Geographical Distribution Of The Association Between El Niño South Oscillation And Dengue Fever In The Americas: A Continental Analysis Using Geographical Information System-based Techniques.

El Niño South Oscillation (ENSO) is one climatic phenomenon related to the inter-annual variability of global meteorological patterns influencing sea surface temperature and rainfall variability. It influences human health indirectly through extreme temperature and moisture conditions that may accelerate the spread of some vector-borne viral diseases, like dengue fever (DF). This work examines the spatial distribution of association between ENSO and DF in the countries of the Americas during 1995-2004, which includes the 1997-1998 El Niño, one of the most important climatic events of 20(th) century. Data regarding the South Oscillation index (SOI), indicating El Niño-La Niña activity, were obtained from Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The annual DF incidence (AIy) by country was computed using Pan-American Health Association data. SOI and AIy values were standardised as deviations from the mean and plotted in bars-line graphics. The regression coefficient values between SOI and AIy (rSOI,AI) were calculated and spatially interpolated by an inverse distance weighted algorithm. The results indicate that among the five years registering high number of cases (1998, 2002, 2001, 2003 and 1997), four had El Niño activity. In the southern hemisphere, the annual spatial weighted mean centre of epidemics moved southward, from 6° 31' S in 1995 to 21° 12' S in 1999 and the rSOI,AI values were negative in Cuba, Belize, Guyana and Costa Rica, indicating a synchrony between higher DF incidence rates and a higher El Niño activity. The rSOI,AI map allows visualisation of a graded surface with higher values of ENSO-DF associations for Mexico, Central America, northern Caribbean islands and the extreme north-northwest of South America.

[access To Information About How To Prevent Oral Problems Among School Children In The Public School Network].

The scope of this study is to identify the prevalence of access to information about how to prevent oral problems among schoolchildren in the public school network, as well as the factors associated with such access. This is a cross-sectional and analytical study conducted among 12-year-old schoolchildren in a Brazilian municipality with a large population. The examinations were performed by 24 trained dentists and calibrated with the aid of 24 recorders. Data collection occurred in 36 public schools selected from the 89 public schools of the city. Descriptive, univariate and multiple analyses were conducted. Of the 2510 schoolchildren included in the study, 2211 reported having received information about how to prevent oral problems. Access to such information was greater among those who used private dental services; and lower among those who used the service for treatment, who evaluated the service as regular or bad/awful. The latter use toothbrush only or toothbrush and tongue scrubbing as a means of oral hygiene and who reported not being satisfied with the appearance of their teeth. The conclusion drawn is that the majority of schoolchildren had access to information about how to prevent oral problems, though access was associated with the characteristics of health services, health behavior and outcomes.

Da natureza do espaço ao espaço da natureza : reflexões sobre a relação corpo-natureza em parque publicos urbanos

Universidade Estadual de Campinas. Faculdade de Educação Física

Lazer e participação em um grupo de praticantes de escalada

Universidade Estadual de Campinas . Faculdade de Educação Física

1. Jogos Escolares Brasileiros da Confederação Brasileira de Desportos para Cegos : um estudo de caso

Universidade Estadual de Campinas . Faculdade de Educação Física

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in Assessing Dental Health

The present study investigated the distribution profile of dental caries and its association with areas of social deprivation at the individual and contextual level. The cluster sample consisted of 1,002 12-year-old schoolchildren from Piracicaba, SP, Brazil. The DMFT Index was used for dental caries and the Care Index was used to determine access to dental services. On the individual level, variables were associated with a better oral status. On the contextual level, areas were not associated with oral status. However, maps enabled determining that the central districts have better social and oral conditions than the deprived outlying districts.

Comparative Study of the Changes in Partial Pressure of Plasma Carbon Dioxide During Carbon Dioxide Insufflation into the Intraperitoneal and Preperitoneal Spaces

Background: We aimed to compare plasma concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO(2)) in dogs that underwent intra- and preperitoneal CO(2) insufflation. Materials and Methods: Thirty dogs were studied. Ten formed a control group, 10 underwent intraperitoneal CO(2) insufflation, and 10 underwent preperitoneal CO(2) insufflation. General anesthesia with controlled ventilation was standardized for all dogs. After stabilizing the anesthesia, blood samples were collected at predetermined times and were sent for immediate gasometric analysis. Analysis of variance was used for comparing variables. Results: The plasma CO(2) concentration in the intraperitoneal insufflation group increased significantly more than in the preperitoneal insufflation group and was significantly greater than in the control group (P < 0.05). The pH values in the intraperitoneal group were lower than in the preperitoneal group (P < 0.05). Conclusion: The data from this study suggest that a greater plasma concentration of CO(2) is achieved by insufflation at constant pressure into the intraperitoneal space than into the preperitoneal space.

