Contribution to the study of epidemiological factors associated with sensorineural hearing loss in the population of São Tomé and Príncipe

ABSTRACT: Otorhinolaryngology, like other medical and non-medical services, can contribute to its humanitarian support. At the end of 2010, the ORL department of CUF Infante Santo Hospital, led by Professor João Paço, was invited to participate in humanitarian missions in one of the Portuguese-speaking countries, former Portuguese colony - Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe. Without any knowledge of the main ENT pathologies we started this adventure. From research on sub-Saharan African countries, an increase in deafness was expected from chronic otological infections. The mission was organized to have audiological assessment, ENT assessment and surgical interventions. It was in February 2011 that we started the adventure through the hot lands of São Tomé and Príncipe. Deafness was one of the main problems found, but contrary to what we expected, deafness was mainly sensorineural, affecting a high percentage of children, some without language acquisition and with bilateral profound deafness. At the end of the first mission, the results led to the curiosity to understand the reason for the increased prevalence of sensorineural deafness, irreversible and with socio-cultural repercussions important for the development of a country. The absence of clinical records, laboratory exams, imagiologic or audiologic tests led us to a greater clinical challenge of etiological cause of hearing loss in this country. The present doctoral project was born at the end of the first mission. Admission to the doctoral course was accepted in July 2011, and a challenge to research began. The initial research project has undergone several modifications due to there are several diagnostic and economic constrictions. In June 2013, in the scope of the doctoral course, during genetics curricular unit, and due to difficulties in carrying out complementary examinations in the island, born the idea was born to study the association between neurossensorial hearing loss and some of some of the most frequent hemoglobinopathies of the region. These hemoglobinopathiesare known to give some protection for the development of one of the major scourges of the country – Malaria. For that, was carried-out the collection of blood samples on Dried Blood Spot or Guthrie paper from São Tomé and Príncipe for analysis in Portugal. Since São Tomé and Príncipe is an island that has been colonized for many years by Portuguese, we could hypothesize for the existence of an associated genetic factor, and for that reason the evaluation of the main mutations of our people should be investigated. Since São Tomé and Príncipe is an island that has been colonized for many years by Portuguese, we hypothesize the existence of the same genetic factors, and for that reason the evaluation of the main mutations from Portuguese population was investigated. In this country, they had a significant improvement in primary health care, since the implementation of humanitarian aid by the IMVF in cooperation with the Camões Institute. São Tomé and Príncipe have good vaccination coverage, but some vaccines that may have an impact on the appearance of deafness, such as rubella, were not implemented until this project. Rubella is a known etiologic factor for congenital deafness. In São Tomé and Príncipe it is not possible to determine the existence of the disease by laboratory tests, being a pathology often forgotten at diagnosis. For this reason, the research project also contemplated the serological study of rubella in order to confirm the existence of the disease in the community and demonstrate the need to implement adequate measures - vaccination. Knowing that there is not only an etiological factor for deafness, the birth of this project undoubtedly is stimulating for a clinician and a researcher. The curiosity that awakens and the attempt to stop this scourge that interferes so much with the development of a community, leads to the effort which is always rewarded. Analyzing the main effects of the risk factors evaluated, it was found that female gender is in high risk to have HL than male gender; rubella disease could lead to HL if it is during gestational period and represents a double risk to HL. In this sample, self-report of malaria infection augments the risk of HL, around three times more; sickle cell disease (HbSS) have almost two and half folder risk to develop HL and sickle cell trait is protecting to HL; regarding G6PD non-B variant in association with gender, even though it was not found to be statistically significant, male gender almost duplicated the risk to develop HL; the mutations in GJB2 and GJB6 of control group, unilateral and bilateral did not reveal significant difference. There was a wide variability in mutations found, which led to conclude that it is not possible to define a standard and can be justified by the existence of multiple people to colonize the island. Simultaneously with the etiological research project, there is a need to the diagnosis to minimize the effects of deafness. The acquisition of equipment for audiological evaluation (audiogram and auditory evoked potentials) and the acquisition and adaptation of hearing aids to children and young adults with work activity were born with the help of patronage, in order to reduce the effects of social isolation. This project gave rise to another humanitarian project - "Projecto sem Barreiras" of the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian with the IMVF and Universidade Católica Portuguesa which included the national implementation of the Sign Language of São Tomé and Príncipe (LGSTP) and the Neonatal Auditory Screening of São Tomé and Príncipe (RANSTP), with the acquisition of acoustic oto-emission equipment. Undoubtedly a project that was born with Professor João Paço, cherished by all, with the ambition to contribute to the development of a country - Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe and scientific knowledge

