Psychological distress in mothers of children admitted to a nutritional rehabilitation unit in Malawi - a comparison with other paediatric wards

In a previous study we found a very high prevalence of psychological distress in mothers of children admitted to a nutritional rehabilitation unit (NRU) in Malawi, Africa. The objective of this study was to compare the prevalence and severity of maternal distress within the NRU with that in other paediatric wards. Given the known association between poor maternal psychological well-being and child undernutrition in low- and middle-income countries, we hypothesised that distress would be higher among NRU mothers. Mothers of consecutive paediatric inpatients in a NRU, a high-dependency (and research) unit and an oncology ward were assessed for psychological distress using the Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ). Two hundred sixty-eight mothers were interviewed (90.3% of eligible). The prevalence of SRQ score ≥8 was 35/150 {23.3% [95% confidence interval (CI) 16.8- 30.9%]} on the NRU, 13/84 [15.5% (95% CI 8.5-25.0%)] on the high-dependency unit and 7/34 [20.6% (95% CI 8.7-37.9%)] on the oncology ward (χ(2)  = 2.04, P = 0.36). In linear regression analysis, the correlates of higher SRQ score were child diarrhoea on admission, child diagnosed with tuberculosis, and maternal experience of abuse by partner; child height-for-age z-score fell only just outside significance (P = 0.05). In summary, we found no evidence of greater maternal distress among the mothers of severely malnourished children within the NRU compared with mothers of paediatric inpatients with other severe illnesses. However, in support of previous research findings, we found some evidence that poor maternal psychological well-being is associated with child stunting and diarrhoea.

EFFECT OF DIFFERENT STORAGE CONDITIONS ON NUTRITIONAL AND QUALITY PARAMETERS OF 'SWEETHEART' CHERRY.

Abstract The sweet cherry ‘Sweetheart’, although having a short shelf life, is highly appreciated by consumers due to its organoleptic characteristics. Different storage methods were tested to study the maintenance of quality during a period of 27 days: 1) cold (air at 1°C and 95% relative humidity) (CC), 2) cold and polypropylene film bags (1°C and 95% relative humidity) (MA) and 3) cold and controlled atmosphere (1°C, 95% RH, 10% CO2 and 8% O2) (CA). Quality parameters tested included external colour (L*, a*, b*), total soluble solids (TSS), and titratable acidity (TA). To evaluate nutritional quality anthocyanins, total antioxidant activity, and total phenolics were measured. Results allow us to say that phenolic compounds were relatively stable and similar during storage in CC and MA. Cherries stored under CA conditions presented lowest concentrations of phenolic compounds. Phenolic compounds, total anthocyanins and antioxidant activity were inversely correlated with values of colour coordinates. Considering all the evaluations done during this work it is unquestionable that fruits stored in controlled atmosphere conditions had significantly different quality.

Trophic plasticity in the cnidarian-dinoflagellate symbiosis

Coral reefs are of utmost ecological and economical importance but are currently in global decline due to climate change and anthropogenic disturbances. Corals, as well as other cnidarian species, live in symbiosis with photosynthetic dinoflagellates of the genus Symbiodinium. This relationship provides the cnidarian host with alternative metabolic pathways, as the symbionts translocate photosynthetic carbon to the animal. Besides this autotrophic nutrition mode, symbiotic cnidarians also take up organic matter from the environment (heterotrophy). The nutritional balance between auto- and heterotrophy is critical for the functioning, fitness and resilience of the cnidariandinoflagellate symbiosis. New methodological approaches were developed to better understand the role of auto- and heterotrophy in the ecophysiology of cnidarians associated with Symbiodinium, and the ecological implications of this trophic plasticity. Specifically, the new approaches were developed to assess photophysiology, biomass production of the model organism Aiptasia sp. and molecular tools to investigate heterotrophy in the cnidarian-dinoflagellate symbiosis. Using these approaches, we were able to non-invasively assess the photophysiological spatial heterogeneity of symbiotic cnidarians and identify spatial patterns between chlorophyll fluorescence and relative content of chlorophyll a and green-fluorescent proteins. Optimal culture conditions to maximize the biomass production of Aiptasia pallida were identified, as well as their implications on the fatty acid composition of the anemones. Molecular trophic markers were used to determine prey digestion times in symbiotic cnidarians, which vary between 1-3 days depending on prey species, predator species and the feeding history of the predator. This method was also used to demonstrate that microalgae is a potential food source for symbiotic corals. By using a stable isotope approach to assess the trophic ecology of the facultative symbiotic Oculina arbuscula in situ, it was possible to demonstrate the importance of pico- and nanoplanktonic organisms, particularly autotrophic, in the nutrition of symbiotic corals. Finally, we showed the effects of functional diversity of Symbiodinium on the nutritional plasticity of the cnidarian-dinoflagellate symbiosis. Symbiont identity defines this plasticity through its individual metabolic requirements, capacity to fix carbon, quantity of translocated carbon and the host’s capacity to feed and digest prey.

