Religiousness and health-related quality of life of older adults

OBJECTIVE To examine whether religiousness mediates the relationship between sociodemographic factors, multimorbidity and health-related quality of life of older adults.METHODS This population-based cross-sectional study is part of the Survey on Health, Well-Being, and Aging (SABE). The sample was composed by 911 older adults from Sao Paulo, SP, Southeastern Brazil. Structural equation modeling was performed to assess the mediator effect of religiousness on the relationship between selected variables and health-related quality of life of older adults, with models for men and women. The independent variables were: age, education, family functioning and multimorbidity. The outcome variable was health-related quality of life of older adults, measured by SF-12 (physical and mental components). The mediator variables were organizational, non-organizational and intrinsic religiousness. Cronbach’s alpha values were: physical component = 0.85; mental component = 0.80; intrinsic religiousness = 0.89 and family APGAR (Adaptability, Partnership, Growth, Affection, and Resolve) = 0.91.RESULTS Higher levels of organizational and intrinsic religiousness were associated with better physical and mental components. Higher education, better family functioning and fewer diseases contributed directly to improved performance in physical and mental components, regardless of religiousness. For women, organizational religiousness mediated the relationship between age and physical (β = 2.401, p < 0.01) and mental (β = 1.663, p < 0.01) components. For men, intrinsic religiousness mediated the relationship between education and mental component (β = 7.158, p < 0.01).CONCLUSIONS Organizational and intrinsic religiousness had a beneficial effect on the relationship between age, education and health-related quality of life of these older adults.

Functional disability of adults in Brazil: prevalence and associated factors

ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE To estimate the prevalence and factors associated with functional disability in adults in Brazil. METHODS We used information from the health supplement of the National Household Sample Survey in 2008. The dependent variable was the functional disability among adults of 18 to 65 years, measured by the difficulty of walking about 100 meters; independent variables were: health plan membership, region of residence, state of domicile, education level, household income, economic activity, self-perception of health, hospitalization, chronic diseases, age group, sex, and color. We calculated the gross odds ratios (OR), and their respective confidence intervals (95%), and adjusted them for variables of study by ordinal logistic regression, following hierarchical model. Sample weights were considered in all calculations. RESULTS We included 18,745 subjects, 74.0% of whom were women. More than a third of adults reported having functional disability. The disability was significantly higher among men (OR = 1.17; 95%CI 1.09;1.27), people from 35 to 49 years (OR = 1.30; 95%CI 1.17;1.45) and 50 to 65 years (OR = 1.38; 95%CI 1.24;1.54); economically inactive individuals (OR = 2.21; 95%CI 1.65;2.96); adults who reported heart disease (OR = 1.13; 95%CI 1.03;1.24), diabetes mellitus (OR = 1.16; 95%CI 1.05;1.29), arterial systemic hypertension (OR = 1.10; 95%CI 1.02;1.18), and arthritis/rheumatism (OR = 1.24; 95%CI 1.15;1.34); and participants who were admitted in the last 12 months (OR = 2.35; 95%CI 1.73;3.2). CONCLUSIONS Functional disability is common among Brazilian adults. Hospitalization is the most strongly associated factor, followed by economic activity, and chronic diseases. Sex, age, education, and income are also associated. Results indicate specific targets for actions that address the main factors associated with functional disabilities and contribute to the projection of interventions for the improvement of the well-being and promotion of adults' quality of life.

Experimenting through the web a linear variable differential transformer

Aiming for teaching/learning support in sciences and engineering areas, the Remote Experimentation concept (an E-learning subset) has grown in last years with the development of several infrastructures that enable doing practical experiments from anywhere and anytime, using a simple PC connected to the Internet. Nevertheless, given its valuable contribution to the teaching/learning process, the development of more infrastructures should continue, in order to make available more solutions able to improve courseware contents and motivate students for learning. The work presented in this paper contributes for that purpose, in the specific area of industrial automation. After a brief introduction to the Remote Experimentation concept, we describe a remote accessible lab infrastructure that enables users to conduct real experiments with an important and widely used transducer in industrial automation, named Linear Variable Differential Transformer.

