Comunicação nas práticas de coordenação de grupos socioeducativos na saúde da família

Este estudo objetivou desvelar a forma da comunicação do coordenador de grupos socioeducativos na Saúde da Família. Pesquisa qualitativa, descritiva e exploratória desenvolvida com 25 coordenadores de grupos distribuídos em oito unidades básicas de saúde de Belo Horizonte, Brasil. Para coleta de dados, utilizou-se a observação não participante e a entrevista semiestruturada com os coordenadores. O estudo teve como marco teórico as concepções de Bakhtin e referenciais sobre comunicação e saúde. As informações coletadas mostram que a tríade corpo, saúde e doença é comunicada nos grupos por diferentes canais e em níveis diversificados de discurso. Conclui-se que há necessidade do coordenador valer-se de uma abordagem que valoriza a expressão do participante, não estritamente da saúde em sua dimensão física, mas da vida de cada um, buscando diferentes formas de comunicação para efetivar a ação educativa dialógica e os espaços de interação nos grupos.

Distribution of neuronal and metabolic markers in the human auditory cortex

SUMMARY The human auditory cortex, located on the supratemporal plane of the temporal lobe, is divided in a primary auditory area and several non-primary areas surrounding it. These different areas show anatomical and functional differences. Many studies have focussed on auditory areas in non-human primates, using investigation techniques such as electrophysiological recordings, tracing of neural connections, or immunohistochemical and histochemical staining. Some of these studies have suggested parallel and hierarchical organization of the cortical auditory areas as well as subcortical auditory relays. In humans, only few studies have investigated these regions immunohistochemically, but activation and lesion studies speak in favour of parallel and hierarchical organization, very similar to that of non-human primates. Calcium-binding proteins and metabolic markers were used to investigate possible correlates of hierarchical and parallel organization in man. Calcium-binding proteins, parvalbumin, calretinin and calbindin, modulate the concentration of intracellular free calcium ions and were found in distinct subpopulations of GABAergic neurons in non-human primates species. In our study, their distribution showed several differences between auditory areas: the primary auditory area was darkly stained for both parvalbumin and calbindin, and their expression rapidly decreased while moving away from the primary area. This staining pattern suggests a hierarchical organization of the areas, in which the more darkly stained areas could correspond to an earlier integration level and the areas showing light staining may correspond to higher level integration areas. Parallel organization of primary and non-primary auditory areas was suggested by the complementarity, within a given area, between parvalbumin and calbindin expression across layers. To investigate the possible differences in the energetic metabolism of the cortical auditory areas, several metabolic markers were used: cytochrome oxidase and LDH1 were used as oxidative metabolism markers and LDH5 was used as glycolytic metabolism marker. The results obtained show a difference in the expression of enzymes involved in oxidative metabolism between areas. In the primary auditory area the oxidative metabolism markers were maximally expressed in layer IV. In contrast, higher order areas showed maximal staining in supragranular layers. The expression of LDH5 varied in patches, but did not differ between the different hierarchical auditory areas. The distribution of the two LDH enzymes isoforms also provides information about cellular aspects of metabolic organization, since neurons expressed the LDH1 isoform whereas astrocytes express primarily LDH5, but some astrocytes also contained the LDH1 isoform. This cellular distribution pattern supports the hypothesis of the existence of an astrocyte-neuron lactate shuttle, previously suggested in rodent studies, and in particular of lactate transfer from astrocytes, which produce lactate from the glucose obtained from the circulation, to neurons that use lactate as energy substrate. In conclusion, the hypothesis of parallel and hierarchical organization of the auditory areas can be supported by CaBPs, cytochrome oxidase and LDH1 distribution. Moreover, the two LDHs cellular distribution pattern support the hypothesis of an astrocyte-neuron lactate shuttle in human cortex.

Elements of olfactory reception in adult Drosophila melanogaster.

The olfactory system of Drosophila has become an attractive and simple model to investigate olfaction because it follows the same organizational principles of vertebrates, and the results can be directly applied to other insects with economic and sanitary relevance. Here, we review the structural elements of the Drosophila olfactory reception organs at the level of the cells and molecules involved. This article is intended to reflect the structural basis underlying the functional variability of the detection of an olfactory universe composed of thousands of odors. At the genetic level, we further detail the genes and transcription factors (TF) that determine the structural variability. The fly's olfactory receptor organs are the third antennal segments and the maxillary palps, which are covered with sensory hairs called sensilla. These sensilla house the odorant receptor neurons (ORNs) that express one or few odorant receptors in a stereotyped pattern regulated by combinations of TF. Also, perireceptor events, such as odor molecules transport to their receptors, are carried out by odorant binding proteins. In addition, the rapid odorant inactivation to preclude saturation of the system occurs by biotransformation and detoxification enzymes. These additional events take place in the lymph that surrounds the ORNs. We include some data on ionotropic and metabotropic olfactory transduction, although this issue is still under debate in Drosophila.