Enhancing Security Requirements Engineering by Organisational Learning

More and more software projects today are security-related in one way or the other. Requirements engineers often fail to recognise indicators for security problems which is a major source of security problems in practice. Identifying security-relevant requirements is labour-intensive and errorprone. In order to facilitate the security requirements elicitation process, we present an approach supporting organisational learning on security requirements by establishing company-wide experience resources, and a socio-technical network to benefit from them. The approach is based on modelling the flow of requirements and related experiences. Based on those models, we enable people to exchange experiences about security-requirements while they write and discuss project requirements. At the same time, the approach enables participating stakeholders to learn while they write requirements. This can increase security awareness and facilitate learning on both individual and organisational levels. As a basis for our approach, we introduce heuristic assistant tools which support reuse of existing security-related experiences. In particular, they include Bayesian classifiers which issue a warning automatically when new requirements seem to be security-relevant. Our results indicate that this is feasible, in particular if the classifier is trained with domain specific data and documents from previous projects. We show how the ability to identify security-relevant requirements can be improved using this approach. We illustrate our approach by providing a step-by-step example of how we improved the security requirements engineering process at the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and report on experiences made in this application.

Eliciting Security Requirements and Tracing them to Design: An Integration of Common Criteria, Heuristics, and UMLsec

Building secure systems is difficult for many reasons. This paper deals with two of the main challenges: (i) the lack of security expertise in development teams, and (ii) the inadequacy of existing methodologies to support developers who are not security experts. The security standard ISO 14508 (Common Criteria) together with secure design techniques such as UMLsec can provide the security expertise, knowledge, and guidelines that are needed. However, security expertise and guidelines are not stated explicitly in the Common Criteria. They are rather phrased in security domain terminology and difficult to understand for developers. This means that some general security and secure design expertise are required to fully take advantage of the Common Criteria and UMLsec. In addition, there is the problem of tracing security requirements and objectives into solution design,which is needed for proof of requirements fulfilment. This paper describes a security requirements engineering methodology called SecReq. SecReq combines three techniques: the Common Criteria, the heuristic requirements editorHeRA, andUMLsec. SecReqmakes systematic use of the security engineering knowledge contained in the Common Criteria and UMLsec, as well as security-related heuristics in the HeRA tool. The integrated SecReq method supports early detection of security-related issues (HeRA), their systematic refinement guided by the Common Criteria, and the ability to trace security requirements into UML design models. A feedback loop helps reusing experiencewithin SecReq and turns the approach into an iterative process for the secure system life-cycle, also in the presence of system evolution.