Characteristics of HIV patients who missed their scheduled appointments

ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE: To analyze whether sociodemographic characteristics, consultations and care in special services are associated with scheduled infectious diseases appointments missed by people living with HIV. METHODS: This cross-sectional and analytical study included 3,075 people living with HIV who had at least one scheduled appointment with an infectologist at a specialized health unit in 2007. A secondary data base from the Hospital Management & Information System was used. The outcome variable was missing a scheduled medical appointment. The independent variables were sex, age, appointments in specialized and available disciplines, hospitalizations at the Central Institute of the Clinical Hospital at the Faculdade de Medicina of the Universidade de São Paulo, antiretroviral treatment and change of infectologist. Crude and multiple association analysis were performed among the variables, with a statistical significance of p ≤ 0.05. RESULTS: More than a third (38.9%) of the patients missed at least one of their scheduled infectious diseases appointments; 70.0% of the patients were male. The rate of missed appointments was 13.9%, albeit with no observed association between sex and absences. Age was inversely associated to missed appointment. Not undertaking anti-retroviral treatment, having unscheduled infectious diseases consultations or social services care and being hospitalized at the Central Institute were directly associated to missed appointments. CONCLUSIONS: The Hospital Management & Information System proved to be a useful tool for developing indicators related to the quality of health care of people living with HIV. Other informational systems, which are often developed for administrative purposes, can also be useful for local and regional management and for evaluating the quality of care provided for patients living with HIV.

Complex variable positive definite functions

In this paper we develop an appropriate theory of positive definite functions on the complex plane from first principles and show some consequences of positive definiteness for meromorphic functions.

Severity of malocclusion in adolescents: populational-based study in the north of Minas Gerais, Brazil

ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE To identify the factors associated with severity of malocclusion in a population of adolescents. METHODS In this cross-sectional population-based study, the sample size (n = 761) was calculated considering a prevalence of malocclusion of 50.0%, with a 95% confidence level and a 5.0% precision level. The study adopted correction for the effect of delineation (deff = 2), and a 20.0% increase to offset losses and refusals. Multistage probability cluster sampling was adopted. Trained and calibrated professionals performed the intraoral examinations and interviews in households. The dependent variable (severity of malocclusion) was assessed using the Dental Aesthetic Index (DAI). The independent variables were grouped into five blocks: demographic characteristics, socioeconomic condition, use of dental services, health-related behavior and oral health subjective conditions. The ordinal logistic regression model was used to identify the factors associated with severity of malocclusion. RESULTS We interviewed and examined 736 adolescents (91.5% response rate), 69.9% of whom showed no abnormalities or slight malocclusion. Defined malocclusion was observed in 17.8% of the adolescents, being severe or very severe in 12.6%, with pressing or essential need of orthodontic treatment. The probabilities of greater severity of malocclusion were higher among adolescents who self-reported as black, indigenous, pardo or yellow, with lower per capita income, having harmful oral habits, negative perception of their appearance and perception of social relationship affected by oral health. CONCLUSIONS Severe or very severe malocclusion was more prevalent among socially disadvantaged adolescents, with reported harmful habits and perception of compromised esthetics and social relationships. Given that malocclusion can interfere with the self-esteem of adolescents, it is essential to improve public policy for the inclusion of orthodontic treatment among health care provided to this segment of the population, particularly among those of lower socioeconomic status.

Scaling law in Saddle-node bifurcations for one-dimensional maps: A complex variable approach

The study of transient dynamical phenomena near bifurcation thresholds has attracted the interest of many researchers due to the relevance of bifurcations in different physical or biological systems. In the context of saddle-node bifurcations, where two or more fixed points collide annihilating each other, it is known that the dynamics can suffer the so-called delayed transition. This phenomenon emerges when the system spends a lot of time before reaching the remaining stable equilibrium, found after the bifurcation, because of the presence of a saddle-remnant in phase space. Some works have analytically tackled this phenomenon, especially in time-continuous dynamical systems, showing that the time delay, tau, scales according to an inverse square-root power law, tau similar to (mu-mu (c) )(-1/2), as the bifurcation parameter mu, is driven further away from its critical value, mu (c) . In this work, we first characterize analytically this scaling law using complex variable techniques for a family of one-dimensional maps, called the normal form for the saddle-node bifurcation. We then apply our general analytic results to a single-species ecological model with harvesting given by a unimodal map, characterizing the delayed transition and the scaling law arising due to the constant of harvesting. For both analyzed systems, we show that the numerical results are in perfect agreement with the analytical solutions we are providing. The procedure presented in this work can be used to characterize the scaling laws of one-dimensional discrete dynamical systems with saddle-node bifurcations.

