Comportamentos de saúde e doença numa comunidade Cabo-Verdiana em Lisboa

This study aims at analysing, through personal reports, the way individuals behave in terms of health and illness. A comparative analysis of the collected data was performed, with the purpose of highlighting divergences in the health and illness practices. The study was undertaken with a sample of 40 «first generation» Cape Verdeans living in the Metropolitan area of Lisbon, divided into distinct groups: social (popular and elite), generation (younger and older) and gender (men and women). A qualitative methodology was employed, by conducting semi-structured interviews for the collection of information. The health and illness practices were grouped into preventive and health care practices, practices used in episodes of illness, resources used for prevention and treatment, use of home remedies, and other alternative resources. Individuals who are part of our study experimented, at the level of practices, with the three health systems that existed in Cape Verde, namely, the official, popular and traditional, and recourse to religion. The discourse analysis concerning health and disease practices showed there are differences, in some respects, between social groups. There were also slight differences between genders and generations. These immigrants’ health practices are identical to those of the Portuguese who are in similar socioeconomic contexts, with no significant effects of immigration itself on these practices. The analysis of the results confirms the existence of differences between social groups concerning the health and illness practices. They were more determined by the socioeconomic factors than by the cultural and ethnic aspects. Those differences also highlighted the existence of a unifying aspect, resulting from their cultural heritage. Although belonging to different social groups, the existence of a common culture and ethnic identity originates a shared feeling of cultural belonging, but not identical behaviours and practices.

Financing local development: Quasi-experimental evidence from municipalities in Brazil, 1980-1991

This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the impact of additional unrestrictedgrant financing on local public spending, public service provision, schooling, literacy, andincome at the community (municipio) level in Brazil. Additional transfers increased local publicspending per capita by about 20% with no evidence of crowding out own revenue or otherrevenue sources. The additional local spending increased schooling per capita by about 7% andliteracy rates by about 4 percentage points. The implied marginal cost of schooling -accountingfor corruption and other leakages- amounts to about US$ 126, which turns out to be similar tothe average cost of schooling in Brazil in the early 1980s. In line with the effect on human capital,the poverty rate was reduced by about 4 percentage points, while income per capita gains werepositive but not statistically significant. Results also suggest that additional public spending hadstronger effects on schooling and literacy in less developed parts of Brazil, while poverty reductionwas evenly spread across the country.

Work values as predictors of entrepreneurial career intentions: A longitudinal analysis of gender effects

Purpose - Work values are an important characteristic to understand gender differences in career intentions, but how gender affects the relationship between values and career intentions is not well established. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether gender moderates the effects of work values on level and change of entrepreneurial intentions (EI). Design/methodology/approach - In total, 218 German university students were sampled regarding work values and with EI assessed three times over the course of 12 months. Data were analysed with latent growth modelling. Findings - Self-enhancement and openness to change values predicted higher levels and conservation values lower levels of EI. Gender moderated the effects of enhancement and conservation values on change in EI. Research limitations/implications - The authors relied on self-reported measures and the sample was restricted to university students. Future research needs to verify to what extent these results generalize to other samples and different career fields, such as science or nursing. Practical implications - The results imply that men and women are interested in an entrepreneurial career based on the same work values but that values have different effects for men and women regarding individual changes in EI. The results suggest that the prototypical work values of a career domain seem important regarding increasing the career intent for the gender that is underrepresented in that domain. Originality/value - The results enhance understanding of how gender affects the relation of work values and a specific career intention, such as entrepreneurship.

Market structure and hospital efficiency: Evaluating potential effects of deregulation in a national health service

In this article we examine the potential effect of market structureon hospital technical efficiency as a measure of performance controlled byownership and regulation. This study is relevant to provide an evaluationof the potential effects of recommended and initiated deregulation policiesin order to promote market reforms in the context of a European NationalHealth Service. Our goal was reached through three main empirical stages.Firstly, using patient origin data from hospitals in the region of Cataloniain 1990, we estimated geographic hospital markets through the Elzinga--Hogartyapproach, based on patient flows. Then we measured the market level ofconcentration using the Herfindahl--Hirschman index. Secondly, technicaland scale efficiency scores for each hospital was obtained specifying aData Envelopment Analysis. According to the data nearly two--thirds of thehospitals operate under the production frontier with an average efficiencyscore of 0.841. Finally, the determinants of the efficiency scores wereinvestigated using a censored regression model. Special attention waspaid to test the hypothesis that there is an efficiency improvement in morecompetitive markets. The results suggest that the number of competitors inthe market contributes positively to technical efficiency and there is someevidence that the differences in efficiency scores are attributed toseveral environmental factors such as ownership, market structure andregulation effects.

