Timing and magnitude of peak height velocity and peak tissue velocities for early, average, and late maturing boys and girls

Height, weight, and tissue accrual were determined in 60 male and 53 female adolescents measured annually over six years using standard anthropometry and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). Annual velocities were derived, and the ages and magnitudes of peak height and peak tissue velocities were determined using a cubic spline fit to individual data. Individuals were rank ordered on the basis of sex and age at peak height velocity (PHV) and then divided into quartiles: early (lowest quartile), average (middle two quartiles), and late (highest quartile) maturers. Sex- and maturity-related comparisons in ages and magnitudes of peak height and peak tissue velocities were made. Males reached peak velocities significantly later than females for all tissues and had significantly greater magnitudes at peak. The age at PHV was negatively correlated with the magnitude of PHV in both sexes. At a similar maturity point (age at PHV) there were no differences in weight or fat mass among maturity groups in both sexes. Late maturing males, however, accrued more bone mineral and lean mass and were taller at the age of PHV compared to early maturers. Thus, maturational status (early, average, or late maturity) as indicated by age at PHV is inversely related to the magnitude and late maturers for weight and fat mass in boys and girls. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 13:1-8, 2001. (C) 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Cirurgia do estapédio na residência: experiência do Hospital de Clínicas/UFPR

A cirurgia do estapédio permanece como tratamento consagrado para a otosclerose. Recentes publicações têm demonstrado que o sucesso cirúrgico nas cirurgias realizadas por médicos residentes tem diminuído e que os resultados audiológicos tem sido piores que os obtidos por cirurgiões experientes. OBJETIVOS: Avaliar a experiência do serviço de otorrinolaringologia do Hospital de Clínicas/UFPR na realização de cirurgias do estapédio no programa de residência médica. MATERIAL E MÉTODO: Estudo retrospectivo de 114 cirurgias do estapédio realizadas nos últimos 9 anos, em 96 pacientes. Os resultados audiométricos foram analisados conforme orientação do Committee on Hearing and Equilibrium e através do Amsterdam Hearing Evaluation Plots, considerando a melhora do gap pós-operatório e de limiares da via aérea. RESULTADOS: Foram incluídos 96 pacientes, na maioria adultos, do sexo feminino (67,7%) e caucasianos (93,7%). Em 50,9% dos casos foi realizada estapedectomia, sendo a grande maioria sob anestesia local e sedação (96,5%) e utilizando principalmente a prótese de Teflon (37,7%). A taxa de sucesso cirúrgico foi de 50,88%, com 11,4% de complicações. CONCLUSÃO: Os ganhos de audição pós-operatórios considerados como sucesso cirúrgico foram inferiores aos publicados na literatura por cirurgiões experientes.

Resultados da cirurgia para otospongiose com dois tipos de prótese em procedimentos realizados por residentes

A cirurgia do estapédio é um dos tratamentos indicados para a melhora da surdez condutiva secundária à otospongiose. O procedimento requer habilidade e experiência do cirurgião e faz parte do treinamento durante a residência médica. OBJETIVOS: Avaliar qual tipo de prótese (teflon ou mista de metal e aço) apresenta melhores os resultados auditivos em cirurgias realizadas por residentes e a incidência de complicações. MATERIAL E MÉTODOS: Foram avaliadas retrospectivamente 189 intervenções cirúrgicas que tiveram participação ativa de residentes, comparando-se os dois tipos de prótese utilizados. Os resultados audiométricos foram analisados conforme orientação do Committee on Hearing and Equilibrium e segundo o Amsterdam Hearing Evaluation Plots. RESULTADOS: O gap aéreo-ósseo diminuiu em média 21,90 dB (p<0,05) após o procedimento cirúrgico no grupo da prótese de teflon e 21,37 dB (p<0,05) no grupo da prótese mista, sendo o ganho do IRF de 22,33 e 26,10 dB (p<0,05), e o gap aéreo-ósseo foi inferior a 20 dB em 80,6% e 85,04%, respectivamente. CONCLUSÕES: Não evidenciamos diferenças no resultado audiométrico e na incidência de complicações quando comparamos o tipo de prótese utilizada. Acreditamos ser válida a execução desse procedimento em serviços de treinamento de médicos residentes, independente do tipo de prótese.