Advancements and Breakthroughs in Ultrasound Imaging

Ultrasonic imaging is a powerful diagnostic tool available to medical practitioners, engineers and researchers today. Due to the relative safety, and the non-invasive nature, ultrasonic imaging has become one of the most rapidly advancing technologies. These rapid advances are directly related to the parallel advancements in electronics, computing, and transducer technology together with sophisticated signal processing techniques. This book focuses on state of the art developments in ultrasonic imaging applications and underlying technologies presented by leading practitioners and researchers from many parts of the world

Proceedings, MSVSCC 2015

The Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center (VMASC) of Old Dominion University hosted the 2015 Modeling, Simulation, & Visualization Student capstone Conference on April 16th. The Capstone Conference features students in Modeling and Simulation, undergraduates and graduate degree programs, and fields from many colleges and/or universities. Students present their research to an audience of fellow students, faculty, judges, and other distinguished guests. For the students, these presentations afford them the opportunity to impart their innovative research to members of the M&S community from academic, industry, and government backgrounds. Also participating in the conference are faculty and judges who have volunteered their time to impart direct support to their students’ research, facilitate the various conference tracks, serve as judges for each of the tracks, and provide overall assistance to this conference. 2015 marks the ninth year of the VMASC Capstone Conference for Modeling, Simulation and Visualization. This year our conference attracted a number of fine student written papers and presentations, resulting in a total of 51 research works that were presented. This year’s conference had record attendance thanks to the support from the various different departments at Old Dominion University, other local Universities, and the United States Military Academy, at West Point. We greatly appreciated all of the work and energy that has gone into this year’s conference, it truly was a highly collaborative effort that has resulted in a very successful symposium for the M&S community and all of those involved. Below you will find a brief summary of the best papers and best presentations with some simple statistics of the overall conference contribution. Followed by that is a table of contents that breaks down by conference track category with a copy of each included body of work. Thank you again for your time and your contribution as this conference is designed to continuously evolve and adapt to better suit the authors and M&S supporters. Dr.Yuzhong Shen Graduate Program Director, MSVE Capstone Conference Chair John ShullGraduate Student, MSVE Capstone Conference Student Chai

Using MapReduce Streaming for Distributed Life Simulation on the Cloud

Distributed software simulations are indispensable in the study of large-scale life models but often require the use of technically complex lower-level distributed computing frameworks, such as MPI. We propose to overcome the complexity challenge by applying the emerging MapReduce (MR) model to distributed life simulations and by running such simulations on the cloud. Technically, we design optimized MR streaming algorithms for discrete and continuous versions of Conway’s life according to a general MR streaming pattern. We chose life because it is simple enough as a testbed for MR’s applicability to a-life simulations and general enough to make our results applicable to various lattice-based a-life models. We implement and empirically evaluate our algorithms’ performance on Amazon’s Elastic MR cloud. Our experiments demonstrate that a single MR optimization technique called strip partitioning can reduce the execution time of continuous life simulations by 64%. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to propose and evaluate MR streaming algorithms for lattice-based simulations. Our algorithms can serve as prototypes in the development of novel MR simulation algorithms for large-scale lattice-based a-life models.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/scs_books/1014/thumbnail.jp

Proceedings of the NASA Conference on Space Telerobotics, volume 4

Papers presented at the NASA Conference on Space Telerobotics are compiled. The theme of the conference was man-machine collaboration in space. The conference provided a forum for researchers and engineers to exchange ideas on the research and development required for the application of telerobotic technology to the space systems planned for the 1990's and beyond. Volume 4 contains papers related to the following subject areas: manipulator control; telemanipulation; flight experiments (systems and simulators); sensor-based planning; robot kinematics, dynamics, and control; robot task planning and assembly; and research activities at the NASA Langley Research Center