Amino acid requirements of white seabream (Diplodus sargus) larvae: effects on growth and performance

Tese dout., Aquacultura, Universidade do Algarve, 2008

Nutritional modulation of innate immune parameters in the epidermal mucus of Senegalese sole (Solea senegalensis)=Influência da dieta nos parâmetros da resposta imunitária inata do muco de linguado (Solea senegalensis)

Dissertação mest., Biologia Marinha, Universidade do Algarve, 2008

Hatchery technologies and nutritional contents of cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) spawners, eggs, hatchlings and live prey associated

Tese dout., Aquacultura, Universidade do Algarve, 2007

Differential requirements of aPKC activity within different epithelial tissues

Epithelial tissues are essential during morphogenesis and organogenesis. During development, epithelial tissues undergo several different remodeling processes, from cell intercalation to cell change shape. An epithelial cell has a highly polarized structure, which is important to maintain tissue integrity. The mechanisms that regulate and maintain apicobasal polarity and epithelial integrity are mostly conserved among all species and in different tissues within the same organism. aPKC-PAR complex localizes in the apical domain of polarized cells, and its function is essential for apicobasal polarization and epithelial integrity. In this work we characterized two novel alleles of aPKC: a temperature sensitive allele (aPKCTS), which has a point mutation on a kinase domain, and another allele with a point mutation on a highly conserved amino acid within the PB1 domain of aPKC (aPKCPB1). Analysis of the aPKCTS mutant phenotypes, lead us to propose that during development different epithelial tissues have differential requirements of aPKC activity. More specifically, our work suggests de novo formation of adherens junctions (AJs) is particularly sensitive to sub-optimal levels of apkc activity. Analysis of the aPKCPB1 allele, suggests that aPKC is likely to have an apical structural function mostly independent of its kinase activity. Altogether our work suggests that although loss of aPKC function is associated to similar epithelial phenotypes (e.g., loss of apicobasal polarization and epithelial integrity), the requirements of aPKC activity within these tissues are nevertheless likely to vary.

Germination requirements of Plantago algarbiensis seeds, an endangered species endemic to the Algarve region (South of Portugal)

The ecdysteroid, 20-hydroxyecdysone or beta-ecdysone, is a steroid hormone which plays a crucial role in molting, metamor- phosis and reproduction of arthropods. This ecdysteroid and its analogues have high potential to be used as insecticides. Previous studies in our laboratory have demonstrated that Vitex glabrata R.Br. (commonly known as Khai-Nao), an indigenous herbaceous plant of Thailand, synthesized and accumulated high quantity of 20-hydroxyecdysone. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of precursor and elicitors feeding on cell growth and 20-hydroxyecdysone production of V. glabrata suspension cultures. Plant cells were cultured in half strength MS medium containing 30 g/l glucose and supplemented with 2.0 mg/l 6- benzylaminopurine (BAP) and 1.0 mg/l 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D). Cells were incubated on a rotary shaker at 120 rpm under continuous light of 2000 lux at 25 °C. Sterilized cholesterol (5 and 10 mg/l) as precursor was added to the cell cultures on the day of inoculation, while chitosan (50, 100 and 200 mg/l) and methyl jusmonate (100 and 200 mM) as elicitors were added to the cell cultures on day 6 after cultivation.

Acoustic oceanographic buoy telemetry system: an ‘advanced’ sonobuoy that meets acoustic rapid environmental assessment requirements

The Acoustic Oceanographic Buoy (AOB) Telemetry System has been designed to meet acoustic rapid environmental assessment requirements. It uses a standard institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) to integrate the air radio network (RaN) and a hydrophone array and acoustic source to integrate the underwater acoustic network (AcN). It offers advantages including local data storage, dedicated signal processing, and global positioning system (GPS) timing and localization. The AOB can also be integrated with other similar systems, due to its WLAN transceivers, to form a flexible network and perform on-line high speed data transmissions. The AOB is a reusable system that requires less maintenance and can also work as a salt-water plug-and-play system at sea as it is designed to operate in free drifting mode. The AOB is also suitable for performing distributed digital signal processing tasks due to its digital signal processor facility.

Early nutritional programming in fish: tailoring the metabolic use of dietary carbohydrates

Tese de doutoramento, Ciências da Vida, do Mar, da Terra e do Ambiente (Nutrição), Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade do Algarve, 2015