Autonomy Markers in Brazilian Adults With Intellectual Disabilities

The objective of the study was to investigate the relationship between autonomy markers in adult people with intellectual disabilities (ID) and variables such as intelligence quotient (IQ), early aging, and literacy. Participants were 47 adults with ID (33 men; aged 28-58 years with nonspecific etiology, 34 literate). All participants were trainees at the Center for Training of Capacity and Orientation for Employment at Associação de Pais e Amigos dos Excepcionais de São Paulo, São Paulo State, Brazil. They were divided into two age groups: younger (n = 27, mean age 31.85; +/- 2.23), and older (n = 38, mean age 41.84; +/- 5.54). They were administered intelligence scales twice, and answered questions related to social participation, community integration, and choice-making; the percentage of item responses leaning toward self-determination and freedom in choice-making was considered in defining the autonomy score. For both groups, IQ declined from the first to the second assessment. Autonomy scores were more determined by IQ classification than by literacy. Authors concluded that autonomy in people with ID is a multifactorial phenomenon associated with cognitive decline.

Subtle Cognitive Deficits in Adults With a Previous History of Sydenham's Chorea During Childhood

Objective. To evaluate the neuropsychological profile and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of adults who had rheumatic fever (RF) during childhood with and without Sydenham's chorea (SC).Methods. Three groups of patients were assessed: adults who had RF with SC during childhood (SC group), adults who had RF without SC during childhood (RF group), and controls (CT group). A range of neuropsychological tests looked at several cognitive domains. HRQOL was measured through a Brazilian version of the Short Form 36 (SF-36) health survey.Results. Twenty patients were included in the SC group, 23 patients in the RF group, and 19 patients in the CT group. The 3 groups were homogeneous regarding sex (P = 0.078), age (P = 0.799), schooling (P = 0.600), socioeconomic status (P = 0.138), intelligence quotient (P = 0.329), and scores for anxiety (P = 0.156) and depression (P = 0.076). The SC group demonstrated inferior performance in tests that assessed attention (Digit Span Forward [ P = 0.005], Corsi Block Forward [ P = 0.014]), speeded information processing (Trail Making A [ P = 0.009], Symbol Search [ P = 0.042]), and executive functions and working memory (Corsi Block Backward [ P = 0.028]), and higher scores for attention deficit scale (P = 0.030) when compared with the RF and CT groups. They also showed a tendency toward lower scores in the physical aspects, vitality, emotional aspects, and mental health domains of the SF-36. The RF group had a lower score for the general health domain than the CT group (P = 0.030).Conclusion. Patients who had SC during childhood can exhibit inferior performance in tasks that evaluate attention, speeded information processing, executive functions, and working memory in adult life. Therefore, there is indirect evidence of the persistence of dysfunction in cerebral circuits involved with the basal ganglia. They also presented a worse self-evaluation in HRQOL that was not related to cognitive impairments.

Detection and thinning of edges in previously known directions

This work presents a study on the generation of digital masks aiming at edge detection with previously known directions. This solution is important when edge direction is available either from a direction histogram or from a prediction based on camera and object models. A modification in the non-maximum suppression method of thinning is also presented enabling the comparison of local maxima for any edge directions. Results with a synthetic image and with crops of a CBERS satellite images are presented showing an example with its application in road detection, provided that directions are previously known.

