Problems of philosophy; or, Principles of epistemology and metaphysics,

Introduction.--General problems of science and philosophy.--Analysis of the problem of knowledge.--Primary processes and data of knowledge.--Conditions of synthetic knowledge.--Theories of knowledge.--The criteria of truth.--The perception of space and objectivity.--Metaphysical theories.--Materialism.--Spiritualism.--The existence of God.--Conclusion.

A preliminary survey of E.D.P. procurement procedures /

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Computer crime : its setting and the need for deterrent legislation /

Includes bibliographies.

Federal privacy legislation and the Illinois response /

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Protecting the privacy of Illinois citizens : responding to Federal initiatives /

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The Computer management of medical payments /

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The Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) Explorer 1.0

The Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) has been developed to support the European Union’s efforts in strengthening our capacity to mobilize and use biodiversity data, information and forecasts so that they are readily accessible to policymakers, managers, experts and other users. Conceived as a set of web based services, DOPA provides a broad set of free and open source tools to assess, monitor and even forecast the state of and pressure on protected areas at local, regional and global scale. DOPA Explorer 1.0 is a web based interface available in four languages (EN, FR, ES, PT) providing simple means to explore the nearly 16,000 protected areas that are at least as large as 100 km2. Distinguishing between terrestrial, marine and mixed protected areas, DOPA Explorer 1.0 can help end users to identify those with most unique ecosystems and species, and assess the pressures they are exposed to because of human development. Recognized by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as a reference information system, DOPA Explorer is based on the best global data sets available and provides means to rank protected areas at the country and ecoregion levels. Inversely, DOPA Explorer indirectly highlights the protected areas for which information is incomplete. We finally invite the end-users of DOPA to engage with us through the proposed communication platforms to help improve our work to support the safeguarding of biodiversity.

Land resource requirements for bioenergy in India

This study presents a two stage process to determine suitable areas to grow fuel crops: i) FAO Agro Ecological Zones (AEZ) procedure is applied to four Indian states of different geographical characteristics; and ii) Modelling the growth of candidate crops with GEPIC water and nutrient model, which is used to determine potential yield of candidate crops in areas where irrigation water is brackish or soil is saline. Absence of digital soil maps, paucity of readily available climate data and knowledge of detailed requirements of candidate crops are some of the major problems, of which, a series of detailed maps will evaluate true potential of biofuels in India.

Patient experiences of serious adverse drug reactions and their attitudes to medicines:a qualitative study of survivors of Stevens-Johnson syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis in the UK

Background: Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) cause significant morbidity and mortality and account for around 6.5% of hospital admissions. Patient experiences of serious ADRs and their long-term impact on patients' lives, including their influence on current attitudes towards medicines, have not been previously explored. Objective: The aim of the study was to explore the experiences, beliefs, and attitudes of survivors of serious ADRs, using drug-induced Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS) and Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis (TEN) as a paradigm. Methods: A retrospective, qualitative study was undertaken using detailed semi-structured interviews. Fourteen adult survivors of SJS and TEN, admitted to two teaching hospitals in the UK, one the location of a tertiary burns centre, were interviewed. Interview transcripts were independently analysed by three different researchers and themes emerging from the text identified. Results: All 14 patients were aware that their condition was drug induced, and all but one knew the specific drug(s) implicated. Several expressed surprise at the perceived lack of awareness of the ADR amongst healthcare professionals, and described how the ADR was mistaken for another condition. Survivors believed that causes of the ADR included (i) being given too high a dose of the drug; (ii) medical staff ignoring existing allergies; and (iii) failure to monitor blood tests. Only two believed that the reaction was unavoidable. Those who believed that the condition could have been avoided had less trust in healthcare professionals. The ADR had a persisting impact on their current lives physically and psychologically. Many now avoided medicines altogether and were fearful of becoming ill enough to need them. © 2011 Adis Data Information BV. All rights reserved. Conclusions: Life-threatening ADRs continued to affect patients’ lives long after the event. Patients’ beliefs regarding the cause of the ADR differed, and may have influenced their trust in healthcare professionals and medicines. We propose that clear communication during the acute phase of a serious ADR may therefore be important.