A CMOS variable width short-pulse generator circuit for UWB RADAR applications

IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, pp. 2713 – 2716, Seattle, EUA

Digitally programmable delay-locked-loop with adaptive charge pump current for UWB radar system

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e Computadores

Supervisory control of a variable speed wind turbine with doubly fed induction generator

This paper is on an onshore variable speed wind turbine with doubly fed induction generator and under supervisory control. The control architecture is equipped with an event-based supervisor for the supervision level and fuzzy proportional integral or discrete adaptive linear quadratic as proposed controllers for the execution level. The supervisory control assesses the operational state of the variable speed wind turbine and sends the state to the execution level. Controllers operation are in the full load region to extract energy at full power from the wind while ensuring safety conditions required to inject the energy into the electric grid. A comparison between the simulations of the proposed controllers with the inclusion of the supervisory control on the variable speed wind turbine benchmark model is presented to assess advantages of these controls. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Optimal brake specific fuel consumption trajectory for stand-alone variable speed Diesel Gen-Set

Energy efficiency plays an important role to the CO2 emissions reduction, combating climate change and improving the competitiveness of the economy. The problem presented here is related to the use of stand-alone diesel gen-sets and its high specific fuel consumptions when operates at low loads. The variable speed gen-set concept is explained as an energy-saving solution to improve this system efficiency. This paper details how an optimum fuel consumption trajectory based on experimentally Diesel engine power map is obtained.

Model morphisms (MoMo) to enable language independent information models and interoperable business networks

MSc. Dissertation presented at Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia of Universidade Nova de Lisboa to obtain the Master degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Abordagem farmacoepidemiológica da terapêutica no idoso: um ensaio em meio hospitalar

Introdução: O envelhecimento demográfico e o aumento da esperança de vida, criam condições para uma maior incidência de doenças degenerativas. Vários aspectos críticos envolvem a medicação no idoso, tais como: polimedicação frequente, com risco acrescido de ocorrência de reacções adversas, relacionadas com interacções medicamentosas e eventual medicação desaconselhada, em que o risco pode ser superior ao benefício. Estes aspectos são particularmente críticos no idoso hospitalizado. Objectivo: Este estudo teve como objectivo estimar a prevalência da polimedicação em idosos hospitalizados e analisar a medicação considerada inadequada nesta população. Participantes e metodologia: Seguiu-se um modelo retrospectivo descritivo transversal, reportando-se os dados a um período de um ano e meio, incidindo sobre o último internamento. A natureza da medicação, foi analisada de acordo com o Formulário Terapêutico Nacional, Resumo das Caracteristicas do Medicamento e com critérios de Beers-2002.Englobou 100 idosos (>65 anos) utentes do Hospital Cuf Descobertas, em regime de internamento. Os dados pessoais e clínicos e respectivo mapa farmacoterapêutico, foram introduzidos em base de dados construída para este estudo, em Access 2003 SP2. Procedeu-se à analise estatística (SPSS 13,0), descritiva, com cálculo de medidas de tendência central; análise univariada para todas as variáveis relevantes e análise bi-variada para quantificar a prevalência da polimedicação por sexo e grupo etário. Resultados:Dos doentes estudados (65-98 anos), maioritariamente femininos, 7 apresentavam 4 patologias em simultâneo, 13:3 patologias, 27:2 patologias e 30:1 patologia. Em 23 não se verificou qualquer patologia crónica. A hipertensão (n=49:27,5%) e a patologia cardiovascular (n=41:23%) foram as mais frequentemente encontradas na amostra em estudo sendo as de menor frequência a patologia reumática (n=1:0,56%), a osteoporose e os problemas psíquicos (n=2:1,12%. A prevalência de polimedicação foi de 84% e nº de medicamentos prescrito em simultâneo variou entre 2 e 23.Não se observou associação entre a polimedicação, a idade: e o sexo. Em apenas um caso foi identificado um medicamento desaconselhado em função do diagnóstico (metoclopramida:Parkinson), e independentemente do diagnóstico a amiodariona foi o mais frequente (25%), hidroxizina (22%), ticlopidina (2%) e cetorolac (1%). Conclusões: A polimedicação é um fenómeno muito frequente nos idosos hospitalizados; o número de medicamentos envolvidos pode ser elevado e a prevalência de medicamentos que requerem uma ponderação sobre o risco/benefício no idoso, indicia a vantagem da revisão da terapêutica, impondo-se a implementação de estratégias informativas sobre os mesmos. Background: The demographic aging and expansion of life expectancy create conditions for increased occurrence of degenerative illnesses. Several critical aspects involve the medication of the elderly, such as: frequent polipharmacy with increased occurrence of adverse drug reactions, related to medication interactions and inappropriate prescribing, in which the benefits can be inferior to the risks.These aspects are particularly critical in the hospitalized elderly. Aim: This study aimed to estimate the prevalence of polipharmacy in hospitalized elderly and to analyze the medication considered inappropriate in this population. Participants and Methodology: A cross sectional model was followed, in which the data used relate to a period of a year and a half, focussing on the last hospitalization. The nature of the medication was analysed according to National Therapeutic Formulary, Drug Characteristics Summary and according to Beers-2002.It considered 100 elderly (>65 years) hospitalized at Hospital Cuf Descobertas. The personal and clinical data and the corresponding pharmacotherapeutic registration were introduced in a database created for this study in Access 2003 SP2. Descriptive statistics was calculated trough SPSS 13,0,.Exploraty analysis consisted in measures of average and spread for all variable considered relevant and univariate and bivariate analysis to quantify the prevalence of polipharmacy by sex and age and to relate polipharmacy with inappropriate medication. Results: Of the patients studied (65-98 years), the majority were women, 7 presented 4 pathologies, 13:3 pathologies, 27:2 pathologies and 30:1 pathology. In 23 patients there was any chronic pathology. Hypertension (n=49:27,5%) and cardiovascular disease (n=41:23%) were the most frequent disease in our study, and the minimal values were observed in rheumatism (n=1:0,56%), osteoporosis and psychic disorders (n=2:1,12%. The prevalence of polipharmacy was of 84% and the amount of medication simultaneously prescribed varied between 2 and 23.No association was observed between polipharmacy and age or gender. In only one case inappropriate medication was identified concerning diagnosis (metoclopramid: Parkinson), and independent of diagnosis the amiodaron was the most frequent (25%), hydroxyzin (22%), ticlopidin (2%). and ketorolac (1%). Conclusions: Polipharmacy is very prevalent among elderly people admitted to the hospital; the number of inappropriate medication can also be very high and this evidence should be collected in order to accomplish good drug use reviews and informative strategies in the hospital setting.