Fractais e Percolação na Recuperação de Petróleo

The complex behavior of a wide variety of phenomena that are of interest to physicists, chemists, and engineers has been quantitatively characterized by using the ideas of fractal and multifractal distributions, which correspond in a unique way to the geometrical shape and dynamical properties of the systems under study. In this thesis we present the Space of Fractals and the methods of Hausdorff-Besicovitch, box-counting and Scaling to calculate the fractal dimension of a set. In this Thesis we investigate also percolation phenomena in multifractal objects that are built in a simple way. The central object of our analysis is a multifractal object that we call Qmf . In these objects the multifractality comes directly from the geometric tiling. We identify some differences between percolation in the proposed multifractals and in a regular lattice. There are basically two sources of these differences. The first is related to the coordination number, c, which changes along the multifractal. The second comes from the way the weight of each cell in the multifractal affects the percolation cluster. We use many samples of finite size lattices and draw the histogram of percolating lattices against site occupation probability p. Depending on a parameter, ρ, characterizing the multifractal and the lattice size, L, the histogram can have two peaks. We observe that the probability of occupation at the percolation threshold, pc, for the multifractal is lower than that for the square lattice. We compute the fractal dimension of the percolating cluster and the critical exponent β. Despite the topological differences, we find that the percolation in a multifractal support is in the same universality class as standard percolation. The area and the number of neighbors of the blocks of Qmf show a non-trivial behavior. A general view of the object Qmf shows an anisotropy. The value of pc is a function of ρ which is related to its anisotropy. We investigate the relation between pc and the average number of neighbors of the blocks as well as the anisotropy of Qmf. In this Thesis we study likewise the distribution of shortest paths in percolation systems at the percolation threshold in two dimensions (2D). We study paths from one given point to multiple other points

Fractais e percolação na recuperação de Petróleo

The complex behavior of a wide variety of phenomena that are of interest to physicists, chemists, and engineers has been quantitatively characterized by using the ideas of fractal and multifractal distributions, which correspond in a unique way to the geometrical shape and dynamical properties of the systems under study. In this thesis we present the Space of Fractals and the methods of Hausdorff-Besicovitch, box-counting and Scaling to calculate the fractal dimension of a set. In this Thesis we investigate also percolation phenomena in multifractal objects that are built in a simple way. The central object of our analysis is a multifractal object that we call Qmf . In these objects the multifractality comes directly from the geometric tiling. We identify some differences between percolation in the proposed multifractals and in a regular lattice. There are basically two sources of these differences. The first is related to the coordination number, c, which changes along the multifractal. The second comes from the way the weight of each cell in the multifractal affects the percolation cluster. We use many samples of finite size lattices and draw the histogram of percolating lattices against site occupation probability p. Depending on a parameter, ρ, characterizing the multifractal and the lattice size, L, the histogram can have two peaks. We observe that the probability of occupation at the percolation threshold, pc, for the multifractal is lower than that for the square lattice. We compute the fractal dimension of the percolating cluster and the critical exponent β. Despite the topological differences, we find that the percolation in a multifractal support is in the same universality class as standard percolation. The area and the number of neighbors of the blocks of Qmf show a non-trivial behavior. A general view of the object Qmf shows an anisotropy. The value of pc is a function of ρ which is related to its anisotropy. We investigate the relation between pc and the average number of neighbors of the blocks as well as the anisotropy of Qmf. In this Thesis we study likewise the distribution of shortest paths in percolation systems at the percolation threshold in two dimensions (2D). We study paths from one given point to multiple other points. In oil recovery terminology, the given single point can be mapped to an injection well (injector) and the multiple other points to production wells (producers). In the previously standard case of one injection well and one production well separated by Euclidean distance r, the distribution of shortest paths l, P(l|r), shows a power-law behavior with exponent gl = 2.14 in 2D. Here we analyze the situation of one injector and an array A of producers. Symmetric arrays of producers lead to one peak in the distribution P(l|A), the probability that the shortest path between the injector and any of the producers is l, while the asymmetric configurations lead to several peaks in the distribution. We analyze configurations in which the injector is outside and inside the set of producers. The peak in P(l|A) for the symmetric arrays decays faster than for the standard case. For very long paths all the studied arrays exhibit a power-law behavior with exponent g ∼= gl.

CENSUS HISTOGRAMS: A SIMPLE FEATURE EXTRACTION and MATCHING APPROACH FOR FACE RECOGNITION

Most face recognition approaches require a prior training where a given distribution of faces is assumed to further predict the identity of test faces. Such an approach may experience difficulty in identifying faces belonging to distributions different from the one provided during the training. A face recognition technique that performs well regardless of training is, therefore, interesting to consider as a basis of more sophisticated methods. In this work, the Census Transform is applied to describe the faces. Based on a scanning window which extracts local histograms of Census Features, we present a method that directly matches face samples. With this simple technique, 97.2% of the faces in the FERET fa/fb test were correctly recognized. Despite being an easy test set, we have found no other approaches in literature regarding straight comparisons of faces with such a performance. Also, a window for further improvement is presented. Among other techniques, we demonstrate how the use of SVMs over the Census Histogram representation can increase the recognition performance.

