Otimismo, bem-estar psicológico e estratégias de coping em desempregados

Dissertação de mest., Psicologia Clínica e da Saúde, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais, Univ. do Algarve, 2013O trabalho ocupa desde os tempos primórdios um lugar de primazia na vida dos homens proporcionando os meios para a sua subsistência e a atual crise económica influencia significativamente o aumento do desemprego privando os sujeitos dos benefícios de exercerem uma atividade laboral. O objetivo deste estudo visa analisar o grau de otimismo, as estratégias de coping utilizadas para uma adaptação mais adequada a circunstâncias adversas e de bem-estar psicológico em indivíduos desempregados. Os dados foram recolhidos a partir de uma amostra constituída por 65 participantes (25 homens e 40 mulheres). Os resultados obtidos revelaram que, apesar da situação desafiadora que representa o desemprego, os valores de otimismo e bem-estar psicológico mantêm-se acima do valor médio da amplitude teórica. A estratégia de coping mais adotada por estes indivíduos foi o planeamento e a menos popular foi o uso de substâncias

Assumir o desafio de uma parentalidade positiva : um programa de intervenção

Na qualidade de profissionais da área da psicologia educacional, temos identificado, ao longo da última década, uma progressiva insegurança e, por vezes, preocupante angústia na vivência e na assunção da função parental. Essa situação reflete-se na preocupação crescente manifestada por parte dos educadores de infância que lidam com crianças que revelam um comprometimento no desenvolvimento social e emocional. De acordo com este cenário, alguns profissionais da educação começaram a utilizar o conceito de indisciplina para traduzir os comportamentos desadequados de crianças entre os 3 e 5 anos, associando muitas vezes esse “rótulo” à utilização indiscriminada do diagnóstico de hiperatividade. No âmbito da intervenção do Centro de Aprendizagem e Desenvolvimento da Infância (CeADIn) da Escola Superior de Educação de Castelo Branco, propomo-nos implementar um programa de inspiração sistémica e ecológica junto de pais de crianças ditas normais e de crianças com necessidades educativas especiais, intitulado Assumir o Desafio de uma Parentalidade Positiva. De acordo com o enunciado, o estudo de caso que pretendemos realizar é norteado pelas seguintes questões de investigação: - A implementação de um programa de Educação Parental de natureza sistémica/ecológica promoverá competências parentais eficazes para o desenvolvimento socio-emocional dos filhos? - Haverá diferenças entre os resultados obtidos junto dos pais de crianças “normais” e os resultados obtidos junto de pais de crianças com NEE antes e após a implementação do programa?As professionals of educational psychology, we have identified over the last decade, a progressive insecurity and sometimes disturbing anguish in living and assuming parental function. This situation is reflected in the growing concern expressed by the kindergarten teachers who deal with children that show a commitment to social and emotional development. According to this scenario, some education professionals started using the concept of indiscipline to translate the inappropriate behavior of children between 3 and 5 years, often associating this “label” the indiscriminate use of the diagnosis of hyperactivity. We propose to implement a systemic and ecological program with parents of “normal” children and children with special educational needs, entitled Assumir o Desafio de uma Parentalidade Positiva under the intervention of the Learning and Development Centre for Children (CeADIn) of Escola Superior de Educação de Castelo Branco. According to the statement, the case study we want to achieve is guided by the following research questions: - The implementation of a parental education program of systemic / ecological nature promote effective parenting skills for socio-emotional development of children? - There will be differences between the results obtained from the parents of “normal” children and the results obtained from parents of children with special needs before and after the implementation of the program

Toward the Identification of a Genetic Risk Signature for Pulmonary Aspergillosis in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Northern Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the Portugal 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000013), and the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) (IF/00735/2014 to A. C., and SFRH/BPD/96176/2013 to C. C.)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Immunity and Tolerance to Fungi in Hematopoietic Transplantation: Principles and Perspectives