Country effects in ISSP-1993 environmental data: Comparison of SEM approaches

Structural equation models (SEM) are commonly used to analyze the relationship between variables some of which may be latent, such as individual ``attitude'' to and ``behavior'' concerning specific issues. A number of difficulties arise when we want to compare a large number of groups, each with large sample size, and the manifest variables are distinctly non-normally distributed. Using an specific data set, we evaluate the appropriateness of the following alternative SEM approaches: multiple group versus MIMIC models, continuous versus ordinal variables estimation methods, and normal theory versus non-normal estimation methods. The approaches are applied to the ISSP-1993 Environmental data set, with the purpose of exploring variation in the mean level of variables of ``attitude'' to and ``behavior''concerning environmental issues and their mutual relationship across countries. Issues of both theoretical and practical relevance arise in the course of this application.

Mosquito community composition in dynamic landscapes from the Atlantic Forest biome (Diptera, Culicidae)

Mosquito community composition in dynamic landscapes from the Atlantic Forest biome (Diptera, Culicidae). Considering that some species of Culicidae are vectors of pathogens, both the knowledge of the diversity of the mosquito fauna and how some environment factors influence in it, are important subjects. In order to address the composition of Culicidae species in a forest reserve in southern Atlantic Forest, we compared biotic and abiotic environmental determinants and how they were associated with the occurrence of species between sunset and sunrise. The level of conservation of the area was also considered. The investigation was carried out at Reserva Natural do Morro da Mina, in Antonina, state of Paraná, Brazil. We performed sixteen mosquito collections employing Shannon traps at three-hour intervals, from July 2008 to June 2009. The characterization of the area was determined using ecological indices of diversity, evenness, dominance and similarity. We compared the frequency of specimens with abiotic variables, i.e., temperature, relative humidity and pluviosity. Seven thousand four hundred ten mosquito females were captured. They belong to 48 species of 12 genera. The most abundant genera were Anopheles, Culex, Coquillettidia, Aedes and Runchomyia. Among the species, the most abundant was Anopheles cruzii, the primary vector of Plasmodium spp. in the Atlantic Forest. Results of the analyses showed that the abiotic variables we tested did not influence the occurrence of species, although certain values suggested that there was an optimum range for the occurrence of culicid species. It was possible to detect the presence of species of Culicidae with different epidemiologic profiles and habitat preference.

Fitness and the level of homozygosity in a social insect.

To date very few studies have addressed the effects of inbreeding in social Hymenoptera, perhaps because the costs of inbreeding are generally considered marginal owing to male haploidy whereby recessive deleterious alleles are strongly exposed to selection in males. Here, we present one of the first studies on the effects of queen and worker homozygosity on colony performance. In a wild population of the ant Formica exsecta, the relative investment of single-queen colonies in sexual production decreased with increased worker homozygosity. This may either stem from increased homozygosity decreasing the likelihood of diploid brood to develop into queens or a lower efficiency of more homozygous workers at feeding larvae and thus a lower proportion of the female brood developing into queens. There was also a significant negative association between colony age and the level of queen but not worker homozygosity. This association may stem from inbreeding affecting queen lifespan and/or their fecundity, and thus colony survival. However, there was no association between queen homozygosity and colony size, suggesting that inbreeding affects colony survival as a result of inbred queens having a shorter lifespan rather than a lower fecundity. Finally, there was no significant association between either worker or queen homozygosity and the probability of successful colony founding, colony size and colony productivity, the three other traits studied. Overall, these results indicate that inbreeding depression may have important effects on colony fitness by affecting both the parental (queen) and offspring (worker)generations cohabiting within an ant colony.

Effects of hatching asynchrony on sibling negotiation, begging, jostling for position and within-brood food allocation in the barn owl Tyto alba

When siblings differ markedly in their need for food, they may benefit from signalling to each other their willingness to contest the next indivisible food item delivered by the parents. This sib-sib communication system, referred to as 'sibling negotiation', may allow them to adjust optimally to investment in begging. Using barn owl (Two alba) broods. I assessed the role of within-brood age hierarchy on sibling negotiation, and in turn on jostling for position where parents predictably deliver food (i.e. nest-box entrance), begging and within-brood food allocation. More specifically, I examined three predictions derived from a game-theoretical model of sibling negotiation where a senior and a junior sibling compete for food resources (Roulin, 2002a, Johnstone and Roulin, 2003): (1) begging effort invested by the senior sibling should be less sensitive to the junior sibling's negotiation than vice versa; (2) the junior should invest less effort in sibling negotiation than its senior sibling but a similar amount of effort in begging; and (3) within-brood food allocation should be directly related to begging but only indirectly to sibling negotiation. Two-chick broods were created and vocalization in the absence (negotiation signals directed to siblings) and presence (begging signals directed to parents) of parents was recorded. In support of the first prediction, juniors begged at a low cadence after their senior sibling negotiated intensely, probably because negotiation reflects prospective investment in begging and hence willingness to compete. In contrast, the begging of senior siblings was not sensitive to their junior sibling's negotiation. In contrast to the second prediction, juniors negotiated and begged more intensely than their senior sibling apparently because they were hungrier rather than younger. In line with the third prediction, juniors monopolized food delivered by their parents when their senior sibling begged at a low level. The begging cadence of both the junior and senior sibling, the junior's negotiation cadence, the difference in age between the two nest-mates and jostling for position were not associated with the likelihood of monopolizing food. In conclusion, sibling negotiation appears to influence begging behaviour, which, in turn, affects within-brood food allocation. Juniors may negotiate to challenge their senior siblings, and thereby determine whether seniors are less hungry before deciding to beg for food. In contrast, seniors may negotiate to deter juniors from begging.