Cumulative cultural dynamics and the coevolution of cultural innovation and transmission: an ESS model for panmictic and structured populations.

When individuals in a population can acquire traits through learning, each individual may express a certain number of distinct cultural traits. These traits may have been either invented by the individual himself or acquired from others in the population. Here, we develop a game theoretic model for the accumulation of cultural traits through individual and social learning. We explore how the rates of innovation, decay, and transmission of cultural traits affect the evolutionary stable (ES) levels of individual and social learning and the number of cultural traits expressed by an individual when cultural dynamics are at a steady-state. We explore the evolution of these phenotypes in both panmictic and structured population settings. Our results suggest that in panmictic populations, the ES level of learning and number of traits tend to be independent of the social transmission rate of cultural traits and is mainly affected by the innovation and decay rates. By contrast, in structured populations, where interactions occur between relatives, the ES level of learning and the number of traits per individual can be increased (relative to the panmictic case) and may then markedly depend on the transmission rate of cultural traits. This suggests that kin selection may be one additional solution to Rogers's paradox of nonadaptive culture.

Addressing Practical Issues Related Tto Nursing Care For International Visitors To Hiroshima

When nine million foreigners visited Japan in 2013, the federal government set a goal to attract an additional two and a half million visitors including medical tourists by 2020. This research investigates the attitudes and concerns of Japanese nurses when they are in a situation dealing with foreign patients. The data were collected from March through September 2010, from 114 nurses at three hospitals, in close proximity to popular tourist destinations in Hiroshima. A questionnaire was developed for this research, named Mari Meter, which included a section to write answers to an open question for the nurses to express their opinions. These responses were examined statistically and by word analysis using Text Mining Studio. Japanese nurses expressed greatest concern about payment options, foreign language skills, and issues of informed consent, when dealing with foreigners. The results confirm that, in order to provide a high quality of patient care, extra preparation and a greater knowledge of international workers and visitors are required by nursing professionals in Japan.


On the number of independent cultural traits carried by individuals and populations.

In species subject to individual and social learning, each individual is likely to express a certain number of different cultural traits acquired during its lifetime. If the process of trait innovation and transmission reaches a steady state in the population, the number of different cultural traits carried by an individual converges to some stationary distribution. We call this the trait-number distribution. In this paper, we derive the trait-number distributions for both individuals and populations when cultural traits are independent of each other. Our results suggest that as the number of cultural traits becomes large, the trait-number distributions approach Poisson distributions so that their means characterize cultural diversity in the population. We then analyse how the mean trait number varies at both the individual and population levels as a function of various demographic features, such as population size and subdivision, and social learning rules, such as conformism and anti-conformism. Diversity at the individual and population levels, as well as at the level of cultural homogeneity within groups, depends critically on the details of population demography and the individual and social learning rules.

Molecular basis for changes in behavioral state in ant social behaviors.

A hallmark of behavior is that animals respond to environmental change by switching from one behavioral state to another. However, information on the molecular underpinnings of these behavioral shifts and how they are mediated by the environment is lacking. The ant Pheidole pallidula with its morphologically and behaviorally distinct major and minor workers is an ideal system to investigate behavioral shifts. The physically larger majors are predisposed to defend the ant nest, whereas the smaller minors are the foragers. Despite this predisposition, majors are able to shift to foraging according to the needs of the colony. We show that the ant foraging (ppfor) gene, which encodes a cGMP-dependent protein kinase (PKG), mediates this shift. Majors have higher brain PKG activities than minors, and the spatial distribution of the PPFOR protein differs in these workers. Specifically, majors express the PPFOR protein in 5 cells in the anterior face of the ant brain, whereas minors do not. Environmental manipulations show that PKG is lower in the presence of a foraging stimulus and higher when defense is required. Finally, pharmacological activation of PKG increases defense and reduces foraging behavior. Thus, PKG signaling plays a critical role in P. pallidula behavioral shifts.

Imaging pheromone sensing in a mouse vomeronasal acute tissue slice preparation.