Local Fractional Variational Iteration Method for Local Fractional Poisson Equations in Two Independent Variables

The local fractional Poisson equations in two independent variables that appear in mathematical physics involving the local fractional derivatives are investigated in this paper. The approximate solutions with the nondifferentiable functions are obtained by using the local fractional variational iteration method.

Unmixing hyperspectral data: independent and dependent component analysis

The development of high spatial resolution airborne and spaceborne sensors has improved the capability of ground-based data collection in the fields of agriculture, geography, geology, mineral identification, detection [2, 3], and classification [4–8]. The signal read by the sensor from a given spatial element of resolution and at a given spectral band is a mixing of components originated by the constituent substances, termed endmembers, located at that element of resolution. This chapter addresses hyperspectral unmixing, which is the decomposition of the pixel spectra into a collection of constituent spectra, or spectral signatures, and their corresponding fractional abundances indicating the proportion of each endmember present in the pixel [9, 10]. Depending on the mixing scales at each pixel, the observed mixture is either linear or nonlinear [11, 12]. The linear mixing model holds when the mixing scale is macroscopic [13]. The nonlinear model holds when the mixing scale is microscopic (i.e., intimate mixtures) [14, 15]. The linear model assumes negligible interaction among distinct endmembers [16, 17]. The nonlinear model assumes that incident solar radiation is scattered by the scene through multiple bounces involving several endmembers [18]. Under the linear mixing model and assuming that the number of endmembers and their spectral signatures are known, hyperspectral unmixing is a linear problem, which can be addressed, for example, under the maximum likelihood setup [19], the constrained least-squares approach [20], the spectral signature matching [21], the spectral angle mapper [22], and the subspace projection methods [20, 23, 24]. Orthogonal subspace projection [23] reduces the data dimensionality, suppresses undesired spectral signatures, and detects the presence of a spectral signature of interest. The basic concept is to project each pixel onto a subspace that is orthogonal to the undesired signatures. As shown in Settle [19], the orthogonal subspace projection technique is equivalent to the maximum likelihood estimator. This projection technique was extended by three unconstrained least-squares approaches [24] (signature space orthogonal projection, oblique subspace projection, target signature space orthogonal projection). Other works using maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) framework [25] and projection pursuit [26, 27] have also been applied to hyperspectral data. In most cases the number of endmembers and their signatures are not known. Independent component analysis (ICA) is an unsupervised source separation process that has been applied with success to blind source separation, to feature extraction, and to unsupervised recognition [28, 29]. ICA consists in finding a linear decomposition of observed data yielding statistically independent components. Given that hyperspectral data are, in given circumstances, linear mixtures, ICA comes to mind as a possible tool to unmix this class of data. In fact, the application of ICA to hyperspectral data has been proposed in reference 30, where endmember signatures are treated as sources and the mixing matrix is composed by the abundance fractions, and in references 9, 25, and 31–38, where sources are the abundance fractions of each endmember. In the first approach, we face two problems: (1) The number of samples are limited to the number of channels and (2) the process of pixel selection, playing the role of mixed sources, is not straightforward. In the second approach, ICA is based on the assumption of mutually independent sources, which is not the case of hyperspectral data, since the sum of the abundance fractions is constant, implying dependence among abundances. This dependence compromises ICA applicability to hyperspectral images. In addition, hyperspectral data are immersed in noise, which degrades the ICA performance. IFA [39] was introduced as a method for recovering independent hidden sources from their observed noisy mixtures. IFA implements two steps. First, source densities and noise covariance are estimated from the observed