Resistance and tolerance are two complementary host defense mechanisms that increase fitness in response to low-virulence fungi. Resistance is meant to reduce pathogen burden during infection through innate and adaptive immune mechanisms, whereas tolerance mitigates the substantial cost of resistance to host fitness through a multitude of anti-inflammatory mechanisms, including immunological tolerance. In experimental fungal infections, both defense mechanisms are activated through the delicate equilibrium between Th1/Th17 cells, which provide antifungal resistance, and regulatory T cells limiting the consequences of the ensuing inflammatory pathology. Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO), a rate-limiting enzyme in the tryptophan catabolism, plays a key role in induction of tolerance against fungi. Both hematopoietic and non-hematopoietic compartments contribute to the resistance/tolerance balance against Aspergillus fumigatus via the involvement of selected innate receptors converging on IDO. Several genetic polymorphisms in pattern recognition receptors influence resistance and tolerance to fungal infections in human hematopoietic transplantation. Thus, tolerance mechanisms may be exploited for novel diagnostics and therapeutics against fungal infections and diseases

Competências dos estudantes na área dos cuidados paliativos

Tese de mestrado, Cuidados Paliativos, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa, 2012Este trabalho teve como principais objectivos: conhecer as competências dos estudantes, do último ano da licenciatura em enfermagem, na área dos cuidados paliativos e, conhecer que tipo de conhecimentos são administrados nas escolas de enfermagem, na área dos cuidados paliativos. Metodologia: Um estudo descritivo foi efectuado a uma amostra não probabilística de 303 estudantes de enfermagem, que responderam a um questionário constituído por várias questões relativas às competências dos estudantes, às unidades curriculares que lhes foram leccionadas na área dos cuidados paliativos, tendo ainda sido caracterizados os dados formativos dos inquiridos. Resultados: Os estudantes quando terminam o curso de enfermagem, apresentam na sua maioria, competências na área dos cuidados paliativos, à excepção de algumas áreas, como sejam as temáticas específicas dos cuidados paliativos: modelos organizativos, articulação entre cuidados continuados e paliativos, comunicação de más notícias, utilização da conferência familiar, o luto imediato, estratégias para lidar com a morte, a perda e o luto e, por fim, a formação. Através da descrição dos conteúdos programáticos leccionados, podemos igualmente destacar que não estão a ser transmitidos alguns conteúdos mais especificos da área dos cuidados paliativos, como sejam: a conferência familiar, as estruturas e modelos dos cuidados paliativos, as capacidades pedagógicas, apoio no luto imediato e técnicas de transmissão de más noticias. Mais de metade da amostra refere que lhe foram leccionados conteúdos, ao longo do curso de enfermagem, na área dos cuidados paliativos, distribuidos por diversas unidades curriculares e anos do curso. Da mesma forma, uma grande parte dos estudantes referiram ter ensínos clínicos onde contactaram com doentes paliativos ou desenvolveram acções paiativas, em diversos serviços e anos de curso. Os estudantes, na sua maioria, consideram que a formação ministrada durante o curso de enfermagem, na área dos cuidados paliativos, não é suficiente para desenvolverem acções paliativas.This work had as main objectives: knowing the competencies of students, from last year's degree in nursing, in the area of palliative care and, know what kind of knowledge is given in nursing schools, in the area of palliative care. Methodology: A descriptive study was conducted at a non-probabilistic sample of 303 nursing students, who answered a questionnaire composed by a number of issues regarding the competence of students, the courses they were taught in the area of palliative care, yet been characterized the formative data of respondents. Results: When students complete the nursing program, have mostly competences in palliative care, except in some areas, such as specific topics of palliative care: organizational models, coordination between continuous and palliative care, communication of bad news, use the family conference, the immediate struggle, strategies for dealing with death, loss and grief and, finally, training. Through the description of the course contents taught, we also emphasize that, some content more specific from the area of palliative care, are not be transmitted, such as: the family conference, structures and models of palliative care, the pedagogical skills, support in the immediate grief and techniques for transmitting bad news. More than half of the sample stated that were taught content, over the course of nursing, in the area of palliative care, distributed over several modules and year of the course. Likewise, a large proportion of students reported having clinical contact with palliative patients or developed palliative actions, in different services and years of course. Most of the students consider that the training provided during the course of nursing in the area of palliative care is not enough to develop palliative actions

