicas que de estas se deriva en una EPS durante el periodo 2012 a 2014 en la ciudad de Bogotá. Metodología: Se realizó un estudio de corte transversal con datos secundarios procedentes de 657 afiliados del Régimen Contributivo en una EPS de la ciudad de Bogotá, con información de las patologías del hombro registradas de origen común y laboral, durante el periodo de 2012 a 2014. Las variables incluidas fueron las sociodemográficas, ocupacionales y clínicas. Se describieron las variables cualitativas en términos de proporción y las variables cuantitativas a través de medidas de tendencia central (medias/ medianas) y dispersión (rangos, desviación estándar, cuartiles). Para evaluar la asociación entre variables se utilizó la prueba de Chi cuadrado de Pearson usando nivel de significación α de 0,05. Resultados: Del total de afiliados se encontró que el 27,3% de las patologías fueron de origen laboral y el resto de origen común, predominando el género femenino (76.9%); el estado civil casado (34,4%), la escolaridad secundaria (60,4%). Un alto porcentaje de los pacientes se han desempeñado en la industria manufacturera (51%) y el diagnóstico más frecuente fue el síndrome de manguito rotatorio (89,2%). Al revisar los factores asociados con el origen de la patología en la calificación de estas, se encontró asociación con la edad (p = 0,000), la escolaridad (p = 0,013), la actividad económica (p = 0,0000), el factor ocupacional ergonómico (p = 0,0000) y con los diagnósticos de patologías del hombro (p = 0,025). Los días de incapacidad por las patologías del hombro reportaron una mediana de 111 días con rango de 0 a 1925 días. El tiempo de exposición al factor de riesgo ocupacional presento un rango de 6 a 470 meses, los costos por las patologías del hombro generadas correspondieron a un rango de $4000 a $68894438, con una mediana de $2287304. Es transcendental diagnosticar a tiempo e instaurar medidas terapéuticas, que permitan mejorar la sintomatología que ocasionan las patologías del hombro y la alteración en la funcionalidad del mismo, minimizando así los costos y días de incapacidad que a esto conlleva.

Representing image captions as concept graphs using semantic information

Conceptual interpretation of languages has gathered peak interest in the world of artificial intelligence. The challenge in modeling various complications involved in a language is the main motivation behind our work. Our main focus in this work is to develop conceptual graphical representation for image captions. We have used discourse representation structure to gain semantic information which is further modeled into a graphical structure. The effectiveness of the model is evaluated by a caption based image retrieval system. The image retrieval is performed by computing subgraph based similarity measures. Best retrievals were given an average rating of . ± . out of 4 by a group of 25 human judges. The experiments were performed on a subset of the SBU Captioned Photo Dataset. This purpose of this work is to establish the cognitive sensibility of the approach to caption representations

Representing image captions as concept graphs using semantic information

Conceptual interpretation of languages has gathered peak interest in the world of artificial intelligence. The challenge in modeling various complications involved in a language is the main motivation behind our work. Our main focus in this work is to develop conceptual graphical representation for image captions. We have used discourse representation structure to gain semantic information which is further modeled into a graphical structure. The effectiveness of the model is evaluated by a caption based image retrieval system. The image retrieval is performed by computing subgraph based similarity measures. Best retrievals were given an average rating of . ± . out of 4 by a group of 25 human judges. The experiments were performed on a subset of the SBU Captioned Photo Dataset. This purpose of this work is to establish the cognitive sensibility of the approach to caption representations.

Developing within-company information and communication technologies (ICT) innovation diffusion networks : a study of three Australian major contractors

The innovation diffusion and knowledge management literature strongly supports the importance of communities of practice (COP) for enabling knowledge about how to use and adopt innovation initiatives. One of the most powerful tools for innovation diffusion is word-of-mouth wisdom from committed individuals who mentor and support each other. Close proximity for face-to-face interaction is highly effective, however, many organisations are geographically dispersed with projects being virtual linked sub-organisations using ICT to communicate. ICT has also introduced a useful facilitating technology for developing knowledge networks. This paper presents findings from a research program concentrating on ICT innovation diffusion in the Australian construction industry. One way in which ICT diffusion is taking place was found to be through within-company communities of practice. We undertook in-depth unstructured interviews with three of the major 10 to 15 contractors in Australia to discuss their ICT diffusion strategies. We discovered that in all three cases,within company networked communities of practice was a central strategy. Further, effective diffusion of ICT groupware tools can be critical in developing COP where they are geographically dispersed.

Examining the use of bid information in predicting the contractor’s performance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of bid information, including both price and non-price factors in predicting the bidder’s performance. Design/methodology/approach – The practice of the industry was first reviewed. Data on bid evaluation and performance records of the successful bids were then obtained from the Hong Kong Housing Department, the largest housing provider in Hong Kong. This was followed by the development of a radial basis function (RBF) neural network based performance prediction model. Findings – It is found that public clients are more conscientious and include non-price factors in their bid evaluation equations. With the input variables used the information is available at the time of the bid and the output variable is the project performance score recorded during work in progress achieved by the successful bidder. It was found that past project performance score is the most sensitive input variable in predicting future performance. Research limitations/implications – The paper shows the inadequacy of using price alone for bid award criterion. The need for a systemic performance evaluation is also highlighted, as this information is highly instrumental for subsequent bid evaluations. The caveat for this study is that the prediction model was developed based on data obtained from one single source. Originality/value – The value of the paper is in the use of an RBF neural network as the prediction tool because it can model non-linear function. This capability avoids tedious ‘‘trial and error’’ in deciding the number of hidden layers to be used in the network model. Keywords Hong Kong, Construction industry, Neural nets, Modelling, Bid offer spreads Paper type Research paper