data by maximum likelihood. Second, sources are reconstructed by an optimal nonlinear estimator. Although IFA is a well-suited technique to unmix independent sources under noisy observations, the dependence among abundance fractions in hyperspectral imagery compromises, as in the ICA case, the IFA performance. Considering the linear mixing model, hyperspectral observations are in a simplex whose vertices correspond to the endmembers. Several approaches [40–43] have exploited this geometric feature of hyperspectral mixtures [42]. Minimum volume transform (MVT) algorithm [43] determines the simplex of minimum volume containing the data. The MVT-type approaches are complex from the computational point of view. Usually, these algorithms first find the convex hull defined by the observed data and then fit a minimum volume simplex to it. Aiming at a lower computational complexity, some algorithms such as the vertex component analysis (VCA) [44], the pixel purity index (PPI) [42], and the N-FINDR [45] still find the minimum volume simplex containing the data cloud, but they assume the presence in the data of at least one pure pixel of each endmember. This is a strong requisite that may not hold in some data sets. In any case, these algorithms find the set of most pure pixels in the data. Hyperspectral sensors collects spatial images over many narrow contiguous bands, yielding large amounts of data. For this reason, very often, the processing of hyperspectral data, included unmixing, is preceded by a dimensionality reduction step to reduce computational complexity and to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Principal component analysis (PCA) [46], maximum noise fraction (MNF) [47], and singular value decomposition (SVD) [48] are three well-known projection techniques widely used in remote sensing in general and in unmixing in particular. The newly introduced method [49] exploits the structure of hyperspectral mixtures, namely the fact that spectral vectors are nonnegative. The computational complexity associated with these techniques is an obstacle to real-time implementations. To overcome this problem, band selection [50] and non-statistical [51] algorithms have been introduced. This chapter addresses hyperspectral data source dependence and its impact on ICA and IFA performances. The study consider simulated and real data and is based on mutual information minimization. Hyperspectral observations are described by a generative model. This model takes into account the degradation mechanisms normally found in hyperspectral applications—namely, signature variability [52–54], abundance constraints, topography modulation, and system noise. The computation of mutual information is based on fitting mixtures of Gaussians (MOG) to data. The MOG parameters (number of components, means, covariances, and weights) are inferred using the minimum description length (MDL) based algorithm [55]. We study the behavior of the mutual information as a function of the unmixing matrix. The conclusion is that the unmixing matrix minimizing the mutual information might be very far from the true one. Nevertheless, some abundance fractions might be well separated, mainly in the presence of strong signature variability, a large number of endmembers, and high SNR. We end this chapter by sketching a new methodology to blindly unmix hyperspectral data, where abundance fractions are modeled as a mixture of Dirichlet sources. This model enforces positivity and constant sum sources (full additivity) constraints. The mixing matrix is inferred by an expectation-maximization (EM)-type algorithm. This approach is in the vein of references 39 and 56, replacing independent sources represented by MOG with mixture of Dirichlet sources. Compared with the geometric-based approaches, the advantage of this model is that there is no need to have pure pixels in the observations. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 6.2 presents a spectral radiance model and formulates the spectral unmixing as a linear problem accounting for abundance constraints, signature variability, topography modulation, and system noise. Section 6.3 presents a brief resume of ICA and IFA algorithms. Section 6.4 illustrates the performance of IFA and of some well-known ICA algorithms with experimental data. Section 6.5 studies the ICA and IFA limitations in unmixing hyperspectral data. Section 6.6 presents results of ICA based on real data. Section 6.7 describes the new blind unmixing scheme and some illustrative examples. Section 6.8 concludes with some remarks.