Clinical significance of medication reconciliation in children admitted to a UK pediatric hospital:observational study of neurosurgical patients

Background: In December 2007, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and the National Patient Safety Agency in the UK (NICE-NPSA) published guidance that recommends all adults admitted to hospital receive medication reconciliation, usually by pharmacy staff. A costing and report tool was provided indicating a resource requirement of d12.9 million for England per year. Pediatric patients are excluded from this guidance. Objective: To determine the clinical significance of medication reconciliation in children on admission to hospital. Methods: A prospective observational study included pediatric patients admitted to a neurosurgical ward at Birmingham Childrens Hospital, Birmingham, England, between September 2006 and March 2007. Medication reconciliation was conducted by a pharmacist after the admission of each of 100 consecutive eligible patients aged 4 months to 16 years. The clinical significance of prescribing disparities between pre-admission medications and initial admission medication orders was determined by an expert multidisciplinary panel and quantified using an analog scale. The main outcome measure was the clinical signficance of unintentional variations between hospital admission medication orders and physician-prescribed pre-admission medication for repeat (continuing) medications. Results: Initial admission medication orders for children differed from prescribed pre-admission medication in 39%of cases. Half of all resulting prescribing variations in this setting had the potential to cause moderate or severe discomfort or clinical deterioration. These results mirror findings for adults. Conclusions: The introduction of medication reconciliation in children on admission to hospital has the potential to reduce discomfort or clinical deterioration by reducing unintentional changes to repeat prescribed medication. Consequently, there is no justification for the omission of children from the NICENPSA guidance concerning medication reconciliation in hospitals, and costing tools should include pediatric patients. © 2010 Adis Data Information BV. All rights reserved.

Construção e validação de instrumento de coleta de dados do casal grávido no âmbito da atenção básica

The research aimed to construct and validate a data collection instrument of pregnant couple as part of primary care. It was considered hypothesis that level of agreement from 70% among participants to validate the expert panel. The document has been based on the Theory of Human Needs by Horta and adjusted by Garcia and Cubas. It is a study of methodological type developed in four stages: identification of empirical indicators to pregnant women through an integrative literature review; evaluation of empirical indicators and their relation to human needs by focus group; structuring of the second version of instrument by categorization of indicators and appearance and content validation of the third version of instrument by judges, by use of Delphi technique. The collection of data was the first stage in months from August to October 2014 in the Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health and Scopus, PubMed, Lilacs, CINAHL, Cochrane databases. The remaining steps were carried out from November 2014 to February 2015. For the focus group was counted with participation of six experts through two meetings. As for the judges, it was obtained a population of 63 and final sample of 51 judges divided into 46 basic health units of Municipal City Health Natal/RN, Brazil. The study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, under Protocol number 876.200. For data analysis of the first stage it was used descriptive statistics and results are presented in tables and charts. At that stage were identified 162 empirical indicators and, when they were related to human needs, 64 by them were on psycobiological, 97 on psychosocial and one (1) on psychospiritual needs. Regarding the second and third stages, data were treated by process of categorizing and analyzing the Content Validity Index. The indicators obtained a 100% validation index. In appearance and content validation phase of instrument non-validated items were excluded and other items obtained index above 70%. Furthermore, it obtained 99% content validity index in the second version and 95.7% in the third version of the instrument as a whole and, therefore, validated tool. This instrument contains Health Institution, pregnant woman and her partner identification data, information on the human needs of the pregnant and items pertaining to systematize the collection of pregnant couple data during prenatal care. By the conclusion of the study, nurse shall have an instrument to collect the data of pregnant couple in primary care innovative by considering psychobiological, psychosocial and psychospiritual pregnant needs and insert health and sociodemographic data of pregnant partner in the context of pregnancy. Also, the document will serve as a tool for teaching and research in obstetrical nursing.

Integrating Scientific Publication into an Applied Gaming Ecosystem

Salman, M. et al. (2016). Integrating Scientific Publication into an Applied Gaming Ecosystem. GSTF Journal on Computing (JoC), Volume 5 (Issue 1), pp. 45-51.

Secure Full-Duplex Small-Cell Networks in a Spectrum Sharing Environment

In this paper, we propose three relay selection schemes for full-duplex heterogeneous networks in the presence of multiple cognitive radio eavesdroppers. In this setup, the cognitive small-cell nodes (secondary network) can share the spectrum licensed to the macro-cell system (primary network) on the condition that the quality-of-service of the primary network is always satisfied subjected to its outage probability constraint. The messages are delivered from one small-cell base station to the destination with the help of full-duplex small-cell base stations, which act as relay nodes. Based on the availability of the network’s channel state information at the secondary information source, three different selection criteria for full-duplex relays, namely: 1) partial relay selection; 2) optimal relay selection; and 3) minimal self-interference relay selection, are proposed. We derive the exact closed-form and asymptotic expressions of the secrecy outage probability for the three criteria under the attack of non-colluding/colluding eavesdroppers. We demonstrate that the optimal relay selection scheme outperforms the partial relay selection and minimal self-interference relay selection schemes at the expense of acquiring full channel state information knowledge. In addition, increasing the number of the full-duplex small-cell base stations can improve the security performance. At the illegitimate side, deploying colluding eavesdroppers and increasing the number of eavesdroppers put the confidential information at a greater risk. Besides, the transmit power and the desire outage probability of the primary network have great influences on the secrecy outage probability of the secondary network. 