Singing in the Rain Forest: How a Tropical Bird Song Transfers Information

How information transmission processes between individuals are shaped by natural selection is a key question for the understanding of the evolution of acoustic communication systems. Environmental acoustics predict that signal structure will differ depending on general features of the habitat. Social features, like individual spacing and mating behavior, may also be important for the design of communication. Here we present the first experimental study investigating how a tropical rainforest bird, the white-browed warbler Basileuterus leucoblepharus, extracts various information from a received song: species-specific identity, individual identity and location of the sender. Species-specific information is encoded in a resistant acoustic feature and is thus a public signal helping males to reach a wide audience. Conversely, individual identity is supported by song features susceptible to propagation: this private signal is reserved for neighbors. Finally, the receivers can locate the singers by using propagation-induced song modifications. Thus, this communication system is well matched to the acoustic constraints of the rain forest and to the ecological requirements of the species. Our results emphasize that, in a constraining acoustic environment, the efficiency of a sound communication system results from a coding/decoding process particularly well tuned to the acoustic properties of this environment.

AMBIVALENT IMPLICATIONS OF HEALTH CARE INFORMATION SYSTEMS: A STUDY IN THE BRAZILIAN PUBLIC HEALTH CARE SYSTEM

This article evaluates social implications of the ""SIGA"" Health Care Information System (HIS) in a public health care organization in the city of Sao Paulo. The evaluation was performed by means of an in-depth case study with patients and staff of a public health care organization, using qualitative and quantitative data. On the one hand, the system had consequences perceived as positive such as improved convenience and democratization of specialized treatment for patients and improvements in work organization. On the other hand, negative outcomes were reported, like difficulties faced by employees due to little familiarity with IT and an increase in the time needed to schedule appointments. Results show the ambiguity of the implications of HIS in developing countries, emphasizing the need for a more nuanced view of the evaluation of failures and successes and the importance of social contextual factors.

Finding Quasi-Optimal Network Topologies for Information Transmission in Active Networks

This work clarifies the relation between network circuit (topology) and behaviour (information transmission and synchronization) in active networks, e.g. neural networks. As an application, we show how one can find network topologies that are able to transmit a large amount of information, possess a large number of communication channels, and are robust under large variations of the network coupling configuration. This theoretical approach is general and does not depend on the particular dynamic of the elements forming the network, since the network topology can be determined by finding a Laplacian matrix (the matrix that describes the connections and the coupling strengths among the elements) whose eigenvalues satisfy some special conditions. To illustrate our ideas and theoretical approaches, we use neural networks of electrically connected chaotic Hindmarsh-Rose neurons.

Quantum fields with noncommutative target spaces

Quantum field theories (QFT's) on noncommutative spacetimes are currently under intensive study. Usually such theories have world sheet noncommutativity. In the present work, instead, we study QFT's with commutative world sheet and noncommutative target space. Such noncommutativity can be interpreted in terms of twisted statistics and is related to earlier work of Oeckl [R. Oeckl, Commun. Math. Phys. 217, 451 (2001)], and others [A. P. Balachandran, G. Mangano, A. Pinzul, and S. Vaidya, Int. J. Mod. Phys. A 21, 3111 (2006); A. P. Balachandran, A. Pinzul, and B. A. Qureshi, Phys. Lett. B 634,434 (2006); A.P. Balachandran, A. Pinzul, B.A. Qureshi, and S. Vaidya, arXiv:hep-th/0608138; A.P. Balachandran, T. R. Govindarajan, G. Mangano, A. Pinzul, B.A. Qureshi, and S. Vaidya, Phys. Rev. D 75, 045009 (2007); A. Pinzul, Int. J. Mod. Phys. A 20, 6268 (2005); G. Fiore and J. Wess, Phys. Rev. D 75, 105022 (2007); Y. Sasai and N. Sasakura, Prog. Theor. Phys. 118, 785 (2007)]. The twisted spectra of their free Hamiltonians has been found earlier by Carmona et al. [J. M. Carmona, J. L. Cortes, J. Gamboa, and F. Mendez, Phys. Lett. B 565, 222 (2003); J. M. Carmona, J. L. Cortes, J. Gamboa, and F. Mendez, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2003) 058]. We review their derivation and then compute the partition function of one such typical theory. It leads to a deformed blackbody spectrum, which is analyzed in detail. The difference between the usual and the deformed blackbody spectrum appears in the region of high frequencies. Therefore we expect that the deformed blackbody radiation may potentially be used to compute a Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cutoff which will depend on the noncommutative parameter theta.

