New data on Echinococcus spp. in Southern Brazil

40 Echinococcus isolates from sheep and cattle in Southern Brazil were genetically analysed in order to obtain further data on the presence of different taxa of the Echinococcus granulosus complex. Differentiation was done using a PCR technique and sequencing of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (CO1). Most samples (38) could be allocated to the sheep strain (G1) of E. granulosus, while two samples belonged to E. ortleppi, previously known as cattle strain (G5) of E. granulosus. Due to the shorter prepatent period in dogs of the latter taxon, this records have important implications for the design of control measures in this endemic region.

Implementação de um modelo de Data Warehouse para o Serviço Nacional de Avisos Agrícolas

Trabalho de Projecto apresentado como requisito parcial para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Estatística e Gestão de Informação.

Training and discovering corpus-based data driven exercices in english teaching (L2/FL) to native speakers of portuguese (L1)

Project submitted as part requirement for the degree of Masters in English teaching,

Candida bloodstream infection: data from a teaching hospital in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil

The incidence of Candida bloodstream infection has increased over the past years. In the Center-West region of Brazil, data on candidemia are scarce. This paper reports a retrospective analysis of 96 cases of Candida bloodstream infection at a Brazilian tertiary-care teaching hospital in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, from January 1998 to December 2006. Demographic, clinical and laboratory data were collected from medical records and from the hospital's laboratory database. Patients' ages ranged from three days to 92 years, with 53 (55.2%) adults and 43 (44.8%) children. Of the latter, 25 (58.1%) were newborns. The risk conditions most often found were: long period of hospitalization, utilization of venous central catheter, and previous use of antibiotics. Fifty-eight (60.4%) patients died during the hospitalization period and eight (13.7%) of them died 30 days after the diagnosis of candidemia. Candida albicans (45.8%) was the most prevalent species, followed by C. parapsilosis (34.4%), C. tropicalis (14.6%) and C. glabrata (5.2%). This is the first report of Candida bloodstream infection in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul and it highlights the importance of considering the possibility of invasive Candida infection in patients exposed to risk factors, particularly among neonates and the elderly.

Single operation multiple data - paralelismo de dados ao nível da sub-rotina

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática

On the analysis of data emerging in non-linear and complex systemscomparison of two X-Ray prony spectra

New arguments proving that successive (repeated) measurements have a memory and actually remember each other are presented. The recognition of this peculiarity can change essentially the existing paradigm associated with conventional observation in behavior of different complex systems and lead towards the application of an intermediate model (IM). This IM can provide a very accurate fit of the measured data in terms of the Prony's decomposition. This decomposition, in turn, contains a small set of the fitting parameters relatively to the number of initial data points and allows comparing the measured data in cases where the “best fit” model based on some specific physical principles is absent. As an example, we consider two X-ray diffractometers (defined in paper as A- (“cheap”) and B- (“expensive”) that are used after their proper calibration for the measuring of the same substance (corundum a-Al2O3). The amplitude-frequency response (AFR) obtained in the frame of the Prony's decomposition can be used for comparison of the spectra recorded from (A) and (B) - X-ray diffractometers (XRDs) for calibration and other practical purposes. We prove also that the Fourier decomposition can be adapted to “ideal” experiment without memory while the Prony's decomposition corresponds to real measurement and can be fitted in the frame of the IM in this case. New statistical parameters describing the properties of experimental equipment (irrespective to their internal “filling”) are found. The suggested approach is rather general and can be used for calibration and comparison of different complex dynamical systems in practical purposes.

Measuring data transfer in heterogeneous IoT environments

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores

Clinical Outcome and Morphologic Analysis after Endovascular Aneurysm Repair Using the Excluder Endograft