Pecolação em uma rede multifractal

In this work we present the principal fractals, their caracteristics, properties abd their classification, comparing them to Euclidean Geometry Elements. We show the importance of the Fractal Geometry in the analysis of several elements of our society. We emphasize the importance of an appropriate definition of dimension to these objects, because the definition we presently know doesn t see a satisfactory one. As an instrument to obtain these dimentions we present the Method to count boxes, of Hausdorff- Besicovich and the Scale Method. We also study the Percolation Process in the square lattice, comparing it to percolation in the multifractal subject Qmf, where we observe som differences between these two process. We analize the histogram grafic of the percolating lattices versus the site occupation probability p, and other numerical simulations. And finaly, we show that we can estimate the fractal dimension of the percolation cluster and that the percolatin in a multifractal suport is in the same universality class as standard percolation. We observe that the area of the blocks of Qmf is variable, pc is a function of p which is related to the anisotropy of Qmf

Waveshapes of continuing currents and properties of M-components in natural positive cloud-to-ground lightning

This work analyses the waveshapes of continuing currents and parameters of M-components in positive cloud-to-ground (CG) flashes through high-speed GPS synchronized videos. The dataset is composed of only long continuing currents (with duration longer than 40 ms) and was selected from more than 800 flashes recorded in Sao Jose dos Campos (45.864 degrees W, 23.215 degrees S) and Uruguaiana (29.806 degrees W, 57.005 degrees S) in Southeast and South of Brazil, respectively, during 2003 to 2007 summers. The videos are compared with data obtained by the Brazilian Lightning Location System (BrasilDAT) in order to determine the polarity of each flash and select only positive cases. There are only two studies of waveshapes of continuing currents in the literature. One is based on direct current measurements of triggered lightning, in which four different types of waveshapes were observed; and the other is based on measurements of luminosity variations in high-speed videos of CG negative lightning, in which besides the four types above mentioned two additional types were observed. The present work is an extension of the latter, using the same method but now applied to obtain the waveshapes of positive CG lightning. As far as the authors know, this is the first report on M-components in positive continuing currents. We also have used the luminosity-versus-time graphs to observe their occurrence and measure some parameters (duration, elapsed time and time between two successive M-components), whose statistics are presented and compared in detail to the data for negative flashes. We have plotted a histogram of the M-components elapsed time over the total duration of the continuing current for positive flashes, which presented an exponential decay (correlation coefficient: 0.83), similar to what has been observed for negative flashes. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The self-polarization effect in Pb(Zr0.50Ti0.50)O-3 thin films with no preferential orientation

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Resíduos orgânicos como recondicionante de subsolo degradado e efeitos na atividade microbiana e fertilidade em cultivo de barbatimão

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Alterações microbiológicas, de fertilidade e de produtividade do arroz de terras altas em diferentes manejos de solo e água

In Brazil, the upland rice Culture system is predominant, but its water supply depends of precipitation and its distribution. Sol-lie practices or disturbances on soil conditions may cause alterations that call be detected by microorganisms, which are quite sensitive. This experiment was developed to study microbiological alterations (microbial biomass carbon (MBC), released CO2 (C-CO2), metabolic quotient (qCO(2)) and mycorrhization), as well as alterations in soil fertility and productivity of upland rice, cultivated under different soil and water managements. Cultivar BRS Talento was used in the experiment. The experimental design was a completely randomized block design, with four replications, using three soil managements: no-tillage (NT), heavy disk + leveling disk harrowing (HL), and chisel plowing + leveling disk harrowing (CL), plus three water managements: no irrigation (WD0); water depth 1 (WD1), with irrigation at the reproductive and maturation periods; and water depth 2 (WD2), with irrigation throughout the rice cycle. Autochthones arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi proved to be sensitive to soil and water management. The NT presented the highest values for MO, Ca, SB and V% and the lowest for H+A1. This management, together with irrigation at the reproductive and maturation periods of BRS Talento cultivar, promoted goods results for crop yield and microbiology characteristics.