Peter Karlson and Martin Lüscher used the term pheromone for the first time in 1959 to describe chemicals used for intra-species communication. Pheromones are volatile or non-volatile short-lived molecules secreted and/or contained in biological fluids, such as urine, a liquid known to be a main source of pheromones. Pheromonal communication is implicated in a variety of key animal modalities such as kin interactions, hierarchical organisations and sexual interactions and are consequently directly correlated with the survival of a given species. In mice, the ability to detect pheromones is principally mediated by the vomeronasal organ (VNO), a paired structure located at the base of the nasal cavity, and enclosed in a cartilaginous capsule. Each VNO has a tubular shape with a lumen allowing the contact with the external chemical world. The sensory neuroepithelium is principally composed of vomeronasal bipolar sensory neurons (VSNs). Each VSN extends a single dendrite to the lumen ending in a large dendritic knob bearing up to 100 microvilli implicated in chemical detection. Numerous subpopulations of VSNs are present. They are differentiated by the chemoreceptor they express and thus possibly by the ligand(s) they recognize. Two main vomeronasal receptor families, V1Rs and V2Rs, are composed respectively by 240 and 120 members and are expressed in separate layers of the neuroepithelium. Olfactory receptors (ORs) and formyl peptide receptors (FPRs) are also expressed in VSNs. Whether or not these neuronal subpopulations use the same downstream signalling pathway for sensing pheromones is unknown. Despite a major role played by a calcium-permeable channel (TRPC2) present in the microvilli of mature neurons TRPC2 independent transduction channels have been suggested. Due to the high number of neuronal subpopulations and the peculiar morphology of the organ, pharmacological and physiological investigations of the signalling elements present in the VNO are complex. Here, we present an acute tissue slice preparation of the mouse VNO for performing calcium imaging investigations. This physiological approach allows observations, in the natural environment of a living tissue, of general or individual subpopulations of VSNs previously loaded with Fura-2AM, a calcium dye. This method is also convenient for studying any GFP-tagged pheromone receptor and is adaptable for the use of other fluorescent calcium probes. As an example, we use here a VG mouse line, in which the translation of the pheromone V1rb2 receptor is linked to the expression of GFP by a polycistronic strategy.

c-Cbl expression levels regulate the functional responses of human central and effector memory CD4 T cells.

The biochemical mechanisms controlling the diverse functional outcomes of human central memory (CM) and effector memory (EM) T-cell responses triggered through the T-cell receptor (TCR) remain poorly understood. We implemented reverse phase protein arrays to profile TCR signaling components in human CD8 and CD4 memory T-cell subsets isolated ex vivo. As compared with CD4 CM cells, EM cells express statistically significant increased amounts of SLP-76 and reduced levels of c-Cbl, Syk, Fyn, and LAT. Moreover, in EM cells reduced expression of negative regulator c-Cbl correlates with expression of c-Cbl kinases (Syk and Fyn), PI3K, and LAT. Importantly, consistent with reduced expression of c-Cbl, EM cells display a lower functional threshold than CM cells. Increasing c-Cbl content of EM cells to the same level as that of CM cells using cytosolic transduction, we impaired their proliferation and cytokine production. This regulatory mechanism depends primarily on c-Cbl E3 ubiquitin ligase activity as evidenced by the weaker impact of enzymatically deficient c-Cbl C381A mutant on EM cell functions. Our study reports c-Cbl as a critical regulator of the functional responses of memory T cell subsets and identifies for the first time in humans a mechanism controlling the functional heterogeneity of memory CD4 cells.

Empowering a group of seniors in a rural community

OBJECTIVE To describe the stages of the empowerment process of a group of seniors in a rural community. METHOD Convergent care research whose foundation is to use the scope of practice. Conducted with the proposal to change the practice of 21 seniors and nine health professionals, with the aim of health promotion empowerment. Data were collected during 22 meetings, and group interviews at the end of the intervention. RESULTS Showed that despite the initial impact of the change, the group was able to welcome the new change, taking advantage of the space to express anxieties, share joys, and build new knowledge, which led to the incorporation of changes that reflected in the development of healthy habits and improvements in interpersonal relationships. CONCLUSION The convergent care research consisted of strategy that changed the group's lives, empowering them with health promoting actions.

A Tributação Pessoal dos Rendimentos Familiares em Cabo Verde – Estudo do Caso São Vicente