Shared information in stationary states of stochastic processes

We present four estimators of the shared information (or interdepency) in ground states given that the coefficients appearing in the wave function are all real non-negative numbers and therefore can be interpreted as probabilities of configurations. Such ground states of Hermitian and non-Hermitian Hamiltonians can be given, for example, by superpositions of valence bond states which can describe equilibrium but also stationary states of stochastic models. We consider in detail the last case, the system being a classical not a quantum one. Using analytical and numerical methods we compare the values of the estimators in the directed polymer and the raise and peel models which have massive, conformal invariant and nonconformal invariant massless phases. We show that like in the case of the quantum problem, the estimators verify the area law with logarithmic corrections when phase transitions take place.

Evolutionary dynamics on rugged fitness landscapes: Exact dynamics and information theoretical aspects

The parallel mutation-selection evolutionary dynamics, in which mutation and replication are independent events, is solved exactly in the case that the Malthusian fitnesses associated to the genomes are described by the random energy model (REM) and by a ferromagnetic version of the REM. The solution method uses the mapping of the evolutionary dynamics into a quantum Ising chain in a transverse field and the Suzuki-Trotter formalism to calculate the transition probabilities between configurations at different times. We find that in the case of the REM landscape the dynamics can exhibit three distinct regimes: pure diffusion or stasis for short times, depending on the fitness of the initial configuration, and a spin-glass regime for large times. The dynamic transition between these dynamical regimes is marked by discontinuities in the mean-fitness as well as in the overlap with the initial reference sequence. The relaxation to equilibrium is described by an inverse time decay. In the ferromagnetic REM, we find in addition to these three regimes, a ferromagnetic regime where the overlap and the mean-fitness are frozen. In this case, the system relaxes to equilibrium in a finite time. The relevance of our results to information processing aspects of evolution is discussed.

COMPLETE ISOMORPHIC CLASSIFICATIONS OF SOME SPACES OF COMPACT OPERATORS

This paper is a continuation and a complement of our previous work on isomorphic classification of some spaces of compact operators. We improve the main result concerning extensions of the classical isomorphic classification of the Banach spaces of continuous functions on ordinals. As an application, fixing an ordinal a and denoting by X(xi), omega(alpha) <= xi < omega(alpha+1), the Banach space of all X-valued continuous functions defined in the interval of ordinals [0,xi] and equipped with the supremum, we provide complete isomorphic classifications of some Banach spaces K(X(xi),Y(eta)) of compact operators from X(xi) to Y(eta), eta >= omega. It is relatively consistent with ZFC (Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice) that these results include the following cases: 1.X* contains no copy of c(0) and has the Mazur property, and Y = c(0)(J) for every set J. 2. X = c(0)(I) and Y = l(q)(J) for any infinite sets I and J and 1 <= q < infinity. 3. X = l(p)(I) and Y = l(q)(J) for any infinite sets I and J and 1 <= q < p < infinity.

ON ISOMORPHIC CLASSIFICATIONS OF SPACES OF COMPACT OPERATORS

We prove an extension of the classical isomorphic classification of Banach spaces of continuous functions on ordinals. As a consequence, we give complete isomorphic classifications of some Banach spaces K(X,Y(n)), eta >= omega, of compact operators from X to Y(eta), the space of all continuous Y-valued functions defined in the interval of ordinals [1, eta] and equipped with the supremum norm. In particular, under the Continuum Hypothesis, we extend a recent result of C. Samuel by classifying, up to isomorphism, the spaces K(X(xi), c(0)(Gamma)(eta)), where omega <= xi < omega(1,) eta >= omega, Gamma is a countable set, X contains no complemented copy of l(1), X* has the Mazur property and the density character of X** is less than or equal to N(1).