Suporte, Stress e Solidão: um estudo sobre o apoio offline e online percecionado pelas mães portuguesas

Uma “rede social” diz respeito a uma estrutura constituída por pessoas ou organizações que partilham interesses, motivações e valores comuns. Um ponto partilhado pelos diversos tipos de rede social é a troca de informações, conhecimentos, interesses e esforços na tentativa de atingir objectivos comuns, muitas vezes potencializando forças e recursos em situações de crise. Recentemente tem-se ouvido falar bastante deste conceito aplicado à internet. A maternidade constitui, por si só, um momento de crise na vida de cada família e de cada mulher, requerendo adaptações e mudanças. O estudo realizado teve o intuito de avaliar o suporte online e offline (denominando-se essas ligações de redes sociais), no caso específico de assuntos ligados à maternidade. Pretendeu-se verificar também se existia uma correlação entre estes tipos de suporte e os níveis de stress e solidão sentidos pelas mães. Por último, aferiu-se ainda a influência que a idade dos filhos teria nesta adesão a grupos de suporte à maternidade, no Facebook. Este estudo teve uma amostra constituída por 170 mulheres (mães), estando as suas idades compreendidas entre os 25 e os 62 anos. Os resultados revelaram que apesar de não haver diferenças estatisticamente significativas entre o apoio online e offline, as mulheres que pertencem a grupos do Facebook tendem a sentir mais suporte por parte das plataformas de suporte disponíveis. Constatou-se ainda que não existem diferenças significativas entre os níveis de solidão e stress, entre mães que pertencem a grupos e mães que não pertencem. Foi interessante verificar que as mulheres com filhos mais novos (faixa etária dos 0-4 anos) têm uma presença mais significativa em grupos de apoio à maternidade, no Facebook. Pensamos que isso se deve às dúvidas e ao stresse gerado por um primeiro filho ou pela introdução de mais um filho no núcleo familiar, nos primeiros anos em que tal ocorre, procurando por isso mais activamente grupos que ajudem como rede de suporte, para partilhas, apoio emocional e esclarecimento de dúvidas. / A “social network” refers to a structure formed by individuals or organisations that share interests, motivations and common values. A feature shared by several types of social network is the exchange of information, knowledge, interests and efforts, in an attempt to achieve common goals, often potentiating strengths and resources in crisis situations. Recently, we have heard of this concept applied to the internet. Motherhood is, by itself, a moment of crisis in the life of every family and every woman, requiring adaptations and changes. This study aimed to assess online and offline supports (being these connections themselves denominated social networks), in the specific case of motherhood-related issues. It was also intended to confirm whether there was a correlation between these types of support and stress and loneliness levels sensed by mothers. Finally, it was evaluated as well the influence that the children’s age would have on this adherence to motherhood support groups on Facebook. This study had a sample of 170 women (mothers), with ages between 25 and 62 years. The results showed that, although there are no statistically significant differences between the online and offline support, women who belong to Facebook groups tend to feel more support from the available support platforms. It was shown as well that there are no significant differences between loneliness and stress levels among mothers who belong to groups and mothers who do not belong to those groups. It was interesting to find that women with young children (aged 0-4 years old) have a more significant presence in motherhood support groups on Facebook. We think that this is due to the doubts and the stress generated by a first child or the introduction of another child in the household, therefore making sense that they seek, in the early years of the child’s life, groups that help as a support network, for shares, emotional support and answering questions.

FEEDING AND DIABETES MELLITUS: PERCEPTION AND FOOD CONSUMPTION BY ELDERLY PEOPLE IN THE HINTERLANDS OF PERNAMBUCO

Objective: To evaluate the knowledge of diabetes diet and identify factors that may interfere with the adherence to nutritional therapy and food choices of participants in a Community Center for the Elderly in Sairé, PE. Methods: A quantitative, descriptive and cross-sectional study, which evaluated 39 attendees of that center, from July to August 2014, with or without diabetes mellitus. Two questionnaires were applied to assess socioeconomic data, nutrition knowledge and cultural factors, and check the consumption of food with high and low glycemic index. Data was analyzed using the Assistat Program 7.0 Beta version. Results: The majority of the respondents have knowledge about types of foods that may influence the treatment of diabetes mellitus, as 51.2% (n=20) reported knowing some food that can reduce the risk for diabetes onset or assist in its treatment. Most of the participants reported having acquired such knowledge through the television 35% (n=7) and conversation with peers 35% (n=7). Evaluation of the food intake evidenced higher consumption of foods with high glycemic index. However, among diabetic patients, foods with low glycemic index are consumed more times per week. Conclusion: The knowledge about nutrition and diabetes mellitus was considered adequate, but socioeconomic and cultural factors may interfere in the adherence to diet therapy for diabetes or in the food choices made by the individuals. However, food consumption was considered appropriate among diabetics.