Cracking the Toll-like receptor code in fungal infections

Innate control of fungal infection requires the specific recognition of invariant fungal molecular structures by a variety of innate immune receptors, including Toll-like receptors. In addition to the role in inducing protective immune responses, Toll-like receptor engagement may paradoxically favor fungal infections, by inducing inflammatory pathology and impairing antifungal immunity. Although the dissection of complex genetic traits modulating susceptibility to fungal infections is complex, the contribution of host genetics may hold the key to elucidating new risk factors for these severe, often fatal diseases. Understanding host-pathogen interactions at the innate immune interface will eventually lead to the development of new therapeutics and genetic markers in fungal infections.This work was supported by the Specific Targeted Research Projects SYBARIS (FP7-HEALTH-2009), contract number 242220, and by the Italian Project PRIN 2007KLCKP8_004. Cristina Cunha and Agostinho Carvalho were financially supported by fellowships from Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia, Portugal (contracts SFRH/BD/65962/2009 and SFRH/BPD/46292/2008, respectively). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed

A hybrid heuristic for a stochastic production-inventory-routing problem

We consider a stochastic single item production-inventory-routing problem with a single producer and multiple clients. At the clients, demand is allowed to be backlogged incurring a penalty cost. Demands are considered uncertain. A recourse model is presented where the production and routing decisions are taken before the scenario is known, and the quantities to deliver to the clients and the inventory levels are adjustable to the scenario. Valid inequalities are introduced and a hybrid heuristic that combines ideas from the sample average approximation method and from relax-and-fix approaches is proposed. Preliminary tests based on randomly generated instances are reported showing that the hybrid heuristic performs better than the classical sample approximation algorithm for hard instances.publishe

Trace Elements as Contaminants and Nutrients

Knowledge about trace elements has evolved remarkably in recent decades, both in terms of their metabolism and their functions. Acting mainly as cofactors of enzymatic systems, several trace elements play an essential role in numerous physiological processes in the human organism, from cell metabolism to the immune response and gene expression, among others. On the other hand, it is also well known that excessive exposure to trace elements can be highly harmful and even fatal.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A computational comparison of compact MILP formulations for the zero forcing number

Consider a graph where some of its vertices are colored. A colored vertex with a single uncolored neighbor forces that neighbor to become colored. A zero forcing set is a set of colored vertices that forces all vertices to become colored. The zero forcing number is the size of a minimum forcing set. Finding the minimum forcing set of a graph is NP-hard. We give a new compact mixed integer linear programming formulation (MILP) for this problem, and analyse this formulation and establish relation to an existing compact formulation and to two variants. In order to solve large size instances we propose a sequential search algorithm which can also be used as a heuristic to derive upper bounds for the zero forcing number. A computational study using Xpress (a MILP solver) is conducted to test the performances of the discussed compact formulations and the sequential search algorithm. We report results on cubic, Watts-Strogatz and randomly generated graphs with 10, 20 and 30 vertices.publishe

Immunotherapy of aspergillosis

We thank C. M. Benedetti for digital art and editing.Management of invasive aspergillosis in high-risk patients remains challenging. There is an increasing demand for novel therapeutic strategies aimed at enhancing or restoring antifungal immunity in immunocompromised patients. In this regard, modulation of specific innate immune functions and vaccination are promising immunotherapeutic strategies. Recent findings have also provided a compelling rationale for assessment of the contribution of the individual genetic profile to the immunotherapy outcome. Altogether, integration of immunological and genetic data may contribute to the optimization of therapeutic strategies exerting control over immune pathways, ultimately improving the management of fungal infections in high-risk settings.The studies were supported by the Specific Targeted Research Project ALLFUN (FP7-HEALTH-2009 contract number 260338 to L. Romani) and by the Fondazione per la Ricerca sulla Fibrosi Cistica (FFC#21/2010 to L. Romani, with the contribution of Francesca Guadagnin, Coca Cola light Tribute to Fashion and Delegazione FFC di Belluno). C. Cunha and A. Carvalho were financially supported by fellowships from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal (contracts SFRH/ BD/65962/2009 and SFRH/BPD/46292/2008, respectively)