Basis set effects on the energy and hardness profiles of the hydrogen fluoride dimer

In earlier work, the present authors have shown that hardness profiles are less dependent on the level of calculation than energy profiles for potential energy surfaces (PESs) having pathological behaviors. At variance with energy profiles, hardness profiles always show the correct number of stationary points. This characteristic has been used to indicate the existence of spurious stationary points on the PESs. In the present work, we apply this methodology to the hydrogen fluoride dimer, a classical difficult case for the density functional theory methods

Surface topography and mixed-pixel effects on the simulated L-band brightness temperatures.

The impact of topography and mixed pixels on L-band radiometric observations over land needs to be quantified to improve the accuracy of soil moisture retrievals. For this purpose, a series of simulations has been performed with an improved version of the soil moisture and ocean salinity (SMOS) end-to-end performance simulator (SEPS). The brightness temperature generator of SEPS has been modified to include a 100-m-resolution land cover map and a 30-m-resolution digital elevation map of Catalonia (northeast of Spain). This high-resolution generator allows the assessment of the errors in soil moisture retrieval algorithms due to limited spatial resolution and provides a basis for the development of pixel disaggregation techniques. Variation of the local incidence angle, shadowing, and atmospheric effects (up- and downwelling radiation) due to surface topography has been analyzed. Results are compared to brightness temperatures that are computed under the assumption of an ellipsoidal Earth.

Sovereign debt markets in turbulent times: Creditor discrimination and crowding-out effects

In 2007, countries in the Euro periphery were enjoying stable growth, low deficits, and lowspreads. Then the financial crisis erupted and pushed them into deep recessions, raising theirdeficits and debt levels. By 2010, they were facing severe debt problems. Spreads increased and,surprisingly, so did the share of the debt held by domestic creditors. Credit was reallocatedfrom the private to the public sectors, reducing investment and deepening the recessions evenfurther. To account for these facts, we propose a simple model of sovereign risk in which debtcan be traded in secondary markets. The model has two key ingredients: creditor discriminationand crowding-out effects. Creditor discrimination arises because, in turbulent times, sovereigndebt offers a higher expected return to domestic creditors than to foreign ones. This providesincentives for domestic purchases of debt. Crowding-out effects arise because private borrowingis limited by financial frictions. This implies that domestic debt purchases displace productiveinvestment. The model shows that these purchases reduce growth and welfare, and may lead toself-fulfilling crises. It also shows how crowding-out effects can be transmitted to other countriesin the Eurozone, and how they may be addressed by policies at the European level.

Empirical studies of cloud effects on UV radiation: A review

The interest in solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the scientific community and the general population has risen significantly in recent years because of the link between increased UV levels at the Earth's surface and depletion of ozone in the stratosphere. As a consequence of recent research, UV radiation climatologies have been developed, and effects of some atmospheric constituents (such as ozone or aerosols) have been studied broadly. Correspondingly, there are well-established relationships between, for example, total ozone column and UV radiation levels at the Earth's surface. Effects of clouds, however, are not so well described, given the intrinsic difficulties in properly describing cloud characteristics. Nevertheless, the effect of clouds cannot be neglected, and the variability that clouds induce on UV radiation is particularly significant when short timescales are involved. In this review we show, summarize, and compare several works that deal with the effect of clouds on UV radiation. Specifically, works reviewed here approach the issue from the empirical point of view: Some relationship between measured UV radiation in cloudy conditions and cloud-related information is given in each work. Basically, there are two groups of methods: techniques that are based on observations of cloudiness (either from human observers or by using devices such as sky cameras) and techniques that use measurements of broadband solar radiation as a surrogate for cloud observations. Some techniques combine both types of information. Comparison of results from different works is addressed through using the cloud modification factor (CMF) defined as the ratio between measured UV radiation in a cloudy sky and calculated radiation for a cloudless sky. Typical CMF values for overcast skies range from 0.3 to 0.7, depending both on cloud type and characteristics. Despite this large dispersion of values corresponding to the same cloud cover, it is clear that the cloud effect on UV radiation is 15–45% lower than the cloud effect on total solar radiation. The cloud effect is usually a reducing effect, but a significant number of works report an enhancement effect (that is increased UV radiation levels at the surface) due to the presence of clouds. The review concludes with some recommendations for future studies aimed to further analyze the cloud effects on UV radiation

Effects of perinatal stress and maternal traumatic stress on the cortisol regulation of preterm infants.