Medidas da dinâmica respiratória em idosos participantes de grupos de terceira idade

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Algoritmos de agrupamentos fuzzy intervalares e índice de validação para agrupamento de dados simbólicos do tipo intervalo

Symbolic Data Analysis (SDA) main aims to provide tools for reducing large databases to extract knowledge and provide techniques to describe the unit of such data in complex units, as such, interval or histogram. The objective of this work is to extend classical clustering methods for symbolic interval data based on interval-based distance. The main advantage of using an interval-based distance for interval-based data lies on the fact that it preserves the underlying imprecision on intervals which is usually lost when real-valued distances are applied. This work includes an approach allow existing indices to be adapted to interval context. The proposed methods with interval-based distances are compared with distances punctual existing literature through experiments with simulated data and real data interval

Caracterização Morfodinâmica e Sedimentologia da Plataforma Continental Rasa na APA Estadual dos Recifes de Corais - RN

This study had to aimed to characterize the sediments of shallow continental shelf and realize the mapping of features visible for satellite images by using remote sensing techniques, digital image processing and analysis of bathymetry between Maxaranguape and Touros - RN. The study s area is located in the continental shallow shelf of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, and is part of the Environmental Protection Area (APA) of Coral Reefs. A total of 1186 sediment samples were collected using a dredge type van veen and positioning of the vessel was made out with the aid of a Garmin 520s. The samples were treated In the laboratory to analyze particle size of the sediment, concentration of calcium carbonate and biogenic composition. The digital images from the Landsat-5 TM were used to mapping of features. This stage was used the band 1 (0,45-1,52 μm) where the image were georeferenced, and then adjusting the histogram, giving a better view of feature bottom and contacts between different types of bottom. The results obtained from analysis of the sediment showed that the sediments of the continental shelf east of RN have a dominance of carbonate facies and a sand-gravelly bottom because the region is dominated by biogenic sediments, that are made mainly of calcareous algae. The bedform types identified and morphological features found were validated by bathymetric data and sediment samples examined. From the results obtained a division for the shelf under study is suggested, these regions being subdivided, in well characterized: (1) Turbid Zone, (2) Coral Patch Reefs Zone, (3) Mixed Sediments Carbonates Zone, ( 4) Algae Fouling Zone, (5) Alignment Rocky Zone, (6) Sand Waves Field (7) Deposit siliciclastic sands

Metodologia para estudo do volume e densidade absoluta da placenta humana de termo

OBJETIVO: comparar duas metodologias para o cálculo do volume placentário em gestações normais de termo: a do princípio de Arquimedes e a do volume do cilindro, para estimar a densidade absoluta da placenta. Definir a metodologia mais adequada para o cálculo do volume e densidade placentários, que se relacione com o peso e classificação do recém-nascido. MÉTODOS: foram estudadas 50 placentas provenientes de gestações de termo sem complicações e calculados o volume e a densidade absoluta placentários: a) pelo princípio de Arquimedes e b) na suposição de que a placenta seria uma secção de cilindro com duas alturas diferentes do bolo placentário: com a altura média e com a altura da média aritmética do centro e extremidades. As densidades absolutas placentárias foram calculadas pelo quociente entre o peso ao ar da placenta e os diferentes volumes. RESULTADOS: a maioria das gestantes eram multíparas, idade média de 25,4 anos, volume placentário médio entre 547,8 e 610 cm³ e densidade média entre 0,94 e 1,14 g/cm³, dependendo da metodologia empregada. CONCLUSÕES: a metodologia mais adequada para estimar o volume placentário no termo foi a do princípio de Arquimedes, pela melhor correlação com o peso dos recém-nascidos, o índice placentário e a classificação do peso dos recém-nascidos em relação à idade gestacional.