A supervised versus home-based program effects on liver transplanted familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy patients: walking, fatigue and quality of life

Familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy is a systemic deposition of amyloidal fibre mainly on peripheral nervous system (but also in other systems like heart, gastrointestinal tract, kidneys, etc) and mainly produced in the liver. Purpose of this study: to evaluate the effects of a six months exercise training program(supervised or home-based) on walking capacity, fatigue and health related quality of life (HRQL) on Familial Amyloidotic Polyneuropathy patients submitted to a liver transplant.

Muscle strength, balance and functional independence in persons with stroke

Cerebral vascular disease is one of the main causes of morbidity, disability and mortality in developed countries. Problems with movement control are frequent after stroke. Lower limb weakness and impaired balance are common problems that are related with the risk of falls and are likely to interfere with the ability to perform daily life activities. Physiotherapy intervention usually starts early after stroke and addresses impairments related to movement and posture in order to improve motor recovery and restore function. Purpose: to investigate the relationship between knee muscle strength, balance and functional independence within the first month after stroke.

Virtual communities of practice: examining the motivations and constraints in their knowledge creation and knowledge transfer preocesses

Paper accepted for the OKLC 2009 - International Conference on Organizational Learning, Knowledge and Capabilities (26-28th, April 2009, Amsterdam, the Netherlands).

Self-reported hearing performance in workers exposed to solvents

OBJECTIVE: To compare hearing performance relating to the peripheral and central auditory system between solvent-exposed and non-exposed workers. METHODS: Forty-eight workers exposed to a mixture of solvents and 48 non-exposed control subjects of matched age, gender and educational level were selected to participate in the study. The evaluation procedures included: pure-tone audiometry (500 - 8,000 Hz), to investigate the peripheral auditory system; the Random Gap Detection test, to assess the central auditory system; and the Amsterdam Inventory for Auditory Disability and Handicap, to investigate subjects' self-reported hearing performance in daily-life activities. A Student t test and analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) were computed to determine possible significant differences between solvent-exposed and non-exposed subjects for the hearing level, Random Gap Detection test and Amsterdam Inventory for Auditory Disability and Handicap. Pearson correlations among the three measures were also calculated. RESULTS: Solvent-exposed subjects exhibited significantly poorer hearing thresholds for the right ear than non-exposed subjects. Also, solvent-exposed subjects exhibited poorer results for the Random Gap Detection test and self-reported poorer listening performance than non-exposed subjects. Results of the Amsterdam Inventory for Auditory Disability and Handicap were significantly correlated with the binaural average of subject pure-tone thresholds and Random Gap Detection test performance. CONCLUSIONS: Solvent exposure is associated with poorer hearing performance in daily life activities that relate to the function of the peripheral and central auditory system.

Accessibility and Local Development: Interaction between Cross-border Accessibility and Local Development in Portugal and Spain

One of de EU major concerns is cohesion and cross-border regional development. Usually cross-border regions are less dynamic, acting as bottlenecks mainly in peripheral territories. This paper is focused on the Portuguese-Spanish border using socio-economic and accessibility data. It considers Spatial Econometrics to produce statistical evidence on the relationship between accessibility and development at a local scale. A pilot study is conducted on North and Center region using variables such as population age, graduation characteristics, migrations, unemployment and daily accessibility to main towns in future this evaluation will be applied to the entire cross-border area between Portugal and Spain.

Measuring and evaluating the impacts of TOD measures: searching for evidence of TOD characteristics in Azambuja train line

TOD (Transit Oriented Development) is typically defined as a high density mixed area (residential and commercial) within easy walking distance of a high capacity public transport station (typically within an 800m buffer area). TOO is viewed as a set of strategies to increase the use of public transport, increasing walking activity, containing urban sprawl, and creating more liveable places. It is believed that this type of combined strategies will improve sustainable growth. This work is an exploratory work for evidence of TOD characteristics in train station areas in Azambuja train line, setting further methodologies to evaluate the success of TOD areas.