Preterm infants experience intense stress during the perinatal period because they endure painful and intense medical procedures. Repeated activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis during this period may have long-term effects on subsequent cortisol regulation. A premature delivery may also be intensely stressful for the parents, and they may develop symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Usable saliva samples were collected (4 times per day over 2 days, in the morning at awakening, at midday, in the afternoon, and in the evening before going to bed) to assess the diurnal cortisol regulation from 46 preterm infants when the infants were 12 months of corrected age (∼ 14 months after birth). Mothers reported their level of PTSD symptoms. The results showed an interaction between perinatal stress and maternal traumatic stress on the diurnal cortisol slope of preterm infants (R(2) = .32). This suggests that the HPA axis of preterm infants exposed to high perinatal stress may be more sensitive to subsequent environmental stress.

Level of accumulation of epoxy fatty acid in Arabidopsis thaliana expressing a linoleic acid delta12-epoxygenase is influenced by the availability of the substrate linoleic acid.

Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh. expressing the Crepis palaestina (L.) linoleic acid delta12-epoxygenase in its developing seeds typically accumulates low levels of vernolic acid (12,13-epoxy-octadec-cis-9-enoic acid) in comparison to levels found in seeds of the native C. palaestina. In order to determine some of the factors limiting the accumulation of this unusual fatty acid, we have examined the effects of increasing the availability of linoleic acid (9cis, 12cis-octadecadienoic acid), the substrate of the delta12-epoxygenase, on the quantity of epoxy fatty acids accumulating in transgenic A. thaliana. The addition of linoleic acid to liquid cultures of transgenic plants expressing the delta12-epoxygenase under the control of the cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter increased the amount of vernolic acid in vegetative tissues by 2.8-fold. In contrast, the addition to these cultures of linoelaidic acid (9trans, 12trans-octadecadienoic acid), which is not a substrate of the delta12-epoxygenase, resulted in a slight decrease in vernolic acid accumulation. Expression of the delta12-epoxygenase under the control of the napin promoter in the A. thaliana triple mutant fad3/fad7-1/fad9, which is deficient in the synthesis of tri-unsaturated fatty acids and has a 60% higher level of linoleic acid than the wild type, was found to increase the average vernolic acid content of the seeds by 55% compared to the expression of the delta12-epoxygenase in a wild-type background. Together, these results reveal that the availability of linoleic acid is an important factor affecting the synthesis of epoxy fatty acid in transgenic plants.

Low income, community poverty and risk of end stage renal disease

BACKGROUND: The risk of end stage renal disease (ESRD) is increased among individuals with low income and in low income communities. However, few studies have examined the relation of both individual and community socioeconomic status (SES) with incident ESRD. METHODS: Among 23,314 U.S. adults in the population-based Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke study, we assessed participant differences across geospatially-linked categories of county poverty [outlier poverty, extremely high poverty, very high poverty, high poverty, neither (reference), high affluence and outlier affluence]. Multivariable Cox proportional hazards models were used to examine associations of annual household income and geospatially-linked county poverty measures with incident ESRD, while accounting for death as a competing event using the Fine and Gray method. RESULTS: There were 158 ESRD cases during follow-up. Incident ESRD rates were 178.8 per 100,000 person-years (105 py) in high poverty outlier counties and were 76.3 /105 py in affluent outlier counties, p trend = 0.06. In unadjusted competing risk models, persons residing in high poverty outlier counties had higher incidence of ESRD (which was not statistically significant) when compared to those persons residing in counties with neither high poverty nor affluence [hazard ratio (HR) 1.54, 95% Confidence Interval (CI) 0.75-3.20]. This association was markedly attenuated following adjustment for socio-demographic factors (age, sex, race, education, and income); HR 0.96, 95% CI 0.46-2.00. However, in the same adjusted model, income was independently associated with risk of ESRD [HR 3.75, 95% CI 1.62-8.64, comparing the < $20,000 income group to the > $75,000 group]. There were no statistically significant associations of county measures of poverty with incident ESRD, and no evidence of effect modification. CONCLUSIONS: In contrast to annual family income, geospatially-linked measures of county poverty have little relation with risk of ESRD. Efforts to mitigate socioeconomic disparities in kidney disease may be best appropriated at the individual level.