PROFILING - CONCEPTS AND APPLICATIONS

Profiling is an approach to put a label or a set of labels on a subject, considering the characteristics of this subject. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines profiling as: “recording and analysis of a person’s psychological and behavioral characteristics, so as to assess or predict his/her capabilities in a certain sphere or to assist in identifying a particular subgroup of people”. This research extends this definition towards things demonstrating that many methods used for profiling of people may be applied for a different type of subjects, namely things. The goal of this research concerns proposing methods for discovery of profiles of users and things with application of Data Science methods. The profiles are utilized in vertical and 2 horizontal scenarios and concern such domains as smart grid and telecommunication (vertical scenarios), and support provided both for the needs of authorization and personalization (horizontal usage).:The thesis consists of eight chapters including an introduction and a summary. First chapter describes motivation for work that was carried out for the last 8 years together with discussion on its importance both for research and business practice. The motivation for this work is much broader and emerges also from business importance of profiling and personalization. The introduction summarizes major research directions, provides research questions, goals and supplementary objectives addressed in the thesis. Research methodology is also described, showing impact of methodological aspects on the work undertaken. Chapter 2 provides introduction to the notion of profiling. The definition of profiling is introduced. Here, also a relation of a user profile to an identity is discussed. The papers included in this chapter show not only how broadly a profile may be understood, but also how a profile may be constructed considering different data sources. Profiling methods are introduced in Chapter 3. This chapter refers to the notion of a profile developed using the BFI-44 personality test and outcomes of a survey related to color preferences of people with a specific personality. Moreover, insights into profiling of relations between people are provided, with a focus on quality of a relation emerging from contacts between two entities. Chapters from 4 to 7 present different scenarios that benefit from application of profiling methods. Chapter 4 starts with introducing the notion of a public utility company that in the thesis is discussed using examples from smart grid and telecommunication. Then, in chapter 4 follows a description of research results regarding profiling for the smart grid, focusing on a profile of a prosumer and forecasting demand and production of the electric energy in the smart grid what can be influenced e.g. by weather or profiles of appliances. Chapter 5 presents application of profiling techniques in the field of telecommunication. Besides presenting profiling methods based on telecommunication data, in particular on Call Detail Records, also scenarios and issues related to privacy and trust are addressed. Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 target at horizontal applications of profiling that may be of benefit for multiple domains. Chapter 6 concerns profiling for authentication using un-typical data sources such as Call Detail Records or data from a mobile phone describing the user behavior. Besides proposing methods, also limitations are discussed. In addition, as a side research effect a methodology for evaluation of authentication methods is proposed. Chapter 7 concerns personalization and consists of two diverse parts. Firstly, behavioral profiles to change interface and behavior of the system are proposed and applied. The performance of solutions personalizing content either locally or on the server is studied. Then, profiles of customers of shopping centers are created based on paths identified using Call Detail Records. The analysis demonstrates that the data that is collected for one purpose, may significantly influence other business scenarios. Chapter 8 summarizes the research results achieved by the author of this document. It presents contribution over state of the art as well as some insights into the future work planned

12 Chapters on Nuclear Medicine

The development of nuclear medicine as a medical specialty has resulted in the large-scale application of its effective imaging methods in everyday practice as a primary method of diagnosis. The introduction of positron-emitting tracers (PET) has represented another fundamental leap forward in the ability of nuclear medicine to exert a profound impact on patient management, while the ability to produce radioisotopes of different elements initiated a variety of tracer studies in biology and medicine, facilitating enhanced interactions of nuclear medicine specialists and specialists in other disciplines. At present, nuclear medicine is an essential part of diagnosis of many diseases, particularly in cardiologic, nephrologic and oncologic applications and it is well-established in its therapeutic approaches, notably in the treatment of thyroid cancers. Data from official sources of different countries confirm that more than 10-15 percent of expenditures on clinical imaging studies are spent on nuclear medicine procedures

Background Examples of Literature Searches on Topics of Interest

A zip file of various literature searches & some resources related to our work related to exposure after the Chernobyl accident and as we began looking at helping in Semey Kazakhstan----a collection of literature reviews on various topics we were interested in... eg. establishing a registry of those exposed for longterm follow-up, what we knew about certain areas like genetics and some resources like A Guide to Environmental Resources on the Internet by Carol Briggs-Erickson and Toni Murphy which could be found on the Internet and was written to be used by researchers, environmentalists, teachers and any person who is interested in knowing and doing something about the health of our planet. See more at https://archives.library.tmc.edu/dm-ms211-012-0060