Enabling Global Experiments With Interactive Reconfiguration And Steering By Multiple Users

In global scientific experiments with collaborative scenarios involving multinational teams there are big challenges related to data access, namely data movements are precluded to other regions or Clouds due to the constraints on latency costs, data privacy and data ownership. Furthermore, each site is processing local data sets using specialized algorithms and producing intermediate results that are helpful as inputs to applications running on remote sites. This paper shows how to model such collaborative scenarios as a scientific workflow implemented with AWARD (Autonomic Workflow Activities Reconfigurable and Dynamic), a decentralized framework offering a feasible solution to run the workflow activities on distributed data centers in different regions without the need of large data movements. The AWARD workflow activities are independently monitored and dynamically reconfigured and steering by different users, namely by hot-swapping the algorithms to enhance the computation results or by changing the workflow structure to support feedback dependencies where an activity receives feedback output from a successor activity. A real implementation of one practical scenario and its execution on multiple data centers of the Amazon Cloud is presented including experimental results with steering by multiple users.

Incremental filter and wrapper approaches for feature discretization

Discrete data representations are necessary, or at least convenient, in many machine learning problems. While feature selection (FS) techniques aim at finding relevant subsets of features, the goal of feature discretization (FD) is to find concise (quantized) data representations, adequate for the learning task at hand. In this paper, we propose two incremental methods for FD. The first method belongs to the filter family, in which the quality of the discretization is assessed by a (supervised or unsupervised) relevance criterion. The second method is a wrapper, where discretized features are assessed using a classifier. Both methods can be coupled with any static (unsupervised or supervised) discretization procedure and can be used to perform FS as pre-processing or post-processing stages. The proposed methods attain efficient representations suitable for binary and multi-class problems with different types of data, being competitive with existing methods. Moreover, using well-known FS methods with the features discretized by our techniques leads to better accuracy than with the features discretized by other methods or with the original features. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The daily and hourly energy consumption and load forecasting using artifitial neural network method: a case study using a set of 93 households in Portugal

It is important to understand and forecast a typical or a particularly household daily consumption in order to design and size suitable renewable energy systems and energy storage. In this research for Short Term Load Forecasting (STLF) it has been used Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and, despite the consumption unpredictability, it has been shown the possibility to forecast the electricity consumption of a household with certainty. The ANNs are recognized to be a potential methodology for modeling hourly and daily energy consumption and load forecasting. Input variables such as apartment area, numbers of occupants, electrical appliance consumption and Boolean inputs as hourly meter system were considered. Furthermore, the investigation carried out aims to define an ANN architecture and a training algorithm in order to achieve a robust model to be used in forecasting energy consumption in a typical household. It was observed that a feed-forward ANN and the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm provided a good performance. For this research it was used a database with consumption records, logged in 93 real households, in Lisbon, Portugal, between February 2000 and July 2001, including both weekdays and weekend. The results show that the ANN approach provides a reliable model for forecasting household electric energy consumption and load profile. © 2014 The Author.

PBL in healthcare sciences: a case study on curriculum innovation

Students of a Cardiopulmonary Sciences curriculum in a Portuguese higher education institution have shown poor learning outcomes and low satisfaction on a course about lung function tests. A transmissive pedagogical approach, mainly based on lectures, was the common teaching practice. Aiming for a change, PBL was considered as a powerful alternative and also as a contribution for progressively innovating the curriculum. Purpose: to create PBL activities in a lung function tests course. to describe their implementation, to analyse the effects of PBL integration in students’ performance and attitudes, to characterize the generated learning environment.

The making of saudade. National identity and ethnic psychology in Portugal

Roots and rituals.The construction of ethnic identities, Ton Dekker, John Helsloot Carla Wijers editors, p. 267-268; Selected papers of the 6TH SIEF conference on 'Roots & rituals', Amsterdam 20-25 April 1998.