A transição para o modo de tributação único, a nível de rendimentos, constituiu uma modificação profunda na base de incidência e nas regras de determinação da matéria colectável dos impostos sobre os rendimentos, de forma a exprimir uma nova relação contribuinte – fisco, baseada numa maior transparência e simplificação dos procedimentos por parte da Administração Fiscal, mas também duma maior responsabilização dos contribuintes pelos seus comportamentos e declarações. Este trabalho teve como propósito estudar a forma como os rendimentos familiares são tributados, nomeadamente, a incidência na tributação de sujeitos passivos singulares, referindo assim o periodo da tributação, os métodos utilizados na determinação da matéria colectável e as taxas aplicadas. Para tanto, foram reunidos estudos teóricos e práticos a nível da tributação dos rendimentos de pessoas singulares, nomeadamente os principios e as regras praticados. Foi feito um estudo de caso sobre apuramento de imposto dos contribuintes casados dois titulares, a partir de formulários modelos 6A da Repartição de Finanças São Vicente, e o objecto desse estudo foi separar os rendimentos desses contribuintes e fazer o apuramento do respectivo imposto em separado. Os resultados do estudo apontam uma vantagem bastante satisfatória para os contribuintes no que diz respeito ao apuramento do imposto em separado. The transition to the unique taxation method, in the level of incomes, is a deep modification in the incidence base and in the determination rules of the basis of tax assessments of income taxes, in a way to express a new taxpayer – Exchequer relationship, based on a greater transparency and simplification of the procedures by Fiscal Administration, and a bigger responsabilization of taxpayers for their behaviours and declarations as well. The aim of this survey was to study how household incomes are taxed, namely: the incidence in the taxation of passive single persons, referring, thus, the taxation period, the methods used to determinate the basis of tax assessments and the applied taxes. For that, theoretical and practical studies were collected in the level of single persons incomes taxation, namely the principles and rules practised. A case study about tax verification of married taxpayers two holders was made, from São Vicente Financial Department’s 6A model forms, and the aim of this study was to separate the incomes of these taxpayers and make the verification of the respective tax separately. The results of this study points out a very satisfying advantage to taxpayers regarding the tax verification separately.

La voz flamenca del violín

Este proyecto representa una aproximación al flamenco desde la música clásica, y más concretamente desde el punto de vista violinístico. Se trata de una visión personal sobre los elementos técnicos e interpretativos a seguir para adentrarnos en la estilística flamenca. Ampliar los conocimientos musicales para así enriquecernos y crecer, tanto como personas como músicos. De la fusión musical emergen nuevos horizontes con los que poder expresarnos. Esto nos abre las puertas a la creatividad.

Landmark detection for fusion of fundus and MRI toward a patient-specific multimodal eye model.

Ophthalmologists typically acquire different image modalities to diagnose eye pathologies. They comprise, e.g., Fundus photography, optical coherence tomography, computed tomography, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Yet, these images are often complementary and do express the same pathologies in a different way. Some pathologies are only visible in a particular modality. Thus, it is beneficial for the ophthalmologist to have these modalities fused into a single patient-specific model. The goal of this paper is a fusion of Fundus photography with segmented MRI volumes. This adds information to MRI that was not visible before like vessels and the macula. This paper contributions include automatic detection of the optic disc, the fovea, the optic axis, and an automatic segmentation of the vitreous humor of the eye.

Approaches and Strategies to Improve Writing Skills

I believe and, I hope others believe that writing well is not only a personal accomplishment but also a valuable form of social participation and leadership. After reviewing the literature, this work tries to identify the problem and to identify the key issues to EFL writing so as to suggest a remedial procedure that may help the learners to express themselves better in English. It aims at finding areas of difficulty in the writing skill among the students and to work out remedial procedures to help them overcome their weakness. A survey carried out on 12th grade students, regarding their comprehension, shows that organizing idea on paper is one of the factors which influences their ability to write. It also shows that students feel the need to be instructed on strategies of writing success and consequently improving their writing. There are a lot systematic approaches and methods for discerning which skills and type of writing teacher should focus on and meaningful classroom activities and strategies that teacher can use to help students improving their writing.

Clusterin in neurological disorders: molecular perspectives and clinical relevance.

Firstly discovered in rete testis fluid, clusterin is a glycoprotein present in most of the other biological fluids. Several isoforms of clusterin are encoded from a single gene located on chromosome 8 in human species. Among the different isoforms, the secreted form of clusterin is expressed by a variety of tissues, including the nervous system under normal conditions. This form is presumed to play an anti-apoptotic role and seems to be a major determinant in cell survival and neuroplasticity after stroke. In animal models of this pathology, both neuronal and astroglial subpopulations express high levels of clusterin early after the ischemic damage. Recent lines of evidence point also to its possible involvement in neurodegenerative disorders. It is thought that in Alzheimer's disease the association between amyloidogenic peptides and clusterin contributes to limit Aβ species misfolding and facilitates their clearance from the extracellular space. Thus, intercellular and intracellular factors that modulate local clusterin expression in the nervous system may represent potent targets for neurodegenerative disease therapies. In this review we provide a critical overview of the most recent data on the involvement of clusterin in neurodegenerative diseases with special reference to their putative clinical relevance.