Exploration and confirmation of the latent variable structure of the Jefferson scale of empathy.

OBJECTIVE: To reaffirm the underlying components of the JSE by using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and to confirm its latent variable structure by using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). METHODS: Research participants included 2,612 medical students who entered Jefferson Medical College between 2002 and 2012. This sample was divided into two groups: Matriculants between 2002 and 2007 (n=1,380) and be-tween 2008 and 2012 (n=1,232). Data for 2002-2007 matriculants were subjected to EFA (principal component factor extraction), and data for matriculants of 2008-2012 were used for CFA (structural equation modeling, and root mean square error for approximation. RESULTS: The EFA resulted in three factors: perspective-taking, compassionate care and walking in patient\u27s shoes replicating the 3-factor model reported in most of the previous studies. The CFA showed that the 3-factor model was an acceptable fit, thus confirming the latent variable structure emerged in the EFA. Corrected item-total score correlations for the total sample were all positive and statistically significant, ranging from 0.13 to 0.61 with a median of 0.44 (p=0.01). The item discrimination effect size indices (contrasting item mean scores for the top-third versus bottom-third JSE scorers) ranged from 0.50 to 1.4 indicating that the differences in item mean scores between top and bottom scorers on the JSE were of practical importance. Cronbach\u27s alpha coefficient of the JSE for the total sample was 0.80, ranging from 0.75 to 0.84 for matriculatnts of different years. CONCLUSIONS: Findings provided further support for under-lying constructs of the JSE, adding to its credibility

Essays in health economics: volume-outcome effect, upcoding behaviour and the evaluation of a short-term intervention program

Evidence in the literature suggests a negative relationship between volume of medical procedures and mortality rates in the health care sector. In general, high-volume hospitals appear to achieve lower mortality rates, although considerable variation exists. However, most studies focus on US hospitals, which face different incentives than hospitals in a National Health Service (NHS). In order to add to the literature, this study aims to understand what happens in a NHS. Results reveal a statistically significant correlation between volume of procedures and better outcomes for the following medical procedures: cerebral infarction, respiratory infections, circulatory disorders with AMI, bowel procedures, cirrhosis, and hip and femur procedures. The effect is explained with the practice-makes-perfect hypothesis through static effects of scale with little evidence of learning-by-doing. The centralization of those medical procedures is recommended given that this policy would save a considerable number of lives (reduction of 12% in deaths for cerebral infarction).Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia - FCT PTDC/ECO/71867/2006 and SFRH/BD/71799/201

Event extraction and representation: A case study for the portuguese language

Text information extraction is an important natural language processing (NLP) task, which aims to automatically identify, extract, and represent information from text. In this context, event extraction plays a relevant role, allowing actions, agents, objects, places, and time periods to be identified and represented. The extracted information can be represented by specialized ontologies, supporting knowledge-based reasoning and inference processes. In this work, we will describe, in detail, our proposal for event extraction from Portuguese documents. The proposed approach is based on a pipeline of specialized natural language processing tools; namely, a part-of-speech tagger, a named entities recognizer, a dependency parser, semantic role labeling, and a knowledge extraction module. The architecture is language-independent, but its modules are language-dependent and can be built using adequate AI (i.e., rule-based or machine learning) methodologies. The developed system was evaluated with a corpus of Portuguese texts and the obtained results are presented and analysed. The current limitations and future work are discussed in detail

BIRTH OF A NATION: POVERTY AND DEVELOPMENT IN TIMOR-LESTE

Timor-Leste is among the world’s poorest countries and poverty reduction is high on the country’s policy agenda. The National Development Plan emphasizes a poverty reduction strategy based on economic growth and a focus on improvements in the health and education sector. This paper describes and analyses poverty and development in Timor-Leste. We find that progress has taken place but the situation remains troublesome with high poverty, low levels of education and large remaining problems in the health sector. Hence, further efforts are needed to improve upon the situation. Economic growth is fragile and too low to generate the necessary resources for such policies. However, unexpected oil revenues seem to be invested wisely and might provide the required means for sustainable poverty alleviationTimor-Leste; Economic Development; Poverty; Education; Health

Influence of abiotic stress factors on VOCs emission from Portuguese rice paddy fields: relation with increased climate change

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia do Ambiente Perfil de Gestão de Sistemas AmbientaisPlants are emitting chemical-signals to the atmosphere in response to stress factors - Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). VOCs have higher influence on atmosphere chemistry: they are acting as photochemical precursors in tropospheric ozone formation. Present work studies VOCs emission released by rice (Oryza sativa L cv. Aríete) cycle in paddy fields, in aleatory schemes with three replicates, in two separate soil plots with different textures (silty clay and loamy sand), studying open field conditions and open top chambers (OTCs) under influence of treatments with induced abiotic stress (increase temperature and simultaneously temperature and CO2 atmospheric concentration enhancement). VOCs were extracted from plant by solid phase micro extraction (SPME) and stem distillation extraction (SDE), and analyzed by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC/MS) using two GC capillary columns with different polarities, one non-polar (DB-5) and other polar (DB-WAX). A total of 33 VOCs using a non-polar column and 22 VOCs using a polar column, in both set of results were identified the three main classes of compounds: green leaf volatiles (GLV), monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes. Between rice cycle VOCs vary their trend and on vegetative stage were observed more VOCs, followed by ripening and lesser on reproductive. Silty clay soil demonstrated higher amount of VOCs released if compared with loamy sand texture. Between OTCs, more compounds were released by increasing temperature than simultaneously temperature and CO2. In Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios with emergent trend of increasing temperature and CO2 atmospheric concentration, two effects are inherent to rice VOCs emission, one negative with higher emission related with temperature and other positive with less emission associated CO2. Field data measurements addictions in air quality models will help achievements of realistic previsions and better understand the effect of climate change in air quality on a global scale.Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology; FCT-UNL and partners from INIAV and UTAD, on a project named PTDC/AGR-AAM/102529/200