OBJECTIVE: Long-term follow-up after endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) is very scarce, and doubt remains regarding the durability of these procedures. We designed a retrospective cohort study to assess long-term clinical outcome and morphologic changes in patients with abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs) treated by EVAR using the Excluder endoprosthesis (W. L. Gore and Associates, Flagstaff, Ariz). METHODS: From 2000 to 2007, 179 patients underwent EVAR in a tertiary institution. Clinical data were retrieved from a prospective database. All patients treated with the Excluder endoprosthesis were included. Computed tomography angiography (CTA) scans were retrospectively analyzed preoperatively, at 30 days, and at the last follow-up using dedicated tridimensional reconstruction software. For patients with complications, all remaining CTAs were also analyzed. The primary end point was clinical success. Secondary end points were freedom from reintervention, sac growth, types I and III endoleak, migration, conversion to open repair, and AAA-related death or rupture. Neck dilatation, renal function, and overall survival were also analyzed. RESULTS: Included were 144 patients (88.2% men; mean age, 71.6 years). Aneurysms were ruptured in 4.9%. American Society of Anesthesiologists classification was III/IV in 61.8%. No patients were lost during a median follow-up of 5.0 years (interquartile range, 3.1-6.4; maximum, 11.2 years). Two patients died of medical complications ≤ 30 days after EVAR. The estimated primary clinical success rates at 5 and 10 years were 63.5% and 41.1%, and secondary clinical success rates were 78.3% and 58.3%, respectively. Sac growth was observed in 37 of 142 patients (26.1%). Cox regression showed type I endoleak during follow-up (hazard ratio, 3.74; P = .008), original design model (hazard ratio, 3.85; P = .001), and preoperative neck diameter (1.27 per mm increase, P = .006) were determinants of sac growth. Secondary interventions were required in 32 patients (22.5%). The estimated 10-year rate of AAA-related death or rupture was 2.1%. Overall life expectancy after AAA repair was 6.8 years. CONCLUSIONS: EVAR using the Excluder endoprosthesis provides a safe and lasting treatment for AAA, despite the need for maintained surveillance and secondary interventions. At up to 11 years, the risk of AAA-related death or postimplantation rupture is remarkably low. The incidences of postimplantation sac growth and secondary intervention were greatly reduced after the introduction of the low-permeability design in 2004.

E.D.I.: electronic data interchange

O presente trabalho tem como tema a Troca Electrónica de Dados (Electronic Data Interchange – EDI) transferência de dados estruturados, respeitando mensagens normalizadas estabelecidas, computador a computador, por meios electrónicos. Trocas entre computadores refere-se a trocas entre aplicações informáticas: por exemplo o sistema de encomendas envia ordens ao sistema central de controlo da produção, o qual então fará o envio da respectiva factura. O EDI aberto faz a troca electrónica de dados entre parceiros autónomos que se associaram para fazerem trocas de dados estruturados que são destinados a serem processados por programas de aplicações.

A score test for non-nested hypotheses with applications to discrete data models

This paper suggests that a convenient score test against non-nested alternatives can be constructed from the linear combination of the likelihood functions of the competing models. It is shown that this procedure is essentially a test for the correct specification of the conditional distribution of the variable of interest.

PIASA: A power and interference aware resource management strategy for heterogeneous workloads in cloud data centers

Cloud data centers have been progressively adopted in different scenarios, as reflected in the execution of heterogeneous applications with diverse workloads and diverse quality of service (QoS) requirements. Virtual machine (VM) technology eases resource management in physical servers and helps cloud providers achieve goals such as optimization of energy consumption. However, the performance of an application running inside a VM is not guaranteed due to the interference among co-hosted workloads sharing the same physical resources. Moreover, the different types of co-hosted applications with diverse QoS requirements as well as the dynamic behavior of the cloud makes efficient provisioning of resources even more difficult and a challenging problem in cloud data centers. In this paper, we address the problem of resource allocation within a data center that runs different types of application workloads, particularly CPU- and network-intensive applications. To address these challenges, we propose an interference- and power-aware management mechanism that combines a performance deviation estimator and a scheduling algorithm to guide the resource allocation in virtualized environments. We conduct simulations by injecting synthetic workloads whose characteristics follow the last version of the Google Cloud tracelogs. The results indicate that our performance-enforcing strategy is able to fulfill contracted SLAs of real-world environments while reducing energy costs by as much as 21%.

Publicação de linked data: o caso de uso Pordata

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Lógica Computacional

Transoesophageal Echocardiography for Monitoring Liver Surgery: Data from a Pilot Study

A pilot study aimed to introduce intraoperative monitoring of liver surgery using transoesophageal echocardiography (TEE) is described. A set of TEE measurements was established as a protocol, consisting of left atrial (LA) dimension at the aortic valve plane; mitral velocity flow integral, calculation of stroke volume and cardiac output (CO); mitral annular plane systolic excursion; finally, right atrial area. A total of 165 measurements (on 21 patients) were performed, 31 occurring during hypotension. The conclusions reached were during acute blood loss LA dimension changed earlier than CVP, and, in one patient, a dynamic left ventricular (LV) obstruction was observed; in 3 patients a transient LV systolic dysfunction was documented. The comparison between 39 CO paired measurements obtained by TEE and PiCCO2 revealed a statistically significant correlation (P < 0.001, r = 0.83). In this pilot study TEE successfully answered the questions raised by the anesthesiologists. Larger cohort studies are needed to address this issue.

Avaliação da eficiência das empresas na utilização das redes sociais digitais: data envelopment analysis aplicada ao Facebook

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia e Gestão Industrial

Three transducers for one photodetector: essays for optical communications

Dissertation presented to obtain the PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering - Electronics